Job

Job’s book asks the Bible’s hardest question at book length: why do the righteous suffer? A blameless man in the land of Uz loses wealth, children, and health in a single narrative avalanche – while the reader, unlike Job, watches the heavenly courtroom where the accuser has alleged that all piety is paid piety: “Does Job fear God for no reason?” (Job 1:9). Thirty-seven chapters of anguished argument later, God answers Job out of the whirlwind with questions rather than explanations, and Job is satisfied by presence where he was denied a syllabus: “now my eye sees you” (Job 42:5).

The New Testament’s one direct mention distills the book into a pastoral sentence: “You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful” (James 5:11). James chooses his words against the grain of the book’s reputation – not Job’s patience (he was magnificently impatient) but his steadfastness: he argued, lamented, demanded audience, and never let go of God. And the verdict James draws from the whirlwind and the restoration is the one sufferers most need certified: the purpose of the Lord, however long hidden, is compassion.

Paul quotes the book too (“He catches the wise in their craftiness,” 1 Corinthians 3:19), and Job’s cry “I know that my Redeemer lives” (Job 19:25) has been read at Christian gravesides for two millennia – an Old Testament sufferer’s reach toward this study’s Easter.

In the New Testament

• The steadfastness of Job and the Lord’s purpose (James 5:11)
• Quoted by Paul (1 Corinthians 3:19; Job 5:13)