The Land of Uz and the Court of Heaven — The Historical World Behind Job 1
Job 1 opens with a man, a land, and a wager that will redefine the meaning of suffering for every generation that follows. But before a single sheep is taken or a single child is buried, the narrator drops three words that most readers skip past without a second thought: “the land of Uz.” To the original audience, those words were not a throwaway geographical note. They were a signal – this story takes place outside the borders of Israel, outside the covenant of circumcision, outside every religious safety net the chosen people had constructed. The greatest saint who ever lived, according to God’s own testimony, was not an Israelite. He was a man from the frontier.
We read Job 1 as theology. The original audience heard it as something far more dangerous – a story about a man they could locate on a map, whose wealth they could measure in animals they had seen, whose mourning customs they would have recognized, and whose God they worshiped. Every detail in Job 1 is anchored in a world that existed before the temple, before the priesthood, before the law code that would later define Israelite religion. To read it well, we must recover that world. We must stand in the dust of Uz and smell the burnt offerings of a man who rose before dawn because his children’s souls kept him awake.
What follows is an attempt to reconstruct the historical world behind Job 1 – the land, the economy, the peoples, the customs, and the theological structures that shaped every sentence of this ancient text. The gap between us and Job is not merely chronological. It is cultural, economic, religious, and cosmological. When we close that gap, the chapter detonates with a force that Sunday School familiarity has long suppressed.
The Land of Uz: A Border Territory Between Worlds
The opening verse places Job “in the land of Uz” (“Uts”Hebrew“עוּץ”“Uts”“Uz”), and the scholarly debate over this location has consumed centuries of ink without producing a final consensus. Walton notes that “the location of the land of Uz is not precisely known” and that “it may have been a general term for the Near East” (IVP Bible Background Commentary, p.507). MacArthur identifies it more specifically as a territory “in northern Arabia, adjacent to Midian, where Moses lived for 40 years” (The MacArthur Study Bible, p.22). But the evidence, taken together, points toward a region that was less a fixed kingdom and more a transitional zone – a frontier territory where Edom, Aram, and the Arabian desert converged.
The Septuagint translates the phrase as “in the land of Ausitis” and adds, at the close of the book (Job 42:17b, LXX), that Job “dwelt on the borders of Idumea and Arabia.” This places Uz northeast of Edom, extending into the Arabian desert. Ptolemy’s Geography (5.19.2) identifies a people called the Aisitai (Ausitae) dwelling in the Syrian-Arabian desert west of Babylon, under the Caucabenes. Josephus (Antiquities 1.6.4) connects a figure named Ousios with the founding of Trachonitis and Damascus.1
The genealogical evidence in Genesis complicates matters further – productively so. The name Uz appears in three distinct lineages: Uz the son of Aram, grandson of Shem (Gen 10:23); Uz the son of Nahor, Abraham’s brother (Gen 22:21); and Uz the grandson of Seir the Horite, through the Edomite line (Gen 36:28). Keil and Delitzsch note that this “perplexing double occurrence” of names like Teman and Dumah in both Idumea and East Hauran likely results from “the mixing of the different tribes through migration.” The name Uz, in other words, was not a pinpoint but a region – a broad swath of territory that different tribal groups claimed at different periods.
Lamentations 4:21 associates the land of Uz directly with Edom: “Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom, that dwellest in the land of Uz.” Jeremiah 25:20 lists Uz alongside Philistia and Edom in a catalogue of nations that will drink the cup of God’s wrath. Syrian Christian tradition locates Job in the Hauran, where a monastery called Dair Ayyub (the Monastery of Job) was named in his honor. Muslim tradition similarly places him in el-Bethenije, a fertile district east of the Hauran. The medieval Arab geographer Yakut al-Hamawi reports that “the whole of Bethenije, a part of the province of Damascus, belonged to Job as his possession.”2
Uz was not a fixed kingdom but a transitional zone between Edom, Aram, and the Arabian desert – a frontier territory where multiple tribal lineages converged. The Septuagint, Ptolemy, Josephus, and later Syrian and Muslim traditions all point toward a region stretching from Hauran into the Arabian desert. This border identity is theologically significant: Job’s story is deliberately set outside the boundaries of Israel.
Adam Clarke, following Mr. Good, places Uz more precisely in “Arabia Petraea, on the south-western coast of the lake Asphaltites, in a line between Egypt and Philistia, surrounded with Kedar, Teman, and Midian.” Clarke argues that “nothing is clearer than that all the persons introduced into this poem were Idumeans, dwelling in Idumea; or, in other words, Edomite Arabs.” Eliphaz came from Teman – a principal district of Idumea (Jer 49:7, 20; Ezek 25:13). Bildad came from Shuah, always mentioned alongside Sheba and Dedan, near Idumea. Zophar came from Naamah, a city in southern Judah (Josh 15:41). And Elihu came from Buz, mentioned in Jeremiah 25:23 in conjunction with Teman and Dedan – another border city upon Uz.
