100 Fun Facts About Book of Job

What does Job's wife urge him to do after asking whether he still holds to his 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, and because Lamentations puts the 'daughter of Edom' in the land of Uz, the story is usually set outside Israel, in Edom or northern Arabia.

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 himself with after Satan afflicts his body?

A potsherd is a shard of broken pottery, and Job is so disfigured that when his three friends arrive they do not recognise him from a distance.

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'.

What do Job's three visitors do for seven days when they first reach him?

Sit in silence on the ground beside him is what they do, 'for they saw that his grief was very great', and the hush ends only when Job speaks 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 day 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 words open Job's vow that ends 'yet will I trust in him'?

Though he slay me opens the vow, but the same verse has Job insist he will still 'maintain mine own ways before him', so his trust arrives with an argument attached.

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 comes from Job's lament in chapter 19?

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.

After his children's feasts, what does Job rise early to offer for each of them, in case they had sinned?

Burnt offerings, one for each child, follow every round of feasting, 'It may be that my sons have sinned', and the narrator adds 'Thus did Job continually' before any test begins.

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 reading took such hold that Russian still calls the animal a 'begemot'.

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 God's first speech, and the 'sons of God' shouting beside them are the same heavenly court where Satan's challenge set Job's ordeal in motion.

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

Orion's bands are beyond Job's loosing, and the jab lands because Job himself had named Orion and the Pleiades in chapter 9 while praising the God who made them.

What does a humbled Job say he will do after God's first speech?

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 end Job's last speech in the book, and God's next words go to the three friends, telling them that they, unlike Job, have not spoken rightly of him.

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

Money and a gold earring come from every brother, sister and old acquaintance, who turn up to 'bemoan' him and share his bread only once the ordeal is over.

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'.

The epilogue doubles Job's largest herd from seven thousand to fourteen thousand of which animal?

Sheep go from seven thousand to fourteen thousand, and the camels, oxen and she-asses double as well, yet Job's new family is the same size as before: seven sons and three daughters.

What do Job's daughters receive in the epilogue alongside their brothers?

An inheritance 'among their brethren' goes to all three daughters, although Numbers passes a man's property to a daughter only 'if a man die, and have no son', and Job has seven.

Which of these is the name of one of Job's three daughters in the epilogue?

Jemima, Kezia and Kerenhappuch are all named, while their seven brothers never are, 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, the 'Writings', comes last in the Hebrew Bible, after the Prophets; Protestant and Catholic Bibles reverse that, moving Job ahead of the Prophets to sit directly before Psalms.

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 where the book's late Hebrew and Aramaic colouring points, although its story is set in a far older world of patriarchs, herds 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 whose ruin is staged by two circus vendors, Mr. Zuss and Nickles, who take the roles of God and Satan; the play also won the 1959 Tony Award for Best Play.

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

William Blake engraved the set in his late sixties for his patron John Linnell, working from watercolours he had first painted some twenty years earlier for Thomas Butts.

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

Carl Jung's twist is that the reply comes from God: having wronged a man more moral than himself, Yahweh must become human, so the birth of Christ is read as an answer to Job.

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 ancient text names Job's first wife Sitidos, who stands by him in his poverty but dies before his fortunes return.

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 that Diaghilev had turned down as 'too English and too old-fashioned', and he so disliked ballet that he insisted on calling it a masque.

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, but the Hebrew word, re'em, is now generally read as a wild ox, which is how modern translations such as the World English Bible put it.

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.

Job 26 says God stretches out the north and hangs the earth upon what?

Nothing holds the world up in Job's picture, and the same hymn says God binds the waters in thick clouds without the cloud tearing under them.

On losing his children and herds, Job says 'the LORD gave, and the LORD hath' done what?

Taken away completes the line, and Job goes on to bless God's name instead of blaming him, so the narrator can say that he 'sinned not'.

When Job at last speaks in chapter 3, opening the long poetic debate, what does he curse?

The day he was born is Job's target: he wants it turned to darkness, and he asks why he did not perish at birth.

Which Franz Kafka novel about Josef K.'s unexplained arrest is often compared with the Book of Job?

The Trial follows a bank official prosecuted by a court that never names his crime, and some scholars think Kafka based it on Job deliberately.

In which 1996 spy film is 'Job' the code name of a mole traced through the Bible verse Job 3:14?

Mission: Impossible has Ethan Hunt realise that the cryptic 'Job 314' is a Bible reference, the clue that leads him to an arms dealer and then to the traitor inside his own agency.

