The Riddle of Job

2500 words, 10 minute read

Ask almost anyone, and they'll tell you that the Old Testament Book of Job is a treatise on the Problem of Evil (POE): Why Bad Things Happen to Good People (Rabbi Harold Kushner, 1981). But is it? Or is it possible that nearly everyone is wrong about Job…and has been for more than 2,500 years?

Simply put, POE asks why God, presumed to be all-good and all-powerful, would allow injustice to infect his creation? It is his creation, after all; fix it already! The author/editor of the Book of Job attacks POE head on. Job showcases many potential solutions, but none of them are satisfying, nor are they intended to be. POE is not what the Book of Job is about!

No proposed solution to POE (in Job or elsewhere) has achieved broad acceptance, and many non-believers cite this as the #1 reason for their conviction. For example, 20th century philosopher, mathematician, and social activist, Bertrand Russell, based his Why I am not a Christian on POE.

The Job-poem, which makes up 95% of the Book of Job, is one of the world's great epics. Even in translation its language is dazzling, but more importantly for our purposes, the poem catalogs more 'POE solutions' than any comparable source. But we have a problem: the poem debunks every one of the solutions it 'proposes’, and it does not appear to offer any new solution of its own. Odd, don't you think?

It is customary for philosophical writing to critique prior opinions, but it is also customary to propose solutions. The Job-poem does plenty of the former, but none of the latter: 40 chapters and still just crickets?

From the earliest times, commentators have struggled, unsuccessfully in my view, to tease a solution to POE out of the Job-text. But what if the Job-poet never meant to suggest a solution? What if Job is not about the Problem of Evil at all? What if that's just its 'narrative skin’? In that case, understanding Job as a treatise on POE would be roughly equivalent to understanding Joyce's Ulysses as a Dublin travelog.

Job is not about POE. Just the opposite in fact. Job asks: What is the nature and origin of Good? Is something good because it is God's will; or is it God's will because it is good? To this last question, the Book of Job gives a clear and unequivocal answer: God is subject to the same objective ethical values and standards as the rest of us! This is what the Book of Job is about.

Job consists of three sections: an epic poem (the 'Job-poem') that spans 40 chapters and makes up 95% of the total text, a short prose Prologue (1:1 – 2:13), and a very short prose Epilogue (42: 7-17).

The Job-poem is structured as a dramatic dialog. There are six main characters: Job, four so-called 'friends'… and God! (What would an epic be without God?) Over a very short time, Job, by all accounts a virtuous man, right in his own conduct, just and generous in his dealings with others, has lost his wealth, his children, the respect of his community, and ultimately, his health.

The Job-poem opens with Job sitting on a 'dunghill' covered in boils, lamenting his fate: "Let the day disappear, the day I was born and the night that announced: a man has been  conceived. As for that day, let it be darkness…let darkness, dead darkness, expunge it." (3: 3 – 5a)

Job goes on to extol the benefits of 'being dead’: "There, no more restless are the troubled…all prisoners are at peace. They hear no more the voice of their oppressor. The small and the great, there they are the same; and the slave is set free from his master." (3: 17 – 19)

Job's opening speech ends with a meditation on the human condition: "They (human beings) are quashed before twilight, from daybreak to evening they are crushed; when it is not even nightfall, they forever disappear. Their tent-pin is pulled up on them. They die without knowledge." (4: 19 – 21)

The Job-poem is structured as a legal proceeding. Job feels that his current sufferings are unjust. He has lived a righteous and generous life; and even if he did inadvertently commit some sins along the way, those sins cannot possibly justify the enormity of his punishment. Few would disagree…unless, like his so-called ‘friends’, they had axes of their own to grind.

