Job

So technically the chronological plan started with Genesis, but right after Noah, it decided to skip ahead and cover the entirety of Job, which officially ended yesterday... except for whatever the reason I decided to breeze through Job within a few days and now I'm a week ahead of schedule. But anyway, I find Job to be one of the more interesting books of the Bible (although I suck at reading through the poetic parts without guided help).

The main point of Job is to address the problem of evil from a Hebrew/OT perspective, or particularly the issue of why bad things happen to good people. Jewish theology up to this point would've probably aligned more along the lines with "you reap what you sow," but as the author probably realized, there are too many cases of suffering in the world where this doesn't seem to apply at all. And so we end up with the story of a righteous, well-off man whose life suddenly falls apart thanks to a series of calamities, the death of his children, and later an onslaught of boils. His wife tells him to curse God and die; his friends yell at him for what they think he deserved, but throughout it all Job perseveres without saying a word against God. and then God shows up, chastises everyone, and rewards Job plentifully for the rest of his life for having passed the test.

The first takeaway that most Christians would probably get from this is a sense of admiration for Job. That despite all of the horrors that Job has experienced, as well as his sense that he himself has done nothing wrong, he still has faith in God's good-will and believes that God will come through for him in the end. Even though he has questions for God, he also still preserves a sense of reverence for him. The fact that God himself does show up and reward Job, and that the story ends happily ever after for the most part does lend credence to this. That said, I feel like focusing on that interpretation alone tends to overlook some of the other aspects and resulting implications that people would take issue with.

1. The prologue. Satan himself (or "the accuser" - some Jews see this more as a prosecutor-kind of angel than the devil, which is what satan in this context translates to) appears in front of God asking permission to torture Job, betting that Job will start cursing God the moment his life stops going his way. And God accepts.

2. Later, Job starts wanting to petition God regarding the reason for his suffering. He believes that he's done nothing wrong (which is true according to the story), and he wants to know the reason from God himself, seeing as how the only excuse his friends can give him is that he's wicked... which obviously doesn't help much. Then, when God finally shows up, he goes on about how there's so many things going on in creation that you wouldn't be able to comprehend and how God himself is greater than the Behemoth and the Leviathan and the thunderstorm and so on, without directly answering Job's question. And Job's just so overwhelmed and speechless at the end of the day that he decides to take back his request and repent in dust and ashes.

These in combination, to me seem more troubling than most of the other arguments and ideas presented in Job. I could more easily get around the message of the book if the prologue had not existed; essentially, the book would've ended with a simple "we don't know why people suffer because we wouldn't be able to comprehend it anyway." This wouldn't exactly be a satisfying conclusion- in fact I think a lot of people take issue with Job in part because of it and God's general attitude at the end- but it would at least make sense given the premise of the story.

However, we the readers, unlike Job, do get a glimpse into the reason behind the suffering: God's bet with the accuser, which comes across as somewhat capricious and selfish from a human perspective (at least, if it were anyone other than God more people would probably see it that way). It would mean that God himself is partly responsible for allowing suffering to happen in the first place. And if you look at it pessimistically, it would mean that he does it to prove a point- a point that he presumably already knew in advance, which still begs the question then of why? To make himself look better? So he can give that big speech at the end of how great he is? What would Job have thought if he had found out?

[Random aside, but I'm reminded of the take on this in Persona 2 with the bet between Philemon and Nyarlathotep. The game gives the player a chance to punch Philemon even though he's on the player's side; it strikes me as a rather human response. and it oddly feels more satisfying, haha. Granted, Philemon isn't really meant to be a stand-in for God in the traditional sense, though.]

From what I can tell there isn't really a clear answer or interpretation regarding these points, and what explanations that do probably wouldn't satisfy everyone, especially people who already find fault with God as he's portrayed in the Bible. That said, several points that stood out to me in the text:

- One could argue that the setup of the story with the prologue was necessary to create this conflict in the first place, and it's also worth noting that the main text itself (with the poetically written arguments between Job, his friends, and later God) seems to be written as a separate unit from the prologue/epilogue - which according to some sources may have been written later to frame the story within a book of sorts.

