An agnostic says the book of Job is the one we need in our troubled times
After the coronavirus pandemic, a war in Ukraine that threatens to cascade into a thermonuclear apocalypse and other problems from inflation to political polarization, nearly everybody is stressed, frazzled and angry.
This might be the perfect time to reread—or read for the first time—the Book of Job, which some experts think is the most ancient of all biblical texts.
It’s instructive not only for Christians but for Jews, Muslims, Buddhists or atheists, as journalist Abraham Riesman wrote last month in Slate. Riesman describes himself as an agnostic Jew.
I’ve long maintained—as he does—that Job is widely misunderstood.
Today, people still refer to “the patience of Job.” Makes you wonder if they’ve ever read the story. If there’s anything the character Job isn’t, it’s patient.
He spends chapter after chapter railing against his afflictions and shaking his fist in God’s face—at the conclusion of which God shows up to congratulate him on his courage in speaking the truth.
That’s one of the book’s main takeaways: it’s OK to be unhappy when the world goes bonkers and we’re crushed by misfortunes. It’s OK to yell at the top of our lungs that the universe is crazy and God, if he exists, must be a madman.
Riesman summarizes the Book of Job’s plot in a few sentences, and since I can’t improve on his telling, I’ll repeat it:
“Job is a perfectly righteous and God-fearing man whose good deeds have brought him prosperity—children, an estate, good health. But then God enters a wager with a member of the Heavenly Host, haSatan (“the Adversary”), who claims he can make even goodly Job curse the deity. Soon, Job’s servants are killed. His children are killed. He is afflicted with painful boils, finding only mild relief when he gouges them with a potsherd. His life is a waking nightmare. But he refuses to curse God for what has befallen him.
“That is, until he debates three of his pious friends, telling them that the logic of religion no longer makes sense to him. If God rewards good and punishes evil, how can one explain what’s happened to him, and to the countless others in creation who suffer for no discernible reason?”
Among the book’s paradoxes is that the villains of this story are the good guys—Job’s pious friends, his supposed comforters. The minute they start to speak, Job’s plight goes from horrible to worse, because his friends add their half-baked judgments to all his other woes.
“The friends say over and over that there must be some sin that Job or his family committed, for God is both morally good and fully omnipotent,” Riesman says. “With each passive-aggressive accusation from one of his ostensible comrades, Job inches closer and closer to outright blasphemy.”
I might word it like this: his friends respond to suffering by spouting religious bromides. They say the very things religious people still say when people suffer. This infuriates Job to no end and, we see later, irritates God as well. Job’s pious friends are fools.
Job demands to hear directly from God. God owes him answers, he says.
Finally, God shows up. But his answer isn’t comforting. God says something like this, if I might be allowed to paraphrase the Almighty:
“I’m God and you’re not. You’re dust. If I explained it all to you, you couldn’t understand. You’ve not got much of an option other than to trust me. However, you did well, Job. You never sinned with your lips. You told the truth as best you could comprehend it, and you didn’t insult me with mindless platitudes. You found your life miserable and you had the gall to stand up to me and say so. Nicely done.”
As a reward for Job’s honesty, his fortunes not only are restored but doubled. (Scholars think the happy ending was tacked on later and wasn’t part of the original.)
For Riesman, the true climax comes after God speaks. Job utters a Hebrew phrase that traditionally has been translated, “I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes.” Meaning, I was wrong to question you and I’m sorry.
Instead, Riesman says, a contemporary translator renders the same Hebrew phrase as, “That is why I am fed up: I take pity on ‘dust and ashes’!”
In that reading, Job’s response is a further protest, a declaration that the world still doesn’t seem good or rational, and he’ll continue to express his compassion for humanity and his fury at injustice. It’s for this statement that God declares Job righteous.
Riesman continues, “As I think about how to respond to the concurrent cataclysms threatening the nation and the globe, I at least want to be Job—not a person with divine patience, but one who cares so much for his fellow mortals that he will spit acidic truth into the face of the Lord to the very end.”
The Book of Job, then, becomes an arresting message for our times. Yes, life can be brutal. But we mustn’t retreat into a superficial religiosity. Look straight into the mysteries and complexities. Be honest. Help others if you can.
Paul Prather is pastor of Bethesda Church near Mount Sterling, Ky. You can email him at pratpd@yahoo.com.