It is perfectly reasonable to read the book of Job and ask: “What is Job’s suffering for? Does it have a purpose? If so, what is it?” Let’s try and answer that.
15.1 Priest of Melchizedek’s Order
Early in the drama we see Job habitually acting as a priest for his family (Job 1:4 6). Exactly what state of covenant relationship this particular Gentile experienced with the God of Israel, or what Job understood as the duties of a priest, are issues of endless debate amongst the scholarly doctors (which, Chesterton cheekily remarked, “is the business of doctors to do”). The two critically important points are that Job acts in the spiritual service of other people and, equally importantly, that this is his “regular custom.” He is a man regularly dedicated to atoning for loved ones. Those who offer their lives in the service of others are those who enable themselves to be employed by God as priests.
In case we are concerned that only those descended from Levi should act as priests (Num 18), we remember there is a higher priesthood, the spiritual order; the order of Melchizedek, which requires no bloodline ancestry; named after the man who was simultaneously King of Jerusalem and priest before God (Gen 14:18). Melchizedek’s signature feature was that his genealogy was deliberately obscured from the scriptural record, so that he appears out of the blue. A man from nowhere, as it were, as if specially created by God: “Without father or mother, without genealogy, without beginning of days or end of life” (Heb 7:3)1.
Jesus qualifies perfectly as a priest of Melchizedek’s order, because he had no human father and, furthermore, he embodies the Word of God, which literally has neither beginning of days nor end of life. In the same way, the Hebrews passage unlocks an ancient mystery of the Joban tale, concerning Job’s missing genealogy. Job’s genealogy is absent from the entire drama. What highlights his missing family line is the fact that the friends in the book invariably have their heritage trumpeted to the reader: Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, Zophar the Naamathite. Never once is Job attributed a family genealogy and never once are any of the three friends listed without theirs. (Elihu the Buzite’s heritage is occasionally listed.) This reveals Job as a potential member of the order of Melchizedek, by emphasizing the ‘without father, without mother’ theme.
Balchin assists by suggesting the name Job could mean: “no father” or “where is my father?”, which is the icing on the cake2. Balchin logically theorizes that this meaning ties in with the absent genealogy for Job, but tragically sees no value in the line of thinking, concluding of Job’s missing genealogy: “Lack of data is not important” and thus failing to spot the Melchizedek motif.
Other factors contribute towards the scripture’s presentation of Job as a man with no origin. The facts that the authorship and date of the book are not certainly known, although not unique for scriptural texts, testify to the same theme of a man without origin. It’s likely this supports not only Job’s office within the Melchizedek priesthood, but also helps reveal Job as a man representing a universal human problem, which Ragaz noted.
All these facts: Job’s listing without a genealogy; the contrasting perpetual citation of the genealogies of the three friends, and the uncertain date and authorship of the book; combine to suggest Job is to be understood as a priest after the order of Melchizedek. If this is true, we anticipate Job will fulfill the office of a priest in performing an act of atonement for the people.
Job was a man dedicated to atoning for others, the type of man God uses to bring salvation. I’m not saying God needs this type of person, for clearly God doesn’t need anything from us, as Paul eloquently articulated at the Areopagus (Acts 17:24-25). But, just as the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000 was based on the five loaves and two small fish that Andrew brought to the Master (John 6:9), even though Jesus didn’t need them to produce the miracle, so it seems it is God’s desire to use the tiny, ineffectual offerings we can muster in our service through which to perform His will.
This challenges me: Do I regularly dedicate my life to seeking the spiritual atonement of others? Am I that man? Is it true, for example, that the majority of my prayers are actually on behalf of other people, rather than focused on my own needs and desires? If so, I am the type of person God is seeking to operate in the ongoing order of the spiritual priesthood. And if not, what am I going to do about that?
