The book turns on an accusation. A spirit being — named Satan in the text, and described there as the accuser — claims that Job loves God only because God has paid him well. Everything that follows is the testing of that claim, and Job himself never learns it was made.

Four things to hold as you read.

• Evil and suffering were not God’s ideas. They originated with Satan. God permitted him to work out his design within set limits, and permits it only in order to defeat and silence him in the end.
• Do not let the length of the book suggest the suffering was endless. At most it covered a few months, after which God restored to Job every spiritual, physical and material blessing. It is worth saying plainly what the ending is not. It is not a receipt. The ten children who died stay dead; the ten born later are not replacements for them, and the book never pretends they are.
• Keep the sneer that started it in front of you. It was an attack on Job’s motives: does he serve You for nothing?
• In this brief period of permitted suffering, God vindicates His own testimony about this man. When all material things are lost, Job goes on trusting Him in naked faith — through his questions and through his doubts.

Act one  ·  1:1 – 2:13  ·  The scene is set — and the reader is told what Job never learns

Righteous Job is described  1:1–5

A wealthy and godly businessman. Although no date is given, everything points to the time of the patriarchs, possibly Abraham: there is no mention of Tabernacle, Temple or Levitical priesthood, and the head of the house acts as priest, exactly as in the patriarchal families of Genesis.

The scene changes to the invisible world  1:6–12

It is worth noting how Satan is described: a transient spirit wandering the earth. He has no court. He is king of nothing. And then the accusation:

Haven’t you given Job a reason to fear God? Haven’t you put a protective fence around him, his home, and everything he has? You have blessed everything he does… But now stretch out your hand, and strike everything he has. I bet he’ll curse you to your face.

Job 1:9–11  ·  God’s Word

Meditate on this accusation. It is the key to the book. Satan is not saying Job is wicked; he is saying Job is bought. Prosperity is not the postscript to his faith but its root cause — take it away and he will stop. God does bless us physically and materially, but we serve Him because of who He is, not because of what He gives.

Evils fall around him  1:13–22

All these disasters could have happened to anyone in that part of the world at that time. The reader knows they originate in the spirit world; they are not coincidence. Job’s response is the opposite of Satan’s prediction — he blesses God, deliberately placing himself in His hands whatever the situation. “Naked I came from my mother, and naked I will return. The LORD has given, and the LORD has taken away!” (Job 1:21).

The second accusation, and his wife  2:1–13

Satan now accuses Job of not caring what happens to others: as long as it is other people’s skin, who cares? Let Job’s own skin be touched and see if he praises God.

Job suffers from some eastern skin disease, apparently a form of leprosy — suggested because he sits in the town rubbish dump, despised by all the townspeople. He did not choose to go there; public health would have required it. Feel his situation: the greatest man in the east now makes his home, to the mockery of the people, with the garbage of the city.

His wife unknowingly sides with Satan — what she calls on him to do is exactly what Satan predicted he would do. “Are you still holding on to your principles? Curse God and die!” He said to her, “You’re talking like a godless fool.” (Job 2:9-10).

Job sees beyond her and beyond the circumstances. Whatever happens, God has not forsaken him; God is ultimately in control, and so Job worships.

Act one, closer — the accuser, the two limits, and his wife

Three things in this opening are easy to read past, and the whole argument of the book rests on them.

First, who the accuser is. God’s Word puts the meaning of the name straight into the sentence:

One day when the sons of God came to stand in front of the LORD, Satan the Accuser came along with them.

Job 1:6  ·  God’s Word

Second, what he actually alleges. Not that Job is secretly wicked. Something worse, and aimed past Job at God — haven’t you put a protective fence around him? Take it away, and I bet he’ll curse you to your face (Job 1:9–11, quoted in full above).

The charge is that no one loves God for Himself — that worship is only ever paid for. If it were true of the best man on earth, it would be true of everyone, and God would have no worshippers at all, only customers.

Third, the limits. God permits the test. He also fences it, twice, and the second fence is drawn at Job’s life “Everything he has is in your power, but you must not lay a hand on him!” (Job 1:12).

He is in your power, but you must spare his life!

Job 2:6  ·  God’s Word

Nothing in this book happens outside those boundaries. The accuser is never sovereign in it; he is on a leash, and the length of the leash is set by God.

And then his wife. She has buried the same ten children, and she says the thing the accuser predicted he would say:

“Are you still holding on to your principles? Curse God and die!” He said to her, “You’re talking like a godless fool. We accept the good that God gives us. Shouldn’t we also accept the bad?” Through all this Job’s lips did not utter one sinful word.

Job 2:9–10  ·  God’s Word

Her line is the one people remember. His answer is the better half of the verse, and it is the exact opposite of what the accuser bet on. The wager is effectively lost here, in chapter two — and there are forty more chapters to go, because Job still has to live through it without knowing that.

