May I summarize my own exgetical work on the Book of Job. It seems
to me, this book was a product during an exilic period when the pious
Jews suffered tremendously at the hands of a foreign culture which could
not understand the reasons their Hebrew Lord had given them to
suffering. They had obeyed the law and tried to lead a good and
religious life, yet terrible things happened. They tried the biblical
prophetic message, but this answer is not enough to explain why they
suffered, they have, at the end, replaced the answer with material
blessings. That at as a good Jew, money can buy everything, so Job was
blessed with new women, children. material blessings. The meaning of
suffering in Job is meaningless. If it is about righteousness, it is a
joke. It was precisely his righteousness that brought on the calamity.
If it is about a honour that God deserves in all his action, that God
has a free will, it too is absurd. God and his gods act irresponsibly
and so people die like flies to them, without a regard at all. Humans
are a joke to the divine, they squash them at will. Think of it, God
thunders and deafens Job at the end, reduces him to prostrate in the
ashes.
So, what is the meaning of suffering in the book Job? If
you isolate the God of Job, he is not at all a loving benign God of
Jesus. Job has no need to repent, for he is blameless, upright, fears
God and does no evil. He is not a sinner. That is precisely why he was
struck. The meaning of suffering of Job mocks us, and holds us spell
bound. That bad things happen to good people, that Gods' willing so humans
should suffer, that gods refuse to answer why, and when asked, they
provoke us and reduce us to nothing, to the lowliest thing on the scale.
In summary, the Book of Job provides no meaningful answer, that
it beckons us to step out of the classical answers to sufferings by
Jews or Christians alike
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