Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

JOB, BOOK OF

Job begs for pity from his friends as he sits in a dunghill before his ruined house. Limbourg Brothers, Trés riches heures du Duc de Berry, fol. 82r (15th century); Accademia, Florence (Giraudon/Art Resource, N.Y.)

An extensive work of prose and poetry found in the Writings of the OT. The book recounts the moving story of a righteous individual who incurs horrendous suffering, is castigated by his friends, challenges God, and is finally vindicated and restored. Although the book is commonly associated with the wisdom books, Job holds a unique place within the biblical literature, for it broaches matters of the human condition and theology that are nowhere else conveyed with such pathos.

Composition and Structure

Dates for the composition of Job have ranged from the 10th to the 2nd century b.c.e., although most scholars contend that it was written during the exilic or early postexilic period (6h or 5th century). In Ezek. 14:14, 20 the protagonist is considered an exemplary figure of righteousness alongside Noah and Daniel. The bulk of the book is composed of poetry (3:2–42:6, with the exception of 32:1-5) and is bracketed by prose (1:1–2:13; 42:7-17). The relationship between the prose and poetry is still debated, although the traditional theory holds that the prose sections once represented an independent, early folktale about the character of Job. The poetic center, thus, is the result of later additions. It may also be the case that the poetry once stood independent of the prose, resembling the much earlier Babylonian Theodicy (ca. 1100; ANET, 601-4), which contains only an exchange of dialogue between a sufferer and his friend. Other Mesopotamian parallels include A Man and His God (ANET, 589-91) and I Will Praise the Lord of Wisdom (ANET, 434-37). Regardless of the compositional development of the book, the poetry stands out as central to the book on the readerly level.

The structure of the book can be illustrated as follows:

I. Prose Prologue: Job’s desolation (1:1–2:13)

II. Poetic Discourse (3:1–42:6)

A. Job’s birthday curse (3:1-26)

B. Dialogues with friends (4:1–27:23)

1. First cycle of dialogues (4:1–14:22)

2. Second cycle of dialogues
(15:1–21:34)

3. Third cycle of dialogues
(22:1–27:23)

C. Meditation on wisdom’s elusiveness (28:1-28)

D. Job’s final defense (29:1–31:40)

1. God’s past favor (29:1-25)

2. Job’s present misery (30:1-31)

3. Job’s oaths (31:1-40)

E. Elihu’s discourse (32:1–37:24)

F. Dialogues with God (38:1–42:6)

III. Prose Epilogue: Job’s restoration (42:7-17)

Content and Movement

The prose prologue sets the stage for the poetic discourse that follows. Job, a non-Israelite, is described as one who fears God, avoids evil, and is blameless and upright (1:1). The stage is set for this folk hero to demonstrate his integrity in the face of tremendous odds. As the narrative progresses through alternating scenes of earth and heaven, Yahweh allows the śāṭān, a member of the divine council who specialized in the art of prosecution (1:6-8), to test Job. The issue at stake is whether Job’s piety is truly disinterested (1:9), i.e., devoid of ulterior motives or self-interest. The śāṭān has his doubts, while Yahweh is fully confident. Consequently, the śāṭān’s proposal, which God wholeheartedly accepts, is as much a challenge to God’s credibility as it is to Job’s. In two successive waves of calamity, Job is rendered without progeny and possessions. His wife urges him to curse God and die. Though often disparaged in both ancient and modern interpretations, the question posed by Job’s wife is vitally important: Does persisting in integrity prompt one to keep silent or to curse God in the face of seemingly unjust suffering (2:9)? It is this question around which the rest of the book revolves. Whether rightly or wrongly, Job quickly rejects his wife’s exhortation and remains a man of few words, ever deferential and stoic in accepting his fate at God’s hand. In the words of the narrator, “Job did not sin or charge God with wrong-doing” (1:22).

In the poetic material that follows a different Job speaks, one who is quick to judge both his friends and God. Jas. 5:11 speaks of the enduring patience of Job, but the biblical Job is anything but patient in the discourses! Chs. 3-27 contain three cycles of conversation in which Job’s three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar (who does not appear in the last cycle), offer a range of responses, from consolation to condemnation, over Job’s plight. Indeed, they end up pinning all measure of turpitude upon him in order to make sense of his suffering (e.g., 15:7-13; 22:5-9). Relying almost exclusively upon the veracity of his experience, Job responds in kind to each of his three friends, employing an impressive arsenal of rhetorical weapons (e.g., instruction, argument, irony, sarcasm, rebuke), which turns his friends’ self-righteous proverbs to “ashes” and exposes their arguments as “defenses of clay” (13:12). Job’s discourse is charged with pathos and protest. Through it all, Job is adamant in maintaining his integrity (27:5-6). Moreover, in order to seek redress from God and humans alike, Job appeals to a “mediator” or “witness” in heaven, a “redeemer” who can judge between God, who has defamed and victimized him, and himself (9:33; 16:19; 19:25-27). Job, in short, comes to expect vindication from a heavenly advocate. (Christian interpreters have frequently viewed Job’s “redeemer” [19:25] as Christ; however, for Job this redeemer is a heavenly being who has the power to call God to account for what he considers a flagrant travesty of justice.)

