Jesus, the “Object of Hostility,” Upholds Jehovah’s Godship

“Consider closely the one who has endured such contrary talk by sinners against their own interests.”—Heb. 12:3.

 1. Why can Jesus be described in a preliminary way as the Greater Job?

THE name Job means “object of hostility.”a How accurately Job in his experiences of testing proved to be an object of hostility received from Satan and from his Babylonized religious companions! Now all this affair comes out to be a detailed prophetic drama with a preliminary fulfillment centering around the Greater Job, Jesus Christ. But before one can examine the many instructive evidences of this, it becomes necessary to make a brief historic survey of religious conditions that generated in Palestine and in the neighboring pagan world during the five centuries that preceded Jesus’ day. In all those five hundred years Satan was producing subtle religious forces and confusing doctrines that would put the promised “seed” to the severest test whenever he would make his appearance on the earth. (Gen. 3:15) As shall be seen, the perfect man Jesus was more than ready and able to be the Greater Job or “object of hostility.” So that the issue of Jehovah’s Sovereign Godship might be rightly vindicated, Jesus endured hostile contrary talk by sinners.—Heb. 12:3.

RELIGIOUS STAGE BEING SET FOR JESUS

 2, 3. (a) How did there become two Jewish centers—one in Palestine and one in Babylon? (b) In what way was the Jewish religion spread abroad, and around what was it centered?

² From Biblical and secular history it is evident that only a minority of the Jews exiled in Babylon between 607 and 537 B.C.E. returned to Jerusalem in and after 537 B.C.E. to share in restoring true worship there and to rebuild the temple under Zerubbabel’s leadership. (Ezra 2:1, 2) Some years later Nehemiah aided by rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem (Neh. 7:1), and Ezra shared by staffing the restored temple with priests for full daily services. (Ezra 7:1-7) Ezra also led in the great work of making available for circulation many reliable copies of the sacred Hebrew Scriptures. The majority of the exiled Jews, however, chose to remain in Babylonia, where they were well fixed materially though dispersed in many communities of the country.b Those Jews remaining in Babylon perpetuated a form of the true religion of Abraham, Moses and the Prophets that might be termed “Hebraism.”

³ Onward from the fifth century B.C.E. many Jews from Babylonia and Palestine became businessmen involved in trading and commerce. With their families and relatives they settled in compact sections of large Gentile cities throughout Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, eventually all around the Mediterranean. This meant that Jewish quarters developed then, as today, in almost every part of the civilized world. These Jews brought with them their Hebraic religion, the habit of meeting for prayer and study without temple ritual or sacrifices. A plain assembly hall was the center of their religious life. At first this center was known as the Beth ha-Keneset (house of prayer) or the Beth ha-Midrash (house of study).c Later, due to Greek influence, such buildings came to be called by the Greek word synagogues.d

 4. How extensive a Jewish world stage was being set for Jesus’ ministry?

⁴ In this way the Jews were taking their religion by “export” into the expanding Gentile world. In time these Jewish “colonies” outside Palestine vastly outnumbered in population the homeland Jews and became known as the Jews of the dispersion (diaspora), that is, the Jews “scattered about.” (Jas. 1:1) For centuries, the Jews were outstanding in conducting what amounted to a great missionary movement taking their religion to the Gentiles. “The synagogues attracted hundreds of thousands of converts,” writes Josephus, to make proselytes of them.e (Matt. 23:15) Once in three years pilgrimages were made by the Jewish and proselyte males to Jerusalem to attend the festivals.f Josephus reports that no less than 2,700,000 males gathered there for a passover.g Of this the Grecianized Jew, Philo, writes by calling Jerusalem the capital “not of one nation but of all nations.”h For these reasons we can appreciate the extent of the world stage that was being set for Jesus to serve as an “object of hostility.”

FLESHLY INFLUENCES OF HELLENISM

 5, 6. (a) What was Hellenism? (b) How was it “exported” to Palestine? (c) To what fleshly influences were the Jews subjected, and was their religion affected?

