Purpose of the Book
“IT WAS A DARK and stormy night….” So begins the novel perpetually being attempted by Snoopy in the Peanuts comic strip. The humor is in the cliché. The cliché has its roots, I imagine, in the fact that novels want to draw the reader in by posing an intriguing scenario filled with danger and mystery. But when our lives are reading like that novel, the idle curiosity of a casual reader is replaced with the sorrow or abject fear of a person in crisis. No one is immune to “dark and stormy nights,” and reading about Job’s is designed to help us know how to think about our own.
The title character of the book of Job is caught in the ultimate “dark and stormy night” of a life gone tragically wrong. We should not mistakenly think that this book is just about Job, however; it is about all of us. Though the book does engage in extremes, it is not trying to minimize anyone else’s suffering in comparison, for suffering cannot be measured objectively. Regardless of where anyone’s experiences fit on the spectrum of pain and suffering, we are all prone to ask the same questions. These questions direct us to the central subject of the book, God himself, for he is the one to whom we direct our confused questions and perplexed musings. Archibald MacLeish, in his Pulitzer Prize winning play J.B., frames it this way:
Millions and millions of mankind
Burned, crushed, broken, mutilated,
Slaughtered, and for what? For thinking!
For walking round the world in the wrong
Skin, the wrong-shaped noses, eyelids:
Sleeping the wrong night wrong city—
London, Dresden, Hiroshima.
There never could have been so many
Suffered more for less. But where do
I come in?2
MacLeish had the same questions that we all direct heavenward, but as an existentialist, he had no answers. Like Job and like MacLeish, we are long on questions but short on answers. Does the book of Job offer any satisfaction? Many have thought not—that like MacLeish, the book simply restates the perennial and ubiquitous questions that plague humankind in a world full of pain and suffering.
I disagree. Perhaps we have not recognized the answers the book offers because we have asked the wrong questions—or, more accurately, the less important questions. When in Acts 3 the crippled beggar asks for money, Peter instead gives him healing. The beggar had not thought to ask for that. Sometimes what we ask for is too limited to do us any real good. We must learn to ask better questions so that we might find the more significant answers. To this end, the book of Job repeatedly shows us that what we thought were the most poignant questions are not significant enough, and it dismisses them. At long last it leads us to the most momentous questions by introducing a whole series of answers, answers that at first seem oblique. In fact, many have been willing to dismiss the answers as a mere smokescreen and turn away from the book disillusioned and disappointed. But if we allow the answers to prompt us to the right questions, we will discover the wealth that the book has to offer.
The book is not about Job, his friends, or the Challenger.3 I have suggested it is about all of us, and ultimately about God.4 Our questions about suffering inevitably lead to God, for when we go through difficult times in life, there is no one else to question—he is the one whose ways we seek to understand. When we ask “Why me?” we are in effect asking “How does God work?” We may start out asking why we deserved this, but ultimately the question we arrived at is, “What kind of God are you?” In all our difficult experiences, eventually we arrive at the place where it is no longer us, but God who is on trial.
As we examine the book in detail, it becomes clear that Job is not on trial. In fact, he is declared innocent from beginning to end by all parties. When the Challenger suggests that Job’s motives may be self-interested, he has no evidence, only suspicions—possible explanations for Job’s pristine conduct. Job is thereby tacitly exonerated because there is no concrete evidence against him. When Job’s friends go hunting for offenses, they likewise have no hard evidence to offer and can only suggest possible misdemeanors. Though Job and his friends may believe he is on trial, the prologue shows that this is a misunderstanding. Rather, it is God’s policies that have been called into question, and he therefore takes the role of defendant.5 Job becomes deeply enmeshed in this trial and is central to it, but he is not on trial.
This concept will be explored in greater depth in the commentary, but a summary here is apropos. The Challenger’s question, “Does Job fear God for nothing?” (1:9) centers on Job’s motivation for serving God and suggests that God’s treatment of the righteous is the incentive for righteous conduct. The policy under scrutiny is known today as the Retribution Principle (RP): the righteous prosper and the wicked suffer. If this is a truism, then the motives of righteous-acting people may be corrupted by the lure of prosperity, because if such material gain is the inevitable result of righteousness, true righteousness becomes illusionary and elusive. The Challenger’s claim is therefore that God’s policy of rewarding the righteous actually undermines, if not subverts, the very righteousness that he seeks to foster.6 In warfare, there is no true faithfulness in mercenaries. The RP has the potential of turning would-be righteous people into “benefit mercenaries” as it trains them to ask, “What’s in it for me?” We might see the issue more clearly if we compare the criticism that some politicians have of entitlement programs: They claim that welfare, food stamps, and the like are bad policy because they make people lazy and dependent.
My son is an artist, and I noticed when he was grade school, still drawing dogs or dinosaurs, he used to either draw them upside down or draw the feet before he drew the rest of the figure. When I asked why, he replied that everything could be put in better proportion if he approached the drawing in this way. We find this same principle at work as we reflect on the literary artistry of the book of Job. The Challenger puts God’s policies to the test by suggesting that it is counterproductive for God to bless righteous people, for it makes them less righteous (in motive, if not in action). Such an accusation gives the book an interesting twist, for while we might be inclined (along with Job and his friends) to spend time thinking about why righteous people suffer, the Challenger turns the question upside down and asks why they should prosper. It is drawing the picture upside down to put everything in better perspective. In this way the book gives us the answers we need rather than the answers we thought we wanted.
After God accepts the proposal of the Challenger, Job’s suffering begins, which provides the other side of the dilemma. Even as the Challenger suggests it is bad policy for righteousness to result in prosperity (ethically counterproductive), Job presses his point that it is bad policy for God’s most faithful people to suffer (theologically counterintuitive).7 Caught on the horns of this dilemma, what is a God to do? This is what the book is going to sort out. Because the book is about God, the teaching that it offers is valuable to all of us. It does not tell us why Job or any of us suffer, but it does tell us a bit about how we should think about God when we are suffering. This is what we really needed to know anyway.
In summary, then, the purpose of this book is to explore God’s policies with regard to suffering in the world, especially by the righteous or the innocent. In the process it seeks to revolutionize our thinking about God and the way that he runs the world. Most importantly, the book shifts our attention from the idea that God’s justice (represented in the RP) is foundational to the operation of the world to the alternative that God’s wisdom is the more appropriate foundation.8 It does not offer a reason for suffering and does not try to defend God’s justice. It does not answer the “why” question that we are so prone to ask when things go wrong. Instead, we are to trust God’s wisdom and, in the process, to conclude by faith that he is also just.