The Bible Knowledge Commentary confirms this broad geographical picture: “The customs, vocabulary, and references to geography and natural history relate to northern Arabia. Whatever Uz’s location, it was near a desert (Job 1:19), it was fertile for agriculture and livestock-raising (1:3, 14; 42:12), and it was probably outside Palestine” (Walvoord and Zuck, Bible Knowledge Commentary: Wisdom, p.18).
The theological weight of this geography cannot be overstated. The book of Job contains no reference to the Abrahamic covenant, no mention of the Exodus, no appeal to the Mosaic law, no invocation of the name Israel. It is, as Delitzsch observes, “the most universal book in the Old Testament.” The narrator has deliberately placed his hero outside the covenant community to demonstrate that genuine fear of God is not confined to a single nation or religious system. John Gill captured this with characteristic clarity: Job is “an early proof of what the Apostle Peter observed: that God is no respecter of persons, but in every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted with him.”
The Patriarchal Setting: When Did Job Live?
Few questions in biblical scholarship have generated more heat and less light than the dating of Job. The Talmudists alone scatter him across nearly every era of Israelite history. Some place him in the time of the patriarchs; others in the days of Moses; still others during the judges, under David, under Solomon, during the Babylonian captivity, or even in the time of Ahasuerus and Esther. Luther placed him in the days of Solomon. The range of proposed dates spans over a thousand years.
The internal evidence of the book, however, points strongly toward the patriarchal period – the age before the giving of the law at Sinai. Several features converge to support this conclusion.
First, the absence of Mosaic legislation. The book makes no reference to the Torah, the tabernacle, the Aaronic priesthood, the sacrificial code of Leviticus, or any of the festivals prescribed in the Pentateuch. If Job and his friends had known the law, it is inconceivable that neither side would have appealed to it during a theological debate that spans thirty-nine chapters. The appeals are instead made to tradition, to the wisdom of the ancients, to direct observation of nature, and to personal experience of God – precisely the epistemic sources available to people who lived before written revelation existed.
Second, the patriarchal priesthood. Job functions as the priest of his own household, offering “olot”Hebrew“עֹלוֹת”“olot”“whole for his children without any intermediary. This is the pattern of the patriarchal age – Abraham built altars (Gen 12:7; 13:18), Noah offered sacrifice after the flood (Gen 8:20), and the father of each family served as its Cohen. After Sinai, this right was restricted to the Levitical priesthood. Beeke observes that “the fact that Job, who was not of the tribe of Levi, offered burnt offerings indicates that this was before the time of the Levitical priesthood (Lev. 17:1-5)” (Reformation Heritage KJV Study Bible, p.39). Job’s priestly role is unintelligible in a post-Mosaic context.3
Third, the longevity of Job. Job lived 140 years after his restoration (Job 42:16), which, combined with his age at the time of his affliction, implies a total lifespan well exceeding 200 years. By the time of Moses, the human lifespan had been reduced to “seventy years, or by reason of strength eighty years” (Ps 90:10). Job’s extraordinary age places him in the era before this reduction – the patriarchal epoch when Abraham lived 175 years, Isaac 180, and Jacob 147.
Fourth, the form of idolatry mentioned. The only idolatry Job references is the worship of the sun and moon (Job 31:26-28) – the oldest and most primitive form of false worship, predating the elaborate polytheistic systems of later antiquity. This fits a patriarchal setting, before the proliferation of the Canaanite and Mesopotamian pantheons.
Fifth, the divine names. Throughout the dialogues, Job and his friends call God “Eloah”Hebrew“אֱלוֹהַּ”“Eloah”“God, and “Shaddai”Hebrew“שַׁדַּי”“Shaddai”“the – not “YHWH”Hebrew“יְהוָה”“YHWH”“the. The name Shaddai is the characteristic name of God in the patriarchal narratives of Genesis, particularly at the turning points of divine self-revelation (Gen 17:1; 28:3; 35:11; 43:14; 48:3; 49:25). After Sinai, YHWH becomes the dominant covenant name (Exod 6:3). The consistent use of Shaddai in Job’s dialogues – over thirty times – anchors the book firmly in the pre-Mosaic era.
Sixth, wealth measured in livestock, not currency. Job’s prosperity is reckoned entirely in animals and servants (Job 1:3), not in silver or gold – though he may well have possessed both. This pattern of valuation, where a man’s standing is determined by the size of his herds rather than the weight of his treasury, is characteristic of the semi-nomadic patriarchal economy described in Genesis.
The internal evidence of Job – the absence of Mosaic law, the patriarchal priesthood, Job’s extraordinary lifespan, the primitive form of idolatry referenced, the consistent use of divine names characteristic of the patriarchal age, and the livestock-based economy – all converge to place the story in the period before the giving of the law at Sinai. Job almost certainly lived in the era of the patriarchs, before written revelation existed.
