Book of Job Study Guide

The unknown author is deeply conversant with the Hebrew Scriptures, making him very likely an Israelite. The illustrations and analogies he uses suggest that he was a well-traveled individual and a keen observer of nature.

The Book of Job doesn’t contain any historical allusions to help readers know precisely when and where it was written. Over the centuries, scholars have offered a variety of opinions on this. The Babylonian Talmud (a compendium of Jewish law and biblical commentary) speculates that Job’s author could have lived anytime from the age of the earliest biblical patriarchs (c. 2000 B.C.E.) to the time of the Jewish exiles’ return from captivity in Babylon (after 538 B.C.E.). The Book of Ezekiel references Job, naming Job, along with Bible heroes Noah and Daniel, as one of three paragons of “righteousness.” So if Ezekiel knew Job’s story from reading the Book of Job (as opposed to hearing it through other written or oral traditions), that would date the book before the Babylonian exile. Also, though modern scholars have questioned whether Job was a real, historical person, citations in Ezekiel (and also in the New Testament’s Book of James) suggest that ancient authors took his existence for granted. Overall, however, the history is simply inconclusive. In fact, the book has a deliberately timeless and even trans-national perspective, in that the protagonist isn’t described as an Israelite, and with a couple of exceptions, the Hebrew name for God (Yahweh) isn’t used. In the book’s later history of Christian interpretation, the “Redeemer” Job names in Chapter 19 has been identified with Jesus Christ, and Job’s hope of vindication by his Redeemer has been read as an early hint of the later doctrine of bodily resurrection after death.

The Book of Job is part of the section of the Hebrew Bible (or Tanakh) known as the Ketuvim, or “Writings.” It has much in common with other biblical wisdom literature, especially Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, in its inquiries about life’s meaning and its use of proverbial sayings. There is another ancient text called “The Babylonian Theodicy” in which an unnamed sufferer and his friend dialogue in a cycle of 27 speeches, although unlike in Job, the deity doesn’t appear to provide resolution. Job can be classified as a “problem play,” or a play in which a problem is posed and characters interact with it. Other examples of this genre include Euripides’s Alcestis (which explores problems of fate and mortality), Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure and All’s Well That Ends Well, and Henrik Ibsen’s plays like A Doll’s House (women’s rights) and An Enemy of the People (issues surrounding truth-telling and public opinion). Job’s trials helped inspire Yiddish author Sholem Aleichem’s “Tevye the Dairyman” short stories. Though focused on the character of Samson from the Book of Judges, elements of Job’s character feature in John Milton’s dramatic poem Samson Agonistes. The book influences the character Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov (and Dostoyevsky himself cites the book’s strong influence on him from childhood onward).