Imperishable Inheritance

No, not “job” as in my work­place although I did just get hired for my first full time “job” as a gov­ern­ment con­trac­tor by Tri­une Soft­ware. I am speak­ing of the Old Tes­ta­ment theod­icy. I just read through it for the first time in my read the Bible in 90 days program.

Job is a book that is read by all philoso­phers whether sec­u­lar or Christian/Jew. It is a fas­ci­nat­ing look into the com­pat­i­bil­ity of a benev­o­lent (good) and omnipo­tent (all pow­er­ful) God with the pres­ence of evil. In the open­ing chap­ters of Job we see a pact between Satan and God for God to allow evil to over­come Job first by tak­ing his fam­ily and pos­ses­sions and then strik­ing Job with lep­rosy. The power of God over Satan is displayed.

There are a few things that struck me about this work. First, although God’s covenan­tal name (“Yah­weh”) appears in the open­ing of the book there is no men­tion of the Abra­hamic or Mosaic covenants. This is par­tic­u­larly inter­est­ing, because the wis­dom book right after it: The Psalms are lit­tered with ref­er­ences to these covenants and God’s faith­ful­ness to Israel through these covenants (cf. Psa 105). It has been pro­posed that this is the old­est book of the Bible, and that cer­tainly would make more sense to the lack of men­tion­ing of these issues. I read that it has been thought to have been writ­ten dur­ing the time of Jacob up until the time of Moses, but we know it was writ­ten before Ezekiel for he makes men­tion of it (Eze 14:14, 20). From Job 1:1 we see that Job is in the land of Uz which is the brother of Abra­ham (Gen 22:21) which I believe gives it an early authorship.

Despite los­ing all that he has and his wife’s exhor­ta­tion to “curse God and die” (Job 2:9) Job responds by say­ing, “You speak as one of the fool­ish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adver­sity?” (Job 2:10). Job’s three “friends” come along and lament with him for seven days in silence (Job 2:13). The bulk of Job is a con­ver­sa­tion between these “friends” and Job. After Job’s curs­ing of God (Job 3) they pro­claim that it was because of Job’s iniq­uity that God has brought this all upon him, but Job holds fast to his integrity (Job 4–32).

Elihu has an inter­est­ing dia­logue with Job uphold­ing the sov­er­eignty of God (Job 33–37), but Elihu is not men­tioned as being there from the begin­ning nor does God con­demn Elihu as he does the other three (Job 42:7). God does indeed, after rebuk­ing Job, give him more than he had to begin with (Job 42:10–17).

After read­ing through this a cou­ple of things may be adduced.

1. Evil, as we see it, does not come solely on the basis of our iniq­uity. It may come sim­ply as a trial that is meant to uphold our trust in God and our view of Him.
2. Noth­ing that hap­pens to man whether good or evil hap­pens with­out God’s allow­ing it to happen.
3. God’s rela­tion­ship to evil and good is pre­sented as asym­met­ri­cal. God gives and orches­trates good, but God does not cause the evil to occur.
4. Make friends with peo­ple who will help you to remain faith­ful to God instead of sim­ply point­ing out iniq­uity in ones life.

I think the book of Job, and its result­ing theod­icy, ulti­mately upholds the Greater-Good Theod­icy.