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After I finished my short thread of posts about the problem of suffering a couple of weeks ago, I realized that it might be helpful for me to discuss one or two of the books of the Bible that deal with the issue head-on — in part because many people don’t read these books much, even if they know about them, and in part because many people who *do* read them don’t know how expert interpreters have explained them.
For no book is this more true that that gem in the Hebrew Bible, the book of Job. Or rather those two books, the two books of Job.
To talk about Job and what it is really about will require several posts. This is the first, an introduction to the single most important issue connected with the book that most people have never heard and that completely affects how the book is to be interpreted.
This is how I discuss it in my book God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question — Why We Suffer (HarperOne, 2008).
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The Book of Job: An Overview
Most people who read Job do not realize that the book as it has come down to us today is the product of different authors, and that these different authors had different, and contradictory, understandings of why it is that people suffer. Most important, the way the story begins and ends – with the prose narrative of the righteous suffering of Job, whose patient endurance under duress is rewarded by God – stands at odds with the poetic dialogues that take up most of the book, in which Job is not patient but defiant, and in which God does not reward the one he has made to suffer but overpowers him and grinds him into submission. These are two different views of suffering, and to understand the book we have to understand its two different messages.[i]
As it now stands, with the prose narrative and the poetic dialogues combined into one long account, the book can be summarized as follows: it begins with a prose description of Job, a very wealthy and pious man, the richest man in the eastern world. The action moves up to heaven, where God speaks with “the Satan” – the Hebrew word means “the adversary” – and commends Job to him. The Satan claims that Job is pious toward God only because of the rewards he gets for his piety. God allows the Satan then to take away all Job has: his possessions, his servants, and his children; then, in a second round of attacks, his own health. Job refuses to curse God for what has happened to him. Three friends come to visit him and comfort him; but it is cold comfort indeed. Throughout their speeches they tell Job that he is being punished for his sins (that is, they take the “classical” view of suffering, that sinners get what they deserve). Job continues to insist on his innocence and pleads with God to allow him to present his case before him. At the end of the dialogues with the friends (which take up most of the book), God does show up, and overwhelms Job with his greatness, forcefully reproving him for thinking that he, God, has anything to explain to Job, a mere mortal. Job repents of his desire to make his plea before God. In the epilogue, which reverts to prose narrative, God commends Job for his upright behavior, and condemns the friends for what they have said. He restores to Job all of his wealth, and more; he provides him with another batch of children, and Job lives out his life in prosperity, dying at a ripe old age.
Some of the basic discrepancies between the prose narrative with which the book begins and ends (just under three chapters) and the poetic dialogues (which take up nearly forty chapters) can be seen just from this brief summary. The two sources that have been spliced together to make the final product are written in different genres: a prose folktale and a set of poetic dialogues. The writing styles are different between these two genres. Closer analysis shows that the names for the divine being are different in the prose (where the name Yahweh is used) and the poetry (where the divinity is named El, Eloah, and Shaddai). Yet more striking, the portrayal of Job differs in the two parts of the book: in the prose he is a patient sufferer, in the poetry he is thoroughly defiant, and anything but patient. Correspondingly he is commended in the prose but rebuked in the poetry. Moreover, the prose folktale indicates that God deals with his people according to their merit, whereas that the entire point of the poetry is that he does not do so – and is not bound to do so. Finally, and most important, the view of why the innocent suffer differs between the two parts of the book: in the prose narrative, suffering comes as a test of faith; in the poetry, suffering remains a mystery that cannot be fathomed or explained.
To deal adequately with the book of Job, then, we need to look at the two parts of the book separately, and explore at greater length its two explanations for the suffering of the innocent.
[i]. As you might imagine, the literature on Job is vast. For introduction to some of the most important critical issues, see the discussions and bibliographies in Collins, Hebrew Bible, 505-17; Coogan, Old Testament, pp. 479-89; and James Crenshaw, “Job, Book of” in Freedman, Anchor Bible Dictionary, vo. 3, pp. 858-68.
Slightly aside from the subject of this posting, it reminds me that several books in the Bible are composites of other works. The flood story, Isaiah, Job, etc… could you point out others, please?
ADo you mean books that have been put together from earlier surviving sources? You could certainly say that of the Gospels; I think it’s true of 2 Corinthians and Philippians as well. In the OT, the books of Samuel. Probably others!
