Job's Wisdom

The Book of Job allocates a strong emphases on the series of questions Job ponders about God in his state of existential despair, and through these questions, although he does not receive a concrete answer, he attains a new insight. Job goes through a progressive chain from acceptance of God’s actions to questioning it and finally achieving understanding. Wisdom, in a general sense, is one’s ability to understand, through the process of gaining exceptional insight and judgment, uncertain and perplexing matters. In particular then, The Book of Job undertakes matters of existence that oppose the very fundamental principle of retributivism which consequently baffles Job. Through recognizing his lack of knowledge and questioning his friends’ assumptions concerning God instead of blindly accepting a simple retributive view of Him, Job manages to, paradoxically, gain a sense of wisdom by just realizing what he does not know.

The questioning of God’s actions is Job’s first step to gaining his wisdom. Job illustrates the danger of living in ignorance, without questioning, by being completely unprepared for the tragedies that befall him. Moreover, Job has a shift in character when he goes from blindly accepting God’s actions to questioning his motives and reasons. Job has maintained a sinless life and even God commends Job saying, “Have you considered my servant Job? You will find no one like him on earth, a man of blameless and upright life, who fears God and sets his face against wrongdoing” (Job, Prologue: 8-10). Evidently, Job has demonstrated his piety in the face of God and has no reason to question his motives because so far everything is going according to the retributive rubric; he is sinless and thus, he remains unp...

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...bout the perplexities of life through a deep insight and appropriate judgment. From initially blindly accepting God’s actions, Job illustrates the danger of living in ignorance. This ignorance is beneficial to recognize in order to understand why God’s ways are incomprehensible and through the friends of Job, there is a disproven idea of a simple retributive rubric under which God acts; furthermore, the viewpoints depict the complex and rather incommensurable system of God. Job remains in a state of existential despair, and ultimately realizes that he can not fathom God in any way, while his friends falsely assume knowledge, in which God later reprimands. Questioning is an important concept that later leads to greater wisdom just as it does for Job because he who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever.