Copyright © 1984 by Westminster
Theological Seminary, cited with permission.
JOB:
REPENTANT OR REBELLIOUS?
B.
LYNNE NEWELL
ALTHOUGH
differing in their views about a number of issues
with regard to the Book of Job, m general scholars
have
agreed that Job's replies to Yahweh in 40:4-5 and
42:2-6 indicate
that Job repented,l
or at least relented and changed his attitude.
Even
scholars such as K. Fullerton, C. G. Jung, and D. A. Robert-
son, who reject the possibility that Job could have
repented, never.
theless agree that 42:2-6 in
particular indicates that he did.
K.
Fullerton maintains that 42:2-6 is absolutely opposed to the
content of the dialogues and could not have been
written by the
author of that section, hence he rejects the whole of
40:6-42:17
as a gloss.2 C. G. Jung and D. A.
Robertson see Job's replies as
hypocritical. C. G. Jung says that
most probably Job prostrated
himself before God as if he were a defeated
antagonist, realizing
that God was a being who could not be judged
morally.3 D. A.
Robertson
says it. is .only a "tongue-in-cheek"
confession, made
to calm God's whirlwinds.4
A few scholars do not believe that Job
is expressing remorse or
regret m any sense m his final reply. For example, M. Tsevat says
that Job only acknowledges in 42:2-6 that he now
knows, from
the content of God's speeches, that justice is not
an integral part
of the universe and that one cannot, and should
not, expect any-
thing for one's behavior. Freed from that
misconception, Job is
then prepared to live a truly pious and moral life
with no such
1 Of what Job repented is
debated. Most scholars favor the view that he
repented of his words and/or attitude towards God
during the dialogue with
his friends.
2 K.
(1924)
116-36, esp. pp. 125-28.
3 C. G. Jung,
Answer to Job (
1955) 31.
4 David A. Robertson,
"The Book of Job: A Literary Study," Soundings
56 (1973) 466.
298
JOB: REPENTANT OR REBELLIOUS? 299
false hopes or claims.5 Dale Patrick
translates 42:6, "Therefore
I
repudiate and repent of dust and ashes," and interprets vv 2-6
as Job declaring that, because of the wonder of God's
ways, he
will change his speech from lament and accusation of
God to praise
and rejoicing.6 Although not seeing Job
as repentant in the usual
sense, these views nevertheless agree that Job
changed his atti-
tude, speech, and behavior,
and that he worshipped God.
In
1979 J. B. Curtis presented a radically different translation
and interpretation of Job's responses.7
He argued that Job did not
repent, but totally and unequivocally rejected Yahweh.
This repre-
sents a complete reversal of
the traditional interpretation. He para-
phrases 40:4 as follows:
Although I dealt with matters that
to you are trivial when I spoke earlier,
I will now with contemptuous
revulsion cease speaking altogether.
He
sees Job here sarcastically expressing his hostility by saying
it is useless to try and talk to a god who is so
concerned with great
things that he is not even aware of the existence of
such small
problems as the suffering of the innocent. He
views 42:3a and
4
as Job "daring to hurl back in God's teeth his own words," and
"sarcastically attacking the god who thinks that his might
answers
all questions."8 J. B. Curtis adds
that 42:4-5 indicate that God
had wanted to question Job, and he did, but about
irrelevancies.
The
experience of seeing God had confirmed the reports Job had
heard about God and had proved his injustice. So,
according to
J.
B. Curtis's translation of 42:6, Job, "totally disenchanted with
this god," said:
Therefore I feel loathing contempt and
revulsion
(toward
you, O God);
and I am
sorry for frail man.
Job
thus totally and finally rejects this unjust, unfeeling, and
irrelevant deity.9
5 M. Tsevat,
"The Meaning of the Book of Job," HUCA
37 (1966) 73-
106, esp. pp. 92, 104.
6 Dale Patrick,
"Job’s Address of God," ZAW
91 (1979) 268-82, esp. p.
281.
