Job And Night: If Hope Is Lost Why Live?

Job is a man that was once privileged and had a lot of power and had God on his side, but in one moment where he receives that disease from God he gives up on God and starts to think that the life of the wicked and the ones that don’t believe in God is a good life. In Night Eliezer is also faced with a challenge that tests his hope and faith. He once was a normal Jewish person who had a family and a good life, but when the Nazi’s invaded them he had to go to concentration camps. He also as Job starts to stop being so loyal to God and to think that he had abandoned them. If we compare the situations where Job and Eliezer are put and lose faith in God we can find some similarities and differences. Job was in his house, he had food and water and was tortured by his disease. Job had support from his friends and that was very important. In the other hand Eliezer was in concentration camp where everything was bad and wrong. He only had his father and was being tortured by his keepers and sometimes by his companions. Eliezer gives up God in the beginning of his life in the concentration camps. We see that he no longer felt the divine presence of God and his help. He said “But I had ceased to pray. How I sympathized with Job! I did not deny God’s existence, but I doubted his absolute justice.” pg 42 so we see that he no longer feels God in his side. Job starts to feel the same and each day he starts to look at the life of wicked people like a good life. I think these two books are really similar because they show how sometimes you can give up on hope and on faith on harsh times, but with people that still have something to live for managed to survive the harsh times. Eliezer’s motivation was his father and Job was his friends and the hope to live one day more. They might be different in the setting of time and events, but the main theme of hope and faith are present in both books.