The Book of Job is a text in the Ketuvim ('Writings') section of the Hebrew Bible, classified among the Poetic Books in the Christian Old Testament. Scholars date its composition to the Persian period, roughly 540 to 330 BCE, on the basis of the Hebrew's post-Babylonian features and Aramaic influences. It is structured as a prose frame enclosing an extended poetic sequence: a prologue in two scenes (one on earth, one in heaven), three cycles of dialogues between Job and his three friends, a wisdom poem (chapter 28), the speeches of a late-arriving fourth voice Elihu, two speeches by God from a whirlwind, and a brief prose epilogue. This edition is Stephen Mitchell's 1992 HarperPerennial verse translation.
Job is a righteous and prosperous man stripped of everything — family, wealth, health — after God allows the adversary (ha-Satan, 'the challenger') to test him. His three friends insist his suffering is punishment for hidden sin; Job rejects this and demands that God answer him directly. God's response in chapters 38–41 does not explain the suffering but presents the incomprehensibility of creation — 'Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?' — to which Job admits he has spoken of what he did not understand. The book declines to resolve the theodicy problem it raises, a position unusual in the Hebrew Bible, which elsewhere largely assumes that suffering follows sin.
Contents
Prologue: The Testing of Job (Chapters 1–2)
Job's Opening Lament (Chapter 3)
First Cycle of Dialogues: Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar (Chapters 4–14)
Second Cycle of Dialogues (Chapters 15–21)
Third Cycle of Dialogues (Chapters 22–27)
The Poem to Wisdom (Chapter 28)
Job's Final Defense (Chapters 29–31)
God Speaks from the Whirlwind (Chapters 38–41)
Epilogue: Restoration (Chapter 42)
Reception
The Book of Job is one of the most commented-on texts in the Hebrew Bible and Western literary tradition. Carl Jung wrote a sustained psychological response in Answer to Job (1952), treating the confrontation as a collision between human moral consciousness and an unconscious divine. After the Holocaust, the text became a primary reference for Jewish theological writing on undeserved suffering; Elie Wiesel, Emmanuel Levinas, and others engaged it explicitly. Archibald MacLeish's Pulitzer Prize-winning verse play J.B. (1958) transplants the Job story to modern America. Stephen Mitchell's 1992 verse translation was praised for literary quality — the New York Times described it as achieving 'a rare degree of vehemence and concentration' — while biblical scholars noted that Mitchell worked from existing scholarly translations rather than directly from the Hebrew. Robert Alter's translation in The Wisdom Books (Norton, 2010) is generally regarded as the more rigorous scholarly rendering; Mitchell's remains the more widely read literary version.
Frequently asked
What is the Book of Job about?
It is the story of a righteous man named Job who is stripped of everything — wealth, children, health — as part of a wager between God and the adversary. The central question is why the righteous suffer. The book does not provide a simple answer; it insists instead on the incomprehensibility of divine justice and the limits of human understanding.
Is the Book of Job a historical account?
Most scholars treat it as a theological poem or parable rather than a historical record. The setting in the land of Uz is not geographically identified, the prose prologue and epilogue read as a literary frame, and the poetic dialogues employ a literary Hebrew distinct from the narrative style used elsewhere in the Bible.
Why doesn't God explain Job's suffering in the whirlwind speeches?
God's speeches in chapters 38–41 respond to Job's demand for explanation with an extended catalog of the mysteries of creation: 'Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?' The speeches do not defend divine justice or explain the suffering. They reframe the confrontation: the cosmos operates on a scale and by a logic beyond what Job — or the three friends — can encompass.