This book brings together published and unpublished articles on Job written over two decades. The majority were originally presented or published in academic settings; about one third of them were also delivered in a somewhat modified form in a variety of congregational venues. The blend of the academic and the theological has been characteristic of my work over the last four decades; I have been unwilling to uncouple rigorous exegesis from robust theological reflection. I have also consistently aspired to connect and integrate biblical motifs with a wide range of art forms, including fiction, poetry, drama, music, art, and iconography. The book of Job has long been an especially rich reservoir for such attention. As Mr. Zuss says to Nickels in Archibald MacLeishâs J.B., âthereâs always someone playing Job.â The essays here exemplify how much I have learned about Job from âexegetesâ of all kinds.
The essays are reproduced here as they were originally published. The style and format, therefore, will not be uniform. The tenor and tone of the essays will differ, some will be more academic and formal, others more personal and interactive, although I trust no less substantive.
I have arranged them here in sections, primarily according to what in retrospect seems to be an appropriate thematic focus. I hope this will serve as a guide for those who may want to connect the essays with the conventional thematic outline of the book of Job: Prologue (Job 1â2), Job and his Friends (Job 3â37), the Divine Speeches (Job 38:1â42:6); and the Epilogue (Job 42:7â14). In the end, however, the categorizing of the essays is rather arbitrary. Almost any one of them could be relocated; suffering like Jobâs â no less than the effort to understand it â transgresses all boundaries.
It has been interesting and revealing (at least for me) to track the trends and trajectories in my thinking about Job over these many years. I look over my own shoulder and see myself returning again and again to issues that have constantly itched at my sensibilities. In this regard, the lead essay is appropriately placed. What are we to think about a God who, according to the Joban story, is complicit in the death of seven sons and three daughters âfor no reasonâ (Job 2:3)? From first encounter to this day these three words have been the most unsettling I have ever encountered in my journey with God and Job. Like Job, I have tried to wrestle the question to the ground, to pin it underneath the weight of some invincible solution that does not mock clear-eyed truth and integrity. Like Job, I have insisted on arguing with God (Job 13:3). At best, I have learned something about what the English novelist Sebastian Faulks calls âthe grandeur of human insignificance.â The affirmation does not quiet my disquiet but it has sustained me through years of trying to comprehend the incomprehensible. âDonât write what you know,â the National Book Award winner Colum McCann advises those who sit down to the blank page every day, âwrite toward what you want to know.â
I am grateful to Jennifer Koosed for including the book in the Biblical Interpretation Series and to Liesbeth Hugenholtz at Brill, who has facilitated the project from beginning to end. I want to thank the students who have walked this Joban trail with me over many years, especially Tricia Vesely and Barry Huff. I have been their teacher; now, I am their student. With enormous pride and high expectations, I dedicate this book to them.