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The book of Job is unique, but it traces a familiar pattern of experience that pulsates throughout redemptive history. It is a story shared by characters such as Joseph and David. It is the story of a man who is favored by God, is cast down into the depths of suffering, and is then raised up and vindicated. It is the story of Christ’s experience, foretold through typology, and fulfilled when the Son of God suffered the depths of humiliation before He was given the name above every name (Phil. 2:5–9). Peter tells us that the message of the Old Testament prophets, given by the Spirit of Christ Himself, is all about “the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories” (1 Peter 1:10–11). This pattern of suffering leading to glory, which anticipates the work of Christ, is the essence of Job’s story.
Job is introduced to us without genealogy, a unique feature that he shares with Melchizedek, and a feature that the writer of Hebrews took as prima facie evidence of typology (Heb. 7:1–3). Job is described as “blameless and upright” and “greatest of all the people of the east” (Job 1:1, 3). God further praises him by saying that “there is none like him on the earth” (1:8; 2:3). Job was not sinless, of course, but we are meant to see him in the midst of his sufferings as what God declares him to be—blameless and upright. A “blameless” man suffering great hardship will be an intolerable thought to Job’s friends but a clue to Job’s typological role. It points to the plan of salvation, which required a truly blameless man to be tested by suffering.
The book quickly flashes to the throne room of heaven, where we find God calling Satan to give account of himself. Satan brags that he has been wandering the earth at will (1:7). How will God respond to Satan’s work in the world and his boastful claim of autonomy? How will God answer the adversary who wanders the earth and sheds his evil influence? This is the key question of the book, to which God responds, “Have you considered my servant Job?” God’s response to the earth-wandering adversary will come in the form of a blameless man who endures great suffering and is exalted at last. It is a foretaste of the gospel, in which one righteous man is bruised but the adversary is crushed (Gen. 3:15).
God’s response to Satan invites the challenge to test Job’s faith through hardship. What unfolds is no ordinary story about an average believer’s trusting the Lord through difficult times. What unfolds is the story of the greatest and most upright man on earth losing everything but his life in a single day. There is nothing ordinary about this story. Job touched the extreme outer limits of human experience at both ends of the spectrum, from being the greatest and most pious man on earth to becoming unrecognizable to his friends (Job 2:12). So great a condescension anticipates One even greater, beyond the limits of human experience, from having “equality with God” to the “death on a cross” (Phil. 2:6–8).
A dialogue ensues between Job and his “friends” that occupies no less than thirty-five chapters. The crux of the argument is whether Job had sinned and brought this calamity upon himself. Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar insist that Job must be hiding some great sin because only sinners suffer such calamity, while the righteous enjoy prosperity (they were the “health and wealth” preachers of their day). These three friends and their simplistic view of providence are rebuked by God at the end of the book, but they unwittingly play a role in the typology of Job. They falsely accuse this “blameless and upright” man of sins that he did not commit, just as the truly perfect Savior would be unjustly accused and “numbered with the transgressors” (Isa. 53:12; Luke 22:37).
Throughout his increasingly heated argument with his companions, Job maintains his innocence in the face of their accusations (e.g., Job 27:5–6). His declarations of innocence are more than just a spirited defense against their charges and more than a relative assessment of whether his sin deserved that much suffering. Job truly was innocent, not in absolute terms as a sinless man but as a typological figure playing his part in a dramatized prophecy. God affirmed that Job’s suffering was not due to sin, saying to Satan, “You incited me against him to destroy without reason” (2:3). Job also contends that his suffering was without cause: “For he crushes me with a tempest and multiplies my wounds without cause” (9:17). “Without cause” is a key phrase that Christ used to describe His own suffering and persecution (see John 15:25).
