Nahum Sarna suggests that there is a seven-step sequence in the calamities that befall Job:
1. Sabeans raid oxen and donkeys
2. Sabeans kill the servants
3. Fire of God consumes sheep
4. Fire of God consumes servants
5. Chaldeans raid camels
6. Chaldeans kill the servants
7. Wind strikes the house and kills children
Showing posts with label Bible - Job. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bible - Job. Show all posts
Monday, September 27, 2010
Heptamerous Calamities?
Thursday, August 05, 2010
Playing with Dragons like Dad
I've suggested elsewhere that part of Yahweh's answer to Job regarding the Leviathan is an invitation to learn to play with Leviathan (Job 41:4). Yahweh plays with dragons, and growing up into the glory and wisdom of the sons of God means growing up to play with dragons: Like Father, like son.
The first "wonder" that Moses performs for Pharaoh is essentially the same thing. The point of the sign of Moses' staff is not primarily turning the staff into a serpent (though that is of course part of it). The real point is that Moses is able to take hold of that dragon by the tail and it submits to him (Ex. 4:4). The sign of the staff is Moses playing with/taming a dragon which is significant because Pharaoh is a dragon (cf. Ez. 29:3, 32:2), and Yahweh rules over him and can play with him. And Moses is a son who is learning to play with dragons (demons/human tyrants) like his Dad.
And ultimately this goes back to Adam in the garden. Adam failed to tame/play with the dragon and allowed it to seduce his wife. But God is a gracious Father, and He trains His sons to tame and conquer the dragons: sin, death, and every form of wickedness and evil.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Job for Worms and Music
Lawrence Besserman writes that one widespread practice in the middle ages was the veneration of Job as the patron saint of those who suffered from worms, various skin diseases, venereal disease, and melancholy. In fact, if one wanted, one might find a number of Latin and German charms against worms, in which Saint Job is invoked.
And somewhat mysteriously, Job was also the patron saint of musicians. Figure that one out.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Private Religion and Weak-Mindedness
"The modern habit of saying, 'This is my opinion, but I may be wrong,' is entirely irrational. If I say that it may be wrong, I say that it is not my opinion. The modern habit of saying, 'Every man has a different philosophy; this is my philosophy and it suits me' - the habit of saying this is mere weak-mindedness. A cosmic philosophy is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic philosophy is constructed to fit a cosmos. A man can no more posses a private religion than he can possess a private sun and moon."
G.K. Chesterton, Introduction to the Book of Job
Monday, May 03, 2010
Job as Slave
Job longs for the grave in 3:19: "the small and the great are there, and the slave is free from his master."
Yahweh has claimed Job as His "slave" twice in chapters 1 and 2, and now Job longs for death where that relationship can be severed. He longs for the place where a "slave" is free from his "lord."
This can be taken as pure pain or anger or nihilism, but the word for "free" is the same word used in Exodus 21 and Deuteronomy 15 in regulations specifically designed to protect Hebrew slaves. They may serve for six years, but in the seventh year, they are to be freed. Job not only longs for freedom, he longs for the seventh year, the year of Sabbath, the year of release.
As becomes more explicit as the dialog goes on, Job longs for the grave not as a nihilistic end, a plunge into the void. Rather, Job longs for the grave because he fully expects to be raised up from it. Perhaps Job is not only looking for freedom but also for maturity and a standing before his master.
Friday, April 30, 2010
And Some Helped Their Wish Come True
Besserman writes:
"For what Samuel Johnson said of readers of Paradise Lost -- 'none ever have wished it longer than it is' -- probably holds true for most readers of the Hebrew Book of Job. The Septuagint is only five-sixths the length of its exemplar, a disparity that was already noted by Origen in the third century, who observed that 'often four or three verses, and sometimes fourteen or fifteen' are missing from the Greek."
The Legend of Job in the Middle Ages, 38.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
William Blake's Job
Davis points out that one of great insights of William Blake found in his famous Illustrations of the Book of Job is the resemblance between God and Job.
Blake underlines this point in Illustration Number XVII pictured here. Above the picture runs the quotation from 1 Jn. 3:2: "We know that when He shall appear we shall be like Him, for we shall see him as He is."
What is really cool is the fact that Job resembles God from beginning to end. This underlines the image of God, Job as Adam before God. But by the end, there is an implied eschatology to this image. Job is growing up into the glory of God.
