186 | Second divine speech and Job's response (JOB 40:6-42:6)

We're picking up the Book of Job at its climax. The book was probably written somewhere between the 7th and 5th centuries BCE, though scholars debate this and the range is genuinely wide — the prose frame and the poetry at the center may have different origins. The world it draws on is older still: the world of the ancient Near Eastern patriarchs, where wealth was counted in cattle and camels, where there were no priests or temples, just a man, his altar, and his God. Job is from the land of Uz, somewhere east of Canaan — most likely Edom, based on the connection in Lamentations 4:21. He's a righteous man whom God has allowed to lose everything: his wealth, his children, his health. Three friends — Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar — have spent chapters insisting he must have sinned. Job has spent the same chapters insisting he's innocent and that God is being unjust. Then a fourth, younger man named Elihu appears in chapters 32 through 37, speaking at length and preparing the ground for what comes next. And then God speaks — out of a whirlwind.Source:https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qcvhxsXZx3PkHZf7OMr7DvQD42as0I8E/view?usp=sharing