Critical Essay on The Book of Job Text

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If i sin, what do i do to you, you watcher of humanity? why have you made me your target? job is a wealthy man living in a land called uz with his large family and extensive flocks. He is ldquo blameless rdquo and ldquo upright, rdquo always careful to avoid doing evil 1:1. God boasts to satan about job rsquo s goodness, but satan argues that job is only good because god has blessed him abundantly. Satan challenges god that, if given permission to punish the man, job will turn and curse god. God allows satan to torment job to test this bold claim, but he forbids satan to take job rsquo s life in the process. In the course of one day, job receives four messages, each bearing separate news that his livestock, servants, and ten children have all died due to marauding invaders or natural catastrophes. Job tears his clothes and shaves his head in mourning, but he still blesses god in his prayers.

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His wife encourages him to curse god and to give up and die, but job refuses, struggling to accept his circumstances. Three of job rsquo s friends, eliphaz, bildad, and zophar, come to visit him, sitting with job in silence for seven days out of respect for his mourning. On the seventh day, job speaks, beginning a conversation in which each of the four men shares his thoughts on job rsquo s afflictions in long, poetic statements. He wishes that his birth had been shrouded in darkness and longs to have never been born, feeling that light, or life, only intensifies his misery.

Eliphaz responds that job, who has comforted other people, now shows that he never really understood their pain. Eliphaz believes that job rsquo s agony must be due to some sin job has committed, and he urges job to seek god rsquo s favor. Bildad and zophar agree that job must have committed evil to offend god rsquo s justice and argue that he should strive to exhibit more blameless behavior. Even worse, zophar implies that whatever wrong job has done probably deserves greater punishment than what he has received.

Job responds to each of these remarks, growing so irritated that he calls his friends ldquo worthless physicians rdquo who ldquo whitewash their advice with lies rdquo 13:4. After making pains to assert his blameless character, job ponders man rsquo s relationship to god. He wonders why god judges people by their actions if god can just as easily alter or forgive their behavior. God cannot be deceived, and job admits that he does not even understand himself well enough to effectively plead his case to god. Job wishes for someone who can mediate between himself and god, or for god to send him to sheol, the deep place of the dead.

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They think his questions are crafty and lack an appropriate fear of god, and they use many analogies and metaphors to stress their ongoing point that nothing good comes of wickedness. Job sustains his confidence in spite of these criticisms, responding that even if he has done evil, it is his own personal problem. Furthermore, he believes that there is a ldquo witness rdquo or a ldquo redeemer rdquo in heaven who will vouch for his innocence 1, 1. After a while, the upbraiding proves too much for job, and he grows sarcastic, impatient, and afraid. He laments the injustice that god lets wicked people prosper while he and countless other innocent people suffer. Job wants to confront god and complain, but he cannot physically find god to do it. He feels that wisdom is hidden from human minds, but he resolves to persist in pursuing wisdom by fearing god and avoiding evil.

Your review should have two goals: first, to inform the reader about the content of the book, and second, to provide an evaluation that gives your judgment of the book’s quality. Your introduction should include an overview of the book that both incorporates an encapsulated summary and a sense of your general judgment. The summary should consist of a discussion and highlights of the major arguments, features, trends, concepts, themes, ideas, and characteristics of the book. While you may use direct quotes from the book make sure you always give the page number , such quotes should never be the bulk of the summary.

Much of your grade will depend on how well you describe and explain the material in your own words. You might want to take the major organizing themes of the book and use them to organize your own discussion. So what do i want, if not just a summary? throughout your summary, i want you to provide a critique of the book.

Nor do you need to know as much about the subject as the author because you hardly ever will. Regardless of how negative or positive your critique is, you need to be able to justify and support your position. You need not answer them all, but questions one and two are essential to any book review, so those must be included. And these are absolutely not to be answered one after another seriatim . Don’t have one paragraph that answers one, and then the next paragraph that answers the next, etc.

The answers should be part of a carefully constructed essay, complete with topic sentences and transitions. What is your overall opinion of the book? on what basis has this opinion been formulated? that is, tell the reader what you think and how you arrived at this judgment. What did you expect to learn when you picked up the book? to what extent – and how effectively – were your expectations met? did you nod in agreement or off to sleep ? did you wish you could talk back to the author? amplify upon and explain your reactions.

How clearly and in what context is it stated and, subsequently, developed? to what extent and how effectively i.e. With what kind of evidence is this thesis proven? use examples to amplify your responses. What are the author’s aims? how well have they been achieved, especially with regard to the way the book is organized? are these aims supported or justified? you might look back at the introduction to the book for help. How are the author’s main points presented, explained, and supported? what assumptions lie behind these points? what would be the most effective way for you to compress and/or reorder the author’s scheme of presentation and argument? 5. How effectively does the author draw claims from the material being presented? are connections between the claims and evidence made clearly and logically? here you should definitely use examples to support your evaluation. What conclusions does the author reach and how clearly are they stated? do these conclusions follow from the thesis and aims and from the ways in which they were developed? in other words, how effectively does the book come together? 7. Identify the assumptions made by the author in both the approach to and the writing of the book.

For example, what prior knowledge does the author expect readers to possess? how effectively are those assumptions worked into the overall presentation? what assumptions do you think should not have been made? why? 8. Are you able to detect any underlying philosophy of history held by the author e.g. Progress, decline, cyclical, linear, and random ? if so, how does this philosophy affect the presentation of the argument? 9. How does the author see history as being motivated: primarily by the forces of individuals, economics, politics, social factors, nationalism, class, race, gender, something else? what kind of impact does this view of historical motivation have upon the way in which the author develops the book? 10. Does the author’s presentation seem fair and accurate? is the interpretation biased? can you detect any distortion, exaggeration, or diminishing of material? if so, for what purpose might this have been done, and what effect does hit have on the overall presentation? these questions are derived from robert blackey, words to the whys: crafting critical book reviews, the history teacher, 27.2 feb. Stone cold critical essay stone cold by robert swindells is a book about a young boy who leaves home and goes to london to live on the streets, and about an ex army man with mental problems who wants to get rid of homless people on the streets of london.

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I also intend to discuss how swindells makes me feel sympathy towards homeless people and how he makes the average person with a house and a job seem unkind. Robert swindells uses links situation and his thoughts and feeling to make us feel sympathetic towards homeless people. Once link arrives in london and spends his first night on the streets we feel even more sorry for him as he begins to describe his inner feelings and some of the problems he was facing and some of the ones he could well be facing soon. Robert swindells starts by describing links first step to becoming homeless, unemployment. He found that most employers wanted experience, something he had none of, and then there was the fact that he was scruffy and smelly did not help much. Not having a job did not help the situation with his new father, and this made him feel very unwanted.

Shelter has some very odd feelings for the homeless, in his mind they are just dirt, they have no purpose in life, that is why it is his goal to clean up the streets. The most likely explanation for this is because of his career in the army, he took people off the streets and turned them into soldiers, and after the army released him on medical terms he decided to kill homeless people in his own time. Shelter is clearly a cold hearted murderer with some clear mental health issues, despite these two factors he carried out the first few murders very cleverly. biblical structuralism: method and subjectivity in the study o f ancient texts. Twentieth centuary interpretations of the book of job: a collection of critical essays edited by paul s.