Reading Hebrew Poetry

With Job, we read the first of a series of Biblical books written almost exclusively as poetry. The poet introduces the plot of this epoch poem by imagining a dialogue between God and Satan that should not be taken literally.

The opening chapters of Job are intended to emphasize Satan’s role as our adversary or accuser, not to describe how God and Satan really interact.

—Come Follow Me for Individuals and Families: Old Testament 2022: Job 1–3; 12–14; 19; 21–24; 38–40; 42

This fictional version of God brags to Satan about how terrific Job is.

8 And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? 

Job 1:8

The Satan character is skeptical.

9 Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, Doth Job fear God for nought?

10 Hast not thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land.

11 But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face.

Job 1:9-11

• Why would it be dangerous to obey the Lord solely for the reason Satan suggested? 
• Why should we remain faithful to God?

In the poem, God agrees to let Satan disrupt Job’s cozy, pleasant, privileged existence so they can find out if Job really is faithful only because of how easy and blessed his life is (Job 1:12). I will remind you here that this dialogue is not to be taken literally. As we continue reading, it becomes clear that the book of Job is not intended to convey that good people are made to suffer because God and Satan are placing bets with each other and playing cat and mouse games with humans. This is just a plot device. Throughout the poem, the poet wrestles with the question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” in a thoughtful way.

Job goes on to suffer through a series of calamities. His property is destroyed, his servants and children die, and he is stricken with illness (Job 1:13-19; Job 2:7). His initial response is exemplary, but this is only the beginning of a very long poem:

20 Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped,

21 And said, Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.

22 In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.

Job 1:20-22

• What do these words reveal about Job? 

As Job continues to suffer, he questions God about why all of these horrible things are happening to him, when they are so clearly undeserved.

25 Did not I weep for him that was in trouble? was not my soul grieved for the poor?

26 When I looked for good, then evil came unto me: and when I waited for light, there came darkness.

Job 30:25-26

Let’s pause here to talk a little about the structure of Hebrew poetry.

Beginning with Job, we find a different writing style, as Old Testament writers turned to poetic language to express deep feelings or monumental prophecies in a memorable way. …Although rhythm, wordplay, and repetition of sounds are common features of ancient Hebrew poetry, they are typically lost in translation. One feature you will notice, however, is the repetition of thoughts or ideas, sometimes called “parallelism.” …An idea is repeated with slight differences. This technique can emphasize the repeated idea while using the differences to more fully describe or develop it. In other cases, the two parallel phrases use similar language to convey contrasting ideas.

—Come Follow Me for Individuals and Families: Old Testament 2022: Reading Poetry in the Old Testament

• Look for parallelism in Job 30:25-26. Where do you find it?

When you notice parallelism in Old Testament writing, ask yourself how it helps you understand the writer’s message. For example, what might Isaiah have been trying to say by relating “strength” with “beautiful garments” and “Zion” with “Jerusalem”? (Isaiah 52:1). What can we infer about the phrase “a soft answer” if we know that “grievous words” is its opposite? (Proverbs 15:1).

—Come Follow Me for Individuals and Families: Old Testament 2022: Reading Poetry in the Old Testament

Noting the parallelism in Job 3:20-23 helps us understand Job’s questions better. A parallelism equates “light” with “life” in verse 20, so when Job asks “Why is light given?” in verse 23, we know he is asking, “Why is life given?” or in other words, “Why was I born?”

20 Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul;

21 Which long for death, but it cometh not; and dig for it more than for hid treasures;

22 Which rejoice exceedingly, and are glad, when they can find the grave?

23 Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God hath hedged in? 

Job 3:20-23

In Job 7:6-7, Job admits that he is losing hope.  And unfortunately for us English speakers, the poet describes his despair using a kind of parallelism that doesn’t translate well at all because it relies on puns:

The poet who authored Job was particularly fond of Janus parallelism, in which a word with two meanings is used as a pun, connecting the ideas in the first and second lines of the parallelism. 

—Jeff Lindsay, Janus Parallelism in the Book of Job: A Review of Scott B. Noegel’s Work. Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 27 (2017).

