Consider the Ostrich: Unlocking the Book of Job and the Blessing of Suffering

By Scott Douglas

We all know the story of creation in the Bible. In the beginning, God created. But what if creation isn't where things started? Not in the Bible anyway. What if the first book of the Bible wasn't about creation…it was about pain.

 

Scholars have debated for years about what the first book of the Bible really is. Most have concluded that the Book of Job was probably the first book written.

Think about that: what if the message God wanted us to receive wasn't about how we were created, but what to do when life gets bad.

 

Being a Christian means happiest. Joy. It means you get that white picket fence and have friends that bring you companionship. Hardship and spiritual warfare may be words that Christians know, but it's not exactly something we talk about.

 

Job is a complicated and messy story because it address the elephant in the giant room that is Christianity: that believing in God doesn't mean happiness. Or wealth. Or even goodness.

 

Job is a story that teaches us an ugly truth about what we believe: that things aren't always better on the other side of the mountain—that good things don't always happen to good people—and that sometimes life is just messed up.

 

Most people know the story of Job. He's the guy who had bad things happen to him. But we often look to the story as more a Sunday school fairytale. Sure, it's believable. But we often look at it as a moral tale about a guy who had it all taken away.

 

There's more to it than that. Rarely do we study it to find out what God is trying to teach us.

 

The lesson here is deep, and one every believe should hear.

• Language: English
• Publisher: SD Editions
• Release date: Jun 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215390337

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

We all know the story of Creation in the Bible. In the beginning, God created. But what if Creation isn’t where things started? Not in the Bible, anyway. What if the first book of the Bible wasn’t about creation, but about pain?

Scholars have debated for years about what the first book of the Bible really is. Most have concluded that the book of Job was probably the first book written.

Think about that: what if the message God wanted us to receive wasn’t about how we were created, but what to do when life gets bad.

Being a Christian means happiness and joy. It means having a white picket fence and friends who bring companionship. Hardship and spiritual warfare may be words that Christians know, but it’s not exactly something we talk about.

Job is a complicated and messy story because it addresses the elephant in the giant room that is Christianity—that believing in God doesn’t mean happiness, wealth, or even goodness.

Job is a story that teaches us an ugly truth about what we believe: that things aren’t always better on the other side of the mountain, that good things don’t always happen to good people, and that sometimes life is just messed up.

Most people know the story of Job. He’s the guy who had bad things happen to him. But we often look at it as more of a Sunday school fairytale. Sure, it’s believable. But we often see it as a moral tale about a guy who had it all taken away.

There’s more to it than that. Rarely do we study it to find out what God is trying to teach us.

The lesson here is deep, and one every believer should hear.

PART I

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE

JOB: A BIOGRAPHY

Most of what we know about Job is from what the book of Job tells us. Outside of Job, he is only referenced in the Old Testament one other time:

Even if these three men--Noah, Daniel and Job--were in it, they could save only themselves by their righteousness, declares the Sovereign LORD (Ezekiel 14:14).

Short as that verse is, it’s telling in the sense that Job must have been well-known. The Jewish people, like so many from this age, passed down many stories orally. People couldn’t read. So, the stories spread more like folklore. The reference in Ezekiel tells us that people knew who Job was—he’s mentioned right up there with the greats.

THE LAND OF OZ OR UZ?

Job was from Uz. We can be pretty certain of that. Why, after all would someone make up a place like that since we have no idea where it actually was? They could have easily said he was from Israel or somewhere with more historic significant. But Uz? You might as well have said Oz because it feels a bit…made up.

Most do believe that Uz existed, but there’s lots of debate about where it physically was located. Outside of Job, we see Uz as both a person ¹ and a land. ² That’s great! So where was it?

One of the Dead Sea Scrolls ³ says that Uz existed beyond the Euphrates. In case you aren’t familiar, the Euphrates is a river in the Middle East—a very long river. It starts in Turkey and empties out in the Persian Gulf. So, what does beyond mean? Someplace to the south? The west? The east? Beyond doesn’t really help.

Popular locations for the mysterious land of Uz include somewhere in Southern Jordan, Southern Arabia, and Southern Syria. Uzbekistan has even been floated by some. But if you ask me, my money is on Uz really being the mystical land of Oz. Just kidding.

JOB, THE RICH AND RIGHTEOUS

If we must go to the source material for information, what does the book of Job actually tell us about Job?

We now know that Job was from Uz, ⁴ but what that also tells us is that he was not an Israelite. That last bit is a little shocking. The Israelites were God’s people—that’s who the bulk of the Bible is about. Job was essentially a Gentile. When we start digging into the words more, you’ll notice there’s a general lack of the law in it—at times it feels more like a moral tale than a Jewish tale. Job’s Gentile status helps explain the lack of Jewishness.

What’s this non-Israelite doing in a Jewish Bible? That depends on where you stand on the dating. It could have been that Job lived before Judaism was even a thing.

More important than the religious team jersey on his back was the fact that he was righteous. From the first verse we hear about just how good Job was; he was, according to the very first verse of Job, blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil. So why is he in the Bible? Because of how righteous he was.

