The Book of Job

Asking “How could one go about suffering?”

and not “Why God allowed bad things to happen?”

Samantha Mallory Tacker

Life Context of the Interpretation

Why do bad things happen to good people? Multitudes suffer without ever finding a satisfactory explanation for why God allows it to happen. Because of this, the book of Job is a critical text for both Jewish and Christian readers who struggle to understand the problem of suffering in the context of a relationship with God and to come to grips with the heartbreaks and disappointments of life.

I have asked myself on many occasions why God allows the righteous to suffer; but the attention I have given to finding an answer to this question has been scant, as I have been very blessed in my life and experienced little tragedy. Further, I feared that if I studied the Biblical texts and felt that they didn’t provide a sufficient answer for me, it might seriously alter my religious perspective – and even my faith. Lately, however, I have grappled with this question as I have been trying to help my boyfriend, Parks, come to terms with a tragedy that took place a couple of years ago that he has been dealing with ever since. Park’s best friend – whom I’ll refer to as “Tom” - lost both his brother and father in a tragic campfire accident that took place on a father-son hunting weekend. Understandably, the incident was incredibly difficult for Tom, who without warning not only lost the two most important men in his life but was also suddenly left with the responsibility of being the only man left to support his sister, mother, and new sister-in-law, whom Tom’s brother had married only a month before.

Aside from being Tom’s best friend, Parks is a very close friend of the family as well. As such, he has had difficulty ever since the tragedy making sense of what happened and reconciling his belief in a just God who has a plan for him – something that he had always believed – with the pain and suffering that he sees Tom and Tom’s family going through still today. Countless times I have listened to Parks talk of what great men, Christians, neighbors, husbands, and people that Tom’s brother and father were. As I watch him struggle with how this event has challenged him as a Christian and led him to question the nature and role of God in his life, I find myself unable to provide any answers in that I, too, am unable to reconcile my vision of a just, compassionate, merciful, and protective God with the seemingly senseless nature of such tragedies. To complicate things even further, Parks feels personal guilt in that he finds himself questioning his own faith while Tom’s faith has remained steadfast throughout the entire ordeal.

As I struggled to help my boyfriend reconcile his vision of God with this personal tragedy, I came to realize that I was unable to help because I did not truly understand the root of the problem I was trying to solve. In the beginning, I attributed my inability to understand why God allows the innocent to suffer to a lack of will – or strength of faith – to trust a God that acts in such mysterious ways and is seemingly so unjust. Having never experienced real tragedy, I definitely suffered from a lack of will to tackle such a daunting and disturbing philosophical and religious question – one that I might very well be unable to answer. I came to realize, however, that my lack of knowledge about God’s role in our lives, His plan for each of us, and in fact His very nature was another barrier that kept me from answering this question.

None of these realizations brought me any comfort, any greater understanding of God, or any acceptable reason for the suffering of so many, however. So I looked to the word of God as recorded in the book of Job, and listened to how God responded to this universal question when Job posed it to Him. In breaking down the text, I came to see the book of Job as a profound statement on the subject of theodicy – the justice and justification of God in light of human suffering. It worked as a corrective lens that allowed me to see what I was missing: that my inability to find an answer to this question was a direct result of my lack of vision – or some might say wrong vision – regarding the nature of my relationship with God. I had originally set out to answer the question of why the righteous suffer, but came to see in the story of Job that the question one should really ask is: how do we suffer righteously? After reading the book of Job and gaining this clarity, I was able to help Parks because it became clear to me that he struggled with his faith throughout this seemingly senseless tragedy because he – like myself – lacked an accurate vision regarding his relationship with God. By questioning God and demanding to know why He allowed bad things to happen to such good people, Parks was not fully trusting in God or focusing on how he should and could go about suffering in a righteous manner that would honor and please the Lord. Because of this, Parks found himself questioning the nature of God and struggling with his faith unlike Tom, who clearly understood and found comfort in the message of Job and thus remained resolute in his faith in the most trying of times.