In truth, we will never be in a position to evaluate God’s justice. In order to appraise the justice of a decision, we must have all the facts, for justice can be derailed if we do not have all the information. Because we never have all the information about our lives, we cannot judge God when he brings experiences to us or make claims and demands. We cannot reach an affirmation about God’s justice through our own limited insight or experiences. We affirm his justice by faith directed toward his wisdom. As we will see, God’s speech at the end does not offer a defense of his justice, but of his wisdom and power.
The book, therefore, wants to transform how we think about God’s work in the world and about our responses in times of suffering. Most people look at the book, thinking that it deals with the question of why righteous people suffer. Instead, the book sets out the question as, “Is there such a thing as disinterested righteousness?”9 In this sense the book is about the nature of righteousness, not the nature of suffering. As the book unfolds, we are going to discover that Job’s motives are indeed pure (he values righteousness over benefits), but his concept of God and his understanding of God’s policies are going to need modification.
Author and Date
THE SHORT ANSWER IS that while we do not know the author or the date, this lack of information does not affect our interpretation of the book. Literary works in the ancient world were largely anonymous, and it was not unusual for them to go through development as they were transmitted from generation to generation. Scholars have traditionally placed the events of this book in the patriarchal period, citing the absence of any reference to covenant or law. Two facts join to support the conclusion that the book is set before the time of Moses: Job’s service as the family priest and the lack of reference to a sanctuary. Against such an inference, we need only note that Job is not an Israelite (he is from the land of Uz, 1:1). We would therefore not expect any reference to covenant or law, priest, or temple.
We could explore some of the potential historical references in the book, such as to the Sabeans (1:15) and Chaldeans (1:17), but such studies do not yield consistent results. Many have also focused on the specialized language of the book, such as the arcane term qesitah (42:11), a unit of money found elsewhere only in early literature (Gen. 33:19; Josh. 24:32). But these give little to go on. Scholars do not contest that the book contains arcane features, but there is not sufficient information to date either the setting of the story or the composition of the book with any confidence. Even if we could provide such dates, it would make no difference in the book’s interpretation.
We should also note that the language of the book has been the subject of much discussion. The book is uncontested for the complexity of its Hebrew. Scholars have attempted to identify it as a dialect or even as a translation, but no such suggestions have been substantiated or widely accepted.10 All of this is to say that until we have more to go on, we cannot use the language of the book to determine its date.
Literature and History: The Genre of the Book of Job
WE MIGHT NEXT REASONABLY ask about the nature of the events. In the end this is a genre question. Is the author presenting the events of the book as actual occurrences? Was there such a man as Job? Did he suffer in these ways? Were there friends who came and discussed his plight with him? Is the book suggesting that there was such a scenario in heaven? Was there a divine appearance from the whirlwind?
All of these questions get at the same issue: How much of the book is literary artifice and how much is a journalistic reporting of real events?11 Either option could be legitimate genres for canonical texts and could provide the authority for sacred writ. How important is this question and how should it be approached? Often we are guided by the claims we presume that the book makes for itself. We also are inclined to check any of these supposed claims by other authoritative, canonical sources. Along with all of this evidence, we are often also driven by our own presuppositions and traditions.
We might deduce from the fact that the book gives the names of Job’s daughters at the end of the book (42:14) that the reader is expected to link them to known history, but any such connections are lost to us. Little else in the book suggests that the author is urging us toward a historical reading of the book. References to Job in the Old Testament (Ezek. 14:14, 20) and in the New Testament (James 5:11) have been used to argue that Job is an historical figure, but such reference could just as easily be made to a literary figure. Job’s perseverance and righteousness could be drawn on effectively in either case, so these references prove nothing.
Before we move on too hastily, however, we might also inquire whether there are literary figures in the ancient world. We know that there are legendary figures, but there is no reason to believe that the legends are not built around historical persons (e.g., Gilgamesh, Adapa, Etana, Kirtu). How then would we establish that a character was simply a literary figure rather than an historical person? Perhaps the better question is whether this distinction really matters, for the argument of the book does not depend on the historicity of the main characters. This is different from the story of, say, Abraham. There the integrity of the text depends on whether there actually was a man named Abraham to whom God made certain promises. If there were no such man, there was no covenant. The situation in Job, however, is not the same.
Though there may be purely literary characters in the literature of the ancient world, ancient authors were more likely to construct their literature around epic figures of the distant past than to fabricate “fiction” as we understand it today.12 This practice is illustrated in the Mesopotamian wisdom work known as Ludlul bel nemeqi, a first-person narration of someone who suffered greatly and did not know why. His name can be deduced from the work, and analysts do not hesitate to consider him a real person.13 Weiss builds the case that the introduction of Job’s name indicates syntactically that Job’s character and reputation are familiar to all.14 For these reasons, we may rightly assume that Job was a historical figure—a man who was righteous and suffered greatly.15 We lose nothing by accepting Job’s story as historical, and we gain nothing by concluding that he is a fabricated, fictional character.
Yet questions concerning the nature and genre of the book are far more complex than simply determining whether Job really existed and underwent such suffering. For example, even the most conservative and traditional of recent interpreters grant that the speeches of Job and his friends are literary artifice rather than journalistic transcripts. No stenographer would have been present; furthermore, people do not talk extemporaneously in such elevated prose. If we agree that the speeches are literary artifice, we must then ask which other parts of the book are in the same category; in fact, is every part of the book in the same category? If the speeches are literary constructions, are the friends themselves literary constructions? That is, are they designed to represent certain approaches to the question of suffering?
These questions are the same as those that surround other philosophical literature from the world of antiquity. For example, Socrates is a character in Plato’s dialogues, in whose mouth Plato places his philosophy. The historical Socrates (and it is debated whether there was such a person) may not have said the things Plato has him say (the same goes for his [historical] interlocutors), may not have gone to trial in the same way, and may not have died the same way that Plato depicts. Ultimately, this makes no difference to Plato’s philosophy; a discovery that there was no historical Socrates would not cast doubt on Platonism.
