Job never existed; this story was only a parable (Bava Batra 15a).

No one among the nations of the world was more righteous than Job (Devarim Rabbah 2:4).

"Blaspheme God, and die” (Job 2:9). Pray before the Holy One, Blessed is He, that you should die, so that you will go from this world innocent, whole, and righteous before you come to sin; for you cannot accept the pain and you will regret your deed of the past (Midrash Iyov 14).

When suffering came upon Job, had he restrained his anger and not complained of injustice, he would have attained an extremely praiseworthy level. Just as we now say in the prayer, "God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob,” so we would have said, "God of Job” (Pesikta Rabbati 47:20).

The whole time that Job opposed his friends and his friends opposed him, the Attribute of Strict Justice was poised. Only when he was appeased by them and prayed for them did the Holy One, Blessed is He, return to him (Pesikta Rabbati 38).

It begins simply, but unrea-sonably. Job, "a whole-hearted and upright man, one that feared God, and shunned evil” (Job 1:1) finds himself in the midst of a not so gentlemanly wager between God and Satan. This could be a revival of the serpent’s temptation of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, particularly since Job lives a life of extraordinary blessing. The difference, however, is that Job’s version, up to this moment, reads more like "Paradise Found.” That is, knowing the inclination toward evil that resides in the heart of every man, Job resisted, and pursued the good. The rewards: of material opulence (seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred she-asses) and family (seven sons and three daughters) were kingly, if not profligate.
Only the strongest of Israel were tested (see under: Abraham). But this test of Job’s faith was the fiercest in the Bible; the punishments are unmitigating. Property, family, health -- Job loses them all. And suddenly, as forlorn and lonely as he had once been happy and popular, he becomes the subject of life’s greatest philosophical quest: "Why do we suffer?” Indeed, this struggle is implicit in the deconstruction of his name: ay plus av - "Where is Father?”
That this question overflows into the New Testament, which centralizes the abandonment and suffering of mankind through the crucifixion, is patent. That it suffuses every strand of human existence, raising the existential problem, is even more pertinent. The need to understand why there is injustice in the world - "why the good seems evil and the evil good” - is the age-old conundrum.
The answer is not immediately forthcoming, although the book of Job has received every possible interpretation in music, art, and literature (Archibald McLeish’s J.B., 1958, is the most noteworthy). Indeed, the answer - in Job himself and itself, the man and the book - is shouted, whispered, hidden, and finally, muted. At first it seems that martyrdom is the best solution as Job replies to his wife, who had encouraged him to blaspheme God before his death:
‘What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?’ For all this did Job not sin with his lips
(Job 2:10).
Like any modern being, Job seeks help and counsel. Three friends come and sit with him, observing the sanctity of silence during his period of shiva (Job 2:11-13). It is too quiet, and Job, his humanity surfacing, at last cries out:
Let the day perish wherein I was born,
And the night wherein it was said:
‘A man-child is brought forth’ (Job 3:3).