Job's Spiritual Journey: The Believer and Rationalist with Questions of God and Man Job's Spiritual Journey: The Believer and Rationalist with Questions of God and Man

Job's Spiritual Journey

The Believer and Rationalist with Questions of God and ManBy William H. Bicksler

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2009 William H. Bicksler
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4389-2255-3

Contents

Preface.......................................................................................1Introduction to Job...........................................................................5Traditions about the Date of the historical figure Job:.......................................6Job's Genre...................................................................................6Relationship to Wisdom of Solomon and other NE Literature.....................................7Themes and Leitmotifs.........................................................................9Date and structure of the Book-in-the-making..................................................10Job, the man..................................................................................14Job the King..................................................................................15Job, the Meaning of the name and the book.....................................................16Author........................................................................................16Composition...................................................................................18Views of God in Job...........................................................................20Eliphaz.......................................................................................20Elihu.........................................................................................21Job...........................................................................................21Structure and Outline of the Book of Job......................................................22Message and Theme.............................................................................27Chapter 1 Job the person, before God and Satan................................................29Chapter 2 The Lord, Satan, Job and his wife...................................................58Chapter 3 Job's Curse.........................................................................71Chapter 4 Eliphaz's help for Job's feelings...................................................90Chapter 5 Eliphaz's help for Job in God.......................................................105Chapter 6 Job's Grief and petition for death..................................................115Chapter 7 Job's plea for pardon...............................................................131Chapter 8 Bildad's 'correct' view of God as to men............................................139Chapter 9 Job's agreement but how to be righteous.............................................144Chapter 10 Job's questions of God's motivations...............................................155Chapter 11 Zophar's criticism of words and meanings...........................................162Chapter 12 Job's teaching Zophar about God....................................................172Chapter 13 Job prepares his case..............................................................183Chapter 14 Job's man-oriented anthropology....................................................194Chapter 15 Eliphaz impugns Job's free speech..................................................202Chapter 16 Job's miserable comforters and the archers.........................................215Chapter 17 Job knows God has closed their minds...............................................225Chapter 18 Bildad on Job, beasts, and wicked men..............................................232Chapter 19 Job is isolated from God and society...............................................239Chapter 20 Zophar appeals to man's history....................................................254Chapter 21 Job and suffering of good and evil men.............................................261Chapter 22 Eliphaz : God men are worthless to God.............................................270Chapter 23 Job seeks audience with God........................................................280Chapter 24 Job seeks a day of reckoning for all...............................................286Chapter 25 Bildad asserts 'all is evil before God'............................................292Chapter 26 Job asserts God is over all........................................................297Chapter 27 Job protests truth and conscience..................................................307Chapter 28 Wisdom is in God's hands to be sought..............................................313Chapter 29 Job reflects on bygone years.......................................................326Chapter 30 Job and the foolish generations....................................................333Chapter 31 Job's covenant commitments& faith appeal...........................................343Chapter 32 Elihu's first speech: Credentials..................................................356Chapter 33 Elihu's Refutation of Job's words..................................................366Chapter 34 Elihu's Second Speech: turns to friends............................................373Chapter 35 Elihu's third speech: on ignorance.................................................382Chapter 36 Elihu's Fourth Speech : God unquestioned...........................................385Chapter 37 Elihu on God's voice...............................................................391Chapter 38 The Lord questions Job on natural law..............................................397Chapter 39 The Lord reviews natural processes.................................................416Chapter 40 Job's reply: the Lord's Behemoth...................................................422Chapter 41 The Lord's Leviathan...............................................................432Chapter 42 Job submits and is restored........................................................442Appendix #1 Ministering to the sick in Job....................................................454Appendix #2 Clues to a Solution in Job's own words............................................456Appendix #3: Study and Discussions on The Book of Job in Various Chapters.....................457Appendix #4 The Bottlenecks of Job............................................................460Appendix #5 Translation: Dispute over Suicide: An Egyptian 'Job'..............................462Appendix #6 The Common Denominator of wisdom in Job...........................................466Appendix #7 Job's Spiritual Growth............................................................467Appendix #8 Job and God's Omnipotence.........................................................469Appendix #9 Ten Paradigms on God's revelation.................................................471Appendix #10 The 'Why' Question in Job........................................................472Appendix #11 Twelve prayers of Job............................................................474Appendix #12 Aspects of theodicy of Job.......................................................476Appendix #13 the Hearer and message of Job....................................................478Appendix #14 What are the twelve pivots of Job's Life?........................................479Appendix #15 The Means God uses...............................................................481Appendix #16 Inductive data on dating of Job..................................................482Appendix # 17 Testament of Job................................................................483Appendix #18 SATAN............................................................................485Appendix #19 Job 14: God and Worship..........................................................491Appendix #20 Job 14 1-12 The Situation of every man...........................................492Appendix #21 Scientific knowledge in Job as wisdom............................................493Appendix #22 Sheol and Afterlife..............................................................494Appendix #23 Satan in Job.....................................................................495Appendix #24 Questions the reader asks of God.................................................496Appendix #25 Generic Man......................................................................497Appendix #26 Confessions: Of Guilt or Innocence...............................................498Appendix 27 Gehenna and the Afterlife in ABD..................................................500Appendix #28 Text of Ludlul Bel Nimeqi........................................................503Appendix #29 Dispute over Suicide.............................................................507Appendix #30 Nabonidus, and Arabian Politics..................................................512Appendix #31 Repentant or Rebellious..........................................................514Appendix #32 Elihu's Insights into Suffering..................................................525Appendix #33 God's 'Good' and 'imperfect' world...............................................531Bibliography of the Book of Job and Evil......................................................533

