Approaching Job

Lewis

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781532615160
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

The book of Job has captivated readers for centuries, yet its sprawling dialogues set beside its seemingly simple narrative have also puzzled those who have attempted to understand the ancient book. In this accessible companion, Approaching Job guides pastors, seminarians, and other students of Job through the characters, themes, critical issues, and key passages of one of the greatest pieces of ancient literature. Approaching Job concludes with theological and ethical implications of the biblical book of Job that should generate plenty of discussion in college courses, Bible studies, and even among laypersons attracted to a story of an innocent man who lost everything and struggled to understand why.

1

Content of the Book of Job

It is customary in biblical studies to begin a book study by outlining potential historical critical problems with the book. While critical concerns are by no means unimportant for anyone digging deep into Job, most people approach the book with little to no concern for its history of composition or transmission. Most see it, at the very least, as a story with a compelling premise and interesting characters. Many included among such a group (and some outside such a group) approach Job as Scripture, inspired by God and thus authoritative in its received form. This chapter will sketch the book as received in the canon—first with descriptions of the various characters in the book and second outlining various themes of Job.

In many ways, the book of Job reads like a drama. The prose prologue and epilogue offer action fit for the theater, where violence is offstage and the important aspects of the story are in the characters’ reactions. Two of the most celebrated retellings of Job (Blake’s Illustrations of Job and the play J. B. by Archibald MacLeish) confirm the dramatic nature of the story. Once the stage is set, so to speak, with the demise of Job’s health, wealth, and progeny, the story is told entirely through a dialogue between and among six characters.

The following section, in the spirit of drama, will present the cast of characters in the story.2 Problems arise when breaking down the story this way. Following the text through the actions of one character raises questions not easy to answer using literary analysis. Scholars in the past couple centuries have been very interested in answering these questions using a variety of tools, namely, text criticism, historical criticism, philosophical theology, and narrative criticism. At the end of each character description will be a question or series of questions to be addressed more in depth in later chapters. Not all questions will have satisfactory answers, but they will rather bring us into the ongoing conversation of Joban scholarship.

The Main Players

Job

The narrative’s description of Job, a Gentile from the East, is of a man who has all the important features of someone wealthy and important during the time of the patriarchs. He had a great deal of livestock (camels, sheep, and oxen) and, presumably, the land on which they could graze. He had many servants to take care of all his belongings and many children (seven sons and three daughters). Because of this type of wealth, of all the characters of the Bible, he shares the most in common with Jacob/Israel. However, the narrator is careful to point out Job’s piety, which separates him from Jacob (and all the other characters of the Bible). The narrator tells us that Job is blameless and upright (tam weyashar). This language should remind readers of Yahweh’s command to Abram to exhibit these same qualities in exchange for a covenant and many children (Gen 17:1). Job, thus, seems to have fulfilled the covenant Yahweh made with Abram, or a version of it, and he has blessed Job accordingly.

The narrator describes some of Job’s actions as concrete evidence of his piety. Job would sacrifice, not only for himself, but especially for his children out of fear that the children may have sinned in their hearts. Later in the story, Job goes into further description of his pious actions. He “delivered the poor who cried, and. . . was eyes to the blind and feet to the lame.” (29:12, 15); he was faithful to his wife (31:9, 10) and clothed the naked (31:19). In short, Job was as perfect as anyone could expect to be and more.

Soon after the narrative establishes Job’s stature as the “greatest of all the people of the East” (1:3), Job loses everything in such quick succession that it would be comic if it were not so tragic. Job’s story is not true tragedy, however, because he has no tragic flaws. Rather, readers learn that Job loses everything because he was blameless and upright. The rest of the story explores the fallout of Job’s losses. His initial reaction is a pious response: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I shall return there; the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (1:21). Job, however, is struck by a skin disease, which, along with time to reflect, takes him over the edge to despair. He sits among the ashes in silence (but for a brief exchange with his wife) until he initiates a curse against the day of his birth. A long dialogue with his three friends ensues.

One of the questions that arises in the book is whether Job is pious for the sake of piety or whether he does all the right things in expectation of God’s blessings. In the words of the Satan character, “Does Job fear God for nothing?” (1:9). This question is difficult to answer, even in retrospect, because it does seem that Job acted as he did with the expectation that he would get something in return. After all, he was righteous and just and was blessed with wealth and children. He should be forgiven for believing so. This belief in what scholars call “retributive theology” would explain why he feels so wronged at times after he does lose everything. He maintains his innocence throughout his dialogues with his friends. If he does not believe in retributive theology, then his innocence would be irrelevant to the discussion. He believes he is wronged by God and begs God for answers. (Job’s speeches to his friends all come in two parts: the first part responds directly to his friend, and the second addresses God as the second person.)

A second, related question, which has inspired much debate over the years is, how do the Job of the prologue and the Job of the dialogues relate to each other? In other words, the way Job acts in chapters 1 and 2 seems very different from the way Job acts in the rest of the book. When Job loses everything in chapter 1, he responds with a short hymn of praise. His words allow God to win the wager with the Satan character, which leads to Job being tested again through a skin disease. Even after Job is afflicted with sores all over his body, he asks his wife, “Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?” (2:10). Just a few verses later (though seven days later in the narrative), Job explodes, cursing the day of his birth (lit. “his day”) (3:2). There is little in the prologue to prepare readers for this change of attitude. Job sustains his anger throughout the dialogues, revealing little of the meek piety he displays in the prologue.

The difference between the prosaic Job and the poetic Job has been widely noted and discussed for centuries. We will highlight more details of that discussion in the next chapter.

God

The character of God is, likewise, complex. Not allowing the theology of the rest of the canon to influence one’s interpretation of God in the book of Job is quite difficult. Nevertheless, it is important to attempt to see who the God of Job is, independent of the rest of the Bible, in order to understand the book of Job. Though readers do encounter God in the prologue, none of the terrestrial characters has any direct interaction with God until chapter 38. In the prologue, God remains in the heavenly court, where the Satan character comes in. God in these first two chapters seems strangely limited in knowledge and power. God asks the Satan where he has come from (1:7) and makes a wager with a created being as if God were unaware of the possible outcomes of such a wager. God even blames the Satan for inciting him “against [Job] to destroy him for no reason” (2:3).

In sharp contrast, when God appears to Job in a tempest in chapter 38, rather than responding to Job’s questions and to the justice or injustice of a righteous man suffering, God asks Job a series of rhetorical (even sarcastic) questions on the creation of the world (as opposed to the direct questions God asks the Satan in the prologue). The God of the dialogues is anything but limited. In fact, the entire thrust of the arguments are about God’s power and humanity’s limitations in comparison. Not only does God not ask Job where Job has been as God asks the Satan, but God goes into great and beautiful description of all the things God does know.

Leaving aside the apparent problems between the prosaic God and the poetic God, let us look more closely at the content of God’s response to Job. In Job 31:35, Job concludes his final defense of his innoc...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Content of the Book of Job
• Chapter 2: Structure and Critical Issues
• Chapter 3: Meaning in Individual Passages
• Chapter 4: Some Theological, Pastoral, and Ethical Implications of the Book of Job
• Works Cited