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THE 

RTHOLIC 

S E R I E S : " T H E WISDOM O F T H E | 
S C R I P T U R E S ' 

" T h e Wisdom of J o b i 
RT. REV. MONSIGNORI 

JOHN J. DOUGHERTY! 

D E C E M B E R 7, 1958 





The Wisdom of J o b 

In these talks I should like to share 
with you some reflections on wisdom 
First of all I must tell you what I mean 
by wisdom. I mean an understanding of 
the ultimate purposes of human existence 
a realization of the real meaning of life' 
Wisdom is proverbially associated with re-
ligion and philosophy, with holy men, quiet 
men, thinking men. There is a proper 
climate for wisdom It is silence and solitude. 

The reason why I have chosen to talk 
to you about wisdom is simply because 
people seldom talk about it these days. 
Have you ever been on a plane filled 
with salesmen? They do not talk about 
wisdom; they talk about business. I 
recall a conversation I had a few years 
ago with a young man who had just come 
here from Europe. He had been in New 
York a few days when I met him and 
asked what his first impressions were. 
I was amused when he said to me, "On 
the subways, everybody talks about 
money." 

I concede that the subways are not 

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the best place to talk about wisdom. 
Neither is a football stadium, nor a 
cocktail party, nor the floor of the stock 
exchange, nor the supermarket, nor the 
rush of weekend traffic. I mean to say 
that we spend a lot of our lives in places 
that are action-packed, fast moving, 
frenetic. Hardly the climate of wisdom! 
You must flee the busy market-place, 
get out of reach of the voice of huckster 
selling his wares on your TV screen, 
and go apart to a quiet church or a quiet 
room and listen in your heart and think 
in your mind. 

That will help, but I do not believe it 
is the whole answer. I do not think that 
wisdom is something you can get all on 
your own. In this matter I fear for the 
man who considers himself all sufficient 
unto himself. We need the help of those 
of proven wisdom. You may know some-
one who is your wise man, one whose 
counsel you seek and whose judgment 
you trust, one who shares his wisdom 
with you. And how does he come by his 
wisdom. Others have shared their wis-
dom with him, both the living and the 
dead. He may have learned something 
of his wisdom from books, perhaps from 
the book of Job. 

You may be accustomed to think of 



Job as a patient man. "/The patience of 
Job" is a household proverb. Or you 
may think erf Job as a suffering man. 
That he was. He was also a wise man, 
or better, the author of the book of Job 
was a wise man. We may grow in wis-
dom by reflecting together on this in-
spired book. 

You recall the story: Job, an oriental 
chieftan was very rich, but upright and 
pious. Suddenly there came to him a 
reversal of fortune. He lost his estates 
and his family. His body was struck 
with a loathesome disease. Three 
friends came to console him. They told 
him his suffering was because of his 
sins. In his bodily pain and mental 
anguish Job protested that he was inno-
cent of sin, and could not understand 
why he was so sorely afflicted. The 
heart of the book is a series of ex-
changes between Job and his friends in 
which they debate the problem of suffer-
ing and sin. 

One of life's inescapable realities is 
suffering. The book of Job is the story 
of one man's suffering told in epic 
propotions, it is a deep and moving*" 

^drama. It is held as one of literature's 
greatest masterpieces as well as God's 
inspired word. Suffering touches the 



life of every man in some measure, and 
therefore the message of the book is a 
universal one. You will find in the 
words of Job an echo of your own heart. 
He will say things you have felt, but 
were powerless to express even to your-
self. The book is not the last word on 
wisdom in the Scriptures, but it can 
help us to be less foolish and more wise. 

