In the Library
The Book of Job
Anonymous, 600 BCE
- Form
- Form Poem
- Difficulty
- Difficulty Moderate
- Reading time
- Reading time 1.5 hours
- Translated by
- Translated by KJV (1611)
- Original
- Original he
- Chapters
- Chapters 42
- Length
- Length 18k words
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The LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.
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About the book
Heaven makes a bet. God lets an accuser strip a blameless man of his children, his wealth, and his health, to see whether he will curse God for it, and what follows is the oldest unflinching cry against undeserved suffering ever set down. Job's three friends come to console him and stay to accuse: surely he sinned, surely the world is just and he has earned his ruin. Job will not say it. He sits in the ash and demands an answer from the silence, and the silence holds, chapter after chapter, until God speaks at last from a whirlwind. What comes is not an explanation but a question, vast and unbearably beautiful: where were you when the morning stars sang together, when the foundations of the earth were laid? The whirlwind does not solve the problem of pain; it dwarfs it. And the book, astonishingly, takes the side of the man who refused every easy comfort and demanded the truth instead.