NOTES for Job 19:25-26

Sounding between the 5th and 4th centuries B. C., simultaneously with the sermon of the last prophets of the Old Testament, these words integrated all the hope of humanity and all our hope for salvation. Two centuries did not pass from this day, when in the Babylonian captivity, God opened to the prophet Ezekiel His will on the resurrection of the death, and here, the author of the Book of Job makes of this revelation a definitive conclusion. Job, whose name became common for the designation of human sufferings, sees his salvation not in the fact that all his misfortunes will end: indeed, a genuine experienced suffering is not just so easy to obliterate from the memory. No, Job hopes that the glory of the Almighty will manifest itself in his suffering flesh. Pain and death, being until then signs of extreme estrangement from God, the Source of Life, become for Job a place of meeting with the Redeemer.

For the ancient East, not less than for the modern world, important is the faith of Job that "from dust" the same flesh, in which he suffers at the moment will be restored. In the first place, then becomes categorically improper the idea of "the reincarnation of the soul", abolishing the tragic experience of the genuine human life. And secondly, suffering stops to be the incarnation of a cruel fatuity only in the perspective of resurrection. Indeed, if man’s life ends with his death, then his suffering is only a sign of the victory of evil, and nothing more. No oblivion can heal the tragic life experience lived by man, it is impossible to forget a real suffering, just as last year flue. It is just impossible to neglect death - it can be overcome only with the intervention of the Redeemer , when in the resurrection of Christ, death stops to be such and becomes the Revelation of Life. Here we touch the secret of salvation, and hardly will it probably be rational to explain it. But we can aim for it, and this secret can become the only source of light in the darkness of the sadness.

Still in these words of Job sounds the completely inexplicable, unexpected hope in the fact that to man can be given in flesh to see the Invisible. The author of the Book of Job is unable to shift glance from this hope, and that is why he puts in the mouth of his hero the words: "though my reins be consumed within me.". Indeed, this meeting means the restoration of what was destroyed by Adam’s crime. Only the victory of the Redeemer on sin makes this meeting face to face possible again.

Sounding between the 5th and 4th centuries B. C., simultaneously with the sermon of the last prophets of the Old Testament, these words integrated all the hope of humanity and all our hope for salvation. Two centuries did not pass from this day, when in the Babylonian captivity, God opened to the prophet Ezekiel His will on the resurrection of the death, and here, the author of the Book of Job makes of this revelation a definitive conclusion. Job, whose name became common for the designation of human sufferings, sees his salvation not in the fact that all his misfortunes will end: indeed, a genuine experienced suffering is not just so easy to obliterate from the memory. No, Job hopes that the glory of the Almighty will manifest itself in his suffering flesh. Pain and death, being until then signs of extreme estrangement from God, the Source of Life, become for Job a place of meeting with the Redeemer.

For the ancient East, not less than for the modern world, important is the faith of Job that "from dust" the same flesh, in which he suffers at the moment will be restored. In the first place, then becomes categorically improper the idea of "the reincarnation of the soul", abolishing the tragic experience of the genuine human life. And secondly, suffering stops to be the incarnation of a cruel fatuity only in the perspective of resurrection. Indeed, if man’s life ends with his death, then his suffering is only a sign of the victory of evil, and nothing more. No oblivion can heal the tragic life experience lived by man, it is impossible to forget a real suffering, just as last year flue. It is just impossible to neglect death - it can be overcome only with the intervention of the Redeemer , when in the resurrection of Christ, death stops to be such and becomes the Revelation of Life. Here we touch the secret of salvation, and hardly will it probably be rational to explain it. But we can aim for it, and this secret can become the only source of light in the darkness of the sadness.

Still in these words of Job sounds the completely inexplicable, unexpected hope in the fact that to man can be given in flesh to see the Invisible. The author of the Book of Job is unable to shift glance from this hope, and that is why he puts in the mouth of his hero the words: "though my reins be consumed within me.". Indeed, this meeting means the restoration of what was destroyed by Adam’s crime. Only the victory of the Redeemer on sin makes this meeting face to face possible again.

These are the words of a man who did not live to see Christ's Resurrection, but who experienced in his heart a meeting with the Crucified and Risen One. This is Job, the same Job whose name has become a synonym for troubles and misfortunes. The same Job whose book's prologue was used by Goethe. Job, who dared to demand judgment and justice from God. Job, to whom God answered with a fearsome, ironic, and very loving voice: "Who is this who darkens Providence with words without meaning? Where were you when I measured the foundations of the earth?" Job, who turned out to need nothing: neither judgment nor even justice, and still less prosperity. God answered his cry. "Before, I had heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eyes see You; therefore I withdraw and repent in dust and ashes." Job, who seeks the meaning of suffering and finds the Almighty Himself, and God Himself becomes his consolation. And of Job too we can say that this is an example of faithfulness to God, directness, and depth of personality.

It is not surprising that Job takes the attitude toward him and toward his words expressed by Bildad as an insult (vv. 2-3). After all, what he said was not said in the heat of the moment or out of foolishness. For him everything is absolutely serious, and once again they want to accuse him of sin, even if involuntary, and make a laughingstock of him (v. 3)! Job, for his part, continues to insist on what he has already said more than once. He accuses God of his calamities, being not without reason convinced that without God's will none of what he had to endure would have happened to him (vv. 6-24). Yet Job is still sure that if he can ever meet God face to face, the situation will change radically. The sufferer now connects his hopes with the Messiah, whom, following the tradition that had developed in post-exilic Judaism, he calls the Redeemer (v. 25).

It is interesting to note that now Job speaks of resurrection, though he understands it somewhat naturalistically (vv. 25-26). As we can see, Job connects resurrection and the coming of the Messiah above all with the possibility of seeing God face to face and personally resolving all his problems with Him. As for Job's friends, according to the sufferer, they behave not as righteous people but as wicked ones. Instead of supporting a suffering righteous man, they use the opportunity to assert themselves at his expense (vv. 5-6). He asks his friends for mercy (vv. 21-22), though he understands that he will receive no mercy from them. These accusations may seem too harsh, and his friends, though mistaken in substance, still do not wish Job harm.

But the problem here is deeper than it may appear. Job's friends not only cannot understand Job; they do not want to, and are afraid to enter into what torments the sufferer. And this fear has a religious character: Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar are simply afraid of losing the confidence that comes to a person from the awareness of his own religious rightness. And this fear has a religious character: Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar are simply afraid of losing the confidence that comes to a person from the awareness of his own religious rightness. Job, by contrast, does not demonstrate such rightness at all. On the contrary, he is no longer sure of anything, and his friends are trying to support him. But they do this as if condescending to the sufferer from the height of their own rightness. They are completely sure that everything happening to Job is a misunderstanding that they are obliged to help him resolve, that they are right about everything, and that Job is either mistaken in his judgments or beside himself because of the troubles and misfortunes that have fallen on him. The thought that Job may be right seems so terrible to them that they are more ready to allow for madness, a temporary derangement of their friend, than for their own error. Such a position, of course, could only seem insulting to Job himself: his condition was already serious enough, and from his friends he saw nothing but contemptuously pitying "help" that did him no good.