Commentary on Job 1:1; 2:1-10

It’s easy to sit back and admire the faithfulness of Job. It’s harder to sit with the book and grapple with what actually happens in it. We may be inclined to look for ways to make the story seem more palatable—to make God come off a little better—whether by justifying divine acts in the opening scenes or by trying to wrest a happy ending out of the book. But it’s worth resisting that temptation. The profound power of the book of Job comes precisely from the most disturbing aspects of its opening, along with its choice not to resolve the story neatly at the end.

In verse 1, we meet Job, the man whose horrific and unjust suffering we’ll have to sit with for the next 40-some chapters. From the first line of the story, it’s emphasized that Job is an innocent man. He’s “blameless and upright”; he “feared God and turned away from evil” (1:1).¹ Job’s innocence is reaffirmed twice more in the opening narrative (1:8; 2:3).

After the first verse of the book, the lection skips to chapter 2, where a scene is unfolding in heaven. But the part the lection skips is important. The scene in chapter 2 is the second of two meetings in heaven. The scene of the first meeting includes pivotal, if disturbing, information.

The divine council

In 1:6, as in 2:1, the benei elohim assemble before God in heaven. Some Bibles translate benei elohim as “angels,” but that’s not what the Hebrew means. In the Bible, angels are one specific type of divine being among many others (for example, seraphim and cherubim—different from one another, and both only conflated with angels in later theology—spirits of various kinds, and more), and the word for “angels” isn’t used here.² Instead, it’s a Hebrew phrase referring to “divine beings” in general. It literally means the “offspring of God,”³ and just as the grammatically parallel phrase “the offspring of Israel” means “the Israelites,” this phrase means “the divine beings” (or, as I like to say, godlets).

The two scenes of the divine beings assembling before God in heaven reflect a tradition we see in other biblical texts too. Scholars usually refer to this as the “divine council” or “divine assembly.” That terminology is in the Bible itself: “God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment” (Psalm 82:1). Divine-council scenes are also prominent in the writing of ancient Israel’s neighbors from Canaan to Mesopotamia, and in those texts, many lower-level divine beings (who serve the chief god) have individual names.

In the Bible, even though most divine beings aren’t given names, they have different recognizable roles, and in some divine-council scenes, one such being steps into the spotlight (for example, the “spirit of falsehood” in 1 Kings 22:19–22). Throughout this tradition, God rules over the divine beings and acts as judge in the divine court. (Heads up: that’s going to be relevant.)

The satan

In Job 1:6 and 2:1, none of the attendees of the divine council have names, but the one who steps into the spotlight has a title: the satan. Satan is a Hebrew noun meaning “adversary.” It eventually becomes a name, but even when Capital-S Satan does make an appearance in the Hebrew Bible, it’s not the same as the devil of the New Testament—there’s no devil in the Hebrew Bible.

The Adversary isn’t evil and isn’t God’s opponent. He’s on God’s staff, and his job is to be an adversary—not to God, but to people (for example, 1 Chronicles 21:1). In the divine-court picture, where God is the judge, the Adversary is essentially the divine prosecutor. (We get to see this in action in Zechariah 3, where the prophet’s vision opens the doors to the court in session.)

So when God turns to the satan and asks, “Have you considered my servant Job?” (1:8), the divine judge has just prodded the prosecutor to look into an innocent man.

This should rattle us. God is not naïve. The satan is only doing his job, and it’s at God’s behest. As one scholar puts it, “Given the Satan’s role, his response can hardly have been unexpected, and of all the beings in heaven and earth, he is surely the one least likely to reply, ‘Yes, he is jolly good, isn’t he?’”⁴

This is why the part the lectionary skips is important. The lection moves directly from the introduction of the “blameless and upright” man to the second heavenly scene, where God tells the satan that Job remains blameless, adding, “… although you incited me against him” (2:3).

“Wait,” you can almost hear the satan say: “I incited you?” When we look back at Job 1, we see something far less comfortable. The Adversary did unconscionable things to Job—but it was at God’s prompting.

The problem

How could God do such a thing?

That is the great unanswered question of the book of Job. It’s not even “Why would God do such a thing?” We know why, and it doesn’t make it better. The first two chapters of the book describe exactly why the innocent man is suffering. God and the satan have a frank discussion about the “why.” Their conversation isn’t about somehow improving upon Job’s already-blameless state, but about finding out if the man has a breaking point. This process—which includes killing Job’s children—is an experiment. If God’s initial nod to the satan should rattle us, this should leave us cold.

It’s tempting to clean up this text, to explain it away as something—anything—that would give spiritual value to Job’s suffering. But finding a way to defend God’s behavior—in a way the ancient writers chose not to—doesn’t do justice to this complex, thoughtful, ancient reflection. What the biblical text actually does here is more profound.⁵

The ancient writer lays the blame squarely at God’s feet. These opening chapters display the divine injustice that Job spends the rest of the book agonizing over. Even the conclusion of the book painfully lacks resolution. (Stay tuned for comments on that lection in three weeks.)

This text gives voice to something—something we might think doesn’t sound reverent, but have probably felt. Like the psalms that accuse God of violently mistreating God’s people despite their steadfastness (for example, You have degraded us and set us up to be slaughtered, we’ve been faithful to you but you’ve crushed us; Psalm 44), this text gives voice to the cry that if God is in charge, God is accountable for our suffering. It gives room for our grief, anger, and protest.

The wisdom of the book of Job is in its refusal to offer an easy out. Instead of reassuring ourselves with solutions that the book never gives, we can learn from the ancient writers, who grappled with the worst possibilities regarding God’s loyalty to us. They wrestled with the injustice of God without resorting to the kind of pat answer that, frankly, none of us cherish in the midst of suffering.

The Bible is full of much more reassuring texts. But what’s disturbing about this text is what makes it meaningful. Job 1–2, unsanitized, set the stage for the book’s poignant expression of the most troubling questions about the nature of God. The ancient writers knew a world full of suffering, and they wrestled and pondered, much as we do now.

Notes

1. All biblical translations are from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition unless otherwise indicated.
2. Esther J. Hamori, God’s Monsters: Vengeful Spirits, Deadly Angels, Hybrid Creatures, and Divine Hitmen of the Bible (Minneapolis: Broadleaf Books, 2023).
3. The translations “sons of God” and “children of God” are both misleading, the first for its implication that the divine beings are male, and the second for its more frequent use referring to human beings.
4. Stuart Weeks, An Introduction to the Study of Wisdom Literature (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 53–54.
5. This essay is based on my fuller exploration of Job and other difficult texts in Hamori, God’s Monsters, especially 75–104, 269–72.