Chapter One

1.1 -2.13 | A Prologue

1.1 The land of UZ.

Uz is a country in Northwest Arabia (Jer 25:20; Job 1:1; Lam 4:21), listed in the OT with either Aram (Gen. 10:23; 22:21; 1 Chr..1:17) or Edom (Gen 36:28; 1 Chr 1:42). Jer 25:20 places "all the kings of the country of Uz and all the kings of the Philistine country" between Egypt and Edom is missing in the LXX, and probably is a gloss referring to Edom relying on Lam 4:21 "daughter Edom, that you dwell in the country of Uz." Jer 25:20 and the LXX of Job locate Job living on the border between Idumea and Arabia (42:17b). But according to Jer 25:20 and Job 42:17b in the Septuagint Uz would be located in the S of Palestine, between the Negeb and the Sinai peninsula. But this is a speculation belonging to the late Persian or early Hellenistic period, approaching the Nabataean and Idumean Periods. Then, Edom was confined to Idumea W. of Wadi Arabah. Originally, the country of Uz was situated in NW Arabia, between Dedan and Edom. The NW and SW orientations seem very far separated. But the general Arabia-Aramean-Edom area on the borders of desert lands are a setting in keeping with having flocks, overland caravans and houses in cities. Both Arabs and Edomites were noted in history for wisdom. The location in non-Israelite territory in the southern part of the kingdom of Jordan causes the reader to think of a universal interest and context.

Job is seen suffering from Sabean (1:15) and Chaldean (Neo-Babylonian) semi-nomadic raids (1:17). This base level social structure reflects the situation in NW Arabia between 552 and 542 BC, when the Neo-Babylonians under Nabonidus tried to evict the Sabeans from the incense route and the incense trade. Prior to Nabonidus, Edom had extended its economical and, perhaps, political control into N. Arabia (Jer 49:8 and Ezk 25:13;), which explains Lam 4:21, where Edom is located in the country of Uz, as well as Gen 36:28 and 1 Chr 1:42, where Uz is listed as a "descendant" of Seir. A tribal name, Arabic 'uz occurs in an ancient N Arabian inscription which was found north of Dedan. Hebrew 'uz is the regular equivalent of Arabic, according to the orthographic conventions of the 1st millennium BC. Among the sedentary, agricultural tribes of NW Arabia (Job 1:3,14), tribal names and regional names are frequently equivocal. So the sedentary, sown, and tribal society forms a backdrop, not the idol-prone people of cities and river civilizations.

