The satan, vis-à-vis Job’s enemy, has made a wager with the Lord, asking: “Does Job serve the Lord for nothing?” His challenge was that the whole method of the Lord’s treatment of people was a farse. It didn’t reflect reality. It is all about stuff. Job served the Lord for what he could get, not for any altruistic reason. Job wasn’t righteous for nothing. He behaved as he did, because he received blessings of wealth from the Lord. In other words, righteousness was only as real as the Lord’s blessings. Take away the blessings, and righteousness would disappear, as well! However, we don’t hear about Job’s satan after chapter two. In fact, he has no active role beyond Job 2:7. Afterward, his surrogates speak for him, Job’s wife and later Job’s friends.
First, comes Job’s wife. Interestingly, although she has also lost her children and the prosperity she once shared with Job, she doesn’t mourn with him over what was lost. Instead, she plays a role as the satan’s representative and seeks to push Job down the path that would prove the satan was correct about the role of stuff in Job’s life. Job’s wife offers the immediate solution to his problems: end it all, commit suicide, and it will all be over. Without the stuff, life simply isn’t worth living! Nevertheless, Job rejects this idea, telling his wife that she is behaving foolishly. Thus, with the immediate solution to his problems rejected, Job’s wife is never mentioned again in the book as an active participant.
For the next 23 chapters of the book, Job’s three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar present themselves in the role of the satan’s surrogates. They each have a different role to play, but together they also have the corporate role of representing the elite of the world, in that they represent the wisdom of the ancient world. They are the wisest of the wise. They are the crème de la crème, the very best of the world. If there is an answer to any problem experienced by an individual or a group, these men would have the answer.
Individually, Eliphaz will direct his advice to Job according to his own personal experiences. Personal experience is his reality. Bildad, on the other hand, focus his attention on the ancients, tradition, the wisdom of the ages. He is the philosopher of the group. Finally, Zophar lives and breathes logic. For him everything is black and white. Life must be lived methodically; we might even say scientifically.
Nevertheless, if the Book of Job begins in an actual heavenly court, it causes these wise men, the crème de la crème of the ancient world, to behave like the court jesters, fools, whose presumptuous guesses come out as shallow and inadequate reasonings. Their wisdom is flawed, and it is recognized as such by the lowliest of readers, who can read and understand the first two chapters of the book. The reader, not the friends, is privy to the real reason for Job’s present and sorry predicament. So, even the understanding of an unschooled reader will trump the flawed wisdom of the wisest of the wise, who, although they represent the best the world has to offer, for the purpose of the book, end up playing the role of court jesters, pushing the agenda of the satan in the text!
“Does Job serve God for nothing?” This is the question the book is supposed to answer. There are other questions, as well, such as “why do the innocent suffer?” and “is God unjust or a bully or insensitive?” While these secondary questions aren’t answered directly and clearly, they are answered. Albeit, one must discover them through a little research and reflection.
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