The Book of Job
Job represents the Western concept of undeserved suffering; it has its force in the Hebraic tragic sense of life wherein there is a profound double view: the snake/garden; his fallen condition/utopia; the ultimate failure of humanity/free will.
The forbidden fruit, for instance, may have underscored a skepticism of their God: why was there a prohibition in the first place? The Hebrews loved their God, got good from him; therefore, why did they suffer evil?
In tragedy, truth is never revealed as a harmonious whole, but in many-faceted, ambiguous moments, and that's part of its terror. The folktale ending to Job removes its tragedy. But catharsis is clearly at work: Job has purged his spirit, but the question still remains about humankind's existence and pain, and the questions still linger.
Unjustified suffering is part of life's mystery; it isn't asked at the end of the story as to why he suffered. Can a new family make up for the old? And what about the dead servants? We still ask why is Job satisfied with god's speech but not bothered that no answer to his question of suffering is forthcoming.
The Hebrew word "Satan" means adversary; Satan is represented as a "son of God," not what he appears to be later in the New Testament. In Hebrew scripture, he was an angel whose task is to roam the earth and expose human wrongdoing.
The prophet Ezekiel mentions Job alongside Noah and Daniel as a paragon of righteousness (14:12-20); from this we know that Job was a byword among the sixth-century B.C.E. Judahite exiles whom the prophet addressed. But from Ezekiel and from the late passing reference to Job's patience (or perseverance) in James 5:10-11 one would never guess the complexity of the character set forth in the book that bears his name. The moral is that piety for its own sake is true virtue and in the end is requited. It is this old story -- often called a folktale -- that is supposed to have been known to Ezekiel's audience. One theory, drawing on this point, puts forth that a later, more profound thinker changed things by using the temporary misfortune of the hero as the setting for his poem, in which the conventional wisdom of the tale is radically challenged. But this is confuted by the whole tenor of the work.
By bluntly calling what he has received from God "bad," Job has moved from his nonjudgmental blessing of God after the first stage of his ruin (2:10). The movement concludes with a variant of the preceding conclusion: "In all this Job did not sin with his lips." Is "with his lips" a mere equivalent of "did not impute anything unsavory to God," or did the Talmudic sage correctly perceive in it a reservation: with his lips he sinned not, but in his heart he did?
Job's wife unwittingly advocates the Adversary's cause to Job ("Bless God, and die") while expressing her exasperation with her husband in the very terms used by God to praise him ("still hold on to your integrity").
The first spokesman, Eliphaz (chaps. 4-5) preaches the doctrine of distributive justice: no innocent man was ever wiped out, while the wicked reap their deserts. Most of the themes of the Friends' argument are included in Elophaz's speech: man's worthlessness before God; man's ephemerality and (consequent ignorance; a call to turn to God in penitence; praise of God; the disciplinary purpose of misfortune; the happiness of the penitent; the claim to possess wisdom greater than Job's.
Both parties pass back and forth from the particular case of Job to the general condition of mankind. but in Job's speeches his particular misfortune governs his vision of the general; his unmerited suffering opens his eyes to the injustice rampant in society at large. The course of the godless leads to perdition (the moral law).
Job denounces god's disregard of his right: he terrorizes Job into confusion; even if Job could plead, his own words would be twisted against him. contrary to Bildad's assertion, God indiscriminately destroys the innocent and the guilty, for "he wounds me much for nothing" (9:17; ironically, Job has unwittingly stumbled on the true reason for his suffering).