The pursuit of understanding the causes and reasons behind suffering and relating it to “God’s cause” based solely on these texts will ultimately lead us in circles, as suggested by the book of Job which highlights the fact that we do not know the universal reality in which we exist. Even in light of scientific advanced quantum physics, there is (possible) evidence to suggest that our own observation and consciousness may contribute to the creation of the material world and its matrix, indicating that our own “mind”, “will”, and intentions may play a role. The very unfortunate fact that suffering is a part of it, does not give any relief, but at least reminds that we also have a choice, and we can do something ourself to do something about it.
For me it is important to remind myself of my view that the book of Job is a narrative rather than a systematic theology of suffering, and should not be relied upon as the sole basis for understanding the nature of suffering. This realization may or in my mind, should inspire a re-evaluation of traditional concepts of our own human being and its creative involvement in this reality. I think it should even lead to a deeper exploration of the nature of God as sought after by so many biblical authors. In this sense, I am onvinced that those who hold a rigid, literal interpretation may have much to reconsider.
Thanks for returning to Job, Bart; I have been hoping you would.
You present a ‘traditional’ evaluation of Job, discriminating the prose and poetic sections. Walter Brueggemann specifies Norman Habel, David Clines and Gerald Janzen as recent studies treating both as an integrated work. It might be helpful to summarise your critiques of these.
In favour of treating Job as one, I would propose:
– Prose-Job explicitly refers back to the arguments in Poetic-Job; as in Job 42:7 and Job 42:9;
– God in the concluding prose, acts radically differently from in the introductory prose. In the introductory section God is enthroned amongst the ‘court of heaven’ and acts remotely through the agency of the Satan. But in the concluding section, the court of heaven appears to have been disbanded, and the Satan is nowhere mentioned. Instead, God now acts directly through an earthly intercessor – Job himself (Job 42:8). If we cut free the poetic chapters, there is nothing to explain how and why this change in God has occurred.
The Book of Job is like “The Usual Suspects”. Everything is re-evaluated with God’s assurance that Job has been speaking right.
I odn’t know Janzen, but Habel and Clines as recent? (!) 1. I don’t know that 42:7, 9 are referring back to what we now have in teh poetic section. The prose story itself has obvioulsy been truncated. The “friends” have said something awful, but since the verses don’t say *what* they’ve said we don’t know if it’s referring to the poetic views or something in the truncated part. 2. I don’t see why a discontinuity between the beginning and end of the prose story shows that the poetic section was originally part of the prose story.
And are you serious about God assuring Job that he has spoken correctly? I guess you mean in the prose? That’s precisely the opposite of what he says from the whirlwind — hence one of th eproblems.
Thanks for the response Bart.
The text leaves it unclear who is being rebuked from the whirlwind – Elihu or Job? Job thinks it is him; but Elihu is the one whom God interrupts, and he is the one who has been speaking sententious claptrap. Interpreters down the centuries have been split on the issue.
The story of Job is a tale of temptation; but what is Job being tempted to do? In the context of the story, Job has been committed both to the proposition that God is truly God, and to the proposition that the Righteous are truly righteous; but maintaining both in the context of his current lived experience is tearing him apart. He knows he has two ways out; to deny God’s justice, or to deny his own righteoussness.
If Job denies God, he knows he will die and his suffering will end. He is tempted to do this by his wife in prose (Job 2:9) and then by himself in verse; but he refuses, as from the dead; he could not continue to maintain his righteousness; so his commttment to the second proposition would fail too (chapter 19).
REally? Why’s Job writhing in the dust and repent of what he said if he hasn’t just been blasted by God? I think maybe you’re going out of your way to squeeze the text in a more amenable direction?
As I understand it Bart; the common translation as “repent in dust and ashes” could as well be rendered “of dust and ashes” or “forswear dust and ashes” or “upon dust and ashes” or “with dust and ashes” ; or indeed more. Don’t think we can assume Job as “writhing in the dust”. Most likely, “dust and ashes” are intended as tokens of mourning; but quite how that relates to Job’s concession to God in this passage is enigmatic.
What I think it is clear that what Job does not do, is to lie and confess falsely to unrighteousness – which is what his friends had urged on him. Job does concede God’s overwhelming power and understanding; but God nowhere addresses Job’s specific complaints, and Job doesn’t restate them.
