The Book of Job has a great many lessons concerning patience
and faith in God no matter how He tests His followers. Job lived in with his family on his great
lands in Hus, and was a man of vast virtue and wealth, quite well esteemed by
those in the countryside, with many friends and love surrounding him. When the Devil challenged God concerning
Job’s faith in the Lord, God told the Devil that Job would be faithful. Still, the Devil pressed for proof, and thus
the Lord told him to strip Job of everything he had, from his wealth to his
health, just so He could prove the Devil wrong.
His family was killed, his lands made useless, his wealth gone, his good
name tarnished, and finally his health removed with boils one after another,
but still Job refused to renounce, denounce, or turn from God. More and more hardships were piled atop him
physically and spiritually so that he became slowly bitterer, until at last he
stood for it no longer. He lost his good
name by being accused falsely of crimes by his own friends, but he refused to
repent of what he didn’t do despite feeling that he had been judged wrongly by
his friends and even by God, who should be his only judge in any case. He defended himself in front of his friends
at length, and one of them, Eliu, argued against Job in every way that he
defended himself. God Himself interjected
that none had the knowledge to speak of the creation of the world and how God
was magnificent as a result of what they could see now, and that Job had cried over
his losses more than the bounties He had given him to begin with. When Job finally submitted himself, God judged
him favorably, and Job then made sacrifices for his friends. He lived a long, happy life with many
children and much wealth for doing so, and had everything returned to him that
he had lost and then some.