Week # 42 Study Page

Job 11-37

About the Book(s)

Job

Date of Authorship: Job is famously one of the most difficult books of the bile to date. Job reads like a play, it is appropriately classified as wisdom literature in the Hebrew Bible because this writing has no intention of providing or describing history. Instead of providing us with a context of kings, kingdoms and ages, the author only briefly gives us hard-to-pin-down location/nation names, and instead focuses on the characters on the stage, and their dialogue. Early in the Church and even in BC rabbinical literature a tradition developed that Job takes place, and was written in the patriarchal era (the age before Moses, closer to, but after the time of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob). This tradition is supported by the names that the author of Job uses for God (El and Eloah), the fact that Job’s wealth is measured by herd-size, and Job’ patriarchal role as priest (he was the one offering sacrifices for his children). While many modern scholars have skeptically viewed the prospect that such a complex and magnificent piece of literature could have such an early origin, 20th-century archaeology has uncovered similarly complex wisdom literature from the Sumerian/Akkadian civilizations which belongs to the 1700’s BC. Job is mentioned by the prophet Ezekiel alongside Noah and Daniel (Ezekiel 14:14,20), so the story of Job was well known and circulated in Israel by at least that date. I prefer the tradition of the early Church and rabbinical literature which dates job to the Patriarchal period, sometime between 1900-1500 BC.

Author: We know nothing of the Author of Job, but we can speculate about the place of origin. the names of the characters would seem to fit well into Edomite culture, and the names Eliphaz and Teman feature in the Chronology of Esau (from whom the lineage of the Edomites is traced) in Genesis 36 (see verses 4 & 11 - note, its very unlikely that the Eliphaz mentioned there is the Eliphaz in Job, but somewhat likely that this name continued to be used in the family of his son Teman, and that the Eliphaz in Job is a descendant of this son of Esau). The author’s and character’s Edomite heritage combined with a patriarchal period of authorship would well explain the understanding of God that is presented in this book.

Purpose: Job is a book about human suffering, and mankind’s quest for answers and explanations related to its presence. Far from a straight-forward treatise or theological explanation of this problem, Job is a drama, a play where the reader is invited to sit in the seat of the suffer and consider his words along with the words of his friends, as we join them in searching for truth about pain and why we suffer it. Its role in God’s word is to help God’s people explore and consider the problem of pain and begin to understand our suffering as it relates to God’s sovereignty and providence.

As You Read Notes:

Job: Dialogue

After chapter 2, Job is a series of dialogues between Job, his friends, and later, God. These friends came to “sympathize with” Job (NIV), this word comes from the verb that would mean literally “to shake (the head)” and it is an expression of sorrow or pity. These are the characters that the author of Job will use to explore the problem of suffering in a dialogic manner.

“One of the marks of greatness that characterize this book is that after the prologue we are never able to identify fully and fixedly with Job or with the friends until the epilogue. By this skillful technique the author draws us into Job’s struggle, forcing us to look at all angles. So we need not be overcome by guilt when we on occasion cheer Job on as he challenges God, or by condemnation when we find ourselves nodding approvingly at the speeches of the friends… We should be aware that the dialogue does not proceed strictly by the method of point/counterpoint. Although one speaker would take strong exception to another’s words, they often responded more to what they believed themselves to hear than what the speaker actually said.” (C. Hassell Bullock, An Introduction to the Old Testament Poetic Books. P. 104-109)

Because of the nature of this literature, we, as readers need to be extremely careful with how we regard the words that we’re reading. You can not take a verse from Bildad’s response in chapter 8 and declare that it must be true of God, the same way that we would be able to do with a verse from one of Isaiah’s prophecies. These are characters in a dialogue about Job’s suffering, and when we read God’s reaction next week, he will not be judging their words favorably. To read their words as absolute theological constructions of truth simply because they are in the Bible is to ignore the nature of the literature of Job, and to mistreat God’s word. You must read their words (even Job’s) from the perspective of the characters and allow for the possibility that what they are saying may be incorrect, in fact, much of it is. God will eventually weigh in here, in a way that requires you to know what kind of trial and dialogue Job has been through, and we’ll certainly treat those words as true. But caution yourself as a reader, to hear the voice of the characters instead of God when you’re reading Job and his friends discuss his ordeal for most of the book of Job.

