Psalm 19 promises that “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” But as Abraham Lincoln knew when he used that phrase in his Second Inaugural Address, referring to the horrendous bloodshed of the Civil War, judgments may be true and righteous without being humanly comprehensible. That is the message of the most disturbing book in the Hebrew Bible, the Book of Job, which has now received a bold new English translation by the Israel-based Bible scholar Edward Greenstein.
Many people think of Job as the archetypal man of faith, who refuses to renounce God even though he is subjected to harsh trials. This may be technically true, but it is far from the impression left by a careful reading of the book. What’s at stake is not whether Job submits to God—he does, because he has no choice—but whether God really is true and righteous. Does he use his infinite power for good, or is he more like a force of nature, incomprehensible and often terrifying? The book’s answer is by no means clear, and it is a sign of the theological daring of the Bible’s compilers that they chose to canonize a text with such transgressive potential.
