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The Story of Job


Abigail
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Sky, I'm starting this as a new thread. I've done just a very preliminary search so far. The truth is, you could find almost as many different answers to your questions regarding Job as you can find Jews. Private interpretation is definitely approved of among Jews.

However, here's what I have so far:

1. There is debate as to whether the story is literal and historical verses a parable to help us understand that suffering is as much a part of life as joy is.

2. There seems to be a great number of Rabbi's who believe, via oral traditions, that Job lived during the same time period as Moses. According to this tradition, when Moses went before Pharoh to seek freedom for the Hebrews, Pharoh sought out the advice of three men. They were: Bilam, Iyov (Job) and Yisro.

Bilam gave bad advice and was killed. Yisro fled and his decendents became Judges in the Sanhedrin.

Iyov (Job) remained silent and was later punished with pain and suffering. Here is a quote from an article (I've come across this same idea in several articles now):

"Heaven rewards and punishes with the poetic justice of measure for measure. The advocate of death by violence ends up the victim of it while the courageous defender of a people is rewarded with grandchildren who rise to that people's highest ranks. But what is the relationship between the silence of Iyov and the pains he suffered?

Iyov was a righteous man and his failure to protest against Egyptian genocide was certainly based on his conviction that Pharaoh had already made up his mind and that his outcry would be futile. Heaven inflicted pain upon him and he cried out. Does crying out bring the pain to an end? Yet one cries because it hurts. In similar fashion Iyov was held accountable for failing to cry out because it hurt to hear such a cruel decree even if he could not change it. "

I'll keep looking and share more

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More on Job

I said earlier there were many who believed Job lived during Moses's time. Here is another version.

Many believe Job lived during Abraham's time and eventually married one of Jacob's daughters. In this version it is said that through all of his suffering and then the great deliverance he received, he turned Abraham's father from idolatry. Additionally, in this version, it is said that Job was even more "upright" than Abraham.

Another interesting thing I have come across is that despite the various differences regarding the history of who Job was, pretty much all agree he was not of Jewish lineage.

Here are some more tidbits I've found:

"Eliphaz’s speech presents the view that Job is unjustified in his complaints:

A. God is absolutely just, therefore Job has sinned.

B. (4:19) Those who dwell in clay houses, whose faith is dust, are crushed like a moth—perishable—this is what it is to be human—mortality means suffering, it is a human condition"

"Testament of Job

1. Post biblical work written 300 years before the Mishna

2. Parallel story in Greek, probably between 100 BCE and 100 CE. Another story about an old guy about to die who calls his children together and gives them his testament/will."

"Saadia Gaon (882-942; philosopher)

1. Two fundamental pillars of Job—the parameters of the entire discussion of Job’s two beliefs:

A. God is absolutely just. Job never denies this, he just wants to understand it.

B. Job is a tsadik (his friends deny this). The book’s problem is how to square these 2 points with the facts of Job’s life.

2. At the end of the book, Saadia posits that until God spoke, Job’s knowledge of God was hearsay. In the last chapter he has reached a new superior understanding of God"

Rambam (1135-1204; also known as Maimonides;

the greatest of Jewish philosophers)

1. Rambam says the reader has to be well qualified to enter into the questions posed by Job. Only people who have studied logic, physics, mathematics and metaphysics are capable—a very small audience!

2. Many Tanach passages may not be taken literally—one needs to look beyond the words to determine what they are trying to say.

3. Rambam says evil is a privation of form—all evil does not come from God (consistent with his notion of free will [JPA]).

4. Three categories of evil:

A. Natural evils deriving from the material world, such as earthquakes, eclipses, etc. Rambam posits that these are relatively seldom and are not generally bad in the long run. If they happened more frequently, they would destroy the world.

B. Moral Evil—between people, such as violence and dominance. These are more numerous but come about because we cause them; from our own free will.

C. Moral-Intellectual Evils—things we do to ourselves, primarily due to ignorance. Most frequent blame goes to individual selves.

5. Rambam rejects the anthropocentrism of humanity—thus, Job is not so important in the cosmic picture; but Satan is more important. (Idea is that if heavenly bodies are superior to man, then they must not exist for human beings. We are high on the ladder, but there are higher rungs than us.)

6. Rambam wants to deflate man and to blunt Job’s complaint—(essentially takes God’s position.)

7. Rambam reads Job as a mashal (example)—Evidence: historians cannot agree on Job’s facts, therefore it is easier to understand what everything means if we look at it as a parable which needs explaining. He identifies characters as B’nei Elohim, Satan and others:

A. B’nai Elohim are the angels, who live in the upper world. Satan lives in the land and wanders. There is no relation between them.

B. All Job’s sufferings are caused by Satan directly. However, this fact is unknown at first to Job and his friends—they all think God is the cause—“no evil can come from high—lo ra ml’ma’alah.”