Job will not feign guilt and throw himself on God's mercy, as his friends suggest. Instead, he decides to bring legal action against the Godhead itself. Job's determination does not come out of any disrespect for God, but rather out of profound faith: “I know that my redeemer lives and on the last day will stand on earth…and in my flesh I will see God.” (19: 25 – 26)

Job does not imagine that he has the power to divert God's will, to change God’s mind; and he knows that no court can compel God to appear, make answer or comply with its judgment. But even with no real hope of prevailing, Job wants to be heard, and he wants to hear from God, and a legal proceeding offers the most conducive venue. Like so many lawsuits today, Job's is not so much about winning as it is about forcing the defendant (God) to divulge his trade secrets.

So, Job asks God for nothing less than a full accounting. What did he have in mind when he 'created the heavens and the earth’, why didn't he do a better job, and why doesn't he fix it now?

Job is the plaintiff, appearing pro se; God is the defendant, initially in absentia. But Job bears a heavy legal burden. To defeat God's application for Summary Judgment, Job must show that he has probable cause, that there is a court of competent jurisdiction, that he has legal standing, and that a potential remedy exists.

Job v. God opens with Job offering the court a detailed summary of the injustices visited on him. Then, each of his four 'friends' attempts to "justify the ways of God to men" (Milton, Paradise Lost). They take turns defending God, reprising all the usual POE arguments, but then adding some remarkable twists of their own: (1) Job is being punished, not for his own sins or even for the sins of his father, but for the sins of his sons; (2) Job is being punished (now) because God knew he would eventually take him to court (future).

We are reminded of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking glass where the King’s Messenger, “…is in prison now, being punished, and the trial doesn’t even begin till next Wednesday, and of course, the crime comes last of all.”

One by one, Job effortlessly swats away his friends' arguments by appealing to concrete, empirical facts: ‘I have lived a righteous and just life. Others, not nearly as upright as me, often deliberately evil, are not punished at all. They live lavish lives in good health and pass that wealth on to future generations. I, on the other hand, live on a dunghill, childless, penniless, and covered with scabs’.

But Job is nobody’s fool. He realizes that he can't meet his legal burdens (above); so Job invokes a legal doctrine known as Nullification; he asks the court to look behind the legal veil and judge the case based on empirical evidence, universal values, and Natural Law.

Job has faith in a 'higher power’, a power that extends even over God - the Good, which we experience as Beauty, Truth, and Justice. God cannot be unjust because being God and being Just are synonymous. 'Being just' is not a choice that God makes from moment to moment (as we do). It’s who he is and he cannot choose to be other than himself. 

Poor God! He is stuck being God, eternally. According to 20^th century existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, an avowed atheist, you and I are not who we are but can be whoever we choose to be. Not so God! Being Justice per se, God cannot act unjustly! Therefore, a court of can hold God accountable…for being himself! And there is a remedy: “God, be God!”

The legal process must grind on. But Job is 'all in’, and he decides to go nuclear! Job has saved his WMD until the very end…and now he decides to unleash it. Job offers an Oath of Innocence. According to the shared legal traditions of the ancient Middle East (e.g. The Egyptian Book of the Dead), when one party swears a proper Oath of Innocence, that party is immediately presumed to be innocent.

If God still wants to contest Job's claim, he must now appear in person and accept that the burden of proof is on him. The downside of this strategy for Job? If a party offers an Oath of Innocence that is later shown to be untrue, the 'taker of false oaths' will have earned himself severe additional punishment. Job seals his oath:

"Here is my mark, let Shaddai respond! … Complete are the words of Job." (31: 35-40)

God can read a room. He sees that his bumbling ‘dream team’ is losing. Hoping to avoid an adverse judgment, God takes over his own defense. He decides to testify after all; he appears "out of the whirlwind" and takes the stand. Is there a more exciting moment in all of literature?

God imagines that he can dispose of Job with a simple display of majesty and might. That usually does the trick where muggles are concerned! But Job is no muggle. God is supremely confident, over-confident as it turns out, that he can prevail in Agatha Christie’s Case of the Pesky Plaintiff. He decides to approach the challenge as an American presidential nominee might approach a debate with her opponent.

