Before the Church · c. 1300 BC
The Poem of the Righteous Sufferer
Ludlul bel nemeqi
Attributed to Shubshi-meshre-Shakkan
What it is
A nobleman loses office, health, friends, and standing, and can find no fault in himself. His diviners cannot read his case, his god has abandoned him, and what is good to a man is an abomination to his god — until three dreams bring a stranger who restores him.
Why it lasted
Called the Babylonian Job for good reason: the same structure, the same protest, the same friends who are no help. Its answer is that divine reasoning is unknowable, which is where the voice from the whirlwind also ends up.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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