Comments on: Job’s turkey, poor as

By: j.r. fishburne

j.r. fishburne — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 13:58:16 +0000

my family used the expression in ocean springs, mississippi in the 1880s.

By: Rick Dostie

Rick Dostie — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 17:27:12 +0000

The expression is not limited to the South. I’ve heard it for years here in Maine, and have often used it myself. I did wonder where it came from, and figured it did refer to the Book of Job, a part of the Bible which many people don’t know from Adam’s off ass.

By: Bill Brandon

Bill Brandon — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 22:15:15 +0000

Some expressions are not as dead as one might think. “Poor as Job’s turkey” was a common phrase in my father’s family. They were mostly from Tennessee (one great-grandmother was from Missouri) and moved to Texas after the Civil War. I still use the phrase today, and perhaps my children and grandchildren will as well.

By: Robert Sutherland

Robert Sutherland — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 09:24:40 +0000

You might be interested in this online commentary “Putting God on Trial: The Biblical Book of Job” (http://www.bookofjob.org) as supplementary or background material for your study of the Book of Job. It is not a sin to question God, to demand answers from God. There is a time and a place for such things. It is written by a Canadian criminal defense lawyer, now a Crown prosecutor, and it explores the legal and moral dynamics of the Book of Job with particular emphasis on the distinction between causal responsibility and moral blameworthiness embedded in Job’s Oath of Innocence. It is highly praised by Job scholars (Clines, Janzen, Habel) and the Review of Biblical Literature, all of whose reviews are on the website. The author is an evangelical Christian, denominationally Anglican. He is also the Canadian Director for the Mortimer J. Adler Centre for the Study of the Great Ideas, a Chicago-based think tank.