A Son in Glory

My pastoral colleague, Toby Sumpter, has just come out with a wonderful commentary on Job, Job Through New Eyes: A Son for Glory . I am biased in favor of my friend, but I’m confident that even an unbiased reader will find a lot to like.

Toby reads Job as something more than theodicy or a meditation on suffering, something more than a story of loss and restoration. He sees in Job a theology of glorification, as Job moves from his original priestly role (sacrificing for his sons) through the royal contentions with his friends (like Girard, Toby thinks that Job is a king surrounded by envious, grasping counselors) toward his climactic prophetic encounter with the God of the storm cloud.

He argues that when Yahweh shows up, “he is not merely putting Job ‘back in his place.’ Yahweh does not want Job to stay where he is . . . .

“the entire book up to this point has been thrusting Job forward. Job has been struck and he has suffered, but he is being made perfect through suffering. He is going from perfect to perfected. He is being draw up into the Spirit-wind presence of his Father . . . Job has moved from being a great son in the east who was not among the ‘sons of God’ to becoming a son who stands before his Maker and Father and talks with him” (p. 179).

This, Toby shows, is what Job wanted all along. When he longed to die, he was longing to be with God; he was longing for vindication and judgment in the presence of God.

It’s a unique reading of Job, lively and edifying.