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

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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 Use of Upper Case in Translations of the Bible

In a recent post on the use of upper case in translating biblical passages, Suzanne McCarthy at Better Bibles Blog wrote:

However, one can see how the choice of whether to use upper case or not could well be doctrinally motivated.

We can’t really have the same experience as those who read this in the original language. Having upper case letters means one thing and not having them means something else.

In her study, she provides examples taken from Judges 9:13, Psalm 110:1, Psalm 2:2, and Isaiah 63:10. In this post, I want to demonstrate that two of Suzanne’s statements are true, that is, “the choice of whether to use upper case or not could well be doctrinally motivated,” and that “having upper case letters means one thing and not having them means something else.”

The use of upper case in English is very common and represents an author’s deliberate effort to communicate a message to the reader. For instance, the word “god” is used to represent a false god while the word “God” is used to represent the God of the Bible. The word “son” is used to designate the offspring of a father or mother while the word “Son” represents Jesus Christ. In the same way, the word “he” is used to designate a man, while the word “He” is used to designate God or Jesus Christ.

This use of upper case to convey a theological message is generally used by Christian writers. For instance, in his book Old Testament Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007), Bruce K. Waltke believes that the Hebrew word for serpent in Genesis 3:1 “functions as a proper name.” He wrote (p. 222): “In Genesis 3:1 the Serpent–with a capital S to represent its uniqueness–brings unaided humanity under its rule.” Thus, the serpent ceases being one of the “beasts of the field which the LORD God had made” to become the incarnation of Satan (p. 265), “that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan” (Revelation 12:9).

In the same manner, the “seed of the woman” becomes a reference to Jesus Christ. Waltke asks: “To whom does the ‘seed’ refer?” He answers his own question by saying: “Surely the most satisfactory identification of the ‘seed’ is Jesus Christ and the church” (p. 62). Although Waltke never uses upper case for “seed,” the New King James Version does: “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel” (Genesis 3:15 NKJ).

These two examples demonstrate that Suzanne’s statement, that the “choice of whether to use upper case or not could well be doctrinally motivated,” is true. The use of upper case in translations of the Bible serves, in many cases, to emphasize a certain theological perspective about a text.

Suzanne’s other statement, that “having upper case letters means one thing and not having them means something else,” can be demonstrated by different translations of Daniel 9:25. Let me illustrate this point by quoting from the King James Version:

Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times (Daniel 9:25 KJV).

It is clear in this translation from the KJV that the word “Messiah” with upper case is a clear reference to Jesus Christ. In late Judaism, the Messiah was considered to be God’s agent who would bring restoration to Israel. The New Testament used the title and applied it to Christ to designate him as the savior of the world.

There is no doubt that readers of the King James would identify the “Messiah” with Christ. The problem with the KJV’s translation, besides the upper case, is that in Hebrew, however, the word “mashiach” means “the anointed one.” So, to do justice to the Hebrew word, the NIV translates Daniel 9:25 as follows:

Know and understand this: From the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven ‘sevens,’ and sixty-two ‘sevens.’ It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble (Daniel 9:25 NIV).

The NIV corrects one of the mistakes of the KJV. The NIV correctly translates the word “Messiah” but it keeps the upper case in “Anointed One.” Thus, a reader of the NIV will also have no problem identifying the “Anointed One” with Jesus Christ.

The problem with both the KJV and the NIV is that they use the upper case to show that, in the mind of the translators, the “Messiah” or the “Anointed One” was Jesus Christ. The Revised Standard Version eliminates this problem by eliminating the upper case. The RSV reads as follows:

Know therefore and understand that from the going forth of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be seven weeks. Then for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in a troubled time (Daniel 9:25 RSV).

So, in the RSV, the “Messiah” and the “Anointed One” becomes “an anointed one.” However, another problem with the KJV and the NIV is that in they use the definite article “the” to identify the person referred to in Daniel 9:25. In the KJV that person is “the Messiah.” In the NIV it is “the Anointed One.” In the Old Testament two people were anointed: the priest and the king. By using the definite article, both the KJV and the NIV are saying (indirectly) that the “Messiah” or the “Anointed One” is a king.

However, the definite article does not appear in the Hebrew text and the RSV’s translation reflects this fact: “to the coming of an anointed one.” This means that the “anointed one” of Daniel 9:25 could be either a priest or a king. The proper exegesis of Daniel 9:25 reveals that the “anointed one” in Daniel 9:25 is a priest.

Thus, by using the upper case in Daniel 9:25, the translators of the KJV and the NIV say that the “Anointed One” was Jesus Christ, while the RSV by not using upper case is saying that the one coming could be either a priest or a king.

In conclusion, translators should refrain from using upper case in translating biblical texts from Hebrew into English because the use of upper case in translation of biblical texts infuses a text with a theological meaning that may not be present in the original text. This infusion of meaning becomes in itself an interpretation of the text that then is transmitted to readers who have little or no knowledge of the original language. These readers, in turn, will accept the inference that these theologically infused translations represent the real meaning of the text.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Bible Translation, Daniel 9:25, Satan, Serpent