It is the third time in a row that I write about a book of the Bible. There are so many exciting books to choose from! Job is a book I have not seriously touched in many years, so it is time I do something with it. I ran into a book by Tremper Longman and John Walton, How to Read Job, that gave me the perfect push and frame to do so. I won’t presume to write a general introduction to the book, but I did find a few intriguing angles and insights to share.
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One such insight: the book of Job is not about Job, at least not primarily; it is about God. And it is not about suffering; after all, suffering is certainly not explained in Job. Instead, it is about justice, God’s justice. The crucial question is: is God just? Is God fully just in the way he runs the cosmos? I will come back to these claims, but first, some background we need to properly understand Job.
Conventional Wisdom Demolished
It is easy to miss how shocking Job is. In dealing with old texts that were revolutionary and caused a great stir when they were first published, it is often hard for us, reading them today, to grasp what made them so controversial in their day. I have read Martin Luther’s 95 theses against the practice of indulgences wondering, what’s the big deal? At the time they were written, they shook the world as the equivalent of an earthquake so big that it is off the scale of Richter. I read it, and it would not have moved me much at all if I had not known about its historical impact.
I felt the same way reading The Jewish State by Theodor Herzl. At the end of the 19th century, it was a major catalyst for the Zionist movement which led to the founding of the State of Israel. The book was a bombshell. Read it today, and you wonder why; like Luther’s theses, it is not very exciting.
In such cases, to get at least an impression of a piece of writing’s first impact, we must consider the circumstances and the prevailing mindset at the time it appeared. When it comes to Job, conventional wisdom among the nations surrounding Israel was based on two pillars; in part and with modifications they were affirmed by Israel as well – and the book of Job thrashes them:
1. The retribution principle. “The retribution principle is, simply stated, the righteous will prosper and the wicked will suffer. The oft-appended corollary is that if someone suffers, they are wicked, and if someone prospers, they are righteous” (Walton and Longman III 2015: 89; emphasis in original).
For the nations around Israel, right behaviour was primarily understood in ritual terms and the gods were unpredictable and their actions often mysterious and unintelligible; there was a fair bit of guess work involved.
In Israel, ethical considerations were more important than ritual ones and there was, of course, only one God, and he was never moody or fickle, but otherwise, the retribution principle was fully considered to be accurate: this was how God ruled the world. It was also how he should rule the world.
There are examples of wisdom texts from the ancient Near East that deal with the enigma of the ‘pious sufferer’ and that reflect exactly this understanding. They are sometimes considered parallels to the book of Job, but what makes Job different is (a) the strong focus on righteousness rather than mere ritual, (b) Job’s insistence on his innocence, and (c) the fact that God is not offended for some utterly mysterious reason and therefore does not need to be appeased by some ritual or otherwise.
2. The great symbiosis. The ancient world believed that the gods had needs such as food and housing in the form of sacrifices and temples and that humans had been created to take care of these needs. In return, the gods were expected to provide for and protect their worshippers: “The great symbiosis assumed that people served the gods so that the gods could serve them, and vice versa” (Walton and Longman III 2015: 28).
The book of Job rejects this principle and, strictly speaking, Israel should have rejected it as well. After all, God has no needs that humans need to provide for and he is worthy to be served for who he is, not for what the worshipper expects to get in return. However, Job’s friends by and large seem to expect things to work this way: serve God, do well, and you will experience his blessing. No doubt, in this they resembled the large majority of Israel.
The Three Central Questions in Job
Now we are ready to come back to the original question: what is the book of Job about? One way to put this is that it is about three questions, two related to God and one related to humans. The first question concerns God’s essential nature. The second question concerns the way he deals with the world, his policies or principles. The third question probes the motivation of humans; it is much less obvious and prominent, and therefore easy to miss, but it is of foundational importance because it helps us to understand that the answer to the second question cannot be simple or straightforward. In the end, the book radically reframes the question about God.
1. God’s nature: Is God just? The answer is yes but no real defence is given in the book of Job.
2. God’s policies: How can righteous people suffer (or wicked people prosper)? This is the primary question in the debate, at least if we accept Job’s persistent claim that he is innocent; otherwise, the answer is simple: Job’s friends would be right. However, we know from the start that they are not because both the narrator (Job 1:1) and God himself (Job 1:8; 2:3) affirm him as blameless. No explanation is given but the book will tell us what to do: trust his wisdom.