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Danny:

I would certainly like to see your historical perspective on Job. Once again, don't overheat your library activities on my account, its not that important.

Abby:

Thanks, you said a lot.

The name appears in Genesis 46:13 as a descendant of Issachar. Most scholars agree this was not the same person. Youngs concordance lists him as a descendant of Shem, although I can find no justification for this. I do however have a wierd theory about Job, too wierd to state cause I dont want you to think I am wierd. And as I said, its just a theory.

If your in the synagogue, I was wondering if you could have a Rabbi that is good in Hebrew give me the literal translation of Job 42:17 (the last verse) I am most interested in knowing if the term death appears in the literal Hebrew. (While I am good at Greek, I am awful in Hebrew. I have these Hebrew lexicons, but to me its like reading a language that gets translated in reverse and I have no training in it.)

I have found considerable consolation in the words of Elihu (the fourth person not being one of Job's "friends".) The term "Eli" meaning God I believe and therefore making him a type of Christ. In "babes and suckling" speech, Eli Who? , that being that Christ had not been revealed.

God Bless icon_smile.gif:)-->

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Sky,

I am interested in your "weird theory" no matter how weird you think it is. icon_smile.gif:)-->

I will look the verse up the next time I get to the library at the synogogue. (They have the most incredible library there - open to all). I will also ask the Rabbi if I get a chance. I was going to say too, if you want to discuss OT with a Rabbi try a Reform or Reconstructionist synogogue - they are more likely to be open to someone who is not Jewish. icon_smile.gif:)-->

I wasn't able to find much on your verse beyond the English translation, but here is what I did find:

"Job, on seeing death approach, gave a cithara to his first daughter, Day ("Yemimah"), a censer to his second, Kassiah ("Perfume"), and a timbrel to his third, Amaltheas Horn ("?eren ha-Puk"), that they might welcome the holy angels who came to take his soul; and while they played and glorified God in the holy dialect, He who sitteth upon the Great Chariot came and took the soul of Job away with a kiss and carried it eastward, where the Heavenly Throne is erected. Amid the singing of his daughters and the great mourning of the people, particularly the poor and the fatherless, his body was taken to the grave. The dirge is given at the close of the book (ch. xi-xii., ed. Kohler; xli.-lii., ed. James)."

"The English word "resurrection" means a re + standing, or standing (rising) again. The Greek is anastasis and occurs first in Matthew 22:23 for a total of 40x in the Christian Bible. The first occurrence of the word in the Jewish Greek Bible (LXX) is in the negative at Job 14:12, "and man that has lain down (in death) shall certainly not rise again." Or, "will not be resurrected." That a resurrection is possible is inferred in verse 13, 14.

There are two other occurrences of forms of ANASTASIS in some versions of the LXX at Job 42:17, ‘And Job died, an old man and full of days: and it is written that he will rise again (ANASTESESTHAI) with those whom the Lord raises up (ANISTESIN).’ This could be rendered: "that he will be resurrected with those the Lord resurrects." So, the first occurrence of "resurrect," or "resurrection" is in the Book of Job which is thought to record events from the Sixteenth Century BC between Joseph and Moses."

Rashi - who is one of the two most well known and accepted Rabbi's who offered comentaries states Job 42:17 this : "Then Job died, being old and sated with days....

and sated with days Heb. ????????.From ????????? he says ????????, in the construct state."

For the complete book of Job with Rashi's commentary go here

In my search for your verse, I also found this, which I thought you might find interesting:

"Like the Patriarchs (comp. Test. Patr., Adam, 14, and Tan., Waye?i, 8, ed. Buber, and Bo, 2), Job in a farewell address to his children reviews his life, telling them that he is of the generation of Abraham, a descendant of Esau (Gen. l.c.), and was known as "Jobab," a rich ruler of the land of Uz (Ausitis), before God called him "Job" because of his martyrdom (see Job, Critical View); that his second wife, their mother, was Dinah, the daughter of Jacob (comp. B. B. 15b). Like Abraham, he had changed from idolatry to the worship of the true God, the Maker of heaven and earth (comp. Num. R. xiv.); yet as he had set out to destroy the idols of the land, the work of Satan, he had been told by the archangel of God to prepare for a life-long battle with Satan, but at the same time he had been promised lasting renown as a great spiritual athlete and a crown of amaranth in the world to come, after the resurrection. "I shall from love of God endure until the end," Job said, and received from the angel the seal of life (comp. So?ah v. 5, and Kohler, l.c. pp. 271, 316). Satan, after having first attempted, in the guise of a beggar, to get Job into his power, but without success, secured from God permission (comp. Targ. Job i. 12) to take away all his possessions (ch. i.-ii., ed. Kohler; ch. i.-viii., ed. James)."

