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Of all the things Job wanted to communicate to the friends, God and his subsequent hearers, the most important is that he was a man of integrity. Though several words, both in English and Hebrew, define Job's condition, words relating to the root "tamam,"--wholeness, blamelessness, perfection, integrity-- characterize Job's condition and longings. The opening words of the book mention he is "blameless and upright" ('tam' and 'yashar'). This is not just the narrator's evaluation of Job; God too, in the conversation with The Satan, points out that his servant Job is "blameless and upright" (2:3).In addition, one cannot understand Job's sense of abandonment, humiliation and injury without the realization that Job himself believes deeply in his own integrity. When he makes his final pleas before his friends and to God, Job returns to his integrity (27:5,6; 31:6). It is the foundational value of his sense of self-identity.

Perfectly Made

Adding to the sense of Job's blamelessness in the moral sphere is the notion that he is perfectly or completely furnished with an array of blessings from God. At a few points in the prose and poetry, the author drops in the Hebrew word "sabib," translated "all around" or "completely" to show that Job's condition is or has been one of full blessing.

The Satan says to God, "Have you not put a fence around him and his house and all that he has, on every side ('sabib'--1:10)?" Later, when Job sadly comments on God's unmerited assault on him, he muses about his creation, "Your hands fashioned me an made me together all around" ('sabib'--my translation--10:8). When God assaults the fortresses of Job's life, he is said to have thrown up siegeworks against Job, and God "encamp[s] around my tent" ('sabib'--19:12). Finally, when Job laments the loss of his family and servants, he talks wistfully about the time "when the Almighty was still with me, when my children were around me" ('sabib'--29:5).

There is something in the compositional style of the author which expresses the fullness of an idea with the word 'sabib.' Thus we have Job, a man of integrity ('tuma') or a blameless man ('tam'), who is perfectly fashioned all around ('sabib') in his own body and surrounded ('sabib') by his children. 'Tamam' and 'sabib' provide the verbal context to understand Job, the man of wholeness.

Fracturing Job

It is all the more powerful for the reader, then, when we learn that Job's distress can be described with the language of fracturing. To be sure, many of the pictures of his distress are derived from language of assault, confinement or a storm (see esp. 16:6-14; 19:6-12). But in one place he says, "I was at ease, and he broke me in two; he seized me by the neck and dashed me to pieces" (16:12). The two verbs ("he broke me" and "dashed me") both begin with the same letter, have the same object and are in a special, and rare, tense called the "pilpel," making the sound of the verbs similar: "veyepharparni" and "veyephatspatsni." We see little pieces of Job skittering across the floor; we imagine him broken as easily as one might snap a pencil. Job, the man of integrity or wholeness ("integer" is the mathmatical equivalent) is now the man of brokenness (he is now a "fraction.").

Restoring Job

When Job's fortunes are restored at the end of the book (42:10-17), nothing is said about Job's subsequent moral or physical condition. The text does not say he is blameless; it doesn't mention that he bears the perfectly formed body or family. Yet he is blessed and he dies, "old and full of days" (42:17).Could this be an unspoken, but subtle, commentary by the author on the whole issue of integrity? Maybe the end of life, if one can be so bold, is to receive blessedness (42:12) and to embrace a new vision of God (42:5) rather than to pursue the elusive, and possibly corrosive, goal of personal integrity.