Job (The Anchor Yale Bible Commentaries)

The "Book Of Job" is one of the indisputably great works of world literature. The story is well-known: a prosperous and happy man, distinguished for rectitude and piety, falls victim to a series of catastrophes. And the occasion (if not the reason) for these undeserved calamities: Satan's challenge to Yahweh to test the sincerity of Job's faith.

It is by now proverbial to refer to the patience of Job. Yet this traditional image derives only from the Prologue and the Epilogue of the book. But the Job who confronts us in the long middle section is anything but patient. His outcries against God raise the question of theodicy, or divine justice, which occupies the greater portion of Job's Dialogue with his comforters.

But it is inevitably as literature that "Job" must be read and enjoyed. This translation is marked by a concerted effort to capture as much as possible the poetic and metrical characteristics of the original Hebrew: the result is a version notable for its accuracy and directness. The experience of reading the "Book Of Job" in this translation, then, is to rediscover an exceedingly eloquent masterpiece. In the terse, rhythmic quality of the translation, the incisive comprehensiveness of the introduction and notes, "Job" maintains thehigh standard of scholarship, literateness, and readability established in The Anchor Bible.