---
title: Job 1:1
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/job-1-1/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/job-1-1.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: Job 1:1
testament: OT
section: Poetry
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# Job 1:1

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. And this man was blameless and upright, fearing God and shunning evil.

## NWT Wording of the Key Phrase

- NWT (2013 revision): "There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. He was an upright man of integrity; he feared God and shunned what was bad."

## JW Usage

Cited as the framing setup for the Job narrative — Job is a faithful worshipper of Jehovah, blameless and integrity-bound, whose sufferings illustrate divine justice and the integrity-keeping principle the Watchtower emphasises. The verse is rarely engaged with in the birthday- ban argument, even though Job 1:4 (his sons feasting "each on his own set day") and Job 3:1 (Job cursing the day of his birth) sit in the same chapter cycle.

## Protestant Usage

Job is the patriarchal counter-example to any reading of Scripture that treats family feasting and the day of one's birth as unknown among the righteous. The man Jeremiah 20:14 echoes — and whose son-feasts open Job 1:4 and whose own birth-day curse opens Job 3:1 — is described in this opening verse as "blameless," "upright," god-fearing, and turning away from evil. Whatever his sons were doing in 1:4 and whatever Job himself referenced in 3:1, this is the man the Spirit calls righteous. The texts incompatible with the Watchtower's birthday rule are nested inside the life of the man the Bible most carefully calls blameless.

## NWT Issue

Where the older English tradition reads "perfect" or "blameless" (KJV, ESV, NASB) for the Hebrew tām, the NWT renders "upright man of integrity." Tām carries the moral force of "complete, blameless, whole" — a man without flaw in the eyes God has chosen to evaluate him. "Of integrity" is defensible but lighter; the published English reader receives a weaker descriptor than the Hebrew supports. The effect is small at this verse but coheres with the broader Watchtower preference for "integrity" as the central virtue of discipleship — vocabulary that maps more easily to organisational loyalty than the older tradition of imputed and lived blamelessness.

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [The Birthday Ban — A Rule Generalised From Two Pagan Tyrants](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/birthday-ban-extrabiblical-canon.md) — Romans 14:5-6 / Jeremiah 20:14 / Job 3:1 [Practice]