Detailed Analysis
Reading Job 42:1-16, I was struck by a large number of questions. One of the largest questions regarded how this section, particularly the epilogue (42:7-17) fit into the rest of the book as a whole, because it seems as though it doesn’t. Also, as a similar point, what does the message of the epilogue, that of Job having his fortunes restored in double, mean in light of the responses Job gives to his friends concerning the irrelevance of God’s blessing upon his belief and faith in Him? However, for the purposes of this paper, I will endeavor to interact with and analyze one particular verse, 42:6 and in particular the understanding of Job’s repentance in connection to the meaning of “dust and ashes” in 42:6b.
Nearly every book, article or commentary I’ve read on Job indicates that Job 42:6 is the crux verse of the book because this verse contains Job’s repentance in response to God’s discourses in the previous chapters. Not only that, but since this is the verse in which we see how Job finally responds to the situation and to God, it is in this verse that we find the meaning of Job’s suffering for Job.[1] “Therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42:6 NRSV[2]) The question that becomes most important for understanding this verse, as well as the book of Job as a whole, is of what exactly was Job repenting? Was he repenting of simply uttering what he did not understand and things too wonderful which he did not know (42:3), or was it something more than that?
How can it be that Job can justly repent for speaking of things that he did not understand when, in the epilogue, God himself rebukes Job’s friends for “not having spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.”(42:7b) God declares Job’s actions and responses to his suffering to be right and good, although Job apparently repents of those actions and words in 42:6.
So, if Job wasn’t simply repenting for the things he said of God, what was he repenting of? One of the conventional ways of understanding Job’s repentance in 42:6 is to consider it as a reversal of his first response to God’s first speech in 40:4-5, in which Job responds to God[3]: “See, I am of small account; what shall I answer you? I lay my hand on my mouth. I have spoken once, and I will not answer; twice, but will proceed no further.” In this reading then, Job is repenting for his ignorance of God’s power.
It has been argued though, that this reading is too simplistic to be able to do justice to the fullness of what is being said in Job 42:1-6 as well as the book as a whole. I will argue that this position isn’t overly simplistic but that it doesn’t necessarily take into account the entirety of what it means. Terrance Tilley posits that there are at least eight different ways of translating 42:6, all of which contain their own theological positives and negatives.[4] However, for the purposes of this paper, I shall take up the translation put forth by Edwin M. Good in his book In Turns of Tempest: “Therefore I despise myself and repent of dust and ashes.”[5]
The phrase “dust and ashes,” occurs only three times in Biblical Hebrew: Gen. 18:27; Job 30:19; and Job 42:6. In Job 30:19, it seems to signify that Job understands himself to be living in a world where suffering humans cry out to the Lord for mercy and justice, but He does not answer (30:20). In Genesis 18:27 the meaning of “dust and ashes” comes from Abraham’s recognition of his status before God: “Let me take it upon myself to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes.” Thus, in each of the two instances of “dust and ashes,” it is used to signify something about the relation of humans to God. It is through these two verses that we might be able to come to a solid understanding of what it means for Job to “repent of dust and ashes.”
As I have already noted, Job’s first response to God was to simply be silent. As Samuel E. Balentine has said: “Job had previously concluded that innocent suffering rendered him mute and submissive before a God who permits neither question nor confrontation.”[6] It is through God’s two speeches to Job that God is forcing Job to develop a new understanding of “dust and ashes.” While suffering might be a part of the human condition, it is not required that humans be silent or submissive in the face of suffering.[7] If the response to suffering was to be silent and submissive to the God who brought it about, which the ancient worldview of retributive justice would certainly have said, then the answers Job’s friends give him would have been correct answers. If Job suffered, he suffered because of some sort of sin that God was faulting him for, and thus the only acceptable response would have been to repent of that sin. However, the new understanding of “dust and ashes” that God showed to Job through his speeches shows that the traditional categories of guilt and innocence when it comes to suffering are null and void. Rather, God’s speeches to Job and Job’s subsequent repentance of his “dust and ashes” mentality show that, not only was God inviting Job to “joyfully embrace a world more powerfully under the control of a gracious god than he had realized”[8], but that Job actually did embrace this new understanding of the world’s taxis. Instead of a world in which the guilty are divinely punished through suffering and the innocent are divinely rewarded through physical wealth, Job’s repentance invites us understand the ordering of the world in a radically different way. God hears the cries of the afflicted and responds, He is not deaf to their pleas.
