Eliphaz portrays God as the great adjuster who dispenses retributive justices. He advises Job to accept his affliction as a well deserved divine chastening. Job speaks first to his friends and then directly to God accusing Him of being unfair. ”What is man, that you make much of him, or pay him any heed?” He becomes the spokesman for not just the God-forsaken, but the God-haunted. Bildad responds with his simple orthodox philosophy- suffering is the consequence of sin. He parades his ignorance of Job and God as knowledge and dismisses the mystery of life to which there are no answers. However, in spite of his unpalatable life with an unjust God and clueless friends, Job sits with the question. Rev. Michael Piazza in Liberating Word says, “if you look at it as a parable… the story is a powerful reminder that when we are suffering and asking why, we are just the latest in the common history of humanity. Apparently, we always have wanted our suffering to mean something, and the message of Job is that sometimes, it just doesn’t.”
Eliphaz portrays God as the great adjuster who dispenses retributive justices. He advises Job to accept his affliction as a well deserved divine chastening. Job speaks first to his friends and then directly to God accusing Him of being unfair. ”What is man, that you make much of him, or pay him any heed?” He becomes the spokesman for not just the God-forsaken, but the God-haunted. Bildad responds with his simple orthodox philosophy- suffering is the consequence of sin. He parades his ignorance of Job and God as knowledge and dismisses the mystery of life to which there are no answers. However, in spite of his unpalatable life with an unjust God and clueless friends, Job sits with the question. Rev. Michael Piazza in Liberating Word says, “if you look at it as a parable… the story is a powerful reminder that when we are suffering and asking why, we are just the latest in the common history of humanity. Apparently, we always have wanted our suffering to mean something, and the message of Job is that sometimes, it just doesn’t.”
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