Job. The Book of Job is so called from the name of the man whose history is the subject of it. In Hebrew the name is Iyyob, of which no certain explanation has been given. As it now exists, the book consists of five parts: (1) The prologue, chaps. i.-ii. This tells us of a man called Job in the land of Uz, who was 'perfect and upright, fearing God, and eschewing evil.' The man's worldly prosperity was in correspondence with his godliness. In the council of heaven the disinterestedness of his religion was called in question by the adversary, who successively receives permission first to deprive him of all his possessions and bereave him of his children, and secondly, to afflict him in his person with a frightful malady. In spite of these afflictions Job holds fast his integrity: 'In all this Job sinned not.' Hearing of his calamities, his three friends among the neighbouring emirs come to condole with him. In the presence of his friends Job loses his self-possession, and breaks out into a passionate complaint, lamenting that he had ever been born (iii.).
(2) The debate between Job and his friends, chaps. iv.-xxxi. Both the tone and the sentiments of Job's complaint seem wrong to his friends, and this feeling on their part initiates a debate between them and Job upon the meaning of his afflictions, which widens out into a general discussion of the causes and purposes of evil and affliction in God's providence. The theory of the friends is that affliction implies previous commission of sins on the part of the sufferer, though in the case of a good man, such as Job, it is not punitive but disciplinary, meant to wean him from evil still clinging to him; they therefore exhort him to repentance, and hold up a bright future before him. Job denies that his sufferings are due to sin, of which he is innocent; God wrongly holds him guilty and afflicts him. And here the dispute with his friends works into the problem raised by Satan, whether Job would renounce God to his face. Under the insinuations of his friends, which, with his consciousness of innocence, left him no escape but deny the rectitude of God, Job is almost driven to openly disown God. Though stopping short of this, he reaches the conclusion, supported not only by his own history but by much which can be seen in the world, that there is not that necessary connection between sin and suffering which the friends insisted on. The discussion between Job and his friends consists of three circles of speeches: (1) chaps. iv.-xiv.; (2) chaps. xv.-xxi.; (3) chaps. xxii.-xxxi. Each of these circles consists of six speeches, one by each of the friends with a reply from Job. In the last circle, however, the third disputant, Zophar, fails to speak. This is a confession of defeat; and Job, left victor in the strife, resumes his parable, protesting before heaven his innocence, and adjuring God to reveal to him the cause of his afflictions.
(3) The speeches of Elihu, chaps. xxxii.-xxxvii. A youthful bystander, named Elihu, who hitherto had been a silent listener to the debate, here intervenes, expressing his dissatisfaction both with Job and his friends. He is shocked by Job's irreverence in charging God with unrighteousness, and indignant that the friends have not brought forward such arguments as to show him to be in the wrong. His abhorrence of Job's sentiments is even greater than that of the three friends, from whose theories of evil he differs mainly in giving greater prominence to the idea that affliction is disciplinary and proceeds from the goodness of God. (4) The words of the Lord out of the storm, chap. xxxviii.-xli. 6. In answer to Job's repeated demand that God would appear and solve the riddle of his sufferings the Lord speaks out of the tempest. He does not refer to Job's problem directly, but in a series of splendid pictures from the material creation and animated nature he makes all his glory to pass before Job. The sufferer is humbled and silent. Such thoughts of God bring him back to the right position of man before the Creator—he repents his former words in dust and ashes. (5) The epilogue, chap. xlii. 7-17. Job having humbled himself before God, and attained to a fuller knowledge of him, is restored to a prosperity double that which he enjoyed before, and dies old and full of days. With the exception of the discourses of Elihu, the connection of which with the poem in its original form is liable to doubt, all these five parts appear original elements of the book, though some of them may contain expansions of a later date.
The traditional view among the Jews was that the Book of Job was strictly historical. Dissentients from this view, however, are referred to in the Talmud, where a rabbi is alluded to who had said: 'A Job existed not, and was not created; he is a parable.' And Maimonides (died 1204) expressed the opinion that 'Job is a parable, meant to exhibit the views of mankind in regard to Providence.' In the Christian church also the prevailing opinion was that the book contained literal history. Luther, however, while admitting a basis of history, was of opinion that the history had been poetically treated. He says in his Table-talk: 'I hold the Book of Job to be real history; but that everything so happened and was so done I do not believe, but think that some ingenious, pious, and learned man composed it as it is.' This is perhaps the prevalent opinion in modern times, though there are many scholars, some of them belonging to the most conservative school of criticism, such as Hengstenberg, who hold that the poem is a pure creation of the author's mind with a didactic purpose and without any historical foundation. That the poem is not strict history is shown by the many ideal elements contained in it—e.g. the heavenly council (chap. i.—ii.; cf. 1 Kings, xxii. 19); the addresses put into the mouth of the Almighty (xxxviii.—xlii.); the symbolical numbers, three and seven, used to describe Job's flocks and his children (i. 2-3); and the profound thought and elaborate imagery in the various speeches, which, so far from being the extemporaneous utterances of three or four persons casually brought together, could only be the leisurely production of a writer of the highest genius. On the other hand, it is not so probable that a work of such extent and written at the comparatively early date to which the book belongs should be purely poetical invention. The reference to Job in Ezekiel (xiv. 14), which can hardly be to our present book, suggests that there was a well-known tradition which represented Job as a man famed for piety in ancient times. This tradition the author of the book laid hold of and no doubt embellished with many details in order to convey through it the lessons in regard to Providence which it was his object to teach.
