The Voice out of the Whirlwind: Recovering the Remedy for Suffering in The Book of Job
Jessamyn Birrer
The Book of Job tells the story of a “blameless and upright” man, “who feared God and turned away from evil.”(Job 1.1) The character of Job is put through many sufferings and engages in various dialogues and diatribes on the nature of suffering, all of which culminate in a direct encounter with God. Through the use of various themes and examinations of suffering and mystery, the author(s) of Job create a framework from which it is possible to derive an answer to the questions of suffering and a message of the remedy for this suffering. In analyzing these themes and questions as they are presented in the book, the reader is led to an understanding of the book’s central theme.
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One of the most puzzling questions regarding suffering in general, and suffering in The Book of Job in particular, is why suffering is allowed, by God, to occur. While it is impossible to ascertain in the secular world the motives and mechanisms of the natural and supernatural worlds, or their possible Creator, this question can be examined insofar as it is portrayed and criticized in The Book of Job. To come close to answering this question, it is necessary to examine the role of God in the narrative, as well as the role of Satan as proposed instigator and accuser.
Satan approaches God in The Book of Job as a “son of God”(1.6), to levy the challenge to God that Job only worships and observes God because he has an “untouched” life. He comes, then, to critique the motives behind Job’s loyalty and obedience to God. As one member of many in the biblical court of God’s angels, Satan has a particular function to perform: that of a critic whose work is to suggest doubt and shake faith in the minds of men.(Toynbee 89) Satan seeks to be set to his task by challenging God’s favorable estimate of His servant Job, saying, “Thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But put forth thy hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will curse thee to thy face.”(1.10-11) Satan then challenges God to allow him to work in Job’s life to test Job’s faith.
God has many members in His court throughout biblical literature, members who perform various functions on God’s behalf, such as testing man’s faith and obedience, bestowing grace, or carrying messages. Satan, “the adversary, is one of these who has his own function to perform. He is not the devil of later biblical theology...he is merely one of the court. His question is a sharp challenge of the Lord’s view of Job’s integrity.”(Murphy 63) Satan’s function to test man’s faith and obedience, and the faith and obedience of Job in particular, is therefore more understandable; he is simply “doing his job.”
Still, the question remains only half answered; after all, Satan may be only doing his job, but this does not explain why God has given Satan this job to perform. This is the essential question of suffering: why does God “allow” suffering to occur, (whether through and envoy or no)? More to our purpose, in The Book of Job, why does God allow Satan to perform his function to such a tragic degree with Job, a man whom God has already acknowledged as “my servant Job, that there is none like on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?”(1.8) From the beginning, it is known that Job is in no way deserving of his iniquities, so a reason must be given.
Throughout The Book of Job, and, indeed, throughout the Bible and all biblical theology and religion, God is acknowledged as a Creator. Job himself asserts God’s role: “In His hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind”(12.10); “I know that thou (God) canst do all things, and that no purpose of thine can be thwarted.”(42.2) There is no one in The Book of Job who denies that God is the Creator and Ruler of all things.
If God is, then the all-mighty, the all-powerful, who sees and knows all, is Satan’s challenge against Job’s faith not “also a test of the Lord? Can He refuse Satan’s challenge, as though He were afraid to face a possible defection on Job’s part? ...Is He a god who secures His position with easy gifts to His followers?”(Murphy 64) If God were to deny Satan this opportunity to perform his function as critic in the greatest of tests—the trial of Job—God would, in effect, deny himself an opportunity to assert His own function as Creator and almighty Ruler. God, in allowing joy without struggle, would be worthy of thanks, but would in no way be exacting faith in His all-powerful strength or rule; in allowing Satan to perform his critical function, God demonstrates His faith in His people and the foundation of His people’s faith in Him, as well as asserting the overriding power of His creation over any test of this faith. In “allowing” Job’s suffering, God is asserting His divine power as ruler.
