I came across a video last week that caused me to think, a lot. What did I know of the main character and what did I really know of who he was and his situation? The more I looked into it, well, that caused more thoughts. I am talking of Job, from the Bible. The man that God spoke to satan about, and all of Job’s suffering, but proving God was right. “Curse God and die,” his wife told him to do. I have to think at that moment in time, Job was wondering about his life’s choices.
What do we know of kings back then? Kings usually had wealth. In the Legacy Standard Bible translation I use, it helpfully tells me that Job was “greatest of the sons of the east.” In the KJV, they told me of Job’s character and wealth. Both of these translations deal with wealth, and the KJV also speaks of his character. In the Septuagint, written 200 years before Christ, it has this to say:
“And it is written that he will rise up again with those whom the Lord raises up.
This man is described in the Syriac book as dwelling in the land of Ausis, on the borders of Idumea and Arabia; and his name before was Jobab; and having taken an Arabian wife, he begat a son whose name was Ennon. He himself was the son of his father Zara, a son of the sons of Esau, and of his mother Bosorrha, so that he was the fifth from Abraham.
And these were the kings who reigned in Edom, which country he also ruled over. First Balak the son of Beor, and the name of his city was Dennaba. After Balak, Jobab, who is called Job: and after him, Asom, who was governor out of the country of Thaeman; and after him, Adad, the son of Barad, that destroyed Madiam in the plain of Moab; and the name of his city was Gethaim.
And the friends that came to him were Eliphaz of the sons of Esau, king of the Thaemanites, Baldad sovereign of the Sauchaens, Sophar, king of the Minaeans.”
It is my understanding that Job is one of the oldest books in the Bible, and written by Moses, before the Law. Why it is in its place in the Scripture — that was the Holy Spirit’s realm.
So from the video, Jobab was a king. The Septuagint says it, and also says his friends were kings too. Eliphaz wasn’t just a Temanite — he was “king of the Thaemanites.” Bildad was “sovereign of the Sauchaens.” Zophar was “king of the Minaeans.” Four kings sitting in the dust together.
Kind of puts a whole new look to the life of Job.
You have read Job your whole life and nobody told you he was a king.
The book opens with a man in ashes. His children are dead, his livestock stolen, his body covered with sores. His friends arrive and sit with him in silence for seven days. Then they open their mouths and make everything worse. God shows up in a whirlwind and answers questions Job never asked. Job repents in dust and ashes. God restores everything double. The end.
It is the oldest story in the Bible and most people read it as a patient man enduring a test. That is not wrong. But it is not the whole story.
There is a note at the end of the Septuagint — the Greek translation of the Old Testament, completed in the third century BC, the oldest complete manuscript of the Hebrew Scriptures we possess. It is not a later gloss. It is not a medieval commentator guessing. It is Hebrew scholarship, preserved in Greek, that identifies the man:
“His name was Jobab. He reigned in Edom. His father was Zerah, from Bosra.”
Jobab. Son of Zerah. King in Edom.
Genesis 36:33 records the kings of Edom before Israel had a king. The second name on the list is Jobab, son of Zerah, from Bosra. The Septuagint note ties the suffering servant directly to a throne that already existed when Moses wrote Genesis.
This is not a fringe reconstruction. The geographic evidence is embedded in the Hebrew text itself. Job’s three comforters are Edomites — Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, Zophar the Naamathite. Teman is in Edom. Shuah is Edomite territory. Naamah is in the Edomite hill country. Elihu, the fourth voice, is from Buz — also Edomite. The names are not random. They are a map.
And when God finally answers Job, He does not come from Sinai. He does not come from Jerusalem. He comes from the south. From Seir. From Teman. From Paran. The theophany in chapters 38 through 41 opens with a voice from the same region where God appeared to Israel at Sinai — but this time He is answering a king, not giving a law. He is vindicating a man, not establishing a covenant. The geography is not decoration. It is the same land, the same God, the same whirlwind.
Every other time the Bible describes God coming in a storm from the south, He is coming in power to deliver His people. Deuteronomy 33:2: “The Lord came from Sinai, and dawned from Seir upon us; He shone forth from Mount Paran.” Judges 5:4: “Lord, when you went out from Seir, when you marched from the region of Edom, the earth trembled.” Habakkuk 3:3: “God came from Teman, the Holy One from Mount Paran.”