In “meeting” Job - “a man who was blameless and upright, who feared God, and turned away from evil” (1:1) - and listening as Job and his friends debate the reasons why God made Job suffer, I saw my own unjustified and ignorant complaints and rage against God. Through God’s response to Job in chapters 38-40 and the list of rhetorical questions that God poses to Job there – to each of which Job must plead ignorance –- I realized that human beings will never be able to understand all aspects of God’s plans for humankind and the world because God and God’s purposes are supreme and we are unworthy of answers. Ultimately, Job not only “hears” God but “sees” God as well – with the eyes of faith and spiritual understanding - because of the very fact that Job has suffered and, as a result of that experience, can accept God’s plan for his life. Job’s experience results in a change of vision and ideology that reflects a fundamental shift in how Christians and Jews perceive their relationship with God. Job in effect turned the “bad news” of God “allowing” suffering into “good news” by showing people the real nature of their relationship with God and, in so doing, reigniting their convictions and trust in God. In my examination of Job, I will explore the theme of suffering from the various perspectives presented in the book including those of Job himself (1:21, 2:10, 3:1, 6:4, 7:11, 13:15, 13:20, 13:23, 19:23-27, 23:8-10, 26:14, 27:2-4, 42:3-6); those of Job’s family, friends, and acquaintances (2:9, 4:7, 5:7, 5:11,5:17, 8:4-5, 8:20, 11:5, 11:17, 34:19, 34:19, 34:17, 34:21, 36:5, 36:26, 33:28); and, finally, the perspective of God (38:2-4, 38:39, 38:41). I will analyze the ways in which suffering and trouble are perceived in this book (apart from the striking “wisdom poems” that provide direct answers for readers) and chart the course of Job’s ideological transformation over the course of the text. Using representative passages, I will show the transformation of Job – from a person whose lack of knowledge keeps him from answering a fundamental question of life and whose lack of vision temporarily inhibits him from having a trusting, dependent, reverent, and closer relationship with God – into a person who has such a relationship.

My Context in Relation to Benjamin Abotchie Ntreh’s Context

Author Benjamin Abotchie Ntreh in the Global Bible Commentary writes about the book of Job from a West African context, in which the concurrent problems of extreme poverty and the HIV/AIDS pandemic confront both the church and the general population. Both poverty and AIDS are problems resulting at least in part from modernization, globalization, the relaxation of traditional sexual restrictions, a lack of education, and – most importantly - West Africa’s colonial past. In reviewing the history of the relationship between Africa and the former colonial powers, one sees that the impoverishment of modern Africa is the direct result of greedy and vicious colonizers who took advantage of West African peoples – people who trusted the Europeans and were willing to share their land with them. The colonizers manipulated the Africans, taking the small amount of land that they were given, asserting themselves, and ultimately managing to dispossess the West Africans from their land and begin a vicious cycle of poverty. With the arrival of industrialization and modernization, West Africans were forced to move into urban centers. They left behind not only their original rural communities but also the traditional societal forces that enforced certain norms, bringing about sexual promiscuity and the rampant spread of AIDS.

Despite the very different contexts from which we approach the book of Job, Ntreh and I are very similar in that we both look to Job for answers to questions on the same important topic: the nature of human suffering. For Ntreh, poverty and the spread of HIV/AIDS in West Africa are the two main problems that he attempts to address in his analysis, while I focus more generally on the universal question of why God allows the righteous to suffer. Ntreh attributes the root of his problems to a lack of knowledge among West Africans regarding poverty and HIV/AIDS. As a result, he focuses his analysis of Job on the root problem of a lack of knowledge on the part of Job and his friends regarding the proper way to address the issues of Job’s sufferings. In my analysis, I touch upon this notion of a lack of knowledge being the root problem as to why it is so hard for us to understand why the righteous suffer, but I ultimately conclude that Job is a text that serves as corrective glasses for Christians and Jews today in that it shows us that this lack of knowledge is really the product of a greater problem: a wrong vision among Christians regarding their relationship with God. The way I see it, God - by conveying this story and allowing readers to follow Job as he experiences this dramatic life-event; and, by finally divinely intervening through a whirlwind and showing Job that the root problem is not a lack of knowledge but a lack of vision – uses the Book of Job to challenge modern day Christians and Jews to focus less on why we suffer and more on how to suffer righteously. In so doing, God offers a solution that - while more challenging and less obvious than most people, including Ntreh’s West Africans, would initially expect - is critical in that it forces them to reevaluate the way in which they see their world, their relationships to it, and God.

