The Daily Office lectionary has, for the last 36 days (August 20-September 17), included readings from the book of Job – all 42 chapters. On some days, this does require the patience attributed to this Biblical hero. All that eloquent poetry can be heavy going; but it’s extremely worthwhile.
You know the story: Job, a godly man who has prospered in every way, is suddenly stripped of almost everything to prove a point to Satan, the prosecuting angel. God gives Satan permission to take away Job’s livestock, crops, and even his children to test Job’s faith and to cause him to curse God.
As Job sits in sackcloth and ashes, covered with painful boils, three “friends” come to console him. These three – Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar – assure Job that he is actually being punished for having sinned. They offer platitudes which provide more pain, and are definitely not comforting.
In response to each of them, Job offers his defense. No, he has not sinned! He does not understand why God, whom he has always worshipped and obeyed, would allow him to suffer so. Next a new character, a young man named Elihu, comes to weigh in. He helps Job realize that he has been so absorbed with self-pity that he has lost the ability to listen to God.
Finally, God appears in a whirlwind, reminding Job and his four companions of his total majesty and control of all things. Humbled, Job confesses his inadequacy, his complete surrender to God’s mercy; and the story comes to a happy ending as God rewards Job with a new family, new possessions, and a long life.
Of course, Job is about human suffering and the part that God plays in it – the problem that we call theodicy. It helps us realize how naïve and simplistic Job’s assumption is that God rewards us for our loyalty and causes us to suffer because of our sins. Suffering is inevitable. We can’t blame God for it. The book of Job never answers Job’s question of “why?” But God does care, and God offers comfort.
An absolutely marvelous characteristic of this book is its description of God’s creation. In poem after poem, the glories of nature are celebrated in eloquent language. It is truly rewarding to read for that feature alone.
Scores, if not hundreds, of expressions enrich our language. One website offers 1,070 “most popular” verses from Job. To name just a few:
1:21: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.”
5:17-18: “How happy is the one whom God reproves; therefore do not despise the discipline of the Almighty. For he wounds, but he binds up; he strikes, but his hands heal.”
12:11: “Does not the ear test words as the palate tastes food?”
14:1: “A mortal, born of a woman, few of days and full of trouble, comes up like a flower and withers, flees like a shadow and does not last.”
As I search for meaning in Job, I can’t help but think in these terms: Job’s persona (his ego, or “false self”) is the righteous man who has earned his good fortune. Tested through loss and suffering, his shadow side demands justification from God. Only when he surrenders completely, dying to his self-righteousness, is he able to receive God’s mercy and healing. Then he experiences individuation as his “true self” manifests itself.
The lesson to me is that I have to give up all pretense and open myself completely to God’s love.
My favorite quotation from Job is found in Chapter 19, verses 25-27: “For I know that Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skins has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God. . . .” George Frideric Handel set this eloquently in this aria from the Easter section of Messiah, completed this month in the year 1741: