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All literary scholars who study the Book of Job immediately notice the difference, both in style and content, between Job 1-2 and Job 3-41. The first two chapters are written in prose. Chapter 3 begins nearly 40 chapters of poetry. In the first two chapters Job accepts his fate; until his closing words of complaint in 31:40 he rebels against it with every fiber of his being. The Satan and God, two of the protagonists in the first two chapters, are absent for many chapters. Indeed, The Satan never reappears. As a result of these differences, most suggest that these two sections of Job, if not contradictory, don't fit well together and show the results of imperfect editing.

The nub of the contradiction is the difference in Job's attitude in chapters 2 and 3 towards his loss. In 2:10, after his great loss, Job upbraids his wife and then says, "Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?" He is a model of perfect Hebrew piety. Nevertheless, at the bginning of the poetic section, within seven verses of 2:10, he curses the day of his birth (3:3). One of the problems of the book of Job is to explain how these apparently contradictory reactions cohere.

Dickinson's Poem

My contention is that there is a perfect psychological continuity between Job 2 and Job 3, and that this continuity can be illustrated through a brief consideration of Emily Dickinson's poem "After Great Pain, a Formal Feeling Comes" (Poem 341). In that poem, Dickinson describes how emotional numbness follows great grief. She calls it a "formal feeling," in which the "Nerves sit ceremonious like Tombs" and the "Feet, mechanical, go round." Confusion reigns as the "stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore, and Yesterday, or Centuries before?" Formality shows itself in incredible coldness and distance and hardness. A "Quartz contentment, like a stone" overtakes us.

But the dead weight of grief, experienced at first, will not stay bottled up forever. She concludes her poem, "As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow--First--Chill--then Stupor--then the letting go." The icy blast of grief begins to break up, first into stupor and then into "letting go." Whether the last phrase suggests a suicidal inclination or a letting go of emotion is unclear; I read it to refer to the latter. Numbness. Aimlessness. Stupor. Then the letting go.

So it is with Job. The brutal assault on his secure fortress in Job 1-2 first brought the mechanical response, "Blessed be the name of the Lord (1: 21)," and the words from 2:10, cited above. Next came the hollowness and stupor as he sat for several days without speaking to his three friends (2: 11-13). Finally, in Job 3, the torrent comes forth, the "letting go." Now we are ready to hear Job. A literary conundrum is nicely explained when we recognize the psychological continuity of the Book of Job.