It is impossible to ascertain whether Uz, "son" of Aram (Gen 10:23; 22:21; 1 Chr.1:17) refers to the same geographical feature or to another tribe or region. In any case, the Aramean connection of Uz together with the derivation of Bozrah from Job's wife (42:17 LXX ) induced the location of Uz and of Job's abode at Shaykh Sa'd in S. Syria by the Christian and Muslim tradition. Jewish Encyclopedia notes the land included Edom as in Jer 25.20 and Lam 4.21. The Sabeans were from the south and Eliphaz from Teman in S. Edom, and Elihu from Buz Jer 25.23; Gen 22.21. Shalmaneser II received tribute from Sasi, of Uzza and from 859-831; Midrash identifies the name with the country.

1.1 The Man from the author of Job's viewpoint. A lead-in for the sake of the hearer-reader. 'A man'. 'ish This is not the commonly used word in the ANE, the Akkadian word awelu for free man or citizen, but is used similarly here. A lead-off sentence such of this points to the almost totally male nature of the book except for his daughters and wife in the prose sections and one instance of temptation in the poetry. Job does make mention of a vow never to look on a maid. But at the end the special mention of his daughters names indicates a progress, climax and turning point in the book where God's post-test blessing includes an appropriate response by Job and the author. As well as God to the presence of women in this world. Unfortunately we don't know his wife's name or whether the woman at the end of the trial period is the same wife or another.

The name Job 'iyyob can mean 'enmity, hostility' where the Hebrew form is active participle 'ieb. The Form 'Iyyob Semitics usually indicates some profession r characteristic activity. Is Job the enemy of God or vice versa? The Rabbah, Baba Bathra 16a and Nidda 52a suggest Job blasphemed when the used the word 'tempest': "Perhaps a tempest passed before you which caused the confusion between Job 'iyyob and 'enemy' 'oyeb. "Is the word to be taken as passive, one persecuted and oppressed or active as agent of hostility." The friends see the second; the reader as the first. Others explained from an Arabic root 'wb 'return, repent' thus 'the penitent one.' The name is not invented by the author since it occurs in EA 256 in 1350 BC, the prince of Ashtaroth in Bashan Ayyab. Pope cites other earlier occurrences

1.1ff The author's perspective:

1. God and evil are introduced in the author's introduction as major topics of the book. Here generic 'God' is used not the Tetragrammaton YHWH. Evil ra' in Hebrew can designate natural disasters or moral failure whether ethical or legal or not. All of this is in the content to the book. Thus so concisely the author makes 'Theodicy' as a philosophical and theological into a personal problem. Usually, the theological term Providence is taken only with a good aspect, never bad. But in this book 'bad' from Satan's standpoint is any selfish behavior to preserve his own property and life. From the friends' standpoint 'bad' is what angers God, is not acceptable ethical behavior or pious language as well as interactive conflict that angers others and doesn't respond with gentility. Most of all, language of attacking God as God, his ethics, justice, and accusing God of not abiding by universal standards of only punishing the wicked and blessing the righteous. From the author's standpoint and Elihu should humble himself, confess his sin and mistakes and be reconciled to God. All People except for God believe 'bad' is not only moral-ethical, legal, but is whatever is disaster or trouble. God, apparently believes that 'bad' is the behavioral and speech behavior of Job that might attribute injustice to God, but to friends their insistence that God only acts according to their rules, making the Almighty God limited by human conceptions of him vis a vis a world view that corresponds to this. Satan is causing all this trouble but is discussing, debating, challenging, accusing God and Job, using nature, ethnic unrest, and People as well as minds to destroy faith hope and love. Satan is not punished, and ceases to be a factor in the story. But if 'Providence' can encompass all God does for People, what we would call good or bad , then sickness, pain, death, dishonor, temptation, accusation, attack, all these destructive things, are known from Rom 8 where God 'causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.' All of this is true for Job. But revelation of this truth was not made in the OT Period. The author's perspective, whether he is one of the authors of ch.31 or mot, believed there were righteous people, perhaps not many. He believed greatness and righteousness were interconnected. He understood that Job did what a good father does for his family, to intercede for and sacrifice for the sins of family members. He believed the highest among men would be to fear God and hold on to integrity.