Overview of the Book of Job

In the Hebrew canon, Job belongs to the third division, known as the Kethubim (or “the writings”), which also contains Psalms, Proverbs, Ruth, the Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, 1 and 2 Chronicles.[1] Along with Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, and a few of the psalms, Job also belongs to a portion of the Old Testament known as higher “Wisdom Literature” due to its reflective nature and its emphasis upon the ultimate issues of human existence – in this particular case, the wisdom regarding how to suffer righteously.[2] When one considers Proverbs and looks at how wise people are portrayed as righteous and good while fools are portrayed as wicked and unsuccessful, Job’s important and unique role in this “wisdom literature” group becomes clear as Job’s story proves to be an exception to this commonly accepted notion that goodness is rewarded and evil is punished – as one sees with Job’s friends who display the attitudes of the wise Proverbs but end up proving this notion false as they are all ultimately unproductive.[3]

Structurally, Job is composed of three sections: the beginning frame, which is written in narrative prose and consists of 1:1-2:13; the middle core - where the argument is presented - which is written in didactic poetry and consists of 3:1-42:6; and the closing frame, which reverts back to narrative prose and consists of 42:7-17.[4] As for the book’s authorship, the writer(s) and editor(s) of Job left no discernable traces of identity. While one Jewish tradition names Moses as the author, most biblical scholars are reticent about identifying a single author and tend to think that multiple writers contributed to the book and brought it to its final form.[5] As for the location of the writing, many scholars look to the animals described in chapters 40 and 41 and conclude that since many of these species are native to Egypt, the book was most likely written there.[6] Others, however, point out that geographical location plays no part in the book’s meaning and thus tend to look to the language the book was written in, Hebrew, and thus conclude that Job was written in or near Israel.[7]

The question regarding when the book was written is much more difficult for scholars to determine because the text of Job never alludes to historical events or topical subjects and is thus, virtually silent about its time. Scholars have dated the book anywhere from the tenth to the third century B.C.[8] Some place Job in the patriarchal period – making the book one of the oldest in the Bible – by pointing to the mentioning in Ezekiel of Job as an important person alongside Noah and Daniel.[9] Others, however, believe that Job was written at a later date due to the fact that Job practiced both monotheism – as seen in the way in which the book resolutely refuses to exonerate God by positing a rival deity – and monogamy – something that in patriarchal times would be rare for a wealthy man like Job to partake in, implying that the practice had become the rule rather than the exception.[10]

While questions regarding the origin of the book are – clearly - still hotly contested among biblical scholars today, the importance of the book of Job and the great appeal it has among Christian and Jewish readers is undeniable. Job mirrors a common aspect of people’s lives and speaks to most everyone in that, at some point in life, people will come to a place where the simple, practical, and traditional solutions to issues that confront them will no longer suffice and the problems they face will appear to be unsolvable. For this reason, the book of Job will continue for centuries to come to be a critical resource in both religious communities around the world and also on the global stage as an important artifact of culture.[11]

Textual Analysis of Characters and Selected Passages

Job’s Response to his Own Suffering

The narrative begins with God plaguing Job with unimaginable suffering in order to discover whether Job’s piety is genuine or whether it is a result of self-interest and depends only upon his prosperity. Job initially reacts to the misfortunes that have befallen him by calmly accepting the will of God, declaring in 1:21, “the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away / may the name of the Lord by praised.” Here, Job shows us that he can and should praise God for what he has been given but also for what he has had taken away; for that, he serves as an exemplary model for how Christians should suffer.[12] The narrator reiterates how unshakeable Job is in his piety in 2:10 by reminding readers “in all this, Job did not sin in what he said.”

Shortly thereafter, however, readers soon realize that Job is feeling more than what he has said and that this attitude of acceptance is no longer with him as one sees Job in 3:1 “curs(ing) the day of his birth.” As we transition to the poetic core with the beginning of chapter 3, one sees Job in a new light as a man overcome with bitterness, anger, and turmoil – one who feels isolated from God and even persecuted by Him.[13] In the next 39 chapters, readers watch as Job struggles to understand why God is punishing him so severely. We see in 6:4 that Job shares Eliphaz’s belief that God is punishing him but that he is puzzled as to why he is being punished – for he does not believe he is sinful enough to deserve such suffering, as one sees in 11:4 when he asserts to God “my beliefs are flawless, and I am pure in your sight.” Job’s increasing anger and growing sense of helplessness are seen in 7:11 as he adamantly states that he will no longer remain silent about his anger towards God – the one whom he regards as responsible for his suffering – and vows that he will “speak out in the anguish of my spirit” and “complain in the bitterness of my soul.” Job then vows to seek vindication from God (13:15), begs God to stop punishing him and start communicating with him (13:20), and – finally - demands to be told by God what sins he has committed that justify such misery (13:23). Yet while Job voices awful complaints against God throughout (as seen in 16-20, 22-24, 29-35), one must remember that Job never totally abandons God or curses Him - as seen in 27:2-4 when Job vows “as long as I have life within me…my lips will not speak wickedness and my tongue will utter no deceit” - as Satan said he would in 1:11 and 2:5.

