Job the Longsuffering

Job, whose story is told in the Old Testament book bearing his name, was a righteous and prosperous man of the land of Uz, 'blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.' By God's permission Satan stripped him of his wealth, his ten children, and finally his health, covering him with sores so that he sat on an ash heap scraping himself with a potsherd. Though his wife urged him to curse God and his friends insisted his sufferings must be punishment for sin, Job refused to renounce his Maker, saying, 'The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.' God answered him out of the whirlwind and restored him double. The Church reads his book in Holy Week, seeing in the suffering righteous man a foreshadowing of Christ.