7 John B. Curtis, "On Job's
Response to Yahweh," JBL 98 (1979) 497-
511.
8 Ibid.,
509.
9 Ibid.,
510.
300
The
variety of opinions about Job's response to Yahweh and
especially the radically different translation and
interpretation by
J.
B. Curtis demand that we reexamine and reevaluate this portion
of the text of Job. That is the purpose of this
article.
To
understand the meaning of Job's responses, we need to con-
sider them within their
context. So, before focusing on the Hebrew
text of Job's replies, we shall first consider
relevant factors from
the literary context of the Book of Job (ancient
Near Eastern
parallel literature), and then the immediate
context (the meaning
and intent of the Yahweh speeches to which Job
responded).10
I. Ancient Near Eastern Literary Parallels
The date of composition of the Book of Job is
much debated,
nevertheless its setting is
generally considered to be in the second
millennium B.C. Archaeology has provided from that
era several
other wisdom texts that consider the issue of human
suffering.
These
texts are commonly referred to by scholars as the "innocent
sufferer" texts and are often considered to
be a subgenre within
the Wisdom Literature.
Although these "innocent sufferer"
texts originated in Meso-
potamia, they, as with other
Mesopotamian literature, were prob-
ably known throughout the Near Eastern area. The
findings of
archaeology have demonstrated that economic and
cultural ex-
change took place. In the field of literature, a
fragment of the
Mesopotamian
Gilgamesh Epic from about the thirteenth century
B.C.
has been found at
dom texts have also been
found at
Nougayrol has called "Juste
Souffrant" because it presents an
innocent man struggling with the problem of his
experience of
suffering. The suggested date for this text is ca.
1300 B.C.12 Simi-
larities of literary format,
poetic style, and certain theological
10 A fuller discussion of these factors and
related issues can be seen in my
Th.M. thesis, "Job, Repentant or Rebellious ?" (
Seminary, 1983).
11 John Gray, "The Book of Job in the
Context of Near Eastern Liter-
ature," ZAW 82 (1970)
251-69, esp. p. 262. A. Goetze and S. Levy, “A
Fragment of the Gilgamesh Epic from
12J. Nougayrol,
Ugantica 5
(1968) 265-73.
Gray, "Job in the Context
of Near Eastern Literature," 262.
JOB: REPENTANT OR REBELLIOUS? 301
concepts (e.g., divine retribution according to
man's behavior) as
well as of theme, indicate that these texts may
constitute part of
the literary context of the Book of Job. So, we
shall examine these
texts to see what attitudes they present as
acceptable in a sufferer.
If
these documents do not allow for attitudes of revulsion and re-
jection of the deity as their
conclusion, then it is less likely that
Job
responded thus to Yahweh.13 That would
lessen the likelihood
that J. B. Curtis's interpretation is correct.
Conversely, if re-
pentance and submission are
found consistently in the sufferers,
more likely Job's attitude would be similar and the
historical
conventional interpretation correct.
The oldest extant text which deals theologically
with the prob-
lem of human suffering is
from
God"14 and it is often referred
to as "The Sumerian Job." The
"hero" is a righteous man who nevertheless is stricken
with severe
sickness and bitter suffering. He describes his
suffering, then la-
ments over it. He concludes
with three pleas for deliverance alter-
nating with two confessions of
sin. The first is just a general
confession of his sinfulness as a human being, but
the second is a
confession of the sins his god made known to him.
His lament
and repentance are accepted by the god who then
restores his
health and prosperity. The Sumerian "Letter to Enki" shows this
same pattern--the need for confession of sin and
repentance so
that the god would end the man's sufferings and
restore his happi-
ness.15
Three Babylonian texts, AO 4462, "Ludlul bel nemeqi"
("I
I
will praise the Lord of Wisdom," often called "The Babylonian
( Job") and "The Babylonian Theodicy,"
resemble the Book of Job
thematically.16 The attitude considered
to be correct for a sufferer
13 See Chapter Two, "The Validity,
Procedure and Benefit of a Com-
parative Approach to Akkadian Autobiography," in Tremper
Longman III,
"Fictional
Akkadian Royal Autobiography: A Generic and
Comparative
Approach"
(Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1983).
