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Christopher Ash

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Herausgeber: Crossway
Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
Serie: Preaching the Word
Sprache: Englisch

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Life can be hard, and sometimes it seems like God doesn't even care. When faced with difficult trials, many people have resonated with the book of Job—the story of a man who lost nearly everything, seemingly abandoned by God. In this thorough and accessible commentary, Christopher Ash helps us glean encouragement from God's Word by directing our attention to the final explanation and ultimate resolution of Job's story: the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Intended to equip pastors to preach Job's important message, this commentary highlights God's grace and wisdom in the midst of redemptive suffering. Taking a staggeringly honest look at our broken world and the trials that we often face, Ash helps us see God's sovereign purposes for adversity and the wonderful hope that Christians have in Christ. Part of the Preaching the Word series.

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Leseprobe

PREACHING THE WORD

Edited by R. Kent Hughes

Genesis | R. Kent Hughes

Exodus | Philip Graham Ryken

Leviticus | Kenneth A. Mathews

Numbers | Iain M. Duguid

Deuteronomy | Ajith Fernando

Joshua | Douglas Sean O’Donnell

1 Samuel | John Woodhouse

Proverbs | Raymond C. Ortlund Jr.

Ecclesiastes | Philip Graham Ryken

Song of Solomon | Douglas Sean O’Donnell

Isaiah | Raymond C. Ortlund Jr.

Jeremiah and Lamentations | Philip Graham Ryken

Daniel | Rodney D. Stortz

Matthew | Douglas Sean O’Donnell

Mark | R. Kent Hughes

Luke | R. Kent Hughes

John | R. Kent Hughes

Acts | R. Kent Hughes

Romans | R. Kent Hughes

2 Corinthians | R. Kent Hughes

Galatians | Todd Wilson

Ephesians | R. Kent Hughes

Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon | R. Kent Hughes

1–2 Thessalonians | James H. Grant Jr.

1–2 Timothy and Titus | R. Kent Hughes and Bryan Chapell

Hebrews | R. Kent Hughes

James | R. Kent Hughes

1–2 Peter and Jude | David R. Helm

1–3 John | David L. Allen

Revelation | James M. Hamilton Jr.

The Sermon on the Mount | R. Kent Hughes

PREACHING the WORD

JOB

The WISDOM of the CROSS

CHRISTOPHER ASH

R. Kent Hughes

Series Editor

Job

Published by Crossway

1300 Crescent Street

Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law.

Cover design: Jon McGrath, Simplicated Studio

Cover image: Adam Greene, illustrator

First printing 2014

Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway. 2011 Text Edition. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

Scripture references marked NEB are from The New English Bible © The Delegates of the Oxford University Press and The Syndics of the Cambridge University Press, 1961, 1970.

Scripture references marked RSV are from The Revised Standard Version. Copyright ©1946, 1952, 1971, 1973 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4335-1312-1 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-2418-9 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-1313-8 Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-1314-5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ash, Christopher, 1953–

Job / Christopher Ash.

1 online resource. – (Preaching the word)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

ISBN 978-1-4335-1313-8 (pdf) – ISBN 978-1-4335-1315-2 (mobi) – ISBN 978-1-4335-2418-9 (epub) – ISBN 978-1-4335-1312-1 (hc)

1. Bible. Job–Commentaries. I. Title.

BS1415.53

223'.107–dc23 2013021331

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

To Dick Lucas

Behold, we consider those blessed who remained steadfast. You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful.

JAMES 5:11

A Word to Those Who Preach the WordPrefaceIntroduction: What Is Job All About?The Structure of the Book of JobPart 1JOB AND WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM (1—3) 1 Welcome to a Well-Run World (1:1–5) 2 The Testing of Your Faith (1:6—2:10) 3 The Loneliness of Job (2:11–13) 4 Weep with Those Who Weep (3)Part 2JOB AND HIS FRIENDS (4—31) 5 Introducing Job’s Comforters: What Not to Say to the Suffering BelieverThe First Cycle of Speeches (4 —14) 6 Eliphaz’s First Speech: A Useless Sermon from a Kind Friend (4, 5) 7 Job’s First Reply to Eliphaz: The God-Forsaken Living Death (6, 7) 8 Bildad’s First Speech: The System at Its Simplest (8) 9 Job’s First Reply to Bildad: The Trouble-Maker Maker (9, 10)10 Zophar’s First Speech: The Cruelty of the System (11)11 Job’s First Reply to Zophar: A Longing for Resurrection (12—14)The Second Cycle of Speeches (15—21)12 Eliphaz’s Second Speech: On the Scandal of Redemptive Suffering (15)13 Job’s Second Reply to Eliphaz: Drinking the Cup of God’s Wrath (16, 17)14 Bildad’s Second Speech: The Road to Hell (18)15 Job’s Second Reply to Bildad: Is God for Me or against Me? (19)16 Zophar’s Second Speech: Another Portrait of Hell (20)17 Job’s Second Reply to Zophar: The Good Life (21)The Third (Truncated) Cycle of Speeches (22—28)18 Eliphaz’s Third Speech: Repent and Prosper (22)19 Job’s Third Reply to Eliphaz: Your Kingdom Come (23, 24)20 Bildad’s Third Speech: A Mortal Cannot Hope to Be Right with God (25)21 Job’s Third Reply to Bildad: The Difference between Religion and Wisdom (26)Job’s Two Summary Speeches (27—31)22 Job Begins to Sum Up: The Danger of Opposing the Gospel (27)23 Why God Won’t Answer My Question (28)Job’s Final Defense (29—31)24 The Longing: A Nostalgia for Paradise (29)25 The Lament: The Stripping of Dignity (30)26 Job’s Last Word (31)Part 3THE ANSWERS TO JOB (32:1—42:6)27 Elihu and the Justice of God (32:1–5)28 Elihu’s First Speech: The God Who Speaks (32:6—33:33)29 Elihu’s Second Speech: Is God Fair? (34)30 Elihu’s Third Speech: What’s the Point of Being Good? (35)31 Elihu’s Fourth Speech: Cosmic Grandeur and Cosmic Justice (36, 37)32 The Lord’s First Speech, Part 1: What Wonderful Knowledge (38:1–38)33 The Lord’s First Speech, Part 2: Nature, Red in Tooth and Claw? (38:39—40:5)34 The Lord’s Second Speech: Terrifying Evil (40:6—42:6)Epilogue: The End Comes at the End (42:7–17)Conclusion: So What Is the Book of Job All About?BibliographyAcknowledgmentsNotesScripture IndexGeneral IndexIndex of Sermon Illustrations

