Natural Evil

[Neo-Scholastic]

He does? [God demonstrates superior knowledge] All I see are a bunch of questions… God made no such statement. In order to conclude that your assertion was God's implied meaning, we would have to either know the mind of Job as God does, in order to know what understanding God expected Job to have, or know God's intent...since you've basically argued that we can't know the mind of God, you've effectively argued yourself into a corner from which we can't know the meaning of God's…dialog with Job.

Once again you have failed to distinguish between general intentions and specific ones. I need to eat and intend to do so. That follows from my inherent nature as an animal. What I intend to eat and how I get it are discretionary decisions that do not follow from my inherent nature. Similarly, given the biblical God and a revealed text, a thoughtful exegesis gives us God’ general intentions (reward the righteous, etc.), but not a detailed list of everything God knows.
With regards to how Job understood God’s answer, the answer is in Chapter 42:3 “…I have declared that which I do not understand, things too wonderful for me which I did not know.” Job previously declared he suffered unjustly. As such, the issue in question was God’s moral judgment.

… if we accept God's message to Job as simplistically rhetorical…it doesn't tell us what God's message to us was meant to be.

Any fair minded person can see that the structure of the tale and its content are not meant to be a purely dramatic reading. Nor were they intended to serve as a philosophical treatise. It is obviously a morality tale, intended to also be read for instruction and reflection. That is one of the historic functions of storytelling and one that fits well with the text. The fact that numerous commentators have mined the story for deeper significance does not undermine a simple reading. Interpretation of stories, be they biblical or otherwise, is always an art. Just as a general observation, interpretations are not foolproof because fools can read whatever they want into any text.

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My main issue with the concept of God in the context of pain and suffering.

I’m not trying to be flip or diminish the true anguish of tragic and unfortunate fates but pain is a given; suffering is optional. Pain provides useful sensory feedback about bodily harm. In that respect pain is a blessing. Suffering, on the other hand, is the emotional response to that pain based on our judgment about it. Athletes endure pain willingly as part of training. That would not qualify as suffering. We suffer when we believe our pain is pointless, unfair or unnecessary. In a theological context, the natural events that cause pains are in some sense just or serve God’s purposes.