Job’s Rationality

Job’s actual experiences and his upright and honest humanity meant that he made the most rational judgment and choices when he lost his assets and his children. Such rational choices were inseparable from his daily pursuits and the deeds of God that he had come to know during his day-to-day life. Job’s honesty made him able to believe that Jehovah’s hand rules over all things; his belief allowed him to know the fact of Jehovah God’s sovereignty over all things; his knowledge made him willing and able to obey Jehovah God’s sovereignty and arrangements; his obedience enabled him to be more and more true in his fear of Jehovah God; his fear made him more and more real in his shunning of evil; ultimately, Job became perfect because he feared God and shunned evil; and his perfection made him wise, and gave him the utmost rationality.

How should we understand this word “rational”? A literal interpretation is that it means being of good sense, being logical and sensible in one’s thinking, being of sound words, actions, and judgment, and possessing sound and regular moral standards. Yet Job’s rationality isn’t so easily explained. When it is said here that Job was possessed of the utmost rationality, it is in connection to his humanity and his conduct before God. Because Job was honest, he was able to believe in and obey the sovereignty of God, which gave him a knowledge that was unobtainable by others, and this knowledge made him able to more accurately discern, judge, and define that which befell him, which enabled him to more accurately and perspicaciously choose what to do and what to hold firm to. Which is to say that his words, behavior, the principles behind his actions, and the code by which he acted, were regular, clear, and specific, and were not blind, impulsive, or emotional. He knew how to treat whatever befell him, he knew how to balance and handle the relationships between complex events, he knew how to hold fast to the way that should be held fast to, and, moreover, he knew how to treat the giving and taking away of Jehovah God. This was the very rationality of Job. It was precisely because Job was equipped with such rationality that he said, “the LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD,” when he lost his assets and his sons and daughters.

When Job was faced with the enormous pain of the body, and the remonstrations of his kinfolk and friends, and when he was faced with death, his actual conduct once again demonstrated his true face to all.

From God’s Work, God’s Disposition, and God Himself II

Read more: God’s Work, God’s Disposition, and God Himself (II)