Operating in conjunction with His role as all-powerful ruler is God’s role as Creator, a role He also works to emphasize by allowing Satan to perform his function as critic.
“When the opportunity for fresh creation is offered to (God) from outside He
cannot but take it. When (Satan) challenges Him, He cannot refuse to take
the challenge up. ...He can refuse only at the price of denying His own nature
and ceasing to be God.”(Toynbee 89-90)
The function of a Creator being clearly one of creating, God cannot turn away from the occasion to create a new assertion of His power and a new matter of faith; again, in allowing Satan to perform his function—in allowing Job’s suffering—God asserts His power, His faith, and His own desert of His people’s and Job’s faith and obedience.
We can see, then, that while Satan brings suffering down upon the recognizably undeserving Job, and that God allows this suffering to occur, it is not a matter of injustice on the part of either member of the challenge, but simply a performance of divine office. It is in the introduction of the idea of secular justice that confuses the matter. This problem of perspective on secular justice is brought up and illustrated by the speeches and actions of Job’s friends, and is the subject of the confusion of Job’s faith when he begins to address the problem of his own suffering.
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“When Job’s three friends heard of all this evil that had come upon him, they came each from his own place, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite.”(2.11) They come “to condole with (Job) and comfort him”(2.11), but upon hearing Job’s lamentations against his suffering, they begin the argument with Job about the question of divine and human injustice. (Later, in Chapter 32, another member of the argument is introduced in the character of Elihu, but his function in the story is not much beyond that of the other friends of Job (Murphy 73-74); so, for the purposes of this paper he will be considered as an equal part of the collective arguments of the others of Job’s friends.) The debate between Job and his friends over the problem of perceived injustice and personal desert is the subject of the major portion of The Book of Job, continuing from Job’s initial lamentation in Chapter Three to the final argument, from Elihu, in Chapter 37.
Each of the friends’ arguments come from the traditional biblical theory of retribution, through which God rewards the “blameless” and destroys the “godless.”(Murphy 66) Eliphaz argues, “who that was innocent ever perished? Or where were the upright cut off? ...those who plough iniquity and sow trouble reap the same.”(4.7-8) In turn, Bildad and Zophar offer parallel theories of retribution.
(Bildad:) “Does God pervert justice? Or does the Almighty pervert the right?
...If you are pure and upright, surely then He will rouse Himself for you and
reward you with a rightful habitation.”(8.3-6)
(Zophar:) “If (God) passes through, and imprisons, and calls to judgment,
who can hinder Him? For He knows worthless men; when He sees iniquity,
will he not consider it?”(11.10-11)
Each friend asserts his belief that if Job “returns” to God, “his restoration will be forthcoming.”(Murphy 65)
Throughout his debate with his friends, Job never waivers in his assertion of his integrity. In response to the contentions of his friends, Job says, “But how can a man be just before God? If one wished to contend with Him, one could not answer Him once in a thousand times”(9.2-3); “will you speak falsely for God, and speak deceitfully for Him?”(13.7) Although Job persists in his assertion of his blamelessness to contradict his friends’ theory of retribution, his words drive the issue to a fuller examination of divine justice. Job questions his suffering, but never fails to acknowledge that God “is wise in heart, and mighty in strength...who does great things beyond understanding, and marvelous things without number”(9.3-10); Job alone recognizes the real blasphemy, that which is inherent in his friends’ arguments which purport to wholly understand God’s justice and actions. Though he questions is suffering, Job never profanes by claiming that one can really know or question God’s justice or purposes. His understanding of the fundamental question of suffering transcends the narrow theory proposed by his friends.
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The inability to reconcile the position of Job with that of his friends brings about the question as to what message The Book of Job is attempting to convey. If we accept the arguments of Job’s friends, and do not recognize what lies in the heart of Job’s speeches against them, we come to the theory that the aim of The Book of Job is solely to address the problem of suffering.