14 S. N. Kramer, "Man and His God: A
Sumerian Variation on the 'Job'
Motif,"
in Wisdom in
D. W. Thomas;
15 William W. Hallo, "Individual
Prayer in Sumerian: The Continuity of
a Tradition," JAOS 88 (1968) 82-88; Thorkild Jacobsen, The Treasures of
Darkness: A History of
Mesopotamian Religion (
(Yale University Press, 1976) 153-54.
16 J. Nougayrol,
"Une version ancienne du 'Juste souffrant,'"
RB 59
302
is clear from these texts. He should examine
himself to see if he
had committed any errors, and if he had he should
repent of
them. Whether or not his own sin was the cause of
his suffering,
he should accept the suffering and not complain,
rebel, or blas-
pheme his god. He should
continue to serve his god faithfully and
seek his god's compassion. The Akkadian
"Righteous Sufferer"
text found at
attitude in a sufferer.
If we accept the consensus of scholarly opinion
which holds that
the Book of Job is also one of the "innocent
sufferer" texts, then
we expect to find this same attitude from Job.
After the theophany,
Job's
wrong attitude would change, and he would praise and wor-
ship God once more. He would no longer complain, nor
would he
rebel against God and reject him. Conversely, he
would repent of
any sin God showed him. This, I maintain, is what
did occur.
The general interest in "the fear of the Lord"
found in Wisdom
Literature
introduces another factor relevant to Job's response to
Yahweh. At the beginning of the Book of Job, Job
was a man
who feared the Lord and shunned evil. The book's
genre as
Wisdom
Literature requires that Job repent and return to fearing
the Lord when at the end of his suffering Yahweh
charged him
with wrongdoing. He would not rebel.
II. Immediate Context
Understanding and interpreting Job's responses
in the light of
their immediate context Involves taking account of
the specific,
content and purpose of Yahweh's speeches to
which he was re-
sponding. To understand the purpose,
and hence the meaning, of
the Yahweh speeches, we must see them, too, in
context. They are
addressing specific statements, questions and
attitudes of Job in
the preceding dialogues.
Actually, Job's speeches in the dialogues
exhibit a mixture of
features, e.g., questioning, agony, faith,
hopelessness, perplexity,
and confidence. He argues with his friends,
defending himself
against their accusations and maintaining his
righteousness. He
(1952)
239-50; ANET 434-37, 596-600, 438-40, 601-4; W. G. Lambert,
Babylonian
Wisdom Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960) 21-62, 63-
91.
JOB: REPENTANT OR REBELLIOUS? 303
addresses God, and speaks about him, as he
wrestles to reconcile
his theology and past experience of God with his
present experi-
ence of suffering and the
wickedness he sees about him. Job be-
lieved God was the sovereign
Lord, and he recognized no second
causes.17 So, as he wrestled to
reconcile this with his loss and
suffering, he concluded that God had changed from
being his friend
(29:2-4)
who cared for him to his enemy who persecuted and
maltreated him (10:8-12;
Throughout the dialogue, as he wrestled to
reconcile his the-
ology with his experience and
to refute the accusations of his
friends, Job accused God of a number of things.
He said God
r oppressed him while he smiled on the schemes of
the wicked
(10:3),
attacked him in anger and shattered him (16:9,12),
wronged him and counted him an enemy (19: 6-11
), denied him
justice (27:1) and maltreated him ruthlessly
(30:19-21).
Although he may not have been conscious of the
full implica-
tions of what he was saying,
Job was actually passing judgment
upon God by thus accusing him. Job also passed
judgment on
God
for not fulfilling his duties as a ruler when he allowed the
widow, the orphan, the poor, and the needy to be
oppressed by
the wicked and did not intervene on their behalf
(24:1-12). In
thus judging God, Job was in fact exalting himself
above God and
implying that he would be a better ruler.