In this case, the Hebrew word which the King James Bible translators wrote as “hope” is a word that can also mean “thread.” So if you know that word is a pun with two meanings, you read it this way:

6 My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, and are spent without hope [/thread].

7 O remember that my life is wind: mine eye shall no more see good.

Job 7:6-7

Noegel explains that the word תִּקְוָה means both “thread” and “hope.” “Thread” parallels “a weaver’s shuttle” in line 6, while “hope” parallels Job’s failing hope in line 7.

—Jeff Lindsay, Janus Parallelism in the Book of Job: A Review of Scott B. Noegel’s Work. Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 27 (2017).

Do people get what they deserve?

This is a clear cry for help, and so Job’s friends swoop in to, um, help him. Job’s friend Bildad responds to Job by echoing Job’s metaphor about hope as a thread.

13 So are the paths of all that forget God; and the hypocrite’s hope [/thread] shall perish:

14 Whose hope [/thread] shall be cut off, and whose trust shall be a spider’s web.

Job 8:13-14

Here Bildad has used both meanings of תִּקְוָה, [thread/hope] and has turned the “weaver’s shuttle” of 7:6 into a spider. The root for the word “weaver’s shuttle” in 7:6 occurs in Isaiah 59:5 in connection with a spider, further highlighting “the skill with which both Job and Bildad weave their remarks.”

—Jeff Lindsay, Janus Parallelism in the Book of Job: A Review of Scott B. Noegel’s Work. Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 27 (2017).

Bildad is showing off some stellar Hebrew poetry skills, but his skills as a comforter to his friend need work. He just accused Job of forgetting God and being a hypocrite because Job was being vulnerable about losing hope!

• Why would Bildad say such a thing?
• Is it helpful to accuse people of forgetting God when they are feeling hopeless? Why or why not?

Job’s friends insinuate that his hardships must be due to sin. Eliphaz says:

7 Remember, I pray thee, who ever perished, being innocent? or where were the righteous cut off?

8 Even as I have seen, they that plow iniquity, and sow wickedness, reap the same. 

Job 4:7-8

Elihu says:

5 Behold, God is mighty, and despiseth not any: he is mighty in strength and wisdom.

6 He preserveth not the life of the wicked: but giveth right to the poor.

7 He withdraweth not his eyes from the righteous: but with kings are they on the throne; yea, he doth establish them for ever, and they are exalted. 

11 …If they obey and serve him, they shall spend their days in prosperity, and their years in pleasures.

12 But if they obey not, they shall perish by the sword, and they shall die without knowledge. 

Job 36:5-7, 11-12

• Are these comments true? Are they helpful? Why or why not?
• What is the problem with this line of reasoning?
• Why is it dangerous to assume that trials are punishments for sin?

Sister Emily Updegraff describes this line of thinking as “the idea that obedience to God is a transactional process.  As if God dispenses particular blessings in response to obedience like a vending machine would.”

Sister Updegraff invites us to reconsider the meaning of Mosiah 2:23-24:

23 And now, in the first place, he hath created you, and granted unto you your lives, for which ye are indebted unto him.

24 And secondly, he doth require that ye should do as he hath commanded you; for which if ye do, he doth immediately bless you; and therefore he hath paid you. And ye are still indebted unto him, and are, and will be, forever and ever; therefore, of what have ye to boast?

Mosiah 2:23-24

• How does God immediately bless us when we obey commandments?
• If God immediately blesses us for our obedience, why aren’t the most righteous people always the most prosperous?

The words “paid” and “indebted” certainly sound transactional. But looking at those verses in the context of the whole address, it’s clear King Benjamin intends to instill humility, not encourage a sense of entitlement. We’re forever in God’s debt, and obedience does nothing to even the scales. 

…It’s also possible that people use arithmetic rhetoric because they find it comforting. Believing that obedience brings payment of desired blessings is appealing because it gives a sense of control. But control is an illusion.

