The Book of Job

The Book of Job is one of the toughest and most important books in scripture. It is tough for translators because the writer uses a rather idiosyncratic Hebrew that borrows heavily from aramaic. This makes it easier to date the book, but harder to get precise translations. Precise translations for some parts of the book are all but impossible. It is important for interpreters because it serves the supremely important function of criticizing the Deuteronomic interpretation of life.

For most of the prophetic Old Testament, the simple answer to the problem of evil is: you deserve it. Good things happen to good people, bad things happen to bad people, and that is about it. This is the Deuteronomic or Deuteronomistic interpretation of life. Job is all-important because it is the apex of a tradition that criticizes this view. The Book of Job INSISTS in a divine voice that there is such a thing as innocent, undeserved suffering. It allows no question, it is iconoclastic on this point. It is a supreme testament to the conversational nature of scripture (which I have championed for years), and shows just how intellectual sophisticated the Bible can be. For the writers of the Bible did not leave out this all-important critical voice that contradicted so much of what was said elsewhere. The Bible includes a powerful principle of self-criticism, which is vital to any vehicle of genuine truth.

However, as interpreters realize it's importance, they struggle with it's message. For the picture of God given is one of a capricious, very limited, and in many ways morally offensive being. It is not a picture of God that is consistent with almost any other found in the Bible, and more over it is not a God that seems by any means worthy of worship. Of course most (but not all) interpreters assume that the picture of God given in Job is meant to be self-consistent, a view I will challenge later on in this post. However, assuming I'm wrong and the others are right, the overall picture of God is not a very good one. Further, when God comes in for one of the great theophanies of the Bible in chapter 38, the answer given to Job is a hard one to discern. There are almost as many interpretations of the end of Job as there are interpreters. The writer of the book does a superb job setting up the problem of evil in it's starkest and most difficult terms. But when an answer to the problem is finally offered, which is what the reader is set up to anticipate throughout the book, it isn't clear what the heck the guy is saying.

It is undeniable, however, that the Book of Job is supremely important. I have my own way of understanding the book. This reflection is, to some degree, idiosyncratic, though it relies on the mountain of good work done by other theologians and pastors. The first thing to remember is that Job is really like a musical. The writer is a poet, and most of the book is written as a series of Psalms. People speak in Psalm, in the book. The prevailing view is that this book is a parable, and so we shouldn't take it to be telling us the story of a man who really existed. Job is considered one of the greatest works of poetry anywhere, and arguably the greatest Hebrew poem of all time.

While I have no doubt that much of the book is poetic and parabolic, I am in the minority in believing that the figure of Job in the story refers to a real person, and I think that person is the writer. In my view, the writer experienced some terrible tragedy, perhaps even an illness like Job himself. The beginning of the book, adapted from an earlier oral story, is the writer caricaturing God. The writer is saying in essence "if God is as I was always taught He was, given what has happened to me, then this is what God is like". The image of God we find at the beginning of the story is indeed an image that is less than good, and less than worshipful. He makes a bet with his prosecuting attorney (the word translated 'satan' is actually 'ha-satan' and refers to the tester, or prosecutor in God's divine court) and is persuaded and changes His mind based on the prodding of this rather foul-tempered angel. I think this is deliberate on the part of Job. He is angry at what happened to him, and he cannot reconcile what happened to him with the image of a moral God. So, he gives up the belief that God is, in fact, moral. That is the reason for the rather jerky story about God we find at the beginning.

Job then goes on to animate the Deuteronomic interpretation of life. The writer has always been taught a certain type of theological outlook, a certain way of looking at God, life and God's action in the world. He wants to challenge that outlook. He does this by bringing this prevailing point of view 'to life' in the form of Job's friends, who come to at first comfort and later challenge him. The writer was a skilled poet and a frantic writer, and so He's just working all out in verse. The friends argue the case of the prophetic tradition, and Job knocks it down. This goes on for a long time. It is clear to me that the writer is very emotional, is feeling what he is saying in a very deep way. Job is the writer, I think. Or at least stands in for him.

There is a certain point in the story when the imagery turns consistently to images of bad weather, of storms. I suspect that the writer, perhaps writing in the shell of the house he once owned (much like Job), may have been hit by a major storm during the process of writing. It is during this storm that the writer (and Job in the story) have their theophany. The God that appears at this point is like no other in the Bible. I stand strongly with those writers who think that the God who appears in chapter 38 is only nominally connected to the God found at the beginning of the story. This God is transcendent, is beyond in a way that earlier God was not. He gives a vision of creation which is not anthropocentric, a minority view in scripture to be sure. This God is beyond, is so beyond that in response all any human being can do is repent in response to His coming.

There is no answer given to the problem of evil when this other God appears. What does happen, I think, is that the earlier image of God as capricious and uncaring is all but wiped away. This God cares about Job, but the gift He wants to give is not the material wealth that Job once knew (the earlier God reappears at the end to grant just these gifts due to, I think, a later edit), but the Spiritual gift of His very presence. The answer the writer discovered, perhaps as the result of the storm, was that through his suffering a deeper reality of God could be found. Job discovered God through his pain, and his working out of that pain through the poems. The discovery of a greater divine truth through our hardship is the only answer to the problem of evil that is offered at the end. An exact formula for how we can theologically explain suffering is lacking.

So what we are left with is the evolution of one man's picture of what God is. That evolution takes place through hardship and through the creative act of writing the poetry. We are left with a sense of the grandeur of creation, and the otherness of God, and the absolute conviction that while suffering is not always deserved, it is always an opportunity to learn and grow no matter what.

For the Christian, there is one final layer to all this. Job includes an evolving picture of God within it, but it is also part of the overall evolution of human understanding of God within the Bible. In particular, it helps lay the groundwork for the revelation of God found in Christ Jesus. For in Job our understanding of suffering and God's place within it have changed. The prophets saw suffering as the work of a righteous God on a deserving humanity. The Book of Job proclaims that the righteous do indeed suffer, and God is not enemy of the suffering person, but with them in a special way. In the Gospels, God becomes the suffering person. God becomes Job. So the whole Deuteronomic tradition is turned on it's head. In this way Job is more than just a book of wisdom, but indeed a book of prophecy. For like Isaiah, and Joel, and Malachi, it laid the foundation from which the very Incarnation of God would come. It set the stage for the coming of Christ. And if we let it, it can be part of that tradition that can change forever the way we look at ourselves, at the world, and at God. Amen.