- Joined
- Mar 30, 2019
I don't know of another holy book that has God playing chicken with the Devil in the form of a guy who genuinely did nothing wrong.
Job makes no sense at all but they left it in there.
The Book of Job is interesting for those reasons but also because it features the single longest instance of God directly, point-blank speaking in the entire Bible. He basically filibusters Job and takes him on a 'tour' of creation showing how He is responsible for maintaining all of it (and other things like how ostriches are really, really stupid). It's absolutely spectacular to read.Job had everything taken away from him for no just reason, then lamented that while basically a corpse in his bed, and had to get told off by God himself before acknowledging his inability to criticize God's actions. Then everything he had was restored twice over. So even Job did wrong by doubting the justice of God's actions, in effect placing himself in God's position by critiquing how God doles out fortune and misfortune.
Also worth pointing out that Job is thought to be the oldest book in the Bible, even older than Genesis. That raises a lot of questions as to why the oldest book features God's longest unbroken speech.