In his work in Proclamation Commentaries, Roland Murphy states of Old Testament writings that “within the wisdom tradition there emerged a rather fixed doctrine of retribution...a good deed begets good and an evil deed yields evil.”(61) This association runs through the majority of biblical thought, but it became the starting point of The Book of Job.(62) Murphy points out, though, that the wisdom writers “were quite aware of the limits of their own wisdom, for they knew that ‘no wisdom, no understanding, no counsel, can avail against the Lord’(Prov. 21.30)”(62); like Job, they acknowledged that the traditional theory of retribution could not serve to fully explain the problem of suffering. While this doctrine “preserved the traditional, and safe, theology concerning the Lord’s justice”(62), it was not an answer to the question of suffering; it worked only to establish an unoffending, fixed, understandable view of God’s operations in the world. The author(s) of The Book of Job used this doctrine of retribution as a tool to bring about a deeper analysis of the problem of suffering.
The “historical” story of Job was one commonly told in the time of the author(s) of The Book of Job.(Murphy 61) The author(s) sought to retell this traditional story, with certain emphases used devicively to work towards a particular purpose.
“For his purposes, the unknown author took up an ancient story about...a
man named Job... Against this background he develops a lengthy dialogue
between Job and his comforters...and the speeches of the Lord Himself.”
(Murphy 62-63)
Various theories exist as to what this purpose of the author(s) is, but the majority of these fails to address The Book of Job as a whole, and in so doing works only to suggest particular themes within the book, rather than the purpose of the entire book itself.
One of these perceived purposes of the book is the assertion of the doctrine of retribution. However, from the beginning of The Book of Job we are discouraged from thinking of the ultimate purpose as being related to this doctrine.
“(The Prologue) serves to set up a situation in which an innocent man is
suffering. On the basis of chapters one and two the reader of the dialogue
will be able to accept Job’s claim to integrity; the tragedies he suffers are
clearly a test, not punishment for wrongdoing.”(Murphy 63)
God Himself, as demonstrated earlier in this paper, recognizes Job’s blamelessness (cf. 1.8, 2.3). It is clear, even in the Prologue, that Job is innocent; so the doctrine of retribution cannot be the explanation of suffering, nor can its emphasis be the purpose of the book. Besides, as H. H. Rowley points out in his introduction to The Century Bible’s publication of The Book of Job, the principal aim of the book would not be realized in the Prologue.(18-19)
Another proposed theory on the purpose of The Book of Job is that it aims “to controvert the theory that suffering is a sign of the Divine displeasure.”(Rowley 18) While Job’s arguments, as well as God’s angry dismissal of the friends’ arguments at the end of the book, certainly work to reject the doctrine of retribution, “it is wrong to suppose that the author of The Book of Job was the first to perceive that all suffering is not self-entailed;” there are reminders throughout the Old Testament (as well as the New Testament) that one “simple doctrine of retribution does not cover all experience.”(Rowley 18) The attempt of the author(s) would not likely be simply to retell another’s proverb; and, again, it is hardly to be presumed that the true aim of the book is realized in the Prologue.
As Rowley also states, it is “equally wrong” to think that the purpose of The Book of Job “was to solve the problem of suffering.”(19)
“So far as Job (himself) is concerned, the reader is told the reason for his suf-
fering. But Job and his friends cannot deduce it, and in the Divine speeches
no hint of the reason is given. If it had been, the book would have been of
little value to others, who must suffer in the dark. Clearly, therefore, the pur-
pose of the writer cannot have been to offer an explanation of innocent suf-
fering, or of all suffering, and his failure to provide a solution cannot be in-
terpreted as a failure to attain his purpose.”(Rowley 19)
Job himself, as stated earlier, goes against any proposed questioning of his suffering. In responding to the onset of his suffering with the words, “the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord”(1.21), he is speaking against the actions of his friends, as well as Satan’s theory that suffering will bring man to question God. Job’s words illustrate his conception of a God “who stands far and beyond any accountability to humans, whose ways are not to be questioned.”(Murphy 64) The author(s) of The Book of Job
“did not attempt to solve the problem of evil, nor did he propose a vindica-
tion of God’s justice. For him, any attempt of man to justify God would have
been an act of arrogance.”(Terrien 21)
When, at the end of the book, Job accepts his suffering and repents of his harsh lamentations, it is clear he recognizes an answer in his suffering, regardless of whether or not that answer is understandable in human terms.
