Biblical Theology XIV: Job

The Book of Job is a postexilic work that deals with the problem of suffering in the form of dispute literature. Dispute literature is where a text presents alternate viewpoints of an issue in the attempt to supply clarification to what are usually very simplistic understandings of life, resulting in a more balanced understanding of life.

Theology: The issue that Job is addressing is the simplistic view that if God is sovereign, and He rewards righteousness without anything else more powerful than He is to prevent Him from doing so, then the righteous should never suffer. The book then presents God as sovereign over all things, even the powers of evil forces (e.g., the adversary), and yet, displays that calamity befalls the wicked and the righteous alike. The book then addresses the sub-argument that if the righteous are not exempt from God placing tragedy upon them, and therefore do not deserve such judgments, God would be unjust. Job’s friends come into the mix to argue that all men deserve God’s judgment upon their sin, and that Job is suffering, not as an innocent, but as a sinner who deserves punishment. Job maintains that he is righteous and does not deserve what God has done to him. Elihu then comes in to tell them all that they are wrong, and he brings a more balanced perspective. Finally, God answers Job, not by providing an answer for why Job has been plagued with suffering, but rather that God is the Creator and Sustainer of all things, that the creation and act of sustaining creation is highly complex and beyond Job’s ability to comprehend, and that Job, therefore, should trust that God, who does understand how to create and sustain, knows what He is doing even if Job does not. God never tells Job why He, specifically, placed all of this suffering upon him, only that Job does not understand how creation works and He does.

In this regard, the book is meant to be a clarification to the truism that if one does good or evil he will receive back the same. Although this is, in fact, true, it is also true that often when one does good he receives back evil and when one does evil he receives back good, showing a far greater complexity than the simpler karmic idea associated with a misreading of prophetic or proverbial literature, which deals with something specific and not generic rules governing all of life.

The book also interacts with the theology of the Book of Genesis, using much of the same language and time period to make its point. Where Genesis argued that God is sovereign and is working all things, even suffering and evil, toward the goal of final creation and salvation, the Book of Job argues that it is not always possible to understand how a particular instance of suffering works toward that the good. Instead, (to state it in terms of the butterfly effect) when the instrument of suffering (the initial state) cannot be seen to connect to the salvation of the world and its final creation (the final state), the believer needs to trust in God who can see it and is working toward that goal.

Ethics: Man is not in the position to judge God. When he does, he will inevitably do so from ignorance. The book is to create a humility within the reader, as it argues that humans are simply not capable of understanding the complexities of life and how they work out toward God’s good work in creation. When they question God in their suffering, they do so from the illusion that they understand their situation and life as a whole. This is an arrogance that leads to belief in oneself over God.

Likewise, man is not in the position, apart from divine revelation that gives commentary to a particular situation, to judge why any particular calamity befalls another individual. It is possible that tragedy finds the wicked for their wickedness, but it is also possible that it finds the righteous for no obvious reason. The finite condition of man gives him no ability to interpret the events of life, neither his nor that of someone else, one way or the other. The Book of Job simply argues that instead of asking why God did this or that, or how event X fits into plan Y, believers need to simply note that God knows what He is doing and has an ultimate reason for it (i.e., the completion of all created things). How a particular tragedy fits into that ultimate reason may never be known by anyone but God Himself. Hence, Job calls us to a mistrust in our own analysis of individual events and to a radical trust in God who creates and sustains the entire cosmos and all life within it.