Presenting Job

How to present Job in one hour and leave room for reflection!

Here's what may become a handout.[update I added the text of Job 1 and 2 - must start at the beginning]

The overall structure of Job.

Job is clearly divisible in two: the frame story and the framed poem.

The framed poem is divisible in three: a series of conversations, a poem on wisdom, and three monologues.

The series of conversations is divisible in three cycles after Job’s opening speech. The first two cycles are complete with each speaker carefully introduced by the narrator. The third cycle degenerates such that one cannot tell who is speaking.

The wisdom poem is not ‘attributed’ to Job and feels like the Narrator’s comment.

The three monologues are introduced: 1 by Job – three chapters, 2 Elihu – six chapters, and 3 Yhwh – four+ chapters with one or two sentences by Job.

The characters in Job

Leaving aside the animals - all of whom are potential characters in Job, and leaving aside the obvious 16 noted humans and all the other lads who tended the farm - it's a large cast! and leaving aside the 5 or 6 designations of the Most High - El, Eloah, Elohim, יְהוָה, El Shaddai, and possibly one instance of the Holy One; leaving aside the cosmos and the children of God who are present and who shout for joy, (and the enemies whom I forgot: Sabeans, fire, Chaldeans, and a great wind) what other characters are implied in the story?

There are several remaining characters or possibly only roles: God's witnesses, Job's trouble itself as witness against him, Job's witness in heaven, (in parallel with Job's testimony).

10:17 you renew your witnesses before me and increase your indignation against me; changes and a host are upon me

16:8 You have seized me - it becomes witness; rising in me is my lie - answering in my face

16:19 even now behold in heaven is my witness and my testimony is in the heights

My conclusion on this witness in heaven is that it is Job's 'case' - not a separate character. Similarly God's witness is Job's trouble - by Job's own admission.

Then there is the redeemer. Redeem occurs only twice in the poem.

3:5 let darkness and obscurity redeem it; let a cloud dwell on it; let blackness of day terrify it

19:25 And I - I knew [qal perfect] my redeemer is living and at the last on dust he will rise

There is dispute over what this means to say the least. It is not a proof text in the NT. That would make it seem for me that it is a recognition that God lives and that God must ultimately play this role and that Job knew this before his trouble from the Deuternomic covenant.

Also there are the mysterious intercessors in Job's final monologue. I do not see this unknown word as implying an obvious or specialized indictable offense. Some things are only overcome through prayer - as Jesus notes (pace the perseveration of some of the hopeless state of others).

31:11 or this plan – [the thought is interrupted] and this is iniquity for intercessors

31:28 indeed this is iniquity for an intercessor, for I would deny the One above

(You will recall that Jesus says some spirits can only be cast out by prayer)

Note that ultimately Job mediates (intercedes) for the three friends. He plays the role that he alludes to in these two verses – and that at God’s command.

The referee

But it is in the theme of reasoning (the word groups around a word meaning  - to prove, decide, judge, rebuke, reprove, correct, be right and so on) that runs through the poem and is seen in the following verses - that there arises the special role or character of referee. The friends fail, Elihu is indeterminate, God invites Job to be his own referee and he accepts with his hand over his mouth, and Ticciati puts God in this role also. I have sometimes used two words in English to connect the reproof-reason axis since all of the words are translating words from the same root. Here we see the word in many forms noun, verb, singular, plural, with or without prepositions and other connectors. (Italics show the subject of the verb if I could see it).

The following list includes all the verses in which this word in various grammatical forms appears. Notice how the conversation involving the 'reproof' word is only on the lips of Job and Eliphaz in the dialogues, but is picked up by Elihu and Yhwh in the monologues.

Eliphaz	5.17	Behold happy is the mortal whom God reproves the mentoring of the Sufficient do not refuse
Job	6.25	how grievous are words of uprightness so what does your reproof  prove?
	6.26	And to reprove speeches - do you count as wind the words of one who is desperate?
Job	9.33	there is not between us a referee that might fix his hand on the two of us
Job	13.3	"nevertheless for me, to the Sufficient I would speak" but I desire to reason with the One
	13.6	[you] Hear please my reasons and to the contentions of my lips attend
	13.10	Reason? he will reason reproof with you if you concealed lift up faces
	13.15	Lo - he will kill me I do not wait Surely my ways before his faces I will reasoning prove
Eliphaz	15.3	To 'reason' with a word without profit and from speeches where he will not benefit
Job	16.21	that a warrior might reason with God and a child of a human with his friend
Job	19.5	If truly against me you gloat and reason my reproach reproof against me
Eliphaz	22.4	will he from your fear reprove you will he come with you to judgment?
Job	23.4	I would order before his face my judgment and fill my mouth with reasons
	23.7	there the upright could reason with him and I would be delivered in perpetuity from my judge
Elihu	32.12	you I understood and behold there is for Job no referee - one answering to his words among you
	33.19	and he is reproved in being marred on his couch and the contention of his bones is perennial
Yhwh	40.2	will he who contends with the Sufficient be the mentor? God's referee - let him answer

Questions:

What are your initial reactions to the Book of Job?
How do the characters fit into your response to Job's situation?
Which character do you identify with?
How would Jesus identify with or relate to the different characters? Job? the referee? Leviathan? One of the three friends? The mediator? Elihu?