Yarden Bibas: A modern-day Job in an unrelenting storm

In the ancient Book of Job, we meet Iyov, a righteous man stripped of everything—family, wealth, health—by forces beyond his control, left to wrestle with the silence of a God he never ceased to trust. His story echoes through millennia, a timeless cry against the injustice of suffering, a plea for meaning in a world that offers none. Today, in the shadow of October 7, 2023, we find a new Job, not inked on parchment but carved into the living flesh of our reality: Yarden Bibas.

Yarden was a good man, a quiet man, a husband and father whose life should have been defined by the mundane joys of raising his sons, Ariel and Kfir, alongside his wife, Shiri. On that fateful morning, as Hamas terrorists stormed Kibbutz Nir Oz, his world shattered. They took him, battered and bloodied, into the dark tunnels of Gaza. They took Shiri, clutching her boys—one just nine months old, the other four—into a separate abyss. For 484 days, Yarden endured captivity, beaten, caged, starved, and tormented with the cruelest weapon of all: uncertainty. His captors toyed with his soul, whispering one day that his family was dead, the next that they lived, a psychological crucifixion that no human heart should bear.

And then, on February 1, 2025, he emerged—freed, but not whole. The home he fought to protect was gone, his family’s fate a gaping wound. Days later, the unbearable truth arrived: Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir were murdered in captivity, their bodies returned in coffins on February 20. Like Job, Yarden stood before the ashes of his life, a man who had done no wrong, yet lost everything. Unlike Job, there would be no restoration, no divine voice from the whirlwind, no new sons to replace the ones torn from him. His story ends not with redemption, but with a silence louder than any scripture.

What does it mean to call Yarden Bibas our modern Job? It is to recognize a man who, like Iyov, faced a trial that defies comprehension. Job’s suffering was a cosmic test, a dialogue between God and the Adversary. Yarden’s was a human-made hell, inflicted by hands that chose cruelty over mercy. Yet both share that piercing question: Why? Why does the righteous man lose his children while the wicked walk free? Why does faith endure when the reward is only more pain?

Yarden’s faith—or what we imagine of it—haunts me. In his eulogy at the Tzohar Cemetery on February 26, 2025, he spoke to Shiri with a tenderness that broke the heart of a nation: “Mi amor, I loved you then, I love you now, I will always love you.” To Ariel, he whispered an apology for failing to protect him, a father’s guilt heavier than any chains. To Kfir, he offered a hope for laughter among the angels. These are not the words of a man who has abandoned belief, but of one who clings to it, even as it cuts deeper. Like Job, he refuses to curse his fate, though surely he has every right.

But here’s where the parallel stumbles, and the wound deepens. Job’s tale ends with a restoration—flocks doubled, a new family granted. Yarden’s ends with a single casket for his wife and sons, a final embrace in death that life denied him. Job’s God answered, however cryptically. Yarden’s silence is filled only by the world’s platitudes and our helpless tears. This is no biblical parable with a tidy moral. This is raw, unfiltered grief, a modern Job left to wander a wilderness without end.

We cannot look away from Yarden Bibas, nor should we. His story demands we confront the fragility of goodness in a world that spares no one. It forces us to ask what justice means when innocence is slaughtered, what faith means when it’s all that’s left. He is not a symbol to be pitied from afar—he is us, stripped bare, staring into the void. And yet, in his shattered voice, there’s a plea: “Guard me, Shiri, so I don’t sink into darkness.” It’s a prayer Job might have uttered, a fragile hope that somehow, somewhere, love endures beyond the ruins.

Yarden Bibas is our modern Job—not because his suffering mirrors the ancient tale, but because it surpasses it. He stands as a testament to a resilience we can scarcely fathom, a man who lost everything yet still speaks of love. His story will not fade into scripture; it will burn in our collective conscience, a wound that refuses to heal, a call to remember that even in the deepest night, the righteous do not vanish—they endure.