In my mind, Job is the first book in the Old Testament worth reading. The books before that don’t really engage the (Christian) reader with any sort of religious thought. It’s mostly just history and laws that don’t necessarily apply to you. I will say that Ezra was a relief. Up until that point, the books were written in such a way that God was a tangible, known quantity when He clearly wasn’t. They wrote the books with the idea of, “Look, there’s God and He’s doing X.” Well, if God’s motives and intentions were so transparent, most of what happened in the Old Testament wouldn’t have happened. It’s clear to me that all of the things that happened in Judges, the Samuels, both Kings, and both Chronicles were histories of things that happened and were later ascribed to God’s actions. God may or may not have been involved but it is clear to me that the authors of those books didn’t really have any idea. After all, if God were directly involved with everything that they wrote about you wouldn’t come away from those books with the idea that you better do what God says or else he’ll smite you… eventually. Or maybe the generation after you, or maybe not. In any case everything in those books are really important… if you’re the king of Israel.
Seriously, everything was about the kings, but what about all the people? Yes, they did what was evil in the Lord’s sight, but it sounds like there were entire generations, with their kings, that got away with it. I would hope to see a more consistent doling out of justice… This gets back to my question about the afterlife. All of what happened in those books would have been OK if there were some mention of people getting their just desserts after they died.
So yeah, I’ve been pretty disappointed in the Old Testament so far, but Job is different. Job is troubling, complicated, and I don’t quite understand it. There does seem to be some good information in there though and some really good questions. This was the third time I had read this particular book, and I think I’ll need to read it a few more times… Some of the more interesting tidbits for me are:
1) Satan is named and shown to be a real tormentor, but with God’s cooperation. God gives him permission to do these things to Job. Does that imply that all bad things are done with God’s permission?
2) Job calls out for an intermediary between him and God. This would seem to put the Catholic practice of praying to Mary or any one of the myriad saints into question. After all, no one in the Old Testament was shown to be praying to Abraham or Moses for intervention. Maybe it’s just a time issue, maybe God hadn’t gotten around to implementing that yet. I have a feeling that some people will see this as foretelling the coming of Jesus. The only problem with that is that if Jesus is God, how is He an intermediary?
Anyway, Job made me think and that’s a good thing. I hope there’s more like Job to come!