This article proposes a political reading of the Book of Job. This biblical text emblematically
describes the dialectic of protection-obedience. In political terms, with the modern political construction
of the State (Hobbes), it is transformed. To the degree that this dialectic is secularized, the original theological
components are dissolved. The exposition of this dissolution in the Christian and Jewish traditions is
at the centre of this article. In the end it is shown that the political dissolution hides the original dialectic
in the form of myth