A Word to Those Who Preach the Word

There are times when I am preaching that I have especially sensed the pleasure of God. I usually become aware of it through the unnatural silence. The ever-present coughing ceases, and the pews stop creaking, bringing an almost physical quiet to the sanctuary—through which my words sail like arrows. I experience a heightened eloquence, so that the cadence and volume of my voice intensify the truth I am preaching.

There is nothing quite like it—the Holy Spirit filling one’s sails, the sense of his pleasure, and the awareness that something is happening among one’s hearers. This experience is, of course, not unique, for thousands of preachers have similar experiences, even greater ones.

What has happened when this takes place? How do we account for this sense of his smile? The answer for me has come from the ancient rhetorical categories of logos, ethos, and pathos.

The first reason for his smile is the logos—in terms of preaching, God’s Word. This means that as we stand before God’s people to proclaim his Word, we have done our homework. We have exegeted the passage, mined the significance of its words in their context, and applied sound hermeneutical principles in interpreting the text so that we understand what its words meant to its hearers. And it means that we have labored long until we can express in a sentence what the theme of the text is—so that our outline springs from the text. Then our preparation will be such that as we preach, we will not be preaching our own thoughts about God’s Word, but God’s actual Word, his logos. This is fundamental to pleasing him in preaching.

The second element in knowing God’s smile in preaching is ethos—what you are as a person. There is a danger endemic to preaching, which is having your hands and heart cauterized by holy things. Phillips Brooks illustrated it by the analogy of a train conductor who comes to believe that he has been to the places he announces because of his long and loud heralding of them. And that is why Brooks insisted that preaching must be “the bringing of truth through personality.” Though we can never perfectly embody the truth we preach, we must be subject to it, long for it, and make it as much a part of our ethos as possible. As the Puritan William Ames said, “Next to the Scriptures, nothing makes a sermon more to pierce, than when it comes out of the inward affection of the heart without any affectation.” When a preacher’s ethos backs up his logos, there will be the pleasure of God.

Last, there is pathos—personal passion and conviction. David Hume, the Scottish philosopher and skeptic, was once challenged as he was seen going to hear George Whitefield preach: “I thought you do not believe in the gospel.” Hume replied, “I don’t, but he does.” Just so! When a preacher believes what he preaches, there will be passion. And this belief and requisite passion will know the smile of God.

The pleasure of God is a matter of logos (the Word), ethos (what you are), and pathos (your passion). As you preach the Word may you experience his smile—the Holy Spirit in your sails!

R. Kent Hughes

Preface

“The grandest book ever written with pen.” So wrote the Victorian essayist Thomas Carlyle about the Old Testament book of Job.1 It is a book I have been grappling with for a decade or so. The more I have walked through it and around it, the more deeply convinced I have become that it makes no sense apart from the cross of Christ. That statement would be strictly true of the entire Old Testament, but somehow in Job it seems more sharply and urgently true, for without Jesus the book of Job will be but “the record of an unanswered agony.”2 It could almost be a commentary on Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 1:18–25. The book of Job hinges around the contrast, conflict, and tension between the wisdom of the world and the wisdom of the cross.

Perhaps this is why commentaries that restrict themselves to interpreting the Old Testament in terms of the Old Testament alone find themselves heading up blind alleys. Scripture is to be interpreted by Scripture, and the book of Job can only be understood as a part of the whole Biblical canon as it is fulfilled in Christ.

Again and again as I have beaten my head against these puzzling and seemingly intractable texts, it has been the cross of Christ that has shone light on the page. This is not to say that the book is not about Job in his ancient context. Of course it is. But Job’s experiences, Job’s debates, Job’s struggles, Job’s sufferings, and Job’s final blessings all come to fruition in the perfect obedience of Jesus Christ in his life and death and then in his resurrection, ascension, and exaltation at God’s right hand. I hope I can persuade you of this as the exposition walks through every verse of the book.

This book is not a treatment of a topic, whether the topic of suffering or anything else. It is a study of the Bible book of Job. I want you to venture into the book of Job, to read, meditate, explore, and pray this profound Bible book into your bloodstream. If you have never done so, my prayer is that this study will help you find a way in. If you have ventured in but got bogged down and confused, I hope this book will help you find your way.

Job is a neglected treasure of the Christian life. It has spawned an enormous outpouring of scholarly work, and yet few Christians know quite where to start in appropriating its message for themselves. I hope this book will be sufficiently accessible, clear, accurate, and faithful to help.

Introduction

WHAT IS JOB ALL ABOUT?

The book of Job raises three big questions: What kind of world do we live in? What kind of church should we want? What kind of Savior do we need?

What Kind of World Do We Live In?

