The Problem of Suffering:
Some Reflections from Job
1-2
Prologue--Prose
1:1-5 Introducing Job on
earth: Job rich and pious
1:6-12 first assembly in
heaven: Satan given permission to take things away
1:13-22 first test on earth:
Job loses animals, servants, and children
2:1-6 second assembly in
heaven: Satan given permission to touch his life
2:7-10 second test on earth:
Job has sores; his wife turns on him.
2:11-13 third
assembly--of friends, on earth
3-27
Dialogue of Job with his friends; 3 cycles
28 Wisdom. God alone knows the way to it (v 23). The fear of the Lord--that is wisdom; to
depart from evil is understanding (v 28).
29-31
Job’s Soliloquy
(29 good old days; 30 But now; 31 oath affirming Job’s innocence)
32-37
Elihu--not
mentioned in Prologue, Epilogue, or Divine speeches. Secondary?
Retards the plot and serves as anticlimactic foil to divine
speeches. An arbiter, but hardly the one
Job desired.
38-42:6
Divine speeches
42:7-17
Epilogue--Prose. Job spoke the truth and friends did not. Job recovers family and property. Retribution is affirmed at the beginning and
end of the book.
Answers to
Suffering Proposed by the Book of Job
11. Suffering is the result of a test or of a contest
between God and Satan (cf the Prologue; for Satan elsewhere in the OT see Zech
3 and 1 Chr 21). Of course, this
perspective is unknown by the other participants in the book, nor does it have
much relevance for other humans who suffer.
And its view of God is very problematic.
22. Suffering has demonic or Satanic causes (cf.
Prologue). But this proposal is ignored
outside the Prologue. What is its modern
relevance in the west? In Africa?
33. The patience of Job.
At first Job willingly accepts suffering and does not ignore the past
benefactions of God. Cf. 1:21, 2:10. What
God gave God took away. Cf. James
5:10-11: As an example of suffering and
patience, beloved, 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....
44. The protests of Job against God’s “brutality” are
acceptable (per contra Exod 17:7: “Is
Yahweh among us or not?”). Am I the sea
or a sea monster that you set up a guard over me? (7:12) “My adversary [God] sharpens his eyes against
me...he sets me up as his target...he rushes at me like a warrior.”
(16:9-14). Though I am innocent, God
would prove me perverse (9:20). If I wash myself with soap and cleanse my
hands with lye, yet you [God] will plunge me into filth, and my own clothes
will abhor me (Job 9:30-31). Contrast James 5:11. Consider this strategy: Let Job
the patient be your model so long as that is
possible for you; but when equanimity fails, let the grief
and anger of Job the impatient
direct itself and yourself toward, or even against, God, for only in encounter
with God will the tension of suffering be resolved.
55. The problematic
relationship of sin and suffering. Job is
innocent.
Job says so
6:24 Make me
understand how I have gone wrong
6:30 Is there any
wrong in my tongue?
9:15 Though I am
innocent.....
chap 31 Job’s oath of
clearance
The
narrator says so:
1:1 The man was
blameless and upright.
2:10 In all this
Job did not sin with his lips [but what about his heart?].
Yahweh says so:
42:7 My servant Job
spoke what was right.
The friends, however,
defend the doctrine of retribution and side against Job. In 22:5-9 Eliphaz
accuses him of sin: “Is not your wickedness
great? You have stripped the naked of
their clothing. You have sent widows
away empty-handed.” The friends claim in
4:7-8 that no innocent person ever perished [hence Job too must be guilty] and
in 8:4 they insist that Job himself or his children must have sinned. Zophar even says that Job suffers less
than he deserves (11:6).
Job presupposes that sin
and suffering are related: “I’m innocent
and should not suffer” (“My face is red with weeping...though there is no
violence in my hands 16:16-17;
cf. 11:4 “I am clean in God’s eyes”)
66. Resurrection is not an answer to suffering in the OT times
since all die without mention of a hope for resurrection. Job would only like to be an exception to the
laws on life and death so that he could hide out in Sheol until God’s anger
would cool. 14:7-13.
77. The sufferer needs/desires a mediator in dealing with the power differential (9:33-35 [there is
no umpire between us {God and Job},
who might lay his hand on us both]; 16:18-22 [my witness is in heaven and the one
that vouches for me on high]; 19:25-27 [I know that my “redeemer” is alive and at last he will
take his stand on the earth after my skin has been thus destroyed, but I want to see God in my flesh. I want to see him for myself and my eyes will
see him and not some other person]).
Instead of a mediator, the sufferer gets Elihu! After chps. 38-41 a mediator is no longer
needed.
88. Elihu: suffering
educates and is a merciful warning. True,
but…. God teaches through dreams (33:15) or pain (33:19; 36:15 [He delivers the
afflicted by their affliction]; cf. 5:17). This ought to lead to confession: I sinned, and I perverted what is right
(33:27). {But God actually brings Job to
a state of equilibrium through his word}.
