What is the importance of the land of Uz in the Bible?

But God took care that there should be not more surely the Pentateuch than the book of Job. In Genesis everything prepares for the chosen nation. When the law was given, God treats the Gentiles as entirely outside. So they were. Alas! we see Israel narrowing more and more in their feeling, and denying that a Gentile was anything but a dog in the sight of God. We find them shutting up their bowels of compassion from others, and in every way denying, after all, what God took care, even in the law itself, to correct and condemn. But even before the law was given we see God, in this most remarkable book, guarding against the snare into which they were subsequently drawn. Is it not an anticipative and blessed vindication of God? Job was a Gentile; and one who, as far as the locality is concerned, seems to have been in anything but a favourable quarter. The land of Uz is connected by the prophet Jeremiah with the land of Edom. Nothing could be more suspicious to an Israelite. If there were any people that had a hatred toward the Jews, it was the Edomites; and this was not at all a new feature. It is not meant that Job was an Edomite; but to a Jew, ready to take fire at anything which did not allow the peculiar place of the chosen nation, I say that his locality was suspiciously near. For it was at the borders of Edom; and the reader of Genesis knows that hatred had shown itself from the earliest days, even in the forefathers; and hatred that had never been extinguished in the children up to the latest days, from Genesis to Malachi; Edom's undying enmity to Israel, if not on the part of Israel against Edom. The hatred is apt to be in that which has neither God nor His blessing; nay, which resents those that have it. So it was therefore with Edom, and there it abode, and the Jew would the more feel the testimony to one who lived near their borders.

We are at once introduced to the leading person of this book. "There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God and eschewed evil." As already stated in the introduction, the land of Uz was east of Palestine and probably a part of Idumea, or in close proximity to the land of Edom. This seems to be confirmed by Lamentations 4:21: "Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom, that dwellest in the land of Uz." Uz is also mentioned in Jeremiah 25:20. It must have been on the borderland of Edom, if it was not a part of it. In Genesis 22:20-21, we read of the sons of Abraham's brother Nahor; among them are two named Uz and Buz. (Elihu was of Buz, Job 32:2.)

All that is known of the history of Job is found in the book bearing his name. He lived in the land of Uz, which was probably named after Uz, or Huz (the Hebrew is the same), the son of Nahor, Abraham's brother. Another link with that family is also found in that Elihu was the son of Barachel the Buzite, for Buz was the brother of Huz. Gen. 22:21. The land of Uz is supposed to be in the S.E. of Palestine toward Arabia Deserta. Job is called "the greatest of all the men of the east." No date is given to the book, but there being no reference in it to the law, or to Israel, makes it probable that Job lived in patriarchal times, as the name Almighty, which was revealed to Abraham, was known to Job, his three friends, and Elihu. He is described as "perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil;" yet he suffered the loss of all his property; his children were killed; and his body was grievously afflicted. The great problem of the book is, the government of God, not directly as with Israel, but providentially in a world into which sin and death had entered, and where Satan, if permitted of God, can exercise his antagonistic power. God's dealings with men in government and chastening are for good; but this brings out another question, How can man be just with God? — a question answered only in the gospel.

The native land of Job, perhaps the district peopled by the descendants of one of the above, or of Huz the son of Nahor. Job 1:1; Jer. 25:20; Lam. 4:21. It is supposed to have been in the south-east of Palestine towards Arabia Deserta, which would lie open to attacks from the Sabeans and the Chaldeans.

The land of Uz (chap. 1:1) is generally suggested eastwards of river Jordan towards the border to Arabia in the land of Edom (compare Lam. 4:21) or its vicinity. In the Septuagint (Greek translation of the OT) Job is even identified with Jobab, the second king of the Edomites (Gen. 36:33).

Geographical and other questions need not detain us long. Uz is believed, by competent authority (the elder Delitzsch), to lie west of Babylon and east of Palestine; perhaps, to the north-east of Idumea. This country, with fertile grazing lands, broken by great stretches of rocks, with the desert near (the land of the inhabitants of Seir when dislodged from their original territory) is the suited home of Job and his friends. These outward details are however of minor importance, given in part of the first verse, where at once we plunge into the narrative which forms the introduction to the book.

"And the sons of Aram, Uz and Hul and Gether and Mash" (ver. 23). The first of them gave his name to the sandy soil south-east of Palestine, in the north of Arabia Deserta, and west of the Euphrates. We hear in Job 1 who lived there, of the raids of the Sabeans and the Chaldeans.

Hul seems to have gone farther north. His name we may trace in Ard-el-Huleh, and Bahr-el-Huleh, south of this district, the waters of Merom, or the lake Semechonitis as Josephus calls it, though he connects Hul with Armenia.

Here we have Job spoken of not merely by the writer, but by God Himself in the strongest terms. The writer says, "There was a man in the land of Uz" (which you know was near Edom, on the borders of Edom, and apparently the friends of Job all came from that quarter more or less), the great desert on the eastern side of Palestine, between Palestine and the Euphrates, where the Bedouins are constantly moving up and down — the nomad races, some of them descendants of Abraham, indeed some of Ishmael. And it is said, "that man was perfect" — meaning by that, not that there was no evil; that is not the meaning of "perfect" in Scripture at all, but in the Old Testament it is the word for a man being thoroughly sound — a sound man, not merely a moralist, but a man who was right with God. And besides being sound in that way, he was "upright" with man. "Perfect and upright" showed relations, one to God, and the other to men. Both ought to go together. The great feature of it was, "fearing God." Another great feature was that it answered to these other terms — refusing or shunning evil. "Eschewing" you know is the old English for shunning. He avoided it; he would have nothing to do with it. So that there you have the fear of God, the great root of his being sound or "perfect"; and refusing evil, the great mark of his being "upright." And then we have his family description.

Who were Job's parents we know not; but his dwelling-place was in the land of Uz, and therefore he was one of Shem's descendants (Gen. 10:23), and his friends belonged likewise to the Shemitic branch of the great human family. Teman, the ancestor of Eliphaz, was a grandson of Esau. (Gen. 36:11.) Shuah, the progenitor of Bildad, was one of Abraham's children by Keturah. (Gen. 25:2.) We gather therefore from these genealogical details whereabouts the land of Uz probably was, Lamentations 4:21 confirming the deduction that it lay not far from Edom.

Did Edom then taunt their fallen brother in the day of his distress? Indeed they did it with murderous treacherous hatred too. Hence the apostrophe of the prophet. "Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom, that dwellest in the land of Uz; the cup also shall pass through to thee: thou shalt be drunken, and shalt make thyself naked. The punishment of thine iniquity is accomplished, O daughter of Zion; he will no more carry thee away into captivity: he will visit thine iniquity, O daughter of Edom; he will discover thy sins." (Ver. 21, 22.) Did they say in the day of Jerusalem, Down with it, down with it to the very foundation? They too must be brought to shame. If the Chaldean swept the holy land, the daughter of Edom must await no less when her day came to be carried away captive for her sins.