My first reflection on reading Job is 
that here pain finds a voice. It speaks 
in stark and startling terms. We are 
forced to say this is a familiar voice, 
true speech, valid argument, for a voice 
responds within our hearts to the agoniz-
ing eloquence of Job, and we feel that 
he speaks our language: 

My soul ebbs away from me; 
Within me there is a seething that 

will not be stilled 
My gnawing pains take no rest by 

night; 
days of affliction have come upon 

me. 
I go about in gloom, without the sun; 

I rise up in public to voice my grief. 
I have become the brother of jackals, 

Companion to the ostrich. 
My blackened skin falls away from me; 

the heat scorches my very frame. 
My harp is turned to mourning, 

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and my reed pipe to sounds of 
weeping. (30:16-31) 

One could interpret the suffering of 
Job in terms of feeling and folly. Such 
an interpretation was the emotional out-
burst of Job's wife. "Curse God, and 
die." (2:9) One might try to interpret it 
in terms of wisdom. Such was the effort 
of Job's friend. Their wisdom was that 
taught by the wise men of their times, a 
teaching that looked back upon a long 
and venerable tradition. According to 
that wisdom suffering was a consequence 
of sin. Job's friends contended that if 
he suffered, it was because of his sins. 
The problem they confronted in the case 
of Job was that in the eyes of men he 
was a just man. His friends conceded 
that he might be just in the eyes of men 
but not in the eyes of God. They believed 
that a man could be guilty of hidden sin, 
sins unknown even to himself. 

Job rebelled against his tidy wisdom. 
He was convinced of his own innocence 
in the sight of men and of God. He 
found it agonizing mental pain to think 
that a just God would allow the innocent 
to suffer. In Job's eyes the traditional 
wisdom broke down under the impact of 
human experience. There must be another 
answer. 

— 5 — 



How sickly are your self-righteous 
words; 

how unconvincing is your argument! 
(6:25) 

You are glossing over falsehoods 
And offering vain remedies, every-

one of you! • 
Oh, that you would be altogether 

silent! 
This for you would be wisdom. 

Is it for God that you speak falsehood? 
Is it for him that you utterdeceit? 

Your reminders are ashy maxims, 
Your fabrications are mounds of 

clay. (13:4-12) 
Sharply and boldly Job declares the 

wisdom of his Comforters unconvincing. 
True to himself he protests his innocence: 

Let God weigh me in the scales of 
justice; 

Thus will he know my innocence! 
(31:6) 

He is tormented by the tension withiri 
him between an honest mind and a be-
lieving heart, tormented by the apparent 
contradiction of God's justice and the 
suffering of the innocent. 

We must not forapt to veiw Job's 
anguished protest in the perspective of 
Old Testament religion. When the book 

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was written the Jewish people had no 
knowledge of the true nature of life 
beyond the grave. They believed in the 
survival of the soul in a nether world 
called Sheol. It dwelt not in men's 
desires to go there. They believed it to 
be a place of darkness and oblivion. 
Without distinction the just and' the un-
just were assembled to endure a shadowy 
sort of existence. The dead were cut off 
from all knowledge of earthly things, and 
there was no praise of the Lord in Sheol. 
All shared a common destiny; the prince 
wgs like the pauper, the master like the 
slave. 

With such a notion of the afterlife we 
may well understand why men preferred 
this life to Sheol, and since they were 
convinced of the justice of God, it was a 
natural conclusion to believe that he 
rewarded the just and punished the 
wicked in this life. Such wisdom was 
sorely strained by the evidence of the 
facts of life, which so often seemed to 
demonstrate just the opposite. Only in 
light of these consideration of Sheol 
and earthly retribution can we under-
stand the book of Job and its statement 
of the problem of pain. The weight of 
Job's suffering had brought him to such 
a state that he preferred Sheol to life: 



Why then did.you bring me forth from 
the womb? 

I should have died and no eye have 
seen me. 

I should be as though I had never 
lived; 

I should have been taken from the 
womb to the grave. 

Are not the days of my life few? 
Let me alone, that I may recover a 

little 
Before I go whence I shall not return, 

to the land of darkness and gloom, 
The black, disordered land 

where darkness is the only light. 
(10:18-22) 

The maddening paradox of pain to Job 
may now be better understood. The 
traditional wisdom declared that God 
rewards the just and punishes the wicked 
on this earth. Job saw his own experience 
as a contradiction of this wisdom, for he 
knew his innocence and his suffering 
was so grave. 

I have heard this sort of thing many 
times 

Wearisome comforters are you all! 
Is there no end to windy words? 

Or what sickness have you that you 
speak on? 