However, we need to remember that these things
were said
within the context of Job's wrestling to reconcile his
beliefs about
God
with the reality he was experiencing and witnessing. Along-
side the above statements we find others that reveal
Job's con-
tinued faith in God and in his
righteousness and justice (e.g.,
that he said, Job does not appear to be spurning God
but rather
Job
is seeking God and his answers.
In Yahweh's speeches18 every pericope except one begins with
17
(
is it ?"
18 Some scholars reject the ostrich pericope (39:13-18) and the behemoth
and leviathan sections (40:15-41:34) as later
additions. However, I do not
find the reasons they give convincing. See my
thesis, "Job, Repentant or
Rebellious ?" chap. 6. See also
E. Dhorme, A Commentary on the
Book of
Job (London: Nelson, 1967) xcii-xcv; Robert Gordis, The Book of God and
Man: A Study of Job (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1965) 122-23,
304
a question. That one, the behemoth pericope, closes with a ques-
tion. The use of questions
is a very effective teaching method.
They
involve the "learner" by calling forth from him a personal
response. So, Yahweh's use of them may indicate
that his speeches
were not designed to be merely a display of his
power and au-
thority, but also for a
relationship purpose. They were designed
to teach Job about God and about himself, and to
draw forth
a response.
In his speeches Yahweh brought three accusations
against Job,
all of them relating to Job's words and attitudes
in the dialogue
with his friends. In his first speech Yahweh charged
Job with
using words without knowledge (38:2), contending with
God and
accusing him of wrongdoing. Job had done all of
this, thus, as it
were, putting himself on at least equal footing with
God. Yahweh
dealt with Job's sin here by asking him a series of
questions
centered around his work of creating and
sustaining the universe
and some of the animals that inhabit it. Yahweh
asked Job re-
peatedly what his part was in
this work, both past and present,
and whether he had the knowledge, power, and
authority to per-
form it. Each question was so framed that Job could
only answer
that he did not possess those qualities, only God
did.
As well as thus emphasizing that he is infinite
in wisdom, power,
and authority, God also spoke to Job of his care of
and concern
for his creation, both animate and inanimate. He
sends rain on
the dry land, provides food for lions and ravens,
and cares for
other animals. All of creation is shown to be in the
control and
care of God. At that point, Yahweh challenged Job
with "Let him
who accuses God answer him" (40:2), and Job
makes his first
response (40:3-5).
In his second speech Yahweh focuses on his third
charge against
Job:
"Would you discredit my justice? Would you condemn me
to justify yourself?" (40:7). Job was guilty
of this too, so that,
though he may have been unconscious of the
implication, it was
as if he were a rival god.
So, Yahweh challenges Job to take over the
administration of
justice on earth in his stead, if he can
(40:9-14). It is clear he
and The Book
of Job (Moreshet Series 2;
logical Seminary of America, 1978) 557-59,
566-68; Francis I. Anderson,
Job: an Introduction and
Commentary
(Tyndale OT Commentaries; Down-
ers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1976) 49, 53.
JOB: REPENTANT OR REBELLIOUS? 305
cannot. Yahweh then confronts Job with behemoth and
leviathan,
creatures and/or chaos forces before whom Job as
man was help-
less and over whom he had no control. Once again
Yahweh re-
vealed Job's weakness and
inadequacy and at the same time
showed his, Yahweh's, power, authority, and control,
not only over
the natural creation but also over chaos forces and
evil.
Yahweh
stated explicitly that no man had a claim against him
that he must pay (41:11 ). Yet God had come to Job
and spoken
to him, to teach, rebuke, correct, and enlighten
him. All of this,
from God's own initiative, was not because of some
"claim" but
of grace. To this God, Job responded.
III. Job's Responses
Now we shall consider the text of Job's
responses in 40:4-5 and
42:2-6
to establish a translation and an interpretation of them.
We
shall, of course, establish word-meanings that are in line with
the meanings of those words in other parts of the
OT, and inter-
preting Job's replies in the
context described above.