Which animated series has a sick boy's parents tell him Job's story, deepening his crisis of faith?

South Park's 'Cartmanland' has Kyle's parents stop before the happy ending, leaving him horrified that God would let an innocent man suffer just to settle a dispute with Satan.

Which Goethe drama opens in Heaven with a wager over a scholar's soul, in an allusion to Job's story?

Faust begins with Mephistopheles betting the Lord that he can lead his favourite scholar astray, the same kind of heavenly wager that sets Job's ordeal in motion.

Which bland food does Job ask about in chapter 6 of the KJV, doubting it has any taste?

The white of an egg follows his question about whether tasteless food can be eaten without salt, as Job protests that the things his soul refuses to touch have become his daily food.

To what does God say 'hitherto shalt thou come, but no further' in his speech to Job?

The sea is pictured as a newborn bursting from the womb, wrapped in cloud for a garment and shut behind bars and doors, where its proud waves must halt.

Each messenger bringing Job news of a disaster ends his report by saying that he alone has done what?

Escaped to tell him is the refrain of all four messengers, each arriving while the one before is speaking, so the blows seem to land in a single moment.

What falls from heaven in Job's second disaster, burning up his flocks and the servants tending them?

The fire of God is the messenger's own phrase, so the blow seems to come from the one Job worships, yet the reader knows Satan was given leave to strike.

How does the epilogue rank Job's three new daughters against every other woman in the land?

The fairest in all the land, says the text, which names each of the three daughters while leaving their seven brothers nameless.

What fault does God find with Job's three visitors when he turns on them in the epilogue?

They spoke falsely of him, God says, unlike 'my servant Job': the man who complained bitterly is vindicated, and the men who defended God are the ones in trouble.

What of Job's has become 'strange' to his own wife, by his complaint in chapter 19?

His breath repels his wife, and the same speech says his closest companions abhor him and even young children despise him.

In chapter 31, Job says he made a covenant with what, to keep his thoughts from a maid?

His eyes are bound by the pact, the first line of a long oath of innocence in which Job invites punishment if he ever lied, cheated or refused the poor.

God's first words to Job ask who is darkening counsel with words that lack what?

Knowledge is what God finds missing, and he follows with a long run of questions about the natural world that Job cannot answer.

Which book, known for declaring that all is vanity, joins Job and Proverbs as the Bible's wisdom literature?

Ecclesiastes shares Job's doubts: both flatly contradict the confident claims of Proverbs about how the world works.

Which 2009 Coen brothers film, about a physics professor whose world falls apart, shows the influence of Job?

A Serious Man, set in suburban Minnesota in 1967, was nominated for the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay.

Which Terrence Malick film, winner of the Palme d'Or, opens with a quotation from God's speech to Job?

The Tree of Life won at Cannes in 2011; it follows a Texas family's grief and pauses for dreamlike images of the birth of the universe.

Which fantasy series sends the demon Crowley to destroy Job's property and children in season two?

Good Omens cast Peter Davison as Job; off screen he is the father-in-law of David Tennant, who plays Crowley.

Which comedy writer retold Job as God's Favorite, a 1974 Broadway play set in a Long Island mansion?

Neil Simon said he wrote the play as a reaction to his wife's early death from cancer, and it ran for 119 performances.

Which biblical leader does the Talmud's tractate Bava Batra name as the author of the Book of Job?

Moses wrote 'his book' and Job, says the Talmud, though modern scholars treat the author as anonymous, almost certainly an Israelite poet of a much later age.

By what Arabic name is Job honoured in the Quran, which praises him as a steadfast worshipper?

Ayyub is one of 25 prophets the Quran names, and in its telling his wife stays loyally at his side.

The Book of Job's long poetic debates are framed by a prologue and epilogue written in what form?

Prose opens and closes the book, and many scholars see that simple narrative as the original core, later enlarged by the poetry.

Which raiders fall on Job's oxen as they plough, killing the servants in the first of his disasters?

The Sabeans strike first, taking the oxen from the plough and the asses feeding beside them; three more reports follow in quick succession.

In whose house are Job's sons and daughters feasting and drinking wine when it collapses on them?

Their eldest brother's house was the setting because the seven sons took turns as host, each in his own home, and always sent for their three sisters to join them.

In the Quran, what appears from the ground to restore Job when God orders him to strike with his foot?

A cool spring bursts out to replenish him, and a well at Urfa in Turkey is shown to visitors as the very one.

In the Latin Vulgate and Protestant Bibles, Job opens the poetic books directly after which book?

