THE CRUEL GOD: Job's Search for the Meaning of Suffering

Job, his patience and his sufferings have become a by-word as illustrating, if not exactly explaining, the apparently strange ways of God with men. The story of Job in the Old Testament often, however, seems to make the problem more obscure, and men have been searching for more light for generations. This most recent study by Margaret Crook, for years a preacher (Unitarian) and teacher of the Bible (at Smith College, Northampton) makes an important contribution to the subject. She sees the Poet, the author of Job, as a teacher who knows how men have agonized over this matter for generations before he and his pupils addressed themselves to it. He is sensitive to his pupils proper criticism of the thesis that God loves and cares for his own. He puts these objections into the mouths of Job's ""comforters"", and eventually the whole debate between the teacher and the taught is written out in the Book of Job, so that the pupils will have a lasting record of their conversations and dialogue with their master. This is a plausible framework in which to study Job, and earnest students will do well to give Miss Crook's argument and exposition serious attention. It is a most interesting and rewarding study.