No one can definitively say when or where Job lived or who recorded his story. Some suggest he was a contemporary of Abraham, while others argue he existed long before the patriarch of Israel. There are even those who believe Job flourished much later, within the territory of Edom. What is certain is that the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel reflect on his laments during the exilic period of Israel, indicating that both the name and story were recognized across generations. It’s possible that Job’s tale began as an oral tradition, much like the narratives of Abraham and Jacob, long before the author recorded it.
We are also left uncertain about how the writer grasped the events in the heavenly courts—whether through divine revelation or imagination for storytelling purposes. However, the essence of this book is not meant to depend on Job’s identity, his place of residence, or the geographical location of Uz. Instead, it aims to address the universal struggle within us: how we perceive our suffering and how we are first to cut our relationship with God when everything we depend on is taken away.
The Prosperous Life
The book opens by telling us Job had seven sons, three daughters, seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred donkeys, and more servants than anyone could count. He was called the greatest man among all the people of the East. What also stands out is that Job is the only book in the Old Testament centered on someone who may not even have been a Hebrew, and where God is shown reaching into the life of a man from a nation outside Israel and calling him blameless and upright.
In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil.
Job 1:1 (NIV)
Can anyone truly be blameless and upright before God?
The whole purpose of the Law, given later, was to show us that our own sacrifices could never make us right with God. So what was it that made Job blameless in God’s sight? It does not seem to have been his wealth or even his careful religious habits. Maybe it could have been that he trusted God, not because of what God had given him, but for who God was. Simply put it was God’s grace upon him that set him apart and which satan later called as being the hedge around Job.
When a period of feasting had run its course, Job would make arrangements for them to be purified. Early in the morning he would sacrifice a burnt offering for each of them, thinking, “Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.”
Job 1:5 (NIV)
This was not something God had commanded him to do; it was Job’s own understanding of how to guard his children—a father trying to atone on their behalf. It is not unlike a father who pays for the damages his child’s recklessness has caused rather than correcting his child directly. Even we, who have the fuller revelation of the New Testament, still often follow this same instinct more readily than we follow what Jesus taught us about His Father. We would rather intercede and offer sacrifices in our attempts to try to pacify God the way Job did than simply trust in God, as Jesus has taught us.
Why do we so easily follow the patterns of Job and Abraham rather than what Jesus taught us?
Perhaps it is because we better relate to men like Job, Abraham, and David, as their situations mirror our own. So, we hold onto them as examples, even without asking why they did what they did or what their relationship with God actually looked like. Jesus, in our minds, does not feel like “one of us” in the same way, so it is easier to imitate Job than to imitate Christ. However, in doing this, we borrow a pattern that was Job’s own guesswork about God, not God’s own instruction, and fail to carry out His will for our lives.
A Storm is Brewing
One day the angels came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came with them. The LORD said to Satan, “Where have you come from?” Satan answered the LORD, “From roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it.”
Job 1:6-7 (NIV)
Even the accuser, has to give account before God. This is the same person we see accusing Joshua the high priest, and the same one John describes accusing the believers before God, day and night in Revelation. Whatever he is doing on the earth, he remains accountable to God, even as he tempts us to believe we are the only ones unaccountable for our own actions. Then the LORD said to satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.” He does not deny Job’s uprightness; instead, satan questions the reasoning behind it.
“Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan replied. “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks and herds are spread throughout the land. But now stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.”
Job 1:9-11 (NIV)
The accuser claims that Job practices devotion that is merely transactional, suggesting that God’s protection has rendered his loyalty effortless. It’s important to recognize what this hedge signifies. In Job’s time, it was God’s grace that sustained his righteousness. Today, that hedge represents the blood of Christ, safeguarding our souls from the accuser’s entry, unless we choose to open a door for him. The hedge is God’s Spirit bestowed upon us who safeguards the salvation secured by Jesus’ blood.
The LORD said to Satan, “Very well, then, everything he has is in your hands, but on the man himself do not lay a finger.” Then Satan went out from the presence of the LORD.
Job 1:12 (NIV)
Peter later warns believers to be alert because the devil prowls like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. We are reminded that the enemy searches for a victim; he does not simply take whoever he wishes. Whether or not the pattern of Job repeats itself for every believer, what we do see clearly here is that God alone remains sovereign over what the enemy is permitted to touch.
Tragedy Strikes
What follows is four tragedies, one after another, each messenger arriving before the last has finished speaking. Raiders carried off the oxen and donkeys and killed the servants. Fire from the sky (probably lightning), consumed the sheep and their shepherds. The Chaldeans, skilled and swift raiders swept off with the camels. And finally, a mighty wind struck the house where Job’s sons and daughters were feasting, and it collapsed, killing them all.
Not every one of these calamities came directly at the hand of another human being. The raiders were men, but the fire and the wind were what the text itself calls acts of God. Job was not simply a victim of human cruelty, which we might be able to direct our anger toward without blaming God for it. Much of what struck him came from what looked, to the ancient mind and even to us, like the hand of God Himself.
