The Book of Job

The book of Job along with the other stories we read in the Old Testament have indirect characterization about God. Something that I have noticed is a continuous theme is that God is very insecure and selfish. In The Book of Job, God and Satan are arguing about whether or not Jobe is loyal and loving towards God because he has such a good life, or if he truly loves God. To settle the argument, they decide to turn Job's great life into a horrible experience for him. They kill his children, and all his farm animals and give him sores on his body from head to toe. This insecurity is also shown in The Sacrafice of Isaac. In that story, God tells Abraham, Isaac's father, that he must kill Isaac to prove that he loves him. This shows that God needs someone to tell him that he is loved in order to feel good about himself. If God was so knowledgeable, he shouldve already known that he is loved by Abraham, so this test would be unnecessary. That is something that makes God selfish. In both stories, God presents a bad situation to good people to benefit his own needs. However, I did notice that compared to The Tower of Babel, in The Book of Jobe, God shows a mighty and powerful side. God wants to show Satan he is correct so he does what is needed to prove it. In The Tower of Babel, God shows a side of fear. In this story, the people of Babel are building a tower. The people have created a language to help them communicate and get the job done. When God sees they are unified by a language, he fears that they are getting too strong so he confuses them by making each person speak a different language. However, the people are so determined to finish the tower that they keep working. When God sees he has not stopped them, he scatters all the people in different locations across the world. In conclusion, I have linked the Old Testament stories together with a common characteristic of God, which is selfishness.