“And seven sons were born to him, and three daughters. And his flocks came to seven thousand sheep and three thousand camels and five hundred yokes of cattle and five hundred she-asses and a great abundance of slaves.”
One of the recurring themes in the book of Genesis is this idea of faith. We see that God likes to test humans to see just how much faith or loyalty they have in him. As we saw with Abraham, God wanted him to sacrifice his own son just to test his faith. Similar to this story, God decides to test Job. When the author describes Job he says “And the man was blameless and upright and feared God and shunned evil.” The author most likely puts this in the beginning of the passage to foreshadow something tragic happening to him later on in the story.
The author consistently builds Job and shows just how wealthy he is. I think the author consistently builds up Job to his fall seem very impactful. I think we are told just how wealthy this man is then moments later he proceeds to lose everything.
When the author describes Job’s tragedy he is very descriptive. He uses imagery and gives a detail explanation of what happens to Job’s life. ‘And, look, a great wind came from beyond the wilderness and struck the four corners of the house, and it fell on the young people, and they died.” The author does this to create some emotion so the audience can sympathize with Job but also some controversy. Here we have Job who is described as blameless in the beginning and here he is now losing everything. The author phrases things in a certain way such as Job’s description and his tragedies so he can appear as this tragic hero.
Job, Leon Bonnat, 1880 Wikiart