The Book of Job

Job is the book the Church reads over her dead, and its hero is named in her prayers for the dying: "Deliver, O Lord, the soul of thy servant, as thou didst deliver Job from his sufferings." In forty-two chapters it moves from a prose story, a rich man tested in heaven's council and stripped on earth in a single day, into a long poem in which Job and his friends argue over why the just suffer, until God Himself speaks. Every chapter is below, with St Jerome's Latin Vulgate beside the Douay-Rheims; this guide introduces the whole.

The name is pronounced "Jobe", hence the common spelling "book of Jobe"; in the Vulgate it is Liber Iob.

Who wrote the Book of Job?

The human author of Job is not known, and the Church has never defined who he was. Bishop Challoner's preface to the Douay-Rheims Bible says it plainly: "It is uncertain who was the writer of it. Some attribute it to Job himself; others to Moses, or some one of the prophets." The attribution to Moses is the old Jewish one, recorded in the Talmud. Those who credit Job himself note that he longs for his words to be "marked down in a book" (Job 19:23).

St Gregory the Great, whose Moralia on Job is the great patristic commentary on the book, sets the question in its true light: it is superfluous to ask who wrote it, "since at any rate the Holy Spirit is confidently believed to have been the Author", as one who reads a great man's letter does not ask with what pen it was written.

Was Job a real man? The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia states that "all the Fathers considered Job an historical person", and Scripture speaks of him as one: God names "Noe, Daniel, and Job" as three just men in Ezechiel 14:14; Tobias 2:12 sets the elder Tobias's trial beside the patience "of holy Job"; and St James writes, "You have heard of the patience of Job" (James 5:11). Some modern scholars treat the book as a poem built around an old tale; the traditional reading holds to the historical Job, while recognising that the speeches are cast in poetry.

When was the Book of Job written?

Two questions are often confused: when Job lived, and when the book was written. The story belongs to the age of the patriarchs: Job offers holocausts for his children himself, as head of his household (Job 1:5), the Law of Moses is never mentioned, and he lives a hundred and forty years after his trial. Challoner, following "the more probable opinion", makes him "of the race of Esau" and identifies him with Jobab, king of Edom, of Genesis 36:33, an identification first found in an appendix to the Greek Septuagint. The land of Hus lay east of the Jordan, near Edom: "O daughter of Edom, that dwellest in the land of Hus" (Lamentations 4:21).

Those who held to Moses or to Job himself as author made the book very old, which is why it is sometimes called the oldest in the Bible. The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia judged it not earlier than Solomon and earlier than Ezechiel, many Catholic scholars placing it in Solomon's reign, in the tenth century before Christ. Many modern scholars date it after the Babylonian exile. The Church has fixed no date.

What is the Book of Job about? A summary

The book has a prose prologue (chapters 1–2), a long poem (3:1–42:6) and a prose epilogue (42:7–16).

The prologue: Job tested (chapters 1–2)

"There was a man in the land of Hus, whose name was Job, and that man was simple and upright, and fearing God, and avoiding evil" (Job 1:1). When "the sons of God", the angels, stand before the Lord, Satan comes among them and claims that Job serves God only for what he receives. God permits him to touch all that Job has, but not his person. In one day raiders carry off his herds, fire from heaven burns his sheep, and a wind from the desert brings down the house on his children. Job falls to the ground and worships: "Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away."

In chapter 2 Satan is allowed to strike Job's body, and he sits on a dunghill scraping his ulcers with a potsherd. His wife bids him "bless God and die", bless standing here, Challoner explains, for its opposite, out of horror at the word. Job answers: "If we have received good things at the hand of God, why should we not receive evil?" Three friends, Eliphaz the Themanite, Baldad the Suhite and Sophar the Naamathite, come to comfort him and sit with him seven days in silence.

Job's lament and the three cycles of debate (chapters 3–31)

In chapter 3 Job breaks the silence and curses the day he was born. The friends speak in turn, and Job answers each. Their argument never changes: God is just, the just prosper and the wicked are punished, so Job must have sinned and should repent. Eliphaz appeals to a vision in the night (chapter 4), Baldad to the wisdom of the ancients (chapter 8), Sophar to God's unsearchable ways (chapter 11).

Job will not confess a sin he has not committed. He confesses that "man cannot be justified, compared with God" (Job 9:2), yet insists that his suffering is no punishment for crimes, and begs God Himself to hear his cause. The first cycle runs through chapter 14, with its meditation on the brevity of life; the second, beginning with Eliphaz in chapter 15, reaches its summit in Job's confession of the Redeemer in chapter 19; in the third, beginning in chapter 22, Baldad's last speech is only six verses and Sophar does not speak again.

Job then speaks alone. The poem on wisdom in chapter 28 asks where wisdom is to be found, and answers: "Behold the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom: and to depart from evil, is understanding." In chapters 29–31 Job recalls his former honour, laments his present contempt, and makes a solemn oath of innocence: "I made a covenant with my eyes, that I would not so much as think upon a virgin" (31:1).