In approaching this question, we must keep foremost in our mind that this book is manifestly and unarguably in the genre category of wisdom literature, not historical literature.16 As wisdom literature it makes no claims about the nature of the events. In that sense the discussion about whether the events are real events is misplaced. A second understanding that is important is that as wisdom literature, this book would fit easily into the classification “thought experiment.”17 In such a case the author is using the various parts of the book to pose a philosophical scenario that will be used to address the wisdom themes as we have articulated them above.18 If the book of Job is a thought experiment, the reader is supposed to draw conclusions about God from the final point, not from every detail along the way. Consequently, for example, the opening scene in heaven is not intended to be used as a source of information about God’s activities and nature. We would not rule out the possibility that such a scenario could happen, but we would be mistaken to think that author seeks to unfold a series of historical events. It is wisdom literature.19
The scene in heaven is not trying to explain why Job or any of us suffer. Job is never told about that scene, nor would he have derived any comfort from it. As I have taught Job to students over the years, the question frequently arises, “What sort of God is this who uses his faithful ones as pawns in bets with the devil?” I would suggest that we need not concern ourselves with this question. The scene in heaven, like the speeches of Job’s friends, is part of the literary design of a thought experiment to generate discussion about how God runs the cosmos; it is not about trying to explain how Job got into such a difficult situation. The message of the book is offered at the end, in the speeches of God, not in the opening scenario, which only sets up the thought experiment.
As wisdom literature the book of Job seeks to give us appropriate foundations for understanding how the world works and how God works in the world. The book reveals how things work in the world, not how things work in heaven. If we are seeking to satisfy our curiosity about whether the Challenger has such access to heaven or whether there are such conversations concerning particular individuals, we cannot rule it out, but we should not think that the answers are provided here.
Shape and Structure
WE MIGHT THINK ABOUT the composition of the book of Job by using an analogy to some issues in the natural sciences. “Intelligent Design” has introduced the concept of “irreducible complexity” as one way to criticize Neo-Darwinism’s adequacy as an explanation of origins. Irreducible complexity describes an organism in which all of the parts are essential to its operation such that the parts could not have developed independently or sequentially, for the organism could not survive if it were lacking any of them in their fully developed form.
A similar claim of irreducible complexity could be made for the book of Job. The book includes dialogues, discourses, narratives, hymns, and laments (to name a few of the major sections), and each one has a significant role to play. If any of them were absent, the book would not accomplish its purpose. Many recent commentators have proposed a history of composition of the book; some suggest, for example, that the Elihu speeches are later additions, or the speeches of Yahweh don’t fit very well.20 Some opine that an original narrative (the frame) was later embellished by the poetic speeches, while others propose that the speeches came first and the narrative frame was added later. Such discussions may have academic value, but in the end they can only result in speculation that has little impact on our reading of the book. Elihu’s speeches cannot be discarded as redundant—they make a significant contribution as they take the argument into new territory. God’s speeches are not superfluous, obtuse, or irrelevant. None of the pieces can be discarded from this carefully and artfully constructed book. The following table offers the structure of the book that I find most persuasive.
Narrative Frame: 1–3 | ||
Dialogue | Prologue: Heaven and Earth | 1–2 |
Job’s Opening Lament | 3 | |
Cycle One: 4–14 | ||
Eliphaz | 4–5 | |
Job | 6–7 | |
Bildad | 8 | |
Job | 9–10 | |
Zophar | 11 | |
Job | 12–14 | |
Cycle Two: 15–21 | ||
Eliphaz | 15 | |
Job | 16–17 | |
Bildad | 18 | |
Job | 19 | |
Zophar | 20 | |
Job | 21 | |
Cycle Three: 22–27 | ||
Eliphaz | 22 | |
Job | 23–24 | |
Bildad | 25 | |
Job | 26–27 | |
Discourses | Series One: 29–31 | |
Job: Reminiscences | 29 | |
Job: Affliction | 30 | |
Job: Oath of Innocence | 31 | |
Series Two: 32–37 | ||
Elihu: Introduction and Theory | 32–33 | |
Elihu: Verdict on Job | 34 | |
Elihu: Offense of Job | 35 | |
Elihu: Summary | 36–37 | |
Series Three: 38–41 | ||
Yahweh: Maintaining roles and functions in cosmic order | 38–39 | |
Yahweh: Harnessing threats to cosmic order | 40:1–2; 40:6–41:34 | |
Narrative Frame: 42 | ||
| Job’s Closing Statements | (40:3–5) 42:1–6 |
Epilogue: Heaven and Earth | 42:7–17 | |
Note that there are three sets of speeches in the dialogue section (chs. 4–27), balanced by three sets of speeches in the discourse section (chs. 29–41). Leading into the dialogue section is Job’s lament (ch. 3), which is balanced by Job’s responses to God (esp. 42:1–6) coming out of the discourse section. Narrative frames the entire work. At the center of all this and most controversial is Job 28, which I have set off as the narrator’s interjection that serves as a pivot for the book and a transition from the dialogues to the discourses.21 Many commentators believe that chapter 28 is a speech of Job bridging from his last speech in the dialogue to his first speech in the discourses.22 It is easy to understand how one would draw that conclusion, but a variety of reasons compel us to discard this option. N. Habel identifies the problem succinctly:
For Job to return (in 28:28) to the traditional “fear of the Lord” would therefore mean returning to a posture of pious unquestioning submission which the friends had advocated all along and which he had repudiated time and again.23
Job’s final speech in Job 27:7–23 shows a pessimistic, fatalistic despair that would be ill-matched to and arguably irreconcilable with chapter 28. Likewise, the speeches in 29–31 show no hint of the convictions expressed in chapter 28.24 In his study of the forms and structure of Job, C. Westermann has concluded that the Wisdom hymn does not conform to any of the speeches by Job or his friends and therefore cannot derive from any one of them.25 Habel summarizes the field as he observes that
Job 28 is a brilliant but embarrassing poem for many commentators. It has been viewed as an erratic intrusion, an inspired intermezzo, a superfluous prelude, and an orthodox afterthought.26
In light of all of this, we may make the most sense of the text by viewing Job 28 as an interlude by the narrator.27
As a final observation, this bracketing out of Job 28 may also find some support in the speech formulas used in the book. Most of the speeches throughout all sections of the book are introduced by wayyaʾan (“he replied”). The only exceptions are Job 27:1; 29:1; and 36:1, where the text has wayyosep (“he continued”). The latter verb usually indicates continuing, repeating, or supplementing something that was done/said before. The placement and nature of these three speeches suggests that they should be taken as concluding summary remarks. Job 27 is Job’s final statement regarding his friends’ urgings and accusations. Job 29–31 is a summary of Job’s position in the whole affair in relationship to his claim against God. Job 36–37 is Elihu’s concluding summary statement. Unfortunately, the idea that a speech introduced by wayyosep can serve as a summary conclusion to a series of speeches introduced by wayyaʾan cannot be demonstrated by pointing to other contexts outside of Job. Extended dialogues are not common in the biblical text.28 The structural points I would make are as follows:
1. We would not expect two wayyosep speeches back-to-back, making it unlikely that chapters 27–28 are one speech and chapters 29–31 are another.
