Job's Accuser

In my earlier articles on Job, I mentioned some of the reasons why I think it makes more sense to view Job's accuser before God as Satan rather than as a good angel. The accuser is questioning God after God has publicly stated that He knows Job to be righteous, God refers to the accuser as inciting Him for no good reason, and the accuser continues in his accusations even after being told that he's wrong and seeing evidence to that effect. It's simpler to see the accuser as a bad angel rather than assuming some unmentioned heavenly office of "prosecuting attorney", as John Loftus has suggested.

John Hartley writes:

"He [Job's accuser before God] answered God's questions obtrusively and brusquely, reflecting a contemptuous attitude. He sought to misconstrue a person's actions by imputing impure motives to good deeds. Thus he immediately doubted what God affirmed and sternly resisted persuasion to a different viewpoint. In the second scene before Yahweh the Satan would not even debate the issue of Job's integrity, but rather denied it in an impudent style by challenging God with verbs in the imperative." (The Book Of Job [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1988], n. 8 on p. 72)

We have other reasons to identify Job's accuser as an evil angel. For example, the behavior of the angel is consistent with what later scripture tells us about Satan's behavior as an accuser of the godly. John Loftus doesn't believe in the Divine inspiration of scripture, but what other passages of scripture tell us (and what later Jewish and Christian traditions tell us) is a factor that we can take into account, even if Loftus doesn't.

But this issue of whether Job's accuser is a good or a bad angel is of secondary importance. The evidence suggests that an evil angel is in view, but let's assume for the sake of argument that a good angel is intended. We still wouldn't have any reason to accept Loftus' larger argument about the book of Job. Nothing that the book of Job tells us logically leads us to the conclusion that Job suffered for no good reason, and the concept that an ancient Jewish author would argue in such a manner, and that his book would then be accepted as scripture, is absurd. The fact that Loftus thought that his argument was good to begin with, then continued to defend it even after being told why it's unreasonable, undermines Loftus' credibility rather than undermining the book of Job.