Have You Considered My Servant Job

An extensive history of how the Bible’s story of Job has been interpreted through the ages. The question that launches Job’s story is posed by God at the outset of the story: “Have you considered my servant Job?” (1:8; 2:3). By any estimation the answer to this question must be yes. The forty-two chapters that form the biblical story have in fact opened the story to an ongoing practice of reading and rereading, evaluating and reevaluating. Early Greek and Jewish translators emphasized some aspects of the story and omitted others; the Church Fathers interpreted Job as a forerunner of Christ, while medieval Jewish commentators debated conservative and liberal interpretations of God’s providential love. Artists, beginning at least in the Greco-Roman period, painted and sculpted their own interpretations of Job. Novelists, playwrights, poets, and musicians—religious and irreligious, from virtually all points of the globe—have added their own distinctive readings. In Have You Considered My Servant Job?, Samuel E. Balentine examines this rich and varied history of interpretation by focusing on the principal characters in the story—Job, God, the satan figure, Job’s wife, and Job’s friends. Each chapter begins with a concise analysis of the biblical description of these characters, then explores how subsequent readers have expanded or reduced the story, shifted its major emphases or retained them, read the story as history or as fiction, and applied the morals of the story to the present or dismissed them as irrelevant. Each new generation of readers is shaped by different historical, cultural, and political contexts, which in turn require new interpretations of an old yet continually mesmerizing story. Voltaire read Job one way in the eighteenth century, Herman Melville a different way in the nineteenth century. Goethe’s reading of the satan figure in Faust is not the same as Chaucer’s in The Canterbury Tales, and neither is fully consonant with the Testament of Job or the Qur’an. One need only compare the descriptions of God in the biblical account with the imaginative renderings by Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, and Franz Kafka to see that the effort to understand why God afflicts Job “for no reason” (2:3) continues to be both compelling and endlessly complicated. “A tour de force of cultural interaction with the book of Job. He guides today’s reader along the path of Job interpretation, exegesis, adaptation and imagining revealing the sheer variety of themes, meanings, creativity and re-readings that have been inspired by this one biblical book. Balentine shows us that not only is there “always someone playing Job” (MacLeish, J.B.) but there’s always someone, past or present, reading this ever-enigmatic book.” —Katharine J. Dell, University of Cambridge “Balentine “considers Job” for the countless ways this biblical book, in all its rich complexities, has inspired readers over the centuries. . . . Balentine’s volume sparkles with insightful theological commentary and rigorous scholarship, and any exegetical course or study on Job would benefit from it.” —Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology

God's Servant Job tells the story of Gods faithful servant Job in verse. This beautifully illustrated book explains foundational theology for younger children as it points to a glorious Redeemer.

Stay curious. There's more to explore! No matter where you are on your faith journey, there's always more to explore in God's Word. Filled with innovative graphics and rich commentary, this visually stunning study Bible delivers intriguing insights from multiple points of view and will feed your curiosity as you explore the treasures of Scripture.

This book is a miracle from God! It would have never been written without God's healing virtue and power that helped my physical body. This book was birthed during of the darkest and most trying times I have ever had in my life due to the near death experience I had encountered. This book uncovers the principle of suffering and glory. I wrote this book especially for all my brothers and sisters in the Body of Christ who at times in their walk with the Lord Jesus have gone through great suffering and trial. For many who don't have the revelation of suffering, in this book, I try to explain that they don't need to feel guilt or condemnation for what they're going through. Sometimes God Himself allows us to go through times of great upheaval and personal suffering and tragedy for a greater purpose than we could ever imagine. That is why this book has been written - to help, comfort, and reveal the truth to so many saints who don't understand what or why they are going through their situation. My prayer is that through my tortured life and experiences, along with an exhaustive look at the Scriptures regarding suffering and glory, that you will awaken to a new found understanding of our glorious, precious God and His holy, revelatory Word. And that you'll find the answer to your situation. May God give you grace to receive this truth.

Richard Rohr, internationally known retreat leader, speaker and writer, plumbs the depths of the Job's story and its relevance for us today. Rohr strips Christian faith down to the essentials, beyond glib answers and a "hand-me-down" experience of God, and points the way to true knowing. In this invigorating exploration, the tension between suffering and faith becomes a powerful means to an authentic, open connection with the divine.