BIBLIOTHECA SACRA 151
(October-December 1994): 393-413
Copyright © 1994
by
GUIDELINES FOR UNDER-
STANDING AND PROCLAIMING
THE BOOK OF JOB
Greg W.
Parsons
Though many writers have given lavish
tribute to the
Book
of Job especially concerning its literary excellence,1
many
preachers tend to shy away from preaching the
book. If they do
preach on Job, the sermons focus on only one aspect of
the book-
the familiar "storyline" of the prologue
(chaps. 1-2) and epilogue
(42:7-17)
in which Job is portrayed as the paragon of patience.
Consequently
Job has often been presented as a model for mod-
ern-day believers to "be
patient" in the midst of trials. However,
few expositors delve into the complex dialogue
between Job and
his friends. Preachers tend to skip over Job's
cursing of the day of
his birth (chap. 3), the intricate and often
argumentative interac-
tion between Job and his
friends (chaps. 4-27), and other hard-to-
understand passages. Sermons or lessons have mainly
focused
on Job's idealized faith and patience epitomized
in the famous
verse,
story presented in the Book of Job.2
This general neglect in preaching from
the whole Book of Job
is partially caused by the difficulty of properly
understanding the
book.3 Because of the
widespread misunderstanding of Job's mes-
Greg
W. Parsons is Professor of Biblical Studies, Baptist Missionary Association
Theological Seminary,
1 Essayist and historian
Thomas Carlyle remarked concerning the greatness of
Job
among world literature, "There is nothing written, in the Bible or out of
it, of
equal literary merit" (cited by Robert Gordis, The Book of
God and Man: A Study of
Job [
2 See M. Vernon
14
(Fall 1971): 65.
3 There is no consensus
among scholars concerning its literary structure, unity,
or essential meaning. A contributing factor to the
distortion of the overall message
of Job has been the difficulty of translating the
Hebrew text into English. The Book
of Job is probably the most difficult Old
Testament book to translate since it has
394
BIBLIOTHECA SACRA /
October-December 1994
sage, the biblical expositor finds a challenge in
seeking to teach
and preach the Book of Job in an accurate and
relevant manner.
Habel illustrates this predicament. "Preaching
from Job is like
nurturing a cactus garden. One is liable to recoil
from constant
prickles and miss the blossoms in the
night."4 The temptation is
to follow the traditional, distorted view of Job's
life and to ignore
the many hard questions Job raised in facing the
mystery of his
innocent suffering. Yet the candid record that
Job began to ques-
tion God strikes a chord
familiar to humankind. To ignore Job's
question "why?" (see
for God's answer is to ignore basic issues of life
everyone must
faces. Thus a second reason many do not preach from
Job is the
difficulty of answering the various theological and
philosophical
questions raised in the book.6
The present writer believes that it is
worth the effort needed to
understand the Book of Job. Continuing Habel's metaphor, one
must cautiously approach the many prickly passages
in order to
gather the blossoms-messages that "touch the
faith and fears of
contemporary listeners. The spines
and spikes of Job reflect a
real world with which we can identify."7
Yet there is a paucity of
tips for the biblical gardener who seeks to
cultivate the unfamil-
iar "desert land"
located between the prologue and epilogue of Job.
Though
many have written concerning various hermeneutical
factors related to the Book of Job, there has
been no comprehensive
study com piling guidelines for understanding the
book.8 Fur-
thermore little has been written
on the teaching or preaching of
the Book of Job. Habel
has contributed a small but helpful study
for preaching the whole Book of Job.9 From the
perspective of an
African-Arnerican pastor, J. Alfred Smith has contributed prac-
tical insights for lessons
and sermons on the Book of Job.10 Yet no
more rare words and a richer vocabulary than any
other biblical book (Gordis, The
Book of God and Man: A Study of Job, v, 160-63). Furthermore the poetic body (Job
3:1-42:6)
contains numerous images foreign to modern culture.
4 Norman C. Habel, Job, Knox
Preaching Guides (Atlanta: Knox, 1981), 1.
5 See
6 See ibid. and J. Alfred
Smith, Making Sense of Suffering: A
Message to Job's
Children, A Guide to Teaching and Preaching the Book of Job (
sive National Baptist
Convention, 1988), 41, and the table of contents in Ord
L.
