Please read the passage before reading the commentary
It is said that virtue lies in the middle. On one extreme, we have Job who is quintessentially the good and honorable person. On the other we have total disaster of Job’s life, family, health and possessions. Perhaps we should look for ourselves somewhere in the middle, between Job’s virtue and his sufferings.
Satan here is not the devil as we think of the devil, a fallen angel who delights in our sins. He is more like a private investigator, looking for evildoers, ready to report them to God. He is something like the product control person in the manufacturing process, the one who randomly samples the quality of the manufactured goods.
What would make a good person blaspheme God or turn away in bitterness from God? Job lost everything physical, mental, and familial and blessed God. We can think of Job’s struggle as epic, out of this world and beyond human possibility, but the author shows us a God who is beyond human possibility in being able to cover our losses with goodness.
The author asserts that God has the power to more than cover human loss and will cover the losses. Job is the example given, but Job stands for each of us as we ponder the ins and outs of our human lives. God can rescue Job and God will rescue us.
God looks upon us from God’s throne room and points us out to the prosecuting attorney and tells him that he cannot have us, that we belong to God. The prosecuting attorney, called in the book Satan, finds that God has us under the divine protection.
We ponder Job in the readings for this week. We should also ponder ourselves, how we relate to God in all the ins and outs of our lives. Our lives are situated between the extremes of Job’s situation and, as God intervened with Job, God will intervene with us.