God begins by questioning Job's 'real world' experience: "Who is this who obscures good counsel, (using) words without knowledge? Bind up your loins like a man! I will ask you – and you will help me know!" (38: 2-3)

The sarcasm is dripping: God pretends that he is here to learn from Job. In fact, of course, his questions are designed to demean his opponent:  "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundations? Have you ever walked on the bottom of the sea? Were you ever shown the gates of Death? Have you ever summoned daybreak?" (38: 4 -17)

Then God plays his trump card: "Who cleaves a downpour's channel and a path for the thunderstorm to rain down on land without people, on wilderness with no human in it, drenching utter wasteland and sprouting grassy growth… Do you hunt down prey for the lion and quell the hunger of beasts?” (38: 25 – 27, 39)

Is this the first time 'ecology' has been cited as an argument in a legal proceeding? God is concerned for all creation and for all creatures, not just human beings. When God 'created the heavens and the earth,' he created an ecosystem. What happens 'off camera' is just as important as what happens 'center stage.' God cannot be expected to focus on Job when there is an entire cosmos to care for!

Here God pauses, thinking his work is done, confident that he has put forward an irrefutable argument. Job’s response is admittedly obscure and that obscurity has led to a lot of misunderstanding: "Lacking respect, how can I answer you? My hand I place over my mouth. I have spoken once, and I will not repeat; twice, and I will no more." (40: 4-5)

It is easy to see how these words could be read as an 'Act of Contrition’. Placing his hand over his mouth could be interpreted as a gesture of submission. But for several reasons, such an analysis is not tenable:

First, if this were the actual end of the poem, it should end the poem, or at least the trial, and it doesn’t; another round of argument follows. Plus, it would be one of the greatest anti-climaxes in all of literature. This epic is beautifully composed and intricately constructed; it seems unlikely that it would end with such a thud.

Second, focus on ‘lacking respect’: Does Job lack God’s respect? Or does Job no longer respect God? Either way, it is clear that matters are far from resolved! Job's placing his hand over his mouth may be a gesture of victory, or disgust, rather than defeat.

Lacking God's respect or lacking respect for God - either way what point would there be in Job talking further. To what end? Job has already set out his case in detail, and God has not addressed, much less rebutted, a single one of his arguments. Therefore, Job's original testimony should be more than enough to secure judgment for the plaintiff. Job will not talk past the close!

Finally, Job’s last words are defiant, not conciliatory: “I have spoken once, and I will not repeat; twice, and I will no more.” Asked and answered!

Seeing that Job is bloodied but unbowed, sensing that his case is lost, God launches into a rambling meditation on his creative process. He reveals himself in exactly the way Job hoped he would. The balance of God's testimony concerns Behemoth (Hippopotamus) and Leviathan (Sea Monster), two of his creatures: "Behold now Behemoth which, like you, I created!" (40:15)

The creation of Behemoth was not secondary to the creation of Homo Sapiens. All creatures are ontologically equal in God’s eyes; and Behemoth is a worthy exemplar of God’s creative prowess.

And Leviathan? "Can you pull Leviathan (out) with a fishhook?” (40:45) Leviathan is part of the ecosystem. “Of all that's under heaven, he is mine. I cannot keep silent about him, the fact of his incomparable valor." (41: 23-26) Even if God could rid the world of monsters, he wouldn't choose to do so! Sub-text: “Job, why can’t you be more like Leviathan?”

The Job-poem ends with Job taking a victory lap: "Who is this, hiding counsel without knowledge? Truly, I've spoken without comprehending – wonders beyond me that I do not know. Hear now and I will speak! I will ask you and you will help me know… I have heard you, and now my eye has seen you. That is why I am fed up; I pity 'dust and ashes' (i.e. humanity)." (42: 3-6)

Notice that Job's closing lines nearly duplicate God's opening, complete with the sarcastic tone. The tables have turned and now there can be no doubt about the outcome of this trial. Judgment for the plaintiff…with damages: “The Lord restored Job’s fortunes and gave him twice as much as he had before.” (42: 10)

Image: Job by Léon Bonnat (1880)

David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com.