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Basics

BOOK: Job

Description: a story of suffering, questioning and restoration

Author: unknown

Date written: unknown

Chapters: 42

Brief Synopsis

• Gets its name from the main player, Job, who suffers and argues
• We are given an insight behind the scenes in heaven (Ch.1 & 2) which explains all that happens to Job and which must be remembered throughout.
• Satan is allowed to move against Job who has the most intense suffering.
• Three friends come to console him and end up arguing with him about the reasons for his state.
• At the end he encounters God and realizes that there is no point arguing with the Almighty sovereign God.
• (Beware! Don’t try grabbing verses out of the argument part of this book because not everything the ‘friends’ say, is right.)

Why Read Job

This is a good question for this book is one of the hardest books in the Bible to read and to understand. The first two chapters and the last chapter are easy to read and take in – they may raise questions but it is easy to see what they say. From chapter 3 on, it gets more difficult, in fact we would say very difficult if we want to go beyond skimming the surface and get into understanding exactly what is being said. Whether it is factual history, an account of something that happened just like this, or it is a fictional narrative to convey amazing truths, we must leave you to decide.

The Challenge of Job

This book, possibly more than any other in the Bible we might suggest, has the capacity to provoke questions within us and sometimes it helps to maintain a ‘big view’ to cope with the smaller parts. So, for instance, we would suggest that the following are the big issues the book deals with:

• the meaning of life and then the meaning of death,
• the nature of the lives people live,
• why life is sometimes cut short prematurely,
• God’s oversight of all human life,
• the role He assigns to Satan in this life
• and then the biggest question of all that we will consider below.

Approach & Lessons

As the book of Job is all about questions and answers – some right, some half right, and some just wrong, we will seek to draw out key lessons to be considered at the end of each chapter. However,

• The biggest question that must hang over the whole book must be, why do bad things happen to good people? However, before we address that we need to reflect on the nature of the book.
• It is thought that this book may be one of the oldest in the Bible and back in such times teaching and history was usually conveyed in story form. Later Jesus was to use parables extensively in his teaching. So, instead of a neatly packaged one by one pieces of wisdom being laid out, we find the book shown as a story which may be factual history or fictional narrative, but the aim is the same (as that found with Jesus’ parables) to provide a narrative that will raise questions in us and guide us towards the truth – but it does need careful reading and then extensive thinking, for which these Frameworks are designed to help you.
• We will go into much more detail in respect of these and other questions raised by the book, in the Appendix at the end.

Contents

• PART 1: Ch.1-2: The Testing of Job
  • 1. Job under attack (Pt.1) (The first series of tests and Job’s response)
  • 2. Job under attack (Pt.2) (The second test and Job’s response)
• PART 2: Ch.3-31: Job & his three friends
  • 3. Job (1): Job wishes he had never been born (Lament)
  • First Round
  • 4. Eliphaz (1/3 – Part 1)
  • 5. Eliphaz (1/3 – Part 2)
  • 6. Job (2) Part 1
  • 7. Job (2) Part 2 
  • 8. Bildad (1/3)
  • 9. Job (3) Part 1: The Futility of Disputing with God
  • 10. Job (3) Part 2: Job Prays i.e. directly addresses God
  • 11. Zophar (1/2)
  • 12. Job (4) Part 1
  • 13. Job (4) Part 2: Job wants to talk to God
  • 14. Job (4) Part 3: Confronting Mortality
  • Second Round
  • 15. Eliphaz (2/3): Challenge & Frailty
  • 16. Job (5) Part 1: Worn out but remaining true
  • 17. Job (5) Part 2: Please Think Again
  • 18: Bildad (2/3): Analogies & Condemnation   
  • 19. Job (6): Woes and faith
  • 20. Zophar (2/2): All about the folly of wickedness
  • 21. Job (7): Theory of the wicked demolished
  • Third Round
  • 22. Eliphaz (3/3): Accusations & Challenges from Eliphaz a final time
  • 23. Job (8) Part 1: Job stands firm in the darkness
  • 24. Job (8) Part 2: Job’s Reflections on Injustices & eventual Judgment
  • 25. Bildad (3/3)
  • 26. Job (9) Part 1: Attack – Rebuke of the ‘friends’ for ‘only God knows’
  • 27. Job (9) Part 2: Defence – Job’s Personal Integrity & the fate of his enemies
  • 28. Job (9) Part 3: Interlude: Where Wisdom is Found
  • 29. Job (9) Part 4: The Past – Job looks back almost nostalgically
  • 30. Job (9) Part 5:The Present -Roles Reversed & a Resultant Wreck
  • 31. Job (9) Part 6: Final Defence – Job’s Final Words of Self-Vindication
• PART 3: Ch.32-37: A zealous young man’s perspective
  • Ch.32 – Elihu – Part 1 of 6: Introducing Elihu
  • Ch.33 – Elihu – Part 2 of 6: God IS a Communicator
  • Ch.34 – Elihu – Part 3 of 6: Job has got it wrong!
  • Ch.35 – Elihu – Part 4 of 6: Misguided Questions?
  • Ch.36 – Elihu – Part 5 of 6: God IS Just
  • Ch.37 – Elihu – Part 6 of 6: God IS Supreme
• PART 4: Ch.38-41: God’s perspective
  • Ch.38: The LORD Speaks about Creation
  • Ch.39: The LORD Speaks about Creatures
  • Ch.40: Human Impotence on the earth
  • Ch.41: Human Impotence on the sea or river
• PART 5: Ch.42: Job restored
  • Ch.42 : Conclusions & Restoration
• APPENDIX: Considering Suffering & God
  • Notes looking at the many questions raised about suffering in Job and in the world, in the light of the Bible teaching that God is a God of love.

