Job, God's Witness

Extract

Job is not a witness to God by the same title and in the same way as Abraham, David, Isaias or St Paul, for Job is a poetic creation like Oedipus or King Lear. Job did perhaps exist, just as did many of Sophocles's or Shakespeare's characters. But of the man Job, of the old Edomite sheik who lived at the time of the Patriarchs, the Bible tells us almost nothing.

Job comes into the sacred books as the creature of imagination and of a poet's dream. The man whose voice is heard behind the voice of the hero is the author. For Job is not only the fictitious character of a drama, he is witness to a religious crisis in the Jewish, soul. He utters the believer's cry of confidence in God. What he says is inspired by God. As such his grandiose figure, even though it be imaginary, which bears within itself the secrets of one of the.noblest of Jewish, minds, ought to find a place amid the Saints, Prophets and Sages who constitute the company of God's witnesses.