The long-suffering Job is a pagan who lived in a pagan country, whose story fell into the Jewish Old Testament not so much because of the sufferings of the righteous man, but because he cried out to the Almighty when misfortunes fell on him without losing his faith.
If we tell the plot of the book in everyday life, then it is about how God argued with Satan that the righteous Job would stop believing if his wealth, family and health were taken away from him. God agreed to give Job into the hands of Satan, but set a condition: he can take everything from him except his soul. So God decided to test the faith of the righteous.
The book of Job consists of 25 chapters and is among the teaching (you can read it here). The book is filled with deep philosophical and theological meanings: about justice-injustice, about faith and punishment, that the question "For what?" does not lead to an understanding of the meaning of what is happening.
Only the question "For what?", Addressed to the future, helps to find the meaning of what happened and find a way out of it. Philosophers and theologians, artists and writers turned to the Book of Job, and quotes from it became winged:
God gave, God took;
Are we really going to receive good from God and not accept evil? (among the people - "Glory to God for everything");
Blessed is the man whom God admonishes.
Promotional video:
Each of us at least once in his life found himself in a Job-situation, but did everyone look for a way out in the ways of Job? One of the teachers, when we studied the Old Testament, expressed the following thought: if, after reading the story of Job, you will be on the side of friends, then you are a Protestant, even if you are baptized into Orthodoxy.
If you sympathize with Job and understand his questioning to God, you are an Orthodox believer. In other words, Job's story is a litmus test of the mood: toward the earthly and the rational, or the heavenly and the Divine. The Job Situation isn't just about stress, frustration, or conflict.
This is a situation of experiencing a deep life crisis, from which a person cannot get out by ordinary means, trying to find the cause of what happened on the paths of everyday advice, which once led to well-being.
An example of this is another story in which the hero could not find a solution, because he constantly regretted the past, answering the question "Why?". This is the story of Joseph K. from Kafka's novel The Trial. The story of a prosperous bank clerk with a good salary
but the threat of a criminal trial suddenly hung over him, the reasons for which he was not told. Joseph does not understand either his own guilt or what he is accused of. He only has a fear that everything will eventually end in execution.
The culmination of the story is the conversation between the hero and the Priest, who told him such a parable. A guard (Priest) stands at the gate and does not let the villager (Joseph K.) enter. The villager first begs the gatekeeper to let him in, then bribes him.
He takes it, explaining that he is doing this solely to calm the soul of the beggar, so that he does not think he has not done something that he considered necessary to do. But even after that, he does not miss it. The parable does not say that the guard uses force, he just stands and talks to him.
The villager, after unsuccessful attempts to obtain permission to enter the gate, died near them. After that, the guard says a sacramental phrase that he stood at the gate, intended only for the villager, no one else needed them.
In other words, the villager did not follow the path that was intended exclusively for him, because to enter these gates, one had to knock, and not beg the gatekeeper, demand, as Job did, incessantly appealing to God, and not wait for everything to somehow settle by itself.
Job is trying to reach out to God and get from Him an explanation of the meaning of what is happening, explain to him - not what his wealth, prosperity and family were taken away for (God yes - God took), but how to find the meaning of what happened. The Book of Job says that our world ceases to be absurd if a person brings meaning to it.
And this is its main function, the main purpose of a person. There is such a problem: how to make four out of three matches without breaking them. Ordinary logic does not work here; it is necessary to enter a different space of thinking. So it is with the Job situation. At first, Job tries to explain what happened as a punishment for some sins he committed, which his wife and friends convince him of, urging him to delve into his past.
But Job doubts their advice, the possibility with their help to find the meaning of the situation that has arisen. He revolts against common sense, against friends and against God. He does not believe in the injustice of God, although he sees that the world is unfair.
The clash of knowledge about the injustice of the world and faith in the justice of God introduces the long-suffering Job into a paradox, which he cannot solve by a simple way of common sense and falls into despair. He knows no sin and no guilt behind him.
And if he admits guilt, which does not exist, it will be tantamount to a lie, which means that God is making a mistake, punishing him for nothing. But Job does not believe that calamities and punishment are always the judgment of God for sins, as his friends say, demanding that he confess his guilt, since there is no punishment without guilt (remember Gleb Zheglov).
But Job continues to turn to the Almighty for an answer, believing that only He can clarify the situation. According to Job's conviction, God is incompatible with the absurd, and therefore tries to overcome the absurd, arguing with God about His righteousness. And what happens in the situation with Joseph K.?
The priest, in response to the words of Joseph K. that all his words and parables are lies, tells him that one should not take everything for the truth, but one must understand that the world is whole and everything that is in it is a necessity, one should not choose from him only what he likes or wants to see. Acceptance of the integrity of the world, in which there is good and bad, wheat and tares, which are also necessary, like wheat, allows you to find meaning and get out of the dead end of the uncertainty and absurdity of the world.
Job's overcoming of absurdity with the help of rebellion against God justifies his insolence, and Joseph K., without trying to comprehend what happened to him, himself takes the position of God, passing judgment on the Priest (guard), thereby blocking his way to overcome the absurdity of the situation, in which turned out to be.
Tina Guy