Back to the beginning of the First Parish homepage
The Bible is a sort of anthology. The word "Bible" comes from an ancient Greek word meaning a collection of little books. There are several sorts of books in the collection. Early on are books of legends, law, and history. Later come books about the social reformers known as the prophets. Eventually, the Christian Bible adds the accounts of Jesus’ life, called gospels, and letters written to early Christian communities, called epistles.
But back in the Hebrew Bible, there is yet another type of book, known as Wisdom Literature, a type that was common in the ancient middle east. Generally, these books are less concerned with societal issues than with the puzzlements of the individual, whether everyday quandaries of the sort addressed in the book of Proverbs, or the great issues of life, death, suffering, and the meaning of it all, which are the subject of Ecclesiastes and Job, as well as of Ecclesiasticus and the Wisdom of Solomon, two books of the Apocrapha, which are part of the Catholic Bible.
It is Job I am going to preach on this morning, thanks to the generosity of Brownie Parker, who bought the right to pick a sermon topic at the church annual auction a month or two ago. As he and I concur, Job is an astonishing, mysterious, beautifully-written, strange, and fascinating story.
Scholars think it is based on a tale that circulated widely in the middle east about the patience of a man whom God tested by destroying his life, but he never complained, so God rewarded him by giving him even more than he had in the first place.
The story in that basic form persevered. Even in the New Testament, it says in the Letter of James, "As an example of suffering and patience, . . . take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. Indeed we call blessed those who showed endurance. You have heard of the endurance of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful." [James 5:10-11, NRSV]
This is the version one finds in Islamic scripture. The Koran says,
Commemorate Our Servant Job,The author of the Book of Job, though, took that old story, rendered it in prose as the beginning and the very end of the book, then interjected a long, wonderful poem that explores the issues the story raises, in particular the age-old dilemma, why it is that good people suffer and, as far as that goes, why bad people seem to do quite well in this world, if in fact there is a God and if that God is just.
Behold he cried to his Lord:
‘Satan has afflicted
Me with distress and suffering!…’
And we gave him (back)
His people and doubled
Their number,-- as a Grace
From Us, and a thing
For commemoration, for all
Who have understanding….
Truly we found
Him full of patience and constancy.
How excellent is the servant!
Ever did he turn (to Us)!
[Koran 38:41, 43, 44]
The story is about an immensely successful and upright fellow named Job, who is portrayed not as Hebrew but as a native of Uz, probably southeast of the Dead Sea. This is commonly taken as an indication that the Judean author wanted to raise his or her account above the provincial. Unlike so much of the Bible outside of Wisdom Literature, this story has nothing to do with God’s relationship with the people Israel. It is about every person and his or her attempt as an individual to make sense of life.
What happens in Job’s life is that he gets involved in a terrible way in a pair of wagers between God and a member of the divine court, Satan. Satan is a very minor character in the Hebrew Bible. It is only in the centuries just after the writing of Job and before the ministry of Jesus that Palestine gets very influenced by Persian ideas like that of the devil or of an afterlife.
Satan makes one of his rare appearances in Hebrew scripture here in Job as a sort of divine independent prosecutor or spy. Satan is not even his name, really; he is the Satan, which is to say, the adversary or the accuser. His job seems to have been to investigate things on earth and report back for God to judge what to do.
After one of Satan’s trips, God gets to bragging to him about how righteous and reverent Job is. And why not, says Satan, you’ve given him great blessings. What’s not to like? But he would curse you if you took them away.
God has hopes that Job is either more loyal than that, or bright enough to know that neither misfortune nor wealth come as God’s reward for one’s degree of righteousness in any neat and simple way. So God tells Satan to go ahead, take away Job’s blessings, just don’t touch the guy.
In a flash, Job learns that his oxen and camels have been stolen, and his slaves, sheep, and all ten of his children have been killed. His response is all that God might have hoped for: he falls upon the earth, worshipping, and says,
Naked I came from my mother’s womb,God is pleased, and gets to bragging to Satan again, noting that
naked shall I return.
The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away.
Blessed be the name of the Lord.