2. The principal figure of the book is Job, a pious Jew, although we do not know what ethnicity he was unless of the Diaspora in Arab territories, who is afflicted with disease and stripped of all his goods. If his story reflects the times of Abraham, whether Aramean or Arab, north or south, then perhaps Elihu was a Jew or the author was. The free and imaginative transformations of the Job figure are literarily and intellectually comparable to Shakespeare's treatment of Hamlet and Goethe's use of Faust. He may have had the rank of sheikh. The pattern of the biography is riches to rags to riches in broad outlines, somewhat like the Prodigal Son, a story told with a lesson. If Job along with the other friends is an Arab, given some descendants of Abraham from two wives, the inner-argument has to do with not ethnicity but differing systems of thought within similar World Views. Note that Nabonidus, the last king of Neo Babylonia, sought by establishing Ur and Tema as worship centers, to unify the borders of the realm around a unified Arab presence.

3. The identity of the author, usually dated 600-400 BC, in the Persian Period, is unknown. But he is deeply concerned when God's viewpoint of a person is accepting, but pious men are not doing so. Compared to Isaiah 55-66 both writers have dissonance as a driving force and a quest for solutions not apparent, since God no longer appears to intervene. The ability of men to lay burdens of guilt on people was mentioned by Jesus of the Pharisees. He is concerned about making Satan a non-theme, but the real cause behind the attacks. He believes it is important to God that there be one righteous unselfish man on earth. He knows that God is in control and this is seen in limits placed on the evil one. He is concerned about the fortunes of righteous and evil persons that don't receive that which is just. He believes the dictum serve God and be blessed, but he recognizes that historical process involving people is part of how God accomplishes this goal. Hence it is a goal and is not always met within the lifetime of a given person. He feels the pressure on God by the 'Enemy' to prove to Satan that God's protection and care of Job are not the reason for Job's serving God. He doesn't need to attack philosophical theism per se, knowing that the mystery of God cannot be explained by any school of Thought. He sees God as one who restores more than one who must punish. He hears and knows complaints without feeling he must reply to them. He does believe Job is proud, arrogant, self-justifying and therefore Elihu speaks up. Yet he knows that Job's attitude toward God is acceptable while his words are really out of control. Still he accepts Job, like Abel for himself and his sacrifice. God, who is alone and under attack by Satan, comprehends Job, an essentially lone person in a world of sinners. People matter to Job and Job matters to God.

4. Throughout the drama Job asserts his innocence of wrong, thereby rejecting the traditional view that suffering is the result of sin. To accommodate his friends he occasionally equivocates since he doesn't know his sin and God won't tell him. His self-doubt vacillates and this doesn't help him with his friends who pick up on this. Evangelicals would also attack a person who claimed to have not sinned (1 John 1.6-2.2), but would not perhaps do so to seek the reason behind his trouble, but might think so and seek a reason for it in the victim. The theology that 'all have sinned,' is true but the Bible distinguishes many levels of sins and uncleannesses, many levels of punishment or resolution, as seen by the details in Leviticus, repeated and augmented in Numbers and Deuteronomy. There are also many terms and verbs used for sinning, which indicate fine distinctions. The very distributing of judicial inquiry from Moses to judges or Tribes as Levites, elders, communities all the way to the King and then God. So to know all men sin is different from treating all men the same way. The wisdom literature

5. Humble and patient Job who bears his sufferings as proofs of piety, however, becomes the raging and insistent Job pressing relentlessly for divine vindication in the dialogue that forms the main part of the book (chaps. 3-31). Patience becomes simple endurance and not so simple demands of God. From a fear of 'closure' in death he moves in the middle of the narrative to a driven desire for closure to the point of a self-inflicted curse he apparently hopes that God will use to put him out of misery. He wants to be done, but 'done' in a way that proves innocence. So his final speeches to God end in mere acceptance of his ignorance, foolishness, God's justice, and 'Providence' in his life allowing closure to both the question of his guilt and or God's injustice. The whole ends basically in submission not confession of sin. On God's side nothing is explicitly shared about Satan, God's motivation and the Why of God's intervention at that point, or even whether God had options of dealing with Job during and after God's final speeches.

