The Truth About Job: Upright, Not Righteous

Modern Readers look at the plight of Job (Hebrew for "hated") as one of the most immoral and sobering accounts in the Bible.

An upright man who did good and avoided bad, he fell victim to the sanctioned attacks of the Enemy. For nearly forty chapters, he bemoans his fate to his three friends, who indict him for some secret sin that he has not committed.

A man righteous in his own eyes, he cannot understand why he is enduring such terrible suffering. Then God confronts him face to face, rebuking Job for his pious presumption. After correcting Job, God indicts his friends for speaking evil of him, then restores to Job double for all that he suffered.

At first glance, it appears that God is harsh and cruel, that life is arbitrarily unjust, and that we can expect no help from the Lord God Almighty.

Closer inspection brings these assumptions to naught.

The first assumption, that Job was a righteous man, is patently false.

In the first verse of the Book of Job, the narrative reads:

"There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil."

Here, "perfect" renders the Hebrew word Word: תָּם־ tam, blameless. "Upright" renders the word יָשָׁר yashar, which means "upright" or "conscientious".

So, he was a good man, but he was not righteous, like Abraham:

"And he [Abraham] believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness." (Genesis 15:6)

For God, it is faith in Him that prospers a man, not what he does:

"Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him: but the just shall live by his faith." (Habakkuk 2:4)

Here, as in the first verse of Job, the word "upright" renders the same word describing Job יָשַׁר yashar

Throughout the Book of Job, the main character bases his goodness on himself, not the Lord:

"Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him." (Job 13:15)

Job claims to trust God, but he wants to do so on his terms, which are unacceptable to God. Isaiah declares the futility of our own righteous acts:

"But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away." (Isaiah 64:6)

So much for man's efforts to establish himself before God.