One sees various “high points” in Job’s understanding of his own situation and of his relationship to God in 19:23-27, 23:8-10, and 26:14 as Job tells readers that he has not given up on God and does not believe that God has given up on him. It is clear in 19:23-27 that Job has taken a leap of faith despite his misfortune as he refers to God as his “redeemer.” Job states that he believes that God is still there watching over him despite His silence, and that one day – in this life or the afterlife – he will see Him and be vindicated. In 23:8-12, Job admits that while he is frustrated that he cannot see God, he still treasures “the words of his mouth more than [his] daily bread” and that he knows that God is there testing him and that he will at the end of his test “come forth as gold.” One sees the knowledge regarding the nature of his relationship with God that Job is gaining from this experience in 26:14, as he questions how we “can understand the thunder of his power” and full extent of his might when it so difficult for us to comprehend what little we already know about God. While the anger and helplessness in Job still persists, readers see now that Job’s unyielding faith allows him to trust God and believe that there is a higher purpose to his suffering.

Unfortunately, however, Job’s wrong vision about his relationship with God still leads him to demand of God a reason as to why He is making him suffer, when he should instead be trusting God’s plan completely and asking how he should suffer righteously. Only when God appears to Job does he see God with the eyes of faith and spiritual understanding and realize the arrogance of his demands. In the final chapter of the book one sees that Job’s vision has finally been corrected and realizes that a true servant of God must not question God but have enough faith to trust God and accept that God’s purposes and plans are supreme and beyond human understanding:

“You asked, ‘Who is this that

Obscures my council without knowledge?’

Surely I spoke of things I do not understand,

Things too wonderful for me to know…

My ears have heard of you

But now my eyes have seen you.

Therefore I despise myself

And repent in dust and ashes.” (42:3-6)

The Response of Others to Job’s Suffering

Job’s responses to his own suffering allow readers to identify with Job’s struggles, follow him on his journey, and see the text as corrective glasses for how one should relate to God. However, the responses of Job’s family, friends, and acquaintances to his situation offer added insight by taking on a number of common reactions that people have toward suffering, as well as a variety of misperceptions that people have as to the proper relationship one should have with God. Job’s unyielding loyalty and faith in God throughout his terrible circumstances – in spite of all the pressure he faces from each of these other characters to curse and abandon God – makes Job an even more admirable and inspiring servant of God. By contrasting the misguided outlooks of others with the truth that God ultimately reveals to Job at the end of the story, readers are able to appreciate better the root of the problem - a lack of vision – and, in so doing, are better able to figure out how they can go about correcting that vision so that they, like Job, can have a closer and more complete relationship with God.

While Job’s wife only appears once in the story, her interpretation for Job’s misfortunes must not be overlooked, as she, too, has lost her children, her property, and – unlike Job – her trust in God. Because of this, her immediate reaction to the misery that has befallen her husband and herself – and the demand she makes to Job in 2:9 – is to “curse God and die.” This is a reaction that many Christians – whether they are willing to admit it or not - have entertained during difficult times when they feel as though God has betrayed or forgotten them.

While Job’s wife is quick to point the finger at God and encourage Job to turn against Him, Job’s three friends who come to visit and console him - Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar – all interpret the situation much differently, quickly pointing the finger at Job and blaming him for his own suffering. While one may feel tempted during the arguments of Job’s friends to accept what they are saying because they contain elements of truth, New International Version Bible wisely reminds readers that these speeches must be read in context and that they are all ultimately wrong in that each of Job’s friends attribute Job’s suffering to his own sins – inexorably (and wrongly) linking merit and fortune.[14] In so doing, all three men arrogantly presume that they understand God’s high purpose and reasoning behind punishing Job, when in fact they have no idea – especially since they are all unaware of the encounter that takes place between Satan and God in the first two chapters of the book. Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar are all, in the end, guiltier than Job, because while Job looked to God for the answers to his problems, Job’s counselors ignorantly spoke about God and heretically claimed to have knowledge they did not possess.[15]

