A Lawsuit Drama

           

            The Book of Job presents that philosophical answer in poetry and prose through the vehicle of drama.  As drama, The Book of Job is understandably a legal drama.[2]  The moral issues of theodicy are easily translated into a legal framework of duties and rights.  In fact, The Book of Job consists of a number of overlapping and interlocking trials.  God puts Job on trial.  Satan puts God on trial.  God puts Job on trial a second time.  Job’s friends put Job on trial.  Job puts his friends on trial.  Everything builds to the climactic moment when Job puts God himself on trial and refuses to acquit him.

 

            The Book of Job virtually opens with the God’s trial of Job.  The time is Rosh Hashanah, the first of the 10 Days of Awe.  The place is heaven, the High Court of Heaven.  God opens the books of life and reviews the lives of all men and women.  He finds his servant Job to be sinless.  In God’s judgment, Job is “blameless and upright, one who fears God and turns from evil” at every juncture.  He is humanity at its very best.  He is the type of person all of us could be and should be.  God’s judgment sets the philosophical stage for all the action that follows.  Because Job is sinless, the evil that will befall him is not punishment for sin.  Because Job has no character flaw, the evil that will befall him is not for correction or character development. 

 

            Almost as soon as God’s judgment on Job issues, Satan challenges the judgment.  It is a profound three-fold challenge. 

 

(a)  First, God is wrong in his judgment on Job’s goodness.  Job is a sinner.  He has sin in his life God missed.  Job may intend the good, but his motive is selfishness.  He serves God only for what he can get from God.  Satan claims he can show God that hidden sin.  Satan claims he can even get Job to curse God.  Satan’s challenge is a claim to the soul of Job. 

 

(b) Second, God has lost his authority to judge. God is in error.  He has passed false judgment.  He is no longer a perfect being and should step down from his throne.  Satan’s challenge is a claim to the throne of heaven. 

 

(c) Third, God is wrong about his plan for mankind.  Human beings are not fit for relationship with God.  They do not love God.  They seek only to manipulate him to get what they can from him.  The very idea of a meaningful relationship between God and man is fundamentally wrong.  Humanity should be destroyed as a failed project.  Satan’s challenge is a claim to destroy the earth and all in it. 

 

With this challenge, there is silence in the heavenly court.  Satan has put God himself on trial.

 

            God picks up the gauntlet and elects trial by ordeal.  He chooses Job as his personal champion to settle the issue of whether love for God can be completely disinterested.  God directs Satan as his personal agent to inflict undeserved and unremitted evil upon his beloved servant Job.  God’s hands are tied.  He cannot tell Job what has transpired.  He cannot give Job the reason for his suffering, lest that give Job a selfish motive to continue his love for God.  

 

            God’s trial by ordeal is truly an ordeal for Job.  While it starts in heaven, the trial is played out on the earth during the 10 Days of Awe.  Job is stripped of everything.  God casts Job out his Eden into the wasteland that is the world as we know it.  Unlike Adam, Job is expelled from his garden not for his sin but for his righteousness.  Not surprisingly, Job struggles to keep faith with a loving God in the midst of this world of undeserved and unremitted suffering.  He longs to know the reason behind evil in the world.  Through five speeches on the Day of Atonement, Job turns that request into a demand.  Through an Oath of Innocence, he institutes formal legal proceedings against God to provoke that answer.  Job’s claim is two-fold.  God is the author of undeserved evil in the world.  Man has a right to know the reason why God has sent such evil into the world.  And Job stakes the propriety of his challenge on the integrity of his ways.  He puts his eternal salvation on the line and demands that God answer him.  If God fails to appear or appears but fails to give the required answer, then Job is morally and legally entitled to condemn God.  The condemnation is by way of a curse.  God’s trial has built to a feverish pitch.  Satan has promised that Job would curse God.  And now, Job has set in motion to legal machinery to do it.  In the eyes of Job’s friends, this Oath of Innocence is blasphemy.  But in the eyes of God, this Oath of Innocence is the pinnacle of righteousness.

 

            To the surprise of all, God appears to Job.   But, on the terms of his trial by Satan, God cannot give any direct answers to Job, lest those answers give Job a selfish motive to continue his love for God.  Through two speeches, God reviews the natural and the mythological worlds, avoiding any discussion of the human world.  God suggests the existence of a possible answer.  But the suggestions are veiled.  And God never broaches the subject of selfless love.  God has been called to give a defense for his creation of this world. Instead, God rests his case having hinted at the existence of a defense, but having never presenting it.  And with that act, God places before Job and all mankind a single question: will they condemn God that they themselves might be justified? 

