5. He was not of the chosen and separated people of God, but of the faithful of the world.
But, whatever the case may be concerning the native country of Job, it is just about certain that Job was not of the people of God, chosen and separated from all nations, that is, the children of Israel: but that he sprung from that people, in which at that time, with the nations not yet decisively rejected, the knowledge of the true God and His word was not yet completely extinguished. Whence also the ancient Hebrews in Tractatu de Idololatria,[1] chapter I, reckon the friends and interlocutors of Job, Bildad, Eliphaz, and Zophar among the אמות העולם, nations of the earth. And that by this argument, that formerly, before the law and constituted polity of the Israelites, the Patriarchs faithfully instilled the knowledge of the true God in their children and posterity; and that that knowledge did not immediately expire, nor was it thoroughly effaced; but that among the nations remained pious men, to whom God more familiarly revealed Himself, until the nations were proscribed by the peremptory decree of God after the measure of their sins was full, and rejected from the covenant of grace. And so also the faithful instruction of Nahor, and especially of his brother Abraham, continued to be of advantage to this period, so that even in the times of Job vestiges of this, not altogether obscure, appeared in him and his friends.
[1] Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Abuda Zara.