One day the heavenly beings came to present themselves before the Lord,
and Satan was among them.
and Satan was among them.
Why do we suffer? Why do the wicked profit, and the honest get left behind? Are our fates distributed at random, or is there method to the madness? And where is God when we need him most? These questions have weighed on our minds for thousands of years, but never has the issue been more honestly put than in the Bible itself. Located within the “Poetical and Wisdom” books of the Old Testament, the book of Job is a spectacular and singular debate on the concept of justice in an unjust world.
While written during the Hellenistic period of ancient Judaism, the story is actually one of the oldest in the Bible (pre-Abraham). Job, a man from Edom, is the most prosperous person in the East. He lives a perfect life and is a perfect person, honest and ethical in all things while being true to God. (Strictly speaking Job is not an Israelite and cannot have known or worshiped Yahweh, but we’ll speak in Judeo-Christian terms for simplicity.) One day the angels all get together to chill with God, and Satan is among them. God gloats over creation, particularly men like Job, who is faultless in all things. Satan scoffs at this and points out how it’s easy for Job to be pious when he has everything. To prove Satan wrong God allows him to deprive Job of all his possessions to test his faith. Satan destroys everything Job has and kills his immediate family, yet Job does not despair. Satan then asks to attack Job’s body, and God agrees. Thus Job is afflicted physically, and finally breaks down. He is visited by four friends who attempt to console him, but they instead enter a debate about God’s justice on Earth, and how Job feels he’s been betrayed by the Lord. While he never actually blasphemes—and from this Satan is ultimately proved wrong—Job seriously questions the theological paradigm and demands justification from God.
The debate here is the treasure of the text, and I am astonished at its profundity but also at its critical perception of God. Three of Job’s friends give the standard explanation of Job’s suffering: he must have sinned and God is punishing him. But Job is confident in his innocence and demands a trial to prove it. He is effectively summoning God to court, and legal language is used throughout his argument. His friends point out God’s majesty and power, and Job’s futility in trying to subject him to a human institution. But Job retorts that this is exactly the problem: God can never be held accountable for his actions, which means that we are subject to his whims whether they’re fair or not. And the belief that God only does good is seriously doubted, not only in Job’s case, but in the living reality that the wicked seem to prosper all the time, while innocent people are made to suffer. And if God does not enact justice on Earth, why be good? (It’s important to note there is no concept of heaven or hell in the Hebrew Bible.)
This is only a taste, as Job posits a number of fascinating ideas. He argues for the value of suicide when our quality of life reaches a low point (countering the belief that all suffering is “healthy”). He points out the impossibility of appealing to a higher power other than God, or even attempting to argue against God as he’s judge and jury, or also because God could convince you with a false argument if he wanted to, such is his power. Given Job’s situation, either his suffering came from God or it didn’t; if it didn’t, then life is chaos and God is of little use, but if it did, then God is capricious and there is unfortunately no escaping him. Job believes in the objectivity of his innocence, distinct from God’s acknowledgement, and is confident he could find a witness in heaven (other than God) to defend him. He argues for the rights of mortals against the divine. Job is the first, to my knowledge, to speak against the practice of making children pay for their parent’s crimes: a standard in ancient religions. He asks that if he has sinned out of ignorance or omission then God should clearly communicate that to him instead of make him guess. He suggests God set dates and times for visits to Earth to answer questions or administer justice, instead of acting needlessly enigmatic. He explains how appealing to God’s power as reply to his questions is a fallacy. And lastly, Job holds allegiance to his purity against God’s cruelty. It’s the only thing God cannot take from him.
As incredible as these points are, there are a few common themes pulsating underneath. The biggest is the conflict between doctrine and experience: Job’s suffering directly challenges scripture and he wants to know why. He's also fundamentally asking for a new theology based off divine justice, something that was not traditionally expected of religions (God in fact denies it) but was growing more common over time. And one way religions have been able to address Job’s arguments while claiming divine justice is through the invention of the afterlife in Christianity and Islam. But what Job is really doing is arguing for logical consistency in divine action, or at least, an explanation. This is also contested by God, but Job accepts the reply without agreeing to it. Finally, and my favorite, is Job’s allegiance not necessarily to God, but God’s expected morality. God is only worth loving if he is good; again a relatively new idea. But again God says this is mistaken.
Before we examine God’s reply let’s first hear the devil’s advocate, as it were. The three friends I mentioned above gave a rather lame and typical reply to Job, which failed utterly. But the fourth friend, ironically the youngest, does make some good counter-points. He stresses being good for goodness sake, regardless of being rewarded or not. If Job expects payment for his honesty then he’s simply greedy (and proving Satan correct), but if he’s not then he shouldn't complain about his current condition as it’s not contingent on his goodness. The friend points out the inherent order of the cosmos, countering Job’s points about a chaotic world, and asks why would God create the universe and lord over it only to be capricious? Also God doesn’t have to answer empty claims against him, and Job’s are not valid enough to warrant explanation. Lastly, people aren’t simply ‘good’ or ‘evil.’ They’re both, and are subjected to ups and downs, and Job should try and make the best of a bad situation.
But then, rather anticlimactically, God comes down and tells everyone to shut up ‘cause he’s gonna lay down the law. God’s argument, in essence, is that he’s all powerful and everyone else is ignorant. Job in response maintains his innocence, but yields the indictment against God. Bafflingly God then says Job was right all along, his friends were wrong, and gives Job a new family and twice as much money/land/animals/whatever. And he lives happily ever after.
This ending seems, in comparison to the richness of the debate, rather lame. God does not answer any questions and uses the same arguments the friends do, while simultaneously telling us that argument is wrong. He gives back Job twice as much (suggesting he has robbed him), which interestingly undermines Job’s argument (the correct one, remember) by administering divine justice. This, to me, is why the book of Job is not more popular. It explicitly challenges religious views and the ending is both confusing and unsatisfactory. A possible explanation is that the debate uses modern and sophisticated arguments, while the ending draws upon traditional religious beliefs: the universe is not just and gods are indeed capricious.
But this is precisely what makes the story so incredible. From a secular point of view, we realize that there is no satisfactory explanation for why suffering exists. There are no easy answers. Even if an all knowing, all powerful deity came down and told us the ultimate Truth, we would still not be happy, because the problem is more profound than any truth can fix. We may live in an arbitrary universe (reflected in the arbitrary bet God makes in the prologue) but that shouldn’t undermine our emotions experiencing it.
All this brings us back to Satan, and his seemingly strange inclusion in the heavenly pantheon. He is there to test humanity in God’s eyes. Job’s inclusion in the Bible is strikingly similar: it seems to be a work questioning its religion’s own internal logic. And best of all it provides no clear answers. God is ultimately unable to answer Job, and from that we must draw our own conclusions. For this and many other reasons I feel the work is a masterpiece; it’s the crown jewel of the Old Testament and arguably the best book of the Bible. Job doesn’t abandon its beliefs but subjects them to critical introspection, under the guise of intellectual debate. It’s the rare example in the Bible of a story holding its allegiance not to God, but to goodness itself. Not to the claims of religion, but to the rights of man.
