Suffering, freedom and justice as well as the mysteriousness of God are among the great themes of human existence. In the Book of Job they are poetically reflected in tremendous density. The circles involved in its creation play with the literary traditions of ancient Israel and early Judaism and bring different theologies of cult, legal and wisdom origins into a polyphonic conversation. The present commentary traces this conversation with a view to its literary origin and its reception in early Judaism and early Christianity. Theodicy poems from the ancient oriental environment are included in the translation and verse-by-verse interpretation of the individual chapters of the Book of Job, as are Egyptian wisdom texts and philosophical discourses from the Greek and Roman environment of the Old Testament. Individual excursions provide information on the anthropological, ethical, mythological and theological backgrounds of the Book of Job.