15.2 The Suffering of a Righteous Man
Priests of the order of Melchizedek also exhibit the feature of learning through suffering (Heb 5:7-10). This quote is primarily about Jesus, saying Jesus learned obedience. Therefore, although it sounds very odd, it is not accurate to say that Jesus was always obedient from birth! This is not to imply that Jesus was in any way disobedient, because he was not, as the same author has just specified (Heb 4:15). But it shows he gradually grew in obedience as he learned more about his Father.
We may need to upgrade our understanding of what obedience is. Clearly it’s much more than ‘not doing anything wrong.’ That’s a very inadequate understanding of obedience; to relegate it to being the absence of a negative thing: a form of double-negative. Obedience, therefore, is best understood as enacting God’s will, or reflecting God’s character. Thus God’s will and character first have to be comprehended, a process which naturally takes years, even for His son Jesus. In this way we can comfortably understand the scriptures telling us Jesus had to learn obedience, without any implication that he was ever disobedient.
But why does there have to be suffering on the priest’s road to obedience? We know God does not enjoy seeing people suffer (Lam 3:32-33).
Primarily, following God’s will causes any of us suffering simply because it’s not natural for us to obey God. Following God’s way isn’t always easy, nor will it always draw respect from one’s peers. Fadelle expresses this articulately:
“[Jesus] learned obedience through what he suffered shows that Jesus did not automatically do his Father’s will — he had to choose to obey. Making the right choice every time brought suffering. He suffered when he said ‘no’ to the natural self. He suffered from the hostile reaction of others.”
One of the priest’s principal duties was to bear the burden of the people; literally carrying the animal carcass from the gate of the Tabernacle to the altar (Lev 1). (Their other principal duty was to communicate God’s wisdom to the people, Mal 2:7.) The ‘suffering’ of the priest comprised taxing physical labor as the sacrifice was prepared.
In the order of Melchizedek, I believe all this is played out on the spiritual plane. The duties of the Melchizedek priest are the same: to represent God to the people and to bear the burdens of those looking to atone. But these burdens are now spiritual burdens, which perhaps answers our question why there has to be suffering for those within this elevated priesthood. Suffering is a natural consequence of sin. This is important: we are identifying the ultimate source of suffering as sin, not God. Nor do we foolishly advance this conclusion in the context of the doctrine of exact retribution, where each sinner suffers only for his own sins and in direct proportion to the magnitude of his sin. Far from it! The conclusion here suggests it is the priest who bears the principal burden of sin. How true that is in the story of Job! Job was blameless: a righteous man. He was also a man accustomed to focusing on the atonement of others, a man who volunteered himself in the service of those he loved. Explicitly in Job’s case, God saw that He could afflict Job to draw out of the three friends their self-righteous pride in a distilled and flagrant form, where He could judge it, destroy it and thereby save them. Other commentators have also noted that the suffering of the innocent may operate beneficially in the salvation of the guilty, and parallels between Job and Jesus can be found in the literature as early as the fourth century.
This allows us to appreciate that God is not bullying Job, because the suffering arises from the situations and attitudes of the three friends, not because God needs or wants it.
God plays a direct hand with Job’s friends too. The salvation the three friends receive comes because God forgives them. Ironically, He could have treated them according to the doctrine of retribution they believed and destroyed them as they deserved. Instead, God says to Eliphaz the Temanite:
“So now take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and sacrifice a burnt offering for yourselves. My servant Job will pray for you, and I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly” (Job 42:8).
Amidst the wrath: forgiveness. Atkinson comments: “It is hard to forgive Eliphaz his unjust tirade,” yet that’s precisely what God does. The same God who is spoken of so poorly because of what happens in the book of Job is actually the first to forgive the three friends, whom most expositors are very reluctant to forgive! Truly this is a loving God, to the point of forgiving even those we struggle to, so there is irony upon irony in this most remarkable drama.