Teman. Seir. Paran. Edom. That is where Job was sitting in ashes. That is where the whirlwind came from. The comforters are Edomite. The land is Edomite. The God who answers comes from Edomite territory. And the Septuagint says the man was Edom’s king.
Now set that next to the Exodus.
The short chronology of the sojourn — 215 years from Jacob’s entry into Egypt to the Exodus — places Moses in Midian at the same time a king named Jobab sat on Edom’s throne. Midian and Edom share a border. The same mountainous country. The same God moving through the same landscape. Moses shepherded Jethro’s flocks in the same region where Job lost everything and was restored.
Job’s vindication and Israel’s deliverance are not two stories. They are the same pattern, on different stages, for different audiences.
A ruined king, sitting in the dust of the kingdom he once ruled, says: “I know that my redeemer lives, and at the last He will stand upon the earth.” He has no Torah. He has no covenant. He has no priest, no prophet, no temple, no sacrifice. He has nothing but the memory of what God showed him and the conviction that the One who took everything will be the One who restores everything.
A few hundred years later, a nation of slaves in Egypt — also ruined, also sitting in dust — watches the same God do exactly what Job said He would do. Stand up. Show up. Vindicate.
Job is not a philosophical puzzle about why bad things happen to good people. That question is what his comforters asked, and God ignored it. God answered something else entirely. He answered with Himself. Not an explanation. A presence. The same presence that later split the sea and shook the mountain and led a nation through the wilderness on pillars of fire and cloud.
The man in the dust was a king. The God who answered was the same God who would answer again. And the words Job spoke — “I know that my redeemer lives” — are the oldest declaration of resurrection faith in the canon. He said it before the Exodus. He said it before the Psalms. He said it before the prophets. He said it without a single verse of Scripture in his hands, because there wasn’t any yet.
What did he have?
The ancient names. The memory of what God had shown his fathers. The witness of creation — which God Himself used as the answer. “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” is not a rebuke. It is an invitation. It says: you know Who I am. You have seen My work. The wind that is blowing your ashes across your skin is the same wind that divided the deep on the first day. The same God. The same power. The same mercy.
Jobab lost his throne, lost his children, lost his health, lost his reputation among men. And in the lowest place, with nothing left but the memory of God’s work in creation and the ancient names passed down from his fathers, he said the truest thing anyone in the Old Testament ever said about the living God:
He lives. And He will stand. And I will see Him for myself.
Not “He might live.” Not “I hope He lives.” Not “I have a theory about whether He lives.”
Know. The Hebrew is yada — to know by experience. Not speculation. Not probability. Certainty born from the only source that can produce it: a God who reveals Himself to a man who has nothing left to cling to but the revelation itself.
That is the whole book. Not “why do bad things happen to good people.” The book never answers that question. It answers a better one: what do you have left when everything is taken, and is it enough?
Job’s answer: God. Just God. That is enough. And the Septuagint tells us that the man who said it was not a random sufferer on a hillside. He was a king. He had known power and wealth and respect. He knew what he was losing. And he said: my redeemer lives.
The Septuagint note is not Scripture in the Protestant canon. It is an ancient witness preserved by the oldest complete manuscript tradition of the Old Testament. Whether the specific identification of Job as Jobab is correct is a legitimate question. But the Edomite setting, the theophanic geography, the pattern of a ruined king vindicated — these are embedded in the Hebrew text itself, and they are the stronger argument regardless.
The identification adds something. The geography and the pattern are already there.
A BLK SHP video called “A Hidden Note at the End of Job Reveals His True Identity” brought the Septuagint identification to our attention. The exegetical work on the Edomite connections is his. What follows is our own path through the same Scripture — the same data, the same text, our own words, the same God. Credit where credit is due. The proclamation is ours to preach.
Job sat in the dust of a kingdom he used to rule. The God who answered him came from the same mountains where He would later meet Moses. The same whirlwind. The same voice. The same refusal to explain suffering and the same determination to be present in it.
And the earliest resurrection confession in the Bible came from a man with no Scripture, no covenant, and no priest — only the ancient names, the memory of creation, and the living God who showed up in person.
That is the God of Job. That is the God of Israel. That is the God who later still would empty a tomb on a Sunday morning in Jerusalem — vindicated, alive, standing on the earth, just like a king in Edom said He would.
I know that my redeemer lives, and at the last He will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God. — Job 19:25-26