spirit, Job’s friends are convinced that punishment deserves sin. Job must have done something wrong; otherwise he would not be forced to suffer. They cling to their belief that God rewards good and punishes evil. So they convict Job without analyzing his situation. Like too many other humans, they seem to enjoy seeing Job in distress. They luxuriate in Job’s misery so that they can rise above it and explain to him why his actions have not found favor with God. Job’s behaviors prove to them that Job was not the righteous person he professed to be. What happened to Job “proves” that he was a fake. His punishment demonstrates that he was fooling everyone with his righteous acting. Finally, the truth has emerged. Perhaps this is one of the reasons that the reading of the book of Job appeals to so many of us. We too wonder: although we may attempt to lead righteous lives, and we may try to say the right things, perhaps we too are fakes and deserving of some of the things we are forced to endure in our own lives.
Job refuses to accept the reasoning of these first three friends. But he also refuses to curse God. Then Elihu speaks. Elihu mediates for Job and in a scene that has become depicted in art throughout history: God responds in the whirlwind of a cloud. God condemns Job’s friends, because they spoke incorrectly of God’s motives and directs them to offer sacrifices for Job and to pray for their welfare. As we review the arguments made by Job’s friends, along with his own rebuttal, we are being invited as readers to enter the text, to become the individual characters. And when we leave our study, we take the text with us. It has become part of who we are, indelibly written into our soul. At the same time, we leave a little of ourselves in the text. As a result, we become changed—as does the text itself. This is why these sacred texts retain their dynamism but only when we are willing to enter them fully and engage them.
Our treatment of the book of Job in this volume is no simple read with commentary, although such an approach can be an important tool in understanding Job. Rather, this volume uses the classic approach of calling on the understanding of former rabbinic commentaries before coming to our own conclusions about how to understand the theology of the book and attempt to answer some of the basic answers of human existence posed by religion: Why is there evil? Why do the good suffer? Why do those who do evil seem to go unpunished? Are acts of goodness rewarded?
Let’s begin by discussing the first question that the book of Job asks, whose definition will be required to understand the entire book: what is evil? Evil is admittedly quite complex. The book of Job tries to present a simple definition of evil by demonstrating that the intentional actions of Satan—who attempts to force disaster on Job—are not deserved. Thus, evil is more than the absence of good. Rather, evil is that which emerges when good is not permitted to surface. We name the very act which prohibits good—and disallows a system of good to operate—as evil, however it is personified.
The evils presented in the book of Job are the intentional actions of Satan and the compliance of God with such actions which afflict Job with suffering and pain. Evil has yet another aspect in this book. Job is being accused of being an evildoer himself. Since biblical theology reflected the idea that God punished evil, Job’s suffering was taken as proof that he was being punished and hence was a doer of evil. Job’s maintenance of his position as being innocent threatened the belief in a just God. If Job were innocent, then one could say God was guilty. Such a blasphemous notion was never made explicit in the book of Job, but it would explain the motivations of Job’s comforters.
The suffering of Job is considered evil, because it is unmerited and caused by the One who is supposed to be on the side of good and not the perpetrator of Job’s suffering.
Such an image of God—as portrayed in the beginning of Job—conflicts with the general notion of God as we know it in most religious sources. After all, a God who acts badly to win a bet is hardly the model of rectitude which individuals should imitate. Moreover, a God who is moved to such an immoral act by Satan, a lesser being, would hardly be a model for the resistance to temptation that any of us would care to emulate. Although we may not resonate with the stand that Job takes and are often taught in the postmodern world to take a stand against injustice, Job serves as a religious exemplar in the rabbinic minds, because he does not complain about what has happened to him. “Shall we receive good from God and not evil?” (Job 2:10) is the profound question he puts to his wife. One wonders if any human could really be motivated to make such a statement, especially in the face of what Job endures. That Job serves God out of love and not for reward does not adequately explain his response. One may act out of love but in response to what the Rabbis call yissurim shel ahava (the suffering of love), one would still expect the natural human response of a person to complain when suffering is unwarranted. Job responds to his suffering by rending his clothes, falling down and uttering a claim which has become a familiar phrase later associated with Jewish mourning and bereavement, “I came naked from my mother’s womb. And naked shall I return. Adonai gave. Adonai takes away. Praised be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21). In the biblical context Job is not prepared to teach us what some postmodern theologians want us to learn, that God is beyond the question of good and evil, that some actions occur in the natural course of events in the world. As a result, we cannot take seriously the proposition that God would respond to the challenges of a Satan, were such a being even to exist. Nevertheless, the message that transcends the book is that a religious life is to be lived; it is a reward unto itself.
We also have to recognize that even if this book comes from two different sources, as noted above, it has been bequeathed to us as a unit. It is, therefore, incumbent on us to ascertain the message of the editor when presenting us with the book as a whole. To help us fully understand the positions taken by the author of the book of Job, it is important to understand its literary and structural design. The book of Job may be considered a didactic poem—one whose purpose is to teach a lesson—that is set in the frame of a prose narrative. The introductory and concluding sections serve as a frame for the middle of the book, which chapters together form the poem.
Some date the book as written during the Babylonian exile (586–538 BCE). Secular scholars claim that the form of Job was fixed by the fourth century BCE although the book is familiar to the seventh-/sixth-century BCE prophet Ezekiel (14:14). Fragments of the book are contained in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Because the traditional understanding of the book of Job is important to the contemporary reader as he or she struggles with its meaning, we use the prism of various commentators through which to view the text. We selected those who might best be described as classical commentators, representing the traditional spectrum of Jewish religious and philosophical life. These commentators sought to view such texts through the lens of their own time and understanding. By each generation attempting to understand a particular text, it provides a foundation for the succeeding generation to do the same. We do the same in our time, as reflected in the entire volume, as well as our specific comments on individual selections of text. These classical commentaries include the Targum, the Aramaic translation of the text from the third century of the Common Era in the land of Israel which is as much commentary as it is translation.
We will also see what Abraham Ibn Ezra (1098–1164 CE) has to say about the text from the perspective of one who was born in Spain; lived in Mantua, Rome and London; and was model for Robert Browning’s poem “Rabbi Ben Ezra.” This commentary reflects the impact of philosophy on Judaism.
Rashi (the acronym for RAbbi SHlomo Itzchaki) who lived in Troyes from 1040–1105 CE is considered Judaism’s commentator par excellence because of his encyclopedic sweep of classic Jewish text and tradition. As a result, his commentary reflects the notions of Rabbinic Judaism more than most others.
Our final commentator, Rabbi Levi ben Gerson (1288–1344, otherwise known as Gersonides or by the acronym Ralbag) reflects the high point of philosophical involvement in Judaism. Just as Rashi read the rabbinic tradition into the text, Gersonides read philosophy into the text. Neither Ibn Ezra nor Gersonides follow classical Jewish tradition’s view that Job deserved his suffering as punishment for his failings. Only Rashi maintains this position.
We have