 

            Job understands God’s veiled suggestions and draws the proper inferences.  Job chooses not to condemn God at this time but to continue to love him.  He melts to his knees in worship.  Yet Job refuses to retract his lawsuit.  He refuses to withdraw his moral and legal claim to an explanation for evil in the world.  He will neither prematurely acquit God nor prematurely condemn God.  Job grants God the benefit of time to prepare a full and meaningful defense to the charges.  Job gives God all of human history to work out his plan for evil in the world.  The matter is adjourned to the Day of the Final Judgment for Job to hear from his Redeemer a third time.  At that time, Job will pass his final judgment on God.   If God fails to give a necessary and sufficient explanation for evil on the Day of the Final Judgment, then Job will condemn God.  And he would be right in doing so.  In a single moment, Job has become the perfect embodiment of the selfless love and moral integrity for which the world was created.

 

            A moral not an aesthetic resolution

 

            Many scholars find the legal metaphor of an Oath of Innocence inappropriate, though for different reasons. 

 

            Some liberal scholars[3] opt for an aesthetic, not a moral, resolution of the question of evil in the world.  They find a sublime beauty in God’s review of the animal and physical worlds, Behemoth and Leviathan.  And it is certainly there.  But that is all they find.  They find no suggestions of a moral purpose in God’s creation and control of evil.  Indeed, they feel none could be forthcoming.  God is beyond good and evil so no moral resolution is possible.   Since no moral resolution is possible, a legal metaphor such as a lawsuit dramatizing the moral question is inappropriate.  They interpret Job to understand that position.  And they interpret him to retract the lawsuit in its entirety.  They interpret the lawsuit metaphor to be inappropriate because there are no answers to the moral question of evil in the world.  To the extent there is a scholarly consensus on The Book of Job and there probably is not such a consensus, this is the majority reading.

 

            This author feels such liberal scholars miss a moral resolution for five reasons. 

 

(a) First, they fail to give adequate weight to Satan’s first speech in heaven setting out the moral solution.  Selfless love is the reason God chooses to create a world of undeserved and unremitted suffering for Job and by implication, for us.  This sets the entire plot in motion.  Their resolution however leaves this important point hanging such that the beginning and ending are completely disjointed. 

 

(b) Second, they misinterpret Job’s struggle with God to be a request for a restoration of his former position, rather than a request to know the reason behind evil in the world.  As such, they see the moral issue Job raises to be nothing more than a retributive version of justice whereby righteousness is rewarded.  This is not the moral right Job raises in his Oath of Innocence.  The moral right is the right to know the reason behind evil in the world.

 

(c) Third, they fail to appreciate the moral restrictions under which God has to operate.  God cannot reveal any moral answers directly without defeating his very purpose in the creation and control of evil.  As a result, they miss the suggestions of moral purpose in God’s two speeches and the inferences God would have Job draw. 

 

(d) Fourth, they fail to fully appreciate the legal dynamics of the enforcement mechanism of Job’s Oath of Innocence.  In particular, they fail to appreciate the distinction between causal responsibility and moral blameworthiness.  Thus, they do not understand God’s comments concerning vindication and condemnation in his first speech to Job.  And they do not understand Job’s hesitation to proceed beyond his own vindication to a condemnation of God in Job’s first speech to God.  Ultimately, they fail to see Job’s adjournment and continuation of his Oath of Innocence implied by the allusion to the story of Abraham and Sodom and Gomorrah in Job’s final speech.

 

(e) Finally, they fail to give full expression to God’s ultimate judgment on Job.  Job and only Job spoke rightly about God.  In the face of such a judgment, there is no room to deny the ultimate propriety of the moral and legal question as a way of framing man’s encounter with God.        

 

            Some conservative scholars[4] opt for a moral resolution of the question of evil in the world, but their resolution is equally unsatisfying.  They interpret Job’s so-called excessive words in his speeches preceding the Oath of Innocence to be morally wrong.  They interpret Job’s raising of the Oath of Innocence to be a sin of presumption.  While they accept God’s two judgments on Job in heaven, they feel subsequent events show Job sinning.  While God is not beyond good and evil, God is under no moral obligation to reveal any reason for sending evil into the world.  Thus they would have Job retract his lawsuit in its entirety and repent morally for either his so-called excessive words, his raising of the lawsuit or both.  They feel the legal metaphor is inappropriate because while there is an answer to the moral question of evil in the world, no human being has a right to that answer and God is under no duty to give that answer. To the extent there is a scholarly consensus on The Book of Job and there probably is not such a consensus, this is the minority reading.

