Review: The Book of Job

The Book of Job 

translated from The Bible by Stephen Mitchell

Harper Perennial, New York, New York, 1990. 176 pp.



After the story of God’s divestment of Job’s family and possessions and many dialogues between Job and his friends as to God’s justice or lack thereof, God answers Job.

Stephen Mitchell provides some fresh imagery here: "Who is this whose ignorant words smear my design with darkness?" This introduces paragraph after paragraph of God deriding Job’s supposed knowledge of what God is and what she does. And God has plenty of material to work with.

Finally Job gives up: "I have spoken of the unspeakable and tried to grasp the infinite... Therefore I will be quiet, comforted that I am dust." (p. 88) As in many of the CSS library books, rest and joy are found only by realizing that we are dust.

-- reviewed by Robin Bundy