This 10-week study of Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon mines the Wisdom Literature not only for wise principles for living, but also for the wise person these books point to through their drama, poetry, proverb, and song. In her accessible and authentic style, Nancy Guthrie focuses on seeing Jesus in the Old Testament instead of emphasizing works-based moralism. She presents clear commentary and contemporary application of gospel truths, speaking directly to issues such as repentance, submission, happiness, and sexuality. Each weekly lesson includes questions for personal study, a contemporary teaching chapter that emphasizes how the passage fits into the bigger story of redemptive history, a brief section on how the passage uniquely points to what is yet to come at the consummation of Christ's kingdom, and a leader's guide for group discussion.
Nancy Guthrie teaches the Bible at her home church, Cornerstone Presbyterian Church in Franklin, Tennessee, as well as at conferences around the country and internationally, including her Biblical Theology Workshop for Women. She is the author of numerous books and the host of the Help Me Teach the Bible podcast with the Gospel Coalition. She and her husband founded Respite Retreats for couples who have faced the death of a child, and they are cohosts of the GriefShare video series.
Personal Bible Study
Even though it is not the first book in our Bible, Job may actually have been the first book of the Bible written, though we don’t know who wrote it or exactly when it was written. Job is a story or drama about a real person in a real place (Uz, which is southeast of Israel), who lived at a particular time in history, probably between the time of Abraham and that of Moses. Job is not in the family line of Christ as are most of the key characters in the Old Testament, but instead he is one of several people featured in the Old Testament (e.g., Lot, Laban, Ruth) who are outside that line and yet embrace God’s covenant promises.
1. Read Job 1:1–5. What does the writer of this book seem to want us to understand about Job?
2. Read Job 1:6–11. How would you paraphrase Satan’s argument against God?
3. Read Job 1:12. Notice that Satan has asked for permission to harm Job and that God has granted that permission along with setting some parameters for Job’s suffering. What do you think this says about Satan and ultimately about God?
4. Read Job 1:13–2:10. How is Job’s response to incredible suffering so far quite different from the way Satan said Job would respond in 1:11 and 2:5?
In chapter 2, we read that Job had three friends who traveled to where he lived just to comfort him, and when they saw what had happened to him, they “raised their voices and wept” (v. 12). They sat with him silently for seven days, and then they couldn’t stay silent any longer. In chapters 3–37, we have three rounds of impassioned debate between Job and his three friends, later joined by a fourth friend, as they focus on the question of what Job’s suffering reveals both about him and about God’s governing of the world.
The book of Job doesn’t dismiss Job’s friends as hypocrites or heretics. In fact, each believes firmly in the one God who is not only all-powerful but wholly just and, at the same time, quick to restore the penitent and to heap blessings on the teachable. Yet both Job (16:2) and God (42:7–9) deem them “miserable comforters.” “The basic error of Job’s friends is that they overestimate their grasp of truth, misapply the truth they know, and close their minds to any facts that contradict what they assume.”1
5. You may want to read chapters 3–37 if you never have before. Or you may want only to skim these chapters, utilizing the chapter titles in your Bible to develop a general sense of the flow and content of the arguments. As you read or skim, write down some key phrases or questions from the chapters along with your own impressions about what you observe about Job and his friends.
6. A key question is voiced by Eliphaz in 4:17: “Can mortal man be in the right before God? Can a man be pure before his Maker?” Job expresses something similar in 9:1–2. How does Job’s question differ from his friend’s question?
7. Last week we learned that the Wisdom Books raise questions that can only be answered in Jesus Christ. How is that the case with this key question (question 6)?
8. Job longs for God to vindicate his integrity, but he knows he can’t forge the gap between himself and God; he longs for an intermediary who can make this happen (9:33; 16:19–21; 19:25–27). How is this longing fulfilled only in Jesus?
Finally, after all of these speeches, God himself speaks from out of a whirlwind in chapters 38–41. Read through these chapters, noting a phrase or two along with its reference about:
God’s wisdom in creation:
God’s wisdom in executing justice:
God’s wisdom in the use of his power:
9. How does what God has to say in the storm answer or not answer all that has been said about him in the previous chapters?
10. Job 40:3–5 and 42:1–6 record Job’s response to hearing God speak from the storm. Write down phrases or ideas from these verses that reveal the following responses from Job:
Submission:
Humility:
Repentance:
11. Job’s restoration is almost like a resurrection. He has been reconciled with his friends and is given double portions of everything he had before except that he is given only ten more children rather than twenty children. How might this detail alone perhaps hint to us that Job’s story is meant to point us toward anticipation of resurrection?
12. How does Job point us to Christ as a type of Christ both through comparison and contrast? Read the observation and quote from Job in the first column and write down a statement of similarity or contrast to Christ in the second column as indicated by the reference following the example provided in the first one.
| Job | Jesus |
| Job was “blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.” (Job 1:1) | Heb. 4:15 |
| God used even the work of Satan for his own glory and for Job’s sanctification. (Job 2:6) | Acts 2:23 |
| Job’s misery was increased by the friends who came around him. (Job 16:1) | Matt. 26: 40, 43, 56; Mark 14:66–68 |
| Job bemoaned, “Men have gaped at me with their mouth; they have struck me insolently on the cheek; they mass themselves together against me. God gives me up to the ungodly and casts me into the hands of the wicked” (Job 16:10–11); and, “Sure there are mockers about me.... I am the one before whom men spit.” (Job 17:2, 6) | Matt. 26:67; 27:29, 31, 41 |
| Job said: “I will give free utterance to my complaint. I will speak in the bitterness of my soul” (Job 10:1); and “I will defend my integrity until I die.” (Job 27:5 NLT) | Matt. 27:12; Mark 14:61 |
| Job determined to put his hope in God even if God killed him. | Matt. 26:38–39 |
| Job’s hopes were centered in resurrection, saying, “After my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God.” (Job 19:26) | Luke 9:22 |
| Job submitted to God in his suffering. (Job 42:1–6) | Heb. 5:7–10 |
| Job prayed for his friends, and God forgave them. (Job 42:10) | Luke 23:34 |
13. In the second column below, record how the book of Job also points to Christ in the way that Christ answers its unanswered questions, meets its unfilled needs, and brings about its anticipated restoration and resurrection. An answer is provided for the first one to serve as an example.
| Job | Jesus |
| Finding no meaning or purpose in his suffering, Job asks, “Why is light given to him who is in misery, and life to the bitter in soul?” (Job 3:20) | Phil. 3:8–10 |
| Eliphaz asks, “Who that was innocent ever perished?” (Job 4:7) | Luke 23:47 |
| Job asks, “What is man, that you make so much of him, and that you set your heart on him?” | Heb. 2:6, 10 |
| Job asks, “Why do you not pardon my transgression and take away my iniquity?” (Job 7:21) | Matt. 26:28 |
| Bildad asks, “Does God pervert | Rom. 5:23–26 |
| Job longed for an “arbiter” or “mediator” between himself and God. (Job 9:14, 33) | 1 Tim. 2:5, 1 John 2:1–2 |
| Job wonders if God can sympathize at all with his suffering, asking him, “Have you eyes of flesh? Do you see as man sees?” (Job 10:4) | Heb. 4:15 |
...
| Job asks, “If a man dies, shall he live again?” (Job 14:14) | John 5:24–25 |
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