I'm not at all sure how this keeps happening, but here we are with another whopping 'catch-up' post.
I'm actually very surprised by Job. I really thought it was just a tiny little book, and now that I actually look at it, it's immense. I'm pretty excited to work my way through it, since it's obviously a much more in-depth piece of work than popular summaries would lead/have led me to believe.
It's still a very weird book, though. Satan showing up at God's angelic council meeting, God bragging about one of his best buds and then granting Satan permission to destroy his life (without actually destroying his life, mind you)... It's a bit of a trip, to say the least.
However, the actual life-destroying elements of the tale seem to (so far, at least) take up a relatively small portion of the text itself. I'm now 16 chapters in, and God and Satan haven't been directly taking part in the action since the end of chapter 2. This seems to suggest that maybe there's more going on here than just a simple tale of a guy being roughed up as part of a supernatural chess game.
The thing is, as far as I can recall, the only times I've ever heard Job actually brought up in conversation have actually been in discussions/disputes/debates with people who are using it as what they consider to be an ultimate weapon in the "is God really good?" argument. If that's your main purpose, then of course the bits that you're going to focus on are the times when God gives Satan free reign over Job's life (and the life of his family members).
However, as the text moves along, there are some interesting things that happen. First off, Job delivers a pretty impressive curse on the day he was born - epic stuff, right there. Then there are Job's three friends, who come and sit with him in the rubble of his formerly sweet, sweet life.
As is so often the case, it seems The Simpsons actually got this one more or less right:
Here we have Ned Flanders, just after a hurricane has destroyed his house, and a "storm-addled mob" has wrecked and looted his small business (a left-handed-goods store called The Leftorium), playing the part of Job, and Reverend Timothy Lovejoy doing a pretty bang-up job of representing what Job's three decidedly-less-supporting-than-anyone-might-expect friends must have seemed like to the man himself.
I should say before going on than any discussion about what happens to Job, along with any and all attempts to frame it in a broader, big-picture context, happen in a purely theoretical, distanced realm. I am in no way suggesting that any of this be put as bluntly to a neighbour/friend of yours who ends up homeless and unemployed as a result of a natural disaster.
Job's first friend speaks up to "remind" him that the innocent do not actually suffer. Now, whether or not this is observably true is a whole other story. The point is that it's a stark contrast to what would normally be expected as a comforting-friend thing to say.
Also, if we're to believe traditional Christian theology, nobody's innocent. Therefore what Eliphaz says is technically correct. And technically correct is, arguably, the best kind of correct.
His other two friends offer similar (if differing in detail) piece of counsel, so that the three of them can be roughly paraphrased as follows:
1) God wouldn't do this to someone who was innocent
2) If you're good, and stay good, God will reward you and fix your life
3) Shut up and stop your whining
How, there are definitely times when all three of these are genuinely good advice (from an objective and distanced standpoint, at least), but they are the opposite of easy to hear, which is perhaps why Job spends so much time/energy trying not to hear and understand what's going on.
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