God's Conversation with Job

by under_believer 34 Replies latest jw friends

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  Midget-Sasquatch

  "I think some modern readers will not be satisfied with (2) but will agree that (1) is a good lesson that anticipates the Christian ethic of Matthew 7:1-2, Luke 6:37, 1 Corinthians 4:5, James 4:12."

  I'm actually modern in some of my thinking then, whoddathunkit? Seriously though, thanks for detailing the two main lessons.

  (1) is excellent and IMO makes this work a valuable read. If only it weren't for the rather weak ending.

  While I can agree with the point (2) that people with their finite understanding are not going to fully understand the actions of a vaster god, the poem, for me anyways, didn't really hammer that specific point down. It seemed like it focussed more on the greater power of god to do this or that, rather than on greater understanding to choose one course of action over another.
• 

  shamus100

  Interesting concept.

  Obviously, Job is completely unexplainable to anyone with an ounce of common-sense, so why not make it a fairy tale? It's possible.

  Why wouldn't someone say that the whole bible is one big fairy-tale?

  Answer the question and you will make me a believer.
• 

  Leolaia

  While I can agree with the point (2) that people with their finite understanding are not going to fully understand the actions of a vaster god, the poem, for me anyways, didn't really hammer that specific point down. It seemed like it focussed more on the greater power of god to do this or that, rather than on greater understanding to choose one course of action over another.

  The question of Job's inability to understand God's ways is paramount throughout this whole section (ch. 38-42). All throughout his speeches, Job questioned God and expected him to answer his theodicean queries. In response, Yahweh turned the tables and questioned Job instead -- highlighting sarcastically Job's lack of knowledge and inability to understand God if he were to answer Job as he wanted him to: "Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man, I will question you and you shall answer me" (38:2-3). The questions begin by questioning Job on God's power in creation: "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know" (v. 4-5). The questioning continues along similar terms, e.g. "Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place?" (v. 12). Job knows nothing about how to do this. "Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth? Tell me, if you know all this" (v. 18). "Surely you know, for you were already born! You have lived so many years" (v. 21). Then in ch. 39 the same questioning continues but moves on to God's wisdom in caring for living things; the power being highlighted is not a brute force power but a nurturing power and wisdom. He counts the months to enable mountain goats to give birth (v. 1-2), he gives freedom to the wild donkeys (v. 5), giving them their habitats (v. 6), giving the horse its strength and flowing mane (v. 19), giving wisdom to the hawks and eagles to navigate and fly (v. 26-27), etc.

  It is in ch. 40-41 where God's strength and wrath is emphasized, but this specifically is occasioned by Job's rebellious challenging of God: "Will the one who contends with Shaddai correct him? Let him who accuses God answer him...Would you discredit my justice? Would you condemn me to justify yourself?" (40:2, 8). The might of God is relevant because Job has taken the offensive questioning the wisdom of God's actions. God's might is depicted by describing how it is greater than the might of the two mightiest creatures formed by God. With respect to the behemoth, "he ranks first among the works of God, yet his Maker can approach him with his sword" (v. 19). With regard to the leviathan, "no one is fierce enough to rouse him, who then is able to stand against me? Who has a claim against me that I must pay? Everything under heaven belongs to me" (41:10-11). The idea isn't that God is just because he is mighty; it is that Job is owed no explanation and that it isn't his place to criticize God's justice, which he doesn't understand. Despite contending with God, he cannot hope to "discredit" his justice and "correct him" without having the knowledge he lacks. In ch. 42, the preceding chapter's demonstration of God's omnipotence leads Job to admit that he lacks the knowledge necessary to give an informed judgment of God: "I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted. You asked, 'Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?' Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know" (42:2-3). To me, that pretty much hammers down the point made throughout the speech that Job's questions on divine theodicy come from ignorance.
• 

  sacolton

  Hey, God said sorry with rainbows. Now, how do you top something like that? Well, except winning a lawsuit for $5,000,000. I guess I'd rather have the money, but ... still.
• 

