Jean Fouquet Job and his False Comforters 1452-60 Illumination Musée Condé, Chantilly

After some quite difficult books, suddenly a couple in a row that are easy. Job is full of humour, for all its dreadful topic and storyline, or perhaps because of them, almost every page sparkles with fun, or with sharp irony or more pointed sarcasm.

The big question, of whether the book as a whole is ironic and humorous, I’ll leave to you. For the purposes of this series I’ll just read a bit from Job’s first reply to his friends “comfortable words” (job 6:1ff.).

Here’s the audio:

Humour in the Bible: book 18: Job

BTW the classic article I refer to is:

E.A. Speiser, “The case of the obliging servant”, Journal of Cuneiform Studies 8, 1954, 98-105.