He was also rich. Like crazy rich Arab-rich. Job 1:3 says he owned, seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen and five hundred donkeys, and had a large number of servants.

If you’re like me, you’re probably thinking: put a dollar on all that. Okay! Let’s do it. I’m going to forget about the servants and real estate and just focus on his actual livestock to give you some idea of how rich he was.

7000 sheep - An adult female sheep is going to cost you around $250 to $300; a lamb will be around $100 to $200; a ram will set you back $400 to $500. Let's just average all of this out to $300. That’s about $2,100,000, give or take.

3000 camels - Camels are a lot pricier; on the low-end, they’re $5,000; on the high end they’re more than $20,000. Let’s just say $10,000. That’s going to bring in $30,000,000.

500 yoke of oxen - First: what is a yoke? It’s a pair of oxen. 500 yokes are 1,000 single oxen. Oxen aren’t as common as they used to be, so that’s going to mean they cost a lot more; a fair comparison in price is a bull. Bulls are around $2,500 to $5,000. Let’s just say $3,000. That’s another $3,000,000 for Job.

500 donkeys - Finally the donkey. Donkeys are pretty cheap. Around $100 to $300. So let’s say $150 and call it a day. That gets Job $75,000.

So how wealthy was Job? His livestock alone were worth around $35,000,000. Now remember, he also needed a lot of land to keep all those animals; and he had servants who needed a place to live, so he had houses. He needed transportation to get around. Also remember that things were not counted monetarily the same way they are today. It’s not really fair to say he had $35,000,000. I’m just throwing that out to make it clear that when we say he was rich, we aren’t talking rich in the sense that he could afford a Tesla and a luxury condo—we’re talking rich like he probably owned the condo complex and Tesla plant.

In a nutshell, Job was that rare breed of insanely rich, but not corrupt, and even righteous and obedient to God.

But it’s really the final part of Job 1:3 that cements the deal of how great Job was. It says, He was the greatest man among all the people of the East.

If you go to the market and say, Anyone here know who King Charles is? everyone’s going to say, yes. But that worked against Job in this story. If I told someone that Charles G. Finney did a lot of cocaine and heroin, ⁵ you’d say, That’s too bad, but who is Charles G. Finney and who cares? But if I told you the king of England was caught in a drug scandal, you’d say, I know! because it’s the king, and everyone would know like yesterday if something that scandalous happened. That’s Job. When something bad happened, you must imagine that news spread fast, and everyone found out.

To make matters worse for Job, people didn’t come up to him and sadly say, I’m sorry. They came up to him and said, What’d you do to get on God’s bad side? Everyone knew Job, but no longer because he had the picture-perfect life, rather because he became some kind of twisted, cautionary tale of how not to mess it all up. So, when you think about Job losing everything as we continue through this book, think about what everything meant; it’s not just his family or riches—it was his status—it was being able to walk around the Middle East with his head held high. He became this deeply troubled and sad man who couldn’t even go outside his house without getting judged by those who used to look up to him.

If you ever feel lonely—like no one gets you and everyone judges you—then turn to Job. Job is God’s gift to the brokenhearted. A story that will tell you just how much God feels for your hurt.

HOW DID JOB SUFFER?

You probably know the gist of what happened to Job, but just to make sure we’re crystal clear, let’s look at all the ways that Job suffered.

First, in Job 1:15, Sabeans ⁶ came and stole all of Job’s oxen and donkeys and killed some of his servants. Let’s forget that the worse crime seems to be stealing the animals and not killing the humans and think only of the numbers. Job has around 11,500 animals, so this amounts to around 13 percent of his livestock.

13 percent is pretty harsh, but not the end of the world. You tell a multibillionaire that they lost 13 percent of their wealth overnight and guess what? They’re probably still billionaires. That’s Job. It stings. But he was still doing okay.

But then Job 1:16 comes along and tells us that fire came from the skies and burnt up his sheep. 7,000 sheep. Gone. And from a freaky fireball from the sky! It’s not as apocalyptic as it sounds—more than likely it was lightening that caused a fire. But still. Job almost lost everything. He was having a pretty bad day.

The day’s going to get worse.

In verse 17, Chaldeans ⁷ attacked and stole Job’s camels. They also killed some more servants—but, again, it seems like the livestock was what people were concerned about in those days.

Job was ruined. What was he going to tell the children?! About that…Job 1:19 tells us that a great wind came, hit his house, knocked it down. They’re dead. All of them.

We have four calamities that came and destroyed Job’s life, which, if you are into the Hero’s Journey, you also might have a twisted smile on your face because four disasters are also what’s described in the Epic of Gilgamesh.

This wasn’t just a bad day. This was an indescribable day. People lose their money. They lose their jobs. They lose their loved ones. But everything? At once?! Come on!

But Job’s suffering was not over.

Just when Job was about to contemplate all the misery that had suddenly come his way, Job 2:7 tells us that Job also became afflicted with painful sores that covered his body—from his feet to his head. What was wrong with him? People have made guesses and assumptions, but we don’t know. What we do know is they caused sharp pains, fever, disfigurement, and hallucinations.

How did Job suffer? He lost everything. People lost respect for