  Narkissos

  What I find most interesting in the Yhwh discourses (and because of this very "interest" I cannot tell how far I read it into them!) is what I would call, with deliberate anachronism, their "anti-humanistic" approach to (non-)theodicy. They, in effect, "deconstruct" the whole theodicy discussion and its underlying conceptual framework and logic (including Job's concept of justice) by confronting it to non-human "realities" (of both a natural and mythological kind), thereby revealing it as not only self- but species-centered. The interests and values of man, or even life, might just not be central to "God" (or, to reality). People may starve while "God" (or, reality) provides for animals -- or even makes it rain on deserts. Reality resists reason (including moral reason). It is simply not accountable. This open to a perception of the real as grace -- the flip side of which is the absurd.

  One very important and difficult exegetical problem is Job's response to Yhwh's discourses. It is usually construed as repentance but is probably more complex than that. The key verb m's in 42:6a has rather the connotation of rejection and disgust (and is consistently used in this sense throughout the poetical dialogue, 5:17; 7:16; 8:20; 9:21; 19:18; 30:1; 31:13; 34:33; 36:5). Job "gives up" for sure. But he doesn't gives right to God or justify him as that would miss the point of the Yhwh discourses: "God" is beyond (human) justification. However, that doesn't mean that Job's (or mankind's) complaint is erased. It remains inscribed as an irreconciliable difference within the indifference of reality (as Job says, written in the ground/rock). None will ultimately bow to the other.
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  parakeet

  sacolton: Hey, God said sorry with rainbows.

  When he's not blaming the victims for his blunders, God's always saying sorry about one thing or another.

  Maybe, instead of apologizing with pretty colors, he should correct his mistakes and prove he's the loving god he claims he is.
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  Leolaia

  They, in effect, "deconstruct" the whole theodicy discussion and its underlying conceptual framework and logic (including Job's concept of justice) by confronting it to non-human "realities" (of both a natural and mythological kind), thereby revealing it as not only self- but species-centered. The interests and values of man, or even life, might just not be central to "God" (or, to reality). People may starve while "God" (or, reality) provides for animals -- or even makes it rain on deserts.

  Interesting point. I am struck by the passage about the wild ass (Job 39:5-8), which has Yahweh helping it escape if captured by man, loosening the ropes so it could run to the salt flats that Yahweh has given to the wild ass as its home. This would be a misfortune to the livelihood of the family that captured it.

  And Yahweh makes it a special point that he did not give wisdom to the ostrich, resulting in a share of misfortune (such that its eggs and young may be needlessly endangered). He doesn't explain the reason for this, only to add that he instead gave it abilities (such as its speed) that other animals would envy.

  Job "gives up" for sure. But he doesn't gives right to God or justify him as that would miss the point of the Yhwh discourses: "God" is beyond (human) justification. However, that doesn't mean that Job's (or mankind's) complaint is erased. It remains inscribed as an irreconciliable difference within the indifference of reality

  It is interesting how subsequent editors were so dissatisfied with this perspective. The author of the prologue and epilogue wanted to give some explanation of the reasons behind Job's afflictions, and he also makes Job voice an attitude altogether different from that in his complaint: "Yahweh gives and he takes away, may Yahweh's name be praised.... We take the good out of God's hand, should we not also take bad things?" (1:21, 2:10). The words in the dialogues are not erased, but they are countered. The writer who inserted the Elihu speeches similarly was not content with Yahweh's indifferent response and used Job's request for an arbiter (9:33, 16:19-20, 19:25) as the excuse to insert a new character who gives an extended critique of the content of Job's complaint — something one might wish that Yahweh had done in his lengthy speech from the whirlwind. The LXX translators softened the bleakness of reality further by adding into the dialogues and the prose story the hope of future resurrection (which attempts to balance present suffering with the promise of a future reward). The later theological development of Satan as a cosmological opponent of God also distracts from Job as a self-professed critic of God's seemingly arbitrary actions. This certainly comes across in JF Rutherford's use of Job as a primary source for his "vindication" doctrine. The focus is entirely on Satan as the figure who challenges God's judgment and sovereignty, despite the fact that in the actual text it is Job, not the satan, who does precisely this.
• 

  Midget-Sasquatch

  Leolaia

  Thanks for clearly showing all instances of the dialogue where Yahweh brings out Job's undeniable ignorance about how things worked in nature. Job admitted that part sure enough. I'd have to say that the latter half of Yahweh's discourse (where he was focussing on his power) was what I keyed in on, and totally forgot the earlier portions of how he took care of nature.

