Truth Unites - Is the Book of Job Evil?

Episode Date: July 2, 2025

Gavin Ortlund discusses whether God's blessing Job with new children after his suffering is a replacement of his prior children.Gavin’s article on heaven: https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/the-eternal-shoreMichael Jones video on Job: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZKuixGmiMwAllen Parr video on Job: https://youtu.be/1_cKn9PF3QE?si=2LInQhbUqwOphFjjEric Ortlund book on Job: https://www.amazon.com/Suffering-Wisely-Well-Grief-Grace/dp/1433576481Truth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites, Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at Phoenix Seminary, and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

For some people, the most difficult part of the Bible, the word disturbing is going to come up. The most disturbing part of the Bible is not Leviticus and some of the strange laws of the Old Testament. It's not revelation and some of the strange symbols in the New Testament, but it's the story of Job. And in this video, we're going to focus on one particular aspect of that, especially difficult one. And that is God blessing Job with new children. And God gives him 10 more children, seven sons, and three. daughters and you think, wait a second. God allowed his children to be killed in order to see if he'd stay faithful. And then when he was faithful, God, who had no reason to kill the children, he killed

these people in order to see if Job would be faithful. Then, in order to reward Job for staying faithful, he gives him another 10 children? Like, this is supposed to make up for the loss of 10 lives. I think this is one of the most disturbing passages in the Bible, and it's meant to be upbeat, right? Oh, I got twice as many sheep and twice as many cattle. And so, and you know, you've got 10 more children. But when you think about it, this is horrible. To imagine somebody thinks this is what God would do, that he'd kill your child, and then if you didn't curse him, he'd give you a different one. So children can't be replaced.

Now, I'm not trying to single out Bart Ehrman there. He's simply giving an expression of what many people feel, very common perspective. many Christians wonder about this. In fact, the top comment on that particular video I just showed that clip from says this, and note the word replaced. Quote, I was always struck by the idea that Job lost his family and later God replaced them and everything was fine again. Obviously, the writer has never lost anyone close to him.

There's always a hole in your heart. Okay, first thing we need to say right out of the gate here is to agree that we never replace our deceased loved ones. In experiences that my wife and I have had, we've been distressed to see how many people, including Christians, can think and speak like this, where you have a miscarriage and then someone wants to come along and say, oh, it's okay, you're young, you can have more kids. And this is unhelpful because we need to give people space to grieve rather than projecting a timetable or a solution or an expectation onto them when they've been through something traumatic. there are some forms of grief that just never fully heal in this life, ever. I would say the loss of a child is the ultimate example of that, perhaps. And I have a whole video making the point that when you're with someone who's in profound suffering, they don't need your theology or your interpretations as much as they probably just need your love and your presence and your tears with them.

But is the book of Job making this mistake? Is Job's restoration a crass replacement, as though, Ten more kids makes up for, Airman's language, his deceased children. The book describes Job's final state with words like restoration and blessing, but it never uses the term replaced. That's an interpretation being put onto the text. And I think it's an interpretation that is unduly cynical and actually misses a critical point of the story that I want to highlight here.

To set things up, let's just observe that in other contexts, we can recognize a new relationship can be a great blessing without replacing an old relationship. Imagine a woman who loses her husband to cancer when she's 35 years old. When she turns 45 years old, she meets someone new, falls in love, and remarries. That new marriage is a blessing and a comfort. But does that mean she's replaced her husband? Well, not necessarily. You don't need to read it like that.

That's a bit cynical. This would be uncharitable to scold her as though she's replaced. No, it's like it's possible to genuinely love. your new husband while recognizing nothing can ever replace your old husband. And we can think similarly like that for other relationships. In other words, there's a matter of interpretation and subjectivity here in how you read this. So how do we know what's going on in the book of Job? Is it more of a replacement?

Or is it kind of a healthier kind of blessing that doesn't necessarily imply replacement of the deceased children? Now, to be clear, we are not asking in this video why God allowed his children to die in the first place. place. That's a larger question. All I'm addressing here is how the text portrays the blessing of his new children. How do we understand this? And I think an answer emerges when we pay attention to the details. Oh, I hope to watch this to the end. It's fascinating. Let's review what did Job have specifically at the beginning of the book? What did he have at the end? Let's review that and see if you notice a little oddity here. So on the screen are the first three verses of the book. And we're told here that Job has 10, children in verse two. You can see that in red. And then a lot of livestock in verse three, which you can

see underlined there. That's a lot of animals. He's a very wealthy man. Let's put five of these categories onto the table on the left side of the screen so we can keep tabs on the numbers. 700 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, 500 female donkeys, and then his children, seven sons, three daughters. That's Job, chapter one. Now we skip ahead to the very end of the book, chapter 42, where verse 10 tells us what you can see on the screen in green here that the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before. Then after his family visits in verse 11, you see the new numbers there in verse 12. Underlined are the animals. Again, in red are the children. Take a second while it's on screen and see if you notice the oddity. Everything is doubled except for

his children. It goes from 700 sheep to 1400 sheep, 3,000 camels to 7,000. to 6,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen to a thousand, 500 female donkeys to a thousand, seven sons and three daughters to just the same, seven sons and three daughters. And so you think, wait a second, this is the most important aspect of Job's suffering, the loss of his children. Surely that wouldn't be where God would miscount or forget or simply neglect to provide blessing. What's going on here? How do we understand this? There are different views. Some have even posited that his children were resurrected. But I think one plausible answer that is resonant with the character of the gospel is simply this. God did double his children because his original 10 children were never lost.