“These are indeed but the outskirts of His ways; and how small a whisper
do we hear of Him! But the thunder of His power who can understand?”
(26.14)
For Job, and for the author(s) of his book, the purpose is not to be found simply in the question of the “why” of suffering.
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The doctrine of retribution, the problem of the involvement of Satan and God in Job’s suffering, and the question of the “why” of suffering itself, are all subjects and themes of The Book of Job. They are, however, themes used to bring about an illustration of the central theme and purpose of the book; none is the true message in and of itself.
The one thing that Job seeks continuously in the story is God’s presence with him. He calls upon God to come to him, over and over, through the course of his suffering; his constant yearning is “for the presence of the Lord.”(Murphy 74) He laments his suffering and participates in the argument with his friends, but after all of this questioning and debate, Job consistently returns to the petition for what he wants most: “I would speak to the Almighty, and I desire to argue my case with God.”(13.3)
Job’s entreaties take on three forms in his addresses to God: the request for His presence as vindicator, the request for His presence to explain his suffering, and the request for His presence to be made known in any way. These appeals are often viewed, under critical analysis, to be blasphemous or accusatory, and this is certainly the perspective taken by Job’s friends. However, the mode of dialogue Job speaks from does not in fact reflect a lack of faith or a blasphemous mindset; as we have already seen, Job does not endorse this type of questioning of God. Rather, his constant cries show only that “Job is operating in the shadow of the traditional theory of retribution”(Murphy 83); he does not lack faith, but simply cannot speak outside of the traditional mode of thought of the times in which he is speaking.
Job’s request for God to come to him as vindicator of his integrity is repeated many times in The Book of Job. He believes that if God will come to him, “this shall be my salvation; that a godless man shall not come before Him...I have prepared my case; I know that I shall be vindicated.”(13.16-18) Even in his suffering, Job has faith in God and His Divine justice. In his final soliloquy, Job “expresses confidence that were he to come before God, his case would be judged fairly”(Murphy 84); he believes that if only God will come to him, his integrity will be asserted. Job’s belief keeps him from blasphemy, and even at the end, in his final soliloquy, he has faith that God “knows the way that I shall take; when He has tested me, I shall come out like gold”(23.10); Job is fearful of God and God’s purpose, but his faith allows him to reconcile this awe with the trust in the ultimate outcome of his suffering.
Job also continually seeks God’s presence in conjunction with a wish for an explanation of his suffering. He cries out for God, saying,
“Oh, that I knew where I might find Him...I would lay my case before Him
and fill my mouth with arguments. I would learn what He would answer
me, and understand what He would say to me.”(23.3-5)
It is, however, important to note that although Job’s cries for God come in conjunction with his questioning of his suffering, Job does not expect the one to answer the other; Job’s desire is simply to have God come to him in response to his questioning and suffering, and not, specifically, with response to his questioning and suffering.
All of Job’s lamentations, questionings and petitions come down to a single root desire—the desire for the presence of God in his suffering. Throughout The Book of Job, “Job had yearned for the presence of the Lord.”(Murphy 74) Time and time again Job cries out for God:
“...let not dread of Thee terrify me. Then call, and I will answer; or let me
speak, and do Thou reply me...Why dost Thou hide Thy face...?”(13.21-24)
“Today also my complaint is bitter, His hand is heavy in spite of my groan-
ing. Oh, that I knew where I might find Him, that I might come even to his
seat!”(23.2-3)
“I have become like dust and ashes. I cry to Thee and Thou dost not answer
me; I stand, and Thou dost not heed...”(30.19-20)
“let my cry find no resting place. Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven,
and He that vouches for me is on high...my eye pours out tears to God...”
