Bible reading guide: Iyov / Job

BOOK OF JOB / IYOV reading guide

Rabbi David L Kline

1-3:1            Prose narrative. Job, his wife and children. God and company, including Satan.

Poetic argument: suffering is punishment.

3:2            Job curses the day he was born.

4-5            Eliphaz   What innocent man ever perished?  Can mortals be more just than God?

6-7            Job            Am I made of stone?              No return.            I shall speak from my anguish.

8            Bildad                        Does God pervert justice?            God does not despise the pure.

9-10            Job            Who can say to Him: What are You doing?      I am sick of my life.

11            Zofar            If God would speak He would tell you.   Think!  Pray!

12-14            Job            I know as well as you.                        Man. . . few days and packed with trouble

15            Eliphaz   Your own mouth condemns you, not I.

16-17            Job     My Witness is in heaven.   Destruction, I call father.  Where then is hope?

18            Bildad            These the dwellings of the wicked, the place of him that knew not God.

19            Job            How long crush me with words?            I escape by the skin of my teeth.

20            Zophar               Heaven will reveal his guilt.

21            Job            Why do the wicked live . . . ?  

22            Eliphaz   Your wickedness must be great.   Return to Shadai, you will be restored

23-24            Job            Surely  He would  not accuse me.    The adulterer watches for twilight.

25            Bildad (Job?)  He makes peace in his heavens (עושה שלום במרומיו).   Man is worm.

26            Job            The  Rephaim (Shades) tremble before Him.

Job insists on his righteousness and integrity.

27            Job            Until I die I will maintain my integrity

28                        Where is wisdom to be found?

29            Job            I was a father to the needy and I looked into the case of the stranger.

30                        I have become a brother to jackals, a companion to ostriches.

31                        Let Him weigh me on the scale of justice, let God ascertain my integrity.

32-37            Elihu emphatically repeats and summarizes justification arguments.

38-41            God (Yah) responds from the whirlwind.

42:1-6            Job accedes.

     7-8            God rebukes justifiers, theodicy?

     9-16 Narrative, improbable happy ending, all is better than before

The term “theodicy” (Greek theo- + dikē, “order, right”)was coined by German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz in his 1710 work, written in French, Essais de Théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l'homme et l'origine du mal. Theodicies attempt to justify the existence of God in light of evil. (Wikipedia)