The introduction of this belief in a doctrine of retribution is immediately thrust upon Job at the beginning of the first speech, with Eliphaz explaining to Job that God is punishing him now for sins he has committed (4:7), but that he should find comfort in the fact that God is doing this for a good reason and that his piety will count with God in the end. For Eliphaz, even the most innocent of human beings such as Job should expect to suffer at some point in an amount that is proportionate to the sin that he or she has committed.[16] Because in Eliphaz’s mind no one is righteous in the eyes of God (5:7), he ends up counseling Job to “not despise the discipline of the Almighty” (5:17) but turn instead from unrighteousness to humility, because those who “mourn are lifted to safety (5:11).”

While Eliphaz’s speech explains Job’s suffering as a temporary and just punishment for the sins he has committed, Bildad’s speech furthers this idea by asserting that the justice of God’s punishments and this doctrine of retribution can best be seen by the fact that Job’s children - who are portrayed as significantly more sinful than Job in 1:4 - have suffered the ultimate punishment in the form of death, while Job’s life has been spared. “Your sons have sinned against him,” Bildad explains, “so he has abandoned them to the power of their guilt (8:4).” Bildad – like Eliphaz but in a more direct manner – points to Job’s former sins for his current misery (8:20) and advises Job to admit to his former transgressions and “plead with the Almighty” for mercy (8:5).

While Zophar in the third speech also supports this idea of a doctrine of retribution, he – as David Clines in the World Bible Commentary explains – believes that “to contextualize Job’s suffering and try to set it in proportion is ultimately to trivialize it” and that “Zophar is for principle rather than proportion.”[17] Clines’ greatest problem with Zophar’s speech, however, lies in the arrogance Zophar displays in assuming that human beings would be able to comprehend God’s reasons “if only [He] would open his lips (11:5).”[18] In the end, Zophar, similarly to his friends, tells Job that he must repent and devote his heart to God but, stresses that, in so doing, he will be awarded with a life that is “brighter than noonday (11:17).”

After Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar state their individual cases to Job, a fourth participant, Elihu, offers his interpretation of what he has overheard the group discussing. Elihu offers a less abrasive and more commendable yet still seriously flawed explanation for God’s purpose behind human suffering. Eliphaz speaks of God’s impartiality (34:19), justice (34:17), and omniscience (34:21), all of which ensure that He never makes a mistake in his punishments. Elihu firmly believes that “God is mighty and firm in His purpose (36:5).” While one sees that Elihu has the clearest vision of God of the four theologians in 36:26 when he describes God as “beyond our understanding,” his vision is ultimately marred by the fact that he claims like the others to understand God’s punishment, which he attributes as a means through which God communicates with humans. To Elihu, punishment is a sort of benevolent revelation in that it brings people closer to God by having them confess their sins so that they can be restored (33:28).[19]

God’s Response to Job’s Suffering

Without the intervention of God at the end of the book, the lack of vision that Job and his friends have regarding their relationship with God would never be corrected and the core question as to why the righteous suffer would never be addressed. As a result, the last two chapters of the book are undoubtedly the most important in that it is in these sections that God reveals to Job the question that he should be asking: not why is he being punished but instead how should he suffer righteously?

God begins in 38:2 by immediately telling Job that his questioning of and rage towards Him are unjustified and a direct result of his speaking “words without knowledge.” The Lord demands that Job “brace himself” (38:2) and provide answers to a number of rhetorical questions – all of which take on the great mysteries of the universe. God questions Job about the creation of the earth in 38:4-11, demanding to know of Job “where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation (38:4)?” He then continues in 38:12-41 to quiz Job on how the earth is managed on a daily basis, asking Job to tell Him who is responsible for feeding all living creatures from the mighty lioness (38:39) to starving young ravens who “cry out to God and wander about for lack of food (38:41).” In chapters 39-41, God demands that Job explain His reasoning behind placing wild, seemingly useless animals on the earth, such as the Behemoth and the Leviathan - both of which Clines points out are symbols of primeval chaos.[20]

By asking Job questions that clearly surpass his limited knowledge and forcing him to plead ignorance to them all, God causes Job to reevaluate how unfathomable the world that He created is. In so doing, God ultimately shows Job that his problem does not stem from a lack of knowledge regarding why God punishes certain people, but more from a lack of vision regarding how one should see God and view His relationship with himself and the world.