This book began as a sermon series on the book of Job in the church where I was pastor.1 Twelve days before the first sermon, on January 14, 2003, Detective Constable Stephen Oake was stabbed and killed in Manchester. Why? He was an upright man, a faithful husband, a loving father. What is more, he was a Christian, a committed member of his church where he used sometimes to preach. The newspapers reported a moving statement by his father, Robin Oake, a former chairman of the Christian Police Association. He said through his tears that he was praying for the man who had killed his son. The newspaper articles told of the quiet dignity of Stephen’s widow Lesley. They showed happy family snapshots with his teenage son Christopher and daughters Rebecca and Corinne.

So why was he killed? Does this not make us angry? After all, if we're going to be honest we will surely admit that there were others who deserved to die more than he. Perhaps there was a corrupt policeman somewhere who had unjustly put innocent people in prison or a crooked policeman who had taken bribes. Or perhaps another policeman was carrying on an affair with his neighbor's wife. If one of those had been killed, we might have said that although we were sad, at least there would have appeared to be some moral logic to that death. But the Oakeses, dare we say it, are good people. Not sinless, of course, but believers living upright lives. So why is this pointless and terrible loss inflicted on them?

We need to be honest and face the kind of world in which we live. Why does God allow these things? Why does he do nothing to put these things right? And why, on the other hand, do people who couldn't care less about God and justice thrive? Here in contemporary idiom is the angry voice of an honest man from long ago who struggled with this same unfairness:

Why do the wicked have it so good,live to a ripe old age and get rich?They get to see their children succeed,get to watch and enjoy their grandchildren.Their homes are peaceful and free from fear;they never experience God's disciplining rod.Their bulls breed with great vigorand their calves calve without fail.They send out their children to playand watch them frolic like spring lambs.They make music with fiddles and flutes,have good times singing and dancing.They have a long life on easy street,and die painlessly in their sleep.2

That was the voice of Job, in a paraphrase from chapter 21. “Let's be honest,” he says. “Let's have no more of this pious make-believe that it goes well for good people and badly for bad people. It's not true; look around the world—it's simply not true. By and large people who could not care about God live happier, longer lives with less suffering than do believers. Why? What kind of God runs a world like this?”

Armchair Questions and Wheelchair Questions

It is hard questions like this that face us in the book of Job. But there are two ways of asking them. We may ask them as armchair questions or we may ask them as wheelchair questions. We ask them as armchair questions if we ourselves are remote from suffering. As Shakespeare said, “He jests at scars that never felt a wound.”3 The troubled Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote eloquently and almost bitterly:

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fallFrightful, sheer, no-man fathomed. Hold them cheapMay who ne'er hung there.4

We grapple with God with wheelchair questions when we do not take this terror lightly when we ourselves, or those we love, are suffering. Job asks wheelchair questions.

Every pastor knows that behind most front doors there lies pain, often hidden, sometimes long and drawn out, sometimes very deep. A few years ago a pastor was discussing how to preach a passage from Job with four fellow ministers when he looked around at the others. For a moment he lost his concentration on the text as he realized that one of them, some years ago, had lost his wife in a car accident in their first year of marriage. The second was bringing up a seriously handicapped daughter. The third had broken his neck and had come within 2 millimeters of total paralysis or death six years previously. The fourth had undergone repeated radical surgeries that had changed his life. As his concentration returned to the text of Job, he thought, This book is not merely academic. It is both about people and for people who know suffering.

Robert Gordis writes, “The ubiquity of evil and its apparent triumph everywhere give particular urgency to the most agonizing riddle of human existence, the problem of evil, which is the crucial issue in biblical faith.” He calls the book of Job “the most profound and—if such an epithet may be allowed—the most beautiful discussion of the theme,” more relevant than ever, “in this, the most brutal of centuries.”5

Job is a fireball book. It is a staggeringly honest book. It is a book that knows what people actually say and think—not just what they say publicly in church. It knows what people say behind closed doors and in whispers, and it knows what we say in our tears. It is not merely an academic book. If we listen to it carefully, it will touch us, trouble us, and unsettle us at a deep level.

What Kind of Church Should We Want?

But as well as asking what kind of world we live in, the book of Job will force us to ask what kind of church we belong to. What is the greatest threat to Christian churches today? That question was asked to an Any Questions panel at the Proclamation Trust’s Cornhill Training Course in London where I work. It is a good question, although answers are bound to be impressionistic. But here’s a suggestion: in most of the world churches are liable to be swamped by the so-called prosperity gospel, and in the richer parts of the world churches struggle to guard the gospel against metamorphosing into what we might call the therapeutic gospel. These two closely-related pseudo-gospels threaten to displace the authentic Christian and Biblical gospel.

The prosperity gospel, in its crudest form, is the message that God wants you to be rich, and if you trust him and ask him, he will make you rich. One of the largest Christian occasions in Britain is the annual International Gathering of Champions, run by Pastor Matthew Ashimolowo. Preachers tell the congregation how God wants them to be rich and then richer and richer. The American preacher T. D. Jakes has an estimated personal fortune of one hundred million dollars. Such fortunes are regarded as evidence of God’s favor.6

The first time I visited Nigeria I was astonished at the myriad of ramshackle signs alongside the roadside advertising little independent churches. Most of them seemed to be teaching the prosperity gospel, with names like The Winners Chapel, Divine Call Bible Church (its slogan was “Excellence and Power”), or The Redeemed Evangelical Mission POWER WORD (how to speak a word that gets you power and influence). Come to Jesus and become a winner in life—that seemed to be the message. In our contrasuggestible English way, my traveling companion wanted to start a Losers Chapel, and I suggested an Apostolic Scum of the Earth Church, neither of which would be a marketing man’s dream, but each of which would have been closer to the New Testament.

