Job Was Accused on Rosh Hashanah and Lifted Into Paradise

The books of every life lay open before God, and it was Rosh Hashanah, the day the New Year turns and deeds are weighed. Into that court the prosecutor walked. He was no demon of pure malice but the heavenly accuser, Ha-Satan, granted leave to test whether one righteous man would hold. He looked down the long table of the world and stopped at the name Job. On the Day of Judgment, the righteous man stood accused.

The Accuser Marched the World Against Him

It began with the herds. Some of the cattle burned where they stood. Others were driven off by men who had eaten at Job's table, who had been clothed and fed by his hand, and who now turned and took what was his. The wound under the wound was not the loss. It was the betrayal.

Then came an army from the far edge of the earth. At its head rode Lilith, queen of Sheba, and her kingdom lay so distant that her host marched three full years to reach the land of Uz. Three years of dust and intent. She fell upon the oxen and the asses and cut down the men who guarded them. One herdsman alone broke free, gashed and reeling, and ran until he reached Job's feet, gasped out the news, and dropped dead on the ground.

The sheep that her sword spared, the Chaldeans seized. Job rose to fight, a man who had always defended his own. Then word came that a fire had fallen from heaven and devoured the rest. He let his hands fall. "If the heavens turn against me," he said, "I can do nothing."

The Broken Man Put God on Trial

The boils came after, head to sole, and Job sat in the ashes and scraped himself and began to question. Not in the small way of a frightened man. He questioned everything. He weighed the world by what his eyes could reach, the wicked thriving in their houses, the upright rotting on a dunghill, and from that ledger he drew a verdict so bold it shook the air. The dead, he said, do not rise. There is no resurrection. And his own ruin was no punishment at all but an error, a mistaken identity. God had confused him with some sinner who had earned the pain.

To accuse the Almighty of a clerical slip. The man had lost his children, his skin, his name, and still he reached up and charged heaven with carelessness.

God Answered With the Arithmetic of Creation

God did not thunder. God counted. "Many hairs have I created upon the head of man," he said, "yet each hair hath its own sac, for were two hairs to draw their nourishment from the same sac, man would lose the sight of his eyes. It hath never happened that a sac hath been misplaced. Should I, then, have mistaken Job for another?"

Then the rain. "For each drop there is a mould in the clouds, and it hath never happened that a mould hath been misplaced. Should I, then, have mistaken Job for another?" Then the thunderbolts, each one loosed down its own appointed path, "for were two to proceed from the same path, they would destroy the whole world."

And then the small lives, the ones no human eye guards. A gazelle labors at the lip of a precipice, and at the instant of birth an eagle sweeps in to catch the falling young. "Were the eagle to appear a minute earlier or later than the appointed time, the little gazelle would perish." The hind, her womb contracted, cannot deliver until the dragon comes to soften it at the exact second. "Were the dragon to come a second before or after the right time, the hind would perish." Every hair, every drop, every birth on its precise mark. The God who never once misplaces a second does not lose track of a man.

Heaven Doubled What the Accuser Had Stolen

The story did not end in the ashes. Job recovered, in flesh and in spirit, and went back to his city with his companions. The people threw a festival, and the old friends who had vanished in his ruin returned, and Job did again the thing he did best. He gathered the poor. He had nothing left to give them, so he asked the crowd, "Give me, each one of you, a sheep for the clothing of the poor, and four silver or gold drachmas for their other needs."

Within days the Lord blessed him until his wealth stood at double what it had been before the fire. He married again, this time Dinah, daughter of Jacob, and she bore him seven sons and three daughters. He kept one wife only. "If it had been intended that Adam should have ten wives, God would have given them to him," he said. "Only one wife was bestowed upon him, and one wife suffices for me, too."

The Accuser Fell and the Faithful Rose

When at last he died, the poor and the widows and the orphans could not bring themselves to bury him. For three days they kept his body above the ground, unable to let go of the man who had stood between them and the cold.

And the accounts were settled. Job's name was set into memory forever for his piety. His friends, who had grieved with him through every blow, were spared the fire of Gehenna, and God poured the Ruach ha-Kodesh, the holy spirit, upon them. As for Ha-Satan, who had marched the world against this one man, he was thrown down out of heaven. He had reckoned that loss would break the praise out of Job, and he had reckoned wrong. Even on the dunghill, even with his skin in ruins, Job had kept blessing the Name. The prosecutor was beaten by a man in ashes, and the man in ashes was lifted into Paradise and the heavenly realms.