2. Chapter 28 is so radically distinct from the end of chapter 27 that it would call for some introductory speech formula if it came from the mouth of Job.
If chapter 28 is put in the mouth of the narrator, it indicates that we have yet to hear true wisdom, even though we have now listened to extensive speeches from those characterized as the wisest in the ancient world. The accusation of the Challenger has been refuted even as the promptings and arguments of the friends have been rejected. Wisdom has yet to be heard, and Job’s own claims have yet to be answered.
Job in the Ancient Near East
SEVERAL PIECES OF LITERATURE from the ancient Near East deal with the topic of individuals suffering for no apparent reason.29 From a literary perspective none of these approach the topic with the subtlety and complexity of the book of Job. Though there is certainly no literary dependence in either direction, these pieces of literature are important because they show that this was a common philosophical discussion. They are also significant because they show the differences between the Israelite approach to the issue and that found in the surrounding cultures. Perhaps most importantly, by understanding what the typical ancient Near Eastern solutions were, we can see how the book of Job interacts with them and shows their inadequacy.
Primary Texts
DIFFERENT STUDIES INCLUDE A variety of different pieces, but here we will mention only the most similar literature containing discussion surrounding a pious but suffering individual. While dates are not always easy to determine, generally speaking they range throughout the second millennium BC. The table on page 32 presents some analysis and comparison of these pieces.
| Mesopotamian Literature Compared with Job30 | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Literature | Status | Condition | Resolution | Outcome | Philosophy | Theology |
A Man and His God31 (Sumerian) | Ignorant of offense | Illness; social outcast | Sins confessed | Restored to health | No sinless child born | Results in hymn of praise |
Dialogue between a Man and His God32 (Akkadian) | Ignorant of offense | Illness | Text broken | Restored to health | None offered | Divine favor assured |
Sufferer’s Salvation33 (Akkadian, from Ugarit) | No comment | Illness; death imminent; omens obscure | No indication | Restored to health | God brought his suffering then brought his healing | Results in hymn of praise to Marduk |
Ludlul bel nemeqi34 (Akkadian) | Conscientious piety; ignorant of offense | Social outcast; omens obscure; illness; protective spirits chased away; demon oppression | Dream appearance | Purification bringing appeasement; offenses borne away; demons expelled; restored to health | Gods are inscrutable | Results in hymn of praise to Marduk |
Babylonian Theodicy35 (Akkadian) | Claims piety | Family gone; poverty | none | none | Purposes of gods remote; RP unreliable | Gods make people with evil inclinations and prone to suffering |
Job (Hebrew) | Claims righteousness and conscientious piety | Family taken; social outcast; illness; wealth taken | Yahweh offers new perspective based on wisdom | Restoration at all levels | RP unreliable; divine wisdom is foundation | God’s justice is granted given his wisdom |
Similarities
AS WE COMPARE THE principal pieces of Mesopotamian literature to Job, we find a number of superficial similarities. All feature an individual who is suffering, is baffled as to why he is suffering, and, in all but one case, is restored in the end. The sufferer in each case ponders his situation by laying his concerns before God or friends as he tries to understand the role of the gods in his plight. In that sense the scenarios are similar. As is often the case, however, when comparing the Bible to ancient Near Eastern exemplars, probing beneath the surface reveals many significant differences.
Differences
WHEN WE BEGIN TO penetrate beyond the superficial level of the general scenario, we find that Job differs on some important details as well as in its general philosophy and theology.
1. The nature of the suffering is different. In the ancient Near Eastern exemplars the major difficulty is health-related. Because of RP thinking, sudden serious illness was generally assumed to result from the gods’ disfavor. Such illness inevitably led to social rejection, for if a god were angry with the sick individual, one would not want to be associated with that person. If a demon were causing the problem, it would likewise be best to keep one’s distance. As the literature indicates, then, serious illness made one a social outcast. In contrast, Job loses his wealth and his family before he loses his health. The Mesopotamian pieces touch on poverty and lost family, but these are not presented as major issues.
2. The nature of the offenses considered in Job are never ceremonial. In the ancient Near East ritual offense was the most common sort of misdeed that a person could commit; though there were ritual expectations for the people, these were devised by society, not revealed by deity. Deity valued order in society, but moral responsibility was not understood as part of the people’s responsibility toward the gods. Instead, humans were to care for the gods (through ritual), and they would incur the anger of the gods by failing to provide for them. One cannot, then, easily speak of “righteousness” in the ancient world, only of “piety” (by which I refer to conscientiousness in ritual activity). There was no orthodoxy (right belief), only orthopraxy (proper performance).
In the Mesopotamian pieces deity is eventually appeased, whether by prayers, laments, or rituals. This appeasement of the deity is necessary in these scenarios because the deity is presumed to be angry or inexplicably moody. In Job there is no appeasement of Yahweh, for Yahweh is not angry; furthermore, Job specifically rejects the path of appeasement urged by his friends (27:2–6). This refusal is important to the book of Job, for Job’s pursuit of appeasement would demonstrate that the Challenger was right. Appeasement focuses on regaining benefits and tacitly denies the place of righteousness. The Challenger had made that precise claim—that supposedly righteous people weren’t really righteous, but only behaved righteously to gain benefits.
The Mesopotamians pursued appeasement because they considered themselves to be in a symbiotic relationship with the gods. The gods had created people to serve their needs; in response to such service, the gods protected the faithful people and provided for them (e.g., fertile fields). This was the Great Symbiosis of religious thinking in the ancient world. It was benefit-based: the gods reaped benefits from the labor of humans, and the humans reaped benefits from the favor of the gods. This expectation was not based on the belief that the god was just, only that he or she was sensible. The gods needed what humans provided, and they in return were capable in most circumstances of providing protection. The system did not work this way because the gods were just, but because they were needy. The gods in the ancient world did not care about defending their character; they were concerned to preserve their prerogatives and their executive perquisites. When a god did not receive the cultic rites to which he was entitled, his status was threatened and his wrath and/or abandonment was predictable. Appeasement was a vital part of this system, and if Job had pursued appeasement, he would have showed himself a part of this system.
3. In the ancient Near Eastern exemplars, the sufferers stood ready to acknowledge offense if they could only be shown what it was. They claimed ignorance while Job claims innocence. This stance would be difficult to maintain in the ancient Near East, for the gods were the ones who decided where sacred spaces were and what rituals needed to be performed. People who lived in Mesopotamia never believed that their information on these issues was comprehensive. Job, in contrast, is confident in his innocence. He clearly uses different standards by which he makes his claims. Job never acknowledges any offense (unlike his Mesopotamian counterparts), and God does not offer forgiveness in the process of restoration.