Morrow,
The Puzzles of Job (Lincoln, NE: Back to
the Bible, 1965).
7 Habel,
Job, 1.
8 Perhaps the most
helpful introductory discussion of these issues is C. Hassell
Bullock,
An Introduction to the Old Testament Poetic Books,
rev. ed. (
Moody,
1988),83-88.
9 Habel, Job.
10 Smith. Making Sense of
Suffering: A Message to Job's Children. Though writ-
Guidelines
for Understanding and Proclaiming the Book of Job 395
resource is available that summarizes specific
guidelines for
preaching and teaching the book.
The purpose of the present study is to
cultivate an interest in
the study and use of the Book of Job by pastors,
teachers, and
laypersons in ministry. Specific guidelines for
understanding
and communicating this ancient wisdom book are
proposed.
SUGGESTED
HERMENEUTICAL GUIDELINES FOR JOB
INTERPRET
INDIVIDUAL PASSAGES IN LIGHT OF THE OVERALL LITERARY
STRUCTURE
(AS A UNIT) AND MAIN PURPOSE OF THE BOOK
This fundamental rule of
interpretation is more crucial for
understanding the Book of Job than
for any other Old Testament
book except Ecclesiastes. Largely a dialogue between
Job and his
"friends," the Book of Job "contains all sorts of
wrong advice and
incorrect conclusions as they come from the lips
of Job's well-
meaning 'comforters.'"11 Thus
much of the book is human
dom, "seemingly
logical but actually wrong."12 Furthermore it
contains much that is theologically sound but
with wrong applica-
tions to Job's situation.13
Consequently preachers who ignore the
dialogue or try to pullout some principle without
an awareness of
the immediate and overall context are in danger not
only of dis-
torting the story of Job but
also of misrepresenting (however un-
wittingly) the message for today.14
Procedure. The first step (which will be obvious to many
readers) must be emphasized since it is so
foundational and cru-
cial: read the book in its
entirety (preferably at one sitting in a
modern version) several times to observe the "big
picture."15 M-
ter the fast-paced action
of the prologue (chaps. 1-2), one may be
ten from a nonevangelical
perspective, this volume contains practical insights on
understanding Job, ideas for helping
laypersons study the book, and several mes-
sages (of varying value) based on the Book of Job.
11 See Gordon D. Fee and
Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible for
All Its Worth:
A Guide to Understanding
the Bible (Grand
Rapids: Zondervan, 1981), 193-94.
12
Ibid., 195.
13
See Elmer B. Smick, "Job," in The Expositor's Bible Commentary (Grand
Rapids:
Zondervan, 1988), 4:859-60; and Derek Ridner, The Wisdom of Proverbs, Job
& Ecclesiastes: An
Introduction to Wisdom Literature (
Varsity,
1985), 60-61.
14 As already mentioned,
Job 19:25 has frequently been abused in this way. See also
the misuse of
Comprehensive
Introduction to Biblical Interpretation (
Varsity, 1991), 192.
15 The student of the Book
of Job often "cannot see the forest for the trees" and
needs a "photograph" taken, as it were,
from an aircraft to understand how each in-
dividual "tree" fits
the whole rugged landscape of the book.
396
BIBLIOTHECA SACRA /
October-December 1994
frustrated by the intricate poetic
"dialogue" (3:1-42:6). Ryken
warns the reader not to expect "a fast-moving
plot" but "to respect
the leisurely pace of Hebrew poetry" with its
skillful use of repeti-
tion and figurative
language.16 One goal of this inductive ap-
proach is to find the natural
boundaries (or major subsections) in
the landscape of Job. Another objective is to
formulate a suggested
purpose for the writing of the book.17
Proper view of
structure as a literary unity. To understand
its message one should assume the literary unity of
Job.18 Though
it has various contrasts and opposites, the book should
be viewed
as a harmonious whole.19
Through one's own inductive reading
and preliminary
study, the following major landmarks in the rugged
terrain of
the Book of Job should be observed.
I. Prologue-in prose (chaps. 1-2)
II. Poetic Body (3:1-42:6)
A.
