Approaching Job

Approaching Job

Andrew Zack Lewis

Approaching Job

Cascade Companions 33

Copyright © 2017 Andrew Zack Lewis. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Cascade Books

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

Eugene, OR 97401

www.wipfandstock.com

paperback isbn: 978-1-62564-818-1

hardcover isbn: 978-1-4982-8715-9

ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-1516-0

Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Names: Lewis, Andrew Zack.

Title: Approaching Job / Andrew Zack Lewis.

Description: Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2017 | Series: Cascade Companions 33 | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: isbn 978-1-62564-818-1 (paperback) | isbn 978-1-4982-8715-9 (hardcover) | isbn 978-1-5326-1516-0 (ebook).

Subjects: Bible. Job—Criticism, interpretation, etc. | Bible. Job—Theology.

Classification: bs1415.2 l50 2017 (paperback) | bs1415.2 (ebook).

Manufactured in the U.S.A. 03/23/17

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the New
Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

For Luke

Now when Job’s three friends heard of all these troubles that had come upon him, each of them set out from his home—Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. They met together to go and console and comfort him. When they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him, and they raised their voices and wept aloud; they tore their robes and threw dust in the air upon their heads. They sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.

Job 2:11–13

Table of Contents

Title Page

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1: Content of the Book of Job

Chapter 2: Structure and Critical Issues

Chapter 3: Meaning in Individual Passages

Chapter 4: Some Theological, Pastoral, and Ethical Implications of the Book of Job

Works Cited

Cascade Companions

The Christian theological tradition provides an embarrassment of riches: from Scripture to modern scholarship, we are blessed with a vast and complex theological inheritance. And yet this feast of traditional riches is too frequently inaccessible to the general reader.

The Cascade Companions series addresses the challenge by publishing books that combine academic rigor with broad appeal and readability. They aim to introduce nonspecialist readers to that vital storehouse of authors, documents, themes, histories, arguments, and movements that comprise this heritage with brief yet compelling volumes.

Titles in this series:

Reading Augustine by Jason Byassee

Conflict, Community, and Honor by John H. Elliott

An Introduction to the Desert Fathers by Jason Byassee

Reading Paul by Michael J. Gorman

Theology and Culture by D. Stephen Long

Creation and Evolution by Tatha Wiley

Theological Interpretation of Scripture by Stephen Fowl

Reading Bonhoeffer by Geffrey B. Kelly

Justpeace Ethics by Jarem Sawatsky

Feminism and Christianity by Caryn D. Griswold

Angels, Worms, and Bogeys by Michelle A. Clifton-Soderstrom

Christianity and Politics by C. C. Pecknold

A Way to Scholasticism by Peter S. Dillard

Theological Theodicy by Daniel Castelo

The Letter to the Hebrews in Social-Scientific Perspective by David A. deSilva

Basil of Caesarea by Andrew Radde-Galwitz

A Guide to St. Symeon the New Theologian by Hannah Hunt

Reading John by Christopher W. Skinner

Forgiveness by Anthony Bash

Jacob Arminius by Rustin Brian

Reading Jeremiah by Jack Lundbom

John Calvin by Donald McKim

Acknowledgments

I first want to thank Christian Amondson and the whole team at Wipf and Stock for their service. Christian has been a great friend for over a decade now and has encouraged me throughout the process of writing this book. I also greatly appreciate the help from my first reader and another one of my best friends, Dr. Margaret Ramey, who graciously offered comments and encouragement out of the goodness of her heart. I would also like to acknowledge Tom and Ashleen Wartenweiler and the Servants Vancouver Community for inviting me to meals and allowing me to read the book of Job with the community one night a week for two months. Lastly, I could not have completed this manuscript without the support and understanding of my wife, Melanie, and my children, Elaine, Micah, and Luke. Luke was not yet born while I finished up my last book, but was present (napping in the next room) for the composition of the entirety of this one. This book is dedicated to you, Luke: may you remain in awe of Creation and, like Job, seek a face-to-face encounter with the Creator.

Introduction

Most readers of the book of Job have more in common with Job’s friends than with Job himself. Many people have identified with Job over the centuries—whether in their suffering, loss, persecution, or feelings of abandonment. And certainly that is one reason for the perpetual interest in the book. Yet the singular experience of Job as described in the first two chapters—where a wealthy and blessed and perfectly moral man (both the narrator and God describe him as blameless and upright) suffers the loss of his family, property, and health because he is wealthy and blessed and perfectly moral—makes one’s ability to identify with Job quite limited. On the other hand, how many of us have found ourselves in comparable situations as Job’s friends, particularly as described in 2:11–13? Knowing someone who is suffering and being at a loss as to how to comfort him or her may be an actual universal experience.

