BOOK OF JOB: INTRODUCTION TO THE LITERARY STRUCTURE

 

Below is a summary of a chapter in my unpublished book The Structure of Scripture. I will send the complete chapter to anyone requesting it at elmerphd21@hotmail.com.

What kind of book is this? It has been variously categorized as a poem, drama, expanded folktale, epic, comedy, tragedy, lament, wisdom literature, anti-wisdom literature, judicial process, history, historical allegory, epic and symposium. In fact, it resembles other great works of literature such as Hamlet, which can be rightly called drama, historical fiction, poetry, philosophical discourse or, as one humorist put it, “just a collection of famous quotations.”

In approaching the Book of Job, the problem is not so much one of identifying the individual blocks that make up the structure – those are fairly obvious; the major dilemma is how to assemble the blocks so that they form a recognizable architecture. This is a hopeless task in the minds of many commentators due to presumed layers of accretion in the text by which each subsequent editor tried to clarify or change the direction of thought of the previous contributor. Conservative scholars over the years have fought, somewhat unsuccessfully, to defend the basic literary unity of the book. Our basic approach is to assume that the book in its present form makes sense as a literary unity without attempting any process of reconstructing the text's history.

At the broadest level, the Book of Job can be divided by genre into a prose Prologue (1:1-2:13), followed by the various speeches given in poetic form, and finished off with a prose Epilogue (42:7-17). Digging down into the next level of organization, the poetic bulk of the book is comprised of a dialogue between Job and his three friends, some possible monologues by Job, a series of discourses by a somewhat mysterious character named Elihu, and speeches by God himself. The dialogue itself takes the form of three cycles in which Job first speaks and then interacts with each of the friends. A more detailed analysis of the book is shown in Fig. 1.

Sections I and I'

The Epilogue begins with a justification of Job's character to the friends (confirming God's assessment in Job 1:1), proceeds to a doubling of his worldly possessions, and ends with a summary of Job's lifespan. These same elements involving Job's person and surroundings are also present in the ABA order in Job 1:1-5. The descriptions of Job's life in I and I' have been called “a good summary of the narrative portrayal of the good life in the Bible.” David Dorsey’s analysis of the Epilogue divides it into the same three sub-sections without proposing any particular symmetrical relationship between these elements or the parallel elements in the opening verses of the book.

Sections II and II'

Proceeding inward to the next pair of sections, one notes that these units are the only ones that feature God himself. The second similarity between these two remote units is their division into two clearly delineated parts. The double form of God’s speech in Section II' has disturbed some critics, who see it as evidence of dislocations in the text. However, this doubling is necessary to parallel the double prologue. The two scenes in heaven begin with practically the same wording; a dialogue between God and Satan resulting in disasters for Job and ending with Job's response, which is then commented on favorably by the author. The parallel section, II', also consists of two sections – two speeches by God in which he answers Job “out of the whirlwind.” Each one begins with identical prosaic introductions and then proceeds to an exhortation to Job followed by an interrogation. Each of the two speeches ends with a challenge to Job followed by his response, just as do the two parts of Section II.

A third common factor between sections II and II' is the interesting way in which their two subsections each highlight the person/character or world/creation of Job and God, respectively. In other words, these sections use the two distinctives of sections I and I' as their dividing principle. Thus, Job's world is disrupted in Section IIA while it is his person that is affected in IIB. Similarly, but in reverse order, God's first speech (II'B) deals with the subject of Himself as creator and sustainer, followed by II'A which describes two examples of the creation itself.

Figure 1: The Structure of the Book of Job

I. Job's First State (1:1-5)

A. His Person / Character (1:1)

B. His World (1:2-4)

A'. His Person / Character (1:5)

        II. Scenes in Heaven and their Aftermath (1:6-2:10)

A. First Scene Regarding Job's World (1:6-22)

1. Interchange between Yahweh and Satan (1:6-12)

                                        2. Effect on Job (1:13-19)

                                            3. Job's Response (1:20-22)

B. Second Scene Regarding Job's Person (2:1-10)

1. Interchange between Yahweh and Satan (2:1-6)

                                        2. Effect on Job (2:7-9)

                                            3. Job's Response (2:10)

III. Job and His Three Friends: the Wisdom of Age (2:11-26:14)

Prose Introduction: Three Friends Remain Silent (2:11-13)

                                        A. Cycle One: Job/Eliphaz, Job/Bildad, Job/Zophar (chs. 3-11)

                                            B. Cycle Two: Job/Eliphaz, Job/Bildad, Job/Zophar (chs.12-20)

                                                C. Cycle Three: Job/Eliphaz, Job/Bildad, Job/--- (chs. 21-26)

                                                        IV. Job's Three Speeches (chs. 27-31)

                                                                A. “Job again took up his discourse” (ch. 27)

                                                                        B. A Hymn to Wisdom (ch. 28)

                                                                A'. “Job again took up his discourse” (chs. 29-31)