As we examine the text of Job's responses, we
find that the
LXX
and the
MT in some verses. However, the nature of
the LXX translation
of Job causes most careful scholars to agree that
great caution
is needed in the use of it for textual criticism.19
Certainly with
regard to the text of Job's responses the weight of
evidence is
not in favor of the variant translations found in
the LXX.
11QtgJob is, on the whole, a sober, literal
translation, sup-
portive of the MT.20
However, some divergences from the MT
19 Dhorme, Job, cxcvi-ccvi;
Henry S. Gehman, "The Theological Approach
of the Greek Translator of Job 1-15," JBL 68
(1949) 231-40; Donald
H.
Gard, The Exegetical Method
of the Greek Translator of the Book of
Jcb (JBL Monograph Series 8; Philadelphia: SBL,
1952); Donald H. Gard,
"The
Concept of Job's Character According to the Greek Translator of the
Hebrew
Text," J BL 72 ( 1953) 182-86; Gillis Gerleman, "Studies in the
Septuagint,
I: The Book of Job" (Lunds Universitets
Arsskrift, n.s. 1/43/2;
of the Greek Translator of the Book of Job, by Donald H. Gard, in JBL 73
(1954) 251-52.
20 Joseph A. Fitzmyer,
A Wandering Aramean:
Collected Aramaic Essays
(Missoula: Scholars Press, 1979) 161-81. G. W. Parsons, "A
Biblical The-
ology of Job 38:1-42:6"
(Th.D. dissertation, Dallas Theological Seminary,
1980) 313-15.
306
are found in Job's response in 42:1-6. The most
significant of
these is the replacing of 42:3 by 40:5. We cannot
consider this as
proof, though, that originally Job made only one
response to
Yahweh. Although in the targum 40:4-5 is illegible, in 40:6
Yahweh
answers Job, thus indicating clearly that Job must have
spoken in at least v 5.21 Also, Job's
expressed intention in 40:5
to say no more seems to better fit the
interpretation that his first
response ends there rather than continuing for a
number of verses
more.
For the translation of 42:6, 11 QtgJob has "Therefore I am
poured out and boiled up (or dissolved), and I am
become dust
and ashes," a translation differing from both
the LXX and the
MT.
The translator has taken different roots for both of the verbs
--mss instead of m's, and hmm (Nifal) instead of nhm.22
Whereas
divergences from the MT are not common in this targum, the
accumulation of divergences in these
verses witnesses to the diffi-
culty the translator was having
here. His obvious difficulty and
his choice of roots that would not yield the words
in the MT with-
out some emendation decrease the value of his
translation for de-
termining the meaning of the MT
in these verses.
1. Job's First Response,
40:4-5
hen qalloti
mah ‘asibeka yadi samti lemo
pi
'ahat dibbarti welo' '’e’eneh ustayim welo' 'osip
The
translation I suggest for these verses is:
Indeed, I am worthless (of no account), What (How) shall I answer
you? I put my hand to
(over) my mouth,
I have spoken once, but I shall not reply
(again)
even twice, but I shall not
add more (I shall not continue).
Scholars agree that the relevant basic meaning
of the root qll
is
"to be light, to be small, to be of little account."23
M. Tsevat
draws our attention to the fact that the root qll is antonymous
21 J. P. M, van der
Ploeg, O. p" and A, S, van der
Woude, Le Targum
de Job de la Grotto XI de Qumran (Leiden:
E. J, Brill, 1971), M. Sokoloff,
The Targum
to Job from
versity, 1914).
22 Sokoloff,
"Targum to Job," 100, 101, 167.
23 BDB, 886. W. L. Holladay, A Concise Hebrew and
Aramaic Lexicon r
of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1978) 319.