- The story, at least, clearly debunks the claim that good things only happen to good people and vice versa; God acknowledges that Job's friends (who have been arguing this point) are wrong. I think the text in general falls in line with the idea that justice itself isn't inherent or built into the natural world. However, it's something that we as humans have come to expect - from our own experiences, from each other, from God, and that sense is what ultimately fuels both Job and his friends' arguments.

- This doesn't seem to be brought up as much, but Job's fourth friend, Elihu, sticks out for showing up late and not being addressed directly by anyone before or after, notably including God. Some people think he was a late addition to the text by someone (or perhaps the original author) taking issue with some of the statements Job and his friends were making, and others see him as a transition between Job's concluding arguments and God's final appearance.

Elihu's speech generally focuses on how both sides have been running on misconceptions of God: on one hand, Job's friends have failed to see how God can use suffering to correct or teach and not just punish; and on the other hand, Job has misconstrued God's sense of justice by questioning God's reasoning in allowing suffering to happen. He asserts that righteous or sinful acts don't affect God in the sense that they don't obligate him to respond to humans in a particular way, but at the same time "God will not do wickedly, and the Almighty will not pervert justice (34:12)."

If anything, Elihu strikes me as having the most nuanced view of how God handles suffering and justice; and the fact that God doesn't address him at all when punishing Job's other friends could possibly lend credence to his words, even if he does come across as a little... "holier than thou."

- You could argue that the suffering was necessary to teach Job (or the reader) a different lesson, and that God merely took advantage of or used the bet with Satan for this purpose.

1. That perhaps prior to his ordeal, Job would have shared in the mentality that his righteousness merited God's blessings, when it actually was the case that God didn't owe him anything regardless of how good or evil he was. (The latter point was brought up above by Elihu.)

2.  Job may have in fact presumed too much about God and his methods, considering his speeches up to the point where God appears. Prior to God's appearance, Job may have been on the verge of questioning whether God knew what he was doing in allowing it all to happen, or God's sense of justice... especially since God sees the need to address that in his own speech more than the actual reason for the suffering.

3. Talmudic literature (according to the Jewish Encyclopedia, anyway) assumes that Job actually sinned or "rebelled" against God, based off of some of the assumptions and complaints in his speeches.

As a result, the whole ordeal was necessary to help Job reevaluate his own situation and standing with God, by providing him with a perspective that he wouldn't have considered before... back when he was still going through the pious-give-burnt-offerings-to-God-every-day routine. This would also fall in line with Job's decision to regret his petition to God and fall back in silence: "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)"

- Oddly, one of the notes in my NISB seems to prefer the translation of Job's final line to God as "I regret dust and ashes" rather than "I repent in dust and ashes," due to the lack of a direct object in the original Hebrew regarding the verb to repent/regret. This would fall more in line with the interpretation that Job is actually disappointed by the realization that God won't answer his question, and is masking that in his words. It's a bit unconventional and I don't think as likely considering the likelihood that God (or the author's conception of God) would've been able to tell such a thing, and also considering that every translation I've come across preserves the "myself" part. But interesting, nonetheless.

- From a Christian perspective, some people have suggested that God actually realizes the inadequacy of his own response (at this time) and the coming of Jesus later falls in line with his true answer (which also would resonate with Job's issue in ch. 9 about not having an arbiter between himself and God).

- The EOB actually contains a translation of both the Septuagint and the Masoretic Text's edition of Job, as both differ significantly enough to merit comparison. I didn't really go through the translation of the Septuagint's version myself, but I noticed that the ending in the Septuagint contains several more verses after Job's death, including one about him being resurrected with those the Lord raises up. This seems to lean  more towards Job being a historical account, oddly considering a lot of other sources consider Job to more likely be an invented account or a myth.

To some people God's answer (or lack thereof) would still seem inadequate, though, and I can't really blame them for it either. I'm more inclined to think that the lack of a clear, unambiguous answer to the problem of evil even in this story resonates with how ambiguous the reality actually is. Even with the best of attempts, we can't really know for sure.

That said, I guess personally, I've been starting to see (both here and in real life) how some life lessons and meaningful experiences wouldn't be possible were it not for the fact that suffering does exist. That's not to say that we should seek out suffering; I think it's easy enough to run into it in life without trying to anyway. It's more about how we should respond to it, and what it teaches us, when we do inevitably run into it.