The Economy of the Ancient East: Oxen, Asses, Camels, and Sheep as Wealth
The narrator’s inventory of Job’s possessions (1:2-3) is not decorative. It is a financial statement, presented in the categories that mattered to the ancient Near East. Seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred she-asses, and “a very great household” (“avuddahHebrew“עֲבֻדָּה“avuddah“a) – this is not merely wealth. It is an empire.
Sheep were the foundation of the pastoral economy. They provided wool for clothing, milk for sustenance, and – critically for Job – sacrificial animals for worship. Walton puts the scale in perspective: “Third-millennium texts record temple flocks of about fourteen thousand sheep, but personal flocks were usually much smaller. In the ancient Near East sedentary herds would generally not exceed three hundred” (IVP Bible Background Commentary, p.507). Seven thousand sheep was therefore a staggering number, requiring enormous pastureland and a substantial workforce of shepherds. When the fire of God fell from heaven and consumed them all (1:16), Job lost not only his primary economic asset but the very animals from which his burnt offerings were drawn. Satan’s strategy may well have included the hope that Job would conclude his sacrifices were unacceptable to God.
Camels were the freight trains of the ancient world. Aristotle notes that “some of the inhabitants of upper Asia used to have camels, to the number of three thousand” – exactly the number attributed to Job.4 Three thousand camels meant Job was not merely a pastoralist. He was a merchant prince, capable of launching massive caravans across the Arabian desert. The camel could carry loads of 300 to 600 pounds and travel for days without water – an indispensable asset for the trans-desert trade routes that connected southern Arabia’s incense-producing regions with the markets of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Mediterranean coast.
Oxen – five hundred yoke, meaning a thousand animals – indicate an enormous agricultural operation. The yoke was the standard unit of measure for plowing capacity; five hundred yoke could work vast tracts of arable land. The oxen were at work when the Sabeans fell upon them (1:14), which tells us Job was not merely a herder but a farmer, cultivating grain on a scale that required industrial labor.
She-asses were prized above male asses for two reasons: their milk, which was a valued commodity in the ancient Near East, and their gentler temperament, which made them superior for riding. Five hundred she-asses – plus whatever number of males Job possessed – represents a substantial transportation and dairy operation. The asses were feeding beside the oxen when the Sabeans attacked, each in its proper place, under the servants’ care. John Gill notes that “the situation and employment of these creatures are particularly mentioned, to show that they were in their proper places, and at their proper work; and that what befell them was not owing to the want of care.”
Behind all of this stood the “very great household” – not merely domestic servants but an agricultural and commercial workforce. Managing seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, a thousand oxen, and five hundred asses required scores, perhaps hundreds, of laborers: shepherds, camel drivers, plowmen, herdsmen, household servants, and overseers. Job was, in modern terms, a CEO of a diversified agricultural and trading conglomerate.
The narrator’s summary is precise: “This man was the greatest of all the ”beneHebrew”בְּנֵי”bene”sons.” These were the tribal peoples extending from Arabia Deserta northward toward Mesopotamia – the same peoples whose wisdom is mentioned alongside Egypt’s in 1 Kings 4:30. Job sat at the summit of an entire civilization. And the narrator mentions all of this before the catastrophe, so that the reader understands exactly what was destroyed in a single afternoon.
The Sabeans: Raiding Culture on the Arabian Frontier
The first blow falls from the south. “The Sabeans fell upon them, and took them away; yea, they have slain the servants with the edge of the sword” (1:15). The Sabeans (“Sheva”Hebrew“שְׁבָא”“Sheva”“Sheba,) are one of the most frequently mentioned peoples in the Old Testament, but the name covers multiple groups with distinct origins and territories. Walton identifies “three groups of Sabeans in Scripture,” including those from “Sheba, modern Yemen, an area that was highly urbanized and had achieved a complex degree of civilization by this period (1 Kings 10),” Sabeans in Ethiopia, and a northern Arabian group “equated with Tema in north Arabia, and probably identified with the Saba of the Assyrian inscriptions of Tiglath-Pileser III and Sargon II in the late eighth century B.C.” – and concludes that “these Sabeans are most likely the ones mentioned here in Job 1” (IVP Bible Background Commentary, p.508).
Genesis traces three lineages bearing the name Sheba: a Cushite (Hamitic) line through Cush (Gen 10:7), a Joktanish (Semitic) line through Shem (Gen 10:28), and an Abrahamic line through Jokshan, a son of Abraham by Keturah (Gen 25:3). The sons of Keturah were sent “into the east country” (Gen 25:6) – the very region where Job dwelt. It is this last group, the nomadic descendants of Abraham’s secondary line settled in the Arabian desert, that most likely attacked Job’s cattle.
