The Book of Job Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

The agree of line of descent - Essay ExampleThis dramatic form also allows the wisdom it seeks to impart to make work dialectically on the reader. I will argue that the wisdom imparted by the Book of Job does not, as it is much argued, support the notion of a moral universe one that is just but whose justice musical composition can never hope to know. That God appears to Job in the conclusion seems to point against the idea that the motive of Job wishes us to understand God as unknowable. Equally, I do not believe that the Book supports a notion of a moral or just God. Quite the opposite, in fact, as it seems to stand firm the premise that God can be seen in the realm of justice at all. As much(prenominal), the entitle does not provide an answer to Jobs complaint (certainly not in the judicial senses of these words) but merely a rebuff to the notion that he might be called to answer. Equally, Jobs repentance is not one based on a greater understanding of the moral framework of his punishment, but merely a bowing to the net power of the entitles might.Before we analyze the Lords speeches in the latter part of the book, we must first characterize merely what Job is complaining of. Job, by his own account, was a pillar of the community he went to the gate of the urban center / and took my seat in the public square, / the young men saw me and stepped aside / and the old men go to their feet (297-8). Job knew the things that were expected of him by virtue and by his God, and he has performed them with diligence and care (see his description in Chapter 31). We are even told that it was considered by the Lord himself that there is no-one on earth like him he is unexceptionable and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil. Indeed, it is precisely Jobs inherent goodness that leads him to be singled out for the painful exasperation that Satan1, with the Lords express approval, rains down upon his head. As such, Jobs complaint, though it is modulated th roughout the thirty or so chapters that count up the central part of the Book, is simply this I am innocent, so why has the Lord enured me so badlyThese are precisely the terms on which the debate between Job and his 3 friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite, take place. Job says is that he is innocent of crimes, therefore he should not be punished. He goes promote and seems to suggest that there must be some mistake on the Lords part, that if he were able to run his case before the Lord, he would not press charges against me (236). Job even reaches the extreme (much to his friends amazement and fear) of suggesting that the Lord has absented the realms of justice entirely, surely God lives, who has denied me justice (272). Though his three friends argue against Job, they do so from the akin standpoint, i.e. the Lords punishment would only be just if he punished the wicked. However, they work from the opposite direction assumptive that the Lord must be just, and therefore, if he is punishing Job, Job must be worthy of punishment. They take the inverse view of the relationship of just punishment to sinful behavior - if a man is as afflicted as Job then Surely such is the dwelling of an evil man / such is the place of one who knows not God. There is some evidence in the text that, at the quantify of writing, this conception of divine justice was the prevalent one. Job even says to his friends admonishments, Who does not know all these thingsI will argue that the Lords answer to Job overturns such a conception. To