Job still holds fast to his integrityBut Satan incites God again, suggesting Job still hasn’t proven much because he still has his health. So God tells Satan to do whatever he wants to Job as long as he spares Job’s life; and Satan gives Job boils from head to foot.
though you incited Me against him
to destroy him without cause.
Job goes off to live on the ash-heap and scrape his sores. His wife suggests that he just curse God and die, but righteous fellow that he is, Job holds fast to his piety (as she puts it), answering, quite sensibly, "Shall we accept good from God and not accept evil?"
Job having displayed his faithfulness and wisdom, the original tale moves directly to the happy ending in which his good fortune is restored, only the greater. But the poet breaks open the tale to insert a literary treasure, the extended poem in which the complexity of the matter is explored.
Because as the poet has it, Job is on his ash-heap and three friends come to visit him, good friends, friends who grieve at his condition, who sit with him in silence for seven days, just keeping company with Job’s agony, waiting for him to speak.
And finally Job does speak. But when he does, we realize that his initial responses, pious and accepting, have lost out within him to a fierce despair and bitterness. Rarely in the world’s religious literature is there an expression of woe we more deep or full. He curses the day of his birth, and longs for his death.
I sit and gnaw on my grief [he concludes];The friends are startled, and remind him that God is powerful and just and blesses the good and brings the evil person to ruin. So Job should not despair but be confident in the reward his uprightness deserves. This is a fine presentation of conventional theology, but it misses the point: in front of them is a suffering person. At first they don’t seem to realize what they are saying, the way it will be heard by Job. This is not theory to him any more; he has been brought low, and he knows there is no justification.
My groans pour out like water.
My worst fears have happened;
my nightmares have come to life.
Silence and peace have abandoned me,
and anguish camps in my heart.
[3:24-26, Stephen Mitchell, trans.]
As that issue comes increasingly into focus, the friends see the side that they have to take to be true to their theology: since success and failure in their view are God’s responses to one’s righteousness or misdeeds, when Job in his bitterness raises the fact that he has had enormous misfortune, they have to argue that he must have deserved it.
But Job cannot accept that solution, because he knows better. Consequently, the terms of the argument force him into an attack on God’s justice, and correctly so, as we know from the opening narrative that preceded the poem.
In the introduction to his new translation of the book, Raymond Scheindlin notes that "The poem cannot exist without the narrative, for the narrative’s purpose is to establish the key fact against which the entire poem is to be read" -- that Job is right in maintaining steadfastly throughout the book that his suffering is unjust, and that his friends are wrong in maintaining that that God is always just and that Job therefore must have sinned.
"The narrative enables the reader to witness the scene in heaven when the capricious decisions are made to destroy Job’s every worldly good. We can therefore view the entire poem from [God’s] perspective, a bold stroke on the part of the poet; with [God], we look down on Job and his friends and observe their pathetic attempts to make sense out of a life that we know need not make sense." [15]
The dialogue back and forth between Job and his friends grows ever more heated, sounding not very friendly at all. One so-called friend responds to Job, "How long will you go on ranting, filling our ears with trash?" [8:1] Another accuses Job of trying to "mouth us into submission with your impudent lies…." [11:3] In return, Job tries sarcasm ("You, it seems, know everything; perfect wisdom is yours") and then pleas ("Enough! … Will your malice never cease?" and "How long will you make me suffer and break my heart with your words?")
Their presentations grow stronger, too. Job longs for the chance to speak before God, to make his case in God’s court. A friend replies that that would only show Job that his guilt is great. It must be great, they argue – look what has happened to you. They even begin to guess what the crimes must be. One says,
your crimes must be inconceivable.But Job, of course, denies it all. He is adamant. "If only I knew where to meet [God] . . . surely I would win my case. For he knows that I am innocent…" [23:3,7] But God has not been just in return.
You cheated your dearest friends,
stripped your debtors naked,
stole food from the hungry,
let the destitute starve,
spat on widow and orphan,
laughed in the beggar’s face.
That is why pain surrounds you…
and the waves close over your head.
…what good has virtue done me? [asks Job]Toward the end, he tells his friends,
How has God rewarded me?
Isn’t disgrace for sinners
and misery for the wicked?
Can’t [God] tell right from wrong
or keep his accounts in order?
