People of the Bible

Job

Faith in trial · Patriarchal age (uncertain) · Appears in The book of Job

Job is the blameless man who lost his children, his wealth, and his health in a single storm of suffering, and who wrestled with God through his grief without cursing him. His story is the Bible's deepest exploration of why the righteous suffer, and it ends not with an explanation but with an encounter with God himself.

For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth:Job 19:25 (KJV)

A blameless man and a hidden test

Job was a wealthy and blameless man in the land of Uz, upright, fearing God, and turning away from evil, blessed with a large family and great flocks and herds. He was so careful in his devotion that he offered sacrifices even for the possible hidden sins of his grown children. He was, by every outward measure, a man whom life had rewarded for his goodness, the very picture of the prosperous righteous.

But the book lifts a curtain the reader can see and Job never can. In the unseen court of heaven, Satan appeared before God, and when God pointed to Job as a man of perfect integrity, Satan sneered that Job only served God for the blessings he received. Take those away, he charged, and Job would curse God to his face. God permitted the test, allowing Satan to strike everything Job had, though not the man himself. So the disasters that were about to fall on Job were not punishment for sin, but part of a contest over whether a human being would love God for God's own sake.

The day everything was lost

In a single terrible day the blows fell one after another. Messengers arrived in relentless succession: raiders had carried off the oxen and donkeys and killed the servants; fire had consumed the sheep and the shepherds; the Chaldeans had taken the camels; and finally, a great wind had collapsed the house where all ten of his children were feasting, and they were dead. It was total loss, sudden and complete, the ruin of a lifetime in an afternoon.

Job's response is one of the great moments of faith in all Scripture. He arose, tore his robe, shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground and worshiped, and said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither; the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD. When a second blow struck and he was covered with painful boils from head to foot, and his wife told him to curse God and die, he answered, Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil. In all this Job did not sin with his lips.

The long argument in the dark

Three friends came to comfort Job, and at first they did the wisest thing they ever did, sitting with him in silence seven days and seven nights, for they saw that his grief was very great. But then the arguments began. Convinced that suffering must be punishment for sin, the friends pressed Job to confess whatever secret wickedness had brought this on him. Job knew he was not being punished for hidden sin, and he defended his integrity while pouring out his anguish, cursing the day of his birth, longing to die, and crying out to understand why God had become his enemy.

Through the long, honest, painful poetry of the debate, Job veers between despair and flashes of soaring hope. He longs for someone to stand between himself and God, a daysman to lay his hand on them both. And in his darkest hour he rises to one of the highest confessions in the Old Testament: For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth, and though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God. He does not understand his suffering, but he will not let go of God.

The answer from the whirlwind

At last God answered Job, but not as Job expected. The LORD spoke out of the whirlwind, and he gave no explanation of the suffering, no account of the wager in heaven. Instead he asked Job question after question about the vast wonders of creation: Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Who shut up the sea with doors? Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades? Chapter after chapter unveiled the power, wisdom, and care of God in a universe far beyond human understanding.

Job was silenced, not crushed but humbled and satisfied. He had heard of God with the hearing of the ear, but now his eye had seen him, and he repented in dust and ashes, no longer demanding answers but resting in the God he had met. Then God rebuked the three friends for not speaking rightly of him as Job had, and had Job pray for them. And the LORD restored Job's fortunes, giving him twice as much as before, ten more children, and long life, so that he died old and full of days.

The patience of Job and the end of the Lord

The New Testament looks back on Job and draws out the meaning of his long ordeal. Ye have heard of the patience of Job, writes the apostle James, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy. Job's patience was not a calm untouched by pain, but a faith that endured through anguish and questioning and refused, in the end, to abandon God, and the end that God brought was full of compassion.

That is the shape of the whole book. It does not promise that the righteous will be spared suffering, for Job was blameless and suffered terribly. But it promises that God is present, that he is not indifferent, and that his purposes toward those who endure are merciful, even when they are hidden from sight. Job's story assures every sufferer that the God who allowed him to be tested was the same God of tender mercy who would one day enter creation's brokenness himself to bear its griefs.

His significance and where he points to Christ

Job is the Bible's supreme example of faith holding on in the dark. He does not suffer in serene calm; he grieves loudly, questions fiercely, and longs to argue his case with God, yet he never lets go, never curses God as he is urged to, and never pretends his pain away. His book refuses the easy answer that suffering is always punishment, and it silences the demand that God explain himself, teaching that the sufferer can trust a God whose wisdom is beyond us. It gives every grieving believer permission to be honest with God and assurance that God can be met even in the storm.

Job longed for a mediator to stand between him and God and lay his hand on them both, and cried that he knew his Redeemer lived and would stand at last upon the earth. That longing is answered in Jesus, the one mediator between God and man, the Redeemer who does live and who was seen in the flesh. And where Job was the righteous sufferer whom God at last vindicated and restored, Jesus is the truly innocent one who suffered, not for his own testing, but to bear the guilt of others, and was raised in glory. In him the cry of Job is answered, for the Redeemer he only glimpsed has come and lives forevermore.

A note on the sources: everything above is drawn from the biblical text itself. Where a detail comes from later tradition rather than Scripture, it is named as tradition. Dates for the earliest figures are traditional and approximate, and Scripture does not always give them. The aim is to tell each life honestly, and to let it do what the whole Bible does, point to Jesus Christ the Lord.

Related: Ruth · David · All the people of the Bible