I’d love to hear others thoughts on this idea, either here or at the Feast wiki—just add to the discussion page if you don’t want to bother with the site policies for commentary pages. One reason I’ve been MIA is we’ve been having some engrossing discussions about Isaiah 6 and several other related topics—mainly thanks to Joe’s efforts—so have a look if you haven’t stopped by the wiki yet/recently….

Thanks for highlighting this point about Job’s story. He is such a good example of the faithfulness aspect of faith that I felt cheated when I realized that I had been raised to think of Job only as a book about suffering.

A friend recently advised me to read the Book of Job, but omit the last chapter. Without that “feel-good ending,” I was forced to actually think about Job’s experiences and what they teach.

If anyone wanted to explore the theme “Why is everything going wrong when I am doing everything right?” then I would suggest reading the novel “The Sparrow” by Mary Doria Russell. She’s an average storyteller, but I think she does a good job forcing the reader to drop the platitudes and actually confront this question.

Good Job!

(Sorry, it had to be said . . . )

I appreciate you bringing this to my attention. We could at least add what you say about those chapters–and the questions that raises–to the study notes.

Thanks very much for these thoughtful and provocative questions. There is no book in all the standard works, with the possible exceptions of Jacob in the BoM and perhaps some of the epistles of Paul, that combine beautiful writing and hard questions as Job does. Which makes it, unfortunately, as you note, a book that is prooftexted far more often than it is read. (Elder Bruce R. McConkie, in a speech he gave at BYU that “ranked” all the books of the Bible, said that “Job is for people who like the book of Job.”)

Of the many things I’d like to say in response to or in addition to your comments, I think I will focus on Elihu. You skip his chapters entirely in your thought questions–why? Because the textual and literary evidence strongly suggests those chapters are an interpolation? But the same can be said for the prologue and the epilogue (though those additions are certainly older). Do you think Elihu doesn’t fit in thematically or stylistically? If so, why? While I don’t fully agree with Elihu’s “doctrine” (not that anyone in the poem actually puts forward any coherent argument in that sense), I think it is important to take seriously his claim: that God is both sovereign and good, and that the only way to hold both of those views simultaneously is to believe that God intends all suffering for our benefit–and to believe that not answering our questions as to why we suffer is also for our benefit. It is, arguably, not all that different from the theodicy taught by Joseph Smith. Moreover, it is a position which is compatible with God’s subsequent condemnation of Job and his friends in the final chapters for having presumed or demanded accounts for the cause of suffering, rather than faithfully defining it away as a problem (that is, as a theological problem; I don’t read Elihu as proposing anything that would remove the need for sympathy and mourning) by positing the goodness of God’s nature.