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Job 1-20, Volume 17
By David J. A. Clines, David A. Hubbard, Glenn W. Barker ZONDERVAN
Copyright © 1989 Word, Incorporated
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-310-52190-7
CHAPTER 1
The Prologue (1:1–2:13)
Form / Structure / Setting
The structure of this prose prologue to the book is clearly defined. There are five scenes, alternating between earth and heaven, and a sixth, pendant to those, linking the events and the prologue with the dialogues:
1. On earth Job's piety (1:1–5)
2. In heaven First dialogue of Yahweh and the Satan (1:6–12)
3. On earth Disasters announced to Job (1:13–22)
4. In heaven Second dialogue of Yahweh and the Satan (2:l–7a)
5. On earth Personal afflictions of Job (2:7b–10)
To which is added:
6. Arrival of Job's friends (2:11–13)
This is a very stylized structure, tending toward the naive. Its simplicity is further emphasized by parallels between scenes. Most striking is the parallel structure of scenes 2 and 4:
1. Situation
The sons of God present themselves (1:6; 2:1)
2. Complication
a. Question by Yahweh (1:7a; 2:2a)
b. Reply by the Satan (1:7b; 2:2b)
c. Question by Yahweh (1:8; 2:3)
d. Reply by the Satan (1:9–11; 2:4–5)
e. Yahweh's authorization (1:12a; 2:6)
3. Resolution
The Satan goes forth (1:12b; 2:7a)
The parallels here extend beyond the structure to the bulk of the wording.
The scenes are with one exception clearly marked off from one another by the recurring phrase "there came a day when" ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], 1:6, 13; 2:1); the first scene does not of course need any marker of beginning. The exception to the pattern is at the juncture between the fourth and fifth scenes. That is, at the beginning of the final scene, the breaking of the formal pattern signals the impingement of the divine world upon the human; as the two scenes dissolve into one another, the tempo quickens for the finale. The simple and repetitive structure of the prologue may be termed one of its "falsely naive" features (see D. J. A. Clines, HAR 9 [1985] 127–36).
In each scene there are never more than two speakers, a sign of the naivety of the depiction (in the third scene, as each messenger gives his account of disaster, he disappears from the scene as another is superimposed).
The genre of the prologue (1:1–2:13) and the epilogue (42:7–17) considered as a whole should probably be designated as legend, in the form-critical sense of "edifying story," a narrative type in which the focus is upon character rather than strictly upon event (G. W. Coats, "Tale," in Saga, Legend, 63–64), in which we find "a virtue embodied in a deed," in A. Jolles' classic formulation (Einfache Formen [2nd ed.; Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1958] 23–61), with an emphasis on behavior and character worthy of imitation (cf. R. M. Hals, "Legend," in Coats, Saga, Legend, 51). This designation focuses on the depiction of Job's response to his afflictions as the appropriate response of a godly person. As Fohrer put it, "The concern of this narrative, as of the book as a whole, is not the problem of suffering, but the behavior of people in their experiencing and enduring suffering ... not the problem of theodicy, but of human existence in suffering" (69).
It is not always possible to distinguish clearly between legend and "tale"—R. E. Murphy uses the term "edifying story" (Wisdom Literature: Job, Proverbs, Ruth, Canticles, Ecclesiastes, and Esther [FOTL 13; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981] 21)—and the typical features of the tale (Coats, "Tale," in Saga, Legend, 63–67) may be seen here, principally the movement from exposition, through complication, resolution, dénouement, to conclusion. Here exposition is obviously 1:1–5, followed by a double complication (the two heavenly scenes and their consequences, 1:6–21 and 2:1–10). If the prologue is read without knowledge of the epilogue (and the distance that separates them invites us to keep the ultimate resolution at the back of our minds as long as possible) then a double resolution is effected in 1:20–21 and 2:10 (similarly Habel, speaking of an "apparent resolution," p. 79). Already in 1:20–21 we are being tempted to believe that the story has reached its conclusion with Job's "arising" (cf. R. Alter, Art of Biblical Narrative, 65). The legend as tale is, however, further "complicated" by the episode of 2:11–13, the arrival of the friends, which locates itself in the position of a dénouement or conclusion where loose ends are tied up and reconciliations effected, but which turns out to be a further disorientation. The prologue thus concludes at the opening of a new arc of tension that will not reach its resolution before 42:9. Every appearance of simplicity in this narrative breaks apart into the most intriguing subtlety.
This prologue is a superb instance of the art of narration through dialogue that Alter has characterized in reference especially to 1 Sam 1 and 21 (Art of Biblical Narrative, chap. 4). The opening scene (1:1–5) we may designate a "pretemporal exposition," first identifying the protagonist and his character, specifying his wealth, and moving then into the "iterative tense" where a repeated action (1:4–5) will form the transition from the "actionless beginning" to the narrative proper, the "singulative" tense. Job's habitual thought, and therewith his character, is rendered by a piece of interior speech (1:5).
