Job: A Man of Heroic Endurance

In his work of Christian nonfiction, Job: A Man of Heroic Endurance (2004), Charles R. Swindoll examines what Job’s sufferings can teach us about humanity and faith. In the Christian and Hebrew bibles, Job is the central figure in the Book of Job, which focuses on God’s justice during difficult times, and how God guides us through times of suffering. In the text, Job endures many trials, often feeling abandoned by God. The point of the book is that, although it seems that God abandoned Job, He didn’t.

Job: A Man of Heroic Endurance teaches readers how to embrace God’s challenges. Using Job as an example, Swindoll explains that we find answers to our questions in unexpected places; God doesn’t always give us the answers we expect. Epitomizing strength, endurance, and patience, we can all learn from Job’s life story. A difficult text to decipher, Swindoll hopes to make the Book of Job accessible to modern readers.

Swindoll aims to dispel the idea that Job isn’t heroic. Many people believe that Job is weak, cowardly, and unable to stand up for himself. Heroes come in all forms. Job doesn’t stand idly by watching his life crash down around him. He consciously endures the trials God throws at him. His inaction is deliberate. Battening down and enduring hardships are heroic qualities.



Swindoll argues that life is unavoidably difficult. What separates heroes from the rest of us is how they deal with those difficulties. Just as Job learns the most about himself when he suffers, we learn through our mistakes and disappointments. We rarely learn anything about our spirituality or ourselves when life is easy. Challenges, according to Swindoll, make heroes of us.

Job suffers in the way we all suffer; his life is terribly unfair. Modern readers can relate to his problems: He loses his family, his property, and his health, and his life is one catastrophe after another. However, because these catastrophes are timeless, Job speaks to everyone regardless of what era they live in. Job represents humanity.

One of Job’s most poignant moments is when he loses all ten of his children at the same time. Standing over their graves, wondering what to do with his life, his wife tells him to renounce God, to give up and let his grief consume him, the way it consumes her. Job, however, refuses to give in. He simply vocalizes his faith in God. It doesn’t matter how God treats Job—Job never strays from the path.



Job suffers every insult imaginable. His friends turn on him; covered in agonizing welts and sores, everyone says he is to blame for his own misfortune. Job asks God for guidance, but God never answers him. Somehow, through this silence, Job stays true to God, and God finally rewards him. However, God’s rewards are never certain, and it takes an incredible amount of trust to believe in Him as Job did.

Swindoll takes us back to the beginning of Job’s story. He describes Job’s early life, his relationships, and his fortunes. It is easy for Job to believe in God when his children are thriving, and he is making a good living. He enjoys the love of a kind-hearted woman, and he is the envy of the village. Unsurprisingly, Job thinks that God favors him.

As the years go by, Job worries that his children aren’t faithful enough. He worries that they don’t pay enough attention to God and that God will eventually punish them. His own strength never wavers. Job is so devout that even God is impressed. God tells his angels all about Job, which antagonizes Satan.



Satan decides to test Job. He says it is easy for Job to love God when God blesses him so much. It is much harder to trust in the divine when the divine seemingly ignores one. The other angels reluctantly agree. Satan plans to make life extremely difficult for Job to show that humans are fickle. God consents to this, and so Job’s troubles begin.

Throughout the book, Swindoll reiterates the point that Job is only human. God doesn’t bless Job with any special powers to help him endure what life throws at him. All Job has is his humanity, and this is what saves him. This is comforting; we are all capable of enduring life’s trials.

The seventh book in Swindoll’s Great Lives from God’s Word series, Job won the 2005 ECPA Christian Book Award for Bible Study. A Christian writer, Swindoll graduated from Dallas Theological Seminary. He is dedicated to spreading God’s word and demonstrating how we can apply God’s teachings to our daily lives. He hopes that his books transform lives and heal souls.