We visited the Ecumenical Centre, the large cathedral-like building at the heart of Abuja, the capital city. This is the flagship Christian building in the country (mirrored by an equally large central mosque not far away). When we were there, the building was being used by a prosperity gospel denomination, headed by self-styled Archbishop Sam Amaga. The bookstall consisted entirely of books by him. Here is a selection of the titles: Cultivating a Winning Habit (with the subtitle “Sure Guarantee for a Top Life”), Created for the Top, Don’t Die at the Bottom, and Power Pillars for Uncommon Success.

A Ghanaian student at Cornhill told me that some weddings in his country replace the traditional wording of the wedding vows with the words, “For better, for best, for richer, for richest” because they cannot countenance the possibility that there may, for a Christian couple, be anything “worse” or “poorer.”

So that is the prosperity gospel. If I am poor (financially and materially poor) and I come to Jesus, Jesus will make me rich. If I am sick, and I pray to Jesus, Jesus will make me well. If I want a wife or a husband, and I ask Jesus for one, he will give me a wife or husband. If a couple wants children and call out to Jesus, Jesus will give them children. And so on. This, according to the prosperity gospel, is what he has promised.

But what if, as in some parts of the world, I already am rich? I may not think of myself as particularly rich, but I have running water, I do not worry about having enough food, I have a roof over my head and adequate clothing. I may well have much more than these, but these alone suffice to make me very rich in world terms. Perhaps I am also healthy, happily married, and have children. What happens to the prosperity gospel when I already enjoy prosperity? It metamorphoses into the therapeutic gospel. In its simplest form, this false gospel says that if I feel empty and I come to Jesus, Jesus will fill me. The promise of objective goods (money, wife, husband, children) metamorphoses into the claiming of subjective benefits. I feel depressed, and Jesus promises to lift my spirits. I feel aimless, and Jesus commits himself to giving me purpose in life. I feel empty inside, and Jesus will fill me.7

This chimes perfectly with prosperous twenty-first-century society. While writing this, I had a survey from our gas supplier asking for customer feedback after a repair job. The survey began with the words, “We want to know how we left you feeling.” That is very contemporary. Not “We want to know whether we made your gas heating work, whether we did it promptly and efficiently” and so on (objective criteria), but “We want to know how we left you feeling” (the subjective focus). Did we help you feel good?

The therapeutic gospel is the gospel of self-fulfillment. It makes me, already healthy and wealthy, feel good.

The book of Job addresses in a deep and unsettling way both the pseudo-gospel of prosperity and the pseudo-gospel of feeling good.

What Kind of Savior Do We Need?

The most significant question, however, is the third one: what kind of Savior do we need? Or to put it another way, what kind of man does the universe need? The more I have bashed my head against the text of Job year after year, the more deeply convinced I have become that the book ultimately makes no sense without the obedience of Jesus Christ, his obedience to death on a cross. Job is not everyman; he is not even every believer. There is something desperately extreme about Job. He foreshadows one man whose greatness exceeded even Job’s, whose sufferings took him deeper than Job, and whose perfect obedience to his Father was only anticipated in faint outline by Job. The universe needed one man who would lovingly and perfectly obey his heavenly Father in the entirety of his life and death, by whose obedience the many would be made righteous (Romans 5:19).

We are probably right to view Job as a prophet. James says to suffering Christians, “As an example of suffering and patience, brothers, take the prophets. . . . You have heard of the steadfastness of Job” (James 5:10, 11). If Job is a prophet, then at the heart of his life was “the Spirit of Christ” indicating within him something about “the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories” (1 Peter 1:11). Sometimes for the prophets this meant living out in anticipation something of the sufferings of Christ, as it did for Hosea when he was called to marry the immoral woman Gomer. For Job, perhaps supremely among the prophets, the call of God on his life was to anticipate the perfect obedience of Christ.

Two Preliminary Observations

Two introductory points need to be made before we launch into the book.

Job Is a Very Long Book

Job is forty-two chapters long. We may consider that rather an obvious observation. But the point is this: in his wisdom God has given us a very long book, and he has done so for a reason. It is easy just to read or preach the beginning and the end and to skip rather quickly over the endless arguments in between as if it wouldn't much matter if they weren't there. Too many churches, if or when they tackle Job, do so in a very short series of sermons—perhaps one on the first two chapters, one for the end of the book, and one (sometimes assigned to a junior member of the preaching staff) to cover chapters 3—37. But God has given us forty-two chapters!

Why? Well, maybe because when the suffering question and the “where is God?” question and the “what kind of God . . . ?” question are asked from the wheelchair, they cannot be answered on a postcard. If we ask, “What kind of God allows this kind of world?” God gives us a forty-two-chapter book. Far from saying, “The message of Job can be summarized on a postcard, in a Tweet, or on an SMS, and here it is,” he says, “Come with me on a journey, a journey that will take time. There is no instant answer—take a spoonful of Job, just add boiling water, and you'll know the answer.” Job cannot be distilled. It is a narrative with a very slow pace (after the frenetic beginning) and long delays. Why? Because there is no instant working through grief, no quick fix to pain, no message of Job in a nutshell. God has given us a forty-two-chapter journey with no satisfactory bypass.

Writing about therapy, one writer says, “Many will wonder why therapy can take so long. Why can’t pain, once understood and engaged with, allow for a speedy rewrite of a physical or mental template and thus bring quick relief? It is frustrating.” She goes on to say that it takes two to four years for a language to become personal and a part of oneself, and therapy is like absorbing a new language. “In therapy the patient has to unlearn one way of being and develop another, more sustainable one”; so it’s not surprising that it takes a long time.8 For a similar reason the book of Job is long. We need to read it, read it all, and read it slowly.

