The Life
Job’s story is the strangest book in the Old Testament. He was a wealthy man who lived around 1900 B.C. in the land of Uz, somewhere in Arabia. He was a fifth-generation descendant of Abraham. He was righteous, generous, prayerful, and abundantly blessed by God. He had seven sons, three daughters, seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred donkeys, and a very great household. The Bible calls him “the greatest of all the men of the East.” Then in a single day he lost all of it. Marauders took the oxen and the donkeys. Fire from heaven burned up the sheep. Other marauders took the camels. A great wind collapsed the house where his ten children were feasting and killed all of them. Then he himself was struck with painful boils from head to foot and sat in the ashes outside the city scraping himself with broken pottery. His own wife told him to curse God and die. Three friends came to comfort him and ended up tormenting him with the suggestion that he must have done something secretly evil to deserve all this. Through all of it Job refused to curse God. He demanded an answer from God and got one — but not the one he expected. The Lord himself answered Job out of a whirlwind. Then He restored everything double. Job lived another 140 years. He has been the patron of every human being who has ever suffered without explanation since.
The book of Job opens with a careful description of him before anything bad happened. He lived in the land of Uz, somewhere in Arabia. He was perfect and upright. He feared God. He turned away from every form of evil. He had seven sons and three daughters. His household was enormous: seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred donkeys, and so many servants that he was called the greatest of all the men of the East. His sons used to take turns hosting feasts in their houses, and they would invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. After each cycle of feasts, Job would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings for each of his children, in case they had sinned and cursed God in their hearts. He did this regularly. The Bible says: thus did Job continually. He was not one of those wealthy men who had become indifferent to his religious obligations. The richer he became, the more careful he was to pray for his children. He was generous to the poor, just in his dealings, prayerful in his household, and steadfast in his fear of God. Then the curtain rose on a scene in heaven that he could not see, and the meaning of his entire life suddenly became more complicated than he had any way of knowing.
Job did not know what was happening behind the scenes of his own life. The book opens the curtain for the reader. Satan came among the sons of God to present himself before the Lord. The Lord asked him: where have you been? Satan answered: from going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it. The Lord said: have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that fears God and turns away from evil? Satan answered: does Job fear God for nothing? You have made a hedge around him and his house and everything he has. You have blessed the work of his hands. His substance has increased in the land. But put forth Your hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will curse You to Your face. The Lord said: behold, all that he has is in your power; only do not lay a hand on him. So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord. The point that the prologue makes is theologically devastating. Job’s suffering is not punishment for hidden sin. It is not even the consequence of some general moral pattern. It is permitted by God to demonstrate to Satan, and to the world, and ultimately to Job himself, that there is a kind of love for God that does not depend on receiving anything in return. Most of the book of Job is the working out of that proposition.
On a single day everything was taken from him. The reports came one after another, each one before the previous messenger had finished. The first messenger said: the oxen were plowing and the donkeys were feeding beside them, and the Sabeans came and took them and killed the servants with the sword, and only I have escaped to tell you. While he was still speaking, another came and said: the fire of God fell from heaven and burned up the sheep and the servants and consumed them, and only I have escaped to tell you. While he was still speaking, another came and said: the Chaldeans formed three bands and fell upon the camels and took them away and killed the servants with the sword, and only I have escaped to tell you. While he was still speaking, another came and said: your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in the eldest brother’s house, and behold, a great wind came across the wilderness and struck the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young people, and they are dead, and only I have escaped to tell you. Job rose. He tore his robe. He shaved his head. He fell to the ground and worshipped. He 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.” In all this Job did not sin, nor charge God foolishly. The next test was about to come.
Job’s three friends Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar argued with him for chapters and chapters. Their argument was simple and entirely wrong. They said: God is just, therefore suffering must come from sin, therefore Job must have sinned. Job kept refusing this. He maintained his integrity. He defended the honor of God while protesting that he himself had not deserved what had happened to him. He demanded a hearing. He demanded that God Himself answer him. Then a young man named Elihu spoke for several chapters. Then finally, after thirty-seven chapters of human argument, the Lord himself answered Job out of a whirlwind. He did not explain why Job had suffered. He did not justify the loss of the children, the cattle, the health. He simply revealed His own incomparable wisdom and majesty. “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined the measurements of it? Who stretched the line upon it? Who shut up the sea with doors? Have you commanded the morning since your days began? Have the gates of death been opened to you? Where is the way light dwells? Have you entered the storehouses of the snow? Have you given the horse strength? Will you condemn me, that you may be justified?” On and on the questions came. Job had no answers. He could not even speak. After the whirlwind subsided, he said: “I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth Thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” The encounter with God was itself the answer.