Job also describes a host of human enemies unleashed against him, evil men who reproach, mock, strike, and spit on him. “God gives me up to the ungodly and casts me into the hands of the wicked” despite his innocence (Job 16:11). “He has made me a byword of the peoples, and I am one before whom men spit” (17:6). Why did God unleash a world of antagonists against this man who suffers in his innocence? It is part of the typological image that would be fulfilled in Christ’s experience. Job uses many of the same images of persecution that we find in the messianic psalms; for instance, “Men have gaped at me with their mouth” (Job 16:10; see Ps. 22:13) and “Now I have become their song; I am a byword to them” (Job 30:9; see Ps. 69:11–12). Comparisons like this are numerous, and they demonstrate, in part, the purpose of Job’s long, poetic musings on his sufferings. He is framing his own suffering in terms of the historically developing prophetic image of the Suffering Savior to come.
Job’s typological role is further highlighted through royal and priestly imagery throughout the book. He compares himself to a king who has been humbled and lost his crown: “He has stripped from me my glory and taken the crown from my head” (Job 19:9). Psalm 89:44 uses the same imagery to describe the psalmist’s dismay that God has allowed His Messiah to fall: “You have made his splendor to cease and cast his throne to the ground.” Job pictures himself, in messianic fashion, as a king who suffers great humiliation at the hand of God.
The book also begins (Job 1:5) and ends (42:7–9) with Job’s making sacrifices and intercession on behalf of his family and friends. The latter text says, twice, that God had “accepted” Job (literally, “lifted up his face”). God had saved him from his trials, had accepted him, and was ready to receive his intercession on behalf of his three errant friends: “My servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept his prayer” (42:8). Job’s story is one of intercession perfected through suffering, which points to the perfect ministry of our Great High Priest, the Lord Jesus Christ (Heb. 5:7–10).
In his final speech, Job drops a bombshell that silences his friends and seals his typological role. In chapter 31, he uses a common formula for an oath of innocence. It appears as several “if-then” statements; for instance: “If I have walked in falsehood” (v. 5), “then let me sow, and another eat” (v. 8). His final oath brings the entire dialogue to a halt: “If I have concealed my transgressions as others do by hiding my iniquity in my heart” (v. 33), “[then] let thorns grow instead of wheat, and foul weeds instead of barley” (v. 40). Job is obviously referring to the first sin of Adam and the curse that followed. Amazingly, he takes an oath to the effect that he has not sinned like the first sinner, but where Adam failed, he has succeeded. While he suffered in innocence, Job became the typological spokesman of the last Adam, who is the only One who could say such a thing (Rom. 5:12–21; 1 Cor. 15:45). After these breathtaking words, Job 31 concludes: “The words of Job are ended” (v. 40).
Enter Elihu, the fourth “friend,” who treats us to five more chapters of unanswered monologue. “He burned with anger” (32:2), probably because of Job’s stunning words at the end of chapter 31. Opinions vary widely on his role in this drama, but like the other three, he continues to accuse Job of sin (34:36–37). Besides his audacious claim to have perfect knowledge (36:4), Elihu claims to be a mediator for God (33:6), but Job knows better. Job has spoken of his true heavenly Mediator throughout the book (16:19–21; 19:23–27), and it’s not Elihu. This fourth “friend” may well be the last trick of Satan, whom we have not heard from since chapter 2 and who is not above using a well-meaning friend as a method of temptation (Matt. 16:23).
Finally, God answers “out of the whirlwind” in Job 38. “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” begins a torrent of rhetorical questions that underscore God’s inscrutable wisdom displayed in creation and providence. Job and his friends had been wrestling in the dark, trying to explain what they did not understand, but God’s reply gives them a higher reference point. The meaning of Job’s suffering is framed by the unsearchable wisdom of God, who has His good and wise purposes behind every instance of human hardship, but especially in the case of this one man from Uz.
If Job’s life was idyllic at the beginning, it was nothing short of glorious at the end. After his trial was over, Job was blessed twice as much as at first (Job 42:10, 12), which completes the typological pattern of suffering leading to greater glory. But the man who was introduced to us without a genealogy was just a man after all, one who “died, an old man, and full of days” (v. 17). The One who condescended further, and suffered much greater things, “always lives to make intercession” for us (Heb. 7:25).