The Book of Job has often been read as a simple tale of innocent suffering that offers an example of patient endurance for the faithful to emulate. A pious man is put to the test by God, proves his faithfulness, and is richly rewarded. Yet the book is perhaps the most linguistically sophisticated and theologically challenging work in the Hebrew scriptures. The reception of the book in Judaism and Christianity, in literature, the visual arts, philosophy, and modern biblical scholarship, has shown that neither the book of Job nor its protagonist is in any way simple. The book is also about far more than the problem of innocent suffering.

Aimed primarily at advanced undergraduate and graduate students, this volume introduces some of the most significant recent approaches to the book of Job, drawing on a variety of exegetical, theoretical, and cultural perspectives. The chapters deal with the poetics of the book and the challenges in translating it, poetic devices of sound and meaning, the history of composition and reception, the use of irony and ambiguity, metaphor, genre and intertextuality, the figure of Job's wife, the womb of Job's mother, ethics, nature, ecology and posthumanism, Job's body, the authority of the book in Second Temple Judaism, its use in early Christianity in light of Greco-Roman book culture, the reception history of Behemoth and Leviathan, theological exegesis, trauma hermeneutics, post-Shoah Jewish interpretations, and Job's final response to the Deity.