III'. The Elihu Speeches: the Wisdom of Youth (chs. 32-37) 

Prose Introduction: Elihu Had Remained Silent (32:1-5)

                                        A. “And Elihu answered” (32:6-22)

                                            B. “Hear my speech, O Job” (ch. 33)

                                                C. “Then Elihu said” (ch. 34)

                                                    D. “And Elihu said” (ch. 35)

                                                        E. “And Elihu continued” (36:1-37:13)

                                                            F. “Hear this, O Job” (37:14-24)

II'. Yahweh's Speeches Out of the Whirlwind (chs. 38-42)

B. Yahweh's Person/Character (38:1-40:5)

1. Yahweh's First Speech (38:1-40:2)

                                        2. Job's Response (40:3-5)

A. Yahweh's World (40:6-42:6)

1. Yahweh's Second Speech (40:6-41:34)

                                        2. Job's Response (42:1-6)

I'. Job's Second State (42:7-17)

A. His Person / Character (42:7-9)

B. His World (42:10-15)

A'. His Person / Character (42:16-17)

Sections III and III'

The dialogues between Job and his three friends, the largest section of the book, have been the subject of the most minute analysis over the years. The clear literary pattern to the interplay between these four characters in the book is shown below.

Cycle 1                      Cycle 2                         Cycle 3

Job (ch. 3)                 Job (chs. 12-14)            Job (ch. 21)

Eliphaz (chs. 4-5)     Eliphaz (ch. 15)             Eliphaz (ch. 22)

Job (ch. 6-7)             Job (chs. 16-17)             Job (chs. 23-24)

Bildad (ch. 8)           Bildad (ch. 18)               Bildad (ch. 25)

Job (chs. 9-10)         Job (ch. 19)                    Job (ch. 26-?)

Zophar (ch. 11)        Zophar (ch. 20)                 ---

This scheme for Section III begins, as do most other treatments, with Job's first speech although, properly speaking, it is better viewed as a lament that catalyzes the attempts of the friends to express the views of traditional wisdom that follow. Those who feel that the last cycle was originally complete, with a longer speech by Bildad and a third Zophar speech, have seen these missing portions misplaced in Job's speeches in chs. 26-31. However, Childs seems to be on track in stating that the real function of Bildad's truncated third speech and the absence of any response by Zophar is to show the failure of the debate to resolve the issue at hand. The dialogue simply grinds to a halt.

The attempts of the three friends to confront Job (Section III) are resumed by Elihu in the symmetrically parallel Section III'. There is an inclusio of sorts to this section formed by Elihu's opening comments regarding those who “justify themselves rather than God” (32:2) and his closing condemnation of “those who are wise in their own conceits” (37:24).

These six speeches tend to group themselves into three cycles with alternating addressees. Thus, they parallel, at least in a formal manner, the three cycles of speeches in Section III. At least two plausible reasons can be cited for the inclusion of Elihu’s speeches in addition to those of Job’s three friends. In the first place, only Elihu possesses an impressive Jewish ancestry.  However, more important is the fact that whereas the three friends represent the collected wisdom of the sages, Elihu’s arguments are those of an angry young man. Neither source of wisdom appears to count much in God’s eyes.

Section IV

The bulk of material found between the three cycles of debate and Elihu's speeches is not, as has been frequently asserted, a hodgepodge of poetry from different time periods, often expressing ideas that seem foreign coming from Job's lips. Instead, it can be seen to possess a very orderly pattern:

A. Oath of clearance (27:2-6)

B. Job's enemies (27:7-10)

C. Fate of the wicked (27:11-23)

D. Hymn to wisdom (ch. 28)

C'. Job's past good life (ch. 29)

B'. Job's enemies (ch. 30)

A'. Oath of clearance (ch. 31)

The only elements of the above pattern that do not seem to precisely match up are C and C'. It is therefore attractive to adopt the suggestion of others that Job is in fact indulging in purposeful mimicry of his friends' ideas, using almost their identical words. If so, this parodying critique of traditional wisdom regarding the wicked in Section IVC is aptly balanced in C' by Job's bitter reminiscences regarding God's fickle treatment of a righteous man like himself.

The Hymn to Wisdom (Job 28)

If Section IV is the center of the chiastic architecture of the book of Job, then ch. 28 is the center of the center, and thus the pivotal point of the book. Confirmation of the importance of this chapter comes from Dorsey’s alternative literary analysis. In literary style and depth of thought, this section of Job is certainly well suited to its position. It is in this poem that Job wrestles with the issue of wisdom, realizes that it cannot be found by unaided mankind. In addition, the climax of this hymn comes at Job 28:28, where wisdom is defined using the exact same attribute enumerated for Job in the first verse of the book: fear of the LORD.