Job's initial monologue or lament
(chap. 3)
B. "Dialogue"20 in three cycles between Job
and his
16 Rather than "looking
for a sustained philosophic argument," one should expect
"characters in conflict, oratorical outbursts," and
"the leisurely poetic embellish-
ment of virtually everything
that is said" (Leland Ryken, Words of Delight: A Liter-
ary Introduction to the Bible [
David
McKenna (Job, Communicator's
Commentary [Waco, TX: Word, 1986], 19-20),
the dialogue of the Book of Job has no simplistic
plot that moves logically forward
in a definable pattern. Though he acknowledges
that he has oversimplified the
data, he wrongly analyzes the plot of Job as a drama
in the classical Greek and
modern Western sense. Norman Habel
uses biblical narrative as a more reliable
model to understand the plot development of Job:
"In biblical narrative the dialogue
not only reports or foreshadows actions in the plot
but may itself also be an action
which retards, complicates, or resolves an episode in
the plot. . . . This model has
been modified with expansion of the dialogue into
speeches which both retard and
complicate the plot" (The Book of Job: A Commentary [
Press, 1985], 26).
17 In this reading and
inductive study, one must eschew commentaries and study
helps. However, see Hans Finzel,
Opening the Book: Key Methods of Applying
In-
ductive Study to All of Scripture (Wheaton, IL: Victor, 1987), 109-10,
120-25, for a I
helpful format in conducting an inductive study
of Job.
18 See Bullock, An Introduction to the Old Testament Poetic
Books, 83. It is im-
portant that the expositor deal
with the text in its current canonical form rather
than discarding portions of Job that do not fit his
preconceived notions. See Gre-
gory W. Parsons, "The Structure and Purpose of
the Book of Job," Bibliotheca Sacra
138
(1981): 142-43, reprinted in Roy B. Zuck, ed., Sitting with Job: Selected Studies
on the Book of Job (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992), 18, esp. n. 2.
19 For a summary of some
of these contrasts, Habel argues cogently that these var-
ious "opposites"
in Job need not reflect irreconcilable conflict but "points and I
counterpoints" or necessary
"polarities" (Job, 4-6).
20 This is not a dialogue
in the modern sense but more like a "speech contest" in
which one speech is not necessarily correlated to
another (Francis I. Andersen,
Job: An Introduction and
Commentary
[
Guidelines
for Understanding and Proclaiming the Book of Job 397
friends
(chaps. 4-27)
C. Poem on wisdom (chap. 28)
D. Job's concluding "monologues" (chaps. 29-31)
F. Yahweh's speeches and Job's replies (38:1-42:6)
III. Epilogue--in prose (42:7-17)
Two extremes must be avoided in
examining the relationship
of the prologue to Job's speeches in the main
body. The first ex-
treme is the tendency of
critics to overemphasize the differences
between the "patient Job" of the
narrative framework (chaps. 1-2
and 42:7-17) and the "impatient Job" of
the poetic body (3:1-42:6)
so that the book is seen as without unity.21
Ironically some evangelicals also have
unwittingly inter-
preted Job in a similar
fashion. By assuming that a Christian
should never ask God "why?" or candidly
offer complaints to
God,
they seem to side with Job's friends in castigating Job for
questioning the Lord.22 However, Westermann wisely concludes
that this is not a biblical concept. The complaint,
which was a
necessary part of the sufferer's prayer in the
Psalms, has been di-
vorced from its original
context.23 Thus the Book of Job demon-
strates that Job was a real
person (not an imaginary hero of a
"folktale") who struggled with his emotions and
feelings.
The
second extreme is to obliterate the differences between the
two portraits of Job so that Job's apparent
statement of faith in
19:25-26
is made determinative for the whole dialogue and poetic
body. For instance McKenna sees this as the turning
point after
which the resolution of the conflict is assured by
faith.24 However,
this is too simplistic. In reality Job's confidence
of vindication
it developed into an overconfident and
self-righteous attitude (see
esp.
31:35-37 where he demanded that God answer and vindicate
him).25 The real turning point in Job's
faith was his final
21 Critics allege that
this is a sign of "sloppy editing" by the author of Job who
failed to reconcile the "folktale" with his
own portrait of Job in the dialogue.
22 Because the modem
perception of "complaint" is necessarily negative in conno-
tation, people are urged to
"suffer without complaining."
23 See Claus Westermann's penetrating analysis of this modern
misconception
("The
Two Faces of Job," in Job and the
Silence of God, ed. Christian Duquoc and
Casiano Floristan [
between the patient Job of the prologue and the
complaining Job of the dialogue and speeches.
