Job, Part 1: The Basics
So I haven’t posted for a few months, whoops. But I really hope this series will get me into some kind of consistent post rhythm. I’ve been reading, studying, and pondering the book of Job for a few weeks now and just finished re-reading it this morning. I also re-read Toby Sumpter’s book on Job, which is solid and I would recommend it. So all of that means I have lots of thoughts swirling around in my head and I hope to use this blog to help sort them out. I’m not entirely sure what this series will be exactly, probably not a verse by verse commentary, but potentially more detailed than a simple overview.
To begin the series, I think it would be helpful to lay out some of the starting assumptions I will be making as I walk through the text. First, Job is a righteous man (1:1, 1:8, 2:3 just for some examples). He fears God and obeys His commandments. Second, Job is a king. 1:3 says he was very wealthy and was the “greatest of all the men of the east.” I also believe this point is made more clear as the dialogues happen. Third, Job was a historical figure. Ezekiel and James both mention Job and give no hint that Job was a mythical figure and so I will be proceeding on the assumption that the book of Job details actual events within history. Fourth and jumping off the previous point, I believe Job was the work of a single author and contains a coherent story based on my beliefs about divine inspiration of the Bible and so I will be ignoring any higher criticism type works in this series. Fifth, that Job was right (42:7-8). God says very clearly at the end of the book that Job had spoken rightly about Him unlike his three friends, and so I will be reading Job’s speeches through that lens and interpreting them as sympathetically as possible. We don’t have to give him a perfect grade on everything but we should take God’s evaluation of the situation seriously.
I think that’s enough groundwork laid, any other points I think of I can address as we get to them. Part 2 will start with the prologue of the book.