Esther comes just before Job in those Bibles, while the Catholic Jerusalem Bible places Job after the two books of Maccabees.

Which term, coined by the philosopher Leibniz, names the Book of Job's central problem of divine justice?

Theodicy tries to square a just God with the existence of evil, and Job's version of the puzzle is why the righteous suffer.

Which medieval Jewish scholar called Job's story a parable, though Thomas Aquinas held it was history?

Maimonides took up Job's ordeal in The Guide for the Perplexed, where he argues that evil has no positive existence of its own.

Which future pope began the commentary Moralia in Job while at the imperial court in Constantinople?

Gregory I, known as Gregory the Great, finished it only after returning to Rome; it fills some 35 books and counts as his major work.

Which science-fiction author's 1984 novel Job: A Comedy of Justice won the Locus Award for fantasy?

Robert Heinlein puts his hero through a shipwreck, an earthquake and a string of shifting worlds, misfortunes that make him identify with the biblical Job.

Which American poet wrote A Masque of Reason, a 1945 comedy presented as Job's forty-third chapter?

Robert Frost has God admit to Job that the whole ordeal was a display put on for the Devil, an answer that leaves Job and his wife with more questions.

Which Canadian songwriter closed her album Turbulent Indigo with 'The Sire of Sorrow (Job's Sad Song)'?

Joni Mitchell gave the song seven minutes at the end of Turbulent Indigo, which won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Album.

Job calls his visitors 'forgers of lies' and worthless members of which profession?

Physicians 'of no value' is his verdict, and he adds that the wisest thing they could do is hold their peace.

With what tool does Job wish his words were engraved in the rock for ever, in chapter 19?

An iron pen and lead, he says, or else a book: Job wants a permanent record of his case to outlast him.

Job 28 opens with a vivid picture of which human industry, before asking where wisdom can be found?

Mining lets men tunnel to silver and sapphires along paths no vulture has seen, yet the poem says no such shaft leads to wisdom.

In Job 8, Bildad likens the trust of a godless man to which flimsy thing that gives way when leaned on?

A spider's web is Bildad's image for false hope, set beside a marsh reed that withers the moment its water is gone.

Which bird, in God's speech to Job, nests on the high crag and feeds her young on blood?

The eagle soars at God's command, not Job's, and the speech adds a grim detail: wherever the slain lie, there she is.

What does God ask whether Job can send out, so that they report back saying 'Here we are'?

Lightning bolts are pictured as servants reporting for duty, in a run of weather riddles that also asks who fathered the rain and whose womb bore the ice.

Which animals, seven of each, must Job's visitors sacrifice after God's anger is kindled against them?

Bulls and rams are demanded from the men who spent the whole book telling Job to repent; now they are the ones who must make amends.

The Book of Job's final verse says its hero died 'being old and full of' what?

Days is the closing word: Job lives another 140 years after his ordeal, long enough to see four generations of his descendants.

Job's first speech ends with the confession that what has now come upon him?

The thing he feared most has arrived, he says, a hint that even in his prosperous years Job was never at ease.

Before which chilling figure is the wicked man marched in Bildad's speech in Job 18?

The king of terrors awaits the wicked man once he is torn from his tent, in a speech that also has 'the firstborn of death' devouring his strength.

Which archaic KJV word for an arbiter does Job use, lamenting that none stands between him and God?

Daysman is the word, and Job longs for one because God is not a man like him whom he could meet in court as an equal.

A Greek addition to the Book of Job identifies its hero with Jobab, an early ruler of which land?

Edom is where the Septuagint's longer ending places him, calling Job a descendant of Esau and promising that he will rise again with the righteous.

The poem Ludlul bel nemeqi, about a righteous sufferer, is often called which people's Book of Job?

The Babylonians' poem has a nobleman stripped of wealth, friends and health, and it may be a hymn of thanks to the god Marduk for his recovery.

On which fast day, mourning the destroyed Temples, do many Sephardic congregations read the Book of Job?

Tisha B'Av bans ordinary Torah study as too enjoyable, so only sorrowful texts are allowed: Job, Lamentations and parts of Jeremiah.

Why is Elihu's anger kindled against Job when he speaks up in chapter 32?

He justified himself over God, in Elihu's view, and Elihu is just as angry with the three visitors for condemning Job without finding an answer.

Which animal, in God's speech to Job, scorns the crowded city and ignores the driver's shouts?

The wild donkey was set free by God, who gave it the barren wilderness for a home, and it ranges the mountains searching for every green thing.