What is strange is that Moses was not informed. Was he not a prophet, and the greatest of all? Didn’t he know that it would have been better to delay the scouts’ departure? To have sent them out earlier or later? Moreover, isn’t he supposed to be the author of the Book of Job (though it was written without divine inspiration)? He should have been well versed in the subject. In his defense we must note that Job is not an easy character to deal with: he was everywhere and everything at the same time. One might call him a hero in search of identity. As though his peregrinations through provinces and centuries were not enough to confuse us, there was also this Rabbi Shmuel, son of Nahman, who asserts that Job simply never lived, that he was only a symbol, a fable. Having said this, we have still not run out of surprises. The concept of poetic fiction encompasses the entire range of theories. There were those who claimed that Job did exist but that his sufferings are sheer literary invention. Then there were those who declared that while Job never existed, he undeniably did suffer.

• • •

Let us speak for a moment of this suffering without which his life would have been quite ordinary. Who doesn’t remember the story? At the outset Job appears like a man fulfilled: wealthy, hospitable, influential, enjoying an excellent reputation at home and abroad. Whatever he possessed, he had acquired honestly. His house, open on all four sides so that every beggar passing through town could enter immediately and satisfy his hunger, recalled that of Abraham. The poor nomads of the Uz region knew only Job, visited nobody’s house but his. As a center of hospitality and of attraction it was unique; people flocked to it from everywhere. Job never sent anyone away, never refused anything. And he gave without humiliating, he gave by giving of himself; nothing pleased him more. There was no sick person he didn’t try to heal, no widow he didn’t attempt to console. He spent his time helping the needy, those less fortunate than himself.

Was he happy? He never complained, true: he had nothing to complain about. He had a wife, seven sons, three daughters and an estate as huge as a kingdom. So busy was he dispensing his good deeds, so taken was he with his civic activities, that he somewhat neglected his children’s education; they indulged in so many revelries that he eventually had to plead for pardon on their behalf.

All this we know from the Midrash and from the Book of Job itself, which Rabbi Yohanan could not read without weeping, for in it he came up against the eternal problem of immanent and transcendent justice on a human scale: Job, friend of man, tested by God, did not deserve his punishment.

The Book’s prologue describes his dramatic downfall—a downfall startling in its speed; in no time at all, he lost his fortune, his possessions, his children, his friends, all his reasons to live. Disasters and tragedies followed in rapid succession. One after the other, messengers appeared, presenting brief, factual reports, pushing him gradually, systematically, into his role of hapless victim drawn into the abyss. The description is powerful, sober and realistic; the pace breathtaking. Messenger followed messenger, one arriving while the previous one was still making his report: Fire fell from the sky and burned cattle and shepherds alike; I am the only survivor, the only witness come to tell you the tale. And also: Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking in the house of your first-born when a terrible wind swept in from the desert, smashing the house, which collapsed, and all those in it were killed; I am the only survivor and only I can tell you the tale.