More on Job

Posted on December 14, 2002 in Myths & Mysticism

blu iguana very rightly quotes the Bible, demonstrating that Job’s misfortunes are ultimately the work of God and that Satan is only God’s contractor on the job.

I’ve realized a few more interesting things about the book of Job which run counter to how people believe and actually behave:

1. It does not let God off the hook for what He did to Job. God makes up.
   
2. It firmly establishes that no human being, no matter how devout and firm of temperament, can possibly put up with the string of disasters and tortures that Job must go through for the sake of God’s stake in a bet.
   
3. Satan warns God that Job will crack and, indeed, Job does. So Satan is right.
   
4. Note when Job loses it. He does pretty well, to tell the truth, when he loses everything in God’s attempt to prove a point. It’s when his friends come and try to tell him that he has no business being angry with God or feeling so bad that he explodes. These are the equivalents of the folks blu iguana and I have been lambasting. Job provides a very neat pattern for people who enjoy making the afflicted and beset feel even worse than they already feel. No one helps Job financially or salves his wounds, takes him out to lunch, etc. They just give him advice.
   
5. And the advice is wrong. It’s OK to be angry at God. It’s OK to feel bad.

And what about Mrs. Job? God seems to save His curse for her for after the restoration of Job’s fortunes. She has to undergo childbirth ten more times to enable God to make up for His playing around with Job’s good humor and kind nature.

Raising the dead didn’t seem to occur to him until he sent Jesus to Earth.

Did God learn not to beset nice people from this incident? Hardly. So who is thicker: God or his “creations”?