(16.18-20)
Job’s words emphasize his distress at his perceived separation from God, and underscore his true desire for God’s presence.
Regardless of his continuous questioning and lamenting of his suffering, or his defense of his integrity to his friends, the most central aspect of Job’s suffering is his irreconcilable feelings that God is no longer with him. This perceived separation from God is the heart and essence of Job’s suffering. Even at the onset of his suffering, Job recognizes and mourns his sense of his removal from God: “Lo, He passes me by, and I see Him not; He moves on, but I do not perceive Him”(9,11); he immediately comprehends his suffering as evidence of his isolation from God.(Rowley 19) Job also understands that although he cannot expect God to contend with him or explain his suffering, it would be enough for God to come to him, because He would at least “give heed” to Job in his suffering.(23.6) Job does not expect answers from God, just God’s acknowledgement—God’s presence. Job’s final words in Chapter 31 are, “Oh, that I had a one to hear me! (Here is my signature! let the Almighty answer me!)”(v.35) Though Job never waivers in his assertion of his integrity or his lamentation of his suffering, the sum of all the he asks of God is God’s presence with him in his suffering.
The true message of The Book of Job is not to be found in the doctrine of retribution espoused by Job’s friends, or the lamentations or questionings of suffering by Job himself, but in the examination of what is at the heart of Job’s speeches, and the response to these speeches Job finally receives from God. Job spends the majority of the book desperately seeking God’s presence, and the reply to his seeking leads the reader to the understanding of the true purpose and message of the book.
“Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind: ‘Who is this that darkens
counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man, I will
question you, and you shall declare to me.’”(38.1-3)*
[*Note: counsel here does not reference the discussion between Job and his friends, but the purposes of God, which were obscured and misrepresented by Job (cf. as “Providence”); the girding of his loins mentioned in verse three suggests a preparation for a difficult task.(Rowley, footnote to chapter 38)]
God’s first words in response to Job’s lamentations are “charged with the tremendum, the awe...of the utterly other”(Rexroth 108); God’s immensity and power are certainly affirmed, but the message is not a violent confrontation with Job; rather, it is a declaration of Job’s inability to understand the purposes of Providence (here: counsel), and a summons to Job to prepare himself for the difficult task of retrieving and recovering his faith in an encounter with God.
God then launches full-force into a cataloging of natural and supernatural mysteries; “the wonders of creation, of the ordering of nature, of the movements of the stars, are successively indicated, and Job is asked whether he comprehends all their mysteries.”(Rowley, footnote to ch. 38) God’s aim is not to ridicule Job, but to remind him that there are countless mysteries in God’s creation, mysteries that cannot be understood; in reminding Job of the vastness and human ineffability of God’s mystery, He demonstrates that understanding the mystery is not the answer—it is, in fact, impossible. The remedy for Job’s suffering must be found in understanding that he cannot understand. “What (God’s speeches) lack in sympathy, they make up in mystery...God will make Job see a startling universe”(Murphy 84); this is how God brings Job over the obstacle of his suffering, the useless attempt to understand the meaning of suffering.
Going further in His cataloging of mysteries, God acknowledges the numerous existences of horrors and suffering in His creation, such as Behemoth (40.15) and Leviathan (41.1). God reveals to Job his recognition that there is suffering inherent in His creation. God identifies and fully understands Job’s confusion about suffering; “to startle man God becomes for an instant a blasphemer; one might almost say that God becomes for an instant an atheist.”(Murphy 84) Job sees now that God understands the perplexity of his suffering, and he repents:
“I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me,
which I did not know...I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but
now my eye sees thee; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and
ashes.”(42.3-6)
Job’s repentance, however, “is not of any sin which had brought his suffering on him, such as the friends called for”(Rowley, footnote to 42.6); it is a repentance of not recognizing the vast ineffability of God’s mystery. What is truly important for Job is that God has come to him in his suffering.
