Who’s In Charge Here?

Why does God do it?  Why does God permit the incredible suffering that Job endures?  Can there be any legitimate reason for what happens to Job?  The first chapter of Job paints a less than flattering picture of God and God’s motives in this exchange.  The Accuser joins the heavenly court one day, and God takes the opportunity to brag a bit.  “While you were going about on the earth, did you happen to notice my servant, Job?  Job is an example of my finest work—‘a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil’” (Job 1:8).  Aren’t you impressed, Mr. Accuser?  That Job is some piece of work.

The Accuser is not impressed.  He attributes Job’s faithfulness to sheer self-interest.  As the best progresses and Job has lost possessions and family, the Accuser suggests that an attack on Job’s person will bring out the real story of Job’s apparent piety.  In any event, God permits the Accuser to inflict terrible suffering on Job simply to prove a point (and win an implicit wager).  Of course, Job lives up to God expectations and then some.  In Job 1:22 we read that “in all this Job did not sin or charge God with any wrongdoing.”  Even after his body was attacked and his wife was alienated, we read that “in all this Job did not sin with his lips” (Job 2:10).

Job may not have charged God with any wrongdoing at the beginning of this account.  However, there is an interesting evaluation at the end of the book.  In chapter 42, Job’s family “and all who had known him before” (Job 42:11) gather at his house for additional mourning and healing rituals involving communal grieving and eating.  

The small description in that verse is fascinating.  Job’s family and neighbors comfort him in the face of “all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him.”  The word for “evil” here is not complex or uncommon.  It is the garden-variety Hebrew word for a bad thing.  The verb is also fairly nondescript.  It is the causative form of the Hebrew verb for “to come.”  So the writer notes that the Lord caused “the evil” to come upon Job.  And now his friends and neighbors offer their support as Job recovers from the trauma of that evil.

Job is described clearly as being without fault in this transaction.  The Lord’s innocence is not nearly so clear in the text of the book.  Now, we can spin this verse in opposite directions.  It may be that the writer describes the outcomes of God’s actions as “evil.”  It may be that the writer is pointing to Job’s evaluation of the disasters he has experienced.  The reader is entitled to offer whatever explanation she wishes.  However, the simplest reading is that the writer of Job describes what the Lord has done as “the evil.”  The simplest reading is that the writer portrays the Lord as the offender and Job as the victim. 

The writer is far more comfortable than most of us with passages such as Isaiah 45:7—“I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe; I the Lord do all these things.”  The balancing of the Lord’s sovereignty and compassion is an impossible task for mortals.  N. T. Wright offers this interpretation:

“Somehow Isaiah has so redefined the broader problem of evil—injustice in the world and the justice of the one Creator God—so that we now see it not as a philosopher’s puzzle requiring explanation but as the tragedy of all creation requiring a fresh act from the sovereign Creator God” (Evil and the Justice of God, page 65).

In these first chapters of the book of Job, the Hebrew word for sin is “chatah.”  The means “to miss the mark” and does not seem to have much of a sense of intentionality about it.  So in all of his actions to this point, Job did not get off target or do anything that might require an offering to atone for the (unintentional) misdeed.  Again, the text wants to be clear that Job has not done something blameworthy by which we might be able to explain Job’s calamities by blaming the victim.  It is crystal clear that Job did not commit any sin that could justify the punishment it appears that he has received.  

Once again, the responsibility falls back upon God.  The writer of the Book of Job doesn't make it easy for us.