Finding Meaning in the Book of Job

From the Cardozo Academy Writers Guild

With the continuing war in Gaza, approximately 100 hostages in Hamas’ hands, and the home front still under rocket threat, many of us seek solace in traditional texts.

About nine years ago, the 929 project was launched. Similar to (but much easier than) Daf Yomi, individuals study one chapter of Tanach a day five days a week, completing the entire cycle in 929 days (3.5 years). Those engaged in it are currently learning the Book of Job, which offers us wisdom in these trying times.

Described by the Victorian poet Alfred Tennyson as the greatest poem ever written, one that inspired authors Thomas Hardy and Franz Kafka, the Book of Job touches on the age-old question of why bad things happen to good people, the seeming unfairness of the universe, the quest of an individual to find meaning in life, and how to maintain faith in God from within tragedy and despair.

Wealthier than anyone in the ‘east’, Job is initially described as a blameless, upright, God-fearing man with seven sons and three daughters. But a character named ‘HaSatan’, the Adversary, claims Job is only righteous because his life is good. Seemingly agreeing to some form of divine wager, God responds “Behold, all that he [Job] has is in your power; only do not put your hand upon him.” (1:12). When the Adversary leaves God’s heavenly presence, Job’s oxen are destroyed, then his sheep and camels. A strong wind collapses the house in which his children are feasting, killing them. Despite receiving one piece of terrible news after another, Job remains faithful to God, even after he is smitten with boils all over his body.

Job took on greater significance in the post-Holocaust world. Elie Wiesel relates how Job kept haunting him, “his file remained open, the questions unanswered.” The wounded, robbed and mutilated Job “could be seen on every road of Europe.”

Many Israelis also identified with the book. Shai Agnon quoted from it in his Nobel Prize in Literature acceptance speech in 1966. David Ben Gurion included a passage from Job in his diary at a time when he was feeling miserable in the Negev. During the First Lebanon War, when two nineteen-year-old soldiers both named Yuval Harel from Talpiyot in Jerusalem were killed within 48 hours of one another, Yair Rozenblum and Emannuel Tzabar wrote a poem / song called Oath of Blood. Full of biblical and liturgical references, a recurring line relates back to the messengers telling Job of the tragedies befalling him.

The sin-punishment fallacy

The main part of the Book of Job involves three cycles of conversations between Job and three friends—Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite—who try to comfort him. Yet the friends bring platitudes, ready-made theological “answers” that are unhelpful and insensitive to the situation at hand.

Instead of simply empathizing with the pain of their friend in his time of need, their focus is on defending religion and faith. As biblical commentator and translator Robert Alter says, they use “boilerplate language for the poetic celebration of God’s world-embracing knowledge and power contrasted to man’s puny grasp,”

“Happy is the man whom God corrects,” Eliphaz tells Job, “therefore do not despise the chastening of the Almighty.” (5:17). “Does God pervert judgment, or does the Almighty pervert justice?” chimes in Bildad, before suggesting Job’s dead children must have sinned. “Such is the fate of all who forget God; so perishes the hope of the godless man.” (8:3-4,13) Zophar meanwhile is more focused on the mystery surrounding God; “If God had a mind to speak…were He to show you the secrets of wisdom which put all cleverness to shame—you would know it is for sin He calls you to account. Would you discover the mystery of God? Would you discover the limit of the Almighty?” (11:4-7).

While Job insists on his innocence, the friends parrot the platitudes that there is no punishment without sin.

This approach, which directly connects tragedy and specific wrongdoings (or sin in general) is still heard today. In 2001 when the floor of the Versailles Wedding Hall in Jerusalem collapsed, killing 23 guests, the officiating rabbi blamed it on mixed dancing. Later, Rabbi Ovadya Yosef described Hurricane Katrina as punishment for George Bush promoting the Gaza disengagement. The Coronavirus was described as punishment for gay pride parades. The Holocaust has been seen by some ultra-Orthodox sects as a punishment for Zionism. More recently, the slaughter at the Nova festival was compared to the punishment of those engaged with creating and worshipping the golden calf (an opinion heard at a modern-Orthodox yeshiva in Jerusalem.)

This sin-punishment link is not a modern idea. There is a biblical source in the second paragraph of the Shema, which states that if we obey the commandments, God will grant seasonal rain for the land. But if other gods are worshipped, the people will swiftly perish from the good land that the Lord has given. It continues in the Talmud (Tractate Shabbat 55a) where Rav Ami says that “There is no death without transgression, and there is no suffering without sin.” Indeed it is far from a peripheral perspective in Jewish thought. As David Kraemer explains in his Responses to Suffering in Classical Rabbinic Literature, it has “centrality to biblical ideology as a whole. Though by no means the only explanation, it is by far the most common explanation and thus the one that is likely to carry the most weight with later Jews.”

Sometimes there are no answers

At the end of the book, God appears to Job out of a whirlwind, and takes him on a magical mystery tour of creation, nature, and the cosmos. The piercing monologue that spans four chapters of expansive language offers a response to Job’s arguments and questions (“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations?”). But it is not necessarily an answer. Job then speaks to God in a mere five verses, the meaning of which is unclear. After this, Job’s wealth is reinstated and he sires ten children.

The book concludes without a clear explanation why suffering happens. But one of the few things we do know is that the sin-punishment approach promoted by the friends is wrong. “The Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite, ‘My wrath is aroused against you and your two friends, for you have not spoken of Me what is right, as My servant Job has.’” (42:7).

As we continue to struggle with finding meaning in these trying times, it is essential that we remember this message. We should lend an empathetic ear to those who suffer, but restrain from providing theological “answers” to those in pain.