Most of Job Is Poetry

About 95 percent of the book of Job is poetry. Chapters 1, 2 and part of chapter 42 are prose. Almost all the rest is poetry. But so what? Well, poetry does not speak to us in the same way as prose. Poems “are always a personal ‘take’ on something, communicating not just from head to head but from heart to heart” (J. I. Packer).9 A poet can often touch us, move us, and unsettle us in ways that prose cannot. Job is a blend of the affective (touching our feelings) and the cognitive (addressing our minds). And poetry is particularly suited to this balanced address to the whole person. But poetry does not lend itself to summing up in tidy propositions, bullet points, neat systems, and well-swept answers. Poetry grapples with our emotions, our wills, and our sensitivities. We cannot just sum up a poem in a bald statement; we need to let a poem get to work on us—we must immerse ourselves in it.

We need therefore to try to sensitize ourselves to the connotations of words, for “speech, particularly poetry, uses words not only for denotation, to refer to concrete, definable objects, but also for connotation, to suggest the penumbra or aura that surrounds the denotation of words and goes beyond them.”10

It is just so with Job. We shall be immersed in the poetry of Job. As we enter it we must not expect tidy systematic points to jot down and then think we've “done” Job, as a one-day tourist might “do” Florence. Job is to be lived in and not just studied. So during this study let us read the book of Job itself, read it out loud, mull it over, absorb it, wonder, be unsettled, and meditate. And may we let God work on us through this great Bible book. We shall find our faith deepened and our emotional palettes enriched.

The Structure of the Book of Job

The book of Job is divided into three unequal parts. In each part a character or characters is or are introduced in prose. First, from 1:1—2:10 Job is introduced (1:1–5), and we then learn what happened to him. Then, from 2:11 right through to 31:40, the focus is on Job and his three friends, who are introduced in prose in 2:11–13. This long section ends with “The words of Job are ended” (31:40). Finally, from 32:1—42:6, we have the answers to Job, beginning with the prose introduction of Elihu (32:1–5). At the very end there is a short but significant conclusion.1

Part I: Job and What Happened to Him

Introducing Job1:1–5

What happened to Job 1:6—2:10

Part II: Job’s friends and their “conversations” with Job

Introducing Job’s three friends2:11–13

Speeches by Job and his friends 3:1—28:28

Job’s 1st lament (3)

1st Cycle of speeches

Eliphaz (4, 5)—Job (6, 7)

Bildad (8)—Job (9, 10)

Zophar (11)—Job (12—14)

2nd Cycle of speeches

Eliphaz (15)—Job (16, 17)

Bildad (18)—Job (19)

Zophar (20)—Job (21)

3rd Cycle of speeches (interrupted)

Eliphaz (22)—Job (23, 24)

Bildad (25)—Job (26)

Job’s summary speech, part 1 (27:1–23)

Job’s summary speech, part 2 (28:1–28)2

Job’s Final Defense 29:1—31:40

Part III: The Answers to Job 32:1—42:6

Introducing Elihu32:1–5

Elihu’s Answers 32:6—37:24

The Lord’s First Answer and Job’s Response 38:1—40:5

The Lord’s Second Answer and Job’s Response 40:6—42:6

Conclusion42:7–17

Because 2:11–13 and 3 focus primarily on Job, I have taken all of chapters 1—3 as the first section of my exposition.

Part 1

JOB AND WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM

Job 1—3

Welcome to a Well-Run World

JOB 1:1–5

IN WHAT SORT OF A WORLD would you like to live? In any society some people come out on top, and others are nearer the bottom; some are great men and women, and others are not. When we give this some thought, we probably say that we would like to live in a society where the great persons are also good persons. In England we have an idiom; when we want to describe a gathering of important people we say, “the great and the good were there,” leaving the connection between greatness and goodness unstated and open.

Much misery is caused when evil people govern and rule. And much joy results when good persons become great and govern with justice and righteousness. That is the sort of world we want, or at least the sort of world we ought to want.

That is the world with which the book of Job begins.

There Was a Man . . .

The story begins with the words, “There was a man . . .” (or, in the Hebrew word order, “A man there was . . . ,” v. 1). This is the story of a human being.1

It is easy not to concentrate when someone is introduced to us. I find that when others kindly tell me their name and something about themselves, all too often what they have said has gone in one ear and out the other. But in the book of Job we need to pay careful attention to the introductions, and supremely to the first one.

This is the first of the three prose introductions that structure the book of Job (see “Structure of the Book of Job” earlier). Although other people are introduced later, the human focus of the book is on the one man Job. It is Job who is introduced first. The scenes that follow focus on what happens to Job. The long speech cycles with his friends are all addressed to Job or spoken by Job. Elihu addresses much of his four speeches to Job. Even the Lord addresses his speeches to Job, and Job replies. It really is “the book of Job.” Job is, as it were, either on the stage or the subject of discussion at every point in the book. So we need to pay careful attention to how Job is introduced to us.

The writer tells us five things about Job.

His Place

First, he lived “in the land of Uz” (v. 1). We do not know exactly where Uz was. Probably it was in the land of Edom, just to the east of the promised land. Lamentations 4:21 says, “Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom, you who dwell in the land of Uz.”2 But “[t]he importance of the name Uz lies not in where such a place is, but in where it is not”; namely, it is not in Israel.3

We do not know whether or not Job was a Hebrew (the term Jew was not used until much later in Old Testament history). But we do know that he lived outside the promised land, and his story does not tie in to any known events in Israel’s history. The story does not begin “in the xth year of so-and-so king of Israel or Judah” or at any identifiable time in Israel’s history. In fact, as we shall see in verse 5, Job seems to be a kind of patriarch who offers sacrifices on behalf of his family in a way that would have been strictly forbidden after the institution of the priesthood. He seems to have been a contemporary (speaking very loosely) of Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob. He lived independent of the giving of the promises to Abraham, before the captivity in and exodus from Egypt, before the giving of the Law at Mount Sinai, before the conquest of the promised land, and outside that land. All this makes his story all the more wonderful. Here was a man who knew almost nothing of God, and yet, as we shall see, he knew God and trusted and worshipped him as God.