What exactly was it that Job repented of? Job repented of his previously erroneous understanding of the way in which the world worked. Thus, Job was really and truly repenting of “dust and ashes,” i.e. his erroneous worldview, and this is indeed something of which he really and truly needed to repent.
Synthesis
It is generally accepted by almost all scholars and lay readers that the book of Job is fundamentally about the nature of suffering. However, past this very generalized assumption, the proverbial waters get very murky. Nevertheless, the book of Job gives us a picture of one person’s struggle with suffering and what his response to God should be amidst his suffering. It is from within the overall framework of this narrative on theodicy that Job’s repentance (42:1-6) and the epilogue must be understood.
If the book of Job is to be understood as being about the problem of theodicy, then Job 42:1-6 should be understood as the apex of the book. Job’s repentance before God should be understood as the main message of the book as a whole. In all of Job’s sufferings, he never once cursed God or sinned with his lips (2:10b), yet he did question God and he did ask God to hear him and respond, which God obliged. Job’s repentance of his previously-held view of retributive justice and his acknowledgement of the radically different divine order of the world is to be understood as the culmination of the book’s attempt to provide a framework through which one might be able to understand suffering, as well as to present a model for further critical reflection upon the nature of suffering and the goodness of God. Far from providing one monolithic and complete answer to the problem of suffering, the book of Job gives guidelines that are rooted firmly in a solid understanding of Job’s repentance in 42:6 from which we are invited to reflect upon and engage with the reality of suffering in our contexts.
The prosaic epilogue of Job needs to be understood generally in light of the whole message of the book and specifically in light of Job’s repentance in 42:6. It is only through doing this that the reader might be able to avoid becoming stuck in the frustrating and seemingly paradoxical affirmations found within the book as a whole. Job 42:7-17 should also be understood as a reversing of “curse” found in the prologue, with Job being again restored from his suffering. However, since taking the epilogue to be God restoring Job because he was righteous and thus affirming the concept of retributive justice would place the epilogue in opposition to the rest of the book’s message, God’s restoration of Job in 42:7-17 must be understood in light of the message of the whole. This perspective allows room for the reader and their community to creatively understand and implement Job’s repentance in 42:6 in new ways not necessarily presented by the book itself. Thus, in Job’s repentance in 42:6 we find the culmination of the book as a whole, as well as the guiding principal for reflection upon suffering, and in the epilogue we find ambiguity and thus an invitation to engage critically in light of our own world.
Reflection
While all of what I’ve previously said seems well and good, it is all for naught if we have no way of applying it to our own situations and contexts. The Bible, and thus the book of Job, is worth nothing if it cannot speak to the Church currently. So, what can we appropriate from the Book of Job for our context and our world today? What does the suffering of the character of Job have to teach us about the place of suffering in the world, or response to suffering, and how one might suffer blamelessly?
Job doesn’t provide the definitive answers to why suffering exists within the world, but it does give us a theological perspective on how we might engage with that suffering. The book of Job reverses the commonly held ancient belief, and one held by a significant number of people even today, that suffering is a punishment, whether divine or not, for something that a person did.[9] Instead, we see that suffering is something that comes from the fallen nature of the human condition and the cosmos, not necessarily from an individual’s actions and choices.
