page_title: Book of Job
section_title: In music, art, literature, and film
hierarchical_section_title: Book of Job / Later influence and interpretation / In music, art, literature, and film
context_page_description: The Book of Job addresses the problem of theodicy, meaning the vindication of the justice of God in the light of humanity's suffering. A rich theological work setting out a variety of perspectives, it has been widely and extravagantly praised for its literary qualities, with Alfred Lord Tennyson calling it "the greatest poem of ancient and modern times". It is found in the Ketuvim section of the Hebrew Bible, and is the first poetic book in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible.
context_section_description: The Book of Job has been deeply influential in Western culture, to such an extent that no list could be more than representative. Musical settings from Job include Orlande de Lassus's 1565 cycle of motets, the Sacrae Lectiones Novem ex Propheta Job, and George Frideric Handel's use of Job 19:25 ("I know that my redeemer liveth") as an aria in his 1741 oratorio Messiah. Modern works based on the book include Ralph Vaughan Williams's Job: A Masque for Dancing, French composer Darius Milhaud's Cantata From Job, and Joseph Stein's Broadway interpretation Fiddler on the Roof, based on an earlier Yiddish memoir by Sholem Alchem in 1894. 
  Joni Mitchell composed The Sire of Sorrow (Job's Sad Song.)
  Neil Simon wrote God's Favorite which is a modern retelling of the Book of Job. Breughel and Georges de la Tour depicted Job visited by his wife, and William Blake produced an entire cycle of illustrations for the book. Writers Job has inspired or influenced include John Milton (Samson Agonistes), Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov), Alfred Doblin ("Berlin Alexanderplatz"), Franz Kafka (The Trial), Carl Jung (Answer to Job), Joseph Roth (Job), Bernard Malamud and Elizabeth Brewster, whose book Footnotes to the Book of Job was a finalist for the 1996 Governor General's Award for poetry in Canada. Archibald MacLeish's drama, JB, one of the most prominent uses of the Book of Job in modern literature, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1959. Verses from the book of Job figured prominently in the plot of the film Mission: Impossible (1996). Job's influence can also be seen in the Coen brothers' 2009 film, A Serious Man, which was nominated for two Academy Awards. Terrence Malick's 2011 film The Tree of Life, which won the Palme d'Or, is heavily influenced by the themes of the Book of Job, as the film starts with a quote from the beginning of God's speech to Job. A 2014 Malayalam film called "Iyobinte Pusthakam" tells the story of a man who is losing everything in his life and also has parallels with Dostoevsky's (The Brothers Karamazov). The Russian film Leviathan also draws themes from the Book of Job. In 2015 two Ukrainian composers Roman Grygoriv and Illia Razumeiko created opera-requiem IYOV. The premiere of the opera was held on 21 September 2015 on the main stage of the international multidisciplinary festival Gogolfest.
caption: Georges de La Tour,
  Job Mocked by his Wife
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