The Suffering of Job and Divine Justice - Part 2

Read Part 1: The Suffering of Job and Divine Justice

People reading the book of Job today will encounter a strange and disturbing view of God, a view that reflects a theology which affirms that God was the source of both good and evil. This theology is behind the words of Job’s four friends who came to sympathize with Job in his time of distress. The dialogue of the four friends with Job was aimed at comforting him, but in the end they concluded that Job was suffering because he had sinned against God.

The friends’ inability to understand the real cause of Job’s suffering prompted them to accuse Job of being like the wicked: he was reaping the consequences of his wickedness. Their words of accusation were based on their experience and knowledge of God. However, they accused Job because they were unaware of what was transpiring in the council of God. In their attempt at defending God, Job’s friends overstated their case by putting the blame on Job.

In their dialogue, Job’s friends presented a lofty and unyielding view of God, a view that makes God appear to be removed from the arena of human experience. According to Job’s friends’ theology, God was so removed from humans that unless a mediator served as a go between God and humans, that separation would leave human beings hopeless when confronted with unyielding justice.

The theology of Job’s friends was not all wrong, but neither was their theology right enough to explain Job’s suffering. Notwithstanding their words of wisdom, Job’s suffering continued. Thus, in the end, human wisdom could not bring the healing or the answers Job was so desperately seeking.

At the end of the dialogue between Job and his friends, God revealed himself to Job. Awed by the divine presence, Job forgot all the bitterness and complaints of his soul. The presence of God required Job’s attention. Finally, Job’s request to present his case directly to God was granted. As Job had already expressed, he knew that he could not contend with the awesome majesty of Almighty God.

Speaking to Job out of a whirlwind (Job 38:1), the Lord answered none of Job’s questions, neither did God explain the reasons he had to endure such torment. No mention was made in God’s response to Job of the events in the heavenly court as narrated in the prologue of the story. God had a more powerful way to demonstrate his justice.

The Almighty God revealed himself to Job. How simple that encounter seemed to be, and yet, how profound were the implications of that revelation. In a moment, Job’s attitude changed. His life was flooded with purpose, with hope, and with the expectation of healing. God healed Job by bringing him out of his anxiety into acceptance of his situation, an acceptance that brought peace to Job’s life.

God’s purpose was not only to heal Job, but also to instruct him. God asked Job several rhetorical questions which were beyond human capability of answering.

God wanted Job to catch a glimpse of his work in creation so that Job could realize that his suffering was insignificant when placed next to God’s work in the world. At the end of God’s questioning, Job recognized the vast gulf between God’s wisdom and power and his own ignorance of the many mysteries of life. The greatest lesson Job learned was that God was sovereign over his creation and that divine sovereignty governs all reality, including Job’s own life.

At the end of God’s encounter with Job, Job humbly repented of his presumption, that he could contend with God. He also repented of his pride in seeing only himself while failing to recognize that God’s purpose for his life was much more than he could understand. He bowed in recognition of his insignificance before his sovereign Lord.

Job confessed his unwavering faith in God’s sovereignty and his total submission to that sovereignty. Job admitted that he was unable to understand the marvelous work of God, and asked God to grant him wisdom and understanding. Job’s repentance signals the end of his intense suffering and the restoration of God’s blessings on his life.

The issue that vexes people with such an intensity, the problem of evil, is presented in the book of Job in the form of the suffering of a good and righteous man. His friends tried to console him, but they failed. Their words were not totally wrong. To the contrary, what they said made sense, but not in the case of Job. So, at the end, God himself told them they were wrong in their accusation of Job.

However, at the end of the book, the reader is still perplexed. Why did a good God allow Job’s suffering to happen? This question presupposes one very important assumption: whoever asks this question believes in a God of justice. Atheists cannot ask this question. Since they do not believe there is a God, they cannot say God allows this kind of evil to happen.

The problem of the suffering of the innocent is a problem for believers, because they believe in a caring and loving God, a God who is in control of his creation. Those who do not believe in the providence of God, find reasons for human misery by denying or diminishing the God of the Bible.

Many people explain the problem of human suffering by denying the existence of God, by limiting the power and the sovereignty of God, or by affirming that God is not good. Many people are like Job’s friends. When people are confronted with the limitations of humanity to understand or explain natural disasters, such as Katrina, Haiti, and Chile, disasters that take hundreds and thousands of human lives, they blame God for these disasters.