  So in some of those verses you get a picture of a God that does try to care for parts of creation. Although there's no indicator of man being the measure there for what counts most.

  I wouldn't say Job is completely ignorant though in what matters to him. He intimately knows what he went through and I feel he never got a real answer to why Yahweh acts or fails to act according to what Job understands as just. 'You don't understand these other things Job so how could you possibly even question me on this.'

  Yahweh here smacks me of a doctor who having a patient question him on callous or indifferent treatment, goes off throwing all kinds of queries about the human body and what to do for various afflictions, overwheliming the patient and making them admit they're not as well studied in medicine. Not addressing the person's real concern though. Job couldn't understand how Yahweh brought certain things into being or even grasp how his power may be manifest or enacted, but does that negate his being able to question the just or injust use of it? Like a modern person not having to fully understand the engineering of a bioweapon to question its moral use?
• 

  AllTimeJeff

  I missed out on this and just wanted to thank everyone, particularly Leolaia and Narkissos as usual for sharing their education with us.

  They JW typology behind Job is fascinating, in that it shows the intellectual flexibility (and dishonesty) of the Governing Body. For example, Chapter 1, Job represents Jesus, but in the rest of the book, chapters 2-42, Job represents the "1900 year old Faithful and Discreet Slave". Questions of course are, why? The answer will always be that the FD Slave (read: Governing Body) is alone commissioned for the exegesis of the bible. Pretty much, you have to take their word for it if you are a good dub. Jobs 3 companions represent the clergy of Christendom. (because all the bad guys in the bible represent non JW religions, and of course, the bible prophesied about them in books like Job.... ) In cahp 41:1-3, Leviathan represents Satan and his earthly org, which YHWH will make a slave of... Again, just amazing Governing Body BS.....

  There are other curiosities as far as JW's are concerned. For example, in Job 1:4, we read that Jobs sons would hold banquets at the house of each one "on his own day". (NWT) and that the children of job would banquet and eat and drink. Of course, this sets up the calamaty of YHWH allowing Satan to kill Jobs children on a bet, as they were accustomed according to the story of partying together.

  It is also interesting to note what that day could have been. At Gilead, they said it could not have been a birthday celebration. Really?

  Narkissos made a great point that has always stuck with me about the writers generally meaning what they wrote, and it takes away a lot of reading between the lines that religions, and esp JW's, are wont to do.

  So why would we assume that Job 1:4 isn't talking about birthdays? What other special "day" could the children of Job refer to? Somehow, they knew (from a JW point of view) that birthdays are bad in front of Jehovah, so they got to pick another special day for themselves? Not likely. Yet they were not censured for doing this. A great opportunity is lost for "Jehovah" to make birthdays a hanging offense. Except he didn't.

  The meeting in heaven between Satan and YHWH in chapter 2 is fascinating as well. It shows YHWH playing fast and loose with human lives for his own ego's sake. Good parental example there. It is interesting that after chapter 2, Satan disappears, as if he wasn't going to get called out for his supposedly wrong challenge on Job and YHWH?

  Job, in trying to explain it, actually creates far more problems in accepting the bible as the unerring word of god. It is fascinating to read and learn of the context and scholarship behind it though; it makes far more sense when you discern the spliced together patch work that Job is.....
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  wildflowermeadow

  UB, you're genius. Job was always my stumbling block. I mean, c'mon...

  Great analysis of Job, Leolaia