Job 15-28–
Manuscripts of the Gods: The Bible and Ancient Cultural Thresholds
by James Whitlark, Ph.D.
The Sophomore Spiral (15-28)
Saying that Job has condemned himself, Eliphaz asks if Job knows “the secret of God.”
Then Eliphaz repeats what he learned in his nightmare, that, in the sight of God,
no one is righteous. He continues with a terrifying description of the destruction
of the wicked, i.e., everybody. If this is the “secret of God,” it is a frightening
vision of a paranoid deity who distrusts even the holy (15.15). According to the
frame story, it is neither entirely right nor wrong. Job is deemed blameless but
God tries him nonetheless.
Calling the comforters “miserable,” Job appeals to a sâhêd (witness or record) in heaven. Since sâhêd only occurs once in the Bible, its meaning is unclear, as are other portions of Job’s speech. Greenberg speculates about one of these: “The universe has turned its back on him, yet Job persists in the affirmation of his own worth and the transcendent worth of unrewarded good. Perhaps this is the sense of the difficult passage in 17:9,‘…The righteous man holds to his way [despite it all]; He whose hands are pure grows stronger’” (295). If that is an accurate interpretation, then Job’s stoicism offers an analog to another of the dualisms in the Bhagavadgita. There, salvation can arise from individual, virtuous effort or the Supreme God (manifest as Krishna) can save His devotees. At any rate, when faced with public ridicule, maintaining a sense of his own integrity is difficult for Job (17.6). Not far from orality, the culture is still has an L4 terror of shame as also with that of the Bhagavadgita, where Krishna deems open disgrace worse than death (2.34)—an attitude understandable to those publicly congregated about texts read aloud.
Bildad objects to Job’s having likened the wisdom of the Comforters
to that of animals. Evidently, he is not fully serious when he exalts God so highly
that the difference between man and beast blurs. Stung with indignation, Bildad imagines
Job among the wicked who “shall have no name in the street” (18.17). Again, one of
the most dreaded concomitants of death is disappearance from a world imagined in
terms of oral community. Equally irate, Job cries violence in approximately the same
words as Habakkuk. Horrified by the injustice and transience of life, Job declaims:
Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book!
That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever! (19.23–24)
At least according to Mitchell, he then imagines an Avenger eventually reading his words and vindicating him (49). He conceives of that inscription as surviving in and of itself. The assumption is the same as Asoka and Heliodorus—presumably a common one in antiquity, before such inscriptions weathered long enough to be indecipherable. (When medieval Chinese Buddhist pilgrims encountered the remnants of A´s oka’s pillars, locals gave completely erroneous “translations” of what was left of them. Strong 1983, 8). The belief that inscriptions would be comprehensible interminably gave the author hope of a godlike, eternal voice. Usually that author was a king with divine pretensions anyway. To compensate psychologically for his present misery, Job eventually sees himself in this category. He twice speaks of his crown (18.9 and 31.36) as well as likening himself to a king amidst his army (29.25) (Good 225). The more miserable he becomes, the more arrogant, but he is much provoked. Once again, Zophar describes the suffering of the wicked (i.e., Job) and all Job can do to reply is talk of the prosperity of the wicked (i.e., the Comforters).
The third exchange develops invective but has little new to say about wisdom, with the important exception of the justly famous encomium on Wisdom:
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But where shall wisdom be found? and where is the
place of understanding? (28.12–15, 23, 28) |
Whether or not this was all originally a speech by Job, in the present texts it is,
generating certain ironies and strange resonances. How can wisdom be so valuable
if it only teaches to do what could not save Job? If, however, Greenberg was correct
about 17:9, virtue is valuable to Job even without reward. Thus, he would understand
Krishna’s lesson of acting, but not for the fruits of action.
As Norman C. Habel has shown, one of the key words of this encomium (and of the book as a whole) is place (m–a q–o m), signifying an appointed position in divinely created order (48). But wisdom has no humanly accessible place, so that, perhaps, it comes best to one who has left his m–a q–o m, like Job. If that is the case, the situation would mirror the Indian notion that the homeless life is conducive to wisdom—an assumption relevant to the long exile of Arjuna even though he (like Job) tends to view his homelessness as misfortune.
One reason for reading the encomium as Job’s speech is its beauty.
In its majestic lines, wisdom is almost as important and mysterious as God. Even
without this passage, the idea of wisdom is sufficiently important throughout the
book to establish that it belongs to the wisdom genre. But this passage does more.
It declares the readers have invested soundly in the text. Being told that wisdom
is unavailable to the living and is too precious to be purchased will make them all
the happier to have bought it. On the surface, the lesson of wisdom consists of nothing
more than the fundamental: fear God. But the torments of Job justifies that fear,
as also does the divine whirlwind, which may have come directly after the third exchange.
In the present text, however, Job’s passionate self–curse and call for God is interrupted
by Elihu, who first apologizes for his youth, then upbraids his seniors.
Junior and Senior (32-37)
Walter Reed argues that Elihu’s speech so blatantly parodies prophetic tradition
that it “discredit[s] the institution of prophecy” (Reed 124). With the possible
exception of God, Elihu is the only speaker who makes scripturelike claims for his
pronouncements:
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I will fetch my knowledge from afar, and will ascribe
righteousness to my Maker. (36.3-4) |
Since we lack evidence of who wrote Job, authorial intentions cannot be reconstructed. We do know, however, that the text was or became Hebrew scripture; thus educated guesses about reader responses are possible. With the exception of YHWH, the name Elihu is the only Jewish one in the dialogue (Gordis 67). It is a form of Elijah, one of the greatest prophets. Elihu’s lineage relates him to King David’s ancestry, an important connection, especially in the light of the eventual messianic associations of that line. Elihu is the youngest of the Comforters, but biblical tradition often prefers younger to elder. Are his words patently absurd? Although not an admirer of Elihu, Greenberg admits:
Elihu has marginally surpassed the Friends in affirming that God does speak to man, that not all suffering is punitive, and that contemplation of nature’s elements opens the mind to God’s greatness—a line of apology for God that does not entail blackening Job’s character (Greenberg 297).
More devout, Maimonides takes Elihu as “among the friends the most perfect in knowledge,”
leading Job toward the highest wisdom, God’s revelation that His knowledge completely
transcends human comprehension (Glatzer 21). Being part of a canonical text, Elihu’s
claim to inspiration is not necessarily arrogant. Consequently, there is nothing
about him that would inevitably cause devout Hebrew readers to see him as a villain.
Thus, as far as reader response is concerned, there is not enough evidence to say
that Elihu travesties scripture so clearly that he “discredit[s] the institution
of prophecy.” The evidence is only sufficient to render some readers suspicious of
him but without data necessary to convict. For readers aware of the above, the effect
of Elihu’s speech would be to hone attention—an appropriate preparation for the most
direct presentation of wisdom, the divine epiphany. Furthermore, Elihu’s references
to suffering as discipline (m–u s–a r, e.g., 36.10)—which “included the submissive
attitude of the pupil in the educative process” (Habel 507)—may be relevant, but
in a sense that he did not intend. Just as the other Comforters make prophecies that
turn out to be true in ways they could not have predicted, so, even though Job is
not a guilty student being punished, his suffering may be for him enlightening—what
readers might expect given the integral connection of the wisdom tradition to learning.
Continue to Job 38-
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