The Book of Job - Essay Example

The Book of Job. The book of Job tells a story that is found in the Christian, Jewish and Muslim scriptures about a man who suffers great loss, including the death of his family and an illness that makes his body have painful sores. It is important to religious people in these faiths because it deals with the difficult problem of why there is evil and suffering in the world. There is a very memorable conversation between God and Satan, which shows Satan wandering over the earth, looking for trouble, no doubt, and then God letting Satan loose to test Job with various nasty experiences.

The point of the story is to teach people to be patient and trust in God, even when they experience bad things, and when they do not understand what is happening to them. The structure of the book is like a discussion. The main character is Job, but he also talks to his three learned friends, and there is a dialogue between God and Satan which explains the theological reasons for the story. This complex structure means that it is possible to interpret the story on different levels, as a personal story, a scholarly debate, and a study on the nature of God.

Job is introduced as a happy man with a large family and plenty of animals, which was an indicator of great wealth in that society. The opening lines state that “He was the greatest man among the people of the East” (Job 1:1). At first he reacts well to disaster. When his whole family is killed he says “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.” (Job 1:21). This shows humility and acceptance of the pain that he is feeling. He trusts in God at this point.

This is the way that believers are supposed to react when they suffer negative things in life. When God allows Satan inflict a disease on Job, he still trusts God, even though his wife encourages him to curse God. After a time, however, all the suffering gets too much for him and Job curses the day he was born and questions the harm that has come to him. He thinks that he is a good man, and that evil should only happen to people who ignore God’s commandments. The book of Job then becomes a long discussion about how people should understand evil and suffering.

Job’s three friends argue about this, thinking of reasons why Job has been singled out for these calamities. Job becomes even more bitter, even suggesting the he would rather die than suffer all this agony: “I despise my life; I would not live forever. Let me alone; my days have no meaning” (Job 7:16). This is a very realistic description of how human beings react when they lose hope in God. Nowadays we would call this depression, and in extreme cases this can lead to thoughts of suicide.

People can become so overwhelmed with the bad things in life that they do not see any point in living. This is both a mental health problem and a spiritual problem. The only way that people can find their way out of this despair is to rebuild hope and trust. It is not easy to trust, however, when someone feels lost and abandoned. The loss of meaning comes when people feel only pain. This is because when you are in great physical or emotional pain it takes over all your thoughts, and prevents you from seeing anything outside of that.

Job lost sight of God, and of all the good things in life, because he was overwhelmed by his experience of the bad things. Job cannot understand why he is being punished in this way, because he feels that he has been a good man all his life. At one point Zohar asks Job “Can you fathom the mysteries of God? Can you probe the limits of the Almighty?” The human advisors seem to think that Job is arrogant and deserves his sufferings because he has sinned At the end of the book of Job, God finally speaks.

There is no real explanation for all the suffering that Job has experienced, but there is a reaffirmation of the greatness of God and the power that he has over everything in the world, because he created it all. God describes all the wonders of creation, asking Job who it is that keeps it all going. God makes it clear that Job is not in a position to question the way that God makes the world. It seems that the point of the story is to show how human suffering fits into a bigger plan for the whole world.

Humans cannot understand this because they see things only from their own, very limited point of view. Evil and suffering are terrible and inexplicable from a human perspective. On a much bigger scale, however, from the point of view of the creator, it all makes perfect sense. Human beings may find this uncomfortable, because we are used to thinking about ourselves as the center of the universe. Our feelings are the most important thing to us, but actually there are many things in the universe that human minds have never seen, and cold not even contemplate or understand.

In comparison with God we are insignificant, and so the only option we have is to trust in God despite all the evil things that happen in the world. 917 words References Holy Bible (New International Version). Accessed 06.10.2012. Web.