Job is one of the most outspoken people in the Bible. Apart from Jesus' teaching, Moses' law recital, David's Psalms, and Paul's letters, I can't think of anyone else who is credited with saying as much as he is.
He has ten monologues—nine, if you don't consider his last speech as two speeches in one—and he fills twenty chapters and 513 verses with his opinions. And that's not including what he says in the prologue or epilogue.
To put these numbers in perspective, Job's verse count is a third of Jesus'. And considering that much of what Jesus says is repeated in more than one gospel, it's more than this in reality.
And that can be a problem because we all open our Bibles with certain expectations.
If we read the Bible like a rule book or an instruction manual, it leads us to look for answers and certainty. The book of Job doesn't offer us this. Instead, Job, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar offer us 182 questions (in the NLT), most of which go unanswered. And if we're looking for the right view of God in this debate, then we're going to be horrified to discover that Job's view of God is just as unhealthy and unlike Jesus as his "friend's" perspectives are.
Both sides of this debate are wrong!
If we read the Bible as a spiritual guide, then we're looking for advice on how to handle the death of a child. If we only consider the first three chapters of Job, then the advice includes tearing your clothes (1:20), shaving your hair off (1:20), falling to the ground to worship God (1:20), self-harming with a piece of broken pottery (2:8), sitting on an ash pile (though it doesn't tell you what to burn first) (2:8), refusing to speak (for at least a week) (2:13), then cursing the day of your birth and that of your parents (chapter 3).
How many of those suggestions jump off the page at you as sage advice?
If we read the Bible like a love letter, then we're expecting to hear how good God is and how much he loves us. Yet the characters repeatedly accuse God of killing Job's ten children—either as a response to sin (the friend's view) or because he's just a capricious deity (Job's view). And while Job wants God to answer him (as we'll see next week), he also wants nothing to do with God beyond that. Job considers God a stalker whom he desperately wants to "leave [him] alone" (7:17 NASB) and longs to be "free" of him "forever." (23:7 NASB).
Turn away from me
so I can have a moment's joy.
— Job in his third speech, Job 10:20
That doesn't sound like a love letter; more a desire for a court order.
Thankfully, there is a fourth way to view the Bible.