His Name

“. . . whose name was Job” (v. 1).

Although various theories have been propounded about the possible meaning of Job’s name, there is no convincing evidence that the name had any particular significance.4 Most likely he is called Job because Job was his name! We are not given his genealogy. His family connections are not significant. He is just a man called Job.

His Godliness

“. . . and that man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil” (v. 1). After the more or less incidental historical facts of his place and his name, the first really significant thing the writer tells us is about Job’s character. This is of lasting importance, and we need to burn this into our consciousness as we read the book.

We are told four things about Job: his integrity, his treatment of others, his religion, and his morality. These four things tell us, not what Job was from time to time or occasionally, but his “constant nature.”5

First, he was “blameless.” This is a better translation than “perfect” (e.g., KJV, RSV). It does not mean “sinless,” for Job himself admits “the iniquities of my youth” (13:26) and “my sin” (14:16). Fundamentally the word “blameless” speaks of genuineness and authenticity. In Joshua 24:14 Joshua exhorts the people of Israel to serve God “in sincerity” (the same Hebrew word)—that is to say, genuinely, not just pretending to serve him while their hearts were somewhere else. In Judges 9:16 Jotham challenges the people of Shechem, “Now therefore, if you acted in good faith and integrity [same word] when you made Abimelech king . . .” By which he means, “if you meant what you said and were not trying to deceive or double-cross anyone . . .” God said to Abraham, “Walk before me, and be blameless” (Genesis 17:1). And Psalm 119:1 proclaims a blessing on those “whose way is blameless.”

The same idea is conveyed by the old expression used by some of the rabbis: “his ‘within’ was like his ‘without.’”6 Or as we might put it, “what you see is what you get.” When you see Job at work, when you hear his words, when you watch his deeds, you see an accurate reflection of what is actually going on in his heart. The word means “personal integrity, not sinless perfection.”7 It is the opposite of hypocrisy, pretending to be one thing on the outside but being something else on the inside. Centuries later Timothy had to deal in Ephesus with the very opposite, men who had “the appearance of godliness, but [denied] its power” (2 Timothy 3:5). Job had the appearance of godliness because there was real godliness in his heart.

This character trait of blamelessness or integrity is pivotal in the book of Job. In 8:20 Bildad will say, “God will not reject a blameless man,” and in 9:20–22 Job will repeatedly claim that he is “blameless.” He does the same in 12:4.8 As the drama develops, we shall be sorely tempted to think that Job is hiding something, that he is not as squeaky clean as he appears, that he is not blameless. We need to remember that he is blameless. The writer has headlined this wonderful characteristic of him.

Second, “that man was . . . upright” (v. 1). This shifts the focus slightly from Job’s own integrity to the way he treats other people. In his human relationships Job is “upright,” straightforward, a man you can do business with because he will not double-cross you, a man who deals straight. We shall see this upright behavior beautifully described in 31:13–23.

Third, his character was marked by integrity and his relationships by right dealing, and his religion was shaped by a humble piety. “That man was . . . one who feared God” (v. 1). We do not know how much he knew about the God he feared. But he had a reverence, a piety, a bowing down before the God who made the world, so that he honored God as God and gave thanks to him (cf. Romans 1:21).

Later in Israel’s history the fear of the Lord was “that affectionate reverence, by which the child of God bends himself humbly and carefully to his Father’s law.”9 For Job, not knowing that law in its fullness, the fear of God consisted of a devout, pious reverence for God and a desire to please him in all he knew of him. Job was, in the very best sense of the word, a genuinely religious man.

As the book develops we shall see that Job believed that God was both sovereign and just, that he had the power to make sure the world ran the way he chose to make it run, and that the way he would choose to make it run would be fair and marked by justice. At least that is what Job thought to begin with. The second of these convictions (God’s justice) is about to be sorely tested.

Finally, Job’s religion issues in godly morality. “. . . and that man was . . . one who . . . turned away from evil” (v. 1). As he walked life’s path, he resolutely stayed on the straight and upright path and turned away from the crooked byways of sin. To turn away from sin is to repent. Job’s character was marked by daily repentance, a habitual turning away from evil in his thoughts, words, and deeds.

Job is thus presented to us, not as a perfect man—only one perfect man has ever walked this earth—but as a genuine believer. In Ezekiel, Job is bracketed with Noah and Daniel as a man of conspicuous righteousness. God says, “Even if these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in [a land], they would deliver but their own lives by their righteousness” (Ezekiel 14:14; see also Ezekiel 14:20). What sort of righteousness did these men have? “By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith” (Hebrews 11:7). Noah was righteous by faith. So was Job. Indeed, no sinner has ever been righteous with God in any other way.

So Job is a real believer, genuine in his integrity, upright in his relationships, pious in his worship, and penitent in his behavior. His life was marked by what we would call repentance and faith, which are still the marks of the believer today, as they have always been.

So the next question is, what will happen to a man like this? The answer appears to be simple and wonderful: he will be a very very great man.

His Greatness

“[And10] there were born to him seven sons and three daughters. He possessed 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, and 500 female donkeys, and very many servants, so that this man was the greatest of all the people of the east” (vv. 2, 3).

