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In chapter one, Job, living in The Land of Uz, is described as a man of great probity, virtue, and piety. He possesses much livestock and many servants. He has seven sons and three daughters and is respected by all people on both sides of the Euphrates. After his sons have a feast, Job purifies them and offers burnt sacrifices so that God may pardon any faults the boys may have committed during the festivities. This attests to Job's righteousness.God permits "the Satan" to put the virtue of Job to the test, at first by giving him power over his property, but forbidding him to touch his person. Satan began by taking away all of Job's riches, his livestock, his house, his servants, and his children; a series of four messengers informs him that they have perished in various disasters.Job rends his clothes, shaves his head, and falls down upon the ground saying, "Naked I came from my mother's womb, And naked shall I return there. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; Blessed be the name of the Lord."[1]As Job endures these calamities without reproaching Divine Providence, Satan solicits permission to afflict his person as well, and YHVH says, "Behold he is in your hand, but don’t touch his life." Satan, therefore, smites him with dreadful boils, and Job, seated in ashes, scrapes off the corruption with a pot shard. His wife wants him to "curse God, and die" but Job answers, "Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?"In the meantime, only three of Job's friends come to visit him in his misfortune — Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. A fourth, Elihu the Buzite, first begins talking in chapter 32 and bears a distinguished part in the dialogue; his arrival is not noted. The friends spend a week sitting on the ground with Job, without speaking, until Job at last breaks his silence and complains of his misery.
Speeches of Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar Job's friends do not waver from their belief that God is right, and that anyone who has such poor fortune as Job is necessarily being punished for disobeying God's law. As the poem progresses Job's friends increasingly berate him for refusing to confess his sins, although they themselves are at a loss as to what sort of sins he has committed. The three friends continue to assume that Job was a sinner and therefore deserves all punishments. They also assume, in their view of theology, that God always rewards good and punishes evil, with no apparent exceptions allowed. There seems to be no room in their understanding of God for divine discretion and mystery in allowing and arranging suffering for purposes other than retribution. Jobs friends never use the name YHVH in the story, they refer God as El, Eloahh and Elohiym.[edit] Speeches of Job Job, convinced of his own innocence, maintains that his suffering cannot be accounted for by his few sins, and that there is no reason for God to punish him thus. However, he refuses to curse God's name.Speech of Elihu Elihu, whose name means 'My God is He', takes a mediator's path, maintaining the sovereignty and righteousness and gracious mercy of God. Elihu strongly condemns the approach taken by the three friends, and argues that Job is misrepresenting God's righteousness and discrediting His loving character. Elihu says he spoke last because he is much younger than the other three friends, but says that age makes no difference when it comes to insights and wisdom. In his speech, Elihu argues for God's power, redemptive salvation and absolute rightness in all His conduct. God is mighty, yet just, and quick to warn and to forgive. Elihu takes a distinct view of the kind of repentance required by Job. Job's three friends claim that repentance requires Job to identify and renounce the sins that gave rise to his suffering. By contrast, Elihu stresses that repentance inextricably entails renouncing any moral authority or cosmological perspective, which is God's alone. Elihu therefore underscores the inherent arrogance in Job's desire to 'make his case' before God, which presupposes that Job possesses a superior moral standard that can be prevailed upon God. Apparently, Elihu acts in a prophetic role preparatory to the appearance of God. Elihu never mentions YHVH and after Elihu's speech ends with the last verse of Chapter 37, YHVH appears and in the second verse of Chapter 38, YHVH says, “Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?“ YHVH also rebukes Job's three friends. Job never replies to Elihu's indictments and revelations of God's dealings with him through the ordeal.
God's response After several rounds of debate between Job and his friends, in a divine voice, described as coming from a "cloud" or "whirlwind", YHVH describes, in evocative and lyrical language, what the experience of being responsible for the world is like, and asks if Job has ever had the experiences that YHVH has had.YHVH's answer underscores that Job shares the world with numerous powerful and remarkable creatures, creatures with lives and needs of their own, whom God must provide for, and the young of some hunger in a way that can only be satisfied by taking the lives of others. Does Job even have any experience of the world he lives in? Does he understand what it means to be responsible for such a world? Job admits that he does not.YHVH's speech also emphasizes his sovereignty in creating and maintaining the world. The thrust is not merely that God has experiences that Job does not, but also that God is King over the world and is not necessarily subject to questions from his creatures, including men. He declines to answer any of Job's questions or challenges with anything except "I am the Lord." Job asks God for forgiveness.In the epilogue, YHVH condemns Job's friends for their insistence on speaking wrongly of the Lord's motives and methods, commands them to make extensive animal sacrifices and instructs Job to pray for their forgiveness. Immediately thereafter YHVH restores Job to health, giving him double the riches he before possessed (including ten new children added to the ten who predeceased him). His new daughters are the most beautiful in the land, and are given inheritance while Job is still alive. Job is crowned with a holy life and with a happy death.
Satan in the Book of JobThe term "the Satan" appears in the prose prologue of Job, with his usual connotation of "the adversary," as a distinct being. He is shown as one of the celestial beings before the Deity, replying to the inquiry of YHVH as to whence he had come, with the words: "from going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it" (Job 1:7). Both the question and the answer, as well as the dialogue that ensues, characterize Satan as that member of the divine council who watches over human activity, but with the evil purpose of searching out men's sins and appearing as their accuser. He is, as it were, a celestial "prosecutor," who sees only iniquity; for he persists in his evil opinion of Job even after the man of Uz has passed successfully through his first trial by surrendering to the will of YHVH, whereupon Satan demands another test through physical suffering (Job 2:3-5). Satan challenges YHVH by saying that Job's belief is only built upon what material goods he is given, and that his faith will disappear as soon as they are taken from him. And YHVH accepts the challenge.The introduction of "the adversary" occurs in the (very short) framing story alone: he is never alluded to in the (very long) central poem at all, although hades is mentioned in the central poem.While many, from a Christian perspective, believe Satan to be the Devil, in the Book of Job he is presented as a worker for YHVH known as the "the satan" (ha-satan, 'the adversary'), not Satan as a personal name. He is the ultimate prosecutor for God. [2]
Job's wifeJob's wife is mentioned only once in the book of Job in Chapter 2. The extra-Biblical Testament of Job adds legendary details about her being named Sitis, who, the legend goes, sold her hair to Satan in exchange for food and money. In the end, she cursed God and died.Job is said to have had at least four wives in the course of his life (four being from the tribe of Peleg) according to The Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary[3], it is currently unknown which wife this was.In lieu of the Talmud's discussion of Job's being a contemporary of figures in the Book of Genesis, Genesis, Rabbinic sources [specify] have also identified Dinah as a possibility for Job's wife. [citation needed]
Identities of Job's friends The first speaker to address Job, 'Eliphaz the Temanite', is likely identified in the Book of Genesis, chap. 36, verses eleven through twelve, in a genealogy: 'And the sons of Eliphaz were Teman, Omar, Zepho, Gatam and Kenaz. Now Timna was the concubine of Eliphaz, Esau's son, and she bore Amalek to Eliphaz. These the sons of Adah, Esau's wife.' This would probably identify the Eliphaz in the Book of Job as a descendant of Teman, and therefore designated as a 'Temanite', meaning 'a relative' or 'a descendant'; 'son of', or 'of the tribe of', rather than as coming from a place called Teman, which there probably was, and also was probably named after its founder, i.e. the original Teman, the son of Eliphaz mentioned in Genesis chapter 36. This would further identify 'Eliphaz the Temanite' in the Book of Job as an Edomite, of the descendants of Esau, Jacob's older brother