24 McKenna, Job, 19-20.
25 Longman rightly
criticizes McKenna's emphasis on Job's development of faith
as a distortion of the data which "shows Job
moving away and not toward God in the
dialogues" (Tremper
Longman III, Old Testament Commentary
Survey [Grand
Rapids: Baker, 1991], 98).
398
BIBLIOTHECA SACRA / October-December
1994
response to the Lord (42:1-6).26
Though each passage is important for a
proper interpretation
of the Book of Job, the roles of the prologue
(chaps. 1-2) and Yah-
weh's speeches (38:1-42:6)
are particularly crucial. The prologue
is the indispensable backdrop for the story of Job
as a whole. It
tells the reader (like the narrator in a dramatic
production) that
Job
was innocent. Since the reader is aware of the scene in
heaven whereas Job and his friends (real-life
"actors") were not
the prologue sets the stage for irony. The basic
problem of the book
is articulated in 1:9.27 If the
prologue serves as the vital platform
for the story of Job, the climactic speeches of the
Lord are "the most
determinative part of the book."28
Since much of the Book of Job is
the human speculation of Job and his friends, to
interpret any part
without the divine input from chapters 38-42 is
to distort the
meaning of the book.
Purpose. The expositor also needs to do an inductive study
of
Job
to determine the possible major purpose for its writing.29 The
key to unlocking the purpose of the book is the
Lord's speeches.
They
do not give a direct answer to Job's question, "why?" Instead
they challenge Job with an avalanche of questions to
insinuate,
"Who
do you think you are?" (see esp. 38:2-5; 41:11)
so that he may
find the answer by faith in "who the Lord
is."30 Until one becomes
confident in stating his own understanding of the
message of Job,
the present author's conclusion concerning the
purpose of the
writing of the Book of Job may be used as a
working hypothesis:
"The
purpose of the Book of Job is to show that the proper rela-
tionship between God and man is
based solely upon the sovereign
grace of God and man's response of faith and
submissive trust."31
Job's
faith found no resolution until the Lord had confronted him for this atti-
tude of pride he had
developed after the coming of his three friends. Only then did
he become willing to trust God as sovereign Lord
without knowing all the answers
to his questions.
27 Terrien
states, "Here is the starting point of the discussion, the nerve of the.
drama, the basic verse in the whole book. . . . Is
not Job pious, as any other man, in
exchange for his privileges?" (Samuel Terrien, "The Book of Job: Introduction and
Exegesis,"
in The Interpreter's Bible, 12 vols.
[
3:913).
28 Bullock,
An Introduction to Old Testament Poetic
Books, 82.
29 There has been no
consensus concerning a single purpose for the book. Some
authors argue that it is not possible to state one
single purpose (Smick, "Job," 858).
Cf.
Kidner, The Wisdom of
Proverbs, Job & Ecclesiastes, 85. For tips on an induc-
tive approach to Job, see Finzel, Opening the Book, 121-25.
30
Cf.
McKenna, Job, 15.
31
Only
the "basis of the proper relationship between God and man" as
articulated
in the prologue (1:9) is broad enough to encompass
all the subthemes in the book.
Guidelines
for Understanding and Proclaiming the Book of Job 399
RECOGNIZE
THE VARIOUS LITERARY FORMS AND DEVICES UTILIZED BY
THE
AUTHOR TO COMMUNICATE HIS MESSAGE
Literary
forms. It is generally agreed that the Book of Job is a
mixed genre combining a variety of literary types to communi-
cate its message.32
In his literary composition the inspired author
utilizes various traditional literary forms (such
as the lament-
or complaint--and the hymns familiar in the
Psalms, the legal
language of the lawsuit, and the disputation
speech from wisdom
literature) by transposing them to meet his
specific needs.