We begin with his family. “Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord,” and the man whose “quiver” is full of them is “blessed” (Psalm 127:3–5). Job’s quiver is certainly full—seven sons and three daughters. These are good numbers. Seven symbolizes completeness. Sons were special blessings in those pastoral cultures. When praising Ruth to the skies, the friends of her mother-in-law Naomi described her as being “more to you than seven sons” (Ruth 4:15). When Hannah celebrates the gospel reversals of God, she says, “The barren has borne seven” (1 Samuel 2:5). What more could a man want than seven sons! Well, I guess some daughters as well. And three is a good number. And seven plus three equals ten, which is also a good number. They are all good numbers and speak of an ideal family.11

Consider also his possessions. Job was a farmer. He was not strictly a nomad, for we see later that he was a local dignitary and was prominent in “the gate of the city” where local business was done (see Job 29:7). He seems to have grown crops as well as having herds and flocks.12 He and his family lived in houses rather than tents (as we see, for example, in 1:18, 19, where the oldest brother’s house is destroyed).13 Job had 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels for desert transport, 500 yoke (i.e., pairs) of oxen for plowing the land, and 500 female donkeys, used to carry the produce of the fields and also for milk production and breeding. In addition, he had a large staff, huge numbers on his payroll. To identify with this, we may need to transpose this pastoral description of great wealth into our own contexts, whether urban or rural. It is a picture of great wealth and power. He is described as “the greatest of all the people of the east”(v. 3). “The people of the east” is an expression used of the Arameans (to whom Jacob fled in Genesis 29:1; cf. Genesis 25:20), of Israel’s eastern neighbors, as opposed to the Philistines in the west (Isaiah 11:14), or of those associated with the Midianites in the days of the Judges (Judges 6:3). It is a general term referring to various peoples who lived east of the promised land. Among these peoples in his day Job was the greatest.

Job was, on a regional or local scale, what Adam was meant to be on a global scale—a great, rich, and powerful ruler. It is worth reflecting on this. This is, in a way, the prosperity gospel, and it seems to be what we ought to expect in a well-run world. Surely the world would be a better place if godly people got to the top and ungodly people were squashed down at the bottom, where they could do no harm. How terrible it is when ungodly people rise to the top. How miserable are so many countries because they are ruled by the wicked.

So Job’s greatness is the natural and right consequence of his godliness. It is what we ought to expect. Or is it? There is just one more thing to note in Job’s introduction.

His Anxiety

His sons used to go and hold a feast in the house of each one on his day, and they would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. And when the days of the feast had run their course, Job would send and consecrate them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all. For Job said, “It may be that my children have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts.” Thus Job did continually. (1:4, 5)

The expression “on his day” probably means an annual feast day for each son, perhaps his birthday (v. 4). This is not a picture of incessant partying, but of regular natural family get-togethers.14 Their three sisters are presumably unmarried, for there is no mention of their husbands. So we are to think of Job as a man in the prime of life,15 perhaps in contemporary terms a man in his early forties, with three unmarried daughters perhaps between eighteen and their early twenties. We do not know if the seven sons are married or not. Whatever the details, it is a picture of family harmony and innocent festivity.

And yet, for all the harmony and happiness on the surface, there is a deep anxiety and care in Job’s heart. When each birthday party comes to an end,16 Job summons all his children (or possibly just all his sons) for a religious ceremony of sacrifice. Each time Job “would rise early in the morning” (v. 5). This suggests an eagerness, a zeal, a sense of urgency. He is conscientious about this because he has a sensitive conscience. Before anything else intervenes to distract them, Job summons them for this ceremony. It is important. He impresses on his children the urgency of being present for this.

They gather, and Job the patriarch, the family head, offers a burnt offering for each of them. Later in the history of Israel a burnt offering would be the most expensive form of sacrifice, in which the whole sacrificial animal is consumed. It pictures the hot anger of God burning up the animal in the place of the worshipper, whose sins would have made them liable to be burned up in the presence of God. We can imagine Job doing this for them one at a time: “This one is for you,” and he lights the fire, and the animal is consumed. And the son or daughter watches the holocaust and thinks, “That is what would have happened to me if there had not been a sacrifice.” And then the next one: “This one is for you.” And so on until all the children were covered by sacrifice.

What was so serious that it necessitated such an expensive and urgent sacrifice? Why did Job insist on doing this party by party? Because he said to himself, “It may be that my children have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts” (v. 5). Although the children presumably showed outward piety (they did not curse God with their mouths; their parties were not wild drunken orgies or anything like that), Job is anxious lest in their hearts they did not honor God, lest deep inside lurked the godless wish that there were no God. Job has integrity (or blamelessness); he is not so sure about his children.

Job knows that what matters is not the appearance of godliness but a godly heart. He knows that to curse God in the heart, to wish God dead (as it were), is a terribly serious offense, an offense that carries the eternal death penalty if it is not atoned for. But Job believes in the atoning power of sacrifice, and so he offers burnt offerings. As Proverbs says, “In the fear of the Lord one has strong confidence, and his children will have a refuge” (Proverbs 14:26). And the narrator concludes, “Thus Job did continually” (v. 5). Year after year the godly Job covers any secret sin in his children’s hearts with sacrifice.

Conclusion

The story does not begin with this introduction. No event in the drama of Job has yet happened. Verses 1–3 are descriptions of Job and his character. And verses 4, 5 describe what Job habitually did. The whole introduction sets the scene before our story actually starts.

It sets a happy scene with one shadow. The happiness consists in a good man being a great man, a pious man being a prosperous man. It is a picture of the world being as the world ought to be, a world where the righteous lead. It is a world where the prosperity gospel seems to be true.