The Sabeans of Arabia Felix – the southern kingdom of Sheba, famous for the Queen of Sheba’s visit to Solomon (1 Kings 10) – were traders and city-dwellers, not raiders. But the Sabeans of Arabia Deserta, the nomadic northern branch, were a different matter entirely. Ezekiel refers to “Sabeans from the wilderness” (Ezek 23:42), a phrase that captures their character precisely. These were desert-dwelling pastoralists and raiders who lived, as Gill observes, “upon the plunder of others” in a barren landscape that offered few alternatives. Strabo confirms that the Sabeans “inhabited Arabia Felix, and made excursions into Syria” – a range that would bring them directly into contact with the land of Uz.5
The Sabean attack was not random violence. It was a calculated raid – falling suddenly on the oxen while they were plowing and the asses while they were feeding, seizing the livestock and slaughtering the servants who resisted. Clines observes that “since plunder is the object of the Sabeans’ raid, their killing of the farm-workers is an unexpected detail that obviously arises from the dramatic necessity to eliminate all of Job’s possessions, including his ‘great household’ (v 2)” (Job 1-20, Word Biblical Commentary, p.133). This was the economics of the desert: what you cannot grow, you take. The pattern was ancient and entrenched, and it would persist in the Arabian borderlands for millennia.
The Chaldeans: Proto-Babylonian Raiders and the Three-Band Formation
The third catastrophe comes from the north. “The Chaldeans made out three bands, and fell upon the camels, and have carried them away, yea, and slain the servants with the edge of the sword” (1:17). The Chaldeans (“Kasdim”Hebrew“כַּשְׂדִּים”“Kasdim”“Chaldeans”) are best known as the founders of the Neo-Babylonian Empire under Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar in the seventh and sixth centuries BC. Some scholars, notably Ewald, have used this reference to argue for a late date of composition. But this objection fails on multiple grounds.
The Chaldeans of Genesis are far older than the Neo-Babylonian dynasty. Abraham himself came from “Ur of the Chaldees” (Gen 11:31), and Nahor’s son Chesed (Gen 22:22) – whose name is the likely etymological root of “Kasdim” – was brother to Uz, placing the Chaldeans in the same genealogical matrix as Job himself. These early Chaldeans were Semitic peoples dwelling among the mountain ranges to the north of Assyria and Mesopotamia, and they were present in the region long before they consolidated into a political empire. Their capacity for raiding – organized, mobile, and violent – was not a late development but a persistent feature of their semi-nomadic existence in the centuries before they became city-builders.
The military tactic described – dividing into “three bands” (“rashim”Hebrew“רָאשִׁים”“rashim”“heads,) – was an ancient stratagem designed to surround and overwhelm the target. The same tactic appears in Judges 7:16 (Gideon’s three companies against the Midianites) and 1 Samuel 11:11 (Saul’s three companies against the Ammonites). The term “pashat”Hebrew“פָּשַׁט”“pashat”“to is the standard Hebrew verb for this kind of sudden, organized plundering attack.6
The alternation between southern raiders (Sabeans) and northern raiders (Chaldeans) is part of the literary and strategic architecture of the chapter. The New Bible Commentary highlights the deliberate geography of devastation: “The disasters (two natural, two inflicted by humans) strike from all directions: the Sabeans (15) come from the south (Sheba); the Chaldeans (17) from the north; the lightning (fire from God, 16) is from the storms that sweep in from the Mediterranean in the west; and the mighty wind (19) comes from the desert in the east” (Wenham and Motyer, New Bible Commentary, p.550). Job’s territory lay between these two predatory peoples, vulnerable to attack from both directions. Waltke underscores the theological architecture: “The calamities fall on the feast day of the firstborn, the quintessential symbol of God’s blessing of life. Satan has power over both politics and nature” (An Old Testament Theology, p.533). The interweaving of human agents (Sabeans, Chaldeans) with apparent acts of God (fire from heaven, wind from the wilderness) is designed to prevent Job from isolating a single cause for his suffering. Is he being punished by God? Attacked by men? Caught in the crossfire of geopolitics? The answer is all of the above, and none of the above, and that is precisely the point.
The Sabeans were nomadic raiders from the Arabian desert, descendants of Abraham through Keturah, who lived by plundering the agricultural settlements on the desert’s edge. The Chaldeans were proto-Babylonian peoples from the north, employing the ancient three-band military formation to surround and seize Job’s camel herds. The alternation between southern and northern attackers mirrors the alternation between human and divine agents – an architecture of confusion designed to make suffering incomprehensible.
Priestly Intercession in the Patriarchal Period
One of the most revealing details in Job 1 is the account of Job’s priestly function. “Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the morning, and offered burnt offerings according to the number of them all” (1:5). This is not merely piety. It is a window into the religious structures of the pre-Mosaic world.
Before the giving of the law at Sinai, there was no Levitical priesthood, no tabernacle, no regulated sacrificial code, no distinction between sin offering, guilt offering, and burnt offering. The only blood sacrifice known was the “olah”Hebrew“עֹלָה”“olah”“burnt – the whole burnt offering, in which the entire animal was consumed by fire and ascended to God. This was the sacrifice Noah offered after the flood (Gen 8:20), the sacrifice Abraham prepared on Mount Moriah (Gen 22:2), and the sacrifice Job offered for his children. The name itself derives from the verb “alah”Hebrew“עָלָה”“alah”“to, indicating that the offering was designed to rise – in flame and smoke – to the God who dwells above.
