The author of Job is unknown, but the book itself was probably written between 500 and 400 BC. Though there are some similarities to the text of Job and Egyptian and Babylonian literature of the time, the work is highly unique.
The standard belief of the time was that a good person would be rewarded with good health, material wealth, and general good fortune (see, for example, Psalm 37). But human experience then, as now, was sometimes contrary to this. Bad things did happen to good people. The Book of Job rejects the simplistic belief that good is rewarded and evil is punished. Job does not so much solve the problem of the suffering of the innocents as it ponders it, lives with it, and explores it.
The faithful Job, a wealthy man with a large, loving family and many possessions loses everything: first his possessions, then his family, and finally his own health. He does not understand why any of this has happened, but rejects the …show more content…
Against his friends, Job insists that he is not more blameworthy than they or any other human being. But since he shares his friends blueprint assumption that God is behind all that has happened to him, the only alternative conclusion available to him is that God is in fact arbitrary. When Yahweh appears at the end of this book, he no more agrees with Job’s theology than he agrees with the theology of his friends.
First, while everyone else at the time the Old Testament was written believed that the world was fashioned and ruled by many conflicting gods, the Old Testament emphasizes that everything ultimately comes from one Creator God. To drive home this highly distinctive belief, Old Testament authors consistently emphasize God as the ultimate source of everything that happens in creation. Even the consequences of free decisions are in a sense brought about by the Creator, in their view, for he alone created the people (or angels) who make their own
The standard belief of the time was that a good person would be rewarded with good health, material wealth, and general good fortune (see, for example, Psalm 37). But human experience then, as now, was sometimes contrary to this. Bad things did happen to good people. The Book of Job rejects the simplistic belief that good is rewarded and evil is punished. Job does not so much solve the problem of the suffering of the innocents as it ponders it, lives with it, and explores it.
The faithful Job, a wealthy man with a large, loving family and many possessions loses everything: first his possessions, then his family, and finally his own health. He does not understand why any of this has happened, but rejects the …show more content…
Against his friends, Job insists that he is not more blameworthy than they or any other human being. But since he shares his friends blueprint assumption that God is behind all that has happened to him, the only alternative conclusion available to him is that God is in fact arbitrary. When Yahweh appears at the end of this book, he no more agrees with Job’s theology than he agrees with the theology of his friends.
First, while everyone else at the time the Old Testament was written believed that the world was fashioned and ruled by many conflicting gods, the Old Testament emphasizes that everything ultimately comes from one Creator God. To drive home this highly distinctive belief, Old Testament authors consistently emphasize God as the ultimate source of everything that happens in creation. Even the consequences of free decisions are in a sense brought about by the Creator, in their view, for he alone created the people (or angels) who make their own