Then Job answered, "Today also is my complaint bitter." With those words, we go from the patience of Job to the bitterness of Job, from a docile Job to a defiant Job. Last week, Job was the model of submission. To him we owe the powerful proverbs: "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away" (Job 1:21).

Last week, we left Job sitting in his ash heap, scraping away at his sores, and asking rhetorically, "Shall we receive the good at the hand of the God, and not receive the bad?" There, in the story, he demonstrates his stability, his steadfastness, or what the text calls his "integrity." He gives us a map of a moral world, which is so clear, so coherent, and so simple that it is impossible to get lost. All the paths lead t…