How kind you have all been to me!And then he begins what has been called The Summation, beginning, "If only I could return to the days when God was my guardian…" and a poignant recounting of his former prestige, and his many acts of goodness, followed by a heart-rending account of his current condition, scorned and
How considerate of my pain!
What would I do without you
and the good advice you have given?
Who has made you so tactful
and inspired such compassionate words?
I swear by God, who has wronged me,
and filled my cup with despair,
that while there is life in this body
and as long as I can breathe,
I will never let you convict me;
I will never give up my claim.
I will hold tight to my innocence;
my mind will never move.
[26:2-4, 27:2-6]
in agony;But before we hear from God, we get to hear from a young man, a by-stander named Elihu, who has been listening to the debate. This section is no doubt a later addition, and some people discount it, while others love it. Elihu is upset at Job’s blasphemy, and to defend God’s justice he repeats some of the friends’ earlier arguments, stressing a few in particular, like the thought that what might seem like a lack of justice on God’s part when good people suffer may be God’s attempt to save them from pride.
the days of sorrow have caught me.
Pain pierces my skin;
suffering gnaws my bones….
You show me that I am clay
and prove that I am dust.
I cry out, and you don’t answer;
I am silent, and you don’t care.
You have viciously turned against me
and lash me with all your might….
Oh, if only God would hear me,
stated his case against me,
let me read his indictment . . .
I would justify the least of my actions,
I would stand before him like a prince.
And then he anticipates what is about to happen by citing God’s power and his sublime works of creation, and he names a lot of meteorological examples, saying, "Pay attention, Job, to this: Stop and think about God’s wonders." [37:14, Scheindlin, trans.]
And then, whose voice should be heard but that of the afore-mentioned God, with an answer, but not the one Job requested. God has no intention of reading an indictment for Job to counter. These are probably the best-known lines of the book, and I think they draw their power from the sudden change not just in tone but in subject. Five people have been debating this and that about whether God’s been fair or not to Job. But this isn’t traffic court; this is God.
Chapter 38, for once in the King James Version: "Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding." Whoo, there’s a trump card for you.
To put things further in perspective, God runs through a litany of his projects, like atmosphere, oceans, and clouds. Listen, Job,
Have you ever commanded morningJob is at a disadvantage in this conversation. I doubt he is feeling like a prince. He has not been to the edge of the universe, he won’t get a word in edgewise till God is done, and God has got some knock-out poetry to deliver.
or guided dawn to its place—
to hold the corners of the sky
and shake off the last few stars? . . .
Have you been to the edge of the universe?
Speak up, if you have such knowledge.
Does the rain have a father?And so on through animals until God concludes,
Who has begotten the dew?
Out of whose belly is the ice born?
Whose womb labors with the sleet?
(The water’s surface stiffens;
the lake grows hard as rock.) . . .
Do you tell the antelope to calve
or ease her when she is in labor?
Do you count the months of her fullness
and know when her time has come? . . .
Do you give the horse his strength?
Do you clothe his neck in terror?
Do you make him leap like a locust,
snort like a blast of thunder?
Do you show the hawk how to fly,Then God says to Job:
stretching his wings on the wind?
Do you teach the vulture to soar
and build his nest in the clouds?
He makes his home on the mountaintop,
the unapproachable crag.
He sits and scans for prey;
from far off his eyes can spot it.
His little ones drink its blood.
Where the unburied are, he is.
Will God’s accuser give in?Job says to God:
Will my prosecutor defend himself?
I am speechless: What can I answer?God has a second speech to Job as well, less often cited, though it does contain the interesting pair of lines,
I put my hand on my mouth.
I have said too much already;
now I will speak no more.
Do you dare deny my judgment?By which I hear God acknowledging what he and Job and we all know is true, that Job’s punishment was utterly unmerited. Your friends are wrong, Job, you are right. But that doesn’t make me wrong, says God. I am not confined to your human sense of what should be. It is my creation. For all you know (although he does not say this to Job), all that death and loss might have been the result of nothing more than my pride, and a couple dumb bets I made at the divine court.
Am I wrong because you are right?
There is a section of God’s first address to Job when he says,
Where is the road to light?God is sarcastically pointing out that that is just who he is, that which was before there was anything else, and that which created all that is, of which we are an insignificant part, unlikely to fathom deeply what in the world is going on, if anything.