When people are challenged by the helplessness of one individual such as Job, a man who suffered and agonized for days and months with an incurable disease, they lose their faith in God and blame the deity for allowing violence, disease, and disasters to occur in the world.

But it is precisely because we know that the Lord is good that we insist that this goodness be shown in the world. It is because we know that the Lord is a righteous judge that we demand that justice be adjudicated in the world. But when we look at the world in which we live, we recognize that goodness and evil are not rewarded evenly. The wicked prosper and the righteous suffer. This was the problem Jeremiah had with God: Jeremiah said: “LORD, you have always been fair whenever I have complained to you. However, I would like to speak with you about the disposition of justice. Why are wicked people successful? Why do all dishonest people have such easy lives?” (Jeremiah 12:1 NET).

In light of such a disparity, how can we continue to believe that God is good? The presence of evil and suffering in the world is evidence to many people that either God is not good or that God is impotent to deal with the problems of the world. But the Bible provides ways of reconciling the problem of suffering with the goodness of God.

The Bible affirms that the God of the Bible is a God of justice: “For the LORD is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him” (Isaiah 30:18). Isaiah says that God’s justice will be revealed, but that the believer must wait for it. However, human beings do not have the patience to wait for divine justice to be manifested, either in the near future or at the end of time. People desire to see divine justice manifested while they are alive. Few are willing to wait for divine justice to be done in the life to come. People want justice done in the land of the living.

Human questioning and reasoning about divine justice are important for humans. Job questioned divine justice until he was confronted with the presence of the sovereign and omnipotent God. Job understood the reason for his sufferings no better after his restoration than he understood it when he sat upon the heap of ashes.

Job found wisdom and understanding when he encountered God. The book of Job demonstrates that wisdom is not found in seeking answers to life problems, but in experiencing God. God’s justice lies not in what a person perceives as fair, but in God’s willingness to justify that person. Perhaps God’s justification of Job was the deepest significance and meaning Job found for his suffering. God provides for each person a Justifier and an Advocate, the one whom Job earnestly desired.

To Job, his witness was in heaven: “my advocate is on high” (Job 16:19). Job’s words indicate that he saw God as his vindicator. But it is clear that Job saw no vindication in this life. Job believed he was going to die but he knew that he would be vindicated: “As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God” (Job 19:25-26).

To Christians, Jesus Christ is the answer to all Job's questions and to ours. Jesus is the culmination of all that Job wanted God to do for him: “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5). Only through Jesus can human beings be justified, and only in justification will human beings learn the true meaning of divine sovereignty and divine justice.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

If you enjoyed reading this post, subscribe to my posts here.

Tags: Hebrew Bible, Old Testament, Book of Job, Divine Justice, Job, Satan, Suffering

The Suffering of Job and Divine Justice - Part 1

The book of Job has fascinated readers over the years because the book deals with the problem of suffering, a problem that sooner or later will touch every human being. The plight of Job has a universal appeal because it raises the question of how a just God can allow a good man to suffer so intensively.

The message of the book is focused on the issue of God’s justice: why must a good and devout man suffer undeservedly? However, although the book of Job is a study of the suffering of the righteous, the book also deals with the character of God, primarily in God’s dealings with Job. Three aspects of God’s character are dealt with in the book.

The first is the justice of God, which is the focus of Job’s argument. The second is the sovereignty of God, which is demonstrated in God’s dealings with the adversary. The third is God’s treatment of Job, an issue that is raised by those who read the book.

At the conclusion of the book, although these issues were not fully addressed and remain partially unsolved, the sovereignty of God was affirmed and divine justice was upheld and it was recognized by Job. The conclusion of the book of Job shows that, although the reader and even Job himself cannot fully comprehend what happened and why it happened, God holds and controls the events in absolute sovereignty, wisdom, and justice.

The story of Job’s suffering begins with a brief introduction of the man Job, who is presented as a righteous and devout man, one who fears God. According to the introduction of the book, Job was “a man of perfect integrity, who feared God and turned away from evil” (Job 1:1 HCSB). In addition to being an upright man, Job was also very rich and “greatest man among all the people of the east” (Job 1:3).