When a loved one dies in the Lord, you don't lose them. They are more alive than ever, in heaven, in the gracious presence of God, and in the Lord, we shall be reunited to them forever. I was reading a book about this and was telling the story of Vance Havner, who's a, he was a well-known preacher in like the 20th century. He got married later in life at age 40, and they had a very happy marriage. He and his wife would travel together all around the country, driving around. They were inseparable. After she died in like the early 1970s, people would say to him,

I heard you lost your wife. And he would say, no. When you lose someone, that implies you don't know where they are, but I know exactly where my wife is. And he would cite them this poem, death can hide but not divide. She is but on Christ's other side. She with Christ and Christ with me, united still in Christ are we. Now, I truly appreciate how this can feel unsatisfying and maybe even manipulative to those who aren't convinced that there is such a thing as an afterlough. life. But just imagine for a moment if it were true. What if you knew for sure that a person that you lost

is in heaven, in perfect happiness, they are not lost to you, you will be with them forever. This is just a temporary separation that really does change our perspective for how we experience death in this life. Everything changes about our whole experience in this world if we understand it as preparation for eternity. And so Paul says Christians can, you know, that's your perspective and you believe Jesus rose from the dead. You believe we have a hope that goes beyond this world, which I think is an absolutely fundamental need in the human heart. And Paul says, we still grieve death, but we grieve not as others who have no hope because we have a savior who says, I've already been dead and I have the keys of death. And so every Christian can feel this way about ourselves as well as our loved ones

that to die is gain, because it means anything that is good that you have here is multiplied, infinitely in the presence of God, beholding the glory of God, and oh, how I want to do more videos on heaven to help Christians understand just how wonderful heaven is, and I'm going to be doing that. If you view death like this, it changes your perspective. Now, let me make a clarification here. I am not saying that everyone goes to heaven, and this hope applies in every circumstance. But I think we have good reason to think that in this case, with Job's children, we have hope for that because of what the book reveals about Job as a father in chapter 1.

And I think we have good reason to hope for this in the case of very young children who die because of what the Bible teaches about the gracious character of God. So here's the happy thought. Think of this. In heaven right now, Job can throw up a table and throw around 21 chairs and have fellowship with all 20 of his children right now, none of whom for one nanosecond were ever replaced or lost or forgotten, all of whom are precious in the sight of the Lord. One of the cool things about heaven, of course, is that parent-child relationships will change.

You start thinking about this, and, you know, they'll sort of be in their true form because children won't be children. They'll be fully in a mature personality. Parents won't be tired like we are right now, right? Everyone will have, you know, I thought about this many times, and I wrote an article about this, by the way, on the Desiring God website, if you're interested. But basically, the happy thought of introducing my children to my grandfather. And in that moment, they won't be like a six-year-old to a gray-haired man. So the nature of relationships like this would be transformed, will be peers together.

It's helpful to remember that as a parent, that the particular kind of authority I have over my kids is a stewardship for this life, not for eternity in the same way there. Now, I want to reiterate again and be so clear on this point, this does not answer the larger questions that they're in the book of Job about the bet with Satan and the allowance for the suffering in the first place. There are larger questions there. I'm talking about the specific issue of how the restoration of children is portrayed in the text. There are other videos on YouTube about Job as a whole. this video by Michael Jones at Inspiring Philosophy. Alan Parr also has a lengthy video working through the entire book of Job, if this is an interesting subject to you. The book of Job is

fascinating. And my brother Eric has written an amazing book on Job. I can't say enough about it. All three of those resources linked in the video description, if you want to do a deeper dive. I recognize I'm being very laser focused on this one particular issue, the nature of the restoration of his children, and do we need to read that as a replacement? I'm saying, no. It's not a replacement. Job did have his children multiplied, and all of them are potentially in the presence of God right now. Let me put up, I'll leave you with this, put up a picture. I talked about making this video on my YouTube channel. I always appreciate the comments.

Thank you all for commenting. And one person said this, I've lost three children to miscarriage at different times in pregnancy. The book of Job was the book that made me feel seen by God in the middle of my deep pain and darkest times. Everybody goes through pain and trials, but some pains are deeper than others, and the book of Job seems to be written for people who go through those dark waters, but ultimately choose to trust God in spite of him not feeling like a good God. Thank you so much to the person who wrote that comment sharing her testimony. The final thought is this. Suppose you're wondering, is God really worth that kind of trust? I think we can all admit,

those of us who are sincere Christians and not just triumphalist Christians who are acting in bad faith, we can just admit sometimes it's hard to trust God. There are some pretty horrible things that happen in this world. How do we know that we can trust God in the midst of the deep suffering of life? And if you're in the middle of it right now, all I can do is I'm not giving this as an interpretation to paper over things. Again, what we need in the moment is often just a hug and love and presence in the middle of it. But I do think there's an answer here, and that's the cross of Christ. we can trust a God who is willing to hang on a cross out of love and in order to redeem those who are his enemies.

A God who willingly hangs on a cross is worthy of our trust. We can trust a God like that. So this video will help on the very specific question it's addressing and the book of Job, I would want to say, far from being a book that doesn't understand the human heart and the travail of human suffering. This is one of the most profound pieces of literature in human history. Even if you don't trust the Bible, there is so much, there's so much nuance and complexity

to it as well. It's a fascinating book. Check out my brother Eric's book. He'll walk you through it well. All right. Thanks for watching, everybody. I hope this is helpful to people out there, especially those who may feel the weight of this topic.

May the Lord be with you and comfort you.