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Job 1:1-22

Teach the Text

Daniel J. Estes

Big Idea: In the face of severe adversity, Job lives up to the Lord’s confidence in his character. Understanding the Text Job 1 and 2 serve as a prologue for the book. The initial chapter introduces the protagonist, Job, as a man of exemplary character. Both the narrator (1:1) and Yahweh (1:8) describe Job as blameless, righteous, and God-fearing. The rest of the book is intended to be read with t...

2. Bildad Again Beats the Retribution Drum

Job 18:1-21

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Daniel J. Estes

Big Idea: Bildad’s theological system leaves no room for a righteous person to suffer as Job has. Understanding the Text Bildad’s second response to Job, in this chapter, echoes many of the points made by Eliphaz in his second speech, in Job 15. As a theoretical thinker, Bildad views Job’s situation as a generic case study of retribution, not as the unique, personal tragedy that it is. Bildad’s ...

3. Bildad Has the Answer (He Thinks!)

Job 8:1-22

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Daniel J. Estes

Big Idea: Bildad so focuses on God’s justice that he is blind to Job’s blamelessness. Understanding the Text In contrast to Job’s passionate speech in Job 6–7, Bildad’s first speech, in chapter 8, is calm and analytical. With an almost unfeeling tone, Bildad is more the lecturing professor than the comforting pastor. Unlike Eliphaz, who at least began by affirming Job (4:3–4), Bildad is caustic ...

4. Bildad’s Final Attempt to Answer Job

Job 25:1-6

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Daniel J. Estes

Big Idea: Bildad concludes that humans have no hope before God. Understanding the Text Job 25 contains Bildad’s third and final speech, but he has little to say to Job. Clearly running out of steam, Bildad speaks only briefly before he and the friends tail off into silence. For all practical purposes, the dialogue is over, with Job and his friends not a bit closer to each other in their position...

5. Elihu Makes His Appearance

Job 32:1--37:24

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Daniel J. Estes

Big Idea: The young Elihu claims to know the truth that has escaped Job and his friends. Understanding the Text After Job concludes his words in 31:40, the reader expects to hear Yahweh speak to resolve the debate between Job and his friends. Instead, a young man named Elihu bursts upon the scene, and for the next six chapters he holds the stage. In his long, uninterrupted speech, Elihu summarizes...

6. Eliphaz

Job 4:1-5:27

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Daniel J. Estes

How Eliphaz Explains Job’s Adversity Big Idea: Eliphaz explains Job’s adversity as a standard case of God’s retribution for sin. Understanding the Text Job’s three friends, who arrived on the scene in 2:11–13, wait until after Job’s opening lament in chapter 3 before they speak. From chapter 4 through chapter 27, the friends and Job speak alternately, as they all try to explain Job’s adversity. El...

7. Eliphaz Condemns and Counsels Job

Job 22:1-30

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Daniel J. Estes

Big Idea: Eliphaz accuses Job of sins he has not committed and gives Job advice that does not apply to him. Understanding the Text Job 22 begins the third and final cycle of speeches, and it is evident that Job and his friends are rapidly reaching an impasse. In the third round, the speeches are much shorter than before, and eventually the dialogue disintegrates completely when Zophar’s turn com...

8. Eliphaz Turns Up His Criticism of Job

Job 15:1-35

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Daniel J. Estes

Big Idea: Eliphaz insists that Job is a sinner who deserves God’s punishment. Understanding the Text Job 15 contains Eliphaz’s second speech to Job, and it is evident that civil discussion between them has broken down considerably. In fact, in the second cycle (Job 15–21) the dialogue between Job and his friends becomes more strained, abusive, and insulting as the friends focus almost completely...

9. Job Comes to a Good End

Job 42:7-17, Job 42:1-6

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Daniel J. Estes

Big Idea: Job realizes that Yahweh’s ways are more wonderful than he has known before, and he comes to enjoy Yahweh’s renewed blessings on his life. Understanding the Text After Yahweh speaks to Job in chapters 38 and 39, Job replies tentatively to him in 40:3–5. Yahweh’s second round of questions, in 40:6–41:34, with his detailed descriptions of Behemoth and Leviathan, then evokes a more definiti...

10. Job Considers a Legal Dispute with God

Job 9:1–10:22

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Daniel J. Estes

Big Idea: Job wants God to declare him righteous, but he cannot envision how to bring this about. Understanding the Text In chapters 9 and 10, Job takes up the challenge made by Bildad in 8:5 to plead with the Almighty. As he contemplates this possibility, Job focuses on his legal status before God. In this speech he begins to work out in his mind how he might approach God with his situation, an...

11. Job Destroys the Friends’ Major Argument

Job 21:1-34

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Daniel J. Estes

Big Idea: Job demonstrates that the observable evidence argues against the absolute application of the retribution principle. Understanding the Text Up to this point in the book, Job has been on the defensive as his friends argue that the retribution principle is an absolute pattern for life. In particular, the friends have insisted that Job must be a sinner, because the wicked are always judged...

