This ancient exploration of the problem of suffering has for centuries been a catalyst and touchstone for diverse groups of readers. In the culture of health and illness, it lends itself to discussions of the social treatment and individual experience of cancer, AIDS, any other serious illness, or the successive health problems that can sometimes accompany old age--as well as the social, financial, and other crises that often combine with illness to make life seem unfathomably difficult unless there is some reason or purpose behind the misfortunes.

Job's laments explore a variety of perspectives on suffering. He describes the experience of physical misery: "My flesh is clothed with worms and clods of dust; my skin is broken, and become loathsome. / My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle, and are spent without hope" (7:5-6). He wonders why he was born and wishes for an unmaking of his own birth that alludes to and opposes the words of Genesis: "Let that day be darkness" (3:4). He increasingly alienates his friends with his refusal to let them rationalize his misery as somehow deserved. Job is anything but a docile sick person, which makes him particularly engaging.

If the text does offer reasons for suffering, one possibility is that it catalyzes individual development in ways that a life without suffering cannot. An alternate, ironic, answer is suggested by the frame narrative: the reason behind Job's suffering is a bet between God and Satan in which humans are victims of the quarrels of higher beings, a plot suggestive of polytheistic Greek culture.

Job weaves a rich fabric of metaphor to express his suffering, suggesting that critiques of the metaphoric treatment of illness (notably, Susan Sontag's Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors; see this database) must consider who controls the flow of figurative language: describing one's own illness metaphorically may have very different effects than when one is the object of someone else's metaphoric description.

In addition, Job's use of metaphor may be the strategy he uses to avoid cursing God; by displacing his descriptions of his situation onto the natural world, he is able to express his sense of injustice without directly accusing his creator. Some translations, however, have suggested that Job actually does accuse and denounce God. The ambiguity of the text makes it even more open to use by a variety of readers, regardless of religious orientation.

See also the annotation in this database of William Blake's painting, Satan Smiting Job with Sore Boils, which is linked to an on-line representation of the artwork.