The Mystery of Job (Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost)

Harry Attridge and Joel Baden discuss Satan, unanswered questions, and internal contradictions in Job 1:1, 2:1-10. The text is appointed for the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost, in Year B of the Revised Common Lectionary.

More Yale Bible Study resources, including a transcript of this episode, at: https://YaleBibleStudy.org/podcast

Harold Attridge is Sterling Professor of Divinity at Yale Divinity School. Joel Baden is Professor of Hebrew Bible and Director of the Center for Continuing Education at Yale Divinity School. 

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Transcript

Voiceover Voice:

I think what’s important about the Book of Job is that it’s highly critical of other important elements in the Biblical tradition.

Helena Martin:

This is Chapter, Verse, and Season: a lectionary podcast from Yale Bible Study. Join us each week as two Yale Divinity School professors look at an upcoming text from the Revised Common Lectionary.

This episode, we have Joel Baden, Professor of Hebrew Bible and Director of the Center for Continuing Education, and Harry Attridge, Sterling Professor of Divinity. They’re discussing Job 1:1, 2:1-10, which is appointed for Track 1 of the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 22, in Year B. Here’s the text.

[Job 1:1, 2:1-10]

There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. That man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.

One day the heavenly beings came to present themselves before the Lord, and the accuser also came among them to present himself before the Lord. The Lord said to the accuser, “Where have you come from?” The accuser answered the Lord, “From going to and fro on the earth and from walking up and down on it.” The Lord said to the accuser, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil. He still persists in his integrity, although you incited me against him, to destroy him for no reason.” Then the accuser answered the Lord, “Skin for skin! All that the man has he will give for his life. But stretch out your hand now and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face.” The Lord said to the accuser, “Very well, he is in your power; only spare his life.”

So the accuser went out from the presence of the Lord and inflicted loathsome sores on Job from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. Job took a potsherd with which to scrape himself and sat among the ashes.

Then his wife said to him, “Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God and die.” But he said to her, “You speak as any foolish woman would speak. Shall we receive good from God and not receive evil?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips.

Harry Attridge:

So, Joel, today we're looking at the Book of Job. And this is a fascinating text and it does a lot for stimulating conversation about what the Torah means and how it's supposed to be applied. But it starts out with this fascinating story about Job being tested by God with a strange heavenly figure coming in. My translation here says the adversary, often referred to simply as Satan, 

Joel Baden:

The translation I'm looking at says Satan. [laughs]

Harry Attridge: 

So, what do you make of this story about the testing of Job?

Joel Baden:

I mean, this is as famous almost as a Biblical story gets. The basis of so much, especially, I mean, literary and theatrical, in part because it gets at the very most fundamental question in probably the most direct way. Which is, why do bad things happen to good people? And that's a question that we find all over the place, especially in the wisdom literature more broadly. But you know, the way that we tend to put it, why do bad things happen to good people is, this is as plain on the face of it as it gets, here's the person who is described in the previous chapter is just, he's good and what's going to happen to him is entirely terrible. And part of what's at stake here is that we, the readers, are let in in this chapter on the secret of why the bad things are happening to Job. Which is such a strange thing for the, in a sense, it's such a strange thing for the story to do. You've got, because after this is chapter upon chapter of like, high philosophical sort of theological debate, as you said, about what it means and why could this be happening, and Job's friends are trying to convince him that it's one thing. And he's saying, no, I don't think so. It must be something else. And there's just all this debate. And even it ends with God saying, you don't know my ways. How could you possibly even think. But we, the reader know it all started with like a side bet. You know?  And so, there's a sense in which it both sets up the, obviously they're like, it sets the plot in motion. 

But I don't know, my feeling is it also sort of undermines, in a sense, the whole purpose of the debate that follows. Because it's as if it just answers from the get-go. No, I mean, in this case, the bad thing happened to the good person because it was just a test. It was a test set up between God and, we can talk about, right, who this other figure is. We know from the beginning that Job didn't really do anything wrong. I don't know. Do you see some, like grand philosophical statement in this chapter?

Harry Attridge:

I don't, no. I guess I take the introductory chapter as a way of setting up the theological conversation that's going to happen for the rest of the book. And, if you take the introductory chapter too seriously that it kind of undermines the whole message as you pointed out. You know, I think what's important about the book of Job is that it is highly critical of other important elements in the Biblical tradition. 

Joel Baden:

For sure.

