Untitled Document

2) Job 3-42:6 Poetry, with alternating speeches between Job and the three friends (3-31) followed by the speeches of Elihu (32-37) and God (38-41), with Job's response to God's speech (42: 1-6).

3) Job 42: 7-18 Final prose section

Under this theory of division, the first section states the "problem" of the Book of Job, by having Job suffer his tremendous and undeserved loss; the second discusses various approaches to pain and loss through alternating speeches of Job, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar, culminating in long speeches of Elihu and God; and the third resolves the problem by having Job be restored to double possessions with a replacement family. It is a division that makes a lot of sense from a literary perspective.

I propose instead to divide the Book of Job into thirds, with the hinges separating the three sections being the beautiful poem on mortality (Job 14) and the hymn to wisdom (Job 28). Thus, I suggest a division of Job in terms of the flow of ideas rather than the accidents of prose or poetic form of the writing. By dividing it into thirds, with the hinges at Job 14 and Job 28, I propose we give attention to the tone of the book, its development, its whispers, its movement.

Job 14 marks the psychological nadir of the book, and the poem reflects Job's utter bereftness. Nature illustrates the hope of regeneration through the new growth of trees and roots (14: 7-9) but mortals die and are no more (14: 10-12). Upon realizing the impossibility of "living again" people experience agony of gargantuan proportions. Our only feeling is our pain (14: 22). Job 3-14, therefore, takes us on a journey in which we burrow into the innermost reaches of despair and hopelessness.

Some of that hopelessness continues in the next several chapters of Job, with Job 17 containing a strkingingly bleak assessment of life, but by the time one gets to Job 28 a new tone pervades the book. There is a glimmer of hope; a sense that our resources to deal with immense pain are not only interior to ourselves; a feeling that there is a principle of wisdom in the universe which can actually lend insight into our suffering. Maybe the suffering can be redeemed, maybe not. But the existence of wisdom excites the heart.

From Job 29-42 the action rises. Confusion still reigns, to be sure, but the profound desolation of the earlier chapters is dispelled. Resolution will come, but the reader who reaches Job 29 knows that we are no longer in the Marianas Trench of emotional emptiness.

Another suggestion for dividing Job follows in the next mini-essay.

[Next]