An Atheist Explroes the Bible Part 88: In which God and Satan are the Duke Brothers from Trading Places, and Job is Dan Ackroyd (Job 1-5)

Job 1-5
In which God and Satan are the Duke Brothers from Trading Places, and Job is Dan Ackroyd.

Welcome to another instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Bible version).

In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the King James Bible, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.
For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/2F8f9JT
For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP

And now:

Job1

“There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil.”

Right, here we go with the story of Job, and the moral is put out there right away. Job is a righteous man who prays every day, and even makes offerings on behalf of his sons just in case they may have sinned (which seems surely to take away any responsibility from his sons?). But as Satan points out, Job is also successful, so of course he’s going to praise God, but what will he do if everthing is taken away from him? Will he still praise God then?

This is a notable appearance: Satan. In verse 6 the “sons of God” come to present themselves to Him, and Satan is amongst them. So far, apart from one reference, Satan has not been a presence in the bible, and we’re 18 books in. There’s the serpent in Eden, but nothing in the bible itself suggests that this is anything other than just a snake. Previous to this, Satan gives David the idea of doing a census (which seems like a very minor evil amongst all the things done so far), but that’s it. Other wickedness is either caused by an estrangement between God and man, or by God sending a vexing spirit, as in the case of Saul. The implication, perhaps, is that Satan was once one of these vexing spirits, a servitor of God sent to punish people. Which is kind of how he acts in this chapter.

Satan causes all of Job’s livestock to be stolen, and his sons killed when a house collapses on them. Job takes on mourning aspect but accepts that he came into the world with nothing, so all that he has is given by God and is God’s to take away.

Job 2

“And Satan answered the LORD, and said, Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life.”

Job still keeps faith with God, so this time Satan inflicts him with a plague of boils. Even so he continues to state that this is God’s right to grant him ill as well as success, despite his wife’s insistence to the contrary. Three of Job’s friends turn up and sit with him, which seems like a kind of reward for being a goodly man. Otherwise quite a short chapter.

Job 3

“Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man child conceived.”

Job breaks, and offers up an impassioned speech on how it would have been better not to have been born, and how death brings relief from troubles. There is some wonderful writing here, standing alongside Hamlet soliloquys for expressing a black mood. The KJV always seems to be at its best when the text is allowed to cut loose and wax poetical, and here the writing is several orders of magnitude above the turgid histories and genealogies.

Job 4

“Behold, thou hast instructed many, and thou hast strengthened the weak hands. Thy words have upholden him that was falling, and thou hast strengthened the feeble knees.”

It almost feels like I need to quote the whole chapter for these ones, I’m liking this so far. I was a bit worried because this is the longest book there’s been since Genesis, at least in terms of chapters, but it rolls along nicely.

Anyway, here Job’s friend Eliphaz the Temanite replies to Job’s lament of the last chapter. He starts by pointing out that Job has always comforted others when they were down, but the rest of what he says doesn’t seem very comforting, insisting that the innocent are never punished (which seems to be implying that Job must have sinned to be punished), but that also death comes to all and everything comes to naught in the end. At least, that’s my reading of the last couple of verses. “They are destroyed from morning to evening: they perish for ever without any regarding it. Doth not their excellency which is in them go away? they die, even without wisdom.” Thanks, Eliphaz. Nice bedside manner.

Job 5

“Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty:”

Eliphaz continues with his terrible pep-talk, saying that sinners bring their own affliction upon them, and that Job should look upon it as a chastisement by God for his own good, and should therefore feel grateful that God is looking upon him to correct him, rather than feel bad about suffering. The problem with this, of course, is that Job hasn’t actually done anything wrong; the punishment is actually because he has been too good, and is solely to prove a point, not out of any correctional action. Unless you count complacency as a sin, which I guess could be one of the messages that this book is trying to impart. I suspect, however, that they three friends may impart their own wisdom as we go along, and each will be a variant on the same kind of theme. Still good writing, though.