4. We can identify a number of Mesopotamian pieces that belong to the declarative praise genre, a genre that likewise appears frequently in the biblical Psalms. This genre is characterized by a lament, a petition, a favorable response by God, and an ending of praise. This is far different from the book of Job, which includes no concluding praise of Yahweh. The Mesopotamian pieces seem designed to feature praise, while Job omits it entirely.
5. While the themes of justice (God’s) and righteousness (Job’s) are central to the book of Job, neither is present in the ancient Near Eastern exemplars. In the ancient world the gods were interested in justice being maintained in the human realm. Shamash, for example, was the god of justice, and kings were accountable to him to maintain justice in society. The gods desired an equitable society because a stable and prosperous community most effectively provided for their needs. It is more difficult to establish that the gods themselves were just or unjust. The gods did what they wished. They were not consistent or predictable. They were neither moral nor immoral.
Notice that the Mesopotamian pieces do not try to defend the justice of God (in the end, neither does the book of Job), nor do they question whether deity is just. The primary concern is the preservation of the parameters and rules of the Great Symbiosis, not of justice. These pieces are all about the relationship between piety and prosperity. The contrasts in Job show it to be a work thoroughly immersed in the Israelite theological system (see below).
6. Just as the gods were not necessarily just in the ancient world, neither were they necessarily responsible for evil or suffering. These elements were built into the fabric of the cosmos, but not by the gods or any other beings. Furthermore, demons or humans could be responsible for suffering or evil without necessarily involving the gods. In Israelite thinking God could not so easily be removed from the equation, though certainly humans could do evil.
7. The piety/prosperity matrix of the Great Symbiosis serves as the foundation of the Challenger’s accusation against Job. If Job’s response indicates that he is bound to this matrix, the Challenger has won his case. In other words, if Job is no different from all of the sufferers in the Mesopotamian literature, the Challenger has made his point. In this sense, while all of the Mesopotamian pieces end by affirming the traditional dogmas, in Job those very same traditional dogmas are voiced by the friends and persistently rejected by Job.
8. Job focuses on his own righteousness, not on the piety/prosperity matrix. While his Mesopotamian counterparts are not declared innocent at any point throughout the literature, Job is declared so from beginning to end. Unlike his Mesopotamian counterparts, Job never considers the option that he deserves what he is experiencing.
9. In the ancient Near East when one offended deity by some sort of ritual neglect or misstep, the deity might react by simply turning his back, leaving one vulnerable to demonic attack. In this way the deity was not the one actively bringing harm. These demons were not seen as doing the will of the deity; they were simply acting in character by attacking a vulnerable subject. The Challenger in Job, however, is not an independent agent opportunistically fulfilling its nature. Whatever he does, he does through the power of God; all the events of the book are understood as God’s actions. Demons in their ancient Near Eastern role are absent from Old Testament theology, including Job.
10. Finally, it is evident that the philosophical and theological answers provided by the book of Job are far different from those offered in the ancient Near Eastern exemplars. Job rejects the easy answers of Mesopotamia (divine inscrutability, inherent sinfulness of humanity, gods who make humanity crooked).36
For Job these premises are acceptable to a degree, but they are not the answers that the book offers. Mesopotamian literature concludes that pious people do sometimes suffer, but this suffering has nothing to do with divine injustice; it only means that one can never be fully comprehensive in one’s ritual performance and therefore inadvertent offense is always possible. One can only increase one’s piety and call out to the gods for mercy. Perhaps they will answer. Is there pious suffering? Yes. But it is no one’s fault; it is just a possibility inherent in the very nature of the gods and the humans who blindly attempt to serve them in the Great Symbiosis. The texts from Mesopotamia consistently fail to affirm or defend the justice of deity. Instead they affirm pervasive and often ignorant offense by humans and the general inscrutability, or more likely, capriciousness of the gods.
I wish I knew that these things were pleasing to one’s god!
What is proper to oneself is an offence to one’s god;
What in one’s own heart seems despicable is proper to one’s god.
Who knows the will of the gods in heaven?
Who understands the plans of the underworld gods?
Where have mortals learnt the way of a god?37
The answer offered by the book of Job is different. Here the answer is that yes, sometimes righteous people suffer, but this fact should not be the basis for deducing that God is unjust. Rather, it is a flawed philosophy to conclude that one’s suffering or prosperity is directly related to one’s behavior. The Great Symbiosis is not at the heart of human experience, but neither is the Retribution Principle. Instead, God’s wisdom is at the heart of how the world operates and of what the resulting human experience is. In one sense this does suggest that God is inscrutable, but it is not capriciousness. Yahweh’s inscrutability is a result of his infinite wisdom in contrast to our human limitations.
Ancient Near East as Foil
WITH SO MANY IMPORTANT differences, it is remarkable that some still speak of the book of Job as borrowing from the ancient Near Eastern exemplars. A more defensible model sees the ancient Near Eastern literature and mentality as a foil for the book of Job. Job’s friends are the representatives of the ancient Near Eastern perspectives, and their views are soundly rejected. Nevertheless, we would have a poorer understanding of the book of Job if we did not look at it against its ancient Near Eastern backdrop. The world of the ancient Near East helps us to understand the way the book is framed and the issues it is dealing with. As we have become familiar with the literature of the ancient Near East, we have discovered the book of Job’s conversation partners. Our understanding of Job is necessarily stilted if we have no awareness of the dialogue to which it contributes.
Distinctly Israelite Features in Job
IN CONCLUSION WE CAN summarize the distinctly Israelite features in Job:
• no symbiosis (God does not have needs, Job 22:3)
• interest in justice of God
• interest in righteousness as an abstract concept
• Job seems to have a sense of personal righteousness that goes beyond what the ancient world would have provided
• no ritual offenses considered or ritual remedies suggested or pursued
• no appeasement pursued
• worship of celestial deities considered an offense (Job 31:26–28), as it would not have been in the ancient Near East
• shape of RP different since God could not be absolved of role in bringing suffering
Retribution Principle and Theodicy38
THE RETRIBUTION PRINCIPLE (RP) is the conviction that the righteous will prosper and the wicked will suffer, both in proportion to their respective righteousness and wickedness. In Israelite theology the principle was integral to the belief in God’s justice. Since God is just, the Israelites believed it was incumbent on him to uphold the RP. Having a worldview in which God was absolutely just and compelled to maintain the RP, they developed the inevitable converse corollary, which affirmed that those who prospered must be righteous (i.e., favored by God) and those who suffered must be wicked (i.e., experiencing the judgment of God).
