The Righteousness of Job

Job contends emphatically that he is righteous. His righteousness is one of the key points in the Book of Job, because Job builds his whole argument against Eloah upon the fact that God should not be punishing a righteous man. But what does Job mean when he says that he is righteous? It is commonly assumed that he is making a moral assertion. Job\u27s three friends are the first to make this assumption. They berate Job for the impurity and scandalousness of his life. Subsequent interpreters of the Book of Job concur with the friends\u27 evaluation of Job\u27s righteousness. They believe that Job means he has lived a morally upright life, when he claims that he is righteous. With a similar assumption, the writer of this paper began this study as an investigation of the ethics of the Book of Job. The term righteousness (cdhq} was soon encountered as a primary concern of this research. When the opinions of various, leading Old Testament scholars were compared, it was discovered that there is a dichotomy of belief concerning the meaning of this term in the whole Old Testament. Some experts hold that righteousnes