Job

When considering Job's suffering in the middle of his story, it is hard to fathom the motivation behind his patience in both the prologue and epilogue. How can he remain faithful to an omnipotent being that allows for everything in his life be destroyed when he has done nothing in his mind to deserve it?

I recently read a poem in my British Lit class that gives some insight about Job's patience called "Hap" by Thomas Hardy. In the poem, the speaker explains that he would be more willing to accept the pain and suffering in his life if he knew that there was some supreme being that willed it. He comes to the conclusion that there's no such thing, that all of life is left up to chance and that both happiness and pain are given to mortals at random by the forces of chance.

Perhaps it is the fact that Job knows that there is a God, and that that God is controlling his life that makes him patient. By understanding his place ion the universe in relation to God, Job is put in a position to accept what God is doing to him, trusting that he will make it right again or at least that what he is doing is right because of the fact that it is God doing it.



Thomas Hardy : Hap
If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
That thy love’s loss is my hate’s profiting!”
Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die,
Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
Half-eased in that a powerfuller than I
Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.
But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain,
And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?
—Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan. . . .
These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.