Patrick O’Brian: Master and Commander, p/b, London, Harper Collins,2002

Patrick O’Brian was a distinguished and prolific C20th English writer fluent in French, Spanish and Catalan. Married to Mary, mother of Count Nikolai Tolstoy, O’Brian was an autodidact and wrote many short stories, reviews, translations and novels. He translated Papillon from French to English, wrote a biographies of Picasso and Sir Joseph Banks and famously wrote twenty novels about the Royal Navy and the Napoleonic wars.

In brief Master and Commander, the first of his naval novels, tell the story of the impoverished Lieutenant Jack Aubrey who gains as his first command the sloop Sophie, a small but highly manoeuvrable ship. He persuades his newly found doctor friend Maturin to join him. Together they go to battle against their French and Spanish opponents during the C18th Napoleonic Wars and remain together for an additional nineteen novels!

Not being a lover of boats, ships or maritime warfare of any sort I found the first three chapters of this book demanding to say the least and unreadable to say the truth. His key character Jack Aubrey is clever at sea but makes himself ridiculous on land. His friend Maturin is thankfully, an excellent support.

Gradually and unwillingly I began to make sense of this story and to endure it rather than enjoy it. In my edition, the author’s notes indicate that all the military and and seaborne battles and skirmishes are taken directly from the Naval Chronicle and the Admiralty papers in the British Public Record Office. I found this encouraging, knowing that the events really did happen! I did note that O’Brien makes no attempt to lionise his hero and Jack Aubrey’s ineptitude in public events and willingness to bed the wives of his superiors, I am guessing, is simply demonstrating the normal routines of C18th British sea going morality!

I love to read but I have to say I will not live long enough to read the other nineteen or so volumes in this series by O’Brien. Just finally, towards the end of this story, I did find myself identifying with what C18th warfare in the world’s oceans might have been like and what a debt is owed to those who lived that life. 4 stars but never again!

Andrew Prideaux: Job, Enduring Hope, Sydney, Aquila Press, Reading the Bible Today Series, 2024

The Reading the Bible Today series has been built around Australian commentators presenting their wealth of Biblical insight on paper. Andrew Prideaux’s commentary on the Old Testament book of Job is the latest in this series. Covering 383 pages Job, Enduring Hope is no small read and his 390 footnotes demonstrate Andrew’s careful attention to the Hebrew text and his interaction with a remarkable number of modern and ancient scholars who have written on the Book of Job.

A central value of the Book of Job for readers is the pastoral benefit to those who struggle in life for whatever reason including perhaps illness or other tragedies or harmful events in their lives. Christian folk can travel along comfortably with their love for and faith in God but they are not immune from traumatic events and tragedies which can shake them way off their runway.

They, like Job, begin to seriously wonder whether God is all he is supposed to be and indeed whether he is any help at all or even is God actually there and if he is why has he allowed these things to happen to me. This is certainly Job’s situation as he cries out to God in despair and indeed in anger.

Uniquely in the Bible, Job is not a Hebrew, but comes from the land of Uz, outside God’s covenant people of Israel. Nevertheless Job remains a God-fearing man who’s life and commitment have constantly been given over to the worship and service of the God of Israel.

In the opening narrative Satan challenges God with the idea that Job only serves and worships God because of his comfortable and wealthy lifestyle. Satan suggests that if these things were taken away Job would no longer worship or be commiteedqo God but would reject him in his misery.

As the story unfolds Job loses his home, his wealth and his family and he himself suffers a horrifyingly destructive skin disease which makes him an outcast from his society and a horror to behold even to his wife who calls on him to turn against God.

Job is supported in his despair by three well-meaning friends who offer him plenty of advice with turns out to be meaningless for Job who is looking for at least a statement or a conversation with the Lord God but nothing comes.

After the failure of the three friends Job is confronted by the young Elihu whose brash and confident rebuking of Job’s desire to speak with God humiliates Job even further. Job deigns not to even comment on Elihu’s words which to him are irrelevant. Job knows he has been loyal to God and cannot believe this traumatic hurt and chaos in his life.

Finally, through a huge storm, God does address Job directly with a powerful account of his creation and sustaining of the universe in all its complexity. God does deal with Job’s trauma but he is humbled and encouraged. He quickly learns to recognise that, difficult though his situation is, God has a purpose for his world and his people, even in those things which, like his suffering, seem to make no sense at all.

Job’s faith in God and his understanding of God’s sovereign purposes had been sincere but he needed somehow to acknowledge the deeper mind of God and his purpose and to trust him no matter what trials come!

God opens Job’s eyes to the wonder of creation and a reminder of his own smallness. He gains a sense that, even in his misery, God’s power and love are for him and with him in his loss and that even though it is a mystery to him why he should suffer, he must trust God to take him through it. His view of the world and God needed to be enlarged.

In return God vents his anger on the three friends who has spoken so wrongly about Job. Indeed they are only restored because Job intercedes and prays for them. God also restores Job’s place in the world a hundredfold.

The story of Job requires careful reading and deep thinking. Readers of this commentary will find many useful insights and a thoughtful and fresh understanding of this remarkable and significant component of Scripture. This is a commentary to be read carefully and thoughtfully and it will return rich spiritual encouragement.