- The book of Job was written before the Patriarchs or any events relating to Israel took place. No events of Hebrew history are mentioned because it predates them.
- Author: there is a strong argument that Job was Jobab, youngest son of Joktan who lived in about 2200-2500 BC, sometime after the Flood but four generations before Abraham.
- There is a special younger-son genealogy for Joktan and Jobab in Genesis 10:21-31. Genealogies are recorded for people who have importance for some reason.
Jobab was descended from Noah via Shem and Arphaxad – thus he was a Semite. Arphaxad’s line leads to Abraham through his son Shelah, his son Eber and his son Peleg. Eber’s second son was Joktan. Joktan had 13 sons, of which Jobab was the youngest. Genesis 10:21-31 has a special genealogy side-shoot that leads to Jobab. This indicates that it was important to know who Joktan’s sons were because the youngest one was probably Job who wrote a very important book of the Bible.
Another reference to Jobab is in 1 Chronicles 1:20 in the genealogy from Adam to Abraham. Abraham lived in about 2000 BC:
Noah – Shem – Arphaxad – Shelah – Eber – Peleg/Joktan – Reu – Serug – Nahor – Terah – Abram
In Genesis chapter 36 there is the genealgy for the descendants of Esau the Edomites. In the region of Edom there were the Horites, the sons of Seir. One of them was Dishan, whose sons were Uz and Aran.
Job came from the land of Uz. From the Genesis chapter 10 genealogy Uz was Jobab’s great great great uncle.
Eliphaz the Temanite who appears in the book of Job, is named as a descendant of Esau in Genesis 36.
There were kings of Edom long before there were kings of Israel. Jobab son of Zerah from Bozrah was the second king of Edom in Genesis 36.
Thus, Job appears to have been a descendant of Seir and to have come from the region of Uz in Edom close to the territory of the Temanites where his friend Eliphaz came from. Job was very rich before his ordeal and became fabulously rich after it. Job may even have been descended from Jobab son of Zerah, the King of Edom.
- The subject of the book of Job is the human condition and why suffering is allowed.
- God is portrayed as speaking with a voice of thunder; He is a God of the natural elements. There are poetic descriptions of thunder storms over what is now the desert of Arabia.
- Job displays an ancient literary style used when writing was first invented. It was probably one of the first books written in a Semitic language using Cuneiform writing. It would have been transcribed into Hebrew with alphabetic writing later on. It is for this reason that some words in the book of Job are not translatable as no one knows what they mean.
- Genre: Wisdom
Merry and True 