In the second scene (1:6–12) there is no narrative proper except for the framing sentences (the Satan came, the Satan left). The whole substance of this crucial narration that determines Job's fate is contained in a five-element dialogue, of which Yahweh has the first, the middle, and the last, and the Satan the second and fourth elements. That the speeches of Yahweh open and end the conversation (it is the same in the second heavenly scene) is a signal that he is the architect and the authorizer of Job's calamity. The first exchange ("Where have you come from?," "From going to and fro in the earth....") draws into the dialogue material that is more for the readers' information than for the progress of the dialogue; we need to know that the Satan has had the opportunity and the responsibility of inquiring into the case of the man Job. The second speech of Yahweh ("Have you considered Job?") seems at first a guileless question, but hearing the response it elicits ("Does Job fear God for naught?") we come to see that it was a provocative question, pregnant with implication. The final speech confirms that although it may seem to be the Satan who has fingered Job, it is Yahweh who is truly the hard-faced one: "All that he has is in your power"; only after the general authorization to harm Job comes the rider to protect him ("only ..."). It is the same in the second heavenly scene.
Alter has nicely remarked on how the respective speeches of Yahweh and the Satan function as "contrastive dialogue" to suggest characterization. Yahweh's first words ("Where are you coming from?") are almost brusque, and it is only when he is echoing the narrator's initial depiction of Job (1:1) that he speaks a formal language. The Satan, on the other hand, "shows a fondness for verse-insets, clever citation of folk-sayings, argumentative positioning of syntactical members for the most persuasive effect ... he is a master of conscious rhetoric, alongside of whom God seems plainspoken" (Art of Biblical Narrative, 74).
In the third scene dialogue again is primary as the events that constitute Job's calamity are never narrated but reported, not shown but told. The device of the messenger speeches not only creates an atmosphere of accelerating doom, no speaker being able to conclude his report before being overtaken by the next, but also heightens the readers' expectation for Job's reaction by preventing Job from responding emotionally or verbally to any one calamity until he responds to them all. Strikingly, his response when it comes is initially silent (1:20), and thereafter is a monologue (1:21), or even perhaps an interior speech like 1:5.
The fifth scene invites comparison on several fronts with the third: it has more narration in it than any of the others (2:7b–8), the narrator himself taking the place of the messengers of chap. 1. But the weight lies upon the dialogue of Job and his wife, her speech forming in verbal mode the third trial of Job, borrowing half its material from Yahweh ("hold fast integrity") and half from the Satan ("curse God"), as if to make her the earthly counterpart of his heavenly assailants.
Dialogue in heaven and speech on earth have spelled Job's disaster; what will it signify that his friends on their arrival impose on themselves an unnaturally extended silence? Only the sequel of the dialogues will offer an answer to that little riddle with which the prologue concludes.
Comment
1:1–2:13The prose prologue. The Book of Job begins and concludes with a prose narrative relating the experiences of the righteous sufferer Job. In the prologue, the two fundamental data indispensable for the book as a whole are presented. First, Job is a righteous man; second, he is suffering undeservedly, and that at God's hand, or at least with God's permission. From these data the whole issue of the book arises. But that issue appears differently to Job and to the readers of the book. To Job the issue is how to reconcile his experience of suffering with his knowledge of his innocence; to the readers the issue is rather how a righteous person is to behave when afflicted by undeserved suffering. The difference between Job and the readers of the book is that the readers are offered the twin fundamental data of the book as its unexaminable premise; whereas for Job the twin data are the object of unrelenting examination, for though he believes both implicitly, they spell out to him only a gigantic contradiction that imperils either his faith in God or his faith in himself—or both.
The prose prologue is divided into five scenes, the first, third, and fifth set on earth, and the second and fourth set in heaven:
1. Job's character and concern for his children's safety (1:1–5)
2. First confrontation between the Satan and Yahweh (1:6–12)
3. Announcements of disasters to Job's possessions and children, and Job's response (1:13–22)
4. Second confrontation between the Satan and Yahweh (2:1–6)
5. Personal afflictions of Job, Job's response, and the friends' response (2:7–10. 13)
The scenes are, with one exception, kept clearly distinct from one another by means of the phrase "and there was a day when" [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] at the beginning of the second, third, and fourth scenes (1:6, 13; 2:1). The exception draws attention to itself: not only is the introductory phrase absent from 2:7, but, for the only time in the prologue, one of the actors moves out of his proper sphere. The Satan, that is, though he is a character in the heavenly realm, eventually operates both on the heavenly plane and on the earthly plane; he goes "forth from the presence of Yahweh" in heaven and "afflict[s] Job" on earth. The breaking of the formal pattern signals the impingement of the divine world upon the human; and it further underscores the role of the Satan as the executor of the heavenly decision against Job. God remains in heaven, uninvolved directly in the affliction of Job; the very possibility of movement from the heavenly sphere to the earthly accentuates the aloofness of God, who does not engage in any such movement. So charged with implications is the fracture of the formal pattern of scenes that one is tempted to find in this structure a pattern created only in order to be destroyed for the sake of the effect. That is, the simple structure of the prologue is only falsely naive; like the unsophisticated language of these chapters, the plainness of the structure suggests, not a primitive narrative mode, but a subtle artistic severity. See further, D. J. A. Clines, HAR 9 (1985) 127–36.
