I do not read Job this way either. Here is a lengthy post on my take on Job.
.....Now the question is, of what was Job repenting? Of what does a righteous man (Job 1:1) need to repent?
....So what was it that Job needed to change in his way of thinking?
We learn of Job's attitude towards God in Job 1:5 where he continually offered sacrifices for his children before God just in case God was angry with them or they had sinned. We see that Job was afraid of God's wrath and feared for the lives of his family.
Now as we make our way through the conversations between Job and his friends we find that Job changes his thinking in this way; while at first he didn't charge God with wrong, over time he does begin to charge God with wrong. For example he says of God, "For the arrows of the Almighty are within me" (Job 6:4) and "How long? Will You not look away from me, And let me alone till I swallow my saliva?" (7:19) etc. I believe it is because Job charges God for suffering that Job needed to repent; for distrusting God.
.... My main contention here is, why did Job repent if God was in fact allowing Job to be afflicted by Satan? I believe Job was repenting of charging God with his suffering. He was repenting of the very worldview that the 'God is in control' message promotes.
I think that you have given a sound analysis, and I doubt that my rebuttal of the points would do it justice.
Briefly, I do agree that there is a change in Job, a metanoia, a repentance, a change of consciousness even as to the nature of who God is, and the nature of righteousness. Job emerges from his encounter with evil and with God with a clearer understanding of what role righteousness plays, and who God is through his encounter.
I do not however see the pivotal point as his repentance of his fear of God, or his scrupulosity in ritual. Indeed fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, and Jewish sages contend that fear of God is much a more effective weapon in the individual's determination to remain of good character and behavior than profound understanding of the nature of the Divine ever could be.
His fear of God is not something that Job repented from, and it is not something that he ever took too far in his discourse with God either, although he did indeed take his questions to the very precipice.
The new realization that Job came to is that does not revolve around repentance of his fear of God, I don't think. Rather it centres on a new understanding that the relationship between righteousness and blessing is not a direct one. It is definitely not cause and effect; ritual as magic had already been rejected by ancient peoples at this point, but the metanoia was one of recognizing that we do not earn our blessings or merit our punishments through own righteousness or our own evil. For lack of a better word, and to continue on a theme already being developed here, there is a (limited) randomness between righteousness and blessing, and sin and punishment. This is not something that Job understood even to the slightest degree at the beginning of his trials. His understanding was the same as that of those around him, both in the story itself, and in the ancient world. Blessings and curses are according to Karma. People are rewarded or slighted in direct proportion to their own righteousness, or lack thereof.
But as it turned out, that was not just true.
...We learn how Job was wrong about God when he declared, "Though He slay me, I will trust in Him"...
To accept your argument we would have to accept that Job did go to far, and to accept that would be to go back into the mindset that Job merited his punishment after all, for bearing false witness against God here. That would compromise the message that the relationship between righteousness and punishment, sin and punishment is not a direct one. There would be a reason to punish Job if this was true.
Moreover, we would have to accept the idea that a God whose hands are tied is something less than an all-powerful being.
I think that your analysis was a good one, well thought out and all.
But the fact that God did step in when he chose to describes a world where he could have stepped in at any time prior to that. His hands were never tied.
The message to be learned here is not to fear " the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell" any less. It is to realize that God does not order the universe according to the laws of Karma.