50 Fun Facts About Book of Job

What does Job's wife urge him to do after asking 'Dost thou still retain thine integrity?'

Curse God and die is the only line Job's wife speaks in the whole book, and Job answers that she talks like one of the foolish women. She is never named in the Bible.

In which land does the Book of Job place its hero, a man 'perfect and upright' who eschewed evil?

Uz is named in the book's opening verse, which then counts Job's wealth in sheep, camels, oxen and she-asses before any person speaks.

Out of what does God finally answer Job, demanding 'Gird up now thy loins like a man'?

A whirlwind is where God speaks from in chapter 38, and instead of explaining Job's suffering he fires off questions about the sea, the snow and the wild animals.

Which affliction does Satan inflict on Job 'from the sole of his foot unto his crown'?

Boils cover Job from sole to crown, yet the text insists that 'in all this did not Job sin with his lips', the same verdict given after his first losses.

What does Job pick up to scrape his sores after Satan strikes him, as he sits on the ground?

A potsherd is a fragment of broken pottery, and the same chapter has Job's wife tell him to give up his integrity as he scrapes away.

Which smoke-snorting creature of Job 41 gave Thomas Hobbes the title of his 1651 treatise?

Leviathan in Job 41 cannot be drawn out 'with an hook', and Hobbes borrowed the untameable sea monster as his image of the all-powerful commonwealth.

Which New Testament letter says 'Ye have heard of the patience of Job', giving English a proverb?

James is the letter that holds the line, at 5:11, and it pairs Job with the prophets as an example of enduring suffering and being counted 'happy'.

For how long do Job's three visitors sit with him on the ground with no one speaking a word?

Seven days and seven nights pass in silence because the visitors see how severe his grief is, and when Job finally speaks it is to wish he had never been born.

Which people, raiding in three bands, carry off Job's camels and put the herdsmen to the sword?

The Chaldeans take the camels while the Sabeans take the oxen and donkeys, and each disaster is reported by a lone survivor saying 'I only am escaped alone to tell thee'.

What strikes the house where Job's children are feasting, killing every one of them at once?

A great wind 'from the wilderness' smites the four corners of the eldest brother's house, the fourth blow in a single afternoon after raiders and fire from heaven took the herds.

Which of Job's visitors speaks first, recalling a vision when 'the hair of my flesh stood up'?

Eliphaz the Temanite opens the debate, and his spectre's question, 'Shall mortal man be more just than God?', sets the visitors' whole case that suffering must be deserved.

Why does Elihu say he held back his opinion while Job and the three visitors argued?

He was the youngest, saying 'I am young, and ye are very old', and once he does speak he rages at the older men for condemning Job while finding no answer.

What does Job call his three visitors in chapter 16, having 'heard many such things' from them?

Miserable comforters is Job's verdict on men who came to console him, and earlier he called them 'forgers of lies' and 'physicians of no value'.

Which phrase opens Job's vow in chapter 13 to keep trusting God even if God kills him?

Though he slay me is followed by 'yet will I trust in him', but the same verse has Job insist he will still 'maintain mine own ways before him'.

Which word fills 'I know that my ___ liveth', the Job 19 line Handel set for soprano in Messiah?

Redeemer is the word, and Handel's soprano air on it opens Part III of Messiah, where the Job verse is joined to Paul's 'For now is Christ risen from the dead' from 1 Corinthians.

Which idiom for a narrow escape does Job coin in chapter 19, where his bone 'cleaveth' to his flesh?

The skin of my teeth is all Job says he has escaped with, a puzzle of a phrase since teeth have no skin, and it now means surviving by the narrowest margin.

Job 5:7 has a friend declare that man 'is born unto trouble' as surely as what 'fly upward'?

Sparks are the image, and the speaker's point is not sympathy but that trouble is the human lot, so Job should accept God's correction as a blessing.

To what does Job 14 compare a man who 'cometh forth' only to be 'cut down', fleeing like a shadow?

A flower is the image in a chapter that opens 'Man that is born of a woman', and Job then argues that a felled tree at least sprouts again.

Job complains in chapter 7 that his time races by 'swifter than' what, spent with no hope left?

A weaver's shuttle is the image in chapter 7, and two chapters later Job tries again with a running post, swift ships and an eagle swooping on its prey.

Elihu, the angry fourth speaker of Job 32, is introduced as 'the Buzite' and the son of whom?

Barachel is named twice in Job 32, and the chapter adds that Elihu was 'of the kindred of Ram', a pedigree none of the three older visitors receives.

Which beast of Job 40, with a tail 'like a cedar', has long been identified with the hippopotamus?

Behemoth 'eateth grass as an ox', and the hippopotamus identification predates the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs in the early nineteenth century.

In Job 38, God asks where Job was when God laid what, 'if thou hast understanding'?

The foundations of the earth open a barrage of questions that goes on to ask who 'shut up the sea with doors' and where light dwells.

What 'sang together' at creation in Job 38, as 'all the sons of God shouted for joy'?

The morning stars sing in a verse that became the title of one of the most reproduced engravings of the book, and the 'sons of God' are the same court Satan joined in chapter 1.

Which constellation's 'bands' does God ask whether Job can loose, paired with the Pleiades?

Orion's bands are beyond Job's loosing, says God, and the same pair of constellations appears in Job 9 alongside Arcturus and 'the chambers of the south'.

What does a humbled Job say he will do after God's first speech, having spoken 'once' and 'twice'?

Lay his hand on his mouth is Job's pledge to stop talking, calling himself 'vile', yet God answers with a second speech anyway, about two monstrous beasts.

