The Book of Job

[amanda]

Job is one of my favorite books of the bible. It's also one of the more, if not most, difficult books to wrap your mind around. Or, maybe it's just me.

I've only completely read through the book of Job two or three times. I'm still not sure what we're supposed to take away from it. Is it a refutation of common views at the time that the cause of suffering is sin and that the righteous are rewarded? Is it a response to the problem of evil?

What impressions do you guys have of Job? What is the meaning or overall message of the book? What does it say about God? And what does it say about the problem of pain and suffering (if anything)?

[rickus]

Hey Amanda,

I've never read Job. But your questions about it make me eager to read it.

[Jeff]

Job is one of my favorite books, too. It is so often quoted, you'd think it's message was clear. But I am with you, Amanda. The book doesn't have many clear conclusions--except maybe that women and children are interchangable and quantity of them is all that matters. (That's a joke, Adam, but only kind of.)

I am at work now, but I'll try to post some worthless thoughts about the book tonight when I get home.

Jeff

[chris]

Kind of late getting to this topic, but I share your questions, Amanda. I've come away from the book, the one and a half times I've read it, with the feeling that God is just an arbitrary SOB. To me, Job (himself, in the dialgoues) doesn't make a strong case for standing by a deity who, based on a bet mind you, decides to inflict suffering on those who follow him. Christianity's answer, of course, is that your rewards will come later, but if one doesn't look as far as speculation on the afterlife, what real benefit is there for following this god? I guess, well, because he's God. At least that's the feeling I came away with. It has been years since I read it though.

One time, long ago, Justin had the idea to make a film version of the Book of Job (devil, dialogues and all), not unlike my idea for making a film version of the Book of Jonah. I always liked what Justin was trying to do. "My Dinner with Yahweh"?

[amanda]

Hey, Jeff.. I'm still quite interested in your thoughts on Job, if you're still willing to post them.

[jtmx1]

Maybe we should just read this one together. Looks like four of us are already interested...and, of course, I've never failed to rope your hubby into a conversion on this topic.

So... There are 42 chapters in the book. That works out to be about 50 pages in my bible. I think anyone who wanted to could cover that in 5-10 weeks. Sound good?

[amanda]

Sounds a'ight to me. Other takers?

[jtmx1]

I gave an exam today so I had time to scratch the outline of my interpretation of Job. I am at work now, so I am supposed to be doing worky things. I'll do a write up when I get home...in about an hour!

[Jeff]

My reading of Job

I’ve only read Job twice and both readings were long ago. I read it once when I was about 14, when our community theater put on a production of J.B. ( www.christopher-plummer.com/jb.html ). I read it again when I was 20 when I took my O.T. class with Dr. Cate. I used to wave my bible at people and read the voice from the whirlwind speech in certain arguments with my college friends—yeah I was an asshole back then, too. (I am getting better, but the process is very slow!) We also analyzed the whirlwind speech in my problem of evil class in 2000.

In all this reading I’ve thought that Job has been approached wrongly by nearly everyone, including my past self. The impression has been growing for sometime, but it became very strong after Justin’s accident. I remember asking Justin what he was thinking about while he lay there possibly dying. His response, while completely natural and obviously correct, was something that I was unprepared for. He told me—I paraphrase—“I wasn’t really thinking about anything. I guess I was preoccupied with all the bleeding and hurting.” The stupidity of my question is obvious, even though it makes a kind of superficial sense, if you don’t really consider it.

Already, you see, we are running into a problem which I think we’ll see over and over again in Job: There is a difference between a kind of blood and bone understanding and what we might call thinking or knowing. We’ll have to get clear on this eventually. Another point: Getting clear is obviously a thinking process, so we can make rational points about this very interior kind of understanding. We’ll have to be careful to make sure that these points are adequate, i.e., do justice to the reality of blood and bones. I’ll do this by keeping Justin’s accident in mind as a kind talisman, but you’ll have to tell me if I overestimate its magic.