When God speaks to Job from the whirlwind, he does not reveal the reason for suffering, nor does he enter the debate of the doctrine of retribution with Job’s friends; God comes “to show (Job) that now, when he most needs God, God is with him.”(Rowley 20) This illustration of God’s presence with Job in his suffering, and Job’s accepting of this presence as the remedy for all his questions and suffering, presents the reader with the true message of The Book of Job. From his encounter with God in the midst of his suffering, Job discovers “that suffering and loss had not detached him from God, that it was possible to serve and love God...for what He was in Himself.”(Buchanan 37) Job finds God in his suffering, and so “found relief not from his misfortunes, but in them. God was to him now far more precious than He had ever been.”(Rowley 20)
Even Before his encounter with God, Job recognizes that “truly, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom”(28.28); he understands that wisdom, and thereby remedy, is not found in discovering the “why” of suffering, but in the possession and recovery of faith. He continues in his lamentations throughout the story in an effort to seek and recover his faith, by seeking God’s presence; “Job emerges as a person of genuine faith because he persists in quarreling with God to the end.”(Murphy 88) Job realizes and accepts that the remedy for his suffering is not in understanding its purpose, as this is something that none but God can fully understand. For Job, it is less important to fathom the intellectual or theological problem of the mystery of suffering; what is more important—what can be the only remedy for his suffering—is his spiritual enrichment through fellowship with God.(Rowley 21) “Though man must suffer in the dark, their very suffering may be an enrichment if in it they know the presence of God”(Rowley 21); suffering is not what brings enrichment, but the presence of God in suffering. This is the true message of The Book of Job, that here and now in the fellowship of God, those with faith may find a satisfaction and peace that transcends all their sufferings.(Rowley 21) The only remedy for suffering, so far as Job and his author(s) is concerned, is faith and communion and fellowship with God.
“(Job), faced with insoluble questions concerning the morality of God,
finds peace in a mystical confrontation...which assures him that the
Creator-god behind (his suffering) is powerful and trustworthy, though
His ways are past finding out.”(Kaufmann 68)
After his encounter with God, Job is restored to a life of health and joy. This restoration, however, does not counteract the fundamental message of the book. Nowhere in the preceding story of events is the reader led to expect Job’s restoration, not does Job expect it himself.(Murphy 68) To justify the “happy ending,” it is important to recognize that Job’s restoration is never promised and never expected. The author(s)’ choice of the ending “is as deliberate as his choice to compose a dialogue that shows how complicated the question of reward and punishment really is.”(Murphy 77) The inclusion of Job’s restoration at the end of the story emphasizes the fact that Job finds his remedy in the midst of his suffering, and not after the restoration of his joys. If Job had found God only after his restoration, the purpose of the book would not have come through.(Rowley 20) Job’s restoration serves to highlight the importance of God’s presence in the midst of suffering.
Through a meticulous examination of the questions about suffering, the problem of traditional theories of retribution, and the encounter with God in suffering, the author(s) of The Book of Job create a work whose purpose is to illuminate the remedy to be found in human suffering. Job realizes through his suffering that the one thing that will alleviate it is a communion with God, and it is this joy in God’s presence that is not only the remedy for Job’s suffering, but the true message of the book as a whole.
BACK TO MAIN PAGE Trusting Job in a Cynical World TO BIBLIOGRAPHY
Jessamyn Birrer
The Book of Job gives us, in the character of Job, a man we can understand and embrace in his humanity. We are shown that there “is none like him on earth”(Job 1.8); and we are told by both God and Job himself that he was set to his suffering “without cause.”(2.3) In studying the book, the reader is led to trust Job in the rendering of his suffering, and in trusting him we can then identify with the heart of his suffering—the confusion of his suffering and his desire for God’s presence.
