Chapter I

ואחר עורי נקפו זאת ומבשרי אחזה אלקה

"Though my skin has been torn from my body [due to my many afflictions], [still] from my flesh I perceive G-d."1

Iyov was once the world's most fortunate individual. After a time, Satan incited against Iyov before G-d, saying to Him that Iyov's piety stemmed only from the fact that he and his children were in good health, and that he was extremely wealthy. Were G-d to take away Iyov's riches and his children, and make him ill, argued Satan, the once-pious man would surely revile G-d's holy name.

So G-d gave Iyov over to the testing hands of Satan. Iyov lost his children and wealth, and was himself stricken with various ailments.

While debating with the friends who came to console him, Iyov says2 that he is sure that his Redeemer lives. He is convinced of G-d's Divine Providence, and that underlying his trials and tribulations is an act of Providence which surely has a specific [positive] purpose.

"Even after my skin has been torn etc.," means Iyov realized that his afflictions came from the Redeemer of his life, for indeed, "from my flesh I perceive G-d," i.e., G-dliness can be understood from one's own body and soul. Just as the body is animated by the soul which G-d places within it, so too the world and its inhabitants are animated by the G-dliness that pervades it. Consequently, everything that befalls a person is part of a Divine plan. But since the divine life-force of all creation is concealed, we created beings do not know its true essence; all we know of it is what we perceive of its effects [on us and on the world as a whole].

We observe that the world and all its creatures are vibrantly alive, trees grow and bear fruit, grain grows in the fields, etc. We are also aware that there is no such thing as spontaneous generation; everything must have a source. Yet an object cannot be created from an already existing object. A case in point: When a seedling is planted, it will not grow until it rots and is thereby unified with the power of growth that G-d placed in the earth. Only then will the seedling produce new vegetation. The period between implantation and growth is called ayin or "nothingness."

As is known, G-d created the world ex nihilo, being from non-being. Creation is only within the power of the Creator. This is expressed in the well-known statement:3 "Should all the denizens of the universe assemble [and utilize their combined wisdom and abilities] they would not be able to create the wing of a gnat and imbue it with a soul."

They are unable to do so because creation is the exclusive domain of the blessed Creator. Creation ex nihilo implies creation of the physical from the spiritual something which only G-d can do.

In summary: "From my flesh I perceive G-d." From the composite of body and soul we understand the G-dliness that pervades the world and all its creatures, the creation and vivification of which are only in G-d's domain.