Who Was Job?

One of my earliest and happiest memories and the first play I ever attended, was The Story of Job performed at Carmel College in 1953. It was written and directed by the brilliant multi-talented Murray Roston (he also taught us how to identify bird songs and imitate them). He soon moved to Israel and had a distinguished career at Bar Ilan University where he is now the Emeritus Professor of English Literature.  However, I am preoccupied with evil at this moment, and why so many people in every society (even our own) seem inclined towards brutality and inhumanity. And Job is the one book in the Bible that seriously addresses this issue. 

The Book of Iyov in Hebrew (but distorted in Greek to Job), is, without doubt, the most difficult book in the Bible from a literary and theological point of view. Its Hebrew is complex, convoluted, and full of rare words whose meanings are still argued about. It deals with the issue of why bad things happen to good people. And whether we can or should blame God for misfortune. We often say “Why is God doing this to me” when things go wrong. Although we are less likely to thank God when things go well. 

The Book of Job has a special place in Western literature and theology. The great psychiatrist Carl Jung wrote “Answer to Job” in which he tried, not very convincingly, to show that the Christian concept of a Trinity could explain why there was good and evil in the Christian God. There are endless translations and commentaries, the most recent and one of the best is,  Job: A New Translation by Edward L Greenstein.

The story (if I may rehearse it for those not familiar with it,) is that Job is a wealthy, successful God-fearing man, with a wife, seven sons, and three daughters. The scene shifts to Heaven where the “Sons of Elohim” gather around God, and in walks Satan the source of evil in Christian theodicy. This is the first and only personification of Satan in the Bible. The only other use is as a verb meaning to block someone ( e.g. Numbers 22.21). God asks Satan’s opinion of Job, and Satan replies that Job is only faithful because he has everything in life but take it all away and see if he does not curse God. God, as if playing a game, allows Satanto take everything away so long as he does not kill him. Which seems to put all the blame for bad stuff on Satan.

Satan takes everything away from Job, family, wealth, and health and leaves Job sitting naked in the dust, bemoaning that day he was born but refusing to blame or curse God.  Three friends arrive to comfort him. Eliphaz HaTeimani, Bildad HaShuchi, Zophar HaNaamati. They sit down on the floor with him, in silence for seven days and seven nights until he begins to talk. From this, we derive the tradition that when visiting the bereaved we should sit in silence until they open the conversation.

The friends try to find reasons why Job is suffering and encourage Job to let it all out. But Job steadfastly refuses to curse God. They try to explain why Job is suffering. Perhaps he deserved it, did something wrong. They offer a range of arguments, but none help. Hence the expression Job’s Comforters. To describe those who make matters worse rather than better. The book is an extended series of monologues trying to explain whether we can talk of God as just and how we should cope with adversity. And the sort of banal arguments we often hear today are rehearsed here. We must have done something to deserve it because God is just. Or God is testing you and only gives you as much as you can take. Job stands by his position that God is not a human being, and it is pointless to blame. One must accept.

In the end, he gets everything back ( or rather replacements), seven new sons and three most beautiful daughters, and his wealth, and they all live happily ever after. And the three comforters get sent back home with a flea in their ears.  

Job is mentioned in only one other book in the Bible. 

“Noah, Daniel, and Job, declares the Almighty, would save neither son nor daughter. They could only save themselves alone by their righteousness”(Ezekiel 14:20).

However, there is a lot about him in the Talmud. In the Talmud Bava Batra 14a-15b you have an amazing range of different opinions as to who he was and when he existed. Some say that Job lived in the days of Isaac, others Jacob, and that he married Dina, his daughter. Some say  Job lived at the time of Moses who wrote the Book of Job. R. Shmuel bar Nachmani said there was never such a person as Job. Rather, his story was a parable. Some say Job lived at the time of the spies whom Moses sent to scout the land of Canaan. R.Elazar says that Job lived in the days of the Judges. Or that Job lived in the days of the kingdom of Sheba ( Solomon’s era). R. Natan says Job lived in the days of the kingdom of the Chaldeans in the time of Nebuchadnezzar. R. Yochanan and R. Elazar both said that Job was among those who returned from exile to Eretz Yisrael at the start of the Second Temple period. His house of study was in Tiberias. R. Yehoshua ben Korcha said that Job lived in the days of Ahasuerus. Job was not Jewish but one of the pious non-Jews who sustained the universe, and he was one of seven non-Jewish prophets who prophesied to the nations of the world.

Can you imagine? So many different opinions? And isn’t that just typical of the Talmudic, Midrashic tradition? All these options. And nowadays, it is fashionable to claim there can only be one authorized interpretation. My goodness, how we have regressed. And yet how universal and inspirational this book is. And comforting at this time when Satan appears to have the Upper Hand.

Jeremy Rosen

March 7th, 2024