Related Papers
Avar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Life and Society in the Ancient Near East
The resistance to mainstream assumptions about retribution in Job and Tobit as theologically positive deviance
2022 •
Katherine Southwood
This article uses material from organizational studies and medical anthropology and sociology to address the value of the idea that bodily dysfunction or illness depart from a norm of health. It argues that examples of positive deviance can be found in the books of Tobit and in Job. Positive deviance describes behavior that notably departs from expected norms, albeit in a direction that a referent group finds positive. In much of the Hebrew Bible, there is a tight connection between the ideas of wrongdoing, bodily suffering, and retribution. However, the books of Tobit and Job are examples of a departure away from this norm. In Job and Tobit the portrayal of circ*mstances in the text depart from expected norms with a view to encouraging the referent group (i.e., audiences) towards a positive assessment of the departure. The character Tobit, in line with dominant thought about retribution assumes his blindness is a result of some inadvertent or inherited sinfulness. However, Tobit’s ...
Retribution or Reality: A Short Theological Introduction to the Book of Job
2023 •
Michael S . Moore
But Man is Born to Trouble ... Metaphors in the Discussion on Hope and Consolation in Job 3-31. Dissertation, KU Leuven.
2017 •
Hanneke van Loon
The topic of this dissertation is the theme of suffering in Job 3–31. To trace Job’s conceptualization of his suffering, this dissertation focuses on metaphors. The analysis of metaphors demonstrates that Job goes through different stages of suffering in chapters 3–19 and that he starts to rebuild his worldview in chapters 19–31. The theoretical approach to metaphors is based on insights from cognitive linguistics. Chapter 1 presents the theoretical framework. It explains different cognitive linguistic theories on metaphor and it introduces the concept of ‘deliberately used metaphor’. Deliberately used metaphors are metaphors that are signaled in the text and that explicitly shift the reader’s attention from the target domain to the source domain. It is proposed that especially the analysis of the source domains that are evoked by deliberately used metaphors provides new input for the interpretation of literary texts. Chapter 2 clarifies the approach to the book of Job and the theme of suffering therein. Firstly, it explains how the approach in this dissertation relates to the tenets and interests of current approaches to the book of Job. Secondly, it discusses the structure of Job 3–31, including the question of the integrity of the so-called third speech cycle (Job 23–27) and the wisdom poem (Job 28). Finally, it presents an overview of the different conceptualizations of suffering that will be discussed in chapters 3–6. Chapters 3–5 are the main body of this dissertation. In these chapters, the conceptualization of Job’s suffering in Job 3–22 is traced by means of the analysis of deliberately used metaphors in selected passages. Chapter 3 shows that in the opening speech, Job suffers from the unrest that results from the realization that he is imprisoned in life. Chapter 4 brings in view that in the first speech cycle, Job suffers from a lack of hope: a lack of hope in life in 7:1-11, a lack of hope in death in 10:18-22, and a lack of hope on God’s recognition in 14:4-12. Chapter 5 contends that in the second speech cycle, the social dimension of suffering moves into the center of Job’s attention. It demonstrates that Job becomes aware of the denial of consolation from the part of his friends in 17:6-16 and 19:20-29, and that exactly this is the trigger that helps him to arrive at a new understanding of his situation and to restore God as his Redeemer in 19:25. Chapter 6 concerns the implications of Job’s new understanding for his worldview and for his relation to God. Firstly, it illustrates how these themes develop in the remainder of the dialogue (Job 23–31). Thereafter, it examines Job’s conceptualization of the position of other sufferers in 24:2-12, 30:3-8, and 31:12-22. In conclusion, it is claimed that chapters 23–31 reflect a process in which Job translates his own experience into a call upon the audience to adopt a new attitude toward the unfortunate ones in society.
Intertextual Discourse And the Problem of God: The Intersection of the Speeches of Job and Deuteronomy
Kipp Swinney
"“‘Without My Flesh I Will See God’: Job’s Rhetoric of the Body.” Journal of Biblical Literature 132, no. 2 (2013): 295–313.