Extreme Obscurity
"Such a diversity of opinions has prevailed in the learned world concerning the nature and design of the Poem of Job, that the only point in which commentators seem to agree, is the extreme obscurity of the subject." Bishop Lowth
Cited in The Legend of Job in the Middle Ages by Lawrence Besserman
Job's Resemblance of God
Ellen Davis closes her essay "Job and Jacob" noting that Job's maturation over the course of the book specifically has to do with an understanding of the concept of "blameless" as "capacity for obsession with the blessing of God." This idea of "obsession" is itself a kind of insatiable hunger. But this hunger in turn corresponds to God's own gratuity. God overflows with blessings for the hungry. And blessed are the hungry for they shall be filled.
According to Davis, Job grows up into this understanding. Through Yahweh's speeches to him, Job comes to appreciate God's overflowing nature. And this overflowing nature simultaneously insists upon God's goodness and freedom. But this "answer" doesn't leave Job unchanged. Rather, Job having seen God with his eyes becomes more like Him. He becomes more like His gratuitous, overflowing God in the double return of his possessions, but he continues this imitation of God in his generosity toward his children, even giving his daughters inheritances, relatively unheard of in the ancient world. Job is even gracious in his prayers, asking the Lord to forgive his three enemy-friends.
Receiving the blessings and bestowing them upon his children is the acceptance of great risk for him and for his family. Job knows that these blessings may also be ripped from him like the previous blessings. He knows that God's overflow is wild and untamed and free. And Job images this same kind of freedom, abandon, and gratuity. Job grows up to "at last resemble the God to whom he surrenders." Davis particularly notes that this reckless abandon of Job, including an inheritance bestowed on his daughters, contrasts with his former anxiety regarding his children. If previously he was a little too cautious, too fearful, offering sacrifices for possible sins in the hearts of his children, his piety now includes prayer for forgiveness for his enemies and has grown up into a generous abandon toward his children.
Without minimizing Job's initial piety toward his children, we might still recognize a maturity moving from only a negative piety (forgiveness for possible sins) to a more robust piety that includes both the negative (prayer for forgiveness) and positive (bestowing inheritances).
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Blamelessness: Capacity for Obsession
Ellen Davis has a great essay in a collection entitled The Whirlwind, ed. by Stephen Cook, et al.
She recognizes the textual parallels in the characters of Job and Jacob and specifically notices the description of both men as tam or "blameless". Davis suggests, following the Targum's rendering of Gen. 25:27 that this "integrity" is a sort teachability. Specifically, she suggests that it is a kind of obsession with the blessing of God. She traces Jacob's life from tricking his brother into giving him the birthright, stealing it and deceiving his father, and struggling with his father in-law for the blessing of a wife, he finally comes face to face with God, wrestling with Him and refusing to let go until he receives a blessing.
Davis applies this connection to Job and then based on her dating of the book suggests its applicability to post-exilic Israel, a nation still struggling, wrestling and the author hopes still obsessed with seeking the blessing of their God. Whether the dating is right or not, the application seems right.
On this reading, to be "blameless" is not in the first place a moral designation. It is rather the calling to seek the blessing of God, to search for God Himself, until He is found. Jacob finally sees God face to face, Moses speaks to God face to face like a friend, and Job eventually meets God and sees Him with His eyes.
These brief allusions all point to the ultimate "blameless" One, Jesus Christ, who is likewise obsessed with the blessing of God His Father. And this Jesus ultimately ascends to the Father and pours out the Spirit upon His people, blowing this calling wide open to all of God's people. All of God's people are called to be sons, called and re-created with capacities for obsession with the blessing of God.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Blessing Meaning Cursing
William Henry Green suggests that the euphemistic use of the word "bless" to mean "curse" running through the prologue (1:6, 11, 2:5, 9) is actually drawn from the more casual use of the word as departing farewell. To "bless" in this sense is to say "goodbye" and leave someone behind (Gen. 31:55, Josh. 22:6). Green says that this is what Job feared his sons may be doing while feasting in their houses. They may have been feasting and forgetting God, leaving Him behind. They may have dismissed God in their hearts.
While this seemed initially like quite a stretch to me. I realized that we actually do this in English. The word "goodbye" contains the word "good" in it, and yet we are not afraid to use it in rather harsh or derogatory ways. An enraged and jealous spouse may slam the door on her unfaithful husband shouting "goodbye!" And though she uses the word "good" there's nothing cheery about it. We see the word BARAK, and simplistically get hung up on its usual usage and meaning. But we do the same thing with the word "good." We use sarcasm and intonation and facial expression to frequently mean the opposite of what our words actually "say."
Friday, March 19, 2010
Job as Christ
When Job prays for his three accusers in the epilogue, he is a Christ figure praying, 'Father, forgive them...'
Genre and Interpretation in Job
Many critics have denied the essential unity of the book of Job, relegating the prologue and epilogue to an early myth, co-opted by a later poet-sage stretching the folk tale into an epic dialogue, with an Elihu scribe and perhaps a Wisdom scribe adding their two and three cents at various stages in the compilation of the final product of the book we now called Job.
