Many scholars believe the story of Job was the earliest book of the Bible written, so discussing what happened to Job and what he learned (yes, Job did learn a lot from his suffering) seems fitting at this point of our journey through the Bible. By the comments I have heard and read through the years, I have inferred that Job seems to be a hard story to unravel. For instance, many people believe that God never answered Job’s question, “Why?”–let me be the first to tell you, God did answer Job and His answer explains a lot about what is currently happening in our world. As I have thought about Job and as I have taught my high school English students, I have come up with an analogy that most of us are familiar with. Anyone who has studied Shakespeare or watched movies is familiar with the five-act drama. Typically, this type of  story begins with an exposition which introduces the main characters and the conflict, proceeds with rising action which intensifies the conflict, peaks into a preliminary climax, continues on with more rising action, peaks into the main climax, and ends with falling action and the resolution. Job’s story is a perfect example of the five-act drama, and I think if we follow the plot line, we will learn a lot.

     So, let’s start with the exposition of Act 1 which begins with Job 1:1 and goes through Job 2:10. (For this part of our exploration, I am going to use the KJV because of one particular phrase which makes understanding what was happening much easier.) Right off the bat, we meet Job who was a sterling example of a man of faith, and we see how much he has been blessed by God. However, all was not well with Job in that he felt the need to continually sacrifice for his sons because he was afraid they had cursed God in their hearts. Remember that–Job was afraid. Now comes the part that confuses a lot of people: Satan came before God and God brought up Job in their discussion. The KJV uses the wording “Hast thou considered my servant Job…” and to our ears, that statement sounds like God was setting up Job and was directly or indirectly involved in what happen to him. However, my KJV has a note pertaining to those words that states the Hebrew meaning of God’s question is “Hast thou set thy heart on my servant Job…” or, in other words, “Are you going after my servant Job?” Do we understand what that means–God knew Satan was planning to attack Job and, as we will soon see, engaged Satan to limit the damage.

     As Revelation 12:10 says he does, Satan started accusing both Job and God. (As we sort through what Satan said, we need to remember Christ’s words about him in John 8:44, “…there is no truth in him…”) Everything Satan said was a lie, including the part about God putting a hedge around Job and the part about telling God to destroy Job’s life. My brothers and sisters, we need to understand the reality that applies both to Job and to ourselves. First, there is no hedge because if God put a hedge around us, He would demolish our freedom of choice and God will not do that. Logic tells us that if there is no hedge, then Satan is free to come against us. Also, God does not put forth His hand to destroy us–evil does not touch God and God does not touch evil (James 1:13, 17). If we look at God’s response, He spoke the truth that everything Job had was in Satan’s power, but God did limit the destruction to not include Job’s health. (In a sense, before Christ died, God was limited to limiting the loss, death, and destruction Satan was determined to inflict upon the human race.)

     Now, when Job lost everything, including his children, he expressed his sorrow, but still worshipped God. However, the words he spoke were not the reality of what happened, “The Lord gave and the Lord taketh away…” Yes, God gives, but God does not take away (John 10:10)–Satan was the one who took away. Because Job had no idea what had transpired between God and Satan, he was clueless as to what had really happened–this man of God didn’t know he had an enemy.

     Well, Satan saw that his vicious destruction did not stop Job from worshipping God, so he went back to God and accused both Job and God again. Without getting hung up on the exact rendering of what God said to Satan, the main point of his response was that Job had held on to his integrity–Satan had not been able to push the man into cursing God. Satan repeated his lies and God again spoke the truth and again limited Satan, this time from killing Job (Psalm 41:1-2 explains why God was able to limit Satan in this case). So, Satan struck again and afflicted Job with boils that covered his body. Then, for the first time, someone else came into the picture when Job’s wife told him to curse God and die. Job’s reply to his wife demonstrated how little he knew about God, “What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil…” (As we will see in the next “act,” Job really believed God was the one who perpetrated his destruction.) Even though Job thought God was behind the evil, he did not curse Him.

     So, in this exposition, we have met the main characters of the story–God, Satan, and Job–and have been introduced to the conflict–Satan destroyed Job’s life, but Job believed that God did it. The rest of the story will work to bring a resolution to the conflict, but not before Job was hurt some more.  

     Please feel free to comment, but, as always, any disrespectful comment will be deleted.

 

     ©2009 by Patricia Zell. All rights reserved.