99. Elihu: God is
detached, remote: If you have sinned,
what do you accomplish against him? If
the old wisdom of retribution seems passe, the new wisdom of Elihu is
pompous. Elihu’s views are ignored--and
so implicitly rejected--in the divine speeches and in the epilogue.
1010. God does respond
to human complaints despite the opinion of Elihu in 37:23-24: The Almighty--we cannot find him...he does
not regard any who are wise in their own conceit.
1111. Humans and God could “work it out” if they just talked face
to face. “But I would speak to the
Almighty” (Job 13:3). “I would give him
an account of all my steps; like a prince I would approach him” (Job
31:37). Seeing God (19:26) should bring an answer though this
answer in fact was hardly what Job expected (38-41; 42:5-6), assuming we can
even understand what God is saying in the divine speeches. The rules for God’s governing the world may
transcend the rational.
1212. Retribution is at best a partial truth. Elihu is right, at least on this point: the Almighty will not pervert justice
(34:12). God sometimes delays punishment (24:1-12, 18-24; 27:13-23 [The wicked
go to bed with wealth; they open their eyes and it is gone]). The Divine Speeches do not comment on the
doctrine of retribution though the Epilogue reports that Job got a new family
and twice as much wealth as before; he lived another 140 years. The last word in the book is thus a
reaffirmation of retribution (But does a new family ever replace the first
family?). Retribution may not explain
human fate in every instance, but in the main it is affirmed by Job as the
truth about the moral universe.
1313. Wisdom is inaccessible
(chap 28: mortals do not know the way to
it [13] even if God does [23]), or it is too complicated for human beings to
understand (38-41).
1414. There is another type of wisdom that is accessible
through faith active in love (28:28 Truly, the fear of the Lord, that is
wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding), but this wisdom is often
contradicted by reality (see the case of Job in chap 1 and chaps 29-31).
Some conditioning
factors on reading the book today:
1515. Much of the book is wrong!
Job’s whole argument is based on his ignorance of the real reason for
his suffering. The friends are
wrong. Elihu is wrong. Divine speeches are in part irrelevant.
1616. Job is a story about a rich man, told by a rich man. Job is a rich and pious man--not our
usual experience--who temporarily loses wealth only to become richer than ever
at the end. Is Job ever really
poor? Even in his worst days he has
maids, a valet, and house guests, and he is never worried about the next
meal. His wealth is not considered
problematic in itself (as it is in large parts of the Bible).
1717. There is a strong male bias in Job. All the principal characters are male. Women’s interests are ignored (Job’s wife too
lost her whole family and her wealth).
There are no wise women in Job--only foolish ones. His wife, who disappears after 2:10, eventually bore 20
children--180 months of pregnancy!--so that everything could come out
even. His sons inherit because they are
sons; his daughters inherit because Job is charmed by them. He “proves” his own sexual integrity by
wishing that his wife would be sexually violated if he is lying (31:9-10). If my heart has been enticed by a woman, and
I have lain in wait at my neighbor’s door; then let my wife grind for another,
and let other men kneel over her.
1818. What Job and his friends are debating turns out to include
some important issues that feminist theology has been raising in recent
years: the significance of personal
experience as a source of religious insight, the importance of solidarity among
those who are oppressed, a critique of traditional models of God, and the
relationship between human existence and the whole of creation.
1919. What is the meaning of Job’s wife’s remarks: “Do you persist in your integrity? Curse God and die.” Does she mean: Where has all your righteous living gotten
you? Forget it! Curse God and die. Or does she mean: If you are so full of honesty and integrity,
tell God what’s really on your mind.
Curse God and die. Did Job follow
his wife’s advice in chap. 3?
From
J.B.:
Sarah: You wanted justice and there was none--only
love.
J.B. God does not love. He Is.
Sarah: But we do.
That’s the wonder.
2020. Job knows that his
friends’ common sense and their traditions, their rationality, and their
revelations are inconsistent with his own experience. For Job, to hold fast to his integrity means
to insist on the validity and authority of his own experience, even when it
seems to be contradicted by “what all the world knows to be true.”
2121. Much of the suffering we observe today is caused by
prejudice, oppression, or the “system.”
It is not individual, private, or inexplicable. The protest of suffering peoples is not (or
not only) against the unfair rule of God, but against the attitudes and
actions--or even the indifference--of fellow human beings. The complacency of the friends about Job’s
suffering is rooted in their own privileged position. Job was noble in attitude toward the poor
(29:12-16), but he does not address the fundamental changes in society that
would prevent the sense of powerlessness and destitution experienced by people
like widows and orphans.
Which
of these reflections is true?
Or
are they all partially and dialectically true--and false!--at the same
time?
Ralph
W. Klein, March 3, 1999;
revised March 3, 2002, November 16, 2003, and November 24, 2007.
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