Part IV.
Lot - Lūṭ (11), Job - Ayyūb (12) and associated Patriarchs, Prophets and their sacred Books.
11. Lūṭ (= Heb. Ar. Lôṭ). In the Qur'an he is both a Rasul (Sent Messenger) and a Prophet (nabi) though he is not considered a mazhar-i ilahi or Maniestation of God in Babi-Baha'i primary sources. Lot the biblical son of Haran and nephew of Abraham (Gen 11:27f;13:5-13,7f). In the Q. Lot is an envoy-prophet mentioned 27 times in 14 sūras and is said to have survived the catastrophic, meteor-like stoning (with sījill) of "upturned" (mu’takifa) ,`vice-ridden’ cities such as (the unnamed) Sodom.
Lot is seldom mentioned in Bābī- Bahā’ī primary sources though aspects of his biblical-qur’ānic story are understood non-literally. In a letter dating to 1938, for example, Shoghi Effendi defended the integrity of Lot relative to the incestuous episode narrated in Gen.19:29-38 (Shoghi Effendi, Dawn of a New Day, 201).
12. Job Hebrew ‘āyôb (Ar.) Ayyūb in the Qur'an is a Prophet or Nabi. He is a non-Hebrew, universal legendary hero known from the biblical book named after him and various post-biblical sources including the Qumran texts. In the biblical book Job is pictured as an inhabitant of Ur (= Edom?). He is four times mentioned in 3 suras of the Q., twice in lists (Q. 4:163; 6:84). Job is also twice mentioned in fragmentary allusions to his story (Q. 21:83-4; 38:41). This Islamic legendry hero is sometimes considered a descendant of Abraham through Isaac (Ṭabarī, Tārīkh I:194).
Job and his (unnamed) wife are greatly celebrated in the opening pages of the twenty-five page Arabic epistle of Baha'u'llah variously entitled the Lawh-i Ayyūb (Tablet of Job) and the Surat al-ṣabr (Surah of Patience, March 1863; Ar. text, AyyamT: 282-313). Therein are registered Islamicate forms of originally Jewish-Hellenistic Job materials such as are found, for example, in the Testament of Job (1st. cent. BCE/CE?; Kohler, 1897; OTP 1:829-868).
Job, though not the biblical book, also figures in a few other alwāḥ of Baha'u'llah (e.g. Lawh-i Sarrāj, see Ma'ida-yi asmani VII:65).
`Abd al-Baha' occasionally interpreted verses of the biblical book of Job (SWAB: 171-2 on Job 19:25-27) and gave Q. 38:41 an allegorical interpretation. The "spring" (mughtasal) in this latter verse is interpreted as the "spring of divine prophethood" (chashmih-yi nubuwwat-i ilāhī). On entering it Job was cured of both spiritual infirmities (amraḍ- i rūḥanī) and physical strictures (taqayyād-i nafsānī) (Ganj, 58-9).