In this patriarchal system, the father of each household served as its priest. There was no intermediary, no ordained clergy, no sacred architecture beyond the rough-hewn altar. The father sanctified his family, the father offered the blood, the father interceded before God. Keil and Delitzsch observe that this corresponds to “the right of priesthood which the fathers of Israel exercised at the first passover” – a right that was later restricted to the Aaronic line after Sinai. Job’s priestly office was not irregular or informal. It was the standard religious practice of his era, and it carried the full weight of covenantal obligation.
The detail that Job “rose up early in the morning” (“vayyashkemHebrew“וַיַּשְׁכֵּם“vayyashkem“and) speaks to the urgency of his concern. This was not a casual observance. The sacrifices were offered at dawn, with each of his ten children represented by an individual offering. The verb “qiddash”Hebrew“קִדַּשׁ”“qiddash”“to indicates that Job summoned his children to undergo ceremonial preparation – likely involving ritual washing and spiritual self-examination – before the sacrifice was made. The whole process was repeated after every cycle of feasting, “kol-hayyamim”Hebrew“כָּל־הַיָּמִים”“kol-hayyamim”“all, indicating that this was not an occasional burst of parental concern but the established rhythm of Job’s spiritual life.
This is the patriarchal priesthood operating at its highest level: a father who rises before the sun because the thought that his children might have silently dismissed God in their hearts is more than he can bear.
The Heavenly Court: The Divine Council and the Figure of the Satan
The narrative shifts in verse 6 from earth to heaven without warning. “Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them.” With this single verse, the narrator opens a window into the cosmological framework of the ancient Near East – the concept of the divine council.
The Sons of God
The phrase “beneHebrew“בְּנֵי“bene“sons designates angelic beings – not deities in a polytheistic sense, but created spiritual beings who serve in the heavenly court. The same phrase appears in Job 38:7, where “the sons of God shouted for joy” at the creation of the world, and in Genesis 6:2, where the “sons of God” interacted with the daughters of men. They are called “sons” not by redemption or adoption but by creation – beings fashioned in the likeness of God, existing before the material universe, standing as His immediate attendants and agents.
The imagery of a heavenly court – where God sits enthroned and spiritual beings present themselves for assignment – is deeply embedded in the Old Testament. In 1 Kings 22:19, Micaiah sees “the LORD sitting on His throne, and all the host of heaven standing by Him on His right hand and on His left.” In Isaiah 6, the seraphim cry “Holy, holy, holy” in the presence of the enthroned God. In Daniel 7, “the court sat, and the books were opened.” Psalm 89:6-8 asks, “Who in the skies can be compared to the LORD? Who among the sons of the mighty can be likened to the LORD? God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the saints.”
This is not mythology imported from Canaanite religion, though the ancient Near Eastern parallels are extensive. The Ugaritic texts, discovered at Ras Shamra in modern Syria, describe a divine council presided over by El, the chief deity, in which lesser gods deliberate and receive commissions. The Mesopotamian Enuma Elish depicts a divine assembly where the gods determine the fate of the cosmos. The Egyptian texts describe courts of judgment in the afterlife, presided over by Osiris.7
The Dictionary of Biblical Imagery confirms that “Satan is not presented as the evil spiritual being we come to know in the NT but as one who plays a legal role in the heavenly court as ‘the accuser.’ Even though he is not loyal to God, Satan, by virtue of his rank as a divine being, is permitted to appear at meetings of the council on a day when ‘the sons of God’ come to present themselves before the Lord” (Ryken, Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, p.81).
The critical difference between the biblical divine council and its pagan parallels is theological, not structural. In the pagan versions, the gods are co-equal or nearly so, deliberating and debating among themselves. In the biblical presentation, there is one God, uncontested in sovereignty, and the “sons of God” are creatures who “present themselves” (“lehityatsev”Hebrew“לְהִתְיַצֵּב”“lehityatsev”“to) before Him – the language of a royal court, where servants report for duty and receive their commissions. God is not primus inter pares. He is the sole Sovereign, and the heavenly beings are His attendants.
The Figure of the Satan
Among these attendants comes “hasatan”Hebrew“הַשָּׂטָן”“hasatan”“the. The definite article is significant – this is not “a satan” (a generic adversary) but “the Satan,” a specific being with a specific role. The word derives from the verb “satan”Hebrew“שָׂטַן”“satan”“to, and designates the prosecuting attorney of the heavenly court, the one whose function is accusation.
The development of the Satan figure in the Hebrew Bible is gradual and restrained. The term appears with the definite article only here and in Zechariah 3:1-2, where “the Satan” stands at the right hand of Joshua the high priest to accuse him. In 1 Chronicles 21:1, the name appears without the article – “Satan stood up against Israel” – suggesting a development from a title (the adversary) to a proper name (Satan). The fullest revelation of Satan’s character and history waits for the New Testament, where he is identified as “the accuser of the brethren, who accuses them before our God day and night” (Rev 12:10) and as a “roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Pet 5:8).