 

            This author feels such conservative scholars miss a satisfactory moral resolution for three reasons. 

 

(a) First, they fail to understand the depth of Satan’s challenge to God.  It is not merely that Job will curse God.  It is that God is wrong in his judgment on Job’s goodness.  God has missed sin in Job’s life.  Such scholars think their moral resolution is possible, because although Job sins, Job does not actually curse God.  The problem they have is that their resolution actually makes Satan right in his challenge of God.  Satan claimed Job was a sinner and they feel Job sinned.  Thus Satan is in the right in his lawsuit with God and God should step down from his throne and destroy mankind. 

 

(b) Second, they fail to give proper weight to Job’s blamelessness and integrity.  The raising of the Oath of Innocence is an expression of that blamelessness and integrity.  It is what God expects of Job, though he cannot tell him that directly.  If Job sins in raising the lawsuit against God, then the sin is blasphemy and God is seriously mistaken in his judgment of Job’s blamelessness and integrity. 

(c) Finally, they fail to give full expression to God’s ultimate judgment on Job.  Job and only Job spoke rightly about God.  In the face of such a judgment, there is no room to attribute sin or wrongdoing to Job for either his so-called excessive words or for his Oath of Innocence.  In the face of such a judgment, there is no room to deny the ultimate propriety of the moral and legal question as a way of framing man’s encounter with God.   

 

            My personal interpretation charts a new middle course between these two-fold horrors: a liberal Scylla which places God beyond good and evil and a conservative Charybdis which attributes sin to Job, either for his so-called excessive words, his Oath of Innocence or both.  I reject both streams of conventional scholarly interpretation, because they fail to integrate all the elements in The Book of Job.  God has a moral reason for sending evil.  Man has a need and a right to know that reason. But God need not provide that reason here and now.  An adjournment of God’s trial to the Day of the Final Judgment and its continuation then is strongly implied.  It is implied through the allusion to Abraham.  It is implied through the allusion to a Redeemer who stands up in court at the Final Judgment to plead Job’s cause.  It is implied through the allusion to the apocalyptic destruction of Leviathan at the Messianic banquet and the explanation of all things that follows.  The legal metaphor is highly appropriate.  A satisfactory moral solution is only possible because of the distinction between casual responsibility and moral blameworthiness embedded in Job’s Oath of Innocence.  That distinction is central to the criminal law defense of justification or necessity.  God may be causally responsible for the evil in the world, but not morally blameworthy for it.  He has a necessary and sufficient reason for the evil and will ultimately give it.  Job grants him that time without denying his need to know and without withdrawing his right to know.  In this work, my intention is to present a single comprehensive and coherent interpretation of The Book of Job that preserves the moral integrity of both God and man.

 

            An Interpretative Challenge

 

            Interpreting The Book of Job is a profound struggle for all who read it and hope to understand it. 

 

            The book itself offers some help, though it is surprising how many readers manage to disregard the signs and lose their way.  The book offers two interpretative aids.  The first is God’s judgment, repeated twice by God and once by the author, that Job is “blameless and upright, fearing God and turning from evil” on every occasion.  The second is God’s judgment that Job has spoken rightly in what he said about God.  These two aids bracket the work and set the parameters for any legitimate interpretation of the author’s message.  Any interpretation that calls Job’s integrity into question for demanding that God give an answer as to why there is evil in world can be summarily ruled out as illegitimate.  Any interpretation that calls the ultimate propriety of Job’s moral question into question can be similarly and summarily ruled out as illegitimate. 

 

            Within those two parameters of interpretation, four things call for the closest examination a reader can muster: (a) Satan’s speech to God, (b) Job’s Oath of Innocence, (c) God’s two speeches to Job and (d) Job’s two responses to God.  Only a proper handling of these four keys will unlock the treasures to be found in The Book of Job. 

 

            The Book of Job demands much of its readers.  In all the overlapping and intersecting lawsuits, the book invites the reader to judgment.  It demands judgment on the part of the reader.  It provokes judgment on the part of the reader.  With its provocative language and anti-climaxes, it even tempts the reader to false judgment.  And yet it condemns with the harshest judgment those who judge deceitfully or prematurely, showing bias either towards man or God.  In many ways, The Book of Job is an abyss of eternal peril for as you look into it, it looks into you.  More than any other biblical book, this book will tell you who you are by the choices it forces you to make.