⁵ Next, let us examine how all this pre-Christian religion of the Jews became contaminated by Oriental, Babylonish religious thinking, this being effected either directly through the Babylonish captivity of the Jews or more subtly through the Orientalized Greeks. The Greeks were anciently referred to as Hellenes, so their culture and way of religious life became called Hellenism. The many ancient Greek philosophers in fact were “prophets” of Hellenism, and their differing schools of thought amounted to various sects of pagan Hellenism. Hellenism in its many sects featured things of a pagan appeal to the “desire of the flesh” (1 John 2:16), such as art, music, the dance, physical culture, games, sensual ways of living, search for happiness in the flesh, materialism, immortality of the human soul and the worship of a pantheon or multitude of gods. When the Grecianized Alexander the Great conquered the then-ancient world, “instead of uprooting the population of the subject countries as Eastern conquerors had done, the Greeks took their own country to them.”i So, like the Jews, the Greeks exported their Hellenistic culture throughout the nations. For example, under this policy of Alexander and his successors a chain of ten Greek cities known as the Decapolis (ten cities) was built right in the midst of Judea. (Matt. 4:25; Mark 5:20; 7:31) This was done to break down Jewish solidarity. It brought about an atmosphere or worldly spirit that was temptingly charged with subtle Hellenistic influences. (1 Cor. 2:12) To the Jewish youths these cities were a showplace that featured athletic games, an appeal to the aesthetic senses, elegance, refinement and beauty of form.j So Greek manners, Greek words, Greek ideas were flooded into Palestine.

⁶ But all these Hellenistic forms of culture and religion had already become mingled with Oriental or Babylonish ways when Alexander had overrun all the Persian Empire.k “When [Hellenism] was mingled with Oriental ideas, it degenerated into an altogether bastard growth of sensuality and rationalism.”l Of both the Jews in Palestine and those in the dispersion it is observed that “gradually but surely the Jews began to assimilate the religious ideas of the people about them, and to look on the Scriptures under the influence of those ideas.”a So this meant that the earlier Hebraism now became further apostatized as the religion of Judaism with all its growing accretions of traditions and non-Biblical regulations. (Gal. 1:13; Mark 7:13) Next, let us evaluate the evidences showing that Judaism became Babylonized, then divided into sects by the time of Jesus.

JEWS ACCEPT BABYLONISH THINKING

 7. By what term did the Babylonians come to refer to their god?

⁷ First note that in the matter of godship in Babylon, Marduk (Merodach) is referred to as “the senior of the gods, the most ancient,” the chief god of Babylon. (Jer. 50:2)b Marduk’s ancient background stems back to Nimrod. “Nimrod . . . the most admissible correspondence is with Marduk, chief god of Babylon, probably its historic founder, just as Asshur, the god of Assyria, appears . . . as the founder of the Assyr[ian] empire.”c Long before Isaiah’s time of the eighth century B.C.E. (Isa. 46:1), the custom had developed in Babylon of calling their great pagan god Marduk (Merodach) merely by the general title “Lord” or Baal as had the ancient pagan Canaanites. (Judg. 2:11-13) “Marduk . . . is the city-god of Babylon where his temple was called E-sagila . . . His proper name in the later periods was gradually displaced by the appellative Belu ‘lord,’ so that finally he was commonly spoken of as [by the title] Bel.”d—Jer. 51:44.

 8. Were the Jews influenced by the above Babylonian practice of calling their god by a title?

⁸ It is a well-known fact that the Jews followed a similar custom after their Babylonian captivity by no longer referring to their God Jehovah by his proper personal name but by merely calling him by the title “Lord” (Adonai) exclusively. Actually, the Jewish sopherim in the Babylonized centuries before Jesus made 134 changes in the Hebrew Sacred text from Jehovah (יהוה) to Lord (אדני) to further this apostate or sibboleth custom.e Thus it is seen how slyly the Jews under Judaism were induced by Satan to hide the very name of their true God by following this sibboleth of a Babylonian practice to refer to one’s God merely by title. The warm, personal relationship was now being lost by no longer calling him Jehovah but substituting therefor an abstract title, Lord.

 9, 10. (a) In what reverent way is it observed that the true worshipers of Jehovah used the term Lord when referring to Him? (b) What is noticed in the way Nebuchadnezzar acknowledged Jehovah’s Sovereign Godship?

⁹ From the days of Abraham to the Prophets whenever the ancient true worshipers of Jehovah referred to him as Lord (Adonai) they used in context the divine name itself.f Where they used Lord (Adonai or Adon) alone without “Jehovah” it was either in connection with his supremacy over other so-called pagan lords or gods (Deut. 10:17; Josh. 3:11, 13), or he alone is referred to as ha-adon, the true Lord.g Isaiah expressed the shibboleth or correct way: “O Jehovah our God, other masters [adoním] besides you have acted as owners of us [baalúnu]. By you only shall we make mention of your name.”—Isa. 26:13.