Concluding Comments

• The ultimate message of this book is don’t try reasoning or rationalizing suffering; you only get understanding through revelation from God.
• If you read this book, in the early chapters catch and empathize with the anguish that Job is suffering and remember, suffering people don’t want logical answers, they want loving and accepting!
• As you go through the arguments of the friends, ask yourself is what they are saying actually true?

An Additional Help

In addition to the notes found in the Appendix, we wish to help the reader find understanding in Job with the following:

We want to imagine a conversation between God the Father and God the Son. This is entirely imaginary and we have no biblical basis for supposing that it happened, but we ’imagine’ this conversation purely as a possible aid to more fully explain and understand the things that we read about in the book of Job. We write it in the light of all else we find in the Bible. We hope you will find it helpful.

Son: Father, I see you watching Job. What are you planning to do?

Father: Son, I am considering him in the light of the bigger picture of this world we created as perfect, this world in which we created mankind, yes, complete with free-will which we knew beforehand they would misuse, a world that would see the Fall, and require us to plan for you to go and redeem them from the claims of Justice. When we made them in our image we made them with potential for great things, but with free-will we gave them the possibility to do the most terrible of things as well, but without it they could not be true human beings with such wonderful potential.  

Son: But, Father, where does Job come into this?

Father: Job, my Son, is going to demonstrate to the world just how wonderful they are.

Son: But how?

Father: Consider again the downside of their free-will. Every action has consequences, and bad actions bring bad consequences, consequences that for them are so often harmful and hurtful and destructive. Now consider our goals throughout their history. We desire to win them back to us, into an even more wonderful relationship with us than they had before the Fall. We want to do that without violating in any way their free-will, or without beating them into submission through fear. We have designed them, we said, with capabilities of greatness, for example to choose to opt for goodness in the face of evil, to reach out in love rather than hate, to choose to honour us in the face of misunderstanding that can come from absence of knowledge. These are some of their possibilities.

Son: So how will this apply to Job?

Father: We have blessed him and allowed him to become very wealthy and to have a large and prosperous family. With all of that, it is easy for him to feel good about us. In fact when we observe him we can see a very righteous man who fully honours us. But how strong is his goodness, what is the depth of his righteousness, just how much does he fit my description of him as being wonderful?

Son: But how can that be tested? How can we ever know just how true all that is?

Father: We will do it in three ways.

Son: Three? What are they?

Father: First, we will allow all of those good things – his wealth, his family, and his reputation – to be taken away.  

Son: But surely we are committed to bless them, not bring them down?

Father: Indeed, but have you not noticed how their own use of their free-will brings such things about?

Son: Well, yes, but how will you get him to do wrong and bring about bad consequences?

Father: The point is that he will not do wrong; I have that confidence in him, but we have to allow him to go through circumstances to prove that.

Son: So how will such circumstances come about?

Father: We will draw him to Lucifer’s attention and point out how good Job is and give Lucifer permission to exercise his malicious intent to go and no doubt whisper into the minds of evil-doers, the Sabeans perhaps, or maybe the Chaldeans, who already have minds, in their fallen state, bent on destruction. They will rob him of all his material possessions and even his family, who we will simply welcome here to be with us.  

Son: I see. And the second way?

Father: That destruction will not satisfy Lucifer; he will demand more and almost certainly demand Job’s health, so that (pause), we will grant.

Son: I understand. Job will have nothing left upon which to stand. But you said three things, what is the third.

Father: Well, basically we are asking Job to act as a marker of greatness for the human race, coping in the worst of circumstances that the fallen world can bring. He will despair of life itself, but here’s the thing: if we tell him what we are asking him to do, the knowledge that he is serving us and mankind will act as a means of strength and support to help him overcome. The third thing is that we will not tell him what is happening, he will be in complete ignorance of what is really taking place. But, in fact, there is a fourth aspect to all this: we will send him three friends, and later an intelligent young man, and all of them will challenge Job in his weakness. Even his wife will tell him to just curse us, and these four will present him with reason after reason why he is wrong as he stands out for his own righteousness and our reputation. In true fallen-human form they will batter him with words, and therein will be the test, will he be able to stand and hold fast to his integrity, his faith, and a right attitude towards us, in the face of all that?

Son: Can he do that? If he’s had everything he values and loves stripped away, if he has to carry pain and almost unbearable anguish, and then have his mind battered almost into submission, can he possibly maintain his righteousness and his integrity and his respect for us? Isn’t that asking too much?

Father: We will see. I have the utmost confidence in him and I am sure he will come out the other side as a symbol of the potential greatness of these potentially wonderful human beings we have designed, and all that without us compromising his free will and giving him helps to overcome. In his darkness and anguish he will find resources and see truths that he could find no other way. And perhaps, my Son, when you have to walk that path of anguish and death, you will be reminded of him and the many others who will remain true to us in similar circumstances, that Sin and this Fallen World bring, and in that, you too will triumph and reveal even more the love we have for them.

Son: Father…

Father: Now just watch, my Son. This will not be an easy time. Be ready to have your heart torn as you watch evil rise against this standard-bearer of ours, but do not be tempted to intervene. The reality of his stand will only be seen to be true if these four things are allowed to happen without our intervention. When it is all over, only then will we intervene to restore him. Now, watch.