Saint Job

Saint Job is a figure of the Old Testament, the just man of the land of Uz whose trial, complaint and faithfulness are told in the Book of Job. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on May 10 as a man of admirable patience.

The Book of Job belongs to the wisdom books and is a masterpiece of Hebrew poetry. It is not known who wrote it or when, nor can it be determined when Job lived. Everything we know about him comes from this book. Beyond it, Scripture mentions him only briefly: the prophet Ezekiel names him alongside Noah and Daniel as a model of righteousness, and the Letter of James reminds the faithful of Job’s perseverance and of the Lord’s compassion and mercy.

The book presents Job as a just, upright and God-fearing man who avoided evil. He had seven sons and three daughters and great flocks and herds, and he offered sacrifices to God for his children. When Satan asked the Lord whether Job feared God for nothing, the Lord allowed him to be tested. In a single day Job lost all his possessions and all his children, yet he said: “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!” Then a grievous illness struck him and covered his whole body with sores. Even so, as the book says, in all this he did not sin.

Three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar, came to comfort him and sat with him in silence for seven days. When Job cursed the day of his birth, they began to argue that suffering is always a punishment for sin, so he too must have done wrong. Job defended his innocence and demanded an answer from God. Benedict XVI wrote that Job could complain before God about the incomprehensible and apparently unjustified suffering in the world. Yet amid his complaints Job confessed: “I know that my Redeemer lives.”

At last the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, questioning him about the mysteries of creation. Job admitted that he had spoken of things he did not understand and confessed that until then he had known God only by hearsay, but now his own eyes had seen him. The Lord rebuked the friends because they had not spoken rightly of him, as his servant Job had, and he accepted Job’s prayer for them. He also restored to Job twice as much as he had lost. Job again had seven sons and three daughters, and he died old and full of days.

Saint Gregory the Great wrote an extensive commentary on this book, the Moralia in Iob, which according to Benedict XVI became in the Middle Ages a kind of summa of Christian morality. In the apostolic letter Salvifici doloris, John Paul II taught that not all suffering is the consequence of a fault, that the suffering of the innocent Job must be accepted as a mystery, and that the Book of Job in a certain way foretells the Passion of Christ. Pope Francis called Job a witness of a faith that does not accept a caricature of God.

Job was never formally canonized. The Church venerates him as a saint, as it does the patriarchs, the prophets and other figures of the Old Testament.