Job 1:6-12
Does Job fear God for nothing
The question is raised in a court Job never hears about, and it is about motive rather than conduct. Everything he has is put into another hand, with one limit.
People of the Bible
Job
Lost everything in two chapters, argued for thirty-nine, and was answered by a question about the weather.
Job is not an Israelite and the book gives no date, which is part of why it sits on its own. He is perfect and upright, fears God and turns from evil, and he is wealthy. In two scenes in heaven that he never learns about, a question is raised: does Job serve God for nothing. Everything is taken in a single day by four messengers who arrive one after another, then his health. His wife tells him to curse God and die. Three friends come, sit seven days in silence, and then begin to explain.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Job
- 01
- 02
Job 1:13-22
While he was yet speaking
Four messengers arrive without a break between them: oxen, sheep, camels, and the house that fell on his children. He rises, tears his mantle, falls to the ground and worships.
- 03
Job 2:11-13
Seven days without a word
The friends make an appointment to come and mourn with him. They do not know him at a distance, they weep and sit on the ground seven days and seven nights, and nobody speaks, for they saw his grief was very great.
- 04
Job 19:23-27
I know that my redeemer lives
He wishes his words were printed in a book, graven with an iron pen in rock forever. Then the line that outran the argument: yet in my flesh shall I see God, whom I shall see for myself.
- 05
Job 38:1-11
Out of the whirlwind
Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth. The reply is a tour of creation with no reference to the case at all, and it goes on for four chapters.
- 06
Job 42:1-10
Now my eye sees you
He answers in six verses and abhors himself. Then God tells the friends to take seven bulls and seven rams to Job, who will pray for them, and the LORD turns his captivity when he prays for his friends.
Why it matters
The friends are theologically tidy and are told at the end that they have not spoken of God what is right, as Job has. Job accuses, demands a hearing, asks for a daysman to lay his hand on them both, and never curses. The answer he gets is not an explanation. It is sixty verses of questions about the foundations of the earth, the storehouses of snow, the wild donkey, the ostrich and the horse, and it ends the argument without settling it, and Job says he had heard of him by the hearing of the ear but now his eye sees him.
18 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