3. Why do people who serve God do so? In the case of Job: why is Job righteous? The way Satan poses the question is: “Does Job serve (or fear) God for nothing?” (cf. Job 1:9). Put like this, it is hardly a question: without a doubt, so Satan, Job is in it for the benefits! Notice that “why is Job righteous?” is very different from “why does Job suffer?” The latter question is not answered in the book, but already by chapter 2 it is abundantly clear that Job will indeed serve God for nothing.
The third question is crucial if we want to evaluate the retribution principle, by which God presumably rules the world: is it a good principle? Won’t this lead to people doing the right things for the wrong reason: to obtain the benefits, not to practice righteousness? In Satan’s view, “God’s policy of blessing righteous people is flawed because it seems to buy people’s loyalty and righteousness” (Walton and Longman III 2015: 15). Won’t it produce hypocrisy on a massive scale?
Even more important, the third question points the way to the right attitude. This was Job’s challenge. Now it is our challenge: will we serve God for nothing?
The Debate
Starting on page 23 of their book, John Walton and Tremper Longman present a simple but fascinating model to explain the debate in Job. It is a triangle. The corners represent (a) the retribution principle; (b) God’s justice; and (c) Job’s status.
Job’s friends have no doubts about the retribution principle or about God’s justice. Therefore only one conclusion is possible: Job is guilty. Their defence of the retribution principle increasingly turns dogmatic. They insist with growing bluntness that Job is at fault, accusing him of heinous crimes without producing a shred of evidence. Job, on the other hand, insists he is innocent and wants to argue his case before God: this cannot be right, and the fault is not with him. Job stops short of directly accusing God of being unjust, but he gets close. He also questions the retribution principle, observing that often enough, righteous people suffer and wicked people prosper. But then, since God is in charge, this likewise places a question mark next to God’s justice.
When God speaks at the end of the book, he does not speak of his justice, but of his greatness and wisdom. The retribution principle is not entirely wrong. After all, it does match who God is, his character, even if not what God does. However, it is far too shallow and simplistic to summarize the profound ways in which God deals with the world.
The fundamental error underlying the retribution principle is the assumption that God deals with the world in a straightforward manner based on his justice and that therefore whatever happens must be a straightforward reflection and expression of this. Things are not that simple.
The book of Job proposes an alternative: “The world’s operation is based not on justice but on wisdom” (Walton and Longman III 2015: 24). In this way, the book reframes the fundamental issue and turns into a defense not of God’s justice but of his wisdom:
God’s wisdom is the key to the book’s message. As readers are impressed with the wisdom of God, they are encouraged to trust him rather than to try to figure out why he is doing what he does. Rather than seeking explanations that will verify his justice, the response to God should be to trust the way he has chosen to have the world operate, trust him regarding the circumstances that come into our lives and trust that his ways are the best ways. (Walton and Longman III 2015: 48)
Chapter 28
That wisdom is the decisive category to think about the questions raised by the book of Job finds confirmation in chapter 28. In beautiful poetry, it lists how various minerals and precious stones are searched and mined by humans. Then it asks where wisdom can be found. The answer is that no one knows except for God, who gives humans a derived, secondary wisdom: “the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom” (Job 28:28). This wisdom does not consist of understanding things but of knowing how to relate to God, trusting his wisdom. Obviously, this is a key insight supporting the book’s main point.
On the surface, it appears that chapter 28 is spoken by Job because there are no markers in the text that tell us there is an interruption or a change of speaker. However, the content of chapter 28 does not fit Job’s outlook or the flow of his argument in chapter 27. It is therefore quite possible that chapter 28 is an insertion by the author or editor of the book, in which he provides the key to an answer that leaves much unexplained but that does convey a way to live.
