What were God's intentions in punishing Job? Well, first of all, God wasn't inflicting the punishment...Satan was. However, if you'll notice, Job was sitting pretty until God mentioned him to Satan...and then the problems for Job began.
Okay, God didn't punish Job, but He allowed Satan to.
Satan isn't omniscient, so he may not have even been aware of Job...but since God brought up Job as an example of a righteous man, He opened Job up for the events that unfolded.
Sounds like God is pretty mean, huh?
...but, He isn't. God is omniscient, and He knew the end result: Job's restoration. So, what does the book of Job tell us, then? Why include it in the Bible at all?
42 comments
Why include it in the Bible at all ordered Satan to do all those nasty things to Job.
Paying a hitman to kill someone for you doesn't make you not guilty of murder.
-pb
Okay, God didn't punish Job, but He allowed Satan to. If there's a guy dying on the street and I don't give him life-saving CPR... isn't it at least in part my fault he's dead?Because having your wife and children killed doesn't matter because he got new ones at the end. You have hit upon it, sir;).
The Bible actually refers to "Satan" as "ha-satan". Its thought that the satan of the story is not "The Devil", but what my pastor described as "God's prosecuting attorney" -- basically, the angel that's responsible for arguing against humanity.
The story of Job is one of the vilest, cruelest pieces of filth in the Bible.
Because having your wife and children killed doesn't matter because he got new ones at the end.
Firthy --
Grow up, dear. The licence God gave to Satan to screw this guy is enough proof that he was putting him on test. Don´t put the blame on him, as usual. Second, this story, a narration which was not meant to be taken literarilly, is the epythome of the theory some Jewish of the time kept that everytime a person was suffering didn´t mean they were punished by God. That good people can suffer misadventures too. That is the meaning, which is so deep to you, that, of course, you can´t understand.
Well Theophilus, its good to see you looked deeper into what was being said in the book of job. I believe these parts of the bible were written by people who value knowledge and wisdom, seeing as you have neither you couldn't possibly see that it clearly says "the lord giveth and the lord taketh away. IE shit happens and theres nothing you can do about it!"
If two people made a bet with each other to see if one of them could get you to commit suicide, and proceeded to ruin your life, steal your wife/girlfriend, get you fired, take all your money, give you a deadly disease, turn your friends against you and have you thrown in jail, would you be satisfied finding out later that the whole thing was a joke to test your will to live? How is Job any different?
So God isn't mean because he knew that he was going to restore Job in the end?wife and children who God allowed Satan to kill horribly? Kind of sucked for them, didn't it?
(Oh, and by the way, there is a monstrous amount of evidence that the story of Job was lifted whole-cloth by Moses (or whoever) from a nearly identical and hundreds-of-years-older myth from Midian.)
Ok, I thought the point of that whole ordeal was that God wanted to test Job's faith, and Satan though he could get Job to curse God. So if God is omniscient, he should have known that Job wasn't going to crack no matter what. But he still let Satan destroy his life anyway?
It shows that your god is a petty and egotistical prick who would happily kill his best followers family and property just for an ego-trip. Playing with lives like they were toys, to just to 'one-up' someone he knew he was going to beat anyway. That's what the bible tells me about in that story. It's like 'Trading Places' with Eddie Murphy when Randolf and Mortimer destroy a man's life for a one dollar bet. The powerful abusing their power.
Old Viking MarylandBear: {/b] An allegorical attempt? Why is it all the gruesome portions of the Bible are to be taken allagorically or metaphorically or poetically, and all the Bambi crap is to be taken literally?
Yeah! I've been hearing a lot of that lately. In my church, it was all supposed to be true, except for obvious parables, and many of them are well within the bounds of reason, like the Prodigals son.
Now the last few years I'm hearing, Job story was allegory, Garden of Eden isn't supposed to be taken literally, and the Noah story too was more showing a farmer protecting livestock or some damn thing.
Suddenly all of the stuff I always called bullshit on are being watered down and teh story behind it changed. Yet even in the context that these were not supposed to be taken literally, god still comes off as an egotistical prick who is unfair and wallows in rage and death.
The story of Job is disgusting. Probably the most revolting thing in the Bible, though certainly some other passages (Lot's daughters and multiple God-directed genocides, just for instance) are right up there as well.
Job didn't do anything wrong, so to call it punishment isn't good.
The way I understand the tale to go, Satan taunted God with the idea that without all the blessings on him, Job would curse God rather than revere him. And instead of answering with something pious and profound such as, "say as you will, but I KNOW Jobs' heart, and so do you. So we both know your claim to be false", God basically says, "oh yeah?! I'll show YOU!" And here I was thinking that Xians believed that giving in to the temptations of Satan was not only one of the worst (if not the worst) of sins imaginable, but showed a weak and contemptible spirit/character. But I guess it's alright for God to do it, because "he's omniscient"? He can go ahead and give in to the temptations of his adversary, and allow him to test the will of a good and decent man? "...And job awoke to the visage of an angel so terrifying. With pale skin, and red swirls painted on his cheeks beneath a shock of raven black hair. And this angel said unto him, 'Hello, Job... I wanna play a game'..."
The story of Job has always frustrated and confused me, just like the story of Abraham and Isaac, where Abraham almost sacrificed his son. It just didn't seem right to me that God would make each of them go through all that just to test their faith. And yes, I wondered about Job's first wife and children, too. How does anyone think that they could be so easily replaced just like that?
@MarylandBear and Professor M: I have Mitchell's version, which is translated from the Hebrew verse. "Ha-satan" is translated as the "Accusing Angel" and then is referred to as the "Accuser" for the rest of the story. My professor said that he basically acts as God's chief prosecutor. He also said that God basically sets up a bet with the accuser to ruin Job's life in order to test his faith, which only makes God look worse.
@Illuvatarwen:
Except that the story of Job, in addition to basically being bully porn as well as a morally bankrupt tale that shows how disgustingly twisted and unfair Yahweh is, absolutely SUCKS as a metaphor.
Let’s take a natural disaster like an earthquake, for instance. It’s a horrible situation that’s even more distressing because there’s nobody to blame. Earthquakes aren’t man-made, so people can’t blame each other (unless they’re fundies). And it makes no sense to blame the earthquake either, because earthquakes aren't sentient or sapient and have no will of their own. They just exist. So, in that scenario, the message, “Sorry, but bad stuff just happens and it’s nobody’s fault and we just have to deal with it the best we can,” is relevant because an earthquake doesn’t choose to hurt people. It has no reasons to hurt people because it’s not capable of reason.
That’s not the case with the Book of Job. In this story, God *is* sentient and sapient. Thus, Job had every reason to blame God. And furthermore, God’s pathetic excuse for an explanation to Job at the end of the story is completely ruined by the fact that an explanation was already given at the beginning! Why did God tell Ha-satan to ruin Job’s life? Because he wanted to prove Ha-satan wrong. An explanation *is* given, which totally ruins the moral of “Stuff just happens.” The next time that something bad happens to you? Oh, it’s because God’s making a bet with Ha-satan. It’s because God’s testing you. Hmm, where have we heard that before?
To excuse this piece of tripe by claiming that it’s not meant to be taken literally is like saying that a story about an abusive boyfriend telling his chauffeur to torment his girlfriend for kicks is okay because it’s just a metaphor about how life isn’t fair.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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