In what does Job say he repents, right after confessing 'now mine eye seeth thee'?

Dust and ashes is the phrase, in a speech of only six verses, and Job adds that he had known God 'by the hearing of the ear' but now sees him.

What gift does each relative bring on coming to eat bread with Job in his house after his trials?

Money and a gold earring come from every visitor, given after God has already doubled Job's herds, so the gifts are less relief than tribute.

What is Job doing at the moment God 'turned the captivity of Job' and restores his fortunes?

Praying for his friends, the men just told they spoke wrongly of God, is what Job is doing when his fortune turns, and God gives him 'twice as much as he had before'.

How many sheep does the epilogue credit to Job, exactly double the flock he owned at the start?

Fourteen thousand sheep join six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand she-asses, each figure precisely twice the prologue's count.

How many years does Job live after his restoration, seeing his descendants to 'four generations'?

140 years is the span for a man who already had ten grown children when the story opens, and the book's last verse says he died old and full of years.

Which name belongs to one of Job's daughters in the epilogue, who inherit alongside their brothers?

Jemima, Kezia and Kerenhappuch are the only children named in the whole book, and the text adds that no women in all the land were 'so fair'.

Job says he came out of his mother's womb in what state, the same one he will 'return thither' in?

Naked is the word, and the verse continues 'the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord', spoken after Job tore his robe and fell to the ground to worship.

What single thing does God tell Satan to spare when delivering Job into his power a second time?

His life is the one limit, 'but save his life', and Satan's argument for the second round was that a man 'will give' everything he has to keep it.

Which gem does Job 28 say the price of wisdom is 'above', after dismissing coral and pearls?

Rubies fall short of wisdom's price in a chapter that first describes miners sinking shafts for silver, iron and sapphires and then asks where wisdom can be found at all.

Having asked 'where shall wisdom be found?', what does Job 28 finally declare that wisdom is?

The fear of the Lord 'that is wisdom', the chapter concludes, adding that 'to depart from evil is understanding', an echo of how the book first described Job himself.

In the second heavenly scene, God admits Satan moved him 'to destroy' Job in what way?

Without cause is God's own admission, and he says it while boasting that Job 'still holdeth fast his integrity', which is exactly what provokes the second wager.

In the Hebrew Bible, Job belongs to which of the three divisions, alongside Psalms and Proverbs?

Ketuvim means 'Writings', the third and last division of the Hebrew canon, and Job sits there with the other Wisdom texts rather than among the prophets.

Scholars date the Book of Job's composition, from its Aramaic-tinged Hebrew, to which era?

The Persian period, roughly 540 to 330 BCE, is the scholarly consensus, although the story is set in a much older patriarchal world of herds, camels and raiders.

Which prophet lists Job with Noah and Daniel as three righteous men who could save only themselves?

Ezekiel names the trio twice in one chapter, and the point is grim: even they 'shall deliver neither son nor daughter' from a land under judgment.

What does Satan say God has 'made' around Job, his house and all he has, explaining Job's piety?

A hedge 'about him, and about his house' is Satan's explanation for Job's devotion, and he bets that removing it will make Job renounce God 'to thy face'.

Which MacLeish verse play retold Job under a circus tent and took the 1959 Pulitzer Prize for Drama?

J.B. is a wealthy New York banker with a happy family whose fortunes are ruined, and MacLeish's free-verse play also won the 1959 Tony Award for Best Play.

Which English poet-engraver published twenty-two engraved Illustrations of the Book of Job in 1826?

William Blake's Job engravings brought him rare recognition in his lifetime, the Royal Academy and the King's Library each buying a copy, and every plate is framed by margins of biblical quotations and symbols.

Which psychiatrist's 1952 book 'Answer to Job' argues Job proved more moral and conscious than God?

Carl Jung's title in German is 'Antwort auf Hiob', and the book reads Yahweh as having been incited by Satan to torment Job for no good reason.

Which woman of Genesis is Job's second wife in the Testament of Job, mother of his ten later children?

Dinah, Jacob's daughter, is the Testament's choice, and the same first-century text gives Job's first wife a name the Bible never does.

Whose music is the 1931 ballet 'Job: A Masque for Dancing', choreographed by Ninette de Valois?

Vaughan Williams wrote the score to a scenario by Geoffrey Keynes, and the ballet was inspired by the illustrated Job edition of an English poet-engraver.

Which legendary beast does Job 39 in the KJV ask whether it 'will be willing to serve thee'?

The unicorn is asked about twice in the chapter, whether it will 'abide by thy crib' and whether Job can bind it 'with his band in the furrow'.

Which animal, in God's speech, 'saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha' and smells the battle 'afar off'?

The horse in Job 39 has a neck 'clothed with thunder' and 'swalloweth the ground with fierceness', pawing the valley and charging out to meet the armed men.

Which bird abandons her eggs on the ground, in God's speech, because he 'deprived her of wisdom'?

The ostrich, the chapter says, 'is hardened against her young ones' and forgets that a foot may crush the eggs she has left on the ground.

Which bird's young ones 'cry unto God' and 'wander for lack of meat' in God's questions to Job?

The raven's hunger closes chapter 38, and Jesus later picks the same bird, 'consider the ravens', to argue that God feeds creatures that neither sow nor reap.

The Hebrew 'ha-satan' in Job's prologue carries the definite article and literally means what?

The adversary is a role in God's court rather than a proper name, and this figure reports in from 'walking up and down' the world before the wager is struck.