Job 4‐10 Eliphaz and Bildad’s First Speeches with Job’s replies Introduction: Eliphaz and Bildad both believe that Job caused his own suffering. Eliphaz tries to convince Job that retribution is a belief he espoused and comforted people using and now he has to apply the same lessons for himself. Success in overcoming these tests will prevent death. Job is frustrated in his response. Bildad believes Job has done something to put him with those who are Godless and that is the cause of his suffering, as well as the suffering of his children leading to their death. Job responds by saying that no one would ever be able to stand in God’s presence justified so even if Job sinned, God couldn’t punish Job for only that reason as then everyone would be punished. All Scripture Citations are from New American Bible, Revised Edition 2010 Key Theological Question First Dialogue (Job 4‐7): How does personal experience change one’s theological beliefs over time? Key Theological Question Second Dialogue (Job 8‐10): What actions cause you to deserve your own suffering, and why is suffering not handed equally for the same or similar sins? Contextual Analysis First Dialogue: Job was a believer in the theology of retribution according to Eliphaz (Job 4:3‐7). Eliphaz’s first response is to follow your own advice and endure to the end, because you do not want to die. Eliphaz also warns that Job’s ambition and success might have caused his suffering because it left him too many attachments. His advice is to make a plea with God and if he is justified he will be restored. Part of Job’s struggle in addition to his suffering is that his beliefs suddenly do not make sense. For someone who is blameless, going through suffering seems unfair because it destroys the retribution equation. One major challenge going forward for Job is that his personal experiences will shape his belief. In ancient Jewish thought, there was a strong communal stance; however, in practice since village were far apart and the location of the Temple high on a desert hill made the journey to worship at the One Temple (note: not like Catholicism or religion now which often has many temples of the same faith in a nearby area.) Ancient Judaism had one temple that was the center of all religious activity. However, because it was difficult to journey to the temple, personal experience of God had some role to play in formation because everything could not be determined by the lawyers and the heads of temple sacrifice as there was not enough availability. So there was only one set of rules, and most people believed in retribution as a form of punishment, but those rules were not always followed exactly as people might have known orthodox faith or they might not have. In other words, belief was not always consistent among different villages of Judaism. People’s differing beliefs arise from personal experience of God acting in their communities and connecting those experiences to a scribe who can put the experience together as a whole. Modern Analysis First Dialogue: There are many things that we have learned about consciousness and psychological development as we have turned toward the individual. In Job’s story, I want to focus on modern thoughts on religious conversion. Job is in a difficult spot, the belief structure that he based his entire life around suddenly is falling apart. This existential crisis causes some insensitivity on the part of his friends as they still want him to believe. The commentator writes, “They see Job’s terrible suffering that might become their fate, too, if their theology proves wrong.” (O’Connor, Kathleen, Job: Little Rock Scripture Series, 2012, 26) Job’s friends are not helpful because they do not want Job’s fate and so they will themselves to believe that Job cannot be innocent. If Job is innocent, then their entire theology is wrong. It takes great courage to change beliefs and one’s image of God. Job feels he must do so in order to make sense of his situation. This is a key to any first philosophy; any new work must explain more of reality than previous reflections. This happens on a personal level as well, worlds are reframed because of circumstances regularly. With the rapid changing pace of the modern world, these breakthroughs happen very quickly, almost too quickly sometimes. When we are reading Job it is important to know that Job’s personal reflections occur because his experience makes his theology make no sense anymore. In a community based world, this would be odd and part of Job’s struggle is that he is standing outside of what is seen as acceptable by his community (and the community of people at the time.) Contextual Analysis Second Dialogue: Ancient Jewish Religion would have had punishments for breaking tenets of the religious law. Women caught in adultery were stoned. Various blasphemy and violence were also punishable by death. Ancient Jewish religion relied heavily on cause and effect. A particular action causes God to be angry and cause suffering. Much of the ancient world had some reasoning of cause and effect in their religion. Judaism was the only one that relied on cause and effect to justify suffering. For most of the ancient world, cause and effect were attempts to prevent suffering and suffering that was caused was by action of the gods, either purposeful or accidental. Judaism is also the only ancient religion to see the creation of humanity as a good in itself and not as an accident (meaning oops, not a philosophical term for characteristic). The cultural borrowing between these two groups led to our modern dialogue that randomness is not evil (randomness as chaos is evil in ancient Judaism). Polytheistic religions taught about randomness affecting all people and Judaic monotheism taught about the importance of humans being good for their own sake. Modern Analysis Second Dialogue: Suffering is not handed out equally because equality can never happen given subjective consciousness. What is great suffering for one will not necessarily bother another. In some sense, suffering occurs because of our attachments (this is why St. Ignatius and the Buddha talk about the importance of indifference, putting effort forth for positive outcomes but not preferring one result over another). Bildad is appealing to Job that his attachment to his success and building up the lives of his kids led to his current suffering. The challenge we have to think about as readers is that love requires some attachment and compassion for another person. This attachment will cause suffering if something happens to the other, but is this suffering plotted to teach us, or random acts? Bildad is appalled at the notion that the innocent might suffer. Free will was not a notion that was utilized in ancient Judaism. Everything was controlled by God, even the bad. In Catholic thought, free will is still utilized as a key initiator of sin in the world. There was also no original sin in Judaism; therefore, the suffering that was called for in response to sin was a social construct based on the experience that people harm others so there needs to be a system for containing the damage that others can cause. This is why commandments had harsh punishments in ancient law, protection of society. Modern advances in understanding the individual psyche help underscore why individuals harm others and restorative work that can be done to reintegrate people into communities. But without training and secured spaces to do this work, serious threats to society had to be eliminated at all costs. Bildad is convinced that Job must be guilty of something because God controls the bad impulses of people and directs them to harm those who deserve it. Now we know that high‐end criminals have specific reasons why they do what they do, often related to some trauma suffered by the person. We don’t assume that people’s good and bad impulses are controlled by God. Some go in the direction of psychological determinism in saying that people do not control impulses at all but are pre‐programmed. This is one of the greater challenges to Catholic faith today. Overarching Theme: Idolatry and Imagery All three friends are engaging discourse about God given their experience and images of God. God as judge is the image where the three friends start. God is the one responsible for balancing out good and evil in the world. God is completely omnipotent in this story controlling good and evil. Like the characters in Job, our images of God also affect how we interact with the world. Much has been written in French and German philosophy in the 19th‐21st centuries about the image of God. The most harm in human society comes when people overvalue one particular image of God or aspect of commonality to the detriment of all others. In other words, idolatry, instead of believing in mystery, encourages us to attach certainty to our preferred expressions of living. This is a common theme starting in Nietzsche and his disgust of Christianity. However, this theme continues in French retrievals of God in philosophy as well as most social science disciplines. A common theme in scholarly literature is unknowing, or, coming to the realization that as people we know very little about the universe. Taking our source of Job as grounding, all three are dealing with the reality that their image of God is shaken. For Job especially, God does not seem like the omnipotent judge that judges good and evil to create order. God seems like something else and the journey for them is to find meaning when their predominant image of God no longer matches their experience. The final goal is to embrace a reality where God is not anything and yet is in all things. For us as readers, this is our journey as well.