Today is Bible Sunday. I’ve been marking essays on the biblical book of Job, and what’s impressed me - even surprised me - has been people writing & saying how helpful – not just interesting - but helpful - they’d found it - long time church members, who’d never really read Job before.
I was reminded too of being at a conference some years ago – where we were let out one afternoon to go exploring. One of the group – a NT scholar and a bishop – couldn’t do that physically. When we got back he said he’d spent the afternoon reading Job. I asked him why – but he gently turned the question back: why not? I felt just a little foolish!
But have you read Job lately? Have you ever read Job?
It’s a very old story. It begins with God up in heaven with all his angels, saying to one of them, who’s been going to and fro on the earth, noticed that good guy Job lately? There’s nobody quite like him. Well, yes, he says - but he’s only good & faithful because you’ve blessed him so well – do you really think he’d still be faithful if you took everything away? That’s the key question.
So God agrees to a test – Job loses everything including his children - is covered in sores from head to foot & his wife says, Still faithful? Then she makes a famously ambiguous challenge – the word she uses can mean either curse or bless. It can’t really be translated – she’s posing the question: will Job curse God or bless God - & will he just give up altogether and die.
That’s the plot. We know it’s a set up – a wager in heaven to test Job, but Job doesn’t know this at all.
And now his friends appear - & they’ve got all the answers. They’re well schooled – they all know the dogma – they’ve all read the books & they know if disasters happen, it must be Job’s fault - he must have sinned. Well, of course, Job has also been well brought up - he knows about doctrine and dogma too. I could also talk as you do if you were in my place (16:4).
He knows human beings are fallible – always getting things wrong & doing what we shouldn’t – but he knows he hasn’t been this bad! And suddenly we realize this is a book about theological debate. Suddenly we realize the bible is entering our world. We know about theological debates.
But this is a very ancient book.
It’s shock & despair for Job. He wishes he’d never been born. Why did you bring me forth from the womb, would that I had died before any eye had seen me (10:18).
But there’s no stopping the friends. No question: Job must have deserved this.
Think now, who that was innocent ever perished?
Or where were the upright cut off? (4:7)
And they have the right prescription: Job must accept what’s happened as just, agree with God - according to their view of God - and be at peace (22:21)
When Job counters this, they’re scandalized: your own mouth condemns you (15:5-6) & shows you’re guilty!
Job’s response - miserable comforters are you all with windy words (16:2-3).
We, of course, know why Job is suffering, - that wager up in heaven - but he doesn’t, crying out to God Why do you hide your face, and count me as your enemy? (13:24)
And he protests: I was at ease and God broke me in two. God seized me by the neck and dashed me to pieces (16:12).
But one thing he feels sure about: that he will be heard: even now, my witness is in heaven (16:19). I have … prepared my case. I know I shall be vindicated (13:18)
As the to-ing and fro-ing continues, the issue becomes wider: why is it that the wicked live on … and grow mighty in power (21:7).
It’s that persistent question: why do bad things happen to good people? Where is God in the midst of it all?
Then in chs.29-31 Job considers his life – when he was a big shot – how when he went out in public, the young men all stood back, the top people stopped talking, even the elderly stood up for him, and my word dropped upon them like the dew. It was all good. He gave money to charities. He wore justice like a garment. That was life as it was meant to be. Very good for people of substance like Job, not so good for the blind, the lame and the needy – those receiving his charity. Sounds familiar?
But this is an ancient book.
The point is Job believes this is how the world should be. As Carol Newsom puts it, Job needs to change his moral imagination.[1] This is key for the book of Job.
Think about it. Is our world running any better – the wealthy receiving tax cuts - some gaining more from bonuses than others have to live on –so many children living in poverty, and rest home care givers shamefully underpaid. Is this what is needed today - a change in our moral imagination?
But Job is still wanting to bring his case before God. The youngest of his friends – the last on the scene, just scoffs. God does not regard any who are wise in their own deceit (37:24). i.e. you don’t really think God is going to take any notice of you.
And then – dramatically, God answered Job out of the whirlwind.
But - big but - God doesn’t talk about Job – or Job’s condition. "What God offers to Job are images … of the intrinsic goodness of the natural world.”[2] Not Job’s world of social inequalities. Not Job’s world centring on human society & status.
Is it by your wisdom that the hawk soars, and spreads its wings toward the south? Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up and makes its nest on high? (39:26).
Who has cut … a way for the thunderbolt to bring rain on a land where no one lives, on the desert which is empty of human life, to satisfy the waste and desolate land and to make the ground put forth grass? (38:25-27)
This is not Job’s world - this is the starting point for changing Job's moral imagination, and it’s creation theology! In a very very ancient book!
What does Job learn? That there are limits to human understanding, that God is not ‘handcuffed" by us,[3] that creation is a mystery – but - & I am quoting -with “an order of rightness” and “intrinsic goodness.”[4] And today we might add, held together by the so-called God particle.
And finally Job admits he’s been speaking without understanding (42:3). Then, in what we might expect to be key, Job’s final statement is quite ambiguous. The NRSV has him say therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes. Lowly worm stuff. But the word “repent” can also mean “comforted”, so Job can be saying, I am comforted concerning dust and ashes. I’m OK now about being human in God’s created world.
God hasn’t accused Job - of sin or scandalous talk. Surprise for the friends. In fact, God says you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has (42:7)! Surprise again - they thought they were defending God against Job!
But according to the book of Job, protesting & challenging God is OK. More than that: wrestling with the God questions is not only OK it’s a must, especially over issues of justice.
So - it’s a book about theology – about faith when everything’s gone wrong – about the goodness of creation & our place in it – about our moral imagination. All of this.
Or, as one writer puts it: it’s like “a tangram, one of those puzzles with pieces that fit together in countless ways … but no combination can be said to be ‘right’ or ‘wrong’.” The point is in the ‘handling’ which “is itself a learning process.” So “those of us willing to wrestle with the book of Job, will never arrive at the meaning” but will “learn something about the meaning of our own lives.”[5]
That’s what my students have been telling me, about this very very ancient biblical book. Have you read Job lately?
Knox Church. 15/7/12 am. Judith E. McKinlay
[1] Carol Newsom, "The Moral Sense of Nature: Ethics in the Light of God's Speech to Job," The Princeton Seminary Bulletin xv/1 (1994): 9-27.
[2] Newsom, "The Moral Sense of Nature,” 16-17.
[3] Gustavo Gutierrez, On Job (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1987), 73.
[4] Newsom, "The Moral Sense of Nature,” 17-18.
[5] Alan Cooper, "Reading and Misreading the Prologue to Job," JSOT 46 (1990): 67-79
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