My Commentary in Relation to Benjamin Abotchie Ntreh’s Commentary

In comparing Benjamin Abotchie Ntreh’s commentary with my own, I am surprised to see how similar the structure of our two analyses are considering the fact that – while we both looked to the book of Job to answer questions regarding the nature of human suffering – we read the text with two very different root problems in mind. Considering Job from a West African context, Ntreh sees Job as addressing issues such as a lack of knowledge regarding poverty, the spread of HIV/AIDS, and the economic exploitation of the region; while I, look to Job to understand why the righteous suffer and learn that my inability to comprehend God’s reasoning behind suffering comes less from a lack of knowledge and more from a lack of vision as to the proper relationship that I should have with God. Despite our two very different contexts and the different problems we seek to address, both Ntreh and I analyze the scripture in a literary fashion. Interestingly enough, we end up drawing upon many of the same passages as we try to find our respective answers in the text.

Ntreh’s commentary identifies five main sections of the narrative – the original state of Job and his demise; Job’s friends attacking him; Job’s response to these attacks; Elihu’s intervention; and, finally, God’s vindication of Job – that together allow him to find a number of parallels between the trials of Job and the plight of West Africans. Apart from Ntreh’s first section – in which he parallels the original state of Job and Job’s demise with that of West Africa (he notes that his homeland was originally endowed with natural resources, rich forests, and massive expanses of land until the 1970’s when economic exploitation by colonizers caused poverty and disease to sweep through the region) – both Ntreh and I explore each of our problems by looking to some of the main characters in the text such as Job, his friends, Elihu, and God to hear their varied perspectives on the issue of suffering. In the second and third sections of his commentary, Ntreh lays out another parallel he sees between Job and West Africans: both have been accused by others (Job by his friends and West Africans by their American and European colonizers) of being responsible for their sufferings. In order to give readers an idea of how debilitating and hurtful these false accusations are for West Africans, Ntreeh employs some of the harsher and more directly accusatory verses spoken by Job’s friends that I found less useful in my own search –passages such as verse 4:8, in which Eliphaz states that he has observed that “those who plow evil and those who sow trouble reap it;” verse 25:6, in which Bildad alludes to the sinful nature of men by equating them with maggots in comparison to God; and verse 20:5, in which Zolphar refers to Job as “wicked” and “godless.” With the help of these passages, Ntreh exposes how malicious and cold others can be when they blindly accept religious notions such as the doctrine of retribution that they know nothing about instead of helping others in their times of need. I, on the other hand, included passages such as verse 5:11, in which Eliphaz asserts that God sets the lowly on high and lifts those who mourn to safety; and, verse 11:7, in which Zophar stresses to Job that in repenting for his sins, Job will be awarded with a life that is “brighter than noonday.” These verses illustrate some of the arrogant and completely baseless assumptions that Job’s friends make about God due to their lack of vision.

In the third section that deals with Job’s response to the attacks of his friends, Ntreh tries to show the parallel that he sees between, on the one hand, Job’s despair for his situation and his longing for the days of old when God was readily available to him; and, on the other hand, the despair and longing that West Africans feel when they are deprived of hope by losing their trained experts to the developed nations. In light of this, Ntreh focuses on chapters 29-31 during which Job longs for his former good health, prosperity, and wealth, laments over the losses he has endured; and, hopelessly proclaims his innocence, asserting that sin is not what has caused his suffering. I – seeing that the solution to my problem (a lack of vision) comes through following Job’s ideological transformation, focus not only on Job as he struggles but also on the way in which Job responds to God’s vindication of him. This can be seen in my decision to close this section by quoting verses 42:3-6, in which Job finally sees that God and his purposes are supreme and repents for the presumptuous words he had previously spoken to God.

In the fourth section of his commentary, Ntreh draws a parallel between Elihu’s intervention into the debate over the nature of Job’s suffering and the intervention of the International Monetary Fund into the discourse between West African countries and the developed nations. Ntreh demonstrates why neither Elihu nor the IMF ends up being accepted as an adequate mediator because of their respective inability to completely break away from traditionally accepted theories (IMF tries to help West Africans but still partially blame them for their own predicament). Toward this end, Ntreh includes verse 32:12, in which Elihu stands up for Job by asserting that “not one of you has proved Job wrong,” and also verse 36:3-7, in which Elihu reiterates that Job is sinful, asking him to listen to the thunder of the God, who “stops every man from his labor” in order for them to know his work. I, however, used Elihu in much the same way that I used Job’s three friends: Elihu, too, demonstrates a lack of vision that leads him to make arrogant assumptions about God and his plan for Job. I thus focus on verses such as 33:28 in which Elihu interprets God’s punishment of people as a sort of benevolent revelation.