Though
the book does "weep with complaint, argue with disputa-
tion, teach with didactic
accuracy, excite with comedy, sting with
irony, and relate human experience with epic
majesty," it is a
unique literary masterpiece that "must not be fit
into any precon-
ceived mold."33
Therefore it is imperative for the student of Job to
become familiar with these various genres so that he
may learn to
identify them according to the normal structure
and language of
each.34 Based on this norm, the
reader must then carefully look
for the ways the author has adapted or combined
them to convey
the message of the book as a whole or to shape the
precise meaning
of a specific passage.35
Literary devices. Though the Book of Job exhibits the basic
types of poetic parallelism, the inspired poet
created unique pat-
terns and variations.36 Both antithetic--or
contrasting--paral-
lelism so common in Proverbs
and strict synonymous paral-
lelism (in which one line
repeats the thought of the previous line)
are infrequent in Job. Rather the poet prefers
"ambiguous varia-
tion" from one line to
the next, which is sometimes spiced with
The
issue of Job's innocent suffering was only the catalyst for the larger issue of
how man should relate to God whether he is
suffering or not. See Parsons, "The
Structure
and Purpose of the Book of Job," in Sitting
with Job, 22-23.
32 Andersen observes that
the Book of Job is "an astonishing mixture of almost ev-
ery kind of literature to
be found in the Old Testament" (Job: An Introduction and
Commentary, 33). For several examples of
the dozens of literary forms sewn skill-
fully into the fabric of Job, see William S. LaSor, David A. Hubbard, and Frederic
W.
Bush, Old Testament Survey: The Message,
Form, and Background of the Old
Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982), 578-82.
33 Ibid.,
574-75.
34 For an orientation to
the main literary forms in the Book of Job, see John E.
Hartley,
The Book of Job (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), 37-43. Also see LaSor,
Hubbard,
and Bush, Old Testament Survey,
578-82. For a thoroughgoing analysis
(from a nonevangelical perspective)
with emphasis on the structure and message of
the book, see the invaluable work of Roland E.
Murphy, Wisdom Literature: Job,
Proverbs, Ruth,
Canticles, Ecclesiastes, and Esther, Forms of Old Testament Lit-
erature, vol. 13 (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1981), 3-82.
35 See Hartley, The Book
of Job, 42-43.
36 See Smick,
"Job," 849-50. Examples of the three traditional categories of paral-
lelism are as follows:
synonymous (
400
BIBLIOTHECA SACRA / October-December
1994
implicit word plays.37
The Book of Job also abounds in verbal
imagery, including
metaphors, similes, and other graphic word
pictures.38 For in-
stance, chapter 14 combines three poignant similes of
man's tem-
porary life (vv. 1-6) with
multiple nature analogies to emphasize
the seeming finality of death for mankind: an
extended
metaphor contrasting man and a tree (vv. 7-10),
and comparisons
of man with dried-up bodies of water (vv. 11-12)
as well as with an
eroded mountain never to be restored {vv. 18-20).39
Greenberg's
summary captures some of the innovative imagery
that perme-
ates the poetic body of the
book. These include the felled tree which
renews itself from its roots (14:7-9) as a metaphoric
foil for man's
irrevocable death; humanity's kinship with maggots (
jackals (30:29) as an image of alienation and
isolation; the con-
gealing of milk (
the movement of a weaver's shuttle (7:6), of a
runner in flight, or
of the swooping eagle (
a lifetime; God's hostility figured as an
attacking army (
God's
absence represented in the image of a traveler's un
found
goal in every direction (23:8; a striking reversal
of the expression
of God's ubiquity in Ps. 139:7-10).40
The legal metaphors that (in tandem
with legal terminology)
saturate the poetic body41 are
probably the most significant im-
agery occurring in Job.42
Through the legal metaphor Job dared to
treat God as his equal by entering, as it were, a
"lawsuit"43
37 An example of subtle
variation and ambiguity is "Naked I came from my
mother's womb/And naked I shall return
there" (
38 LaSor,
Hubbard, and Bush, Old Testament Survey,
575-76.
39 See Andersen, Job: An Introduction and Commentary,
170-71,173.
40 Moshe Greenberg,
"Job," in The Literary Guide to the Bible, ed. Robert
Alter
and Frank Kermode (Cambridge, MA: Belknap,
1987),302. The dating of the writing
of Job is debatable, but a good case can be made
for it after the writing of Psalm 8,
which seems to be parodied in Job 7:17-18. See the
introduction to the Book of Job in
the present author's contribution to The New King James Study Bible (
Thomas Nelson, forthcoming). .
41 However, the prologue
may initiate the legal imagery with the mention of Satan,
who brought the charges against Job and placed him
on trial before God and the
community. Strictly speaking the Hebrew 1~~iJ,
"the adversary," is not a proper
name for Satan but designates "a prosecutor or
accuser in a court of law" (see Ps.