12. Job Feels Both Confidence and Terror

Job 23:1--24:25

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Daniel J. Estes

Big Idea: God’s justice draws Job toward confidence, but God’s sovereignty intimidates him. Understanding the Text In Job 23, Job rejects what Eliphaz has just said in the previous chapter, when he counseled Job to “submit to God and be at peace with him” (22:21). This is yet another indicator that the communication between Job and his friends is breaking down. Instead of speaking directly eithe...

13. Job Feels under Attack by God

Job 16:1-17:16

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Daniel J. Estes

Big Idea: Job feels exhausted under God’s attack, but he still dares to hope for God’s justice. Understanding the Text In his rebuttal to Eliphaz in Job 16–17, Job begins by countering many of the charges made previously by his friends. He vigorously rejects their claims to possess knowledge that is superior to his, and he dismisses their arguments as irrelevant to his specific case. Job’s stron...

14. Job Hears the Whispers of God’s Works

Job 26:1--31:40

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Daniel J. Estes

Big Idea: When Job considers God’s greatness, he realizes how little he himself knows. Understanding the Text When Bildad says in Job 25:6 that humans are mere maggots and worms before the transcendent God, Job apparently interrupts him. Although Job agrees with much of Bildad’s lofty view of God, he draws different implications from their shared theology. Bildad claims that God’s greatness mean...

15. Job Presents Evidence against the Retribution Principle

Job 12:1--14:22

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Daniel J. Estes

Big Idea: Job points to evidence in life where God’s wisdom and power work contrary to the retribution principle. Understanding the Text As the discussion comes to the end of the first cycle (Job 3–14), Job is not persuaded by the arguments of Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. All three of the friends agree that Job must repent of his sin and then God will restore him to the blessing he enjoyed previ...

16. Job Shatters the Silence

Job 3:1-26

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Daniel J. Estes

Big Idea: Job brings his most troubling thoughts and deepest pains to words and views his adversity in the light of his commitment to God. Understanding the Text Job 3 begins an extended section of poetry in which Job and his three friends speak in turn. After the prose prologue in Job 1–2, the narrator fades from view, and we hear the voices of the individual speakers. Without the narrator, the r...

17. Job’s Hope against Hope

Job 19:1-29

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Daniel J. Estes

Big Idea: In a situation that seems hopeless, Job maintains a ray of hope in God. Understanding the Text In chapter 19, Job responds to Bildad’s second speech. Job uses a mixture of lament and legal language to express how abandoned he feels by his friends (19:1–6), by God (19:7–12), and by the full range of people in his community (19:13–19). In the final verses of the chapter, Job pleads with ...

18. Job’s Reply to Eliphaz

Job 6:1–7:21

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Daniel J. Estes

Job’s Frustration with His Friends Big Idea: Job’s adversity shapes how he views God, his friends, and himself. Understanding the Text After Eliphaz’s first speech in Job 4–5, Job responds in chapters 6 and 7. In chapter 6, Job indirectly refers in a few places to what Eliphaz has said, but he does not actually refute him point by point. Job’s speech, rather, is an emotional outburst in which he d...

19. Turning Up the Pressure

Job 2:1-13

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Daniel J. Estes

Big Idea: Despite increased adversity, Job reasserts his complete commitment to the sovereign Lord. Understanding the Text Job 2 completes the prologue, which sets the scene for a thorough discussion of a godly response to adversity. Much of the language of 1:6–22 is repeated and intensified in 2:1–10, as the writer uses the technique of repetition with variation to build suspense and interest. ...

20. Yahweh Speaks as the Master Teacher

Job 38:1--41:34

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Daniel J. Estes

Big Idea: Yahweh poses questions about the physical world to demonstrate that Job’s knowledge is too limited to explain how God works in his world. Understanding the Text Throughout the speeches in chapters 3–37, the various human speakers claim to know what Yahweh thinks about Job’s situation, but in chapter 38 Yahweh finally breaks his silence and speaks for himself. Yahweh addresses Job in 38...

21. Zophar Rejects Job’s Complaints

Job 11:1-20

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Daniel J. Estes

Big Idea: Zophar dismisses Job’s complaints as illogical. Understanding the Text In their first responses to Job, Eliphaz appeals to experience and personal revelation (Job 4–5), Bildad adduces traditional teaching (Job 8), and Zophar applies strict deductive logic to evaluate Job’s situation (Job 11). Zophar seems to be the most curt and insensitive of the three friends in speaking to Job. By t...

22. Zophar’s Final Words for Job

Job 20:1-29

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Daniel J. Estes

Big Idea: Zophar insists that God always punishes the wicked. Understanding the Text In Job 20, Zophar speaks to Job for his second and final time, because in the third cycle Zophar chooses not to answer him. So this chapter constitutes Zophar’s final answer to his friend. Numerous times he alludes to details in Job’s previous speeches, often trying to turn Job’s words against him, but in partic...

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