A number of recent scholars have pointed out how unhelpful this redaction criticism really is. At the end of the day this get-out-your-scissors approach to exegesis leaves us with a pile of disconnected scraps which seems to be an elaborate evasion of responsibility on the part of interpreters. Who's to say what Job means when we're dealing with so many fragments, authors, editors, etc.?
Even if the the end product of Job was in any way a collaborative effort, the end product is what we have, and any meaningful interpretation must take the final form seriously.
As Carol Newsom has pointed out, the stark differences in genre have typically been viewed as barriers, deep divides that keep interpreters from allowing the prologue and epilogue from being friends with the dialogues. But as she notes, this is overly simplistic and does not really answer the question of whether the author may have intentionally written in two different genres on purpose and what that purpose may have been.
For just one example, while the literary style of the prologue and epilogue are unmistakably similar, the mediating literary style of the dialogues doesn't allow the reader to return to the epilogue unaffected. The prologue sets a tone that is interrupted but not fully shaken as the text "falls apart" in the dialogic storm of words, and then that storm isn't fully calmed even as Job is comforted and surrounded by family and friends and possessions at the end.
One imagines the black, snarling clouds still swirling in the distance and everything is shiny and sparkling from the rain as the sun breaks out of the clouds. And that's part of the intentional structure, the dueling genres of Job.
The Crown of Suffering
As many have pointed out, suffering has a way of stripping away the extra things, the non-essentials. But it is the suffering, the pain, the loss that defines what those extra things are: family, cars, clothing, health, even food and drink become extras in so far as we endure their absence. The loss of them and pain have a way of narrowing priorities, clearing and clarifying the mind, values, relationships.
But Christian suffering does not reject the world. It does not refuse material possessions. Righteous suffering does not come to resent the extras. On the contrary, the extras become what they always were: grace. They are gifts, undeserved gifts. And they are glories. The child of God who emerges from the fray, emerges by grace, in grace, upheld and sustained by grace. The believer emerges with his or her face glowing. And who cares what Moses was wearing?
Like a warrior emerging bruised and bleeding from the chaos and horror of battle, he somehow doesn't need his armor, doesn't need his weapons. The horror strips away the armor, strips away the decorations, but it doesn't strip them away permanently. They come to rest on him like a mantle, they rest on him like a crown.
The restoration of Job reads like this. He receives everything back in all its fairytale glory. And it really is glory. God isn't winking or crossing his fingers. The author isn't sneering. But the 'return' isn't exactly a mirror image of the introduction. The 'return' is resurrection, it's life-again, but it's life-again in a powerful, glorified way. And the possessions and children and gifts rest upon Job like crowns. But we (the readers) see Job's scars. His hands have holes in them from the nails, and there is a hole where the spear was thrust into his side.
Job and the Sheep
Gustavo Gutierrez in his book On Job suggests that the maturation story in Job is in part an elaborate instance of what Jesus says is the case in Matthew 25 in the parable of the sheep and the goats.
Entering into the suffering of the weak brings individuals face to face with Christ. Christ is the one who is clothed, fed, and befriended. Service, suffering, and struggling is the path to encountering Jesus. And as the parable insists, this can be a surprising, unexpected conclusion -- the sheep wonder when they served Christ and the goats wonder when they didn't.
Gutierrez says this is a gloss on 1 Corinthians 13, where love of others is a mirror in which we see Christ dimly, and love is the excellent way toward the end of seeing Jesus face to face.
In Job, it is his suffering, the accusations, the loss which lead him to encounter Yahweh in the whirlwind. The darkness of death, pain, and accusations is how we see now "dimly," but this gives way to a conference with Yahweh, face to face.
Monday, March 08, 2010
Touchstone
The good folks over at Touchstone have published an article in the latest issue that I wrote with Peter Leithart. You have to get the hardcopy to read it, but at least now you know. And are you surprised? It's more on the book of Job.
Friday, March 05, 2010
Barth on the Freedom of Job
Barth says that the story of Job is all about (surprise) freedom.
"Freedom is not caprice. The relationship [between Yahweh and Job] could not be other than it is. The intercourse could not take a different course. yet there can be no question of any necessity of the relationship or ineluctability of the intercourse. For it is all grounded in and fashioned by free electing and disposing on the part of God and equally free obedience on that of Job."