Unfortunately, the friends, for the most part, have been vilified for their poor theology based on a moral economy of right for right and wrong for wrong rather than appreciated for their sympathy as they tried comforting their friend in the best way they knew how. Yes, God does condemn their words in 42:7–8. Job’s anger at his friends’ words along with God’s condemnation in the epilogue lead casual readers and scholars alike to dismiss the friends as unsympathetic characters. However, God does offer the friends a route to restoration to the community through Job’s intercession in 42:8. Also, only the most dismissive of readers would think that Job’s friends argue with Job out of malice rather than with the best of intentions. If most readers are honest with themselves, they can identify with the friends at even their worst—exasperated at the ostensible whining of a friend in a situation the friend could have prevented with a bit more perspicacity. The friends, after all, have no reason to think they should abandon their tradition’s retributive theology as they speak into Job’s situation.

Very few books have inspired such interest as Job has throughout the centuries, and much of that interest is due to its inscrutability. The work of interpreting Job clarifies the story itself. When the story of Job opens, we meet a blameless, humble man who more than meets God’s approval. We don’t expect Job to undergo divine testing. As the story unfolds, it shocks us. Just as we think we know what to expect at the start of Job’s story, so as interpreters we approach the book familiar with its story or the themes or its theology. Yet as we move closer, the book shocks us again. When confronted with the depth of Job’s suffering, Job and his friends try to find meaning in it. Similarly, we interpreters of Job argue over its meaning: either at the minutest level like a single word, or at the meaning of the book as a whole, or even what verses belong in the book at all. These arguments have been going on for centuries.

It is not in the scope of this book to bring an end to these arguments, but rather to highlight them. The purpose of Approaching Job is to consider all (or at least the most significant) issues pertinent to the interpretation of the book of Job. In order to explore the book from different angles, I offer four chapters that, like Job’s friends, first approach him from a distance and then get closer. I hope such an approach gives readers of Job different ways of reading the book and allows them to identify with the different characters and to understand the variety of Job interpreters across the centuries.

Chapter 1 begins the approach with an overview of the characters and themes. I offer a brief character analysis of each character in the book of Job—from Job and God to Job’s friends to Job’s children to even the marauders who destroy Job’s property. Such an approach is my attempt to give each character his or her due. It is easy either to malign characters for their poor decisions with the benefit of a omniscient narrator or hindsight, or to dismiss them as plot devices. Many readers of Job (and I am thinking of myself here) assume a privileged position. As a white male in North America, I am conditioned to read Job as a book for me. Job the character is a privileged person who loses all of his belongings through no fault of his own. Job is either like me or like others in my peer group. But perhaps Job’s understanding of suffering is most akin to my understanding of suffering as a member of a wealthy, male, elite audience.¹ If I see Job as the character most like me in his story, then could taking on the perspectives of other characters open up other ways for me to understand the book of Job? Is Job’s wife unfairly marginalized after attempting to persuade Job to curse God and die? The first chapter ends with an overview of some of the themes that arise in the book of Job.

At the end of each section in chapter 1, I raise some questions that come up in the character descriptions within that section. I revisit some of these questions in chapter 2, which offers a more traditional introduction to the book of Job—describing the structure of the book, offering evidence for proposing composition date in the Persian era, and detailing the most important critical problems with the book.

Though these critical issues are important, especially for those who will continue to read secondary literature on the book of Job, I do suspect that some readers will have less interest in the issues of this chapter. While I revisit many of these issues in the third chapter, particularly the structures diagrammed, lay readers will be forgiven for skimming the sections on the date and integrity of the book. While formal students will benefit from this information, they will find that the composition date is relatively unimportant for interpreting the book and that I assume a general integrity of the book in the next two chapters, especially in attempting to determine the theology of the book of Job.

The third chapter looks closely at the most important and contentious passages of the book of Job. Through much of this chapter I survey the history of interpretation, including recent research to explore what the book of Job might mean through the lens of a particular passage. Within the long book of Job, several writers and exegetes tend to favor different sections over others, which leads them to argue for competing meanings of the book. Several of these passages that have become so important across the centuries create other problems in interpretation, such as translation. The vast majority of readers of the book of Job read Job in a language other than Hebrew. Even those who know Hebrew, though, will note that the Hebrew of Job is particularly ambiguous in parts, either due to the use of rare words, double entendres, or potentially corrupt texts. This book will not erase these ambiguities, but will highlight them in order to make readers aware of other interpretive possibilities or to challenge presuppositions that blind readers to more nuanced understandings of this already challenging book.

Chapter 4 sums up our exploration of the book of Job with brief overviews of theological and ethical implications of the book. Many people have entered the book of Job because they have suffered greatly, hoping that a biblical book where God answers an innocent sufferer will provide some answers to their own suffering. My final chapter looks at the conclusions of some who have entered the book of Job for such reasons as well as other theological conclusions about the book, having to do, for instance, with the freedom of God and the role of humanity in God’s creation.

The fascination with Job over the centuries has been too vast to mention more than a fraction of its receptions in this volume, but even a comprehensive evaluation of the impact of Job would not exhaust its propensity to surprise. No matter how many times we approach the book of Job, even with all of its history in mind, we may, like his friends, still be caught aghast at not