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Preface

The book of Job has had a bad reputation, perhaps because the Hebrew it is written in is obscure, and some earlier translations gave confused readings. Perhaps because it is written in poetry, which is harder to understand than the historical writings. Or perhaps because the topic is too painful and the answers not comforting. For whatever reason, there have been too few studies of the book of Job, and fewer that I have found encouraging. Yet it is a book that holds a magnetic attraction for me, a book I keep coming back to year after year. When I feel discouraged, when I feel persecuted, when I feel abandoned by God, I stop and reread this book. The answer I find changes with each reading, the answer deepens and brings with it fresh wonder and awe. With each new disappointment in life I find a resonance in Job, and a new revelation in his reply. It is out of that appreciation for Job, for how he lived and how he spoke, that I am writing this short study. If I can convey a small fraction of the comfort I have received, then this effort will be well spent.

1.1 Methodology

The requisite section before beginning any book study is a semi-exhaustive list of the historical context, the sources, the authors, and the theology of the book. I have neither the knowledge nor the resources to write such an introduction, though some of these points will be made at other places in the study. Instead I want to describe the approach I take to this book. It is both objective and subjective, scholarly and personal, observer and participant, strategic and tactical. Without analyzing the objectives of the book we will get lost in the debates, but without participating in the dialogue we will completely miss the rebuttals. Therefore the early part of this study will be all strategic, laying out the battleground, the weapons, the known tactics of the belligerents. The later part of this study will be the thrust and parry, the heat and the dust of the battle. The stakes are high: Job's very life and perhaps his salvation hangs by a thread. The tactics are brutal: accusations, innuendoes, words that cut like knives. The outcome: well, unexpected.

We are neither observers nor shamans of the book of Job, but participants in this rivetting drama. As we absorb with Job the next body blow to our psyche, our emotions well up fresh each time. Yes, they are colored by our previous reading, but also deepened. We can begin to feel beyond the raw anger to the disappointment, the pity, and yes, the hope that Job speaks in his reply. Then when life deals me the short stick, the cutting comment, the unexpected disaster, I can hear Job's voice guiding me, "no don't put your trust there, here is your real hope." and his words are like steel girders to my soul.


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Copyright © 1997 Rob Sheldon