The Book of Job
I have studied in small part the book of Job in the past and would be interested to hear interpretations from Rabbinic or other perspectives on the power of belief in one's own righteousness and piety in face of gratuitous suffering by the hand of God through the will of Satan.
My early readings, which have been strongly influenced by Jung's interpretation point towards a person who's unshakable belief in oneself was so great that God became troubled by such infinitesimally small yet profound belief. Such was Job's conviction that God appeared before him to show all His might and glory, to which Job's response is of the ineffability of God even with respect to his gratuitous suffering caused unto him.
There are many interesting aspects to the book of Job in of itself. Namely, that belief itself was presented as a fickle tool to understanding the will of God. One one hand, Job's friends tell him, that he must have sinned to warrant the suffering and loss that has been bestowed upon him. Yet, Job remains patient and steadfast in his belief about his innocence. These contradictory beliefs are held in each instance as true, for God is all knowing and the limits of human understanding of God's will and sense of justice are never to be entirely known.
Doubt never enters Job's mind, and perhaps this is in my interpretation the moral of the story. That one ought not doubt in God (or otherwise, to trust in God) for whatever reason or amount of suffering. Job's conviction is vindicated in the end, when God restores his former wealth, status, and family.
What impressed me the most is the amount of patience and piety that Job shows in face of such evil from Satan, allowed to be inflicted upon him by God. One cannot help but draw parallels to books like Augustine's Confessions or Marcus Aurelius' Meditations.
My early readings, which have been strongly influenced by Jung's interpretation point towards a person who's unshakable belief in oneself was so great that God became troubled by such infinitesimally small yet profound belief. Such was Job's conviction that God appeared before him to show all His might and glory, to which Job's response is of the ineffability of God even with respect to his gratuitous suffering caused unto him.
There are many interesting aspects to the book of Job in of itself. Namely, that belief itself was presented as a fickle tool to understanding the will of God. One one hand, Job's friends tell him, that he must have sinned to warrant the suffering and loss that has been bestowed upon him. Yet, Job remains patient and steadfast in his belief about his innocence. These contradictory beliefs are held in each instance as true, for God is all knowing and the limits of human understanding of God's will and sense of justice are never to be entirely known.
Doubt never enters Job's mind, and perhaps this is in my interpretation the moral of the story. That one ought not doubt in God (or otherwise, to trust in God) for whatever reason or amount of suffering. Job's conviction is vindicated in the end, when God restores his former wealth, status, and family.
What impressed me the most is the amount of patience and piety that Job shows in face of such evil from Satan, allowed to be inflicted upon him by God. One cannot help but draw parallels to books like Augustine's Confessions or Marcus Aurelius' Meditations.
Comments (47)
It’s a remarkably existential book, in my view. I take the main theme to be that suffering comes to the righteous and unrighteousness alike. His friends insist he sinned, which is why he is suffering. On the other hand, God’s epic screed at the end questioning Job (and saying “I will ask and you will answer”; the irony!) about whether he controls the leviathan, the weather, is all a metaphor for the mindless, unconditional nature of suffering. Like a wild beast or an unexpected storm, suffering is uncontrollable and inevitable; suffering is existential and has no correlation with morality. the question is what to do with suffering, and this is the only point at which Jobs righteousness comes into the picture. He didn’t curse God and die, but endured his suffering, without knowledge of why he was suffering. The message here essentially renders the old half baked question “ if God is all powerful, why does he allow suffering?” Essentially meaningless. And of course God doesn’t answer. The fact that he doesn’t is in line with the Rabbinic teaching of asking the right questions, rather than providing basic answers.
Ain’t that Ecclesiastes?
Thanks.
Nice!
Not the sort of deity worthy of any respect.
Proving humans are greater beings than gods, which accords with Homer so well.
Man being moral having everything to loose suffers in dignity, whilst the tardy, arrogant and capricious gods torture taunt and dish out arbitrary punishments on humans.
If I ever need reminding how confused and contradictory is the Bible then I remind myself of Job.
Satan is the servant of God, or is he the evil fallen angel the sworn enemy of god?
Is god kind and beneficent, or is he mean minded and capricious?
Lol sneaky!
How does that particular interpretation of a scripture prove that idea? I’m guessing you don’t actually place that much stock in scripture to give it so much power.
Quoting charleton
Is this a metaphor? I’m assuming you don’t actually believe that.
What did not throw down on Lot FOR A BET with Satan? It's like you've not understood the most basic fact of the story!
I'm still waiting for your claim of objective morality to be substantiated.
Do you think it was moral of God to give Lot a lifetime of torture just to win a bet with Satan?
I read the text metaphorically. It’s a human story about human experience; of course the Old Testament depiction of God is barbaric; it was a barbaric time. To the contrary, the Israelite God was revolutionarily different to competing gods of the time. Today stories about God are told differently, based on the cultural milieu. The fact that you place so much significance on the Old Testament God in your arguments against the existence of a deity is ironically solely dependent on an Evangelical interpretation of scripture that considers it inspired and innerant, and most of all, unchanging, positioning the Old Testament God as something still valid to a modern milieu. It’s such an old and uninteresting argument, to be honest with you.
No - that's the Bible doing that. Read it again!
More evidence that atheists know their Bible with more detail than the believer.
Well you got that right at least.
I still prefer the God of the Old Testament. You know keeping it real and all?
