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Preface
The book of Job has had a bad reputation, perhaps because the Hebrew
it is written in is obscure, and some earlier translations gave
confused readings. Perhaps because it is written in poetry, which is
harder to understand than the historical writings. Or perhaps because
the topic is too painful and the answers not comforting. For whatever
reason, there have been too few studies of the book of Job, and fewer
that I have found encouraging. Yet it is a book that holds a magnetic
attraction for me, a book I keep coming back to year after year. When
I feel discouraged, when I feel persecuted, when I feel abandoned by
God, I stop and reread this book. The answer I find changes with each
reading, the answer deepens and brings with it fresh wonder and awe.
With each new disappointment in life I find a resonance in Job, and a
new revelation in his reply. It is out of that appreciation for Job,
for how he lived and how he spoke, that I am writing this short
study. If I can convey a small fraction of the comfort I have
received, then this effort will be well spent.
1.1 Methodology
The requisite section before beginning any book study is a
semi-exhaustive list of the historical context, the sources, the
authors, and the theology of the book. I have neither the knowledge nor
the resources to write such an introduction, though some of these
points will be made at other places in the study. Instead I want to
describe the approach I take to this book. It is both objective and
subjective, scholarly and personal, observer and participant,
strategic and tactical. Without analyzing the objectives of the book
we will get lost in the debates, but without participating in the
dialogue we will completely miss the rebuttals. Therefore the early
part of this study will be all strategic, laying out the battleground,
the weapons, the known tactics of the belligerents. The later part of
this study will be the thrust and parry, the heat and the dust of the
battle. The stakes are high: Job's very life and perhaps his
salvation hangs by a thread. The tactics are brutal: accusations,
innuendoes, words that cut like knives. The outcome: well,
unexpected.
Higher Criticism
There is no doubt, wrote one critic, that the text of chapters 24 to
30 is clearly jumbled. "There is nothing for it but to reorder the
text as best we can, realizing that the original order is probably
lost forever." I take this "lost forever" to mean that we will never
get a majority of Hebrew scholars to agree on any particular
reordering, because, alas, when we do as best we can, we change the
meaning of the text, since reassigning text to Job or to Zophar or to
God will have a significant effect on the meaning. What are we to
do?
The problem is potentially fatal, since our interpretation of Job will
dictate our reordering (not to mention our textual emendations). Thus
we find ourselves in the vicious circle of subjectively deciding the
objective outcome. Since the only ordering all Hebrew scholars can
agree on is the present one, I think the most objective approach is to
leave the ordering alone. If this makes our interpretation difficult, so
be it. The God who caused Job to suffer, who caused the book to be
written, surely is responsible for the sad state of the text today. One
might even conclude that he wanted Hebrew scholars to share, if ever
so slightly, in Job's suffering.
The loss of meaning, or the loss of information, must not be pinned to
a single word, or a phrase or even a poor ordering of the text. If
there is a consistent theme throughout the book, if there is an
overarching message, it will overcome all such difficulties. The
approach we take to this book, therefore, is particularly designed for
addressing ambiguous problems, for solving the situation of partial
information. Perhaps an analogy will clarify this approach, by showing
how the human brain (unlike a computer) is unusually adapted for
solving such problems.
My brother-in-law was born with a auditory nerve hearing loss that
prevents him from hearing any frequencies above middle C. Most of the
consonants, such as "s" and "t" consist entirely of high frequencies,
that sound to him like silence. Try speaking a sentence out loud,
voicing only the vowels. "Ow ah ou?" That's the general idea. At an
early age he was taught to lip-read and does phenomenally well. The
doctor told his parents that there would be some things he could never
do, such as talk on the telephone. The doctor was wrong. I just
finished getting directions to his house from him, over the
telephone. How does he do it? Frankly, I don't know and I don't know
anyone else who has this ability. He tells his telephone callers to
identify themselves using their full christian names, the more
syllables the better. If he doesn't know who you are, or what you will
be talking about, conversation is well nigh impossible. But once he
knows your name and your potential message, he follows remarkable
well. He fills in the missing information from context and sometimes
asks that you use longer words to explain something. His brain is
constantly comparing all the potential expected messages to the
minimal information he can hear and filling in the gaps. The more
context he can associate with the message, the easier it is for him to
follow. This then is our approach to the book of Job.
We obviously lack information at many levels of the book of Job, from
the translation of ambiguous words to the ordering of the text, from
the purpose of Job's suffering to the normally clear meaning of God's
prophecies. Some of this is intentional, some of it is accidental. But
the meaning can still be extracted when we apply the same principles
as my brother-in-law applies to telephone conversations: context, both
real and potential. Like him, we must look at all the potential
messages in this book, constantly comparing them with what we actually
read, and filling in the gaps. The truly difficult part of this
process is narrowing down the choice of potential messages. Those
decisions are in part subjectively determined by our interests and
experiences. Thus this little book acts as a test of our abilities, if
we fail to find coherence, if we fail to solve the apparent paradoxes,
we have failed the final exam. This book is as much about the journey
to truth, as it is about the truth itself.