¹⁰ Additionally, it is apparent that the Babylonians, as did other pagans, never referred to their chief god by the exclusive expression meaning “the true god,” as did the genuine Hebrew worshipers of Jehovah by saying ha-elohim. When Nebuchadnezzar was forced to recognize the Godship of Jehovah, the God of the Hebrews, as the true God, he never used the Hebrew expression ha-elohim but merely used the Aramaic expression elaha (determinative), god.—Dan. 3:28, 29.

11. Give further evidences of the Jews accepting Babylonish religious thinking.

¹¹ The Babylonian “notion of trinities of divine powers” came to the Jews through Egyptian influence.h Beliefs “in the immortality of the soul” came into Judaism from Babylon and Greece. “In the second century [B.C.E.] the Palestinian as well as the Alexandrian Jews accepted the doctrine of the immortality of the soul.”i This further led to the belief by the second century in “resurrection of the body” that, as they believed, enabled the soul to continue to reside immortally.j For example, the Apocryphal book called Wisdom of Solomon, written by a Jew before Jesus’ day, advances the teaching of the Greek philosopher Plato as to the separation of soul and body. (1:4; 9:15) It presents the Greek view of predestination where the pre-existing soul is said to enter the body. (8:19, 20) Future life does not come through the Messiah but through wisdom. (8:13) It teaches that man was created for incorruption and immortality. (2:23; 6:19; 12:1) The Greek thinking is presented that Hades is a place where unrighteous souls suffer (1:14; 2:1), and that the wise thing for man is to live a life of pleasure now.—2:7-9.

JEWISH SECTARIAN PRESSURE GROUPS

12-14. One at a time, describe three of the Jewish pressure groups.

¹² Judaism began to divide into several sects according to the accepting or rejecting of the various shady beliefs from the pagan world. These sects came to serve as pressure groups not only religiously but also politically. In this period the sect of the Sadducees developed. The Sadducees “included a large part of the priestly caste, and they inherited the outlook of the former Hellenists . . . They were essentially materialists; they did not share the Messianic hope of the people, and put their trust in reason; their self-reliance, their rigidity in enforcing the letter of the rabbinical law, and their denial of the resurrection reflect the spirit of the Stoic [a Greek school of philosophy].”k

¹³ The sect of the Essenes shared with the Hellenistic Puritans who followed Pythagoras in believing “not only the dualistic doctrine of body and soul, but the striving for bodily purity, the practice of ablutions, the rejection of blood offerings, the encouragement of celibacy [becoming in effect eunuchs].”l

¹⁴ The scribes formed what amounted to a sect or party. Early they were associated with the Hasidim (the pious ones). They were strict advocates of the Law of Moses, being its lawyers. They were largely antagonistic to the Greek language and Greek ideas.a

15-17. Give some interesting points as to three more of the Jewish pressure groups.

¹⁵ Still another sect, that of the Pharisees, came into existence during these pre-Christian times and were known among themselves as habherim, meaning “neighbors.” Their claiming to be neighbors “added to the power [the Pharisees] had through their influence with the people.”b Incidentally, when Jesus spoke to the Pharisees on one occasion, this adds point to his illustration about the “good Samaritan,” where he asked: “Who of these three seems to you to have made himself neighbor to the man that fell among the robbers?” (Luke 10:25-37) The Pharisees were strict observers of the many Jewish traditions that had been added to the law of Moses. They believed in angels and spirits and held to a “resurrection of the body.”c (Acts 23:6-8) That human souls are immortal and that the wicked suffer in a hades were also taught by them. Josephus testifies to this: “[The Pharisees] think that every soul is immortal; only the souls of good men will pass into another body, but the souls of the evil shall suffer everlasting punishment.”d

¹⁶ A further pressure group came to be called Herodians or the party followers of Herod. (Matt. 22:16) They were a party of nationalists who supported the political aims of the Herods in their rule under the Romans.e

¹⁷ A final pressure group came to be the Sanhedrin Court itself that acted as a whole. Its members were made up of the priests and leaders from these other sects and parties. Such is the complete lineup of the sectarian pressure groups that had formed by the time Jesus conducted his ministry.

THE GREATER JOB ON STAGE

18, 19. Present more striking similarities between Jesus and ancient Job.

