Main news for 15 January 2025

The first trial that came down on Job showed that his faith held firm; he remained faithful to God. The chief value for Job is not prosperity, not the gifts he possessed, but the Lord Himself. Job also endures the second trial, when he himself is struck by a most dangerous disease and becomes an outcast even among outcasts.

It is no accident that Job's dispute with his wife occurs after the second trial: in essence, it is a clash between deep faith and the "normal" worldly position, according to which a person sees God as the giver of benefits and, when they are absent, is ready to turn away from Him. In the first trial, the wife suffered the same calamities as Job, but the second trial did not touch her directly, and from the outside she is free to advise her husband to die by blaspheming. Job's view of the essence of things is deeper, and his attitude toward God is more exalted and is not reduced to demanding constant care for himself, so here too he withstands the test. But this is only the beginning. A calamity that has just happened is relatively easy to endure; it is harder to endure when the calamity lasts a long time.

In the account of both trials it is said that Job did not sin in his judgments and assessments of what happened to him. He is ready to receive everything that comes from God, even evil. The point, however, is that the Lord is not the source of evil; He only permits it. Why He permits it is an enormous question, and the answer to it lies beyond the text of the Book of Job, and even more beyond the text of the whole Bible. So one can wonder whether Job's ideas about the Creator are limited if he believes that evil can come from Him. Although it is said that there is no sin in this point of view, it is incomplete, as all our ideas about the Creator are incomplete. No human being can comprehend Him in His fullness.

Job 2:9-10

NOTES

The Book of Job begins with a kind of prologue. Who is the Job of the Book of Job? We know something about the Job of ancient traditions, though not much. The Job of tradition appears before us as a complete, ideal righteous man, a hero, a knight without fear or reproach. As we can see, the author of the book needed precisely such an image: an ideal and blameless righteous man. Job is even, if one may say so, over-righteous. For example, he performs purification rituals and sacrifices for his children even when he has no reason to think that they need purification. It is enough for him to think that they may have sinned, may have done something that makes purification necessary. Job is certain that in such a case it is better to overdo it than to leave something undone. And this is the very person who becomes the subject of a dispute between God and Satan.

A strange dispute, it would seem. But Satan, this spirit opposed to God, is free just as a human being opposed to God is free. God does not suppress his freedom either by force or by authority. And Satan is true to himself: he trusts no one and laughs at every good thing he sees in the world and in people. Satan simply does not believe that a person, or anyone else, can be good, and in this he is certainly judging by himself. Satan is certain that a person can do something good, pious, or righteous only if it is profitable for him. And he says this to God directly.

Then something happens that seems altogether strange: God permits Satan to test Job, giving him access to the righteous man, to his property, to those close to him, and even to his body. There is only one requirement: to leave Job alive, to preserve his "soul," his life. As we can see, the author of the Book of Job is well aware of the difference between God's will and what theologians would later call God's permission. But a natural question arises: why did God need this peculiar wager? It cannot convince Satan, whatever the outcome, for that is what makes him Satan.

To convince Himself? That is even stranger: could God not know what Job is really like? What, then? Perhaps the matter lies with Job himself? But what does God expect from him? Job accepts the trials as a deeply religious person: God gave, God has taken away; naked I came into the world, naked I will depart; blessed be the name of the Lord. In short, all the traditional religious formulas for such occasions are present. But time goes on. How long will they be enough? And what will Job say next, when these formulas seem too little to him? The story of a righteous man and the testing of his righteousness begins.

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