The speeches of Eliu (chapters 32–37)

A younger man, "Eliu the son of Barachel the Buzite", who has kept silence out of respect for his elders, now speaks, angry with Job "because he said he was just before God" and with the friends because they had found no answer (Job 32:2). Across chapters 32–37 he argues that God speaks to man through suffering, to correct and to save him, and that no man may accuse the Almighty of injustice. When the Lord rebukes the friends at the end, Eliu is not named among them.

The Lord answers out of the whirlwind (chapters 38–42:6)

"Then the Lord answered Job out of a whirlwind" (Job 38:1). He gives no account of Job's trial. Instead He asks question after question: "Where wast thou when I laid up the foundations of the earth?" He shows Job the sea shut up with doors, the morning, the treasures of the snow and the lion's prey, then the wild goats, the ostrich and the war horse (chapter 39). The Lord speaks a second time, and sets before him two great beasts, Behemoth and Leviathan (chapters 40–41). In chapter 42 Job answers: "With the hearing of the ear, I have heard thee, but now my eye seeth thee. Therefore I reprehend myself, and do penance in dust and ashes."

The epilogue: Job restored (42:7–16)

The Lord's wrath is kindled against Eliphaz and his two friends, "because you have not spoken the thing that is right before me, as my servant Job hath". "The Lord also was turned at the penance of Job, when he prayed for his friends. And the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before." He has again seven sons and three daughters, named Dies, Cassia and Cornustibii, and he dies "an old man, and full of days".

The meaning of Job and the Catholic reading

Suffering is not always punishment. The friends' error is to reason that all suffering is the wage of personal sin, and God says they have not spoken rightly. Our Lord refutes the same error before the man born blind: "Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents; but that the works of God should be made manifest in him" (John 9:3). In Job, suffering is a trial permitted by God to prove a just man. We treat the wider question in What Does God Say About Suffering?

Providence and the power of Satan. St Thomas Aquinas wrote his literal commentary on Job to show that human affairs are governed by divine providence. The prologue teaches that Satan can do nothing without God's leave, and only within the limits God sets. The Catechism of the Council of Trent draws this lesson on the petition "lead us not into temptation".

God's wisdom beyond our reckoning. The Lord's answer is not an explanation but a revelation of Himself, whose ways man cannot measure. St Paul quotes the book: "I will catch the wise in their own craftiness" (1 Corinthians 3:19, from Job 5:13), and echoes 41:2 in Romans 11:35. Job stands with Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Wisdom among the wisdom books.

Job, a figure of Christ. For St Gregory the Great, "the blessed Job conveys a type of the Redeemer". Job's name, he notes, is interpreted "grieving", and that grief sets forth either the Passion of our Mediator or the travails of Holy Church; the innocent man struck and scorned, who at the end prays for those who wronged him and obtains their pardon, is read as a figure of Christ. The Moralia, begun at the prompting of St Leander of Seville, runs to thirty-five books and reads the text in its historical, allegorical and moral senses; see our life of St Gregory the Great. The Roman Catechism also cites the friends of Job, forgiven through his prayer, in defence of the intercession of the saints.

The resurrection of the body. Job's confession in chapter 19 is one of the clearest witnesses to the resurrection in the Old Testament. Challoner's note says that verses 25 to 27 "shew Job's explicit belief in his Redeemer, and also of the resurrection of the flesh". The Catechism of the Council of Trent cites it, with Daniel 12:2, among the prophecies of the resurrection: "In my flesh I shall see my God." See The Resurrection of the Body.

Behemoth and Leviathan. The two beasts of chapters 40 and 41 show the Creator's power over creatures no man can master. Challoner's notes take Behemoth, from the Hebrew word for a beast, for the elephant, as "many authors explain", and Leviathan for "the whale or some sea monster"; some readers today see dinosaurs in them, which no traditional commentator proposed. Mystically, the Douay note on 41:25 reads Leviathan, "king over all the children of pride", as "the devil, who is king over all the proud".

Famous verses from the Book of Job

Job 1:21. "Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away: as it hath pleased the Lord, so is it done: blessed be the name of the Lord." (Job 1)

Job 7:1. "The life of man upon earth is a warfare, and his days are like the days of a hireling" (Job 7); in the Vulgate, Militia est vita hominis super terram.

Job 13:15. "Although he should kill me, I will trust in him" (Job 13).

Job 14:1. "Man born of a woman, living for a short time, is filled with many miseries" (Job 14).

Job 19:25–26. "For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and in the last day I shall rise out of the earth. And I shall be clothed again with my skin, and in my flesh I will see my God" (Job 19). It is among the most chosen of our Bible verses for funerals.

Job 38:4. "Where wast thou when I laid up the foundations of the earth? tell me if thou hast understanding" (Job 38).