Job’s contention

Job is the main character in this drama and he has drawn a tough role. His life has seemingly been ruined, and his body afflicted with painful sores. One week after all of this happens, Job is sent another affliction in the form of his friends. After a week of sitting in silence with them Job speaks out in anguish to express the severity of his suffering. I think it is important to see that Job does not challenge God in his opening soliloquy. This is a development that comes later as a response to the counsel of his three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. Each of them are of the opinion that Job has sinned against God and has been punished for it. Against their allegations Job begins to defend himself by claiming innocence and righteousness. As the argument of Job’s friends intensifies, so does Job’s defense of his own guiltlessness. Job goes from wanting God to turn away, to wanting an audience before God, and ultimately challenges God to answer his (Job’s) oaths about how righteously he has acted. consider the change that Job goes through in the course of his dialog. Compare the mournfulness of Job 3 with the indignation of Job 31 which includes this challenge:

35 (“Oh, that I had someone to hear me!
    I sign now my defense—let the Almighty answer me;
    let my accuser put his indictment in writing.
36 Surely I would wear it on my shoulder,
    I would put it on like a crown.
37 I would give him an account of my every step;
    I would present it to him as to a ruler.)— (Job 31)

Is Job better off in chapter 31 than where he started in chapter 3? As the dialog continues, Job’s contempt for his friends intensifies. He believes that they are being cruel to him, that their counsel is wrong, and that he’d be better off without them. On this, I agree with Job

Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar

These friends engage in three cycles of dialog with Job. Each of them speaks in order, to Job and then hears his response; only Zophar is missing from the third cycle of dialog

Cycle 1: chapters 4-14
Cycle 2: chapters 15-21
Cycle 3: chapters 22-27

Though their arguments are unique, and there is progressive movement from graciousness and sympathy to condemnation and disagreement, there is a univocal message at the core of everything that they say in the book. Their main contention is that God has punished Job for his transgression(s). They are constantly trying to prove to Job that all of these calamities are punishment from God for his (Job’s) wickedness. The God of Job’s friends is purely transnational, blessings are rewards from God for the righteous, and calamity is punishment from God for the wicked. When Job points out that many people who act wickedly prosper, they dismiss the prosperity of the wicked as only a temporary, false, and empty illusion, claiming that the wicked can’t even enjoy their prosperity because they know that God’s punishment lurks around the corner. Because Job has suffered, his friends’ minds are made up that Job has been counted among the wicked - for some reason - and this is why he must be suffering. Job’s insistence of his innocence is rebuffed by these friends who scold Job for believing that any person could be righteous before God. You can feel Job’s friends’ frustration at his unwillingness to accept their counsel.

Job’s friends are, of course, wrong about the reason for Job’s suffering. The author of Job told us the story behind Job’s afflictions, precisely so that we could read the words of Job and his friends while knowing why Job really suffered. The reader is hearing these arguments being made while all-the-while knowing that these guys have no clue about why all of this has happened to Job, and they’d never guess the truth. I believe that the rejection of Job’s friends’ contention that suffering must* be* punishement from God for wickedness is a primary purpose for the author of Job. This understanding of God and worldly events expressed by Job’s friends would have been extremely common to the understanding of ancient peoples. The reader of job encounters the inescapable fact that the argument made by these three friends is false, and must conclude that they themselves can not so confidently assert that each earthly/human calamity is God’s punishment for wickedness. The falsity of the argument being made by these 3 friends is what the author of Job spends the majority of this drama displaying, thus it needs to be a primary lesson which we learn from the book.

Elihu

Elihu’s speech concludes our reading this week. Though this (chapter 32) is the first time we are introduced to him, he has apparently been there with Job and the three friends this whole time. Elihu is a “Buzite,” Buz was the nephew of Abraham (Genesis 22:20-21), and he was younger than the rest of the characters in Job. Job’s three friends are unable to respond after Job’s long final speech (26-31) so Elihu breaks in. Much of what Elihu has to say is a defense of his right to say it and a rationale for why his words should be heeded despite the fact that he is young.

Elihu is critical of Job’s friends for not being able to effectively correct Job, and especially critical of Job for attempting to justify himself before God. Much of Elihu’s correction of Job sounds like what the other three friends have said. One minor difference is that Elihu stipulates that God could send suffering not only* as punishment for wickedness, but also for the purpose of correcting or training humans to be righteous (33:14-30, 37:13). Elihu’s final words sound very much like what God is about to declare to Job and Elihu points out that God is almighty, and we can not question his ways, or even advocate for ourselves before him because of the vast distance between His transcendence and our own “darkness” (Job 37:19). Unlike every other part of the dialog in Job, Elihu’s contribution is not responded to, and not judged directly by God. While Elihu seems to rightly correct Job’s self-advocacy before God, his understanding of human suffering is still insufficient, and gives no account for the true story that the reader of Job was told before any of this dialog took place.

Although we are left with an attractive formula that might explain suffering in some cases, the reader knows that Elihu has applied it to the wrong case because the prologue has provided the audience a higher level of understanding. When the garrulous Elihu is finished we may have explored another forest more fully, but we are really no closer to home than we were when the major discussants had exhausted their verbal arsenals. (An Intorduction to the Old Testament Poetic Books - C. Hassell Bullock, p. 124)

Week #42 - Job 11-37