Title: "The Book of Job," written anonymously.
Characters: Job ("perfect and upright" man from Uz), God, Satan, Eliphaz (Job's friend), Bildad (Job's friend), Zophar (Job's friend), & Elihu (messenger of God).
Plot: Job, blessed since he beginning of his days with 10 healthy, wealthy children and much land and livestock, is suddenly stricken with bad luck from God. Satan, coming forth from Earth, challenges God to cause Job suffering as to see if Job would still remained God-fearing if everything he used to thank God for were taken away. Throughout the tale, Job's three friends (Eliphaz, Bildad, & Zophar) question and advise Job to overcome his iniquity and find out why he is being punished so he can get back what he once had. Job questions God and becomes angry when he feels that he does realize why he is being punished. Themes occurring in this work include those of human suffering and integrity. Job suffers mentally, physically, and economically by God's hand and, though questioning everything from his own iniquity and purity, comes to accept God's act of punishment and learns from his experience and eventually is granted his prosperous life back after Elihu pleads his case to God. God convinces Job that Job is not better than him and has no knowledge as great as God. God also grants Job back twice of what he had at the beginning of his life after Job confesses that God is all-knowing and that he's nothing compared to God. Job appreciates his life even more than before when he was prosperous, and even though he did not deserve to be punished in the first place, he was made a better man from his experience. Job, being honest with himself, realizes that sometimes things just occur for no reason and one should learn to accept life's difficulties and move on. Questions: Why exactly did God test Job, because Satan asked him to? Are the italicized words written in that format to express more emotion, or as to just stress the word itself? Why was the book translated into King's English? Hasn't it lost meaning through translation?.