Barth asks, "How does Yahweh come to be the Partner of the man of Uz in the drama of this history? He obviously is this with great seriousness and intensity. He manifestly could not be otherwise. By why is He? ... [the story] is one long demonstration of the boundless confidence which He has set in him and the fidelity which he has plainly sworn to him. But it is not, as the false and lying theology of the three friends presupposes and maintains, a moral or juridical law which is secretly above Him. Along the lines of His unchangeable fidelity, it is His self-determined and to that extent free and royal conduct." (CD IV.3.1, 386-387)
Barth says that Job (with qualifications) is a prefigure of Jesus, particularly in the sort of relationship that he has with Yahweh. Satan asks if Job fears God "for nothing," that is, isn't God's blessings on Job what actually secure their friendship?
Certainly part of the answer of the author is, 'no.' Their relationship is based on freedom, a freedom which is ultimately grounded in the sovereign love of God.
At the same time, Barth is characteristically opaque in drawing this out: he asks, "And how does Job come to be the servant of God? The answer is that he simply is." He of course grounds this "being" in the idea of freedom "to be." He says, "Job would not be Job if he were not free to receive both evil and good from God. This implies that he fears and loves the free God as such..." That is, his loyalty and allegiance to God is not based on a particular program or contract. It is rather genuine and free love and loyalty between persons.
Blessing and Cursing
Carol Newsom again on the prose prologue in Job: along with most commentators, she puzzles over the euphemistic use of the word "bless" to mean "curse," running through the text. In fact the word "curse" doesn't even occur in the prologue of Job. The word for curse is always the word ordinarily used to mean "bless."
This is particularly striking since the central argument/contention in the introduction has to do with whether Job will "curse" God if all the "blessings" are taken away. Likewise, Job offers sacrifices for his children who may have "sinned and cursed God in their hearts" (1:5). This insinuates a kind of ambiguity in both directions: is "cursing" an absolute evil/rejection of YHWH? And pushing in the opposite direction, are all of God's material "blessings" absolutely good?
Thursday, March 04, 2010
Karl Barth and Carl Jung on Job
Heather den Houting has an essay on her blog from a couple of years ago comparing Karl Barth and Carl Jung on the book of Job.
She summarizes Jung's take on the book of Job as follows:
• In the Book of Job the nature of Yahweh is disclosed as “an antimony – a totality of inner opposites;”
• “Job realises God’s inner antinomy, and in the light of this realisation his knowledge attains a divine numinosity;”
• This therefore is a “new factor” having “never occurred before in world history…without knowing it or wanting it, a mortal man is raised by his moral behaviour above the stars in heaven, from which position of advantage he can behold the back of Yahweh;”
• God becomes reflective and is reminded of Wisdom (of whom he had lost sight, and whose feminine role had been replaced by the “covenant with the chosen people” );
• Wisdom heralds a coming act of creation, but “this time it is not the world that is to be changed; rather it is God who intends to change his own nature.”
• God must be changed as his “creature has surpassed him, he must regenerate himself;”
• God is born as human, through Sophia/Mary;
• Christ’s death is a “fate chosen by Yahweh as a reparation of the wrong done to Job…and as a fillip to the spiritual and moral development of man (sic);”
• However, the immensity of God is still reflected in the Gospels and in Revelation, as both God incarnated as light and God as fierce and terrible; as a result God can be loved but must be feared,”
• Thus, “Yahweh’s decision to become man is a symbol of the development that had to supervene when man becomes conscious of the sort of God-image he is confronted with. God acts out of the unconscious of man and forces him (sic) to harmonise and unite the opposing influences to which his (sic) mind is exposed from the unconscious. The unconscious wants both: to divide and to unite. In his (sic) striving for unity, therefore, man (sic) may always count on the help of a metaphysical advocate, as Job clearly recognised.”
---------------
Obviously some problematic directions here, but still some interesting possibilities, particularly with regard to the incarnation.
Monday, March 01, 2010
Stories that Create Children
Newsom explores the genre of the prose introduction of Job and settles on a "didactic tale," drawing off of elements of fairytale as well as prophetic/parabolic tales.
She interacts with Susan Suleiman's work Authoritarian Fiction, who notes that didactic literature "infantilizes the reader." Newsom explains: "The subject position that didactic narratives offer the reader of whatever age is that of a child."
The genre of fairy tale, parable, or didactic tale as Newsom calls it revels in security and reassurance, a simple and unified vision of the world and morality, and all from the an authoritative voice.
While Jesus is clearly playing with some of these expectations in His parables, it is nevertheless striking to note how in this sense the genre of Jesus' stories assumes and even creates a child audience. If parables have at least on the surface a "paternal" voice, then Jesus is the Word of the Father for the children of Israel. Or in other words, the parables are children's stories only appreciated and loved by those who have "become children" for the Kingdom. Or yet another angle: These stories of Jesus are one of the effective ways that Jesus calls into being and creates a childish people. Listening to the stories of Jesus in faith is the way to become children who may enter the Kingdom. Parables are stories that create children.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
