The Lord Gave, and the Lord Hath Taken Away

Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped,
And said, Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.

-- Job 1: 20-21 (KJV)

You will not find the phrase, "The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away" in the King James Bible -- nice try with the Renaissance conjugations, but still a misquotation.

It's not even clear Job intended to make the sweeping generalization we do. The Hebrew verb translated as "gives" might really mean "gave," in which case Job is talking about only one particular incident, though admittedly it's a doozy.

What happens is that one day the Lord casts his eye upon the earth and notes with satisfaction how godly and upright his "servant" Job is. But among the "sons of God" there is a dissenter: the "adversary" Satan [see the previous entry]. He cynically attributes Job's piety to prosperity and dares the Lord to deprive Job of everything. Then, Satan predicts, Job "will curse thee to thy face."

The Book of Job presents us with several challenges and mysteries, among them who the "sons of God" are, what Satan's role is in the heavenly court, and why God takes up the dare when he should already know the outcome. Whether to see for himself or only to prove to his "sons" Job's faith, God destroys Job's livestock, servants, house, and family. But rather than curse God to his face, Job stoically notes that he was born with nothing ("naked") and is content to die with nothing; the Lord, after all, gave him all he has, and it was the Lord's right to take it away. (The bit about nakedness shows up again in Ecclesiastes and in Cervantes's Don Quixote.)

If Job is really speaking in the past tense, he may think he's suffered all he can, but if so he's wrong. Satan isn't satisfied yet, so he dares the Lord to keep trying -- this time by smiting Job's person. God rises to the challenge by afflicting Job with boils from head to toe. This prompts Job's wife to utter her one, infamous, line: "Curse God, and die" (Job 2: 9). Job refuses to bite, though he ends up cursing almost everything else.

The resulting ranting and raving has convinced the pundit and language columnist William Safire, at least, that Job was The First Dissident (1992). Perhaps he's right, if you don't count the serpent of Genesis, or Satan for that matter.

 
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Michael Macrone is Associate Site Producer of GraceCom and the author of nine books on language, literature, and ideas, including the best-selling Brush Up Your Shakespeare!