IMMERSED IN JOBT H E S T O R Y O F J O B B E G I N S by telling us “he was blameless—a man ofcomplete integrity. He feared God and stayed away from evil.” Job isexactly the kind of person the book of Proverbs envisions when it urgesits readers to embrace wisdom. According to Israel’s wisdom tradition,such godly character should lead to success and prosperity in life. Andwhen we first meet Job, he is indeed prosperous and wealthy, surrounded by a large family and respected for his wisdom. But a suddenseries of catastrophes takes everything away, and he’s left in poverty,disfigured by disease and disgraced in the eyes of the community.The book then presents an extended dialogue between Job andthree of his friends who come to “comfort and console him.” But as itturns out, they have come mostly to confront him with his guilt, whichthey believe caused his troubles. In their unbending moral universe,goodness is always rewarded and wrongdoing is invariably punished.So if Job has gone from prosperity to suffering, there must certainly besome great sin or failure in his life.For his part, Job relentlessly protests that he is innocent, that theAlmighty has made some mistake in allowing these tragedies into Job’slife. In the strength of his moral certainty, Job demands to meet withGod and present his case directly.The reader learns at the start of the book that there’s more to thisstory than any of the players on earth know. But the drama of Job’sarguments with his friends and his extended complaint to God has toplay itself out, since the secret remains unknown to them.The book of Job is a daring exploration of the deepest questionsregarding our faith in God and his role in the world. According to theBible, wisdom gives us the ability to understand the order God gave tothe world. But what happens when that ability is stretched to its limits?What are we to do when our explanations fail? What if the order in theworld itself seems to be fractured?The book of Job is made up of a series of long poetic dialogues thatare bookended by brief explanatory narratives. The poetic dialoguesare marked by powerful imagery and elegant, serious tones. There arethree rounds of these speeches between Job and his three friends, and267
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