Job wraps up his defense with a wrenching resume of his present misery (30:1-31), which follows upon the heels of an effusive description of the glory days in which he enjoyed God’s preeminent favor and his community’s esteem (29:1-25). Job concludes with a series of powerful oaths by which he challenges God to either judge him or redress his complaint (31:1-40). In the end his friends are rendered speechless (32:1), after which a new character appears without forewarning. His name is Elihu (“He is my God”), and he represents a new generation of sapiential pedagogy, one that does not rely upon the accumulated wisdom of past sages, to which Job’s friends frequently refer (e.g., 8:8; 15:17-19), but upon direct inspiration from God (33:14-15, 33; 36:2). Yet like Job’s friends, Elihu finds Job guilty. As would a youth, Elihu revels in stepping on the toes of his elders (32:6-9), and his speech is to an extent theologically suspect, owing to his bombastic delivery (32:15–33:5) and accusatory tone. Yet Elihu’s speech masterfully sets the stage for the Almighty’s appearance before Job (37:14-24).

Yahweh’s answer to Job (chs. 38–41) represents the high point of the book’s development. Yet many modern readers find the speeches ultimately disappointing, since they neither address Job’s insufferable condition nor solve the problem of theodicy. Some in fact accuse the author of these speeches of bad theology. In any case, the divine discourses do serve to resolve Job’s case against Yahweh (cf. 42:6). These speeches from on high are filled with references to creation, embracing in order the realms of cosmology, meteorology, and zoology, the latter being most pronounced (38:39–39:30; 40:15–41:34[MT 41:26]). Indeed, it is through Yahweh’s litany of the animal kingdom that Job’s world is most profoundly and radically reoriented.

The animals described in this section are not domestic but wild — lion, mountain goat, deer, onager, wild ox, ostrich, hawk, and eagle. Even the war horse (39:19-25) is described as untamable and fearsome. Yahweh revels in their wildness and freedom from human control. Images of vitality and vigor abound, including some measure of violence (e.g., 38:39; 39:26-30). The majestic world which Job is shown is infinitely larger than his own accustomed world, wherein he saw himself as a patriarch of royal proportions (29:25). At one point, Job laments that he has become a “brother of jackals and a companion of ostriches” (30:29). The irony runs deep when Yahweh points out that Job is in good company with these denizens of the margin, of a “no-man’s-land.” Job’s provincial and self-centered world is radically reoriented in Yahweh’s description of the awe-inspiring creatures Behemoth and Leviathan, which together mark the apex of Yahweh’s litany of creation (chs. 40-41; cf. Gen. 1:26-27). Missing is any mention of humanity in this parade of creatures, except for the slight reference to Job’s creation in 40:15. Job is no longer the pinnacle of the community; Leviathan, rather, is a creature unsurpassed in strength and royal stature (41:34[26]), in somewhat the same way Job saw himself (29:25). These mythical beasts of chaos take center stage as magnificent and proud creatures. Rather than viewed as hostile beings before God, they are praised by Yahweh as integral parts of this cosmic pageant.

For Job the world is reconstructed by a fiercely loving God, the same world that Job had cursed to chaos in ch. 3. It is a world in which moral retribution has lost its force. Nevertheless, a moral sense of nature pervades these divine speeches. Creation is characterized as an arena of freedom and independence, established by Yahweh, who gratuitously balances and sustains the needs of all creatures and delights in the dignity and beauty of each thing irrespective of utility and without direct and dramatic intervention. The chaotic sea is given birth and nurtured, albeit with imposed limitations (38:8-11). Yahweh even causes the rain to shower upon the desert, “to satisfy the waste and desolate land” (38:26-27). Job’s response to such a radical reorientation is enigmatic, but certainly marks both a resolution of his case against Yahweh and an embrace of a new moral vision (42:1-6). Job has emerged a different sort of patriarch operating with a different set of principles. No longer obsessed with the ideals of honor and authority, he prays to Yahweh on behalf of his friends who had unjustly condemned him. Restored with the same number of children, Job shares his inheritance equally with his daughters (cf. Num. 27:1-11). So read, the book of Job is about the transformation of human integrity, tested and refashioned, and of moral vision, reshaped and broadened.

Bibliography. D. J. A. Clines, Job 1–20. WBC 17 (Waco, 1989); N. C. Habel, The Book of Job. OTL (Philadelphia, 1985); C. A. Newsom, “The Moral Sense of Nature: Ethics in the Light of God’s Speech to Job,” Princeton Seminary Bulletin n.s. 15 (1994): 9-27; L. G. Perdue, Wisdom in Revolt: Metaphorical Theology in the Book of Job. BLS 29. JSOTSup 112 (Sheffield, 1991); M. Tsevat, “The Meaning of the Book of Job,” HUCA 37 (1966): 73-106; repr. in The Meaning of the Book of Job and Other Biblical Studies (New York, 1980), 1-38.

William P. Brown

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

JOB, BOOK OF

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)