Moreover, in my view, all the poetic discourses in Job have to be interpeted in the light of the central argument in chapter 28, that God’s creation is a text that must be read at multiple levels, if wisdom and understanding are to be found within it. In which case the enigma of Job’s concession may well be understood as literary intention.
As you know, it is massively debated, both as to how to translate and, even when translated, how to understand it. But I think the climax is pretty clear. Others don’t!
(continued)
If Job would only deny his own righteousness, God will end his suffering and restore him to good fortune – at least that what the three ‘friends’ say, and Job appears to accept it. The three friends maintain that no one is fully Righteous; we have all done wrong things, maybe without being aware of it. Job is being arrogant and presumptuous in refusing to accept this.
Job responds in the key section; Job 27:1-6. He is entirely willing for his righteousness, or not, to be investigated by due process; but he will not admit to a crime that he has not committed. That would be a falsehood; and so an act of unrighteousness in its face.
Elihu than tempts Job again (Janzen proposes that he functions as the serpent in Genesis 3:5) ; Job’s two propositions are not equivalent; God is so great that the righteousness or not of any one individual is a matter of triviality. This time, it’s God who steps in to stop him.
Note that although Job does submit to God at Job 42:6, he does not, even then, make a false admission of unrighteousness.
Years ago I realized that the prose part of Job not only does not go with the poetic part, but it really blunts if not contradicts the point of the poem! I understand why the prose was added, but it was a big mistake in my opinion: it makes God look like a heartless jerk. People struggle to understand Job but I think it is so much simpler to understand if you separate the prose from the poem,
The problem of suffering continues to be one of the most perplexing mysteries to any religion or philosophy the proposes a purpose to our existence.
It seems clear to me that the ‘Many Worlds Interpretation’ of Quantum Theory would provide the most elegant answer to the question of Theodicy of all that I have come across in Religion and Philosophy.
Leibnitz proposed that our existing world is the best world that ‘God’ could have created. However, with the ‘Many-Worlds Interpretation’ of Quantum Physics, Everett’s ‘relative state formulation’ at macroscopic level would contend that much as there is no special place in this universe, there is also no privileged event. All possible events occur- natural or willed, and their prevalence amongst multiple worlds varies according to their respective probabilities.
The ‘I’ that I am aware of is only observing a singular existence among multiple that occupy the same 3 dimensions of space but are ‘lateral’ to ours in ‘event-time’. Debates about Theodicy and any God’s Omnibenevolence are somewhat redundant if every possible event can occur in its’ own reality.
Great to revisit Job.At my synagogue we had Harold Kushner visit.I felt that he doesn’t answer the main questions, concluding that God is not omnipotent.
I felt- and still do-that God is,precisely, so much beyond human imagination, absolute,that God’s pronouncement in 38:44 (“where were you when I laid the foundations…”) sounds more brutally honest and real,overwhelming and reproaching Job, than the all-loving compassionate human-sized God we may prefer.
The worst of it is the thought of the ” replacement” children being an adequate restitution for the murdered children.Still, though,better than remaining childless.
When Spinoza claimed a pantheistic view of the God idea,”God” did not sound so ” beyond us”and cruel as Job’s God declares himself to be.Spinoza sounds true.It’s not a personal God.It’s an awesome-awful God.
It’s “All That Is”,as Beethoven believed,an Egyptian definition the composer had on his piano.
Is Spinoza’s or Einstein’s God relevant to this exegesis?
I am not clear about the ” suffering as a test of faith” remark. Does this first prose mean that ” all” suffering comes as a test of faith or just in Job’s particular case, because of the casual wager with the Adversary, who seems to act as a ” general prosecutor “?
Usually if someone tells a tale of why God causes suffering it is to have a wider application than just this one case — otherwise it’s just entertainment. But I guess that’s possible?
The worst of it is the thought of the ” replacement” children being an adequate restitution for the murdered children.Still, though,better than remaining childless.
That is one of the worst things for me as well; the idea that children are fungible.
If someone who lost a child and has another, someone telling them that they have been made whole because they have a child to replace the dead one would be considered a big jerk (at best). Yet, God is given a pass on it, even though he is complicit in the death of 10 of Job’s children.