The RP was thus an attempt to understand, articulate, justify, and systematize the logic of God’s interaction in the world. Because human experience often seemed to deny the tenets of the RP, the principle had to be qualified or nuanced in order to be employed realistically in the philosophical/theological discussion. How can God be just if he does not punish the wicked? In order to answer this question, the RP was frequently under discussion in Israelite theodicy (defense of God’s justice in a world where suffering exists, which in modern terms extends into a philosophical discussion concerning the origin of evil), driven particularly by the context of ethical monotheism. The RP does not of necessity operate in the context of theodicy, but because of Israel’s theological commitments this tendency is apparent in the Old Testament.
The literature of the ancient Near East continually demonstrates that people believed that the administration of justice in the human world was a concern and responsibility of the gods. The questions that swirl around the RP lose their philosophical urgency in the ancient world because injustice is often blamed on demons and humans rather than on the gods. In Mesopotamian thinking, evil was built into the fabric of the cosmos by means of the “cosmic laws,”39 but even those were not established by the gods. Since evil existed outside of the jurisdiction of the gods, divine administration of justice did not necessarily eliminate suffering. Some misfortune came about simply because of how the world was.
In both Egyptian and Mesopotamian thinking, the gods were not considered responsible for evil in the world; therefore, the presence or experience of evil did not have to be resolved in reference to the justice of the gods (this in contrast to Israel, where nothing existed totally outside the jurisdiction of God’s sovereignty; i.e., the rest of the gods were contingent, but he was not). In the Sumerian Lament over the Destruction of Ur, the city is destroyed not as an act of justice or injustice, but because it was time for kingship to be passed on. Likewise with regard to individuals, suffering can sometimes just be one’s fate for the present. It is also clear that personal misfortune could result from offending the gods, even if that offense was committed innocently. In such cases, the gods were not unjust; they simply were not very forthcoming about communicating their expectations.
A sense and expectation of the RP at a basic level remains evident here, though the gods are relieved of responsibility because of the way their function in the cosmos is perceived. Even in the areas where the gods could be held responsible, they, like human judges, may be doing their best to administer justice, but do so imperfectly.
In this sense, though people of Mesopotamia might believe that the gods do indeed punish those who earn their wrath, this conviction cannot offer an explanation for all suffering. The notion that those who suffer must be wicked could not work because in the ancient Near Eastern worldview, much of the suffering that people experienced was not orchestrated by the gods. Suffering could be the result of the god’s inattention, of simple circumstance, or of the nature of the world. Even if the gods abandoned a person because of some offense, they were not responsible for the ensuing evil; they simply did nothing to prevent it, having withdrawn their favor and protection.
Theodicy in its modern philosophical and existential guise concerns the origin and nature of suffering and evil. In theology proper (whether in mythology, in broad metaphysics, or in ethical monotheism), the philosophical question naturally focuses its attention on the divine role in suffering and the divine relationship to evil. The RP progresses from philosophy to pragmatism in trying to understand and formulate how deity acts in the world. To what extent can deity theoretically be considered responsible for the evil things that happen in this world? This question draws theodicy and the RP together in theological conundrum.
We have suggested above that the gods in the ancient Near East were somewhat relieved of responsibility because their role in the origin of evil was limited, and because they were often only indirectly considered the cause of suffering. This understanding of the role of deity, along with ambivalence regarding the god’s inherent justice, nearly eliminates theodicy from the discussion. Though people continued to have deep concerns over a deity’s actions in the world and therefore their interests in the RP remained robust and vital, the RP could not be employed in theodicy. Given the above considerations, we would conclude that “theodicy” is a misnomer when applied to the ancient Near East. The origins of evil were impersonal and the gods were not just, nor did they take ethical responsibility for suffering.
In Israel the absence of any source of divine authority other than Yahweh limited the philosophical possibilities regarding the origin of evil and the source of suffering (1 Sam. 2:6; Isa. 45:7; Job 2:10; Eccl. 7:14). There existed no supernatural power alongside Yahweh or outside of Yahweh’s sphere of power. At the same time Yahweh was considered powerful, good, and just. Thus one might say that the theodicy question bloomed in Israel, and in this hothouse of theological tension, the RP provided the traditional explanation, despite its obvious inconsistencies in accounting for human experience.
In considering the biblical position we need to recognize the tension between RP as theodicy and RP as theology. The affirmations of the RP in the text are intended to be theological in nature, and they serve well in that capacity. By this I mean they offer a picture of God’s nature: He delights in bringing blessing to his faithful ones and takes seriously the need to punish the sinful. In contrast, the Israelites were inclined to try to wield that theology in service to theodicy, a role for which it was singularly unsuitable. That is, they wanted to apply it to their expectations and experiences in life, and in the process to understand God’s justice and the reasons behind suffering. The role of the book of Job is to perform the radical surgery that separates theology from theodicy, contending that in the end Yahweh’s justice must be accepted on faith rather than worked out philosophically. He does not need to be defended; he wants to be trusted. The entire constellation of God’s attributes is at work in a complex coordinated manner. Justice is part of that constellation, but it does not trump all other attributes. Thus the RP cannot serve the purposes of theodicy.
In Israelite theology God is just and administers justice in the world. He employs the RP to disclose his character and to articulate the general parameters of his administration. This activity can be traced both on a corporate and individual level. Furthermore, the unique shape of the RP within Israelite thought is heavily influenced by two philosophical preconceptions: There is only one God, and there is no recognition of reward or punishment in the afterlife.
Corporate Level, Covenant Theme
ON A CORPORATE LEVEL this theology is expressed in the covenant blessings and curses. Consequently, it is also evident in the judgment oracles of the prophets, since they pronounce the doom that the Israelites have brought upon themselves by their covenant violations. The corporate aspects of the RP are worked out literarily by the Chronicler as he traces its effects through the history of the monarchy. On the corporate level, the RP provided for occasional tension (e.g., Psalm 44; Esther), but since it could be worked out over the long span of history, it carried less immediacy, urgency, or poignancy. Corporate RP in Israel is a covenant theme, and since covenant violation was rampant, the claim of innocence was difficult to maintain.
Individual Wisdom Theme
IN CONTRAST, THE RP on the individual level is a wisdom theme. This connection is laid out plainly in Psalm 1 and is confirmed repeatedly in the central role of the RP in wisdom literature. It is important to note, however, that the biblical text only offers affirmation of the main proposition (“the righteous prosper, the wicked suffer”), not of the deduced converse corollary (“the one who prospers is righteous; the one who suffers is wicked”). According to the principles of modern logic, the corollary could only be asserted if the main proposition is true universally and consistently. Nevertheless, the book of Job and the need for such a book imply that the Israelites did tend to extend their expectations to include the corollary. The tension of the book is created by the corollary as both Job and his friends conclude that his suffering can only be explained as punishment from God.