Students of the book have not found it easy to dispose all its contents under a single conception, and some writers, as Bleek, have contented themselves with stating some lessons which it obviously teaches. The prologue, for instance, shows how even pious men may be visited with severe afflictions, which it is wrong to consider due to special sins on their part, or to regard as signs of God's displeasure. Again, the course of the debate, taken in connection with the divine speeches from the storm-cloud, suggests that it is presumption in man to pass judgment on God's providence, which it is beyond human wisdom to comprehend, man's true wisdom lying in fearing the Lord and reverent submission even amidst intellectual darkness and perplexity. This second truth may be said to be the burden of the words of the Almighty spoken out of the storm-cloud, and many writers have concluded that this truth, taught by God himself, must be just the lesson intended by the book. This view, however, neglects entirely the light given to the reader in the prologue, and also Job's restoration narrated in the epilogue, and indeed the whole debate between Job and his friends. A just theory of the purpose of the book must take account of all its elements. Now, first, the books of Scripture have mostly a practical aim, and are directed to the instruction of Israel as a people in special circumstances. The circumstances disclosed by the book are those of great distress and perplexity in regard to the ways of providence arising out of this distress. Job, though represented as an individual, must be regarded as a type of the suffering righteous, or it may be of Israel. His history, with the lessons it teaches, are the lessons which Israel should comfort itself with in its circumstances of affliction. Now, these lessons partly come out in the debate with the three friends and partly in the history of Job's mind, his perplexity, return to faith, and restoration. When the great calamity of the downfall of the state befell Israel the prophetic view that it was due to the sin of the people was accepted, and was sufficient when the state as a unity was considered. But many pious individuals suffered for sins of which they had not been guilty, and, as in this age the position and worth of the individual began to rise into prominence, this fact occasioned perplexity in regard to the operation of Providence. Further, when the exile was prolonged and a new generation arose, innocent of the sins of a former age, and yet involved in its punishment, this perplexity increased, and questions began to be asked whether the view that sufferings were always due to previous sin was sufficient. This is the question in debate between Job and his friends. They maintained the affirmative, while Job dissented, founding on his own history and on much that he could perceive in the world. When the author of the book allows Job to put his friends to silence, we may infer that it was his purpose to teach that the ancient view left much unexplained, and was not a solution applicable in all cases. And when in the prologue he exhibits the case of an upright man afflicted as a trial of his uprightness; and in the body of the book the man in spite of much doubt and even sinful frailty holding fast his integrity; and then in the epilogue the same man, victorious in his faith and more reverent in his submission to God, crowned with double prosperity, we may infer that it was his design to teach Israel that sufferings may be a trial of the righteous, which, if reverently borne, will lift them up into fuller knowledge of God, and therefore into more assured peace and felicity. This is the lesson which he desires to teach Israel amidst its sorrows and the perplexities occasioned by them.
Objections have been made to the originality of the prologue and epilogue which have little weight. Among modern scholars the prevailing view is that the speeches of Elihu (xxxii.—xxxvii.) are an insertion of a later date. This view rests on such facts as these: that Elihu is not mentioned either in the prologue or epilogue; that Job makes no reply to him, nor is he referred to in the divine answer from the storm-cloud; that he betrays a mannerism which looks like the creation of a different author; that the language of his speeches is less pure Hebrew than the rest of the book; and that his strong repugnance to the irreverence of Job, and his more profound sense of man's sin and the goodness of God, belong to a later age than the original book. The section is of great interest and significance in a religious point of view. There are other passages—e.g. chap. xxviii., which it is difficult to fit into the general scope of the book, and a good many passages are wanting in the original form of the Greek version.
The age of the Book of Job must not be confounded with the age of Job himself. Job is assumed to have lived in the Patriarchal period, the colours of which the author has skilfully thrown over his composition. The author, however, is an Israelite, whose work is a reflection of the religious life and religious thought of Israel. Two general facts point to the age of the exile as the period to which the book belongs: first, the condition of great disorder and misery which forms the background of the poem (ix. 24; xii. 6; xxiv. 12, &c.); and secondly, the discussions on Providence and the relation of suffering to the righteous, which reveal a condition of perplexity in men's minds occasioned by the miseries of the captivity. Other things also point to the same period—e.g. the very highly developed doctrine regarding God, which is paralleled only in Isa. xl.-lxvi., and the later psalms (Ps. cxxxix.); the inwardness of the morality inculcated (e.g. chap. xxxi.); and the general affinity of the book in thought and language with writings of the exile age. Job iii. is probably dependent on Jer. xx. 14 seq. The author of the book is altogether unknown. It was only the prophets who usually put their names to their writings.
The literature is very copious, comprising A. Schultens (1737); Umbreit (1832); Hirzel-Olshausen-Dillmann, Exeget. Handbuch (1839-69); Stickel (1842); Schlottmann (1851); Renan (1859); Delitzsch, Ewald (both trans.); Hitzig (1874); Cox (1880); Davidson (Cambridge Bible for schools, 1884); Bradley (1887); Froude, Short Studies (vol. i.); Budde, Beiträge zur Kritik d. B. Hiob (1876); Grill, Zur Kritik d. B. Hiob (1890).