¹⁸ A grander scale of fulfillment of the Job drama opened in Jesus’ day. Jesus himself became that Greater Job, the chief “object of hostility” as the name Job indicates. It is amazing the details that developed in Jesus’ earthly ministry that came to be in direct fulfillment, as in Job’s case, although not always in the same order. Furthermore, Jesus, being a perfect man with full knowledge, was in an advanced position to deal with the mounting pressures brought against him by the permitted hand of Satan and his Babylonized pressure groups. It is profitable to examine the striking evidences where Jesus masterfully upholds the Sovereign Godship of his Father, Jehovah.

¹⁹ When Jesus was anointed as King-designate by God’s spirit at the Jordan River in 29 C.E., he, in effect, held ownership to the entire earth with all its wealth and animals. Truly, Jesus Christ was legally far richer than ancient Job ever was. Jesus as a perfect man could have had perfect children even though he might have married an imperfect wife. Why? Because perfection is determined by the father and not by the mother. This is proved in the case of the perfect father, Jehovah, using the imperfect mother, Mary, to bring forth the perfect male child Jesus. In this manner Jesus could have populated the entire earth with perfect humans in fulfillment of the symbol of Job’s ten children. In actuality, however, Jehovah God did not give Jesus a human earthly wife, but did give him what was equal to children. He gave him “children” in the form of faithful disciples, loyal footstep followers, whom he could teach and take care of, just as an earthly father does his children. Of Jesus it was prophesied: “Look! I and the children whom Jehovah has given me are as signs and as miracles in Israel.”—Isa. 8:18; Heb. 2:13; Mark 10:13-16.

JESUS UPHOLDS JEHOVAH’S GODSHIP

20. Describe Satan’s initial testing of Jesus. What was the outcome?

²⁰ As in Job’s case, Satan the Devil tried to strip Jesus forever of both his destined earthly wealth and his spiritual children. Unlike Job’s case where Satan remained in the background, Satan now personally and directly set off the ordeal of “hostility” against this chief “object,” the man Jesus. This he did by three times directly tempting Jesus in the wilderness. Satan as the personal Tempter tested Jesus on (1) materialism, (2) personal fame and (3) denying the Godship of Jehovah. Jesus came off victorious on each of these basic tests. In each instance Jesus beat back Satan by using the Sacred Scriptures where Jehovah’s official name appeared. (Matt. 4:1-11) Yes, Jesus, the Greater Job, successfully upheld Jehovah’s Godship right from the start.

21. In Jesus’ case, what seem to correspond to Job’s children being taken away and Job’s wife having become weakened?

²¹ In the third year of Jesus’ ministry (32 C.E.) just before Passover time, Satan caused a great falling away of disciples from Jesus, similar to Job’s ten children (a complete number) being taken away. During the course of his ministry Jesus did lose some of his professed disciples, as in the case recorded in John 6:66-68, but he still had childlike disciples who stuck with him up until his bitter experience in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night of his betrayal to his bloodthirsty enemies. But on that crucial night he lost all his disciples, as symbolized by the complete number of Job’s children and as foretold in the prophecy of Zechariah 13:7. (Matt. 26:31) First, the apostle Judas Iscariot betrayed him, and then Jesus asked that he alone, not his eleven other apostles, be arrested. But now, in fear of man, all eleven apostles (representative of all his disciples) fled, of their own accord, forsaking him to his enemies. (Matt. 26:56) As he had said to them: “You will leave me alone.” (John 16:32; 18:8) But this was the enemies’ “hour and the authority of darkness.”—Luke 22:53.

JESUS PRESSURED AS THOUGH A SINNER

22. How was Jesus pressured as though a sinner?

²² To the materialistic Jews of Israel, Jesus indeed appeared to be a very poor man. “But Jesus said to him: ‘Foxes have dens and birds of heaven have roosts, but the Son of man has nowhere to lay down his head.’” (Matt. 8:20) Likewise as in Job’s case, to the Jews it appeared that Jesus was a sinner. On one occasion the Pharisees charged: “We know that this man is a sinner.” (John 9:24) Again to the Jews it appeared that Jesus was acquainted with sickness. “He was despised and was avoided by men, a man meant for pains and for having acquaintance with sickness.” “He himself took our sicknesses and carried our diseases.” (Isa. 53:3; Matt. 8:17) In the hostility against Job, Job was forced to sit “in among the ashes,” that is, at the city dump outside the city gate as an outcast. “It is clear that Job’s choice of the dung-hill (the ashes, Job 2:8) outside the gate is not an expression of his despair, but it had been forced upon him because he had been thrust out by his fellow-townsmen.”f Remarkably, too, Jesus, the Greater Job, was considered an outcast by his fellow Jews, and the Bible so reports: “Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered outside the gate. Let us, then, go forth to him outside the camp, bearing the reproach he bore.”—Heb. 13:12, 13; see also Rom. 15:3; Ps. 69:7-9.