Here is another kind of symbol of the understanding I’m talking about. Sting has a line in his song “Be Still My Beating Heart”:

And I wriggle like a fish caught on dry land,
Struggle to avoid any helping hand.

This line is meant to apply to someone suffering from premature (immature?) love, a very cultivated state, but I think it’s a completely general idea about our animal responses to pain. The goal of a person who suffers is to be restored to a condition of non-suffering. And if the way to that condition seems to be through a patch of contradictory statements or self-defeating behavior, well that is no barrier at all. This is not to say that the fish wouldn’t be better off allowing the helping hand to do its work, only that there is another kind of understanding at work in it. And this is the understanding we need to talk about when we discuss Job.

Job is the book of the Bible that deals most squarely with enigmatic suffering. I want to suggest to you that there is a difference between that kind of problem and what is often called the problem of evil. I could argue—and I will if anyone deems it necessary—that there is a fundamental difference between evil and suffering. But the big difference that will arise in our reading of Job concerns the solutions to each problem. Very roughly, the solution to the problem of evil is an answer, an explanation, whereas the solution to the problem of suffering is a condition of restoration. Now, there is nothing wrong with wanting an intellectual solution to the problem of evil. But one could easily imagine being granted restoration without explanation. Part of the problem with Job’s friends is that when he cries, “Let the day perish when I was born,” and “I have no rest; but trouble comes,” his friends respond with “Think now, who that was innocent ever perished?” and “How happy is the one whom God reproves.” As I read it, Job is operating in the realm of suffering and restoration while his friends operate on the level of reasons and explanations. I think this is the ultimate reason that God reproves them at the end of the book, but I’m sure we’ll talk more about that later on.

The upshot of my reading of Job is that ultimately its theological points are subsidiary to its descriptive and phenomenological ones, i.e., Job is better read as a description of the suffering of a religious person than as an indication of the nature of God. I think most people miss this. Even the author of the introduction to Job in my New Oxford Annotated Bible (get one of these if you don’t have one) says that the main theological point is “Will mortals be religious apart from rewards and punishments?” I am suggesting to you that the main theological point is that there is no theological point more important than the fact of God’s existence. That is, the chief obstacle to human restoration of any kind is our lack of power.

When the news came to us that Justin had been injured on that sad morning in May, 2003, my mother practically screamed the facts to me. And I began chanting—for reasons not completely clear to me—“No, no, no, no…” We were powerless and confronted with monumental loss. And there were still lots of stupid things we had to do like bathe and call other people and drive 45 miles and deal with hospital staff and the tedium of waiting rooms…and we had no power at all over these conditions. And then there was Justin. You hear people say silly things like “Fighting for his life.” But what kind of fighting is this? Do you really have any power over your afflictions? Isn’t what we really mean by this, “Well, he’s not dead, yet”? Everything gets mysterious very quickly, which is the better part of the reason doctors wear white.

On my view the voice from the whirlwind sounds exactly the right note. It says to Job three important things 1. I exist! 2. I have all the power needed to effect your restoration. And 3. Theological questioning stands to distract you from these facts.

Anyway, that’s how I see things this morning. I am outta time, here! But I am looking forward to our reading. What say we just discuss our basic ideas about the book this week and start reading in earnest next? Sound good?

Jeff

[Jeff]

The Interpreter's One Volume Commentary pretty much agrees with the view I sketched above. It does not, however, note the ambiguity inherent in most understandings of the problem of evil, which it simply conflates with the problem of suffering. Last night I tried to find a commentary that didn't have this failing, but I couldn't. Still, if you have access to this volume, I'd recommend you take at look at the section in the introduction to Job entitled "themes."

Jeff

[Jeff]

Some late night thoughts on suffering…

Though the distinction between the problems of evil and suffering is important, they are conflated, I think, because it is often the case that suffering comes without either restoration or explanation. Thus, the most troublesome case vexes us from two sides, as it were. This helps explain why even if an intellectual solution could be found, it would still ring hollow. (Even if Job’s friends turned out to be correct, they are not addressing Job’s real concern.)

