Who needs enemies when you have friends like these? Job is a book that so many people have wrestled with. But don’t be discouraged, in this incredible book, you’ll learn all about the supremacy of God in our lives. Listen to Job’s friends as they give him misguided information about the error of his ways, and hear the heart of God as he speaks and puts all their meaningless talk into his perspective.
When things go wrong the first thing I question is whether God is in control – do you? Like he fell off the throne or worse fell asleep on the job. I hate that that is my first reaction, I wish I was one of those people who just went to faith first. But I don’t, my prayers sound like I’m begging God to take back control, I’m begging him to intervene, to wake up and notice what is happening. But the book of Job really challenges that way of thinking.
The Book of Job locates itself within the Sapiential Tradition (Wisdom Books within the Hebrew Bible), in a wider set of genres known as Wisdom Literature. Wisdom literature was commonplace within the ancient Near-Eastern world and can be found throughout ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian societies. It is within this technical grouping that the Book Job is set, chiefly due to the presence of ‘dialogue, discourse, narrative, hymn and lament’ styles of writing.
How are you going in the Book of Job? Don’t your friends look amazing compared to Job’s friends? Here at TYB, we want you to read the Bible and gain a new perspective. Most people read Job and get angry at a God that would do this to him. How dare God do these things! But is that really what is happening in this text, or are we missing the whole point?
The book of Job introduces us to the genre of Old Testament Wisdom Literature. Throughout the history of the Church, there have been numerous debates concerning the authorship and historicity of Job and as such, it is all too easy to be buried under scholarly technicalities that readers will often abandon any real attempt to dive into Job before they’ve even begun.