HOSTILITY FROM THE PRESSURE GROUPS

23. What corresponds to the three companions of Job? How so?

²³ Satan now brought to bear his centuries-long-prepared pressure groups of hostility. This was to be a long, grueling ordeal that was to try to break down Jesus’ heart integrity toward Jehovah and to defeat Jehovah on the issue of Godship. In Jesus’ time, the “three companions” of Job’s day represented all the teaching groups or sects of Judaism together with their retinues of disciples that should have been companions with Jesus in correctly upholding the Godship of Jehovah and the true teachings of the Bible. Instead, these false teaching agencies were employed to make bitter, violent doctrinal attacks upon Jesus. The number three, Biblically indicating emphasis, aptly illustrated the emphatic, all-out attack from all these leading sects of Jesus’ day that had become doctrinally defiled with Babylonish thinking. The statistics show that Jesus had some forty different skirmishes or word battles with these several pressure groups. There were two involving the Sadducees, two the party followers of Herod, five with members of the Sanhedrin, eight with the scribes, one indirectly referring to the Essenes (Matt. 19:12) and thirty-three involving the leading sect, that of the Pharisees.

ANSWERS BY JESUS VINDICATE GOD

24. Present some statements of truth revealed in Jesus’ answers. How do they parallel Job’s replies?

²⁴ Jesus’ many answers to the attacking questions from his hostile sectarians contained a great flood of new truth that flowed to enrich the true religion of Christianity. Like Job, Jesus protested against the false charge that he was a sinner just because he was being tested as to his integrity. (Job 10:14, 15; Luke 5:30; John 8:46; 9:24) Like Job, Jesus rejected the Babylonish false teaching that man has an immortal soul by showing plainly that man is mortal and, when dead, is unconscious, asleep. (Job 7:9, 17; 10:18; John 11:11-14) Like Job, Jesus taught that there would be a resurrection of the soul, the individual, and not a “resurrection of the body,” as wrongly taught by the Pharisees. (Job 14:7, 14, 15; John 5:25, 28, 29) Like Job, Jesus taught that future life is not earned through works of the flesh or works of the Law but comes by the legal means of ransoming through a redeemer. (Job 19:25, 26; Matt. 20:28) These are but a few of the parallels between Jesus’ counterarguments against his religious opposers and those similarly had by Job.

25. Give an outstanding reversal Jesus brought against his opposers.

²⁵ Take one outstanding reversal that Jesus brought about against his chief sectarian opposers, the Pharisees. In Jesus’ clever illustration of the rich man [Dives] and Lazarus, he likens the Pharisees among others to the rich man. (Luke 16:14, 19-31) “The rich man died and was buried. And in Hades he lifted up his eyes, he existing in torments, and he saw Abraham afar off and Lazarus in the bosom position with him.” So that put the Pharisees in the very place where they ridiculously and falsely taught that all the poor ones go, such as represented by the “beggar Lazarus.” However, this does not mean that Jesus was teaching that there was any such hades or hell of torment where souls suffer. Jesus himself went to the literal Haʹdes or “hell,” but suffered no torment there, and came out of it on the third day, and now has the “keys of death and of Haʹdes” in order to release all others therefrom in God’s time. (Ps. 16:10; Acts 2:30-32; Matt. 16:18; Rev. 1:17, 18) Consequently, the Bible Haʹdes, Sheol or “hell” is the common grave of dead mankind from which there is a resurrection.g This, then, robs many Babylonized religious teachers even today of using this very parable of the rich man and Lazarus to support their hellfire teaching.

26. In the mounting hostility, what did Jesus make plain as to Godship?

²⁶ Hostility continued to mount. The Pharisees charged that Jesus was performing his miracles by means of the ‘ruler of the demons, Beelzebub.’ (Matt. 12:24) His opposers had difficulty in controlling themselves and several times desired to have Jesus killed.h Then came the touchy subject of Jehovah’s Godship and who is the true spiritual father. The acid test was to determine who is one’s spiritual Father, Jehovah or the Devil. “If God were your Father, you would love me, for from God I came forth and am here. . . . You are from your father the Devil, and you wish to do the desires of your father.” (John 8:42, 44) Jesus further backed this up by his powerful public condemnation of these sectarians: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! . . . Serpents, offspring of vipers, how are you to flee from the judgment of Gehenna?” (Matt. 23:29, 33) Such ones then became exposed as being part of the ‘seed of the serpent’ that were out now to bruise the “heel” of Jesus, the seed of God’s woman.—Gen. 3:15.