109:6).
See Kidner, The Wisdom of
Proverbs, Job & Ecclesiastes, 58.
42 This phenomenon is
consistent with Job's role in 29:7-17, 22-25 as an important
city official or judge. Thus Job felt at home with
the legal metaphor and jargon. See
the present writer's brief analysis of legal
metaphor in Job in "The Structure and
Purpose
of the Book of Job," in Sitting with Job, 28-33.
43 The Hebrew term byri (whether as the verb "to contend or make a complaint
or
accusation" or the noun "complaint")
is used metaphorically in Job of the "lawsuit"
between Job and God except for two places where
it denotes Job's previous judicial
experience (29:16 and 31:13). See ibid., 29.
Guidelines
for Understanding and Proclaiming the Book of Job 401
against God for malpractice as Creator and Judge
of the uni-
verse.44 In 41:11 the Lord
confronted Job for feeling that He owed
him something for his righteousness and for
insinuating that
God
ought to "pay" him (i.e., make restitution45 for the
property,
reputation, and posterity He allegedly had
wrongfully seized
from him; see
metaphor illustrates the bankruptcy of viewing
man's relation-
ship to God as a business "contract"
between equals that can be en-
forced through court proceedings.47
The Book of Job (as part of ancient
wisdom literature) also
utilizes several key metaphors from creation
theology that reflect
the mythological milieu of the ancient Near East.48
Another significant literary feature
of the Book of Job is the
use of irony saturating nearly every section. At
least two types of
irony are frequent in Job: dramatic irony and verbal
irony.49
The
former, similar to that found in Greek drama, is an irony of
events whereby the reader (or "audience")
has knowledge con-
cerning the activities on the
heavenly "stage" of which Job and
his friends were not aware. Because the readers
know that Job
was innocent of wrongdoing and was being tested by
the Lord, the
vigorous debate between Job and his friends
becomes almost com-
ical at times as they
frequently make dogmatic statements that
are undermined by their ignorance of the events of
the prologue.50
44 The dilemma of Job, who
portrayed God as both an unjust judge (
gal adversary (10:2), sets the stage for Job's
cries for an impartial mediator to help
him (
advocate (
in court to vindicate him (31:35). However, the
Lord ignored Job's plea for a day in
court and rebuked him for seeking to bring a
"lawsuit" against Him (40:2).
45 The Hebrew verb means
to pay a debt or to make restitution for something lost
or stolen (Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and
Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and En-
glish Lexicon of the Old Testament [
the NIV translation of 41:11 (Heb., v. 3):
"Who has a claim against me that I must
pay? Everything under heaven belongs to me."
46 See Sylvia Huberman Scholnick, "Poetry
in the Courtroom: Job 38-41," in Direc-
tions in Biblical Hebrew Poetry, ed. Elaine R. Follis
(Sheffield: Sheffield, 1987),
187
-88, reprinted in Sitting with Job, 424-25.
47 The Lord contradicted
Job's misconception (based fundamentally on the retri-
bution dogma he shared with
the pagan religions) that He is obligated (as though by
a business contract or a judicial claim) to
reward man if he is obedient.
48 Leo G. Perdue, Wisdom in Revolt:
Metaphorical Theology in the Book of Job
(Sheffield:
Almond, 1991),28-31,74,260-73.
49 For a brief
introduction to irony and its utilization in Job, see the present
writer's "Literary Features of the Book of
Job," Bibliotheca Sacra 138 (1981):
215-18,
reprinted in Sitting with Job, 38-43; also see Habel, The Book of Job, 51-53.
50 Whedbee
describes comedy as including a "perception of incongruity that
moves in the realm of the ironic, the ludicrous, and
the ridiculous" (William
402
BIBLIOTHECA SACRA / October-December
1994
Verbal
irony (a literary relative of sarcasm) is employed repeat-
edly by Job and his friends
as they trade remarks laced with the
very words previously used by one another but with a
modified or
opposite meaning.
Job frequently used mythopoeic language (the poetic usage of
mythological allusions without
endorsing the pagan beliefs or
practices). For example he alluded to the pagan
belief that an
eclipse was caused by the chaos monster
Leviathan which could be
called up to swallow the sun or moon (3:8).51
Job's clear statement
of monotheism (31:26-28) suggests that the
numerous mythologi-
cal