…As lived experience has taught you and me, bad things happen to the obedient and the good, and to the innocent.  How then to make sense of King Benjamin’s talk of being “paid” with blessings?  It helps to consider that Mormon aphorism from Alma 41:10: “wickedness never was happiness.”  I think this is true not because of external punishments applied by divine intervention, but because the things God commands us to avoid are corrosive to relationships, and as human, social beings, our relationships are a primary source of joy.  Obedience to commandments at the very least saves us from torpedoing our relationships with others and with God, and at best rewards us with peaceful and lasting relationships.  By not stealing or bearing false witness we gain the trust of our peers, by not committing adultery we create a safe space for relationships to flourish, and by worshiping God we avoid wasting our time adoring entities that won’t love us back.  And thus we are “paid.”  The blessing is inherent to the act of obedience.  No external punishments or rewards are required

—Emily Updegraff, On Obedience and Happiness, The Exponent, March 15, 2015

• What are the dangers of thinking of obedience and blessings in a transactional way?
• How can goodness be a blessing in and of itself?

When Job’s three friends come to comfort him, they form a group of society’s most privileged members who are trying to make sense out of a disturbing disruption in their world. As they grope for an explanation, the three friends attempt to account for the way in which prosperity and loss, good and bad fortune, are distributed. It is not surprising that the three friends are convinced that people essentially get what they deserve and deserve what they get. Apparent discrepancies, such as Job’s misfortunes, are merely temporary. Although they are not aware of it, their complacency about the order of their society is rooted in large measure in their own privileged position. They simply cannot see injustice in the world. 

—Carol A. Newsom, Job, Women’s Bible Commentary by Carol A. Newsom, Sharon H. Ringe and Jacqueline E. Lapsley

• How can we learn to see injustices that don’t affect us personally?

Comforting the Afflicted

Sometimes we, like Job’s comforters, may be tempted to offer rationalizations about the Lord’s purposes as if our explanations were gospel truth. If we don’t know by revelation that a friend’s daughter died because she was needed in heaven more than here, or that a neighbor’s son was born with a physical handicap so the child’s family could learn to be more compassionate, then we should be reticent about putting forth our reasoning as the Lord’s hidden will. The purpose behind many tragic experiences can be learned only by personal revelation, and this usually comes to the aggrieved party rather than to a well-intentioned, self-appointed comforter.

—John S. Tanner, “Hast Thou Considered My Servant Job?” Ensign, December 1990

• Why would answers be more likely to come through personal revelation to the sufferer than to someone else?

Job does not find any of these speculations about his righteousness and calls to repentance helpful, and says so:

1 Then Job answered and said,

2 I have heard many such things: miserable comforters are ye all.

3 Shall vain words have an end? or what emboldeneth thee that thou answerest?

4 I also could speak as ye do: if your soul were in my soul’s stead, I could heap up words against you, and shake mine head at you.

5 But I would strengthen you with my mouth, and the moving of my lips should assuage your grief.

Job 16:1-5

• What would be a better way to speak to someone who is coping with tragedy? 
• How can our words strengthen others in their grief? 

In its section on Providing Strength to Others, the Emotional Resilience manual of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) teaches:

Be sensitive to the feelings of those you are trying to help, taking care not to say or do anything that minimizes their pain and difficulty.

—Finding Strength in the Lord: Emotional Resilience, 2021

Job tells his friends they are not thoroughly weighing his grief; in other words, they are minimizing his pain and difficulty.

1 But Job answered and said,

2 Oh that my grief were throughly weighed, and my calamity laid in the balances together!

Job 6:1-2

• Why should we avoid statements that minimize others’ problems?

Job tells his friends that even if he were a sinner (one who forsakes the Almighty), they should still extend kindness. (Most Biblical translations use the word kindness here where the King James version uses the word pity. See Bible Hub.)

To him who is afflicted, kindness should be shown by his friend, Even though he forsakes the fear of the Almighty.

Job 6:14 (New King James Version)

• In what ways did Job’s friends fail to show kindness?
• Should we predicate how kind we are to someone on how righteous they are? Why or why not?

While all his friends are accusing Job of being unrighteous, unworthy, and deserving of the terrible things he is experiencing, Job never doubts his own goodness. He tells his friends:

27 Yea, ye overwhelm the fatherless, and ye dig a pit for your friend.

28 Now therefore be content, look upon me; for it is evident unto you if I lie.

29 Return, I pray you, let it not be iniquity; yea, return again, my righteousness is in it.

30 Is there iniquity in my tongue? cannot my taste discern perverse things? 

Job 6:27-30

• In verse 28, Job tells his friends to look at him. What are they failing to see?
• How can we see others better?

