by 
Why did God send Satan to test Job even though he was already following God’s desires?
While the Book of Job can be interpreted in several ways, it is probably best understood as a narrative (not literal) exploration of the age-old question: why is there suffering? Or, more personally: “Why am I suffering? After all, I’ve tried to do the right thing most of the time. Oh sure, I’ve messed up a time or two, but overall, I’ve tried to live a Godly life. So why has this tragedy happened to me? Is God punishing me?” Many of us could put ourselves in Job’s shoes. It is a timeless, universal tale addressing a timeless, universal struggle.
A quick recap in case Job (pronounced with a long o) is unfamiliar to you. When we meet Job, he is very well off. He has “seven sons and three daughters, seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred donkeys, and very many servants” (Job 1:2-3). We also learn that Job is faithful—“blameless and upright” is the way he’s introduced. But then the scene shifts to the heavenly court. Ha-Satan (literally, “The Accuser”—think prosecuting attorney, not red pointy-tailed creature) points out that Job is so faithful precisely because God has given him everything. “Take away Job’s blessings,” Ha-Satan argues, “and then he will curse you, God.” So God gives permission. In one tragic day, Job’s oxen, donkeys, and camels are stolen, his sheep are burned up, his servants are murdered, and his children are all killed. But still Job does not curse God. So Ha-Satan asks for and receives permission to harm Job himself. Soon Job’s entire body is covered with sores, and we find him sitting on an ash heap scratching his sores with a pottery shard. That’s a pretty miserable scene. Job’s wife bluntly says, “Oh, just curse God and die.”
All of this happens in the first two chapters. But the Book of Job is long—forty-two chapters in all. So what’s the rest of the book about? Well, the rest of the book (apart from the last eleven verses when Job’s fortunes are restored) is about the struggle to understand in the midst of the pain.
The structure of Job is what I like to call a “sandwich.” The beginning and the end are a prose folktale, most likely much older than the rest of the book. In between—the middle of the “sandwich”—is a long poem that explores this question of suffering. The familiar folktale at the beginning and end proclaims a simple lesson, too-simple really: “If you are patient in spite of your sufferings, it will all pay off in the end.” But the middle of Job, by far the bulk of the book, proclaims something else: “When you are suffering, when you are in pain, when you are going through the absolute worst time in your life, you will question everything. You will question your faith. You will question all that you have ever learned or known about life. You will even question God. And that’s OK because God is big enough to take it.” In adapting an old folktale for his own narrative and theological purposes, the author of the Book of Job accepts the framework that God is testing Job, but that isn’t his focus. The question our author really wants to wrestle with is this: How do we continue to relate to God when we feel like we have been abandoned? And the answer is: we just keep at it. We argue. We complain. We whine. We shout. We question. We pray. In the end, what matters is that we stay in there and keep wrestling because it is the conversation with God that is key. It is the relationship with God that ultimately will lead us back to wholeness and life.