In the ancient Near Eastern context, the figure of a heavenly accuser or adversary is not entirely without parallel. The Egyptian concept of divine judgment included adversarial figures who challenged the worthiness of the deceased. But the biblical Satan is distinct in a critical way: he is not an independent power operating outside divine sovereignty. He comes among the sons of God – not as a member in good standing, but as an intruder who is tolerated for a season. He cannot act without divine permission. He operates on a leash. Delitzsch captures this with precision: “Evil operates within the sphere of divine sovereignty, not outside it. God does not create evil, but He governs it.”
The dialogue between God and Satan (1:7-12) is structured as a legal proceeding. God interrogates (“Whence comest thou?”), the defendant evades (“From going to and fro in the earth”), God introduces evidence (“Hast thou considered my servant Job?”), the accuser files his charge (“Doth Job fear God for nought?”), and the court renders its ruling (“Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand”). This is the heavenly court in session, and the fate of the greatest man on earth hangs on its proceedings.
The heavenly court scene in Job 1 draws on the ancient Near Eastern concept of a divine council, in which spiritual beings present themselves before God. But unlike the pagan parallels found in Ugaritic, Mesopotamian, and Egyptian literature, the biblical council features one unchallenged Sovereign and creatures who serve at His pleasure. The Satan figure is a prosecuting attorney, not an independent power – brilliant and malicious, but unable to act without divine permission.
The Authorship Debate: Who Wrote the Book of Job?
The question of authorship has generated a bibliography vast enough to fill a small library, and no consensus has emerged. The principal candidates are three: Moses, Solomon, and an anonymous author writing during or after the Babylonian captivity.
The Case for Moses
The traditional Jewish view, recorded in the Talmud (Bava Bathra 14b-15a), attributes the book to Moses: “Moses wrote his own book, and the section of Balaam, and Job.” The theory holds that Moses composed the work during his forty years in Midian, drawing on Arabian traditions he encountered in that region, and delivered it to the suffering Israelites in Egypt as a model of patience under affliction. This would explain the book’s numerous Arabic linguistic features – words, constructions, and idioms that have closer parallels in Arabic than in standard biblical Hebrew.
Mr. Mason Good, in his Introductory Dissertation, argues the case for Moses at length. He contends that the author “must have been minutely and elaborately acquainted with Astronomy, Natural History, and the general science of his age; that he must have been a Hebrew by birth and native language, and an Arabian by long residence and local study.” He identifies extensive parallels between the acknowledged writings of Moses and the book of Job – similarities in imagery, vocabulary, and theological conception that he attributes to “the habit of thinking upon subjects in the same manner, and by means of the same terms.”8
The Case for Solomon
Solomon’s candidacy rests on the extraordinary overlap between the book of Job and the acknowledged Solomonic writings – Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. Both Job and Proverbs contain extended eulogies of wisdom (Job 28; Prov 8). Both use the rare noun “tushiyyah”Hebrew“תּוּשִׁיָּה”“tushiyyah”“sound – a word that appears six times in Job, four times in Proverbs, and almost nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible. Both use the uncommon noun “havvah”Hebrew“הַוָּה”“havvah”“calamity, in the sense of ruinous downfall – a usage largely confined to Job, Proverbs, and the Psalms. The sentiment that the wicked heap up riches only to have the righteous inherit them appears in nearly identical form in Job 27:16-17 and Proverbs 28:8.
Solomon, “instructed in all the wisdom of God,” who “spoke of trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon to the hyssop that springs out of the wall” and “spoke also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes” (1 Kings 4:29-33), would have possessed the comprehensive knowledge of natural history that the divine speeches in Job 38-41 display. Gregory Nazianzen, Spanheim, and Hardouin all supported Solomonic authorship. Adam Clarke considered it a serious possibility, noting that “a multitude of sentiments, sentences, terms, and modes of speech” in Job “are almost peculiar to Solomon.”
The Case for an Anonymous Author
Some scholars, noting features that seem to presuppose knowledge of later Israelite history, have attributed the book to an unknown author writing during or after the Babylonian captivity. This view has the advantage of explaining certain theological developments – particularly the sophisticated treatment of the Satan figure – that some consider more consistent with later biblical literature. But it struggles to account for the book’s archaic linguistic features, its complete absence of references to Mosaic institutions, and its consistent maintenance of a pre-Israelite setting.
The honest answer is that we do not know who wrote the book of Job. MacArthur summarizes the theological stakes: “The book of Job poignantly illustrates Deut. 29:29, ‘The secret things belong to the LORD our God’” (The MacArthur Study Bible, p.3229). What we know – what the internal evidence, the canonical testimony, and the tradition of the church all confirm – is that it is inspired Scripture, received as authoritative by the Jewish community, quoted as such by the apostle Paul (1 Cor 3:19, citing Job 5:13), and woven into the fabric of biblical revelation with the same authority as any other book of the canon.