According to the text, Job was blessed with a large family of seven sons and three daughters (Job 1:2). The writer of Job stresses these moral and religious aspects of Job’s life in order to demonstrate his righteousness. Job’s wealth was evidence that he was blessed by God. Job’s righteousness was constant, essential, and stable. Job’s wealth was temporary, accidental, and not essential to his righteousness. What the writer of the book was trying to demonstrate was that without his righteousness Job was nothing; without his wealth Job remained everything.

The word tam in Job 1:1, translated “perfect integrity” (“blameless” in other translations) comes from a Hebrew word taman, a word that suggests completeness. The reason the writer used this word was to introduce a person who had integrity and who tried to please God. Thus, Job was not the kind of person that Satan, and after him Job’s three friends, insinuated Job was: one kind of man on the surface and another man in his real self. Although Job was not a sinless man, Job was a righteous man whose integrity of character showed itself in his relationship with God and in his dealings with people with whom Job came in contact.

It was important for the writer of the book to establish the upright character of Job, for had Job not been righteous and blameless, there would be no meaning to the book because Job’s suffering could have been understood by the reader as God’s judgement on Job’s iniquity. But Job was a righteous man, and the fact that Job was blameless and righteous gives rise to the puzzle of the book of Job. Since Job’s suffering was not the judgement of a righteous God on a wicked man, what then was the purpose of Job’s suffering?

In the prologue of the book, the author introduced his readers to a part of the big picture of the story which Job and his friends never saw. The story of Job begins when the sons of God appear in heaven to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came and joined the assembly of the sons of God. In the ensuing conversation between God and Satan, the Biblical writer emphasizes the subordination of Satan to God.

The text shows that the adversary was subject to God and could not act without the approval and permission of the Lord. The text also shows that it was Satan and not God who caused the disasters to Job’s life that caused his suffering. As a member of the divine assembly, Satan was the accuser of human beings before God, and it was in that role that he came to report human failures to God. To Satan’s accusations of the failure of human beings, Yahweh addressed the adversary with a pointed question: “Have you considered my servant Job?” (Job 1:8).

God’s question was important to the development of the story because it was God who drew Satan’s attention to Job’s character. So confident was God of Job’s perfect integrity that God challenged the accuser to find any flaw in Job’s blameless character. Satan knew that Job was a righteous man but contended that Job was a mercenary behind his upright behavior. Satan said: “Does Job fear God for nothing? Have you not put a fence around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land” (Job 1:9-10).

Satan insisted that Job would not be so stupid as to do anything that would compromise a relationship that worked so well in his favor. The adversary believed that if Yahweh would change his treatment of Job that Job would certainly reverse his conduct toward Yahweh, that is, when piety would no longer pay, Job would become defiantly profane and would deny and even blaspheme God.

The adversary then proposed a challenge to God: “But stretch out your hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face” (Job 1:11). This proposition of Satan was a challenge which God confidently accepted. Yahweh knew the heart of Job and demonstrated his faith in his servant by staking his honor on the way Job would respond to the loss of his children and all his possessions. The development of the story affirmed God’s confidence in Job. Job’s integrity held strong and God’s honor was upheld by Job’s righteous words: “The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away. Blessed be the name of the LORD” (Job 1: 21b).

After Satan’s first attempt at forcing Job to deny God, the author returns to the scene in heaven. Satan and the sons of God came again to present themselves before the Lord. Although no time is given, it is possible that one year had passed. As the accuser again prepares to list the failures of human beings, the Lord asked Satan: “Have you considered my servant Job?” (Job 2:3).
God again expressed his confidence in Job: “He still persists in his integrity, although you incited me against him, to destroy him for no reason” (Job 2:3).

Satan, however, was not convinced. He wanted nothing less than to impute God’s honor by demonstrating that Job served God only out of selfish motives. So the accuser proposed another challenge to Job’s integrity: “Skin for skin! All that Job has he will give to save his life. But stretch out your hand now and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face” (Job 2:4-5, slightly paraphrased). Once again the Lord agreed to Satan’s evil request. Satan immediately proceeded to inflict Job with inflamed loathsome sores all over his body, which eventually become breeding places for worms (Job 7:5), gnawing pains (Job 30:17), blackened, scaly skin (Job 30:30), intense pain, and feelings of terror that lasted many excruciating days.

