The Talmud blamed Job's suffering on his silence before Pharaoh
The Book of Job never explains why a righteous man loses his children, wealth and health, beyond a wager in heaven. One Talmudic tradition supplied a reason: Job sat on Pharaoh's council, disliked the order to kill Hebrew baby boys, and said nothing. His afflictions, on this reading, were punishment for keeping quiet.
The book itself is part of the Writings section of the Hebrew Bible, and its mix of later Hebrew and Aramaic influences points to composition in the Persian period, between 540 and 330 BCE. It opens with Job living righteously in the land of Uz. An angel called 'the satan', meaning adversary, suggests Job is pious only because God shields him, and God lets the angel strip away everything but his life. Job curses the day he was born, yet never curses God.
Most of the book is argument. Three friends, Bildad, Eliphaz and Zophar, insist his suffering must be deserved; Job rejects every word of their counsel. God finally speaks out of a whirlwind, rebukes the friends, and restores Job to greater prosperity than before, with seven sons and three daughters named Jemimah, Keziah and Keren-happuch, meaning dove, cinnamon and horn of eye-makeup.
Job's life extends well beyond one book. The Greek Septuagint adds a genealogy making him a grandson of Esau and a ruler of Edom. Most rabbis took him as a real person, though a minority saw him as a literary creation, and the Talmud debates at length when he lived. The New Testament's Epistle of James holds him up as a model of patience, and his line 'I know that my redeemer lives' opens Part III of Handel's Messiah, though Jewish commentators dispute reading it as a prophecy of Christ. In the Quran he is the prophet Ayyub, steadfast without the despair or the debates.
Places compete for him. At least two sites claim to be where he suffered and at least three claim his tomb, including a cave complex at Urfa in Turkey with a well said to heal, and Jabal Qarah near Salalah in Oman. A church was built in 384 over his supposed house in Syria's Hauran region.
Source: Job (biblical figure)
