The Book of Job belongs to the Ketuvim (“Writings”) section of the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament part of the Christian Bible. The main character, Job, is introduced in the prologue, where he is depicted as a godly man generously gifted with material and non-material gifts alike. The narration swiftly shifts to Heaven, where Satan prompts God to consider whether Job’s piety is genuine or only due to his many blessings in life. To test the main character’s faith, the Lord takes away everything dear to Job, but a tragedy after a tragedy does not shake his faith. Though ultimate wisdom is a characteristic of God only, the genre encourages the reader to broaden their knowledge and take a critical perspective. This paper summarizes and contrasts three such attempts to interpret the Book of Job.
Job suffers both emotional and physical pain, but the gravity of his physical afflictions is often misunderstood. Basson (2008) focused on his bodily degeneration as one of the many curses orchestrated by God. In Job 2, the main character is at Satan’s mercy; Satan is allowed to inflict any pain on Job as long as he “[spares] his life” (Job 2:6). The antagonist justifies his actions by saying that it is only the bodily degeneration and pain that can make a person genuinely desperate and reject his faith. So Satan “ infected Job with terrible boils from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head” (Job 2:7). Even Job’s wife thinks that the disease will be her husband’s breaking point and crush his will. She tells him: “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die” (Job 2:9). However, Job refuses to let go and argues that one should receive both the good and the bad from God.
To understand why Satan saw bodily mutilation as the worst punishment, one should study what body meant in ancient Israel. Basson (2008) writes that the rules in ancient Israel were built around the notion of purity, which included a pure body. The human body was similar to the body of Israeli society: it had to have unity, integrity, and the ability to stay within the fixed boundaries. The Israeli priestly code was clear on which bodily conditions needed purification and whether they were grounds for social exclusion (Basson, 2008). Ultimately, only healthy people with their bodies intact had the right to enter kinship. Therefore, an incomplete, diseased body was an almost insurmountable hurdle to social life.
The Book of Job is illustrative of how the impact of a severe health condition goes beyond physical suffering and practically means complete detachment and isolation from others. At first, Job’s three friends come to his house to comfort him and express their empathy for his many woes. Right upon seeing him, the friends have a hard time recognizing Job, and after they “raise their voices and weep, and they tore their robes and sprinkle dust on their heads toward heaven” (Job 2:12-13). However, their compassion does not last because they grow suspicious about God’s motive for punishing Job later on. Bildad argues that “God will not reject a blameless person” (Job 8:20). Basson (2008) points out the categorization of bodies into whole and unwhole translates into the categorization of people into good and evil. Therefore, Job’s disease ceases to be grounds for mercy and becomes an excuse to rob him of his status and proclaim him a danger to others.
As explained by Basson (2008), Jewish orthodoxy drew a strict line between acceptable and unacceptable bodies partly due to the belief that bodily afflictions were somehow deserved. Generalizing this worldview, it is safe to conclude that contemporary Israeli society believed in divine theodicy or fair God – a notion that is contradicted at length in the Book of Job. In his article, Fox (2018) investigates whether justice is important to Old Testament God. The prologue to the Book of Job suggests that God values justice, or, the way Fox (2018) puts it, “reward and punishment are forces in the working of the world.” However, what the prologue defies is the idea that retribution is an invariable, mechanical process. Fox (2018) concludes that justice is incomplete; it is in God’s interests, but sometimes He acts unfairly due to reasons incomprehensible by humans. Therefore, it is futile for humans to devise their own framework for predicting the outcome of their actions.
Apparently, it is the lack of such a framework that tortures Job the most. As Fox (2018) puts it, the longer the character drowns in his suffering, the more he realizes that God and he do not share the same ethical standards. Like other Israelites, Job did not explicitly expect rewards for his pious behavior, but at the same time, he could not even imagine facing so much suffering in life. Therefore, he accuses the Lord of many things – injustice, inconsistency, and hostility are among them. When God responds to Job and starts a dialogue, He does not give him an answer. Instead, He tells him about the animal and the non-animal world and asks Job questions that the character cannot answer. According to Fox (2018), God’s reluctance to give Job a clear reason for His suffering is most telling. The Lord’s deflection and focus on the world as a whole show him as an inventive creator whose universe does not run on retributive justice but on wisdom.
Many interpretations see Job’s lot as God’s test and him being rewarded at the end as proof that he passed the said test. Fox (2018) counters this notion by arguing that the Book of Job never indicates whether Job was successful in proving his piety. However, what he learns is that he is important to God, and God needs him to “grow by this experience” (Fox, 2018, p. 18). What God needs is faith and voluntary loyalty that can only be unconditional; otherwise, the relationship becomes transactional. The article concludes that though at God’s mercy, Job has a lot to offer to God – his loyalty and his honor.
Following the calamity caused by God, Job resorts to self-condemnation and protest because he sees that what God did as unjust. As pointed out by Fox (2018), God does respect the freedom of choice because He wants loyalty to be given willingly; He also responds to Job in a prophetic vision. The question arises as to whether Job’s speech was justified because the Joban dialogue has the link between what one says and what one is as a recurrent and important topic. Hawley (2020) focuses on the dialogue that occurs between Job and his friends who, initially, want to stay by his side, but the purpose of their consolation is to ultimately bring his mourning and accusations to an end (Hawley, 2020). When the main character does not stop, one of the friends openly calls him wicked, though associating speech with one’s righteousness or the lack thereof.
Hawley (2020) argues that Job’s friends are wrong for accusing him of wickedness. However, he cites Raba Joseph Hama’s words that Job is not completely blameless: while he did not sin with his lips, he sinned with his heart. Fox (2018) concurs with this opinion, saying that when Job condemns his life, he condemns God’s creation as a whole. Yet, God does not punish Job for his speech; instead, his ignorance is a starting point of his learning about God’s wisdom. Ultimately, the main character’s condemnation appears to be an expression of his integrity and self-advocacy.
Part of wisdom literature, the Book of Job contradicts the optimism and confidence of the Book of Proverbs. Basson, Fox, and Hawley approach the Book of Job from different standpoints. While Basson discusses the deeper meaning of bodily degeneration in the historical concept, Fox and Hawley are more concerned with theological thought and the matters of loyalty, faith, and condemnation. What all the three sources have in common is their understanding of Old Testament justice. Basson, Fox, and Hawley agree that retributive justice is not the main principle in God’s universe, and He is not obliged to be just at all times. The authors show that the workings of the world cannot be distilled down to rewards and punishments because, ultimately, wisdom trumps justice.
References
Basson, Alec. “Just skin and bones: the longing for wholeness of the body in the book of Job.” Vetus Testamentum 58, no. 3 (2008): 287-299.
Fox, Michael V. “The meanings of the Book of Job.” JBL 137, no. 1 (2018): 7-18.
Hawley, Lance. “The rhetoric of condemnation in the Book of Job.” JBL 139, no. 3 (2020): 459-478.