At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship and said: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised.” In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing.
Job 1:20-22 (NIV)
Can anyone praise God immediately after facing a tragedy like this?
It is hard to imagine us doing what Job did in that moment. Most of us, if we are honest, would curse before we would praise. Whatever strength allowed Job to worship in that instant is not something we can manufacture in ourselves; it is something only God can supply, and if that strength is delayed in coming to us, something far worse than grief can take root in its place.
The Breaking Point
On another occasion, the heavenly beings gathered before the LORD, and satan was among them. The LORD pointed to His servant Job, emphasizing Job’s blamelessness, uprightness, and steadfast integrity despite the ruin that had been brought upon him. However, satan pressed further, insisting that Job’s loyalty would falter if his own body were afflicted.
God permitted satan to afflict Job with illness but stipulated that Job’s life must be spared—satan departed from the LORD’s presence and inflicted Job with agonizing sores all over his body. Job used broken pottery to scrape at his sores while sitting in the ashes. It was during this time that his wife expressed the words that would become infamous.
His wife said to him, “Are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die!” He replied, “You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” In all this, Job did not sin in what he said.
Job 2:9-10 (NIV)
Why is it so hard for us to accept that trouble might come from God, and not only from the enemy?
We tend to trace every blessing straight to God, but the moment trouble comes, we quickly reassign it to the devil, as though the enemy had briefly overpowered God to torment us. Job understood that God is sovereign over everything, that nothing touches us without passing through His hand first. Where we err is when we treat God the way we treat an employer. Throughout the years, we built an expectation of regular raises from our employers, driven by consistent performance and dedication; however, after one disappointing year with minimal increases, it’s easy to let that experience overshadow all the previous good years of generous increments we’ve received, causing us to forget that our hard work was once recognized and rewarded.
Much in the same way, we expect blessings to increase every year, just like we anticipate a raise. When those blessings don’t come as we hoped, we can feel slighted, forgetting that God is not withholding blessings but rather giving them in forms we are not trained to notice. While we see increments in our faith, we still tend to expect only monetary blessings from God, overlooking what He truly wants to offer us. Each year, as we walk closely with Him, we grow in faith, understand His will, and develop love for those around us.
Job Curses the Day of His Birth
When Job’s three friends—Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite—heard of his suffering, they traveled from their homes to comfort him. Seeing Job from a distance, they barely recognized him and were moved to tears. In grief, they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads. Then they sat with him on the ground for seven days and nights, remaining silent as they witnessed the depth of his pain. This is a very human, very familiar picture. When we do not know what to say to someone in grief, the most faithful thing we can do is simply sit with them until they are ready to speak. Job’s friends did exactly that, waiting seven days before a single word passed between them.
After this, Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth… “Why did I not perish at birth, and die as I came from the womb? … Then I would have been at peace.”
Job 3:1, 11, 13 (NIV)
When Job finally finds his voice, it is not to condemn God but to lament the day of his birth. Here is a man who, by many standards, had experienced a rich life filled with blessings, with children old enough to have families of their own, before disaster intervened. Yet within just a few days, he perceives that his entire life is not worth living at all.
What makes us question the value of our own lives during our darkest days?
Why does one season of suffering seem to erase a lifetime of purpose in our minds? Paul answers this in part when he writes to the Corinthians, calling our troubles light and momentary when set against the eternal glory they are producing in us. The trouble with us is that we take what is light and momentary and carry it as though it were the whole of our life. If we were honest and counted our days, the period of sorrow is a small fraction against the far greater number of blessed days we have lived. But we tend to forget the ninety-nine and magnify the one. Only the Spirit of God can reshape that instinct in us; we cannot talk ourselves out of it on our own.Job also says something that many still quote today,
“What I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened to me.” Job 3:25 (NIV)
It is tempting to read this as though Job’s own fear summoned his disaster, that satan somehow overheard his private dread and made it happen. But that is not what the account tells us. Job’s fear did not cause what happened to him; it happened in spite of that fear being in his heart. Job was secure in his relationship with God, yet lived in constant fear over his children, fear that no offering of his could ever fully settle. Fear, at its root, is what happens when trust falters. As Paul reminds Timothy, God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of love and of a sound mind, and John tells us that perfect love casts out fear. The nearer we walk with God, the less room fear has to take root in us.
Job’s story does not begin with answers; it begins with a man clinging to God in the dark, with no explanation for why the darkness has come. He does not know what has transpired in the courts of heaven; he only knows what has been taken from him, and still he chooses to bless the name of the Lord. His life is not a formula for how to earn God’s favour, nor a guarantee that our own integrity will shield us from suffering. It is the picture of a man whose devotion to God does not rise and fall with his circumstances. Job could not yet see the cross, but we stand on this side of it, with a Shepherd who has already borne what we fear most. May we, like Job, hold on to God not for what He gives, but for who He is.
The Jordan Valley 
Reply