I also could talk as you do 

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were you in ray place 
I could declaim over you, 

or wag my head at you. 
I could strenghten you with talk, 

or shake my head with silent lips. 
If I speak, this pain I have will not 

be checked; 
4 if I leave off, it will not depart from 

me. (16:1-6) 
What wisdom is there then in the book 

4 of Job, if the old wisdom cannot stand 
up against the vehemence of his argu-
ment? Job's wisdom is in the honesty 
and strength of his conviction that wis-
dom must be more than a speculative 
escape from the realities of human ex-
perience. It cannot presume to ignore 
reality. It must tangle with it and test 
its strength. Job's wisdom was his 
capacity to reason with life and to 
believe in God. If the old wisdom did 
not answer the guestion why the innocent 
suffer, it did not follow that the tradi-
tional faith in a God of justice must 
collapse. The wisdom of Job was in the 
fact that his faith was strong enough to 
live with the guestions. He could say 
of himself: 

I wore my honesty like a garment; 
justice was my robe and my turban. 

I was eyes to the blind, 

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and feet to the lame was I: 
I was a father to the needy; 

the rights of the stranger I studied, 
And I broke the jaws of the wicked 

man; 
from his teeth I forced the prey 

(29:14-17) 
He argued that his suffering was not 

retribution for sin. It was rather the 
mysterious will of God: 

But he has decided, and who can say 
him nay? 

What he desires that he does (23:13) 
He knew that if he could see God he 

would understand but he also knew how 
difficult it was to see God: 

But if I go to the east, he is not there; 
or to the west I cannot perceive him; 

Where the north enfolds him, I behold 
him not; 

by the south he is veiled, I see him 
not (23:8f) 

For Job wisdom was not the pat 
answer and the facile phrase. It was 
deep and mysterious. It is with God. 

Whence, then, comes wisdom, 
And where is the place of under-

standing? 
God knows the way to it: 

it is he who is familiar with its 
place. 

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And to man he said; 
Behold, the fear of the Lord is 

wisdom; 
and avoiding evil understanding. 

The wisdom of Job is in the fact that 
he will not deny what is real by ex-
perience nor what is real by faith. By 
experience he knows suffering. By faith 
he believes in a just God. With his 
meager knowledge of the afterlife he 
could not see how these two realities 
could be reconciled, but not withstanding 
he believed. 

The faith of Job was founded on God 
and his creation. "The Lord addressed 
him out of the storm" (38:1) He over-
whelmed him with guestions saying "1 
will question you, and you tell me the 
answers" (38:3) 

Where were you when I founded the 
earth? 

Who determined its size, do you know? 
Have you ever in your lifetime com-

manded the morning and shown the 
dawn its place? 

Have the gates of death been shown to 
you or have you seen the gates of 
darkness? 

Will we have arguing with the Almighty 
by the critic? 

Have you an arm like that of God 

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or can you thunder with a voice 
like his? 

Would you condemn me that you may 
be justified? (38-41 passim) 

The Lord's speech was a flood of 
questions which might be summed up on 
this one: Who is rran to probe the secrets 
of divine power or to question the motives 
of the divine wisdom? The realization 
of God's wisdom and power left Job 
without argument and without protest: 

Behold, I am of little account; what 
can I answer you? 

I put my hand over my mouth (40:4) 
I have dealt with great things that I do 

not understand; 
Things too wonderful for me which I 

cannot know. (42:3) 
We learn wisdom from Job by behold-

ing the magnificence of his faith. He 
saw so much of God's wisdom and power 
in the world that all the pain and all his 
protest could not make him abandon 
faith. He might protest and argue, but 
argument and protest withered in the 
fuller manifestation of God. The wisdom 
of Job is not the wisdom of Paul. Job 
did not have the revelation Paul had 
about the afterlife whereby he could say, 
"The sufferings of the present time are 
not worthy to be compared with the glory 

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to come" (Romans 8:18) The wisdom of 
Job' is that a man with towering faith 
can live with burning questions unan-
swered, realizing that should one wish 
to contend with him (God), he could not 
answer him once in a thousand times. 
(9:3) 

We who live anxiously on a globe over 
which hangs an atomic sword suspended 
by a slender thread can learn from Job 
that without faith we are lost, that fear 
of the sword can be the beginning of the 
fear of the Lord which is the beginning 
of wisdom. The end of wisdom is love 
of the Lord. 

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