The Orthodox Church reads the entire book of Job during Holy Week. The Old Testament readings on Holy Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday include extended passages from Job. The reason is theologically precise. Job is the supreme Old Testament prefiguration of the Lord Jesus Christ in His own Passion. Both are righteous men. Both suffer through no fault of their own. Both are afflicted in body and in soul. Both are surrounded by friends who do not understand. Both are abandoned. Both ultimately receive vindication from the Father. The whole structure of Holy Week is illuminated by the parallel. Christ is the new Job, the truly innocent one, the one who suffers not for any sin of His own but for the sins of the entire human race. The book of Job, read alongside the Passion narratives, opens the deeper meaning of what Christ accomplished. He did not just suffer as Job suffered. He suffered as Job suffered and infinitely more, because His suffering was not just patient endurance but redemptive offering. He absorbed into His own innocent body the entire weight of human suffering across all generations, transforming it from the inside through His union with the divine Word. Job is the door through which the Old Testament prepares us to understand the Cross. The Cross is the door through which the suffering of every faithful soul finds its meaning.
On the worst day of his life, after the messengers had told him that everything he had was gone and all ten of his children were dead, Job said this. The LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD. It is one of the most quoted verses in the entire Bible. It is read at Orthodox funerals. It is whispered by people who have just received the worst possible news. It is sung in monastic chapels at the moment when a brother or sister has died. The Bible says: “In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.” That is the heart of it. He did not pretend not to be in pain. He tore his robe and shaved his head and fell to the ground. He genuinely mourned. But he did not curse God. He did not stop blessing the Lord’s name. In the very depths of comprehensive loss, he kept blessing. The whole subsequent tradition of the patient saints — from the martyrs to the desert fathers to Saint Nektarios in his charity hospital ward — stands on the foundation that Job’s response established. Suffering is real; loss is real; the pain does not have to be denied. But the blessing of the Lord’s name does not have to stop just because everything else has.
After all the speeches were over, after the friends had been silenced, after the Voice had spoken from the whirlwind, Job said one thing. I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You. He had heard about God for his entire long life. He had been faithful, prayerful, righteous. He had even, before the catastrophe, offered burnt offerings continually for his children. But all of that had been hearing about God. The catastrophe and the encounter that followed it had transformed his hearing into seeing. Whatever he had thought he understood about God before, he now actually saw. The vision did not include an explanation of why his children had died, why his cattle had been taken, why his health had been broken. The vision was simpler and infinitely deeper. The Lord Himself, alive, present, more real than anything else in existence. That sight was the answer. Whatever else Job had wanted, whatever questions he had asked, whatever protests he had filed, the encounter with the Lord answered everything. Wherefore I abhor myself, he said, and repent in dust and ashes. The encounter with God transformed the meaning of his suffering even though it did not explain it. The pattern is universal in the spiritual life. We can hear about God for years through teaching, reading, hymnography, sermons, conversations. None of that is the same as the encounter itself. When the encounter finally comes — often through suffering, often through the breaking of every other framework that we had thought sustained us — it answers everything that the previous hearing could never have answered.
After the encounter with the Voice in the whirlwind, the Lord turned to Job’s three friends and rebuked them. He told them: my anger is kindled against you, for you have not spoken of Me what is right, as my servant Job has. He commanded them to bring offerings to Job and to ask Job to pray for them, and Job would do it. They went and did so, and the Lord accepted Job’s prayer. Then the Lord turned the captivity of Job. He gave Job twice as much as he had before. He gave him fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand donkeys. He gave him seven new sons and three new daughters; the daughters were the most beautiful in all the land. Job lived 140 years after his trials, completing his earthly life at 248 years. He saw his sons and his sons’ sons, even four generations. He died, an old man, full of days. The Septuagint text of Job 42:17 adds one extraordinary line: “And it is written that he will rise again with those whom the Lord raises up.” That single sentence is read on Great and Holy Friday during Vespers, when the composite Gospel speaks of the tombs being opened at the moment of the Lord’s death and the bodies of the saints being raised. Job’s patient suffering has been gathered up into the Lord’s own Passion. His vindication has been gathered up into the Lord’s Resurrection. He is alive in the Kingdom, awaiting the resurrection of the body in which he has hoped from the beginning.
Job matters to every Orthodox Christian for one supreme reason: his story is the biblical answer to the deepest human question. Why do good people suffer? Why does the Lord allow the righteous to be afflicted while the wicked sometimes prosper? Why are the children taken before the old? Why is the cancer diagnosed in the kindest of mothers? Why is the marriage destroyed in the family that prayed faithfully? Why is the war that comes? The book of Job does not give a discursive answer to any of these questions. It gives something deeper. It gives the encounter with the God who Himself suffered the Cross. It gives the patient pattern of the man who refused to curse his Lord even when his children were dead. It gives the eschatological hope of the resurrection that gathers up every patient suffering into the eternal vindication. The Orthodox Church has been reading the book of Job during Holy Week for two thousand years because the only adequate answer to the suffering of the righteous is the suffering of Christ. Job is the door through which the Old Testament leads us to the Cross. The Cross is the door through which the suffering of every faithful soul finds its meaning. He is the friend of every Christian who has ever wondered whether the Lord still hears, still cares, still remembers. The Lord did remember Job. He gave him double. He raised him in the resurrection. He is the same Lord, and He still works the same way.