Readers comparing the Douay with the King James Version should know that from chapter 39 the Vulgate divides the text differently from the Hebrew: the Douay's 39:31–35 is the KJV's 40:1–5, Behemoth is at Douay 40:10 (KJV 40:15), and Leviathan begins at Douay 40:20 (KJV 41:1). Our chapter pages follow the Vulgate numbering.

Its place in the canon and in the liturgy

Job is a protocanonical book, received without dispute by Jews and Christians, and so it stands in Protestant Bibles as in Catholic ones. In the Vulgate and the Douay it follows Esther and opens the wisdom books, before the Psalms; the Council of Trent, in its decree on the canon (Session IV, 8 April 1546), lists "Tobias, Judith, Esther, Job, the Davidical Psalter". St Jerome translated it from the Hebrew in the early 390s, likening it in his preface to an eel that slips away the harder one grips it; see the Latin Vulgate Bible.

In the 1962 Breviary, Job is read at Matins from the first Sunday of September, before Tobias, Judith and Esther. Above all it is the book of the Office of the Dead: all nine lessons of its Matins are taken from Job, beginning with Parce mihi, Domine, "Spare me, Lord, for my days are nothing" (7:16), and the responsory Credo quod Redemptor meus vivit sings the confession of chapter 19. The Church prays it for the departed, above all on All Souls' Day; the Hours are in our Breviary. In the 1962 Missal the Offertory of the Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost takes its words from the opening of the book: Vir erat in terra Hus, nomine Job, "There was a man in the land of Hus, whose name was Job."

How to read the Book of Job

Read chapters 1–2 first in one sitting: everything else depends on the scene in heaven, which Job himself never sees. Read the debate of chapters 3–31 slowly: the friends say many true things about God but apply them falsely to Job, as God's verdict in chapter 42 shows. Then read chapters 38–42 at one sitting. In time of grief, the lessons of the Office of the Dead (chapters 7, 10, 13, 14, 17 and 19) are a short way into the book.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who wrote the Book of Job?

The human author is unknown. Challoner's Douay-Rheims preface records that some attribute it to Job himself and others to Moses or one of the prophets; the Mosaic attribution is the old Jewish tradition. St Gregory the Great teaches that the question matters little, since the Holy Spirit is the Author of the book.

When was the Book of Job written?

The Church has fixed no date. Job lived in the patriarchal age; the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia judged the book no earlier than Solomon and earlier than Ezechiel, many Catholic scholars favouring Solomon's reign, while many modern scholars date it after the exile.

What is the main message of the Book of Job?

The book teaches that God governs all things by His providence, that suffering is not always the punishment of personal sin, and that man must trust God's wisdom where he cannot understand it. Job's hope of seeing his Redeemer in his own flesh points beyond this life to the resurrection.

How many chapters are in the Book of Job?

The Book of Job has 42 chapters. Chapters 1–2 and 42:7–16 are prose; chapters 3:1–42:6 are poetry. It is one of the longer books of the Old Testament, 1,070 verses in the Douay; from chapter 39 the Douay verse numbers differ from the King James Version.

Was the Book of Job written before Genesis?

Some call Job the oldest book of the Bible, because its story belongs to the patriarchal age and Jewish tradition attributed it to Moses. The Church has not decided the question; the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia placed its composition after Moses, no earlier than Solomon.

Who is Eliu (Elihu) in the Book of Job?

Eliu, "the son of Barachel the Buzite", is a younger man who speaks in chapters 32–37 after the three friends fall silent. He rebukes Job for justifying himself and the friends for condemning him without an answer, and teaches that God speaks to man through suffering.

What are Behemoth and Leviathan in the Book of Job?

They are two great beasts described by the Lord in chapters 40 and 41 to show His power over all creation. Challoner's notes take Behemoth for the elephant and Leviathan for the whale or some sea monster; mystically, Leviathan is understood of the devil.

What does "I know that my Redeemer liveth" mean?

In Job 19:25–27 Job, abandoned by all, declares his certainty that his Redeemer lives and that "in my flesh I will see my God". Challoner and the Catechism of the Council of Trent read it as an explicit profession of the resurrection of the body. The Church sings it in the Office of the Dead.

Read the whole Book of Job verse by verse, Latin and English, in the Iter Fidei Catholic Bible app.

Sources. The Book of Job, Douay-Rheims (Challoner) with the Latin Vulgate; Bishop Challoner's preface and notes to Job; St Jerome, Preface to the Book of Job; St Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job, preface and letter to St Leander; St Thomas Aquinas, Expositio super Iob ad litteram; Council of Trent, Session IV, Decretum de canonicis Scripturis (1546); Catechism of the Council of Trent, on the eleventh article of the Creed and on the sixth and seventh petitions of the Lord's Prayer; Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), "Job"; Breviarium Romanum (1962), Officium Defunctorum; Missale Romanum (1962), Dominica XXI post Pentecosten.