Sunday, July 12, 2009

Ticciati on Job's Dilemma

I hope to blog on this extremely well written book. This morning I looked ahead to the Hebrew section and was pleased to find it focus on the מוכיח arbiter/umpire of chapter 9 and to link this to the bi-directional intercessory role of the prophet in Israel. Then I realized I was not being patient, so I went back to the theological sections. I will repeat her word study in a later post with a full listing of the uses of יכח - prove, reprove, etc since this is a theme in Job (15 occurrences - earlier study here).

Her first three-word summary of Barth's 6-million-word Dogmatics is the link in his commentary on Job to 1. the pure, 2. the suffering, and 3. the speaking forms of God's relationship to Christ. Ticciati summarizes Barth's relating of this to the threefold structure of Job. She intends to prevent the closing of the questions raised by Barth's relating of 3 to 3. (Her introduction reminds me of Frye's advice noted here.) The issue relates to the question - is it the same Job in the frame as in the poem? Also to be remembered is the question - why is Job not more explicitly used in the NT? Or are there veiled allusions as I have suggested in a few places? (Note the strong relationship, for instance, of Ephesians 1 to Job 42 in the matter of inheritance and those things that are prepared.)

Here is a paragraph of her summary.

... the matter in which [Job] is both right and wrong.] Job is right insofar as he recognizes that it is still his God who appears to him in this alien form, thus acknowledging God's freedom to adopt this alien form as such. However, Job can no longer recognize in this alien form the familiar contours of his own God, with whom he existed in a relationship [the pure] characterized by blessing on the one side and righteous obedience [for naught] on the other. And on the basis of this known relationship, he demands [the speaking] that God put off his alien form [the suffering], revealing himself once more as the God Job knows him to be. Job holds up his preconception of God as a standard to which God must conform, thus denying God's freedom to be God in the other form in which he now appears. This constitutes Job's wrong.
The note about hand would confirm the identity two of the forms in which God appears.

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