Book of Job

by

Anonymous

Themes and Colors
Suffering and Divine Justice Theme Icon
The Mystery of God Theme Icon
Human Wisdom vs. Divine Wisdom Theme Icon
Faith in Suffering Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Book of Job, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.

Suffering and Divine Justice

The Bible’s Book of Job explores the question of why good people sometimes endure senseless suffering—particularly, why God seems to allow such suffering. The story centers on Job, a thriving patriarch whose prosperity seems to be the reward for his upstanding behavior. So when God permits Satan to inflict disease and devastating losses on Job, it seems, from a human perspective, that divine justice has somehow gone awry. As he laments his circumstances, Job…

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The Mystery of God

During his suffering, Job feels that God is both too distant to reach and much too close for comfort. His sufferings make him feel like God is relentlessly oppressing him—looming so close that Job begs God to look away from him long enough to let Job breathe. And yet, at the same time, God seems to “hide his face” from Job (to feel totally absent) and to elude Job’s searching, preventing Job from pleading his…

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Human Wisdom vs. Divine Wisdom

When three of Job’s friends (Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar) hear of Job’s suffering, they come to comfort him. But when Job complains that God has punished him for no reason, Job’s friends take turns arguing with this point. They argue that God causes people to suffer because of their sins and that he rewards the righteous; to assert otherwise, they contend, is to accuse God of being unjust and so…

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Faith in Suffering

When Job hears the news that he’s lost his children and all his possessions, he immediately responds by tearing his robe and shaving his head (traditional signs of mourning in the ancient Near East). He then falls to the ground and worships God, saying, “The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.” Even after Job himself is afflicted with terrible sores, he continues to “maintain his…

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