15.3 Reflection
Job was a priest after the order of Melchizedek and as such he was the mechanism through which God worked to bring his friends to salvation. This was Job’s glory and greatest success in foreshadowing the Messiah that was to come. His shortcoming was in failing to disengage from the Satan so that the Word of God could judge the pride of his friends, not him. Job was determined to persist in the fight with Satan to demonstrate his own rectitude. Again, the Joban tale provides excellent education. Don’t pick a fight with Satan. When personal attacks are launched by pride-filled opponents, don’t go round after round in protracted debate. Ultimately those middle chapters in Job do have a sense of futility to them (as well as a progression teaching us of the nature of the Satan) and that futility communicates a valuable lesson! Even if we are convinced we have the beating of Satan’s reasoning on an intellectual level, the infection of the pride that drives the attacker is the truest danger, as Job was to discover empirically.
I’m convinced this is how Jesus knew he should rebuff the Satan in the wilderness and, just as with Job, I think it’s vital to identify who Jesus’ Satan was. I am convinced that the Satan in Jesus’ wilderness temptation was Jesus’ own self-will, his prideful desire to serve self not God. In other words, Jesus was tempted by the same Satan we meet in Job. It makes sense Jesus would be attacked by the same Satan, because the opponent of God must also be the opponent of the Christ, since the Christ is the perfect expression of the Father (John 10:30, Col 1:15). In fact I do not believe the scriptures can support any other interpretation for Jesus’ Satan, although it is beyond our purview to establish that matter here.
We saw Jesus learned obedience through suffering (Heb 5:8), an early part of which was being “led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil” — a picture beautifully resonant with Job’s experiences in Uz. We might ask: Why is the Spirit of God leading people to be tempted? Didn’t James assure us that God doesn’t do that? James tells us that temptation comes from our own lusts, not God (James 1:13-14), yet Matthew’s record seems to contradict, saying Jesus was led “of the Spirit” to be tempted.
I contend the Spirit did not lead or cause Jesus to be tempted. Rather the words in Matthew need to be read very carefully. I suggest what the Spirit did was solely to lead Jesus into the wilderness. No more. The temptation came from Jesus’ own lust to sin, doubtless at that specific time because, as the previous verse shows, Jesus had just been baptized and received the Spirit of God without measure. (The chapter break between Matthew 3 and 4 is tremendously unhelpful as it breaks an important spiritual connection.)
Thus the Spirit did not cause Jesus to be tempted. The Spirit saw temptation was inevitably imminent and effectively said to Jesus: “You need to be alone now. The last thing you need is to be surrounded by people. They will distract your focus, exacerbate the problem of the temptations and, quite possibly, derail your resistance and contribute towards you actually sinning! You need to be led away into the desert, right now, so that the imminent temptation your human nature is causing takes place in an environment free from those additional pressures.” This is how I understand the verse: “Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil”(Matt 4:1). The temptation was triggered by Jesus being human and receiving unlimited power. The Spirit merely chose a wise location for the cataclysmic collision to occur.
This interpretation is consistent with James’ writing that God does not tempt us. It is also fully consistent with the central theme of our exposition of Job. God provokes salvation, not suffering, or temptation; even if the latter two may be inevitable pit-stops on the way to salvation by reason of the weaknesses of either ourselves or others.
Jesus was coping with a purely internal Satan, as we do daily, so this helps us resist Satan in our discipleships. Jesus knew that to give mental headroom to the things that tempted him, to let them lurk and fester in his mind, was disastrous. Only immediate banishment of the Satan’s suggestions from his mind would keep him in harmony with his Father. This is a protocol Jesus adopts throughout his ministry: when tempted, he dismisses the temptation immediately and removes himself to a solitary place to pray: just as the Spirit had guided him to do at the outset.
But the bottom line in this thread of the drama is this: The suffering of a righteous man brought salvation to unrighteous men. In this statement alone we see both a profitable reason for that suffering and also a foreshadowing of the Christ. How well Job typifies the Messiah; and what a tantalizing message of salvation this promotes. For if the suffering of one righteous man can bring salvation to three of his friends, how much more can the suffering of The Righteous Man bring the whole world’s redemption?
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One