Mourning Customs: Robe-Tearing, Head-Shaving, and Prostration
When the final messenger delivers his report – all ten children dead, crushed beneath a collapsed house – Job’s response is described with the precision of a cultural ethnographer: “Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped” (1:20). Each of these actions draws on mourning customs deeply embedded in the ancient Near East.
Rending the garment. The “me’il”Hebrew“מְעִיל”“me’il”“robe, was the cloak of dignity, the garment of a man of standing. To tear it was the conventional expression of extreme grief – a physical enactment of a heart torn open by sorrow. The practice appears throughout the Old Testament: Jacob rends his garments when told Joseph is dead (Gen 37:34), Joshua and Caleb rend theirs before the rebellious congregation (Num 14:6), and David tears his clothes at the news of Saul’s death (2 Sam 1:11). The act was not uncontrolled hysteria. It was ritual grief – a formalized, culturally recognized gesture that communicated the depth of loss to the community.
Shaving the head. Hair, in the ancient Near East, was a symbol of vitality, strength, and social status. To remove it was to strip oneself of dignity and adornment, to present oneself as desolate and bereft. The practice is attested across multiple ancient Near Eastern cultures – in Mesopotamian mourning texts, in Egyptian funerary customs, and throughout the Semitic world. Some commentators note that Job “shaved” his head rather than tearing his hair, indicating deliberateness rather than frenzy. He was not thrashing in hysterics. He was performing the rites of mourning with the steady hands of a man who knew exactly what he was doing.9
Prostration. Job “fell down upon the ground, and worshipped” (“vayyishtachu”Hebrew“וַיִּשְׁתָּחוּ”“vayyishtachu”“and). The verb is the standard term for religious worship – bowing before the presence of God with face touching the earth. This was not the collapse of a man who could not stand. It was the deliberate self-abasement of a man who, in the moment of his greatest agony, chose submission over rebellion. Clines captures the theological significance: “The portraiture of Job contains the answer the narrative seeks to convey: in mourning for his loss Job blesses the Lord who gave and who has taken away, never sinning in his speech or speaking irreverently of God (1:21-22; 2:10)” (Job 1-20, Word Biblical Commentary, p.166). Matthew Henry observes that “he did not faint away, but arose, as a champion to the combat; he did not, in a heat, throw off his clothes, but very gravely, in conformity to the custom of the country, rent his mantle.”
The sequence is theologically loaded: grief, then worship. Tearing, then bowing. Human agony, then divine adoration. The two are not in conflict. They are simultaneous. Job does not suppress his pain to worship, and he does not allow his pain to cancel worship. He holds both together in a single breath – the fullest expression of what it means to be a creature before the Creator in a world where children die.
Job’s response to catastrophe follows the formalized mourning customs of the ancient Near East: tearing the robe of dignity, shaving the head as a sign of desolation, and prostrating oneself before God. These were not uncontrolled outbursts but deliberate ritual acts that communicated the depth of loss. The sequence – grief followed by worship, tearing followed by bowing – demonstrates that human agony and divine adoration are not incompatible.
The Question Behind the Question: Ancient Near Eastern Theology and the Problem of Suffering
To appreciate the radical nature of Job 1, we must understand what the ancient world assumed about the relationship between suffering and guilt. The dominant theological framework of the ancient Near East – shared by Mesopotamians, Egyptians, and later by Israel’s own wisdom tradition in its popular form – was retribution theology: the righteous prosper, and the wicked suffer. If a man is prosperous, the gods favor him. If a man is afflicted, the gods are punishing him. Effect follows cause with mechanical regularity.
This framework was not irrational. It was, in fact, a reasonable inference from ordinary experience, and it contained a genuine kernel of truth – God does reward righteousness and punish wickedness, in the long run and in the aggregate. The Mosaic covenant itself enshrined this principle in its blessings and curses (Deut 28). Proverbs affirms it repeatedly: “The blessing of the LORD makes rich, and he adds no sorrow with it” (Prov 10:22). As Walton observes, “the solution offered in the cycles of speeches by Job’s friends is basically common in the ancient Near East and one we have seen in Mesopotamian literature. The retribution principle is affirmed (Job 4:7; 8:4, 20; 36:6-7), and the justice of God is defended (8:3-6; 34:10-12)” (Ancient Israelite Literature in Its Cultural Context, p.187).
But the popular version of retribution theology made a fatal leap: it inverted the logic. Instead of “the righteous often prosper,” it concluded “the prosperous must be righteous.” Instead of “the wicked often suffer,” it concluded “the suffering must be wicked.” And it is this inverted logic that Satan exploits in his challenge – and that Job’s three friends will later weaponize against him.