JOB: REPENTANT OR REBELLIOUS? 307
to kbd.24
Used of a person, the noun klib6d can mean "weighti-
ness, splendor, distinction, honor ."25 Job had spoken of his kabod
in 29:20 (also 19:9). In 31:37 Job had said he
would approach
God
like a "prince," and a prince would be a man of kabod. But
after Yahweh's first speech, which brought Job to
realize his fini-
tude and his lack of
knowledge, power, and authority, Job re-
sponded that he was the
opposite of kabod,
i.e., he was without
intrinsic honor and worth.26 The LXX
has outhen on, "(I) being
nothing," which is the same basic idea.
Two scholars give different translations for hen qalloti.
E.
Dhorme translates, "If I have been
thoughtless," although he too
states that the basic meaning is "to be
light." He chooses that
translation to suit the interpretation he gives for
the meaning of
Job's
responses, i.e., he has spoken out of ignorance.27 His trans-
lation does not really convey
the meaning of the Hebrew word.
J. B. Curtis translates v 4a as "Although I
was too light in
what I answered you." He considers that
"this is bitter sarcasm,
slashing out against a god who is
irrelevant."28 His argument for
translating hen as "although" cannot be
sustained.29 Also, the
Hebrew
here does not require the translation he gives. He states
that v 4a should be rendered in this way so that it
is in keeping
with the meaning he proposes for 42:6. He then
suggests as a
paraphrase for v 4a, "although I dealt with
matters that to you
are trivial when I spoke earlier."30
This paraphrase moves further
toward subjective interpretation.
The expression "to put the hand to the
mouth" is found six
times in the OT. There is some variation in the
Hebrew expressing
this phrase, but the variations are not significant.
In Judg 18:19
the expression follows immediately after a command
to be quiet,
and is really a repetition of that command. It
appears to add
emphasis. The writer of Prov
30:32 says "hand to mouth"--a
24 Tsevat,
"The Meaning of the Book of Job," 91. See also V. Kubina,
Die Gottesreden
im Buche Hiob (Freiburg: Herder, 1979) 78.
25
26 Kubina,
Die Gottesreden
im Buche Hiob, 78.
27 Dhorme,
Job, lix, 615, 646-47.
28 Curtis, "Job's Response," 507.
29 See the Appendix on "The Particle
hen" in my Th.M. thesis, "Job,
Repentant or Rebellious?"
30 Curtis, “Job's Response," 507.
308
verb is not used. Again it is a command, apparently
emphatic,
to be silent.
In Job 21:5, having asked his friends to listen
carefully to his
words, Job then says, "look at me and be
astonished, and put
your hand over your mouth." Here too the
expression indicates
that they should be silent, probably because of
feeling astonish-
ment and horror. When
describing the respect paid to him in his
presuffering days, Job says that
"the chief men refrained from
speaking and covered their mouths with their
hands" (29:9).
Again
the expression means that they were silent but this time
because of a feeling of deep respect. Mic
a result of seeing the Lord's wonders, nations
will be ashamed,
lose their power, "lay their hands on their
mouths and their ears
will become deaf," and then (v 17) they go on
to fear the Lord.
Once
more this expression indicates that the nations become silent,
apparently because of feelings of shame and awe,
and possibly as
a sign of submission.
Two ancient reliefs
contain scenes which portray the placing of
the hand to or upon the mouth as a sign of respect
and in one of ,
them possibly amazement. One of those reliefs shows a man being
carried skyward on a lion-headed eagle. To our
left of that eagle
is a man with his hand up towards his mouth. This
gesture could
be because of amazement or because of respect.31
In the other
relief, King Danus is seated
on his throne with Crown Prince
Xerxes, attendants and guards standing behind
him.
In front of :
King
Darius is .a Median dignitary who is bowing slightly from
the waist and with a hand upon his mouth.32
Clearly this posture
shows respect and homage.
In summary, the five biblical uses examined
above all indicate
that a person putting the hand to the mouth
signifies silence. With
the usages in Judg 18:19
and Prov 30:32, no emotional involve-
ment is evident, though they
may be considered emphatic. In the
other three usages, the person is silent because of a
feeling of
astonishment, shame or awe, or as an
indication of deep respect
or even submission. The association of this
gesture with respect