Connection to Monotheism and Afterlife
SINCE ISRAEL WAS TO believe in only one God who was responsible for every aspect of the cosmos, it was difficult to absolve him from responsibility for suffering. In order for him to be considered just, they believed that he must maintain the RP. If there were no opportunity for God to achieve final justice in the afterlife, then he was obliged to demonstrate his justice within the lifetime of the individual; note Psalm 27:13: “I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.” These factors combined to pose the conundrum of the RP and human experience and led to RP’s use for theodicy. It is in Israel, therefore, that we see the formulation of the inherent connection between the RP and theodicy, a formulation that becomes commonplace in the history of theological discourse.
Application to Job
THE BOOK OF JOB is all about God’s policies and the role of the RP in those policies. Neither the RP nor Job is on trial, despite the fact that both he and his friends assume he is (though the book declares him righteous—from God’s mouth—from the beginning). M. Tsevat has proposed that the tension in the book can be diagrammed by a triangle depicting the three elements to be defended by various proponents: God’s justice, Job’s righteousness, and the RP.40 Given the situation that develops in the book, the proponents choose which element must be defended above all, and in the process must decide which of the three elements is expendable, for all three cannot be maintained simultaneously.
Job’s three friends defend the RP and show themselves willing to deny Job’s righteousness to support their defense. In the first round of speeches they focus on God’s protection of the righteous (4:6–7; 5:18–27; 8:5–7). The destruction of the wicked is stated in brief principle (11:11) and alluded to as the problem of Job’s sons (8:4). In the second round, the emphasis is entirely on the punishment that comes to the wicked (15:20–35; 18:5–21; 20:4–29), and this same theme is picked up from a different perspective in the third round (22:15–20). This is all defense of the RP, not defense of God or his justice, though Bildad gets the closest in his contention that God does not pervert justice (8:3). At occasional junctures other affirmations are made concerning God: He is more righteous than human beings (4:17), he exercises his power in the world to accomplish his will (5:8–16; confirmed by Job in 12:13–25), he effects the RP (8:20–22) as judge he sees and knows (22:12–14), and he establishes order in the cosmos (25:2).
As in the ancient Near Eastern literature, the friends fully believe in the RP but do not employ it for theodicy, though their view of God has more of an Israelite shape than an ancient Near Eastern one (specifically in that they do not treat God as having needs, nor do they see the solution in ritual terms). Nevertheless, they agree with the two basic tenets of ancient Near Eastern thinking regarding suffering: (1) they affirm human ignorance of what God demands and thus confirm innate human sinfulness (4:18–21; 22:5–9; 25:4–6); and (2) they likewise affirm the inscrutability of deity (11:7–9; 15:7–16).
Job chooses to defend his own righteousness, and since he sees no possibility of neutralizing the RP, he is left with suspicions about God. In Job’s speeches we find an anti-theodicy (i.e., God is not just; e.g., 19:6; 24:12) as he refuses to defend God or make excuses for him. Indeed, this is what God reprimands Job for (40:8).
In contrast, Elihu distinguishes himself as the participant who actually offers a theodicy. His defense of God’s justice falls under the category of “educative theodicy”—that is, suffering serves to bring potential problems to our attention so that they can be remedied. Elihu still believes in the RP and defends it, but it builds a case that suffering is not just God’s response to past sin; it can also preempt future or potential sin. By choosing to defend God’s corner of the triangle, he also calls Job’s righteousness into question, but in a more nuanced way than the other friends. Elihu redefines the RP (preventive not remedial) and on the basis of that redefinition, he finds fault in Job’s self-righteous response to suffering.
In God’s speeches we find the true solution in a revised perspective on God’s policies and practices, and in a revised vision of the RP. The triangle is too simplistic and reduces God’s policies to a narrow system in which justice is the foundational attribute and the RP is law. God does not choose one of the three elements of the triangle to defend—rather, he discards the triangle model as artificial and inadequate.
The book thus offers a modified view of the RP that construes it in proverbial and theological terms. In other words, the RP is useful to describe what God is like and therefore serves as a basis for identifying general trends in human experience. However, the RP offers no guarantees. The book of Job in effect takes a contra-theodicy position (i.e., refuses to offer a theodicy) by defending God’s wisdom rather than his justice. Though the book is not a theodicy, it is interested in the RP and its legitimacy. The RP is finally rejected as a foundation for divine activity in the human realm (i.e., as a theodicy), but it is reclaimed on the proverbial and anecdotal level as representing the character of deity (i.e., as a theology). God delights in bringing prosperity to the righteous, and he takes seriously the responsibility of punishing the wicked.
God’s restoration of Job at the end of the book serves the important function of reemphasizing God’s commitment to the RP properly understood as a theological principle. This principle cannot be employed to assess character—whether that of God (theodicy) or the individual. Thus the basic premise of the RP is retained (righteous prosper, wicked suffer), but since it does not represent a strict formula that always maintains, the corollary fails: One’s wickedness cannot be inferred when one is suffering, nor can one’s righteousness be inferred when one is prospering.
Israelite Theology versus Biblical Theology
DID THE ISRAELITES BELIEVE the RP and its converse? A sufficient number of texts imply that they knew it was not enforced moment by moment (e.g., Ps. 37:7, 25). That is, they realized that on certain occasions there might be a time lag before the books were balanced. With that caveat, they largely accepted the RP as true, and they were inclined to treat it as the main determining factor for God’s activity. They also tended to accept the converse corollary as true and used it to shape their expectations and to formulate their theodicy.
In contrast to this Israelite theology, the biblical theology of the wisdom literature is more cautious and nuanced.41 The text never affirms the converse corollary, so it cannot be framed as a biblical teaching. Furthermore, Proverbs couches the RP in proverbial language, Ecclesiastes casts suspicion on it, and the book of Job details its limitations. Thus wisdom literature rejects the RP as providing a theodicy, yet embraces it in its theology.
The contrast between the views of the character of Job and the teachings of Qoheleth in Ecclesiastes is instructive. We could imagine that Qoheleth would have much to say to Job had he joined the circle of Job’s advisors. In fact, I often have had my students construct a conversation between Job and Qoheleth so as to draw out the issues. The following is one such dialogue.42
Q: I see that in your despair you have buried yourself among the ashes. Trust me, Job, I will not ask you not to mourn in your tragedy, and neither will I claim that you are not righteous. But tell me, why do you heap sorrow on top of your sorrow?