Satan’s question – “Does Job fear God ”chinnam”Hebrew”חִנָּם””chinnam””for?” – strikes at the root of the entire retributive system. If Job’s piety is motivated by prosperity, then retribution theology is not merely a description of how God governs the world. It is a description of how humans manipulate God. Worship becomes a transaction. Faith becomes a contract. And God becomes a vending machine who dispenses blessings in exchange for devotion.
The ancient Mesopotamian text known as Ludlul bel nemeqi (“I Will Praise the Lord of Wisdom”), sometimes called the Babylonian Job, explores similar territory. Its protagonist, a pious nobleman named Shubshi-meshre-Shakkan, is afflicted with disease and social disgrace despite his devotion to the gods. He protests his innocence and questions the justice of divine governance. But the Babylonian text resolves with the god Marduk restoring the sufferer’s fortunes – a resolution that leaves the retributive framework intact. The system works; it just took longer than expected.
Job goes further. The book does not merely question the timing of retribution. It questions the entire premise. Satan’s challenge – and God’s acceptance of it – introduces a category of suffering that retribution theology cannot accommodate: probative suffering. Job is afflicted not because he sinned but because he was righteous. The suffering is not punitive but demonstrative. It exists to prove something – that disinterested love for God is possible, that a human being can worship the Almighty without a price tag attached.
This is the theological earthquake at the heart of Job 1. It does not deny that God rewards the righteous. It denies that reward is the reason for righteousness. It separates the gift from the Giver and asks whether a creature can love the Giver when every gift has been removed. And it answers – through Job’s broken, bleeding, magnificent worship in the ashes – that yes, such love is possible. Grace can produce a faith that survives the removal of every earthly reason for faith.
A World Before the Law: The Melchizedek of the Old Testament
Keil and Delitzsch call the book of Job “the Melchizedek among the Old Testament books” – a comparison that deserves unpacking. Melchizedek, the priest-king of Salem, appears in Genesis 14 without genealogy, without origin, without context. He blesses Abraham and receives tithes from him, yet he belongs to no tribe, holds no office recognized by the later Israelite system, and serves a God whom Abraham himself acknowledges. He is a witness to the universality of true religion before the covenant of circumcision was given.
Job occupies the same theological space. He is a worshiper of the true God who exists outside every structure that Israel would later build to house its faith. No temple, no priesthood, no law code, no prophetic tradition, no covenant community supports his religion. He has only God, and God has only him. And in that stripped-down, pre-institutional encounter between creature and Creator, the most fundamental question of all theology is asked and answered.
The book of Job, like the figure of Melchizedek, stands as permanent testimony that the grace of God is wider than the walls of any religious institution. God had His servants in Uz before He had His tabernacle in Shiloh. He had a man who rose before dawn to offer sacrifice for his children’s hearts before He had a priesthood to regulate sacrifice. He had a saint who would worship Him from the ashes before He had a people who would worship Him from the promised land.
This does not diminish the importance of the covenant, the law, or the institutional structures God would later establish. It does something more profound: it reveals the foundation on which all those structures rest. The law was given to a people who already knew what it meant to fear God and depart from evil. The priesthood was established for a humanity that already understood the need for blood atonement. The temple was built for a God who had already been worshiped under the open sky of Uz.
Job 1 takes us back to that foundation – before the scaffolding was erected, before the blueprints were drawn, before the institution existed. And there, in the dust of the patriarchal world, with Sabean raiders to the south and Chaldean bands to the north and fire falling from heaven and wind tearing houses apart, a man with no creed but God and no ritual but sacrifice falls on his face and speaks the words that will echo through every century of human suffering:
“The LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.”
That is not the statement of a man protected by institutional religion. That is the statement of a man who has nothing left but God – and who discovers, in the losing of everything else, that God is enough.
Sources cited: Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament: Job; John Gill, Exposition of the Entire Bible; Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible; Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible; Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews; Aristotle, Historia Animalium; Ptolemy, Geography; Strabo, Geography; Xenophon, Cyropaedia; Leo Africanus, Description of Africa; Edwin M. Yamauchi, Africa and the Bible; John H. Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament; John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews, and Mark W. Chavalas, IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament; John H. Walton, Ancient Israelite Literature in Its Cultural Context; Marvin H. Pope, Job (Anchor Bible Commentary); John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible; Joel R. Beeke, Reformation Heritage KJV Study Bible; David J. A. Clines, Job 1-20 (Word Biblical Commentary); Bruce K. Waltke, An Old Testament Theology; Gordon J. Wenham and J. Alec Motyer, New Bible Commentary: 21st Century Edition; John F. Walvoord and Roy B. Zuck, Bible Knowledge Commentary: Wisdom; Leland Ryken, Dictionary of Biblical Imagery.
This article is part of our Job 1 Deep Dive series. For a verse-by-verse exegesis, see Job 1: The Day Heaven Held Its Breath. For a study of the Hebrew vocabulary, see Hebrew Words That Unlock Job 1. For the theology of sovereignty and suffering, see Does Job Fear God for Nothing?.