JESUS USES JEHOVAH’S NAME

27. What was the situation as to the use of the divine name during the religious controversy in Jesus’ day?

²⁷ Like the three companions of Job’s time who did not use the divine name once in their speeches as did Job, so it was with the sectarian leaders of Jesus’ time. Not once in all their questionings did they use the divine name, Jehovah. In the four Gospel accounts there is record that Jesus used the divine name himself twenty-five times.i Unlike the Jews, Jesus was not bound by the Babylonish custom of merely using Lord instead of pronouncing the divine name. In fact, Jesus was outstanding for teaching the name to his disciples.—John 17:6, 26.

28, 29. (a) What appears to correspond to the neutral observer Elihu, with what supporting points? (b) What confirmation does Jehovah make?

²⁸ For three and a half fiery years Jesus, the “object of hostility,” did not sin nor give in on his stand of integrity as Jehovah’s Chief Agent of life. (Acts 3:15) Who, then, could have been the unbiased, neutral observer like Elihu that could say which side was right, the Jewish sectarian leaders or Jesus? (Job 32:2, 3) It could have been the governing body of the newly established young Christian congregation on the day of Pentecost of 33 C.E., fifty days from Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. Before speaking up in Job’s day, Elihu was filled with the spirit of Jehovah God. (Job 32:9, 18-20) Likewise, when Peter and his fellow apostles spoke up in vindication of God and of his Son Jesus Christ on the day of Pentecost, they were first filled with God’s holy spirit and thus spoke under inspiration. They proved God to be true and that Jesus was the Christ, exalted to heaven.—Acts 2:22-37.

²⁹ Another parallel noted is that in Job’s day Jehovah’s voice spoke out of the storm wind whereas in Jesus’ day Jehovah’s voice was heard three times directly from heaven, three being indicative of emphasis, confirming his approval of Jesus as his official representative.—Matt. 3:17; 17:5; John 12:28.

HOSTILITY CLIMAXED—RESTORATION

30. In what did the hostility climax, and how did Jesus react?

³⁰ The hostility climaxed when all of Satan’s forces were brought to the full, bringing about Jesus’ death on the torture stake. Yes, Satan had now accomplished the bruising of the Seed’s heel. (Gen. 3:15) For the time that Jesus lay dead in another man’s tomb he was indeed deprived of everything—children and possessions. But even to his dying moment on the torture stake outside Jerusalem, Jesus, like Job, “did not sin or ascribe anything improper to God.” (Job 1:22) His lips and his heart were sinless when he said: “Father, into your hands I entrust my spirit,” and then: “It has been accomplished,” and finally he expired.—Luke 23:46; John 19:30.

31, 32. (a) Give parallels between Job’s and Jesus’ restorations. (b) What happy windup does the drama have in Jesus’ case?

³¹ As in Job’s restoration where he came to have double wealth and ten children, so Jesus, restored by a miraculous resurrection, came to be “heir of all things.” (Heb. 1:2) As with Job’s original wife ten more children were born, so with the aid of God’s wifely organization as represented by the heavenly Jesus who poured out the holy spirit, a host of new spiritual children were brought forth on and after Pentecost 33 C.E. in the first-century fulfillment of this drama. They were God-given “children” to Jesus. (Isa. 8:18; Heb. 2:10-13) As a priest Job was also to have offered up a sacrifice and prayed for the three repentant companions to bring about their recovery. (Job 42:8) This, too, happened in that a repentant minority of the Jewish sectarians came to be obedient to the faith and were covered by Jesus’ priesthood services and the ransom sacrifice after Pentecost 33 C.E.—Acts 6:7.

³² Now in a grand windup of this spectacular drama—of all God’s family in heaven and on earth, Jehovah as the Sovereign God can say to Satan and all creation: ‘There is no one like Jesus Christ in all the universe.’ (Job 2:3) So Jehovah has made Jesus, the vindicator of His Godship, most happy. We, too, pronounce Jesus happy forevermore. (Jas. 5:11) See the next Watchtower as to the happy outcome of those who are “objects of hostility” in these last days.

[Footnotes]