It has been purposed by various and many scholars that Job offers this position on the nature of suffering, or that position on why suffering happens, but it would be my contention after reading the book and the study that I’ve put into it that Job wasn’t meant to offer us an answer to why people suffer. Rather, in Job we see an expression of how a person might be able to suffer rightly, but not tacitly endorse the suffering itself. God’s speeches to Job and Job’s subsequent response and repentance show us that the question of why suffering exists within the world is the wrong question to ask. Suffering exists because we are fallen people who live in a world that is “groaning in labor pains” (Rom. 8:22) awaiting the fullness of our restoration and redemption through Christ. Suffering is an inevitable result of a fallen cosmos. Nevertheless, suffering is not a divinely ordered mandate. Those who suffer don’t suffer because they have offended or sinned against God. Rather, most likely people suffer because of oppressive systems or evil systemic structures, because of violence and hatred, or because of other’s greed. And those who suffer mustn’t allow themselves to curse God as the author and exacter of their suffering. We, like Job, need to repent of our “dust and ashes” perspectives and understand that suffering isn’t retributive but rather a consequence of the yet fully restored cosmos.
However, the existence of suffering cannot, and certainly does not, have the final word for the Church. God’s answer to Job in His divine speeches shows us that not only does God hear the cries of the oppressed, but that He decisively responds to their affliction.
While God’s response to Job in it’s Old Testament context is somewhat vague and seemingly unhelpful, when viewed from the perspective of the New Testament, and specifically God’s revelation in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the proto-type that Job offers us of a person who suffers rightly can be fully understood and appropriate by the Church today. In the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the Word of God incarnate, we see God’s decisive action on behalf of and in response to those who suffer and are oppressed. Jesus came to bring the good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, to preach recovery of sight to the blind, to set the oppressed free and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor (Lk. 4:18-19). This is the message of the Kingdom of God and this is the new order of things that God had shown to Job in His speeches.
In Jesus, God deals the ultimate deathblow to the notion of retributive justice, because in Jesus we see a God who in His gracious love and mercy takes on the fallen human nature, so that He might restore and redeem an undeserving humanity. God acts on our behalf out of His gracious love to set to rights the things that we have broken, to redeem us even while we are undeserving, and to reconcile all things unto Himself.
What does all of this mean for the Church now? It means not only that we have to repent of our mistaken and sinful notions of suffering, but it also means that we have a responsibility to stand on the side of the oppressed and to work towards ending the suffering of those who suffer. It means that our repentance of our “dust and ashes” must result in our action with and for the oppressed and suffering of this world. God has revealed Himself to us proto-typically in Job as the God who hears the cries of those who suffer, and finally and decisively in His self-communication in the person of Jesus of Nazareth as the God who acts on behalf of those who suffer and are oppressed. Thus, we as Christ’s Church must also act with and on behalf of those who suffer and who are oppressed. Job offers us a foretaste of the way in which people are radically and powerfully transformed when they come into contact with the God who loves in freedom.
[1] Terrence W. Tilley, “God and the Silencing of Job,” Modern Theology 5:3 (1989): 260.
[2] All direct quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) of the Bible.
[3] Edwin M. Good, In Turns of Tempest: A Reading of Job with a Translation (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 371.
[4] Terrence W. Tilley, “God and the Silencing of Job,” Modern Theology 5:3 (1989): 260.
[5] Good, In Turns of Tempest, 375. Good argues for the logic of this translation in the introductory notes of his book. The argument is one based upon Hebraic syntax and word structure, of which I am unfortunately ignorant, and am thus indebted to his work.
[6] Samuel E. Balentine, “My Servant Job Shall Pray For You,” ThTo 58:4 (2002): 512.
[7] Balentine, “My Servant Job Shall Pray For You,” 512.
[8] Edwin M. Good, In Turns of Tempest: A Reading of Job with a Translation (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 377.
[9] This view is seen most clearly in peoples’ responses to poverty and homelessness in America. We tend to think that a person is poor because of something that they did (i.e. substance abuse, poor money management, lack of education, etc.) instead of the systemic factors that have lead to a person’s poverty (i.e. unjust wealth distribution, capitalism, injustices in the job market and work place, etc.).
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