79. The Book of Job, Chapter 2 to the end of the Book

In chapter 2 we meet Job's wife who advises him to curse God and die. Job was having nothing to do with this foolish advice. At this point also, I had to make a decision. Since I announced that we had reached the Book of Job in our journey through the bible it has aroused quite a lot of interest in certain areas of the Benefice. I have been asked several times how I am going to tackle it. I am certainly not going to attempt a full-blown commentary on the Book. Instead, I have been asking what I have learned from a prolonged study of Job. The answer, as far as I am concerned, is not very much. Job is steadfast in his trust in God whatever happens to him, in spite of conflicting advice from his friends. At the beginning he loses all his possessions and in the end God gives him

back double of what he lost. Like many of my readers I have tried to live a Christian life. This means having absolute trust in God and his merciful goodness. Such a faith gives meaning to the whole of one's life. I knew this long before I read the Book of Job. Many times I have turned to God for help in difficult times and have never been disappointed in His response. I would draw your attention to chapter 28 where Job praises wisdom as an excellent gift of God.

Next month we begin to travel through the Book of Psalms

Note

The Book of Job is an allegorical poem, author unknown, which may have predated Genesis. It raises many knotty questions, not least:

'why, if I lead a 'good', God-fearing life does God seemingly still allow huge misfortunes to happen to me?'

A good explanation is in the following book:

When bad things happen to good people' by Rabbi Harold S Kushner.†

But perhaps the most telling verse of Job is found in chapter 33 when Elihu (an inexperienced adviser to Job) seems to predict the coming of Christ, and penitents being forgiven by God. Repentance and forgiveness of sin, of course, underpin the Christian faith.

† Paper-back sold on Amazon for £8.99

'Rabbi Kushner writes from a wealth of Jewish wisdom and pastoral devotion, but his theology is, I find, wholly in keeping with contemporary Christian thought. So far as there is an answer to the conflict between the goodness of God and the bitterness of suffering, this is it'

Gerald Priestland

A Journey through the Bible with Tiglath