Dr Ehrman,
Thanks for introducing me to this “critical” interpretation of Job. I’d never heard it until today.
I have a couple observations about the plausibility of this interpretation. An entailment of this hypothesis is that some later editor(s) compiled these two contradictory books into a single work that they thought was coherent. There must then be some interpretation of this book that harmonizes what you consider contradictory. Also, if a plausible harmonization could be offered, this would undercut the force of the argument from contradictions for the hypothesis that there are two books behind the current book of Job. You can’t get from what you consider contradictions to the two-book hypothesis. Your stronger points favoring this hypothesis were: “The writing styles are different between these two genres. Closer analysis shows that the names for the divine being are different in the prose (where the name Yahweh is used) and the poetry (where the divinity is named El, Eloah, and Shaddai).”
Yes, it is possible to harmonize any discrepant views; the question is which is the best interpretation/understanding of the text. I was raised on a harmonized understanding. Once I saw how the discrepancies worked, the entire understanding of the book opened up magnificently. I know lots of people who have had the same experience, both scholars and layfolk.
The Universe is a very violent neighbourhood, born in a primal, catastrophic explosion, termed colloquially The Big Bang by Science and envisioned quite similarly in Lurianic Creation: God contracted into an infinitesimal point to allow for the Universe to exist. As it then expanded, something went wrong. God’s “vessels” were shattered, creating incalculable pain and evil.Our responsibility and life mission are to repair the world,to discover and unleash the divine sparks still trapped since Creation.
Black holes, Supernovas, massive asteroids, and we only know 4-5% of the Universe. Species and stars disappear in what in cosmic time amounts to fractions of seconds. Our own Galaxy is doomed. It will take a few billion years, but it will cease to exist. Or it will happen much earlier than that in our Earth and within our human race. Taming God is not in our hands. Helping the shattered world,though, is.
But we still live in the fantasy world transited by faith concepts such as Resurrection, Virgin Births,HB miracles, Mohammed’s horse- riding flights, etc,etc)
How are the “evil” and “suffering”surrounding us ,as well as our demand for a convenient, partial God ,at all relevant in the grand scheme of things?
It’s amazing how fantasy is taken as reality by people who are otherwise cultured, educated, and critical. And the number of people who just don’t believe scientific fact is frightening.
I dont get the “problem of suffering”.
Isnt Satan in control of the earth? Like he was cast down and took control of it. As in book of Revelation 12:7-9.
Its also mentioned in John 12:31, 2. Cor 4:4, especially 1st letter of John 5:19.
This is how i have understood the bible, basicly God has only little effect in here on earth controlled by Satan.
Yes, if you believe Satan is in control of the earth then you have latched on to one of the ways to explain suffering. It’s not they way found in most of the Bible, but that probaby doesn’t matter!
A thing that has puzzled me for decades is that in most Bibles, Job’s wife tells him to “curse God and die,” but in Young’s Literal translation, it is given as “bless God and die.” Huh? Understanding Young’s approach of absolutely consistant rendering for any given word, my guess would be that the Hebrew word is ambiguous and could mean either blessing or cursing.
Ah — long ago (in my memory) to “bless” meant to “curse”. Still does in places.
Scripture (or at least the Masoretic Text) doesn’t like to do things like suggest God should be cursed. So the MT reads בָּרֵ֥ךְ אֱלֹהִ֖ים וָמֻֽת – literally, “Bless God and die,”which everyone understands in context to mean “curse God and die.” This is similar to the practice of never ending a book of the Bible on a gloomy note, so Isaiah, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations (and one other book that I forget) all repeat the previous verse at the end of the book, which is not so gloomy.
In response to Leibnitz, as you know, Voltaire created Dr. Pangloss. Job is a curious book. I’ve read it many times and when I get to the second part I note that God seems to be fed up with Job’s whining about his innocence as he tells Job to “gird up his loins”, which I interpret to mean pull up your pants and act like a man. I certainly don’t blame Job for his protestations, he is indeed proof that being Righteous does not always protect you from the most unimaginable disasters. There is a rhetorical observation made by one of the so-called comforters that has always seemed interesting to me: “Does the white of an egg have any taste?” Is there some type of esoteric meaning to this observation? In the end I think the book wants to reward Job for his integrity. After the murders, the destruction, the mayhem, the suffering, a harsh lesson indeed.