Job

Job , book of the Bible. The book is of unknown authorship and date, although many scholars assign it to a time between 600 BC and 400 BC A lament in narrative form, the subject is the problem of good and evil in the world: "Why do the just suffer and the wicked flourish?" In the prose prologue Satan obtains God's permission to test the unsuspecting Job, whom God regards as "a perfect and an upright man" ; accordingly, all that Job has is destroyed, and he is physically afflicted. The main part of the book is cast in poetic form and consists of speeches by Job and three friends who come to "comfort" him: Job speaks, then each of the three speaks in turn, with Job replying each time; there are three such cycles of discussion, although the third is incomplete. The friends insist alike that Job cannot really be just, as he claims to be, otherwise he would not be suffering as he is. Nevertheless, Job reiterates his innocence of wrong. The sequence changes with the appearance of a fourth speaker, Elihu, who accuses Job of arrogant pride. He in turn is followed by God himself, who speaks out of a storm to convince Job of his ignorance and rebuke him for his questioning. The prose epilogue tells how God rebukes the three friends for their accusations and how happiness is restored to Job. The author did not intend to solve the paradox of the righteous person's suffering, but rather to criticize a philosophy that located the cause of suffering in some supposed moral failure of the sufferer. The texts are imperfect, and there may be serious losses, misplacements, or even additions to the original. The book contains many eloquent passages; among them are Job's declaration of faith in the "redeemer," his speech on wisdom, and God's discourse on animals. Job is mentioned elsewhere in the Bible.

Bibliography: See N. C. Habel, Job (1985); L. G. Perdue and W. C. Gilpin, ed., The Voice from the Whirlwind: Interpreting the Book of Job (1991); R. P. Scheindlin, The Book of Job (1998). See also bibliography under Old Testament.

Job Old Testament book describing the crises in the life of Job, a well-to-do man from a town e of Palestine. The main theme is that suffering comes to good and bad people alike.

Job in the Bible, a prosperous man whose patience and piety were tried by undeserved misfortunes, and who, in spite of his bitter lamentations, remained confident in the goodness and justice of God; also, the book of the Bible recounting his story.

Job is shown initially as a man who is wealthy and upright, surrounded by his family; he is reduced from this to sitting among ashes scraping with potsherds at the boils that afflict him, while his wife urges him to ‘Curse God, and die.’ Despite this, and despite the comforting of his friends which only aggravates his sense of despair, he remains true to his belief in God, and is in the end restored and justified.
Job's comforter a person who aggravates distress under the guise of giving comfort, with allusion to the story of the biblical patriarch, in which three friends who came to comfort him only increased his sense of injustice and wrong.
poor as Job very poor. Job after his possessions are taken from him becomes a type of abject poverty; proverbial allusions to him are recorded from late Middle English.