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Here is what Rashi says about Elihu:

32:2

"Then Elihu the son of Barachel the Buzite of the family of Ram became angry; he became angry with Job because he thought himself [more] righteous than God.

of the family of Ram Abraham, as it is stated (Josh. 14:15): “the greatest man among the Anakim.” This is Abraham.

than God More than the Omnipresent."

This is very interesting (it is not from Rashi)

"Abraham was the first Jew to be circumcised, and the covenant of circumcision is known to this day as “the covenant of Abraham.” Thus, whoever fulfills the commandment of being circumcised and guards the purity of his sexuality merits Abraham’s protection. Allegorically, this simply means that guarding sexual purity is sufficient merit to be spared the ordeal of Purgatory even if one has sinned in other ways that would have otherwise required that he undergo the purging process.

Now, this caused Terah to be reincarnated. When he returned, he descended as a woman and married according to leviratic law.

I.e., she married the brother of her deceased, childless husband. In such a case, the first child of this union is considered the child of the deceased man.

Although Terah repented of his sin of idolatry before he died, he evidently had to be reincarnated in order to right his sexual sins. He thus descended as a woman—presumably to experience female consciousness and thereby realize the seriousness of having “used” women. As a woman, s/he suffered being childless and losing her husband. S/he then had to marry the deceased husband’s brother.

The key to the rectification of Terah’s sexual sins was the sexual purity and idealism of his son, Abraham. The fact that Abraham (re-)introduced the idea of sexual integrity into the world allowed Terah’s soul to be set straight.

The result of this union was Job. Job [thus lived] in the generation of Isaac. He was not comforted by the words of any of his [three] friend who came to console him. He was only comforted when he met Isaac, [who is called in the book of Job] Elihu ben Berachel the Buzite.[7] Isaac was called Elihu ben Berachel [literally, “Elihu the son of he whom G-d has blessed”], for G-d blessed him. [Elihu ben Berachel] was “from the family of Ram,” meaning Abraham.

Job, like Isaac, was a grandson of Terah. He lived in “the land of Utz,” and Utz was the son of Nahor, Abraham’s brother. After G-d inflicted suffering upon Job, his three friends came to console him. But Job was not consoled by their words, since they each tried to convince him that he had done something to deserve this suffering. Only the younger Elihu was able to console Job."

And here is more from another source

"WHO WAS ELIHU?

Enter Elihu. Who is Elihu? Elihu was a member of the Ram family [Job 32:2] and was therefore a descendant of Ram. Who was Ram? Perhaps a better way to pose the question: Who was the father of the Ram family? Av = Father, therefore, the father of the Ram family was Av Ram; more commonly known as Abram. The Talmud in Bava Basra 15b records that Elihu was a descendant of Avraham. Elihu's name is spelled two different ways: five times with an aleph at the end, but twice [Job 32:4, 35:1], without an aleph at the end. Without the aleph, Elihu's name is spelled the same way that Elijah's name (Eliyahu) is occasionally spelled. Is there significance to that "coincidence"? Is there a relationship between Elihu and Elijah? Malachi said that Elijah will come before the great and dreadful day of the HaShem [Malachi 3:23]. It is interesting that Elihu came before the great and dreadful day of HaShem's revelation to Job. The sages tell us that the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob kept the Torah before it was given on Mount Sinai. That is, the patriarchs comprehended the spiritual realities of the Torah that was ultimately revealed at Mount Sinai and lived in accordance with that understanding. The spiritual knowledge and understanding of the patriarchs was far beyond the level of even the most righteous Gentile Noachide. (Keep in mind that all Israelites, prior to the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai, were obligated to keep the Seven Laws of Noah and were therefore Noachides in the technical sense). Elihu was from the family of Abraham. According to the Artscroll Translation [page 274, footnote to Job 32:2], the Ramban informs us that Elihu was Abraham's descendant and that Elihu was steeped in the traditions of Abraham's faith. Elihu partook of Abraham's spiritual knowledge and understanding. It was from that wellspring of spiritual knowledge of Torah that Elihu was able to 'correct' the deficiencies in the Noachide theology of Job. What does Elihu's name mean? Eli means "my G-d". Hu are the middle two letters (Y-V) of HaShem’s name (Y-K-V-K). Elihu (aleph-lamed-yud-heh-vav) could also be a contraction of two words: Eli (aleph-lamed-yud) and Yahu (yud-heh-vav). The two yud are contracted into a single yud. The aleph (which has no sound) at the end may be a polite way not to write out all of HaShem’s name into someone else's name. In short, Elihu's name means: My G-d is HaShem."

Ok, enough reading for one night.

Pretty interesting stuff regarding Elihu - especially considering Martindale taught that Elihu was born of the seed of the devil!

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