The kinds of intellectual “solutions” that get discussed are well known to everyone: Some suffering is educative, some suffering is necessary for the universe to have some pervasive feature (like freewill), perhaps God is not powerful enough to eliminate all the suffering (and suffers, too), etc… But I would argue that even if some or all of these are true, the vast majority of the suffering in the universe is still left unexplained. And this fact, by itself, constitutes the strongest evidence we have that God does not exist.

What interests me in all this is the relationship between wisdom and explanation. Suppose that you were a wise friend of Job. What is the wisest thing that you could say to him? Perhaps it would be something like, “I am with you till the end, no matter what happens.” In other words, at the end of the day, wisdom doesn’t get beyond categories like friendship, presence, and compassion. Further, it is part of wisdom to know intellectually this limitation.

The wise do have some knowledge, then, but the basis for their knowledge is the limitation of human rationality itself. This amounts to a kind of unavoidable intellectual insecurity, a kind that abhors even the hint of dogmatic certainty.

I find both the attempt to demonstrate logically God’s non-existence and the claim that She obviously exists and Her will is easily discerned eerily alike in their overconfidence in human discernment. In this way suffering is oddly non-paradoxical, indeed, it offers a great clarification of human wisdom: Be humble before the greatness of the world that you will never fully understand.

I do not think that is the last word on the subject, however, since it also seems to be part of wisdom to creatively construct, even on a grand scale. But even the products of these endeavors are uncertain and insecure. In fact, they mostly move beyond our creative authority even as they become important to others.

I suppose I should shut up in this thread now and let someone else get a word in.

Jeff

[Betterout]

For all my bellyaching about how great this book is, I think I ultimately like Job for all the wrong reasons. Honestly, though, the God character is a fairly heartless braggart and bully. Job is so self-absorbed with his own warped concepts of righteousness (this is the guy who begs daily for God to forgive his kids on the off chace that they might have sinned without intending to) that he sees the needless deaths of family members and nearly all of his workers as an attack on himself (well, let's face it: he's right there). He then spends the better part of the book arguing with blockheads about it. And when he gets his chance to dress God down face-to-face, he completely chickens out. And then he's pacified when God gives him all new stuff.

That said, I really do love the book. And what I love about it is not what it says about God or suffering or evil (it doesn't take much of stand on human evil, and it doesn't call God's actions evil, even though they were arguably the very epitome thereof), but rather what it says about humanity in general, most notably in terms of our desire to discover the true nature of world, self, and God, and the various blurry interfaces between them all. This is the very essence of human religious experience. And, actually, the book even takes a break midstream (well, chapter 28) to talk this process, our unending quest for what the author calls wisdom. There's a really great mining metaphor that I always thought would appeal especially to Tyler (who himself is concerned especially with a particular brand of righteousness that greatly outweighs the superficial things of our world, despite the high values many have assigned them, and who has also played a memorable dwarven D&D character or two):

Surely there is a mine for silver, and a place for gold to be refined. Iron is taken out of the earth, and copper is smelted from ore. Miners put an end to darkness, and search out to the farthest bound the ore in gloom and deep darkness. They open shafts in a valley away from human habitation; they are forgotten by travelers, they sway suspended, remote from people. As for the earth, out of it comes bread; but underneath it is turned up as by fire. Its stones are the place of sapphires, and its dust contains gold. That path no bird of prey knows, and the falcon's eye has not seen it. The proud wild animals have not trodden it; the lion has not passed over it. They put their hand to the flinty rock, and overturn mountains by the roots. They cut out channels in the rocks, and their eyes see every precious thing. The sources of the rivers they probe; hidden things they bring to light. But where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding? Mortals do not know the way to it, and it is not found in the land of the living.