J: What do you mean? Can I give myself more sorrow than the hand of the Almighty has already poured on me?
Q: Yes. For you grieve not only about your tragedy, but also because such tragedy has come to you. You wail not only because you have lost your sons, but because you have lost your dignity and status before men. Which do you consider more unfair?
J: Both are unfair! I have lived a righteous life.
Q: When has God promised to reward your righteousness? Or, more to the point: Is it the anticipation of reward that has given you meaning in life?
J: I have no meaning in life because God has treated me as a wicked person. He has taken away everything in life that could have had meaning.
Q: Ah … so many are on a quest for meaning in life. I myself have pursued many different quests and found them all incapable of delivering self-fulfillment—meaningless vanity. Tell me, what is the nature of your quest? What held meaning in life before your tragedy? Was it your good wife?
J: No.
Q: Your camels and riches?
Q: Your children? Your health?
J: No, no, no—none of that!
Q: Then tell me, why do you grieve now? How can you say that your life has lost its meaning? What you have lost, though tragic, was not what you based your life on. What did you base your life on?
J: On God. But he has failed me.
Q: Certainly it is better for a man to base his life on God than on his hope for the benefits God can give. But in what way would you say that God has failed you?
J: Look at me—I’ve been made a fool! The God who promises to prosper the righteous and punish the wicked has raised his hand and lashed out at me. The God who I believed was just has failed me. That is why I am in despair.
Q: Do you think that God can be forced to act according to such expectations? Who has told you that God must punish all the wicked and withhold suffering from the righteous?
J: How can God be just if this is not so?
Q: I have never seen it like that. In my lifetime I have seen many righteous people oppressed under evil rulers.
J: Who is God then—a weakling who cannot oppose the wicked?
Q: No, he is the one who stands over all and in wisdom decrees how the world operates.
J: So, in this supposed wisdom, does your God not care about the righteous and wicked conduct of his creatures?
Q: On the contrary. It is in the character of God to prosper the righteous and punish the wicked. In the long run, I know that it will be well for those who fear God. But, Job, we are here on this earth, and we cannot see beyond the mountains that tower around us, nor do we know about tomorrow. There is a time for everything under the sun. So how can we know what is wisest? Since God is beyond all and sees all, might his wisdom sometimes look obscure to us?
J: How then shall we live?
Q: Take each day as it comes. When hardships come, endure them. When good things pass your way, seize them and enjoy them. And in all this continue to fear God and keep his commandments. You have looked for fulfillment in your own righteous standing before God, and now in your new quest you look for fulfillment in your vindication. Abandon the quest, Job! There is nothing under the sun that brings the sense of self-fulfillment and meaning that you seem to think that you deserve. Forget thinking about what caused your tragedy—begin to think of what purpose it can serve. Your righteousness is your strength—live it out! Your desire for vindication and explanation is your weakness—leave it behind.
J: You are more tolerable to speak to than my other pitiful comforters, but your wisdom seems strange. How can God not work strictly according to the principle of retribution and still be counted just?
Q: We cannot have all the answers, Job; we don’t even know all the questions. Though we may affirm that God is just, justice has not been built into the laws by which nature operates. We do not have enough information to critique God’s justice. We must be content to accept his wisdom in our lives.
J: But I only wish I knew more of the wisdom of God, so I could affirm his justice!
Q: You have made much progress, Job. Until today you have been demanding your “rights”—that God appear and defend his justice; but “rights” too are vanity. Now you seek to learn more of his wisdom—a far more worthy goal, to which God is more likely to respond.
And in the distance they both could hear a rumble and see a disturbance on the horizon. They sat transfixed at the approach of the mighty whirlwind.
The RP continues to play a role in the theological discussion that persists into the New Testament. Jesus confronts it explicitly on two occasions. In John 9:1–3, the disciples pose the RP question when they ask why a man was born blind. Jesus’ answer turns them away from the issue of theodicy (indicated by the question of cause) and toward an expanded theology: Suffering should not be evaluated in terms of its cause (actions in the past) but in terms of its purpose (God’s ongoing plan). Thus his reply: “That the work of God might be displayed in his life.” As in the book of Job, no explanation for suffering is forthcoming, possible, or necessary. More important is the need to trust God’s wisdom and to seek out his purpose.
In Luke 13:1–5 the issue concerns whether those who had died in recent tragedies should be considered to have deserved their death. Again, Jesus turns the attention away from cause and even states that there is not a one-to-one correspondence between sin and punishment. As an alternative, Jesus tells his audience to view the incident as a warning. Consistent with John 9, he refuses to engage the question of cause and concentrates instead on purpose.
Paul weighs in on the RP question in Galatians 6:7: “A man reaps what he sows.” Here he states the RP proverbially without neutralizing its theological impact. His statement can be interpreted this way based on the fact that his teaching regarding suffering in other passages does not embrace the converse corollary. In fact, the New Testament authors are more inclined to explain the suffering of the righteous as a participation in the sufferings of Christ and therefore a positive experience rather than a punishment of God.
Job and Open Theism
OPEN THEISM PROPOSES THAT the future is still unfolding and that God does not know what is going to happen since human choices have yet to unfold and have effect. Some outcomes remain undetermined (i.e., the future is open or unsettled in some details). God is still considered omniscient, but some things remain unknown because they have not yet happened. Scholars who argue for this theological perspective point to passages where God is “sorry” (Gen. 6:6–7), “changes his mind” (Jon. 3:10), or comes to “know something” (Gen. 22:12). Another example would include successful intercession by humans (e.g., Moses, Ex. 32).
Some assert that the scenario in Job supports open theism, in part to salvage God’s reputation. It seems cruel for God to afflict Job if he already knew that Job would pass the test.43 God’s assent to the test proposed by the Challenger could only be justified if God did not know how it would turn out. This sort of thinking might have merit if it were true that God is testing Job’s righteousness. As suggested above, however, I believe that God’s policies are being tested rather than Job’s righteousness, which is affirmed throughout. If it is correct that God’s policies are being tested, then it does not matter whether God knows the outcome or not. The scenario must play out for God’s policies to be vindicated.44
Another open theism question could be raised in connection with God’s question to the Challenger concerning where he is coming from. As will be defended in the commentary in chapters 1 and 2, Yahweh’s question simply opens the conversation by asking the Challenger, “What brings you here?” No occasion is therefore given in the book to suspect that the future remains open and unknown or that God’s omniscience has such limitations.