Job is the story of a righteous man who loses everything: his family, his wealth, and his health, without having committed any sin. Through his suffering and his intense dialogues with friends and with God himself, the book explores one of the deepest questions of humanity: why do the innocent suffer? A poetic and philosophical work that remains as relevant today as it was millennia ago.
The book of Job is considered one of the oldest texts of the Hebrew Bible, with possible origins that some scholars place between the second millennium B.C. and the postexilic period, around the 5th century B.C. Rabbinic tradition attributes its authorship to Moses himself, though many modern theologians consider it anonymous. Job was not an Israelite, but an inhabitant of the land of Uz, possibly located in the region of Edom or Arabia, which gives the book a universal character that transcends cultural and religious borders. A curious fact: the book alternates between narrative prose sections and long poems of extraordinary literary beauty, which suggests it may have been composed by more than one author or in different eras.