As the story progresses, the writer begins to describe the different aspects of Job’s response to the sufferings and the terror he faced. Initially, Job remained steadfast in accepting his suffering: “Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?” (Job 2:l0). As time passed, however, two issues became the focus of his dialogue with his friends: his misery and his view of God’s justice. All that Job said in chapters 3 to 31 of the book are the result of his pain and suffering and his bewildered spirit.

At first Job desired the escape of death, even wishing that he had never lived. The life he once lived was now reduced to months of futility and nights of suffering (Job 7:3). He failed to understand the reason God considered him so important that he would not let up on his desperate situation. Job began to believe in the hopelessness of his situation. He also began to believe that he could not contend with the Almighty, although he desired to defend himself by presenting his case before the Lord. Job declared: “If it is a matter of strength, he is the strong one! If it is a matter of justice, who can summon him?” (Job 9:19).

As his suffering increased and his requests for an audience with God remained unanswered, Job became more and more convinced that God was against him, that God had become his enemy: “My enemy sharpens his eyes against me” (Job 19:11). In the midst of his doubts and suffering, Job clung to his integrity. In his misery Job’s consolation was that he had “not denied the words of the Holy One” (Job 6:10). Confident of his innocence, Job declared: “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him; I will surely defend my ways to his face” (Job 13:15).

Read: The Suffering of Job and Divine Justice - Part 2.


Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

If you enjoyed reading this post, subscribe to my posts here.

Tags: Hebrew Bible, Old Testament, Book of Job, Divine Justice, Job, Satan, Suffering

The Savage God

During the SBL meeting in San Diego, I attended a conference on the characterization of God in the book of Hosea. One of the speakers called the God of the Old Testament “the Savage God.” According to the speaker, the savage God is the God who is cruel and violent, unjust and harsh in his dealing with the Israelites and with peoples from other nations. The notion of the savagery of God arises when people are unable to reconcile the love of God with God’s demands for righteousness and justice. The God of the Bible is merciful and loving, but he is also a God who requires justice from people.

According to some people, the savage God of the Bible is the God who arbitrarily demanded the destruction of entire cities and the killing of men, women, and children. The savage God is the God who allows drought, hurricanes, tornados, and other natural disasters to cause havoc to cities and to bring misery to thousands of people. If God is a merciful and loving God, how could this God allow the destruction of innocent people?

The reason people believe that the God of the Bible is a savage God is because God exercises divine justice when people fail to meet divine standards. As the prophet Jeremiah wrote: “I am the LORD who demonstrates unfailing love and who brings justice and righteousness to the earth, and I delight in these things” (Jeremiah 9:24). God delights in justice and justice is what God demands from Israel and all peoples.

The reality of divine justice does not mean that there is a standard of justice for Israel and one for the rest of the world. On the contrary, there is a single standard of justice for all. God’s judgment falls not only upon Israel but also upon other nations when they fail to meet the moral standard set by God. In order to dispense justice, God intervenes in human history to redress injustice and restore the moral order of society.

When one considers the theme of justice in the Hebrew Bible, one encounters a different perspective from that which appears in the popular understanding of justice. Justice means a restoration of normalcy in society, a return to a condition where human rights are recognized.

One good example of divine justice at work is found in the book of the prophet Amos. Amos proclaimed that since God was the sovereign Lord over all nations, his demand for justice was universal and that it applied to all. To Amos, God was not only the guarantor of Israelite laws, but also of the entire moral order. God’s universal requirements applied to Israel and included the conventional norms of international behavior. Amos saw God’s universal requirements as justice, and his judgment as a punishment for injustice against members of the community.

God’s universal requirements demand right conduct of individuals and nations. God’s righteousness is manifested not only in the judgments which he brings to individuals and nations, but also in his acts of mercy and salvation toward Israel and, eventually, towards all peoples.

In Amos’ oracles against the foreign nations, we see divine justice at work.

In Amos 1:3, God spoke through Amos and said:

“The people of Damascus have sinned again and again, and I will not let them go unpunished! They beat down my people in Gilead as grain is threshed with iron sledges.”

The principal transgression of the Aramean kingdom was the threshing of the people in Gilead with iron threshing-machines. When the Arameans conquered Israel, they crushed the prisoners to pieces with iron threshing-machines. This act of cruelty against the people of Gilead reflects a barbarous war-practice that was prevalent in the ancient Near East.

