SOURCE: "God, Job, and Evil," in The Dimensions of Job: A Study and Selected Readings, edited by Nahum N. Glatzer, Schocken Books Inc., 1969, pp. 181-93.

Weiss was a leading American philosopher whose works include Nature and Man (1947), Man's Freedom (1950), Modes of Being (1958), The World of Art (1961), Art and Religion (1963), The Making of Men (1967), and Right and Wrong: A Philosophical Dialogue between Father and Son (1967). In the following essay, originally published in Commentary in 1948, he considers The Book of Job "one of the great works of literature, " emphasizing its treatment of broad, universal problems that are not confined to any specific religion.

Great literature is a universe framed in words. Offering a scheme of things more dramatic, more intelligible, more beautiful, more self-revealing than the universe in which we live, it at once inspires, restrains, and enriches the wise man, providing him with an endless source and a satisfying...