Amy Erickson
Journal of Religion and Health
Psychosomatic Approach to Job’s Body and Mind: Based on Somatic Symptom Disorder. JORH 59(4) (2020): 2032–44.
2020 •
JiSeong James Kwon
In Job’s speeches, metaphors to expose the status of his mind and emotion are recurrently connected to his physical body parts that are significant instruments in expressing his unimaginable mental anguish (7:15a; 9:27-31; 14:21; 16:15). His broken body parts signify the foremost reason of his suffering, namely the fact that God’s enmity against Job is destroying human body (6:4, 9; 16:7; 30:19, 21; 7:12; 10:8-13, 16-17; 16:14; 9-11, 13). Because of this, Job’s sensibility malfunctions, and God’s presence is hidden from Job’s sight (9:11; 23:8-9; 16:20; 10:4; 19:25-27). Moreover, Job’s body metaphors are sometimes used for vindicating his innocence and are suggested as faithful witnesses in a court (9:17, 20; 16:8, 17-18; 19:20-24; 23:11; 27:4, 6; 31:35-36). This paper, therefore, will show how Job’s body parts and sensibility denote his cognitive dissonance and mental turmoil and will indicate that irrelevant to the physical suffering from the Adversary (2:7), Job is experiencing a sort of “somatic symptom disorder” (SSD) which means that persons focus on physical symptoms such as fatigue, fragility, and pain according to their particular cognitive schematic in terms of property loss, extreme anxiety, and the absence of God that lead them to chief anguish and agony in their daily lives. The inter-relationship between body and mind/spirit of Job plays a central role in resisting the retribution principle of Job’s friends and in doubting the justice of God.
Journal of Biblical Literature
The Rhetoric of Condemnation in the Book of Job
2020 •
Lance Hawley
Abstract:The relationship between speech and a person’s identification as righteous or wicked is a recurrent topic in the Joban dialogue. The objective of this article is to demonstrate how Job and his friends link Job’s protest to his potential or realized condemnation. The multiple evaluations of Job’s speech by the friends and Job himself reveal a development within the dialogue. The friends move from consolatory rebuke toward condemnation and blatant accusation not on the basis of secret sin that Job committed prior to his calamity but because of his words in chapter 3 and following. Job knows the rashness of his words, but he decidedly speaks them anyway, eschewing caution and proceeding with his accusation against God. Paradoxically, it is by means of his supposed self-condemnatory speech that Job moves from hope for death to hope for vindication. YHWH also evaluates Job’s words, assessing them as both ignorant (38:2) and right (42:7), thus rejecting the dialogue’s assumed retributive relationship between accusatory protest and condemnation.
Journal for the Study of the Old Testament
"Morality and Mortality: The Dialogical Interpretation of Psalm 90 in the Book of Job." Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 44 (2020):624-641.
Will Kynes
This article identifies dialogical interpretation in Job as a form of aggadic inner-biblical exegesis. Job and the friends frequently attack each other through allusions to each other’s words. This interpretive dispute spreads into their allusions to other texts, which are drawn into the dialogue and caught up in the conflict. Job and the friends frequently interpret these texts differently, capitalizing on their tensions and manipulating them into weapons in their debate. Ps. 90, with its ambiguous presentation of specific and universal referents, God as deliverer and destroyer, and human transience as punishment and grounds for pity, becomes one of these weapons. While the friends appeal to the psalm to urge Job from complaint to confession, Job incorporates it into his divine confrontation. By depicting this contentious dialectic between his characters’ interpretations, the Job poet produces a meta-interpretation that represents the psalm’s conflicted advocation for sufferers courageously to confront God.
The Book of Job: Aesthetics, Ethics, Hermeneutics; ed. Leora Batnizky and Ilana Pardes
Whose Job Is This? Whose Job Is This? Dramatic Irony and double entendre in the Book of Job
2015 •
Naphtali Meshel
The Book of Job
2014 •
Leora Batnitzky