Job’s Friends
Job’s three friends represent conventional wisdom; they speak what was the accepted norm at the time. They fully support the retribution principle and hold a modified form of the great symbiosis: God is angry and therefore Job should appease him. The three have much in common; are they are also differences between them? Walton and Longman III think so:
Some have used labels that echo modern philosophical approaches. (One common proposal identifies Eliphaz as a mystic, Bildad as a traditionalist and Zophar as a rationalist.) These modern categories may not be far off the mark in general terms, but we should recognize that rationalism is probably not a viable category for ancient Near Eastern thinking. Alternatively we could suggest that Eliphaz gives most weight to his personal experiences, Bildad relies on the wisdom of the ages and Zophar is most inclined to find understanding in a system of thinking in which everything is black and white … The important point is to see that the three friends represent different perspectives, though they all agree on the conclusion that Job is suffering because he is a sinner. (Walton and Longman III 2015: 67)
So What about Elihu?
The model above also helps us to understand Elihu’s contribution to the debate. Elihu is half right. But he is also half wrong. He is adamant in his defence of God’s justice and severely takes Job to task for questioning it. At the same time, he is greatly upset with the other friends because they accuse Job of sins for which there is absolutely no evidence. This is the part he gets right.
Elihu sees the explanation for Job’s suffering not in sins Job committed before his ordeal but in his present attitude of self-righteousness and defiance of God. Suffering did not come because of sin but came in order to bring Job’s hidden attitudes into the open. It is an attempt to save the retribution principle by adjusting it, but it fails. This is the part Elihu gets wrong. Already in chapter 1 it has been made clear that nothing Job has done and nothing he has failed to do explains his suffering. The retribution principle, which has limited applicability to begin with, does not apply here.
Interestingly, Elihu appears out of nothing and after he speaks, he is not referred to again. At the end, only the other three friends of Job are rebuked. It is hard to know what to make of this. Does it imply Elihu was close enough in his assessment that God let him pass? Did he speak of God “what is right” (Job 42:7)? Or is this God’s way of responding to Elihu’s obvious arrogance, by simply ignoring him, because (ironically, seeing these are Elihu’s final words) “he does not regard any who are wise in their own conceit” (Job 37:24)? We cannot be sure because the text does not give us any information.
And What about Satan?
It has often been pointed out that the Hebrew word satan always appears with the definite article in the book of Job. This means it is not a name but more like a title or function. We could translate as “the Opponent” (with a capital ‘O’); Walton and Longman III (2015: 50) refers to him as “the challenger”. This suggests we are not dealing with a fully developed concept of the devil as it appears in the New Testament.
However, I am not convinced by Walton and Longman’s representation of the Opponent as a relatively neutral character in the drama who is simply fulfilling his assigned role or task. That “nothing intrinsically evil emerges in the author’s portrayal of the satan in Job” (Walton and Longman III 2015: 53) does not strike me as true. His insinuations appear to betray a malicious streak; the ferocious nature of his strike against Job is hard to explain as anything but pure malice; what is neutral here!?
Job Today
Unfortunately, conventional wisdom with its retribution principle and the great symbiosis is alive and well today. Perhaps we know better than Job’s friends and we won’t try to ‘comfort’ by exhorting people who suffer to repent of their sins. But what about the logic that if we have faith, we will not have to suffer from illness or poverty? Isn’t that great symbiosis thinking combined with the retribution principle?
And what if disaster strikes? I have seen friends who were deeply shaken in their faith because something bad happened that was not supposed to happen. Weren’t they serving God? Why did he not keep his side of the deal? Of course, they would not have put it in such words, but they apparently felt God owed them something in return (the great symbiosis concept) and he had failed. Certain things (and they were truly, truly terrible) should not have happened to them but they did.
At the end of the book, neither God nor his actions have been explained to us. But his wisdom has been affirmed: “He does not need to be defended; he wants to be trusted … rather than defending God’s justice, it defends his wisdom” (Walton and Longman III 2015: 95, 104).
The question posed by the book of Job therefore is: will we trust God? In addition, there is that profound and helpful question asked by the Opponent: does Job serve God for nothing? If there are no benefits, will Job still serve God?
Will we?
Attribution
Photos taken from Pixabay
References
All Bible quotations taken from: The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. 2001 (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles)
Walton, John H., and Tremper Longman III. 2015. How to Read Job (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic)
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