A recent conversation with a friend led me to a new conclusion about Job. I suppose it’s not a conclusion so much as a paradigm, a way to think about Job that makes sense of the whole book: Job is the almost ideal righteous sufferer, kind of like Moses was the almost ideal prophet and David was the almost ideal anointed one. Thinking about Job in light of Moses and David is helpful. I’ll try to explain.

Job’s beginning and ending in tension

At the beginning of the book of Job, you know that Job is suffering unjustly, but at the end of the book Job is checked by Yahweh. Throughout the book, Job demands a hearing with God, and Job questions God’s justice.

Does it seem good to you to oppress, to despise the work of your hands and favor the designs of the wicked? … Why did you bring me out of the womb? Would that I had died before any eye had seen me. (Job 10:3, 18)

I think I could understand Job’s words in a way that excuses them as the inevitable venting of a righteous sufferer, but at the end of the book, when God does show up, he is a sharp with Job,

Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? … Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty? (Job 38:1; 40:1)

So how do we think about Job in light of the beginning and ending? Is he a model righteous sufferer? Was he in the right or wrong? I think it’s both.

Job as almost-ideal

Job is like Moses and David. In the world of the Old Testament, Moses is the ideal prophet—with Elijah a close second, perhaps running side by side Moses, but Elijah’s story is told on analogy to Moses—but even Moses failed in the end. At the end of the day, Moses was almost ideal.

David was a model anointed one, but he failed in the end, as well—in many ways, from Bathsheba forward. David too was almost ideal. I think this is the way to think about Job—an almost ideal righteous sufferer, who fails in at least some regard because he questions God’s character and justice, even accusing him of “favoring/shining on the designs of the wicked” (וְעַל־עֲצַת רְשָׁעִים הוֹפָעְתָּ, Job 10:3). This is apparent in the way God addresses Job from the whirlwind.

Almost-ideal—this paradigm explains the beginning of Job, which holds Job up as a model of testing for the reader to consider, and at the same time it explains the end of Job, where he is critiqued for questioning God’s justice.

Conclusion

Moses and David aren’t just pictures of “almost-ideal” prophet and anointed one; their characters point forward and become paradigms through which the Old Testament authors look forward with hope for “one who is to come.” The New Testament authors then portray Jesus as the embodiment of the ideal Moses-like prophet and the David-like anointed one. These almost-ideal characters play a major role in the biblical portrait of messianic hope, which paves the way for Jesus as the embodied ideal.

I think that’s the case with Job, too. Job is an imperfect righteous sufferer that points forward to the ideal righteous sufferer. The reader of the book of Job is shown a lot of good in the character of Job, just like the Pentateuch portrays Moses and Samuel-Kings portrays David. At the end of the day, however, the reader is pointed towards hope for a more ideal righteous sufferer, one who will not wag his finger at God as he waits.

Notes

On Jesus as a new Moses:

• Dale C. Allison Jr., The New Moses: A Matthean Typology (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2013).
  

On how Matthew portrays Jesus as an ideal, David-like Messiah:

• Matthias Konradt, “David’s Son and Lord: A Sketch of the Davidic-Messianic Aspects of Matthean Christology,” in Christology, Torah, and Ethics in the Gospel of Matthew, trans. Wayne Coppins, Baylor-Mohr Siebeck Studies in Early Christianity (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2022), 37–57.
• Patrick Schreiner, Matthew, Disciple and Scribe: The First Gospel and Its Portrait of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2019).
• H. Daniel Zacharias, Matthew’s Presentation of the Son of David: Davidic Tradition and Typology in the Gospel of Matthew (London; New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017).
• I attempt to make a contribution to this conversation in my dissertation as well: Brian Wayne Davidson, Jesus as God’s Delight in the Gospel of Matthew: An Overlooked Aspect of Matthew’s Christology (The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2024). Maybe this will see the light of publishing day in the coming year or so.