The Emotional Resilience manual provides this guide about what to say when comforting someone who is suffering.

—Finding Strength in the Lord: Emotional Resilience, 2021

• Do any of the statements on these lists remind you of what Job’s friends were saying?
• Do any of them remind you of how Job says we should react to a suffering person?
• What statements from others have you found helpful or unhelpful when you have experienced hardships?

Believing in Ourselves

Job holds his ground for a single fundamental reason: he knows that his friends’ common sense and their traditions, their rationality and their revelations are inconsistent with his own experience. For Job, to hold fast to his integrity means to insist on the validity and authority of his own experience, even when it seems to be contradicted by what all the world knows to be true.

—Carol A. Newsom, Job, Women’s Bible Commentary by Carol A. Newsom, Sharon H. Ringe and Jacqueline E. Lapsley

• How can we recognize our individual worth when others do not?
• How do we cope when others judge us unfairly?

I believe in myself. I do not mean to say this with egotism or arrogance. But I believe in my capacity and in your capacity to do good, to make some contribution to the society of which we are a part, to grow and develop, and to do things that we may now think are impossible. I believe that I am a child of God, endowed with a divine birthright. I believe that there is something of divinity within me and within each of you. I believe that we have a godly inheritance and that it is our responsibility, our obligation, and our opportunity to cultivate and nurture the very best of these qualities within us.

—Gordon B. Hinckley, This I Believe, BYU Speeches, March 1, 1992

• What does it mean to believe in ourselves?
• Why should we believe in ourselves?

President Gordon B. Hinckley had a lot of other people who believed in him, too. His belief in himself was validated by his selection as an apostle and president of the LDS Church. For many women, this kind of external validation is not so forthcoming.  

What is at stake between Job and his friends should sound familiar to women. The sense of what is normative in a society—its highest values, its ideal of human nature, its notions of God—has been constructed largely on the basis of male experience. Women who have found that their experience is inconsistent with or not adequately described by these norms have often tended to discount their own experience. Where women’s lives do not fit the patterns of male experience, women are frequently judged to be defective or inferior. It has been one of the tasks of feminist thought to encourage women to hold fast to the integrity of their own experience.

—Carol A. Newsom, Job, Women’s Bible Commentary by Carol A. Newsom, Sharon PH. Ringe and Jacqueline E. Lapsley

• What is the integrity of our own experience?
• How do we hold fast to it?

In the end, God confirms that Job was right and his friends were wrong.

7 ¶ And it was so, that after the Lord had spoken these words unto Job, the Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite, My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath.

Job 42:7

• What has Job said that was right?
• What has his friends said that was wrong?

Brother John S. Tanner, who served as First Counselor in the Sunday School General Presidency, suggested several specific ways that Job’s friends were wrong: 

And how have the comforters not spoken the thing that is right? They have pretended to understand by reason that which they could not know except by revelation—that is, the Lord’s purposes in allowing Job to suffer. They have ceased to pursue answers, complacently assuming their own wisdom was enough. And, most important, they have failed to speak with compassion.

—John S. Tanner, “Hast Thou Considered My Servant Job?” Ensign, December 1990

• How can we avoid these pitfalls in our lives?

Expanding Our Perspective 

In chapter 29, Job waxes nostalgic about his old life. As you read Job 29:2-16, consider these questions:

• What were Job’s spiritual strengths?
• What were his privileges?

2 Oh that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me;

3 When his candle shined upon my head, and when by his light I walked through darkness;

4 As I was in the days of my youth, when the secret of God was upon my tabernacle;

5 When the Almighty was yet with me, when my children were about me;

6 When I washed my steps with butter, and the rock poured me out rivers of oil;

7 When I went out to the gate through the city, when I prepared my seat in the street!

8 The young men saw me, and hid themselves: and the aged arose, and stood up.

9 The princes refrained talking, and laid their hand on their mouth.

10 The nobles held their peace, and their tongue cleaved to the roof of their mouth.

11 When the ear heard me, then it blessed me; and when the eye saw me, it gave witness to me:

12 Because I delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless, and him that had none to help him.

13 The blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon me: and I caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy.