The final parallel that Ntreh draws between Job and West Africans derives from the fact that both ultimately blame higher powers for their situations – Job blames God while West Africans blame their colonizers. The most important and most fundamental difference in our respective commentaries becomes apparent at the end of this section, when I am able to walk away from my analysis feeling that the problem I identified – a lack of vision as to the nature of God and thus, the proper relationship that I should have with Him – has been corrected: God, intervenes in the end, vindicates Job, and restores his property. In verse 38:2, God tells Job that Job’s questioning of and rage towards Him are unjustified and a direct result of his speaking “words without knowledge.” Ntreh’s problem, on the other hand, – a lack of knowledge – is not solved by a long shot in that West Africa has little hope that the answers to their problems will suddenly appear, or that their property be restored.

Conclusion

In the book of Job, readers watch as a righteous man struggles in his relationship with God - with spiritual temptation, anguish, and faith - after being plagued by a series of unimaginable and seemingly unjust problems. During the course of his struggle, Job serves as a reminder to modern audiences about the universal nature of human suffering – as seen in verses 24:1-12 when Job speaks of the “groans of the dying,” “the fatherless infants (24:9),” “the hungry field hands (24:10),” “the thirsty vine yard workers (24:11),” “and the naked shivering in the cold of night (24:7-8). Job also serves as an example of a child of God, who, despite his “blamelessness” and “uprightness,” suffered to such a degree that he found himself (to his own horror) questioning a God who could be so silent and seemingly indifferent in the midst of such misery. I, too, recently found myself questioning God and His plan for all of us as I watched my boyfriend, Parks, struggle to reconcile his vision of God with the seemingly senseless deaths of his best friend’s father and brother.

Yet, by “walking” with Job, feeling his rage and helplessness, relating to his complaints, and finally seeing the Lord as he does with the eyes of faith and spiritual understanding, I was given a clearer vision as to what the people of God’s relationship with God should be and what the true nature of God is. I learned in Job that suffering endured is never “unjust” because it is God who is inflicting it – and God is just. I saw in God’s condemnation of Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar that human beings are incapable of knowing God’s plans for his people and that we all must remember that God is the only truth and that one must be wary of those who arrogantly claim otherwise or pretend to understand His reasoning behind such difficult theological issues, like that of theodicy. While many today might view human suffering in the same way Job’s friends did - believing that God communicates with His people through a doctrine of retribution - and might thus attribute the suffering of Tom, his family, and their friends (like Parks) to each of their sinful pasts, the story of Job takes on this commonly accepted notion and reminds us all that we are incapable and unworthy of understanding God’s plan for the world and that suffering should never be a means through which people gage God’s degree of love for His people. Job teaches us all that we can always trust God and should know that He will always be there with us, even during the deepest darkness and the most awful of divine silences – an idea that Tom clearly understood and embraced as seen by the fact that his faith was kept in tact and in many ways strengthened by the tragic fire that took his father and brother from him.

While God will always remain a mystery and no one will ever be able to fully understand his plan for us, Job provides us some consolation by giving us a new perspective on the relationship between suffering and wisdom – reminding us that the question is not why do the righteous suffer but how does one suffer righteously. One must realize, however, that with this perspective comes great implications and forces the people of God to reevaluate their world and their relationship to it. For me, the book of Job proved to be a critical stepping stone in my own relationship with and understanding of God in that it helped me stop trying to make sense of the devastation and suffering that I see plaguing so many in the world today – the individuals I know who have recently lost loved ones, communities who are struggling to rebuild and pick up the pieces after suffering from the effects of natural disasters, or the families of the innocent victims who have perished in recent wars or from terrorist acts – and instead reminded me that I should be working to make a difference and act righteously amidst such sufferings. In so doing, Job restored my hope for the future of the world in that it reminded me of the infinite love and compassion of God and also of the gifts He has given me so that I can make a difference in the lives of those who suffer. In the end, Job instills in God’s people a renewed trust in His plan by demonstrating how Job’s suffering was not endured in vain but rather served an important purpose in that it strengthened Job’s faith and gave him - along with the rest of the world – a greater wisdom regarding the nature of God.