Since no one could bring Ben-Hadad to justice, God intervened and caused the invasion of Damascus by the Assyrians and the deportation of the Arameans to Kir (Amos 1:5; 2 Kings 16:9).

In Amos 1:6, God spoke through Amos and said:

“The people of Gaza have sinned again and again, and I will not let them go unpunished! They sent whole villages into exile, selling them as slaves to Edom.”

The captives of war mentioned here were sold as slaves by the Philistines to the Edomites, the arch-enemies of Israel. According to Amos, the captivity was so devastating that not a single captive remained. Entire villages were taken away and none of them ever returned to their land.

Since there was no way the people taken as slaves could obtain redress in a court of law, God intervened and the Philistines were threatened with divine retribution for having plundered the land and sold the captives as slaves. To vindicate the oppressed slaves, God promised that the king of Ashdod would be destroyed (Amos 1:8). The divine judgment came by the hands of Sargon, king of Assyria, and his army after Assyria conquered Ashdod (Isaiah 20:1).

In Amos 1:9, God spoke through Amos and said:

“The people of Tyre have sinned again and again, and I will not let them go unpunished! They broke their treaty of brotherhood with Israel, selling whole villages as slaves to Edom.”

The people of Tyre are charged with selling people to Edom, but not by having conquered them. This implies that Tyre bought war prisoners from an enemy of Israel, and then sold them as slaves to Edom.

Tyre was a nation known by its trade and commerce, thus, it is possible that Tyre carried out an extensive slave business and that they probably purchased prisoners from different nations and sold them as slaves to more nations than just Edom.

Slaves have no one to fight for them and vindicate their cause. So, God intervened and promised that the fortresses of Tyre would be destroyed. The prophet Isaiah announced the destruction of Tyre: “This message came to me concerning Tyre: Weep, O ships of Tarshish, for the harbor and houses of Tyre are gone! The rumors you heard in Cyprus are all true” (Isaiah 23:1). Whether the destruction was caused by the Assyrians or the Babylonians, Isaiah was clear on who brought the demise of Tyre:

“Who has brought this disaster on Tyre, that great creator of kingdoms? Her traders were all princes, her merchants were nobles. The LORD of Heaven's Armies has done it to destroy your pride and bring low all earth's nobility” (Isaiah 23:8-9).

In Amos 1:13, God spoke through Amos and said:

“The people of Ammon have sinned again and again, and I will not let them go unpunished! When they attacked Gilead to extend their borders, they ripped open pregnant women with their swords.”

The ripping up of the women with child was one of the many atrocities that came as a result of the many wars in the ancient Near East (see 2 Kings 8:12; 15:16). This cruel act was practiced by the Arameans, the Assyrians, the Ammonites, and even by an Israelite king. The Ammonites are singled out by Amos for the cruelty which they inflicted upon the Israelites during a time of war.

Since the victims were powerless to defend themselves and bring justice to their cause, God intervened and as a punishment for this cruel act, the Ammonite capital was to be burned, and the king and his officials would go into exile (Jeremiah 27:1-6).

In Amos 2:1, God spoke through Amos and said:

“The people of Moab have sinned again and again, and I will not let them go unpunished! They desecrated the bones of Edom's king, burning them to ashes.”

According to Amos, the people of Moab opened the grave of one of the kings of Edom and burned his bones. The king’s bones were burned so completely that the bones turned into ashes. This desecration of the dead king was unacceptable to God. Since the dead king was unable to defend himself, God intervened and promised to bring judgment upon Moab by the hands of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon.

These examples show that the God of the Bible is not a savage God. He is a God of justice who vindicates the oppressed and who acts as the sovereign judge to bring justice to people and nations on behalf of victims of violence and brutality. God acts on behalf of nations other than Israel to bring justice upon evildoers.

Thus, divine justice is the process by which God renders redress on behalf of those who are unable to act on their own behalf. Since God in his nature is righteous, God imposes righteous laws on his creatures and executes them righteously. Justice is not an optional product of his will, but an unchangeable principle of his very nature. As Creator, God requires his creatures to conform to his moral laws. When they fail to do so, God acts and justice is upheld.


What people believe to be divine savagery, it is nothing but God’s dealing with his accountable creatures according to the requirements of his laws.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Amos, Divine Justice, Savage God