Where does darkness live?
(Perhaps you’ll escort them home
or show them the way to their house.)
You know, since you have been there
and are older than all creation.
Job concurs. His last words in the book are these:
I have spoken of the unspeakableAt that point, our talented poet returns to the prose account he or she has interrupted at such length, and lets the story have its fairly happy ending. It is certainly happy for Job, who ends up with a huge number of sheep, camels, oxen and donkeys, and another ten children, including the world’s most beautiful daughters, Dove, Cinnamon, and Azure. (That will be on the test.)
and tried to grasp the infinite.
[What was I thinking? -- No, Job didn’t really say that.] . . .
I had heard of you with my ears;
but now my eyes have seen you.
Therefore I will be quiet,
comforted that I am dust.
The friends, they do not fare as well at first, for God is very angry with them for not having spoken the truth about God, as Job had. They are allowed to atone by giving animals to Job, but God’s anger makes a powerful point: they had been wrong when they claimed that Job must have done something wrong to deserve his misfortune.
Whereas, as Scheindlin points out, God "is pleased with Job because, although he complained, at least he maintained the difficult truth that the author of Job wants the reader to accept: that God’s management of the universe is arbitrary." [16] Scheindlin thinks that is the basic point of the book, that God "is outside human calculations of justice; [we] cannot know whether [our] suffering has any meaning at all, and it is impertinent … to ask." [16]
But this is a message that seems so contrary to what is affirmed in so many other books of the Bible, the books of the Hebrew Bible especially. What is it doing in there? One could ask the same thing of Ecclesiastes, with its world-weary view that everything people do is worthless and futile. In both books, there has been a little later effort made to pretty up the picture, which is how Elihu slips into Job, one imagines.
But I think in both cases the books survived because they spoke so powerfully to a deep religious truth or mood or attitude -- in Job’s case, to the reality of life’s unfairness sometimes. Job gives voice to an anger and despair many may feel, and voices them vigorously, poetically, and well. There can be a sort of consolation in that. And all the people who think they know that there is some reason that one has brought some suffering on oneself, and all the people who say that it’s all for the best, they end up earning God’s anger.
Furthermore and finally, in an important way, the book offers a wonderful affirmation of the glory of the world in which we live, captured in the nature poetry voiced first by Elihu and then, at the climax of the whole book, by God. Referring to the latter speech, Scheindlin notes that "Nowhere in the book [of Job] is the poet’s fascination with the fullness of life displayed more energetically than here…. His inclination to marvel at the world and at the life with which it teems . . . is given free rein, so that it comes to overwhelm the book’s problematics.
"[God] has no moral consolation to offer Job or [hu]mankind. Only [God] manages the universe; [we] cannot know how or by what rule [God] does so. All [we have] by way of consolation is whatever pleasure [we] can derive from life’s sheer plenitude: wonder at God’s creatures, … gratitude to be in a world so fascinating and abundant, no matter what suffering [we have] to endure to experience it. The intended effect of [God’s] speech is to replace resentment with a sensation of the sublime." [41]
I know, when suffering is our daily bread, as sometimes
it can be, that it is hard to feel even consolation, much less a sensation
of the sublime. But maybe that is why, after almost a hundred generations,
people go on listening to the words of the character named God with encouragement
and hope, and go on listening with recognition to Job’s dispute with his
friends, who are well-meaning and theologically orthodox, but unintentionally
cruel and ultimately wrong. Suffering is rarely our punishment or fault.
For all who feel so, Job is their voice.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Greenberg, Moshe, "Job," in The Literary Guide to the
Bible, Alter and Kermode, ed. (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA)
1987
Gutierrez, Gustavo, On Job (Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY)
1987
Kushner, Harold S., When Bad Things Happen To Good People
(Schoken Books, New York) 1981
Michell, Stephen, Into the Whirlwind (Doubleday &
Company, Garden City, NY) 1979
Pope, Marvin H., Job (Doubleday & Company, Garden
City, NY) 1965
Scheindlin, Raymond P, The Book of Job (W. W. Norton
& Company, New York) 1998
Except in the few cases noted in the text, all translations
from Job are by Stephen Mitchell.