Job

An Exegetical and Theological Exposition of Holy Scripture

Robert Alden

• Publisher: Holman Reference
• Year: 1994
• ISBN:
  9781433675560
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Commentary

THE NEW AMERICAN COMMENTARY is for the minister or Bible student who wants to understand and expound the Scriptures. Notable features include: * commentary based on THE NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION;* the NIV text printed in the body of the commentary;* sound scholarly methodology that reflects capable research in the original languages;* interpretation that emphasizes the theological unity of each book and of Scripture as a whole;* readable and applicable exposition.

SECTION OUTLINE

I. PROLOGUE (1:1–2:13)

1. Background (1:1-5)

(1) Job's Place (1:1a)

(2) Job's Piety (1:1b)

(3) Job's Posterity (1:2)

(4) Job's Prosperity (1:3)

(5) Job's Regular Custom (1:4-5)

2. Test of Wealth (1:6-22)

(1) The Satan (1:6-10)

(2) Challenge (1:11-12)

(3) Misfortunes (1:13-19)

Theft (1:13-15)

Fire (1:16)

Theft (1:17)

Storm (1:18-19)

(4) Job's Response (1:20-22)

3. Test of Health (2:1-10)

(1) The Satan (2:1-5)

(2) Disease (2:6-8)

(3) Job's Wife (2:9-10)

4. Job's Three Friends (2:11-13)

I. PROLOGUE (1:1–2:13)

The prologue is absolutely essential to the Book of Job. In it the writer introduces the readers to the main character, Job of Uz. With just a few strokes of the pen he sketches the heavenly council, the challenge from the Accuser, and Job's loss of his wealth, his children, and his health.

The prologue, like the epilogue, is in prose, but it is a lofty prose that almost shades into poetry. Rare words; unusual word order; and the use of special numbers, repetition, and parallelism mark the prose as of a different character than, for example, Genesis.

In the prologue the readers are informed of something that Job never learned, that is, that he was a test case. We know that he was innocent. God knows that he was innocent. The Satan knows that he was innocent. The friends who came to counsel him were sure he was not innocent. Job was quite certain of his innocence, but even sane people begin to question their sanity when faced with excruciating losses and prolonged illness. Happily for God and Job and us, Job survived; he passed the test and established himself as a great hero of faith.

1. Background (1:1-5)

In these opening five verses the necessary facts about Job appear—his locale, his wealth, his children, and, most important of all, his godliness.

(1) Job's Place (1:1a)

¹In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job.

1:1 Unlike most Hebrew sentences, which begin with the verb, this one begins with the noun “a man.”¹ Such deviations from the usual order of verb-subject-object are often for emphasis. Could it be that the humanity, the finitude, the frailty of the major character is the point of the text in making “a man” the first word?² “Lived” translates a simple verb “to be,” literally, “A man was in the land of Uz.”³

The location of the land of Uz is uncertain. Uz is the name of three Old Testament characters: (1) the son of Aram and grandson of Shem (Gen 10:22 = 1 Chr 1:17); (2) Abraham's nephew, the son of Nahor and Milcah and brother of Buz (Gen 22:21); and (3) an Edomite, one of the sons of Dishan the Horite, who lived in Seir (Gen 36:28 = 1 Chr 1:42).⁴ The last of these most likely gave his name to the land of Uz.⁵

Jeremiah 25:20 mentions the “kings of Uz” among those forced to drink the cup of the Lord's wrath. Separate in that list are Edom, Moab, and Ammon (v. 21). Lamentations 4:21 has Uz parallel with Edom.⁶

Wadi Sirhan, a depression about two hundred miles long running from northwest (near Zarqa) to southeast (near Jawf) is the most likely candidate for the land of Uz. It is the catchment for the waters that run off Jebel Druz and is capable of supporting large herds of livestock such as Job had. Today it lies mainly in the northernmost part of Saudi Arabia. It was close enough to Edom to be occasionally linked with it, yet it was also within striking distance for Chaldean raiders (1:17).

Outside this book the name Job occurs only in Ezek 14:14,20, where the hero is listed with two other worthies, Noah and Daniel. Efforts to link this otherwise unknown name with the root

, “enemy,” are futile. All but one of the more than 250 occurrences of “enemy” are qal participles. Three of them are in Job but never in such a way that one might connect it with the name Job (13:24; 27:7; 33:10).

(2) Job's Piety (1:1b)

This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil.

Verse 1b contains two adjectives that readers often question. Job was “blameless” (“perfect,” KJV) and “upright.” The first of these (

) will occur six more times in Job. Because the English word “perfect” has overtones of sinless perfection, it is best to avoid it in translation. A glance at two places where

appears illustrates its range of meanings.⁷ The word never describes God although it does characterize his work (Deut 32:4), his way (2 Sam 22:31 = Ps 18:30[31]), and his law (Ps 19:7[8]). Jesus urged his followers to “be perfect, … as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt 5:48).⁸

Perfection, integrity, or blamelessness referred to the absence of certain observable sinful acts. Job, his friends, and the author of the book were thinking of honesty, marital fidelity, just treatment of servants, generosity to the poor, and the avoidance of idolatry. Job denied wrongdoing in all these areas in chap. 31, his long self-maledictory oath. Neither Job nor his friends was thinking of perfection in the theological New Testament sense. If Job were perfect in that sense, then he would not have had to repent as he did at the end of the book (42:6).

“Upright,”

, is more common than

but is essentially equal to it and serves as ballast to give the line adequate weight. “Upright” most frequently occurs in Psalms and Proverbs. The verb form is in the well-known Prov 3:6, “In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths

.”

As if to elaborate on what “blameless and upright” meant, the remainder of the verse declares in two short sentences that Job “feared God” and “shunned evil.” “Fear” in Hebrew has a wider range of meaning than it does in English, including fright and scare, but it also encompasses reverence and awe. The picture here is not of a man cowering before an offended deity but of a devout man who respects God and obeys his laws.

The predominant words for God throughout the poetical parts of Job are

and

. Here, however, the word is the more common

, which, though frequent in the prologue, occurs only a few times in the rest of the book. Yahweh (yhwh),⁹ the name of the God of Israel, will come up a few times in the opening and closing chapters of the book but only once in the debate cycles (12:9). That is the name in the common phrase “the fear of the LORD” (e.g., Job 28:28; Prov 1:7).

“Shunned” or “turned from” represents the other side of the coin from “feared God.” The first phrase was positive; the second is negative. Good people turn to God and away from evil. The good life involves not only the doing of right but also the avoidance of wrong. Again, “evil” was defined as mainly overt acts such as those Eliphaz listed in 22:6-9—ruthless and cruel demanding of collateral and conscious neglect of the weary and hungry, the widow and orphan. In 29:12-17 Job countered these charges and added more good deeds to his ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Editor's Information
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Editor's Preface
• Author's Preface
• Abbreviations
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Person Index
• Selected Subject Index
• Scripture Index