Job In Katharine J. Dell's Book Of The Hebrew Bible

Job has been a profound book of the Hebrew Bible to interpret the meaning of the book as one of the Wisdom literatures. Katharine J. Dell argues, “As part of the Wisdom literature of the Old Testament, the book of Job might be expected to discuss ethical issues in similar fashion to Proverbs.” In this view, we may expect that Job typically show to reward virtue and to punish vice by God. According to Dell, “We find an airing of the doctrine of retribution according to which the good are rewarded and the wicked are punished, a basic presupposition of the proverbial worldview.” This is the one of the traditional and main view point of the Hebrew Bible. However, Job deals more beyond the traditional ethics. Dell asserts further, “In many ways,

Nevertheless, why is Job afflicted by Satan? Why does God neglect him? Marvin Sweeney also brings up the problem of Job, “Job does not understand the reasons for his suffering, which is particularly striking in relation to the Torah, the Prophetic literature, and Proverbs, in which the righteous are supposed to flourish for observing God’s will and wicked are to suffer for their failure to do so.” Like Job, we understand that the world is not equal. Someone who is doing virtues is still suffering, but the other who is walking evil way get prosperous. How do we accept this truth in the perspective of Job? Job seems not to illuminate exactly about human suffering and divine

God knows Job is flawless and upright, but he hands Job’s status over to Satan who wants to give Job pain and take away his all of possession to test him. Here, there is a theological confliction between the viewpoint of traditional Wisdom literatures and Job’s viewpoint. Dell focuses on theological issues that are the disinterested righteousness and the doctrine of retribution. According to Dell, “Proverbs has the view of life as a path by which the right choices lead to the right outcomes. However, Job’s experience of suffering leads him to question this assumption – again it is an ethical assumption that good is always rewarded, but it is treated in a profound theological manner in the dialogues of Job such that the problem of innocent suffering comes to the fore as the main theological theme here, and arguably of the whole book” In this assumption of Job, it is hard for readers to have certain conclusion of why God gives a virtuous man suffering, which is still arguable. However, one thing is clear that God knows that Job is piety and worships God, which means that God has a relationship with Job. Dell mentions, “Thus here God recognizes Job’s piety. This has important implications for the discussion of whether human beings can have a meaningful relationship with