At the end of the book of Job God says this about Job's friend's.
Job 42:7 KJV
And it was so, that after the Lord had spoken these words unto Job, the Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite, My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath.
My question here is, are the word's of
Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar written in the Bible actually God's word's. If your God is saying that what they said about him is not right, then do you disregard that part of the Bible as the word of God?
I think this demonstrates perhaps some confusion about what mainstream Christian teaching says about Scripture being "God's word". It doesn't mean that every jot and tiddle in the text God speaking or some such. In its most fundamental sense it is about the way in which Scripture points us to God's Revelation of Himself in Jesus. In Christianity Jesus Christ is God's Word, Jesus Christ is God's Revelation. The Bible is about Jesus.
In the case of the book of Job, it is part the Jewish Wisdom literature. It is a literary genre that also includes the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs, Sirach, and Wisdom. The last two are among the Deuterocanonicals, books found in the Septuagint but ultimately not in the Jewish Bible (the Tanakh) and which are accepted by Catholics and Orthodox, but not most Protestants. As such Job needs to be read as Wisdom literature; while it is unique among the sapiential books in that it has a narrative structure, its point is still wisdom (as opposed to say, history--Job is not a history book). The theme in Job is, basically, the problem of suffering, that perennial question of "why do good people suffer?". But in the spirit of Jewish Wisdom literature the wisdom to be received is not philosophy as in the Hellenic tradition, but rather the wisdom of trusting and revering God. Ultimately Job doesn't answer the question, at least not in the way the Western philosophical tradition would want it to be answered; but instead points to the Mystery that is God, and that in the good and the bad in life one should fear and honor God, rather than try and comprehend the incomprehensible mind of God.
To call the book of Job part of "God's word" isn't to say that God wrote it, or dictated it, or that every word in it is God's own voice. For Christians Job is ultimately part of the larger tapestry of Scripture which points to Jesus, and a fundamental way of engaging the text as a Christian is from within this larger Christocentric context. I would also add that Job is probably also a good illustration of the Hebrew idea of wrestling with God, which forms an essential component of the Jewish relationship to God; the text invites one to wrestle with God, to wrestle or engage with God with deep questions that may, very likely, have no answer. Thus when approaching the book of Job, there are different angles, and they aren't mutually exclusive. The literary context as Wisdom literature inviting one to an engagement with God and being open to the possibility of not having the kind of answer we might like with some of our questions; as well as the distinctively Christian approach of looking at Scripture holistically in a Christocentric way.
-CryptoLutheran