Today is the 21st day of August. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian. It is wonderful to be here with you today.

As we dive into our week and move forward together on our adventure through the Scriptures this year.

And our step forward yesterday brought us to the conclusion of a book, and that was the book of Esther.

And that can only mean pretty much one thing.

And we have some new territory to move into as we take the next step forward.

And this new territory that we are moving into today, and we'll camp out in for a little while, is called the Book of Job.

And Job is one of the most beautiful pieces of literature in the Bible.

Many believe in all of the world and all of history, but underneath it all it's dealing with a problem.

The problem of evil and human suffering, begging for the answer, why me? And then groping for an answer.

The origins of Job are interesting because they're disputed and because they're pretty much unknown for certain.

There isn't any historical context in the book, and it doesn't name any historical figures that could be searched and give clues.

And so there is much conjecture, and there are varying opinions even in Jewish tradition.

So some scholars believe that because of the Hebrew that's used in the Book of Job, it's archaic, and there are many unique words that aren't used anywhere else in the Bible, that Job might have been a contemporary of Abraham going back that far, or maybe a contemporary of Jacob.

And others believe that the book is much newer than that, that it was probably written by a scribe that was returning from exile.

And we spent plenty of time in the season of the exile, so a scribe coming back from exile whose native tongue wasn't Hebrew.

And then many follow the tradition that Job was collected, at least collected, if not written by Moses, and if that were true, then he was probably writing down oral traditions that were passed down maybe for a long, long time.

Or maybe writing a theological explanation that's dealing with the issue of suffering, so that the Book of Job becomes a parable, but regardless, it's a beautifully written book that we're going to read, and it deals and allows us to wrestle with the issue of suffering.

And as we get into Job, we'll certainly find out what happened to Job, what happened to him, and we'll find out that what did happen to him was indeed terribly traumatic, and we'll watch how he responds and how he deals with that.

And then some friends will hear of what has happened to Job, and they will come, and they will sit with them and just sit, saying nothing, nobody's saying anything for a week.

They're just being present to Job in his suffering.

And then finally Job starts speaking, and when he does, it's a conversation from that point forward.

A back and forth between Job and his friends.

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