Many interpretations of the purpose and method of The Book of Job have been drawn, from examinations of Job’s anguished soliloquies, the arguments of his friends, or the perceived ironic response to Job from God out of the whirlwind at the end of the story. It is clear, however, from Job’s point of view in the story, that none of these things is so compelling to him that he turns away from God or from other human beings. Job renounces his friends’ arguments, but does not ultimately renounce his friends.(Job 42.8) He laments his suffering in anguished confusion, but ultimately repents these outcries, which come from his lack of understanding, after his encounter with God.(42.4-6) The reader may perceive God’s responses to Job as ironic—even cruel—but this is clearly not the perception of Job himself.(see ch.42) If we are willing to trust Job in all things in the story—in his maintaining of his integrity, his pain in suffering, his frustration with his friends and his own confusion—why is it so hard for us to trust Job’s words and actions at the end of the story, when he repents his outcries after his encounter with God, recognizing his faith as the remedy for his suffering?
In order to move towards an acceptance of what Job accepts as the remedy for his suffering, we must first understand why Job submits to God’s mystery at the end of the book. In his essay “Job and the Modern World,” Eugene Good heart challenges the reader of Job: “Is (Job’s) submission...the only moral alternative, the others being suicide or dissipation or a romantic refusal to accept his fate?”(100) If Job does not submit and repent to God after admittedly recognizing both his own lack of understanding and his communion with God, he in effect refuses the remedy given to him by his faith. The final words of Job are “accepting, not God’s cruelty, but the limits God has set upon Job’s capacity to understand (his suffering’s) meaning.”(Goodheart 100) The only way that Job can receive the remedy for his suffering is by reconciling with God and accepting His presence. Any other action would not only deprive Job of this remedy, but involve a surrender of his integrity and an unmaking of his self.(Goodheart 101) Job’s final submission is not an act of cowering or weakness, but an embracing of his suffering’s remedy.
The Book of Job, when examined from the most reliable—most human— perspective of the story (that of the character of Job), becomes, then, “a vehicle for contemplation for the deepest kind of prayer.”(Rexroth 109) When we accept our trust in Job in all his words and actions in the story, we can then begin to understand that “Job’s final words are a prayer...a voicing of the breakdown of logic and evaluation in an abiding state of calm ecstasy.”(Rexroth 109) This discarding of “logic and evaluation” is fitting in Job’s acceptance of the remedy for his suffering; after all, “the acceptance of the incomprehensibility of the justice of God is not a rational act.”(Rexroth 109) Job accepts that God is beyond man’s rational understanding; if we can trust and accept Job and his story, we can then begin to understand and accept the message of The Book of Job.
But why is it still so difficult for us to bring the message out of The Book of Job and accept its message in the light of the modern world? Is it, as Goodheart proposes in his essay, that Job’s submission fails to satisfy us because it shows the acceptance of mystery, and, because we are such a scientific people now, for us mystery equals the unresolved?(Goodheart 102) The essential difference between the sensibilities of the biblical and the modern world would then seem to be that in biblical times it is enough simply to know and be in God’s presence.
Roland Murphy, in his Proclamation Chronicles, recognizes this tendency to discount mystery; he sees that our attempt to understand or approach the idea of God’s presence in simply scientific or human concepts constricts divinity. “The understandable desire for certainty and security leads to a description of a God that is firm and reliable—and thereby void of mystery.”(Murphy 84-85) Because we restrict our focus to trying to understand the nature of suffering in specific terms, an attempt Job has recognized as insufficient and impossible, we fail to arrive at, or at least accept, the message of faith and remedy within the book.
In reading The Book of Job, we can come to a deep identification with humanity and human sufferings. In trusting the acceptance of faith as remedy by the character of Job, we can begin to understand the true message of the book.
“If Job has learned from hearing things that were too wonderful for him,
we must at least learn that we have failed to hear them. Then perhaps the
experience of Job will become available to us.”(Goodheart 106)
Whether or not we can learn to accept this message in the modern world, we can at least begin to see that the possibility of a remedy for human suffering is not beyond reach.
Tilting Whirlwinds