Harry Attridge:

And it inculcates debate about what fundamental affirmations you want to make about God's intervention in human history, et cetera. 

Joel Baden:

Yeah.

Harry Attridge:

And that's a very important message to come through. So, that's where I focus in thinking about Job. Or when I used to teach Job, that's an important thing that I tried to get across. But the introductory story, eh, it just sets up the story. I don't think it makes a theological point.  

Joel Baden:

Yeah. I also, I mean I think you’re absolutely right about what makes Job such a wonderful book. And in fact, I still do teach Job, and often when I sort of do the, my like lecture on Job for the introductory Bible course here, one of the ways I approach it is I say, I can read this book five different ways. You can read it as in favor of traditional wisdom, as against traditional wisdom, as a statement about this or statement about that. Because it's a dialogue and because it's so discursive, I think you're absolutely right. It sort of sets the stage for an entire way of thinking about the Biblical text. I also think, in fact, that what's going on here between God and this, the Satan figure. Satan in Hebrew, as your translation has, means just adversary. It's not Satan. It's not a name. It's a professional title. The adversary, the lawyer, in a sense. But the idea that God is debating with this figure, and that between the two of them they're going to try and figure out what's going on. That also, to me, sets up a sort of discursive notion. We don't have here a situation in which God knows everything. Where God makes a determination from the beginning about how things are going to be. We're going to see how things play out. But I do think that the question at stake in chapter 2 is not really the same question that's at stake in the rest of the book.  

That is, you know, this Satan, this adversary figure, his real thing is his whole quest. His whole thing is people who have all the good stuff are obviously going to be fond of you God but take their stuff away and see what happens. That's not the same as why do bad things happen to good people, right? It's to what extent do people recognize where their sustenance and provision comes from. This to me is almost a, I can understand, I could read this as a midrash on man does not live by bread alone, you know, in a sort of roundabout way.

Harry Attridge:

Yeah, thinking about it a little bit further, I wonder if there is an attempt to say something about who God is or what God usually does in this portrait of the first couple of chapters that might in fact support or might mesh nicely with some of the critical dimensions of the theological conversation that’s going to be following. If God is someone who rolls the dice, God does not determine outcomes, there might be a resistance to certain notions of God predetermining and orchestrating everything that is.

Joel Baden:

Yeah. I was going to say, I would go so far, is God even, like, involved much, right? There's a sense of, there's a sort of laissez faire kind of deity, I think, depicted here where he's got other divine beings to go around and see what's happening. That's the setup at the beginning of the book is, the beginning of the chapter even, right? “Where have you come from?” God says to the adversary. “I was going to and fro on the earth and walking up and down on it.” It's just like, there's other people there to check on the day to day, and it's only when, there's a sense of God sort of sitting back and enjoying things and being prompted to intervene in a way that maybe isn't so common. 

Harry Attridge:

Yeah. I think one way of thinking about this is that the Book of Job doesn't actually present a well-developed theology of what God is or how God works, but it throws out questions and wants to say that the solutions that people have proposed in the past just don't work. Think about it more deeply friends. 

Joel Baden:

Right. Or even, think about it more deeply but also recognize that no matter how deeply you think about it, what is it that God says at the very end, out of the whirlwind, right? How could you possibly think that you understand what's going on with me? And here I think is, I mean, this to me is the, really the great message probably of the entire book, maybe of the entire Bible to a certain extent is, there's not some easy answer here. There's not some obvious mechanism by which you, human, can understand or even better control what's going on. There's more to this than you could possibly comprehend and your attempts to comprehend it, which to my mind is Proverbs. Or like the entirety of the wisdom tradition. Or even beyond that, even Torah, right? These are attempts to understand and sort of confine the deity's desires. I'll tell you what it is that God really wants us to do. And, I think the Book of Job says otherwise.  

Harry Attridge:

Yeah. The Book of Job asks an important question and forces us to ask those questions. It also gives us a little bit of support. The Lord gives, the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

Helena Martin:

Thanks for listening. For a transcript of today’s episode and lots more, check out YaleBibleStudy.org.

Chapter, Verse, and Season is a production of the Center for Continuing Education at Yale Divinity School. It’s produced by: Creator and Managing Editor, Joel Baden; Production Manager, Kelly Morrissey; Associate Producer, Aidan Stoddart; and I’m your Host and Executive Producer, Helena Martin. And our theme music is by Calvin Linderman.

We’ll be back with another conversation from Chapter, Verse, and Season.