Only because you have failed to see its importance.
What God would allow millions of believers for thousands of years to follow those writing and the examples within in His name?
How would you characterise such a God?
And if we cannot learn about God from the Bible why read it at all?
Misogynism, Terroism and Genocide perfect examples for the world of the devout.
Respond to my counter argument that you’re interpreting scripture literally rather than metaphorically just like the Christians you critique, and I’ll then respond to your points.
Quoting Mr Phil O'Sophy
Please read the top quote!! I sometimes despair of the treacle I have to wade through to get some sense in here. YOU, accused ME of a flaw, when what I said is an accurate account of what it says in the Bible. If anything is flawed it is, then, the Bible's absurd story of Job, the writers having fallen into the same error. OR those that wrote this section of the book did not share your view of God! God wagers with Satan, who oddly in this book is not his enemy, but his 'servant', exhorted to do God's dirty work and bring down suffering upon an innocent man.
At no point did I say you were a Christian. But if this is your god either way you can keep him.
It's not a counter argument of any strength, since millions have taken the Bible as their example for thousands of years.
That is not what I said. You love to put words into another's mouth. They call that a straw man.
But they are guilty by association if they continue to promote Scripture, yes.
Millions misinterpreting scripture says nothing about my argument, and the argument isn’t original either; it’s well known. Try again.
What that you find it boring?? What sort of argument is that?
Again, respond to my argument with at least a fraction of the effort I put into responding to yours, and I’ll be happy to continue the discussion.
I don't believe God should be all loving if you've seen suffering. The cognitive dissonance gets too real. A more cold and aloof God always made better sense to me. Even a spiteful one at that.
You are not paying attention.
Since by your own admission you reject any use the Bible might have in giving us an insight into gods moral guidance I cant see what your argument is for.
If you want to use the book as an example to uncover what the writer thought about god, then that would be more interesting.
But I fail to see what use it is, if you ignore anything we can learn about the portrayed character of god, to conclude any moral insights. Moral insights from a wager between god and his buddy Satan which ignore the basic facts of the scenario are worthless.
The devout propagate the idea that genocide misogyny and rape are okay by propagating the Bible as the word of God.
What do you not understand by this?
That’s an egregious characature of what I said.
Quoting charleton
Indeed, not interpreting scripture in a literal manner does just that because it naturally takes into account the unavoidable anthropomorphism of ancient religious texts.
Quoting charleton
Another egregious caricature of what I said. You’re presenting the interpretation of scripture as a black and white affair; a nuanced approach to interpretation takes all various approaches to interpretation and attempts to judge which tool to use in which case. Surely you should know that since atheists know scripture better than Christians (of which I’m neither).
Duh. I'm not claiming that. The Bible is.
It's not even a caricature. You said not to take it literally. But this is just an excuse to avoid inferring the capricious nature of god, which was most likely the author's intention.
Quoting Noble Dust
If it says nothing about God at all why bother. Or do you like to cherry pick?
Oof, I don’t do well with having words put in my mouth, and I can’t keep going in circles like this. Till next time.
The Koran is much worst for inaccuracies, contradictions, hatred and immorality.
What is the message of the OT?? The message that you want to characterise positively?
So, God might not be all Good, is that what you are suggesting? There are plenty of interpretations and that tends to get brought up quite often with the problem of evil (suffering).
No I'm not suggesting. The Book of Job insists upon it.
You fail to understand the regard of that the author of Job, had of god. You are just shoe-horning your own view of god where is does not fit.
The author of Job quite clearly had a completely different apprehension of God to you. It is a view of god far more common in the ancient world unhindered by Augustine's omni-everything view, which is simply NOT present in the OT at all.
The God of the OT is capricious, vengeful, violent and by modern standards a pretty evil genocidal maniac giving favours to the Jewish race, that your Creed characterises as "Apes"
If god is all powerful then what use is there asking this? He's going to do it his way whatever you say.
Well, that's an interpretation, you know? Some are more acknowledged by others and some aren't.
Please do not use god in this way again to me.
This is the complete converse of reality.
At the time of Job, Satan was analogous to God's Chief Operating Officer; COO, in terms of humans and the earth. Although God ranks above Satan, God is not fully involved in the day-to-day operations of humans. He delegates most of this job to his COO, Satan. This is why God is open to the council of Satan. The story of Job, tells us about the beginning of a falling out between God and his old Testament COO. God realizes he was given bad advice about Job.
What is important about the book of Job is it brings up the point that the assumed God of the old Testament, may have actually been God's COO, Satan. This explains the apparent hypocrisy of God. The analogy is owning a business and having a CEO who makes decisions that reflect on you. Satan is still Heaven, even at the time of Jesus. In Revelations, Jesus eventually takes over the role of COO; right hand of God. God was/is still the same and unchanging, but now he has better council; new COO Jesus.
The analogy is, God was like the owner of a lot of fast food franchises; universe. In each store, he has a manager. Each manager has the authority to make decisions and spend money on the behalf of the owner. The owner is busy keeping track of the bigger picture, and periodically has his managers report to him.
Satan as manager of the earth franchise, had a lot of autonomy, and could act on the behalf of God. During this advisory committee meeting with God; Job, Satan was demonstrating his leadership style. He was sort of a bully, and God starts to wonder if Satan is right for the job. He is not fired right away.