14 I put on righteousness, and it clothed me: my judgment was as a robe and a diadem.

15 I was eyes to the blind, and feet was I to the lame.

16 I was a father to the poor: and the cause which I knew not I searched out. 

Job 29:2-16

Dr. Newsom discusses how losing his riches and status created an opportunity for Job to expand his perspective:

It was necessary that the hero of the book be a character at the top of the social order. The hero must be one who quite literally has everything to lose. It is scarcely surprising then that Job is depicted as a patriarch rather like Abraham, the wealthy and respected head of a large household with many dependents. …Without his really being aware of it, [Job’s] sense of identity, his expectations about the world and his place in it, and even his image of God have all been shaped by his status in a particular social and moral order. When his world is shaken by the suffering he undergoes, it becomes possible to see something of the dimensions and the limitations of that world.

—Carol A. Newsom, Job, Women’s Bible Commentary by Carol A. Newsom, Sharon H. Ringe and Jacqueline E. Lapsley

• Why don’t all righteous people enjoy such privileges as Job did at the beginning of the poem?
• Do you think such privileges make it easier or harder to follow the gospel?  Why? 
• How might these privileges create blindspots?

Job, however, has been shocked out of his own previous complacency by the wholly undeserved suffering he has experienced. Gradually he begins to see things from a different perspective, from the perspective of others who suffer. In a powerful speech in 24:1–17 Job describes the desperate condition of the very poor, who are without food, shelter, or adequate clothing, exploited by those who hire them or lend to them, and subject to repeated violence. Job draws particular attention to the plight of the widow and the orphan, for, then as now, women and children make up a disproportionate number of the poorest of the poor. Here Job stands in solidarity with all the wretched of the earth.

—Carol A. Newsom, Job, Women’s Bible Commentary by Carol A. Newsom, Sharon H. Ringe and Jacqueline E. Lapsley

As you read Job 24:1-17, consider these questions:

• How do the lives of people Job is describing here differ from the more privileged life Job had been leading?
• How might Job’s privileged lifestyle have prevented him from witnessing these social problems before?

1 Why, seeing times are not hidden from the Almighty, do they that know him not see his days?

2 Some remove the landmarks; they violently take away flocks, and feed thereof.

3 They drive away the ass of the fatherless, they take the widow’s ox for a pledge.

4 They turn the needy out of the way: the poor of the earth hide themselves together.

5 Behold, as wild asses in the desert, go they forth to their work; rising betimes for a prey: the wilderness yieldeth food for them and for their children.

6 They reap every one his corn in the field: and they gather the vintage of the wicked.

7 They cause the naked to lodge without clothing, that they have no covering in the cold.

8 They are wet with the showers of the mountains, and embrace the rock for want of a shelter.

9 They pluck the fatherless from the breast, and take a pledge of the poor.

10 They cause him to go naked without clothing, and they take away the sheaf from the hungry;

11 Which make oil within their walls, and tread their winepresses, and suffer thirst.

12 Men groan from out of the city, and the soul of the wounded crieth out: yet God layeth not folly to them.

13 They are of those that rebel against the light; they know not the ways thereof, nor abide in the paths thereof.

14 The murderer rising with the light killeth the poor and needy, and in the night is as a thief.

15 The eye also of the adulterer waiteth for the twilight, saying, No eye shall see me: and disguiseth his face.

16 In the dark they dig through houses, which they had marked for themselves in the daytime: they know not the light.

17 For the morning is to them even as the shadow of death: if one know them, they are in the terrors of the shadow of death.

Job 24:1-17

• How can we channel the adversity we will inevitably experience to build awareness and empathy?
• How has adversity broadened your perspective?

The climax of the Book of Job comes in chapters 38-41, when God speaks.

What is initially puzzling about the divine speeches is that they do not address Job’s questions directly but are mostly concerned with an elaborate description of the created world. …The final speeches of Job and God seem intentionally designed to contrast with one another in terms of the perspectives they take—Job from the perspective of his own experience, God from the perspective of creation and cosmos. …Although tradition spoke of the giving and withholding of rain as a response to human conduct (e.g., Amos 4:7–8), here God speaks of the rain that falls in the desert where no human lives (38:25–27). Job’s categories have been too narrow, his conception of God hopelessly anthropocentric. That is to say, both Job and his friends have assumed that God primarily reacts to human conduct, a view of the world that puts the individual human being at its center. God’s education of Job continues as God turns to speak of the animals for whom God has provided (38:39–39:30). These are not domestic animals but wild ones—the lion, the raven, the mountain goat, the wild ox, the ostrich, and so on. God quite evidently delights in their very wildness and their freedom from human use—another implicit criticism of Job’s exclusively anthropocentric views. …This new image is one of God as a power for life, balancing the needs of all creatures, not just humans, cherishing freedom, full of fierce love and delight for each thing without regard for its utility, acknowledging the deep interconnectedness of death and life, restraining and nurturing each element in the ecology of all creation.

