So I have been reading the book recently, and it struck me how rarely the book as a whole is considered. A few choice passges are sometimes referred to, and some basic overviews are addressed. But there are, I realised as I read it, some important messages.
So I think it is important to understand that the story is just that - a story, a parable, if you want, with a moral or purpose. Things like children and livestock were seen as an indication of wealth - so replacing 7 children by another 14 is perfectly valid (however callous this seems to us). All the characters are simply playing a part in a larger story.
So, what of the story? Well a good 35 chapters of the book are Job and his "friends" discussing righteousness. This is the first area that I find really interesting. Because what is clear here is that Job being critical of God - saying that God is unjust and unfair (which is true) is perfetly reasonable.
His friends were all arguing that Job must have comitted some sin to suffer like this. This view is that suffering is always and inevitably the result of sin. Which is interesting, because I have heard similar arguments far more recently. The idea that if you are struggling, unhappy, suffering than you must need to repent of something is still proclaimed.
And it is still wrong.
Which is (one of) the point(s) of the story. Linking righteosness to divine blessing is a fundamental mistake. God will bless who he will, and with withhold from who he will.
As Job says (in one of the quotes so often taken out of the context) "The Lord gives and The Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord" - he had it right.
So when people tell you that the answer to your problem is to get "right with God", point them to Job.
But there is a second aspect that struck me completely anew this time. This is the response from God. Now, I should point out that this "response" is a typical approach in wisdom writing by not actually answering the question even slightly. What it is normally considered to be doing is telling Job that he has no right to question a God who has made everything.
But I read it differently this time. To me, it was saying "do you - humanity - have the slightest understnading of how the world works. Of how all of nature is interconnected, of how 'Gaia' (if you want) operates to manage itself? If not, how can you seriously onsider that you know why things happen to people?"
This really struck me because it is becoming abundantly lear that we have no idea whatsoever of the impact of what we do, and of how the world as a whole operates. We are causing rampant climate collapse, and we seem not to care. We are destroying our planet without understanding a billionth of what it does.
So how can we pretend to be "gods", to be so good, so righteous? How ome we claim to be the "most intelligent beings on the earth" when we are the only one wrecking it?
There is a lot of depth and meaning in this book. So often it is portrayed in a simplistic way, or a summary form that leaves aside all of the meaning. But it does speak to our modern world, I think. To a world that still consists of humans, and so - as with all of the wisdom books - a world that still needs this wosdom.