6. Argument as monologue made into dialogue is pursued through three cycles of speeches in which Job's three friends-Eliphaz, Bilbad, and Zophar-chide the hero and he, in answering them, challenges God. Throughout there is a dialectic of positions largely due to serious hyperbole in overstating the way things appear. Or is the sequence rather that they react to Job's speeches? The length of some speech units has been questioned. The ch.28 seems to depart from the usual manner of speech as addressed to someone. The sudden appearance of Elihu and the format of separate sermons connected in one place, not in dialogue format, although addressed to Job and others. These and the interactions of the 'speakers' affecting their affective level of emotion. Their topics, arguments, and insights all need deeper study. Livingston's dissertation studying mood swings as he did Jeremiah's need publication seeing that these monologues are definitely related to feelings. Then too, is their really a distinction between viewpoints of speakers, do they change at all, and are they essentially and truly steered by both Satan and God to destroy Job on the one hand and to lead Job to faith on the other?

7. Final self-defense and call upon the deity is answered by God's speech from a whirlwind in which Job is invited to trust in the divine omniscience and power. This direct experience of the mysteries of God leaves Job at peace with himself. God only attacks Job on the issue of his ignorance mainly, his inability to govern, a role only God can do, and job's issue over 'justice' in which God rejects the attack as probably even more complicated than the life-interactions of all the creatures God made and supports. But is the point of justice not answered that calls forth the faith of commitment to a God so wise we can trust him even in a natural world that is functioning not as a perfect and ideal place but actually as God wants it to function.

8. Although no final solution to the problem is offered, the author clearly rejects traditional explanations of suffering. It is a moot point whether he offers a positive answer to questions about suffering and divine justice or to Job's specific questions. But the shape of the whole supports the view of retributive wisdom as the rock of existence and special grace and forgiveness as God's unusual intervention in special cases. There is no solution to the losses of property and People experienced by Job, but most of these can be reconciled to life by seeing terrorists and natural disasters and possibly with the inter-cultural reactions of various ethnic entities with each other.

9. The unity of the book is debated. Many interpreters assign the prologue and epilogue to an earlier or later hand, and it is widely assumed that the poem on wisdom (chap. 28) and the speeches (chaps. 32-37) of a fourth friend (Elihu) inserted after the dialogues were added later, because they interrupt the flow of the argument. Job's final speech is very long because Zophar has no final speech. There are other examples such as the Code of Hammurabi, where the elements are a-b-a as in prose-poetry-prose, but in this case there are lead-ins consistently dividing the cycles into monologue units. A deep part of the structure is a kind of dialectic driven by the feelings and contents of the dialogues.

10. There is no formula for historical narrative to open the book which would be wayehi 'ish 'There was a man,' but only 'ish hayah 'a man there was.' Thus there is no connection with any preceding story contrary to Judges vis a vis Ruth. It also points to a narrative about one person, Job, who the author has introduced in detail and the speeches of God, Satan and the friends focus on explicitly, and the author closes with as well. Biographical-Dialectic also doesn't encompass the whole. 'Testimony' as a genre can open the door to God's, Satan's. Job's the friends' and the problem of hearsay, verification, substantive evidence through cross- questioning. But Philosophical Discourse as a genre opens the window to see topics, positions, debate rules, World Views, God as object of inquiry and subject of confrontation, and the questions of theosophy, theology, theodicy along with ethics in life. A genre of religious beliefs and experience allows the opposite, of that which is not to be experienced by man as well as theophany and God's personal revelation. Out of this comes competing systems for ascertaining truth, from tradition, God, wise men, observation, and revelation to name a few. The reliability of man's knowledge, his experience, his speech and assumptions requires a hermeneutic not to examine only individual statements of those who speak, but the connected and extended discourses in their monologue form, dialogue form, cyclical form and unified form. The religious is not seen, but only as background, yet in every topic and discourse word spoken. If wisdom, as seen in Job and Ecclesiastes is training for those being educated for service in society, then education is and must be a holistic approach to all that is seen and unseen, and consider all the thoughts of man and God that can be discovered. Try as they may the friends sought to censure both the thoughts and words of Job, to no avail. Education must consider quest and discovery as an unending task for many of the issues of human existence and then apply the results to inequities that do exist. Job was one who tried to deal with local issues of poverty and need, but through God's revelation he discovered a larger task, that power, influence and affluence must be directed to needs on every level.

(Continues...)

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