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Book of Job--Table of Contents

I wrote the following essays during 2019 and the first part of 2020, with editing and preparation for this format following in 2020. This represents the fourth book or extensive study I have done on the Book of Job. The first, Trusting God Again: Regaining Hope after Disappointment or Loss (1995), focused primarily on stories of loss told me by friends, which formed the basis for my dive into the text of Job. Attractive artwork also adorns the pages with my co-author, Glandion Carney, being the "model" for the drawings. The tone of the book was upbeat, even though Job had experienced devastating loss. Our hope was that by understanding Job's losses, and his ultimate seeing of God in a new way in Job 42, we would be provided encouragement to do the same.

My approach to Job changed a bit in my next book on the subject (A Hard-Fought Hope: Journeying with Job Through Mystery (2005), also written with Glandion Carney. Between the publication of Trusting God Again and A Hard-Fought Hope I attended law school and then became a litigation attorney and law professor. This background was reflected in A Hard-Fought Hope, as I presented the basic problem of the Book of Job as a lawsuit filed by Job against God. Using my law firm's template for filing a lawsuit, I had Job "sue" God. Yet my ultimate conclusion of the work was the same as in 1995: Job ultimately "gave up" his lawsuit when he "saw God" in Job 42. The vision of God answered all his arguments.

[To be mentioned, at this point, also are two smaller books/booklets on Job I penned between 1995 and 2005. The first was for the Christian Reformed Church denomination--and was designed as a curriculum for high school students.The second was the introduction and notes on Job I wrote for the Spiritual Formation Bible (published in 2007, but my contribution was written several years previously). My presentation in that resource was of the Book of Job as a drama, with dramatis personae and various acts]

Many things happened between 2005 and 2019 that led to a re-evaluation of my understanding of this enduring classic, the Book of Job. Perhaps the primary thing was my several-year focus on regaining my Biblical Hebrew (which I began studying as a college junior at Brown University) so that I could feel comfortable reading and deciding for myself on the flow of the text, its words and its ideas. When I did so, I not only saw afresh the beauty of Job's language, but I began to focus on the actual nature of the arguments that appear in the Book of Job. When I did that, I concluded that a new approach to Job was warranted, an approach reflected in my 2020 book, When Leaving God is a Good Choice, featured on my home page. But I also said to myself that since I am pursuing a completely new strategy with respect to Job, I needed to defend and explain that strategy through a lengthy commentary. These essays try to do that. At more than 470,000 words, these essays constitute the longest commentary on Job online. They seek never to lose the "big picture" of what is going on or being said at any moment in the argument while, at the same time, giving a close reading or minute exposition of the Hebrew text and its problems. While I don't have the linguistic breadth of some of the leading modern commentators on Job, I think that my approach to Job, as well as some exegetical insights, made the project worthwhile for me. I hope you agree!