Book of Job, Issues and Analysis

Thinking Through Job

Will a person serve Jehovah without reward? when afflicted so severely that nothing worse could be done and even death to be preferred? That is the issue raised in the first three chapters of Job. Is Jehovah that great?

This book provides the answer. Not that of “everyman,” but that of the best man on earth according to Jehovah’s own testimony.

The patience of Job did not preserve him from all sin, but Job did hold on to God through all his trials. His friends and their ignorant attempts at comfort are dismissed, but God never is.

In the debate, however, which concludes with an evaluation, judging man a failure in the search for wisdom (ch. 28), Job committed terrible sins, accusing God of injustice. Job defended his own integrity, but felt God was treating him as a sinner, manifesting hostility toward him. Thus the trial did not lead Job to abandon God, but it did uncover defects of character that needed to be dealt with in order that Job might be even better.

Job had to be humbled and put in his place. But more was required than a show of superior power to bully him into silence, perhaps with resentment at not having a fair chance to make his case. The resolution has two essential parts. Elihu, a man of clay like Job himself, answers Job’s charges against God, particularly presenting a different view of the suffering in which God is seen not as an enemy, but as a friend. The reasoning of an equal satisfies Job’s mind and prepares him to be put in his place by God, howbeit without the resentment he might have felt had he merely been forced into silence by superior power.

Thinking Through Job guides a student through the complexities of Job’s case to a final resolution which makes us shout Hallelujah! to a God worthy to be worshipped even without reward and despite undeserved suffering. Satan is exposed as a slanderer and the magnificence of Jehovah declared. The suffering of Job provided him with his best opportunity to bring glory to God; and so with many another sufferer whose faithfulness manifests just how great Jehovah is.