hinduwoman

Job was a man of Ur. So not an original Jewish story?

bacht

Uz:

According to modern investigators, who regard the names given in Genesis as geographical terms, the territory of Uz embraced the regions represented by the names of the persons mentioned above; and in like manner the brief notices in Jeremiah and Lamentations agree with those concerning the native country of Job's friends, as well as with other data concerning the land in the first chapter of Job. According to verses 15 and 17 of that chapter, the country was first invaded by the Sabeans from the south, and later by the Chaldeans from the north, which implies that the district lay on the northern edge of the great Arabian desert. Eliphaz, one of the friends of Job, was from Teman, a town of southern Edom; his companion, Bildad, came from Shuah (Gen. xxv. 2), which, according to the cuneiform inscriptions, lay south of Karkemesh (Carchemish); and Elihu was a native of Buz (comp. Jer. xxv. 23; Gen. xxii. 21). According to the cuneiform inscriptions, Shalmaneser II. received tribute from one Sasi, a son of the land of Uzza, from 859 to 831 B.C.; and the Midrash also identifies the name of Uz with the country, making Job a contemporary of Abraham (Yalḳ. Shim'oni, cii. 2; Gen. R. lvii. 3).


http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com

Joan of Bark

But Job does not get back his original wife and children, merely new ones. So Job is rewarded (assuming that he regards his new family as sufficient compensation for the loss of the originals), but his original family is punished (if there is no afterlife).

BH

I read in a book that the author of the Book of Job actually mocks the god portrayed therein.

Basically, the devil tricks god into making himself look stupid by letting him do whatever he wants to Job, except killing him, all in the name of god proving Job will stay loyal and not forsake him

In the end the devil basically makes a fool out of god, because when Job questions why it all happened knowing he is innocent of sin, god has no answer or his answer is a non-answer! Jobs comments about the glory of god an so forth after god appears in the whirlwind are actually sleuth mockery of god and his non-answer answer. In the end a realizing he is humbled god gives Job a bunch of wealth and a new family as a consolation for allowing the devil to make an idiot of himself and hurting Job as the tool to get it done. Gist of the story is your deity is an idiot but you are stuck with him.

Anat

Whether the action of the satan (who isn't the same as the Christian devil) is a trickery of god or not is a matter of interpretation. Doesn't this depend on what god's goal is? If god doesn't care about the suffering of individuals in what way is he being tricked? In Job god makes the point that Job spoke truthfully and correctly, as opposed to his friends. So the message is that suffering does not necessarily imply the person undergoing the suffering sinned in the past. What is god's answer to the question of suffering? It comes down to 'because I felt like it'.

bacht

Yes, he loses his children but I think his wife survived:

So Satan went forth from the presence of the LORD, and afflicted Job with loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head.
And he took a potsherd with which to scrape himself, and sat among the ashes.
Then his wife said to him, "Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God, and die."
But he said to her, "You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?"
In all this Job did not sin with his lips.

2.7-9

and after the ordeal:

And the LORD restored the fortunes of Job, when he had prayed for his friends; and the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before.
Then came to him all his brothers and sisters and all who had known him before, and ate bread with him in his house; and they showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the LORD had brought upon him; and each of them gave him a piece of money and a ring of gold.
And the LORD blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning; and he had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she-asses.
He had also seven sons and three daughters.
And he called the name of the first Jemi'mah; and the name of the second Kezi'ah; and the name of the third Ker'en-hap'puch.
And in all the land there were no women so fair as Job's daughters; and their father gave them inheritance among their brothers.
And after this Job lived a hundred and forty years, and saw his sons, and his sons' sons, four generations.
And Job died, an old man, and full of days.

42.10-17

I don't think we should take all this too literally, it's more like a fable, exaggerated for effect. Jonah is similar this way.

dog-on

The aftermath is an interpolation... :P

bacht

Really? There is the "story within a story" framing, but how would it make sense without some kind of denoument like what we have? You'd have to remove the introduction and start with the discussions between Job and his friends, and end with God's rebuke.

Would you say that the book originated as a "philosophical" discussion of God and evil?

Back Again

Well, he got 1000 she-asses. Not sure he still needed the wife and her smart mouth. :devil1:

BH

A thousand donkey butts.:Cheeky: