The Legend of Job, According to the Bible

The Legend of Job, According to the Bible

Imagine this story of Job. According to the text, Satan and the Lord God never met in person, and Job never heard the voices of Satan nor the voice of God.

Therefore, Job was unaware of the agreement between Satan and God. He could not have known that he would face difficulties with God's consent, much less that he would suffer curses from Satan.

This was Job's situation: suddenly, things started to get very bad, without any reason he could know, no clue, no motivation. As he himself said, as his wife said, and as his friends said, just bad luck, misfortune, or normal things. It wasn't a cause, it wasn't a pandemic or a wave of evil sweeping through his land, his people, his relatives, or neighbors; just something strange and mysterious happened to his ten children and his affairs.

How many people could see their wealth disappear and their children suffer a house collapse accident due to a predictable, albeit unusual, weather event, and yet Job didn't realize he was the victim of a conspiracy or a curse; it was merely a possible, albeit unpleasant, situation, as sometimes happens with great fortunes that fall into disgrace and disappear suddenly.

Let's, just for the sake of argument, modify the text of the Book of Job, imagining or supposing that if God and Satan were excluded from the text of the Book of Job, nothing would change in this narrative.

Let's suppose that Job didn't believe in God, nor in Satan, but only reasoned with his high intelligence, like a rational atheist who doesn't believe in supernatural forces.

It seems that nothing changes in the story of Job if he were an atheist and only thought that his rise and fall were possible events, and that's how he reacted. He didn't blaspheme against a divine entity because he cannot speak; this spiritual entity cannot hear laments, requests, or supplications. He does nothing; he remains impassive in the face of misfortunes, pain, injustice, suffering, death, the fall, catastrophe, sadness, impoverishment, illness, accidents, and epidemics. Nothing shakes the invisible, impassive God. Therefore, the solution to Job's indifference is that Job discovered that God does not exist, does nothing, would do nothing, and will do nothing. Simply put, the book of Job warns us against idolatry and alerts us to the complete truth that God does nothing, cannot speak, cannot hear, because God does not exist.

The book of Job is a book against atheism.

Job did not complain, did not ask for anything, did not speak to God, did not hear God's voice, did not seek the invisible because Job was an atheist, but he did not confess this to anyone.Roberto da Silva Rocha, professor universitário e cientista político