The deep says, "It is not in me,' and the sea says, "It is not with me.' It cannot be gotten for gold, and silver cannot be weighed out as its price. It cannot be valued in the gold of Ophir, in precious onyx or sapphire. Gold and glass cannot equal it, nor can it be exchanged for jewels of fine gold. No mention shall be made of coral or of crystal; the price of wisdom is above pearls. The chrysolite of Ethiopia cannot compare with it, nor can it be valued in pure gold.

Where then does wisdom come from? And where is the place of understanding? It is hidden from the eyes of all living, and concealed from the birds of the air. Abaddon and Death say, "We have heard a rumor of it with our ears." God understands the way to it, and he knows its place. For he looks to the ends of the earth, and sees everything under the heavens. When he gave to the wind its weight, and apportioned out the waters by measure; when he made a decree for the rain, and a way for the thunderbolt; then he saw it and declared it; he established it, and searched it out. And he said to humankind, "Truly, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding."

Moreover, the Satan character in Job is a straight up trickster figure like out of one of Mr. Hawziptah's Saynday stories (I can almost hear Little Pounded Meat's noo-noo-nee-noo song as I'm typing this). Satan serves the Great One in more of a creative foil role than that of archnemesis. Satan wanders around on earth, but is welcome to come and go in the heavens like a card carrying member of the local press corps. And Satan plays God like a pipe! It's great storytelling, friends, and is just so memorably out of place in today's over-represented button-down right-wing tea-totalling Christianity varieties.

And, yeah, I love God's "Hey, who's the all-powerful one here?" shtick at the end. It's freakin' hysterical. I read it and just laaauuugh... And then quickly check for nearby lightnight strikes, while reverently putting the book back in the shelf.

[Jeff]

I hear you on the Satan character in Job, Justin. He certainly still enjoys community with God, and he also is concerned with human beings. Why should he care if we are too focused on rewards and punishments, anyway?

He doesn't even appear as the most evil character in the book! Job's wife comes off worse, I think. “Why don’t you curse God and die—so I can be released from marriage to you?” It is telling that Satan doesn’t even ask God if he can deprive Job of her. Her heart seems to return only when the prosperity does. So long as Job sits on the ash heap, she don't want no scrubs.

[rick the illiterate]

Just a quick comment.

We covered Job in Bible study a couple of weeks ago. Our Bible study "Leader?" is currently going to seminary at Philips in Enid. He mentioned that the meaning of the name in Hebrew is something along the lines of "an instigator" and that this character in Job really should not be confused with the later portrayal of Satin as the Evil One. He insisted that they are two different characters.

[jtmx1]

Rickus,

The character of Satan undergoes constant evolution throughout the Bible. I would urge that he has no consistent nature that persists throughout its entirety. Even if you confine your attention to the NT, Satan looks more like the Satan in the writings of the Essenes than his description in the OT. And where did the Essenes get their ideas? Probably from Zoroastrianism. So the NT Satan might have more in common with Ahriman than with the obstructer of the OT. Strange and stranger.

I am pleased that your seminarian drew a distinction between OT Satan and his NT counterpart. But heck, why stop there? Why not deconstruct the character entirely? I know that I’ve mentioned this before, but Elaine Pagels wrote a pretty good book that does just that called The Origin of Satan ( www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679731180/sr=8-1/qid=1143745425/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-6871237-5673457?%5Fencoding=UTF8 ). She argues that Satan in the NT represents parts of the community both Christian and non-Christian that proto-orthodoxy wanted to vilify, to classify as Other. What is interesting is how these judgments w/i the Christian community shift and how those shifts show up in character of Satan.

Now, this is a very liberal view, of course. Pagels doesn't believe Satan is anything but a myth, though a very interesting one. But looking at the Bible, its historical influences and the best scholarship we have available, isn’t that the most faithful thing we can say?

Jeff

Interesting: www.religioustolerance.org/chr_sat2.htm