Customer Reviews

Book of God and Man: A Study of Job

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The Book of God and Man: A Study of Job, as Robert Gordis addresses the title focuses on all the contemporary issues that surround the Book of Job such as linguistics, philosophy, dating, etc. There are many issues he addresses in which he address attacking scholars before shredding them. He never strawmans and keeps his arguments honest. This book is an essential for anyone who desires to increase their conservative education.

The middle of this book (Ch. 6-11) is a reasonably well done commentary on Job. Gordis focuses on God's response to Job at the end of the book, asserting that God's speech about the beauty and mystery of the natural world is not merely an evasion, but a implicit claim that "just as there is order and harmony in the natural world, so there is order and meaning in the moral sphere, though often incomprehensible by man."

Gordis also makes some interesting points about Job- suggesting that Job's failure to consider the idea of an afterlife shows that Job is a relatively early work, and emphasizing that Job never considers atheism an option.

Unfortunately, the first few chapters and the last few chapters are dominated by technical discussions of grammar and conjectures about Job's historical background - all of which I found to be rather dull. I think those parts of the book to be of interest only to people with great interest in philology (i.e. not me). In addition, Gordis's translation is not always the most readable: for example, he has Job asking: "Can tasteless food be eaten without salt, Or is there any savor in the juice of mallows?" Since I have no idea what a "mallow" is, I much prefer another translation which has Job referring to the tastelessness of eggs.