Distinctions
Traditionally, theological institutions divide the areas of study into
"Systematic Theology" (a topical approach to the Bible) or
"Biblio-Historical Theology" (a more chronological approach to the
Bible). One can find all sorts of specialties within these broad
categories: "Apocalyptic Theology", or "The Doctrine of Salvation"
might be subcategories under the first, whereas "Pauline Theology" or
"The Historical Jesus" might be subcategories of the second. This art
of categorizing is both a strength and weakness in human thought, with
examples that can be drawn from every age, from the Garden or
Hammurabi to the present. Sometimes it is essential to knowledge and
progress, sometimes it is a deep pit. For example, learning the
difference between the genders is an important step in every child's
development of "self-identity" and cannot be overplayed, but
associating that distinction with power, significance or privilege is
a pit from which our society has yet to escape. Thus the skill of
making right distinctions is the art of creating unity from diversity,
of weaving many colored threads into a single tapestry, of combining
both systematic and historical theology into compelling knowledge of
God.
For without any distinctions, consequences seem arbitrary, decisions
mysterious and conclusions unfulfilling; we become merely witnesses of
a secret rite in a foreign language. Yet with inappropriate
distinctions, actions appear staged, decisions predetermined, and
conclusions predictable; we become the shamans, proud of our intricate
steps. The path to the knowledge of God lies between these extremes
and it is treacherous and full of pitfalls. It means sometimes knowing
too little (what was God thinking when he gave Satan permission to
abuse Job?) and sometimes knowing too much (if only Job's friends
heard God say he was a blameless man!) And more often than not it
means taking a different path each time one reads the book of Job.
False humility aside, I am just a dabbler in this field, and can only
suggest some of the distinct threads running through this rich
tapestry of history, poetry, didaction and worship that we call the
book of Job. I can only hope that my handling of this subject sets the
proper tone between monotony and cacophony, between dogged
interpretation and incredible constructs; that it find the
transcendent melody of God's love and salvation that dips and rises
like an angel song playing briefly on the edge of our hearing and then
is gone.
Multiperspectivalism
What is multiperspectivalism? It is the art or skill of viewing a
single work of literature from many different perspectives. Now not
every perspective is meaningful for a particular work. Only history
can tell whether the feminist critique of Newton's Principia will
stand the test of time, but it is my opinion that such perspectives
reveal much more about the reviewer than the work reviewed. My goal,
inasmuch as I can objectively view it, is to let the book of Job tell
its timeless story without interference from my late 20th century
perspective. My goal is to explore, to mine the richness of a human
story told well, of a divine story with human actors, of an ageless
story rooted in a historical time, objectively applying every
potential perspective that can unlock the riches of this work.
Does this work use stage sets reminiscent of a law court? Then let us
analyze the work as a human court scene, perhaps it will explain the
mysterious unannounced entrance of Elihu as "a friend of the
court". Does this work use military language? Then let us describe the
combatants, perhaps it explains the odd presence of "Satan", "The
Adversary", in the heavenly realms. What is unexplained with one
perspective may become crystal clear in another. The richness of human
thought and literature lies in this essential ambiguity. No one
perspective invalidates another, each contribute to the web of
meaning. The skills learned in diagramming this web are skills
directly applicable to all of life, for are we not all engaged in a
lifelong struggle to extract meaning from our brief existence?
Multiperspectivalism is more than a literary technique, it is a
lifestyle.
Incarnation
But like Shakespeare and other great works of literature, this
endeavor is bound to fail precisely because the greatness of this book
lies in its ability to hold a mirror to my opinions and prejudices. I
cannot remain objective when reading Job, I must take a stand, I must
react to the enormous claims, either with indignation or with
worship. On my first reading I was indignant with Satan, on my second
reading I was mad at God, on my third I was upset with Job, on the
fourth I was angry at Elihu, and most recently, I was shocked by the 3
so-called friends. This then is the dilemma confronting us; we must
make objective distinctions from many subjective perspectives to even
begin to understand this human drama on a heavenly stage that is the
book of Job, but if instead we apply subjective distinctions from an
"objective" perspective we will extract only what we already know. For
example, we know (from reading the end of the book) that both God and
Job were upset with the three friends, yet if we then assume that
everything the three friends say is theologically flawed, we will miss
both the power and the truth in their arguments. Instead we must view
the book from the perspective of these friends if we are to fully
appreciate Job's response.
But how is it possible, if the book demands a subjective response, to
objectively apply such different perspectives to it? Will not our gut
response subjectively color the perspective we seek to understand?
Can we really apply Eliphaz' perspective to Job when we are appalled
at his tactics? I think we can accomplish this feat the same way that
an actor can convincingly portray an unwholesome character, and
portray him night after night while knowing the ending of the drama.
That is, by being a participant, by immersing oneself so completely in
the character that the dialogue is "new" and "fresh" every time. If it
is a defining characteristic of humans to make distinctions, then it
is also a defining characteristic to unmake them, to empathize, to
vicariously experience what a fellow human being is undergoing. If the
God who created man in his own image was introduced to us in Genesis 1
as the God who distinguished between the earth and the sky, then He is
also the same God who empathized with us in our suffering in Isaiah
53.
We are neither observers nor shamans of the book of Job, but
participants in this rivetting drama. As we absorb with Job the next
body blow to our psyche, our emotions well up fresh each time. Yes,
they are colored by our previous reading, but also deepened. We can
begin to feel beyond the raw anger to the disappointment, the pity,
and yes, the hope that Job speaks in his reply. Then when life deals
me the short stick, the cutting comment, the unexpected disaster, I
can hear Job's voice guiding me, "no don't put your trust there, here
is your real hope." and his words are like steel girders to my
soul.
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Copyright © 1997 Rob Sheldon