No. There was no man who could blame him for anything, though men tried to do so later in the story. He was an upstanding member of the community, one you would love to have for a neighbor. He turned from evil. But there were things lurking within Job of which he was unaware, and when God’s painful allowances brought them to his attention, he repented and was even more righteous.

2. Job 1:1. Where was (is?) Uz?

Lamentations speaks of “daughters of Edom” that live in Uz. This would place Uz in the far southern part of Canaan/Philistia, (or northwest Saudi Arabia) near the Dead Sea and beyond.

3. Job 1:13-20. How do you account for the unprecedented attack on Job from so many directions at once?

The power of God seems to be the only way to explain this. It is not normal that a man would face this much animosity from hell if God were not allowing it and even participating in it. Satan had asked for such permission on this man who was the “greatest man of the east.” He was a prime target. A well-known figure, but who loved the true God and was especially favored by that God. To bring such a one down dramatically would prove to surrounding people that God is not to be followed, not to be trusted or adored.

In verse 16, the messenger even mentions “the fire of God” . The Sabeans, the Chaldeans, and that “great wind” were all similarly employed by the God of Heaven to give us a story of His wonderful transforming power, and of the patience and love He can put in a man’s heart when that man loves Him.

4. Job 3:13-19. What is Job’s view of death and the afterlife, if there is one? How does it line up with what later Bible writers have written?

It is necessary to understand that not all Bible characters speak and do absolute truth. Job is a righteous man, for sure, but he does not seemed to be fully trained in the things of God. This we will notice elsewhere, in him and his friends. We should not try to justify everything Job says as though he were a student of Christian theology. This is not a prophet, an apostle, a teacher. He is merely a good man going through bad times.