SOURCE: "The Fear and Fascination of Death," in Job: Poet of Existence, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc. 1957, pp. 40-65.

Terrien is a French-born American theologian, educator, and pastor whose writings include The Psalms and Their Meaning for Today (1952), Le Livre de Job: Commentaire (1963; The Book of Job: A Commentary), and The Elusive Presence: Prolegomenon to an Ecumenical Theory of the Bible (1978). In the following excerpt from his Job: Poet of Existence, he discusses Job's experience of despair and isolation in relation to the concept of death in The Book of Job.

How does man answer the riddle of self and existence? Not in being a marvel of obedience and submission, as Job was in the prose tale when he said, "What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?" (2:10), but on the contrary in refusing to bless the name of the Deity...