The shadow is the sad possibility that people might say that they are pious while in their hearts they are being impious, saying in their hearts that they wish God were dead. At this stage we cannot imagine why recipients of such signal favor from God would ever want to curse God. Why would men and women blessed with such harmony and abundant prosperity do anything other than praise and love God from the bottom of their hearts? And yet the possibility is there. It exercises Job at every family gathering. There is something dark in human hearts, and Job knows it. Job knows that by nature we do not honor God as God or give thanks to him (cf. Romans 1:21). Only sacrifice can cover such sin in the heart.

The Testing of Your Faith

JOB 1:6—2:10

THE GLORY OF GOD is more important than your or my comfort. That is a statement with which all Christians will readily agree in theory. A Puritan prayer begins:

Lord of all being,There is one thing that deserves my greatest care,that calls forth my ardent desires,That is, that I may answer the great end for which I am made—to glorify thee who hast given me being. . . .1

That is a fine and noble prayer. But it has awesome consequences from which we naturally shy away. Of course, we say, there can be nothing more important than the glory of God. What Christian could possibly disagree with that expression of correct piety? And yet before long we find ourselves recoiling from the implications of this statement.

The introduction of the book of Job in 1:1–5 portrays a world with which Disney would by and large be happy. It is a world in which the right people come out on top. We are ready, as it were, to go home happy, knowing it is all working out as it should. But then the action begins, with four alternating scenes in Heaven and on earth. The story is told sparingly and brilliantly, as a cartoonist might, as a few well-chosen lines on the page conjure up whole worlds of drama. In this drama we shall see that it is necessary for it publicly to be seen that there is in God’s world a great man who is great because he is good, and yet who will continue to be a good man when he ceases to be a great man. Ultimately, in the greatest fulfillment of Job’s story, we will need to see a man who does not count equality with God (greatness) as something to be grasped but makes himself nothing for the glory of God (Philippians 2:6–11).

Scene 1: Heaven (Job 1:6–12)

Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and the Satan2 also came among them. The Lord said to the Satan, “From where have you come?” The Satan answered the Lord and said, “From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.” And the Lord said to the Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?” Then the Satan answered the Lord and said, “Does Job fear God for no reason? Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face.” And the Lord said to the Satan, “Behold, all that he has is in your hand. Only against him do not stretch out your hand.” So the Satan went out from the presence of the Lord. (Job 1:6–12)

After the timeless introduction, which describes who Job was and what he habitually did, we read, “there was a day” (v. 6). And what a day! On this particular day something happened in Heaven that would change Job’s life forever.

The day began in what seems to have been a routine way: “the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord” (v. 6). The expression “the sons of God” speaks here of beings whose existence is derivative from God (hence “sons”) but whose rank is superhuman.3 The expression literally translated “sons of God” by the ESV is often translated “angels” (e.g., NIV). We meet them again in Psalm 29 (“Ascribe to the Lord, O sons of God,” Psalm 29:1, ESV footnote) and in Genesis 6:2.4 They form a “divine council” or heavenly cabinet, and we see reference to this in Psalms 82 and 89.

God has taken his place in the divine council;

in the midst of the gods he holds judgment. . . .

I said, “You are gods,

sons of the Most High, all of you.” (Psalm 82:1, 6)

For who in the skies can be compared to the Lord?

Who among the sons of God (ESV footnote) is like the Lord . . .

a God greatly to be feared in the council of the holy ones,

and awesome above all who are around him? (Psalm 89:6, 7)

As members of God’s heavenly cabinet, they come “to present themselves” before him (v. 6). The expression “to present oneself” or “to stand before” means something like “to attend a meeting to which one is summoned” or “to come before a superior ready to do his will.”5 It is the expression used of the wise man in Proverbs: “Do you see a man skillful in his work? He will stand before kings; he will not stand before obscure men” (Proverbs 22:29). That is to say, he will be a senior civil servant or a government minister rather than just a local council employee. The same expression is used with apocalyptic imagery in Zechariah when the four chariots go out to all the world “after presenting themselves before the Lord of all the earth” (Zechariah 6:5). First they present themselves for duty, and then they go out to do what they have been told to do.

This “day” that turns out to be so devastating for Job begins with a normal heavenly cabinet meeting. God summons his ministers rather as an American President might call his senior staff to an early-morning meeting in the Oval Office before sending them out for action.

Only one member of the heavenly cabinet is mentioned individually: “. . . and the Satan also came among them” (v. 6). The expression “the Satan” suggests that here “Satan” is a title, which tells us something about his role. The word “Satan” means something like “adversary, opponent, enemy.” The noun is used to mean an adversary in other contexts as well. When the Lord stops Balaam in his tracks, he does so “as his adversary [satan]” (Numbers 22:22). When the Philistine commanders tell the Philistine king Achish they don’t want David fighting with them against Israel, they say, “He shall not go down with us to battle, lest in the battle he become an adversary [satan] to us” (1 Samuel 29:4). Here in Job 1, it is not yet clear whose adversary the Satan is. It will soon become apparent that he is Job’s adversary.6

We are not told explicitly whether or not the Satan is present as a member of the heavenly council or whether he is in some way a gatecrasher. It is sometimes assumed that because the Satan is evil he cannot be a member of the council and must have barged in uninvited. So the Lord’s question, “From where have you come?” (v. 7) is read in a hostile voice (“What do you think you are doing here?”). But this is unlikely. The word “among” (v. 6) probably suggests that he is a member of the group.7 There need be no hostility or implied rebuke in the question, “From where have you come?” Probably it represents something like a President asking a Cabinet secretary for his report: “Secretary of War, it is time for your report. Tell us where you have been and what you have seen.”

In 1 Kings 22 the prophet Micaiah vividly describes the same heavenly council: “I saw the Lord sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing beside him.” Then as Micaiah describes the conversation in the

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