—Carol A. Newsom, Job, Women’s Bible Commentary by Carol A. Newsom, Sharon H. Ringe and Jacqueline E. Lapsley

• Why is it important to remember that humans are not God’s only creations?
• Why do you think God chose this lesson to teach Job at this time?
• What might be the reason God didn’t directly answer Job’s questions about why bad things were happening to him?

Although God’s response is cryptic, Brother Tanner sees hope in it.

That the Lord finally speaks to Job holds forth hope to the hopeless, who feel called to believe in spite of their afflictions rather than because of their blessings. It also points all of those who are struggling with similar crises of faith to the only fully adequate source of comfort: revelation from God himself, whose ways are mysterious but who is full of justice and love.

—John S. Tanner, “Hast Thou Considered My Servant Job?” Ensign, December 1990

• How can we seek revelation when we are feeling a crisis of faith?

Even as Job’s perspective broadened through his trials, chapters 30 and 31 expose that Job and the poet who wrote his story had blindspots with regards to classism and sexism that were never resolved because, like most of their contemporaries in 6th Century BCE, Job and his poet never recognized such attitudes as sinful. For more details, see:

Classism and Sexism: Lingering Flaws of a “Perfect Man” in the Biblical Book of Job

Coping with Adversity and Accepting Ambiguity 

Throughout the Book of Job, Job’s testimony fluctuates. Sometimes his testimony is firm and powerful:

23 Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book!

24 That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever!

25 For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth:

26 And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: 

Job 19:23-26

• What do you know about God that helps you face challenges? 
• How have you come to know these truths, and how have they strengthened your faith?
• What difference does this knowledge make when you experience difficult trials?

At other times, Job seems to despair. At one point, with beautiful imagery, Job describes himself looking for God, but not finding Him.

8 Behold, I go forward, but he is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive him:

9 On the left hand, where he doth work, but I cannot behold him: he hideth himself on the right hand, that I cannot see him:

10 But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.

11 My foot hath held his steps, his way have I kept, and not declined.

Job 23:8–11

• In this metaphor, what does Job do when he cannot find God? How can we follow this example?
• When we are struggling to find God, why is it helpful to remember that “he know[s] the way that I take”?
• What does it mean to “come forth” from our trials “as gold”?

I think part of the reason Job wanted his testimony to be written down, no better yet, to be engraven in stone (Job 19:23-26) was because he knew his testimony would fluctuate, and he wanted to preserve his spiritual memories to hold onto in the hard times, when he wasn’t feeling it.

The book of Job teaches that until they are answered, questions and faith can coexist, and regardless of what happens in the meantime, we can say of our Lord, “Yet will I trust in Him” (Job 13:15).

—Come Follow Me for Individuals and Families: Old Testament 2022: Job 1–3; 12–14; 19; 21–24; 38–40; 42

• How can questions and faith coexist?
• Why is it important to know that questions and faith can coexist?

3 Behold, thou hast instructed many, and thou hast strengthened the weak hands.

4 Thy words have upholden him that was falling, and thou hast strengthened the feeble knees. 

Job 4:3-4

• Have you ever felt instructed, upheld or strengthened by God, even when your trials were not taken away? What was that experience like?

The Book of Job resolves neither the particular perplexities of these cases nor the general problem of evil. It does teach us, however, about enduring the crises of faith that occur when life seems to lose all moral sense. It does not answer the question, “Why does God permit suffering to come to his children?” But it does answer the question, “How shall we respond?”

—John S. Tanner, “Hast Thou Considered My Servant Job?” Ensign, December 1990

• What has the story of Job taught you about how to respond to a crisis?
• How does the story of Job inspire you?