1–5Job's character. The one thing needful in the preface to the poem of Job the righteous sufferer is that "there must be no room for the misgiving that the sufferer's afflictions are the due reward of his deeds" (Peake). The opening sentence establishing Job's blamelessness is given precedence over the more external description of Job's family and wealth, since it is his moral rectitude that will be put in question by events of the narrative. Reference to his children and possessions, however, functions not as a decorative addition to the portrayal of the man, but as tangible evidence of his uprightness. The fundamental assertion of Job's blamelessness is reverted to in the last two verses of this unit, where a cameo scene depicts how scrupulous he is to ensure that his innocence extends beyond himself to the members of his family. At the same time, by bringing the children within the ambit of the story, it prepares for the third scene, in which their fate is portrayed.
1 First things first, for this storyteller. What is important about this man is not his name or his origin. The name Job is of uncertain meaning, Uz of uncertain location; was it any different in the narrator's time? Job's moral character is the theme of this scene, and the barest identification of the man is all that is needed.
A customary formula with which a biblical narrative book begins is "and it came to pass that" [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] or "and there was" [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]; thus Joshua, Judges, 1 Samuel, (2 Samuel), Ruth, Esther (also Ezekiel). Some continuity with preceding narrative is probably implied; or, in the case of a book like Ruth, which had no doubt been an entity independent of Israel's national history, the formula forges a deliberate link with that history. Here the opening phrase is, literally, "a man there was" [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], the only genuine parallels to which occur at the beginnings of Nathan's parable (2 Sam 12:1) and of Joash's fable (2 Kgs 14:9); in Esth 2:5, often cited in this connection, the similar word-order simply marks a shift of focus; similarly 1 Sam 25:2). The implication is not that what follows is a tale rather than history (Gordis) but that the subsequent narrative has no link with any stage in the course of Israel's history (thus König, Syntax, § 365g). The formulation of the opening words gives an advance warning that the frame of reference of this story will be other than Israel's canonical history. The name of Job's land will be a further such signal.
The importance of the name Uz lies not in where such a place is, but in where it is not. Israelites themselves may not have known its precise location, but they will have known, as we do, that it is not in Israel. The name therefore signifies that the action has a horizon that is not peculiarly Israelite. It does not mean that Job necessarily is a foreigner, for most Jews of the exilic period and beyond—if that is the time of the book's composition—lived outside the borders of Israel, and the patriarchs themselves—since that is ostensibly the time in which the story is set—were almost as often to be found outside the land as within it. The Book of Job simply does not say whether or not Job is an Israelite; by leaving open the question of his race, the book effectively makes his experience transcend the distinction between Israelite and non-Israelite, Jew and non-Jew. We do not know that the storyteller had such a conscious intention, but such is the effect he has created.
The clearest pointer to the location of Uz is Lam 4:21, where "the land of Uz" stands parallel to "Edom" (the only other occurrence of Uz as a place name is in Jer 25:20, where no clues to its location are given). Further support for a situation in or near Edom may be given by the occurrence of the personal name Uz in an Edomite genealogy (Gen 36:28 = 1 Chr 1:42), and by the probability that most of the personal names in Job have an Edomite origin (see on 2:11). Further, the personal name Uz is linked in Gen 22:21 with the name Buz, which appears in Jer 25:23 as a place name associated with Dedan and Tema, towns in northwest Arabia and thus not far south of Edom.
Again, the Septuagint appendix to the Book of Job preserves a tradition that the land of Job (which has become Ausitis in Greek transliteration) was located "on the borders of Idumea and Arabia" (42:17b), which indicates the same general setting (it is not clear that this tradition rests on the faulty identification of Job with the Jobab of Gen 10:29, as claimed by Fohrer, and Snaith, Job, 45). The name Uz has also been seen in a Lihyanite tribal name, al 'Aus (B. Moritz, "Edomitische Genealogien," ZAW 44 [1926] 81–92), and in the place name Khirbet el-'Is (so A. Musil, Arabia Petraea [Vienna: A. Holder, 1907] 2/1:337; cf. J. Simons, Geographical and Topographical Texts [Leiden: Brill, 1955] 25). Very much less probable are attempts to situate Uz in the region of Damascus or of northern Mesopotamia (cf. Gen 10:23 [= 1 Chr 1:17] where Uz is a "son" of Aram; and the tradition in Josephus, Ant. 1.6.4, that Ouses or Ousos son of Aram was the founder of Damascus and Trachonitis). Cf. also G. A. Barton, "The Original Home of the Story of Job," JBL 31 (1912) 63–68. M. Gorg relates the name to the Egyptian term 'd or '3d, "land on the edge of the desert at the border of the regularly watered region," locating the friends' homes in the south, the east, and the north, as representing a global failure to comprehend Job ("Ijob aus dem Lande 'Us: Ein Beitrag zur 'theologische Geographic,"' BN 12 [1980] 7–12).
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Job 1-20, Volume 17 by David J. A. Clines, David A. Hubbard, Glenn W. Barker. Copyright © 1989 Word, Incorporated. Excerpted by permission of ZONDERVAN.
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