Day 18 – Tuesday -- The Book of Job

Day 18 – Tuesday

The Book of Job

If you are a good person, God will bless. If you are a bad person, God will punish you. That was a simple view of life in Biblical times. Scholars call it the Deuteronomist theology. But then the Book of Job comes along and disagrees. It tells the story of a good man named Job who suffers tragedy. Job’s friends, like good Deuteronomic theologians, try to get him to acknowledge that his suffering is the result of some wrongdoing of his. They want him to repent of his sin so that God might have mercy and take away his suffering.

But at the end of the story God tells Job’s friends that they were wrong, and that Job should pray for them.

In the Book of Job we see one of the Bible’s internal debates going on. The Bible argues with itself. It talks to itself—just as we sometimes talk to ourselves. The story of Job is pushing back on the traditional belief that tragedy is a sign of someone’s serious sin.

After absorbing Job’s message we can affirm that bumper sticker that says: EXCREMENT HAPPENS. Or as we put it these days: It is what it is.

Life is too complex to believe in simple platitudes. The truth is that bad things happen to good people; and good things happen to bad people (to over-simplify again).

The prologue to Job—the part about God and Satan having a little bet—and the epilogue—the part about Job getting back twice as much as he had to begin with—these bookend scenes have most likely been added later to give the book some symmetry and take some of the shock out of the central message. We can take only so much reality.

This is the second time Satan has come up in Scripture. (Remember 2nd Chronicles and the census?) In the prologue to Job, Satan is not an evil being; rather, he is part of the heavenly court; sort of a Prosecuting Attorney. God plays the part of the Defense Attorney (and Judge). Satan accuses Job, God defends Job. And what follows (if the prologue were original) is like a game. (Do you ever feel like God is just playing with you?) There is something helpful in picturing God as a playful person. But not in the sadistic way God plays with Job and his family.

One thing we learn in the Book of Job is that it is alright to get mad at God and argue with her. Abraham did it. Moses did it. David did it. Jesus did it. It is a Biblical thing to do. Don’t worry—God can take it. Spill your guts. Tell God what’s on your mind. Don’t hold back. Let it all out. That is a Biblical way of praying.

At the end of the story, Job says,

                  I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,
                  but now my eye sees you;
                  therefore I despise myself,
                  and repent in dust and ashes. (42.5-6, NRSV)

Old Testament scholar Gerald Janzen points out that in the Hebrew text the verb “despise” has no direct object. The Hebrew text says: I despise [blank] and repent… Traditional translations have inserted the word “myself,” assuming that the meaning is obvious. Job despises himself. But the word “myself” is not there. What else could it be?

The Jewish Publication Society’s translation says, I loathe my words. In other words, Job is sorry about what he has said. The scholar Marvin Pope, in the Anchor Bible Commentary translates the phrase as, I recant—I take it all back. Again, the emphasis is on Job’s reasoning, not on personal loathing.

My interpretation is that Job regrets his misguided or exaggerated perspective on God, and then goes on to say, I repent in dust and ashes; that is, he changes his mind and his perspective. (To repent is to change your mind and see things differently.) The phrase “dust and ashes” refers to his limited human condition. So, he realizes that his finite mind cannot reach into the depths of ultimate reality.

God has spoken to Job out of a “whirlwind.” The effect of God’s speech on Job is that Job changes the way he sees the world and life. He no longer wishes to explain everything. Now he has a different desire: to live life to its fullest, glorifying God and helping his neighbors. Job’s repentance is a change of mind in the sense of having been given a different way to perceive the vicissitudes of life. Human logic has been transcended by theo-logic—by divine wisdom.

In the end Job is converted to a new worldview. God’s speech gifts Job with the gift of acceptance. The whole question of who deserves what becomes irrelevant.

We have been given a world that none of us deserve. God’s grace surrounds us at all times—even in the midst of suffering and pain. Our job is not to figure out why things happen, but to appreciate what we have been given, and to be support those who are suffering.

One of the well-known verses in Job is this:

                 For I know that my Redeemer lives,
                 and that at the last he will stand upon the earth;
                 and after my skin has been thus destroyed,
                 then in my flesh I shall see God. (19.25-26, NRSV)

Finish this: O God, I have a bone to pick with you…