Chapter 10 Summary

The Book of Job has long been a favorite in literary circles and skeptics have often found in it reason for repudiating the Judeo-Christian tradition. Here, it will be examined as the Tanakh's most conscious confrontation with God's destructive or demonic side and its disturbing impression will never be dissipated in the books that follow. Job is a culmination of the Bible's examination of the dark side of God rather than an inauguration of the topic. The main character is not the first dissident in the Bible and his plight does not go beyond the expression of Ps. 44 (and ignores the theological reflections of Second Isaiah). Its solution to the problem of evil does not go beyond Proverbs 16:4. Nothing in Job's speeches, often held to be subversive, has not in one form or another been raised previously in the Tanakh. Job is a...