Act two  ·  3:1 – 31:40  ·  The speeches, and the limits of religious explanation

Three interchanges follow between Job and the friends who came to him — the first 3:1 – 14:22, the second 15:1 – 21:34, the third 22:1 – 31:40. In each, the friends address Job and he answers them.

Note what happens when men use the human mind to fathom the ways of God. It leads to controversy, and to disillusionment with everything that has traditionally been accepted as true — and with nothing to fill its place, the result is despair.

Job and the friends did not know about the heavenly council in the introduction. They were trying to fit a jigsaw together with the most important pieces missing. That warns us not to try to fit God into a formula. The friends brought the best of human theology and the standard religious answers to the inequities of life; they hint, and then accuse outright, that Job is living in secret sin and that his suffering must be the result. Job violently denies it, and he is right to. Something is going on that defies the neat explanations of men.

And in the middle of the argument he says the thing the book is remembered for “But I know that my defender lives, and afterwards, he will rise on the earth.” (Job 19:25-27).

“My defender” is the kinsman-redeemer word — the same term God’s Word uses of God Himself in Isaiah 54:5, and the duty Boaz took up in Ruth. A man who has lost everything, sitting on an ash heap with no advocate left, reaches for the one relative who is obliged to come and get his own back.

Act three  ·  32:1 – 37:24  ·  Elihu

Elihu has not been mentioned before. His words show an awesome reverence for God, and with it the sense that sin goes far deeper than the three friends have suggested. He sees God as One who will lead a person through the sufferings of life into a deeper trust and understanding of His wisdom. Significantly, at the end of the book Job is not called on to pray for him — only for the other three.

Act four  ·  38:1 – 41:34  ·  God answers

Everything said so far has suggested that God is not acting consistently with Himself, but in some unintelligible way. God now comes on the scene to refute that. “Then the LORD answered Job out of the storm… “Brace yourself like a man!” (Job 38:1, 3-4).

By a series of questions He shows Job the marvels of the universe and of the animal kingdom — and an omnipotent, wise, caring God, faithful in all His works. When God’s Word and revelation of Himself came, all debate and argument were over.

Note carefully what God does not do. He does not answer Job with logic or address his intellectual problem. He does not explain Satan, which the reader already knows about. And astonishingly, He never answers the friends’ theory that suffering is the result of sin. His answer is a new revelation of Himself as all-powerful, all-wise and wholly faithful in His care of creation. See especially 38:26–27, where He sends rain on a desert where there are no humans at all — God waters ground nobody will ever see.

The conclusion is plain: a God so faithful in the material world can be trusted in the invisible spirit world. God did not give Job an answer to his questions. He presented Himself as the answer.

Act five  ·  42:1–17  ·  Job’s response, and the finale “I had heard about you with my own ears, but now I have seen you with my own eyes.” (Job 42:5).

Compared with what he knows now, Job looks back on everything he knew before as second-hand.

The friends have been wrong — and Job not only forgives their hurtful words, he prays for them. By comparison, God calls Job His servant four times over. Job had expressed himself very strongly and in anger; the friends had stated their traditional religious views. This book would tell us that it is better to face life honestly, even if it upsets everything we have believed, than to cling to accepted views that do not fit life’s experience.

The book ends not only with the vision of God but with Job’s prosperity restored and doubled (42:10). That is so alien to the legalist’s reading of the book — which would have Job suffer and live in poverty all his life — that it is worth stating plainly. Through Job’s faith Satan has been shown to be the liar. He has no further permission to harass and hurt this man; instead Job is blessed above everything he lost.

“Twice as much” — and it is meant literally

After Job prayed for his friends, the LORD restored Job’s prosperity and gave him twice as much as he had before.

Job 42:10  ·  God’s Word

That is not a round figure. Set the inventory in chapter one beside the inventory in chapter forty-two and the arithmetic is exact in every category:

Every column doubles except the last one. The livestock is returned twice over; the children are not. Seven sons and three daughters were lost, and seven sons and three daughters are born — the same number, not double, and the book does not explain why. It is hard to read that as an oversight in a passage this precise about every other figure. Whatever else the ending is, it is not a man being handed a replacement family.

He lived another hundred and forty years and saw four generations (42:16). And the New Testament’s verdict on him is one word “We consider those who endure to be blessed. You have heard about Job’s endurance.” (James 5:11).

What the book is for

Read this way, Job is not a puzzle waiting to be solved. It is a lesson from which to understand life’s struggles, and an encouragement to faithfulness regardless of the cost.

The accusation was that no one worships God for nothing. One man, stripped of every reason he had been given, went on trusting Him anyway — and in doing so answered a charge he never knew had been laid. That is the point of the book, and it is why the reader is told in chapter one what Job is never told at all.