Proper 23, Year B | Job 23:1-9, 16-17
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
October 13, 2024
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
To watch the full service, please visit this page.
Job is something of an oddity within the broader Hebrew Bible, not really fitting into the historical books or the prophetic writings. It’s generally grouped with “Wisdom” books, but the text itself directs the reader to question the wisdom we hope it provides.
We missed last week’s reading due to the Blessing of the Animals, but the book begins with a prose story, switches to chapter upon chapter of philosophical poetry, and then returns to prose again in the end. People have wondered about the structure for ages: did the story exist before the poetry? Is the ending original, or did someone add it later to try to tidy up an otherwise bleak tale? What about the speeches? Have they all remained in the same order over the millennia, or have some of them shifted into different places or mouths over time?
The book opens by introducing us to its namesake, along with his extensive wealth and deep piety, but rapidly switches scenes to the Celestial Realm. There, we encounter a meeting of the Divine Council. Jah (the God of the Hebrews), addresses “the Satan”[1] (the embodiment of adversity), and points out Job, noting, “There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil.”[2] This leads to an exchange where Adversity claims that Job only loves Jah because his life has been wonderful in every regard. Jah eventually hands authority over Job to Adversity, demanding only that Job be kept alive. From that moment, our protagonist’s life falls apart with the utter desolation of his wealth, his servants, his children, and eventually his health. Despite the cascading devastation, Job remains loyal to Jah, stating, “the Lord [aka Jah] gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”[3]
Hearing of Job’s misery, three companions[4] arrive to sit with him and mourn. They remain aghast in silence for a full week before Job finds the strength to express his despair. But that only ends up making things worse, causing these last remaining comforts—his friendships—to unravel. The others operate under the assumption that bad things only happen to bad people, so they begin encouraging Job to confess and abandon whatever sin he may have committed in order to end his suffering. Job, working within the same moral assumptions as his friends, wracks his brain but can’t think of anything; as Jah told Adversity, he truly is “a blameless and upright man.” In the face of this reality, he asserts there must have been some sort of mistake at the Divine level.
The friends take this as a theological affront and begin intensifying their accusations, viewing this insult to the Divine as obvious evidence of Job’s deep-rooted contempt for God. Job maintains his innocence, and the argument continues for 33 chapters, until Jah finally responds, part of which we’ll hear next week.
Our reading today takes place a little less than halfway through the exchange, with Job once again maintaining his innocence in the face of escalating allegations. At this point he declares he wishes he could bring a lawsuit against God; however, he has no way to deliver the summons. The Lectionary cuts out a few verses where Job contemplates a parallel conundrum: even if there were a way to sue this God who refuses to be found, Job’s now so terrified that he realizes he wouldn’t be able to do anything other than hide!
Thus ends our reading, and here begin our questions.
Having grown up within an extremely literalist branch of Scriptural interpretation, we didn’t really worry about the structural questions most people have, but we definitely raised quite a few of our own. There’s no formal chronological setting, so when did these events take place? With none of the characters appearing to be Hebrew, we assumed it had to have been set before Abraham.[5] In the end, the book declares Job to have been in the right throughout the tale while God rebukes his friends, so what exactly were we supposed to do with their speeches? Was there any “Biblical” truth to things that they said, or were we simply to disregard all their words, listening only to what Job and God had to say? Most popular of all were the debates over what creatures the behemoth and leviathan referenced in the Lord’s later speeches may have been.
But late last night as I was looking into a few last details, I discovered that very nearly everything with which we or anyone else had been concerned weren’t simply side questions but entirely moot points.[6]
It appears that Job is, in fact, a conversation among different known schools of philosophy active in the Ancient Near East, with each of Job’s friends speaking for a different line of thought. I have no idea how I’ve been reading and studying the Bible for more than four decades and never before heard or even noticed this. And it isn’t subtle, either: each of the friends’ names pretty much states the viewpoint they espouse. I haven’t had time to fully investigate this information or reread their words in light of it, but it appears we have what we would recognize as Prosperity, Hedonism, Wisdom or Cleverness, and Traditionalism all presenting their understanding of life in the face of tragedy. Each of these approaches is then found wanting when confronted with Nature or Reality, from whom we’ll hear next week.
This discovery has me rethinking a good amount of what I’ve ever learned about this book, so I can’t say I have a whole lot of certainty as I speak this morning. However, there are a few lessons we can still draw from Job, even without understanding the depth or significance of the arguments he’s been facing.
The most prominent one is that Job shows us it’s okay to question and even be angry with God. Religious people often have this idea that we need to quietly accept or submit to whatever it is that’s been happening in our lives and simply be grateful no matter our circumstances—to “let go and let God” or “in whatsoever state I am…to be content.”[7] But the book of Job throws that whole idea out the window. Job is mad and sad and confused and in despair and outraged. And he’s right to be so. What’s going on in his life isn’t fair or just or appropriate—and that’s only judging by humanity’s flawed standards. So how can it be okay on a Cosmic level?
Despite Job’s frustration with and accusations against the Divine, God declares Job to have been in the right throughout the book. His emotions and ensuing responses to the disasters that have befallen him don’t drive a wedge between him and God—God ends up saying that of all the speeches and throughout the pages, only Job, in his outbursts, is in the right! That suggests it’s no sin to question God or lament tragedy or long for a more just reality. It wasn’t for Job, and it isn’t for us, either. In fact, I would argue that expressing the fullness of ourselves before God is evidence not of rejecting God but of the strength of our relationship with God. We feel what we feel when we feel it, and God can take it.
Secondly, we need to approach Scripture not with fear but certainly with caution. Sometimes the most plain, seemingly obvious reading is utterly flawed. The difference between how we approach the world today and how ancient people understood life to be is nearly unfathomable. That’s why I say we need to treat the Bible less as an instruction manual of how to get to Heaven when we die and more as a Field Guide to God.
People have experienced and encountered God is a variety of ways throughout the centuries and millennia. What we read shouldn’t restrict our understanding by limiting the forms and ways in which God expresses Godself. They’re lessons in what other people have observed in their encounters with God. A field guide lists the commonalities and frequent characteristics one can expect to see when looking for a particular plant or animal, but those descriptions don’t restrict the animal itself. A guide would always recommend looking for a duck near water, but if you were to run into one on the dunes of the Sahara Desert, a duck would still be a duck!
In like ways, we should approach each other’s experiences of God with caution and respect. God is still moving in the world, working and drawing all things toward Godself. My expectations of how God should be working do not and cannot constrict the reality of how God is working in someone else’s life. Instead, I need to watch and learn, maybe adding a few notes to my field guide so I’m better prepared for the many ways I too may someday encounter God.
[1] The character is introduced using an article, although its continuing use is sporadic.
[2] Job 1:8 | All Bible quotations are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.
[3] Job 1:21
[4] A fourth appears later out of nowhere.
[5] The heritage of several of Job’s friends, and the ascent of Jah either to El’s right hand or as El’s replacement, demand a post-Abrahamic and even post-Mosaic setting.
[6] Except perhaps the wondering whether all the speeches are coming from the right mouths.
[7] Philippians 4:11 | KJV