Wisdom and Book of job and Job 28

Job 28, the hymn to wisdom, appears unexpectedly. For 25 chapters the friends have been locked in an increasingly unfruitful conversation about the meaning of Job's pain. In my interpretation, things have gotten so bad that by the time Job speaks in 26-27 he is interrupting and even silencing the friends. Once this has happened, and Job mocks them in speech, the hymn to wisdom appears. Important to consider are the function and meaning of Job 28.

Function

The hymn to wisdom functions both as a "time out" from the action and a hinge to link the conversations of 3-27 with the longer speeches of Elihu and God in 32-41. As a "time out," it is a recognition that the human efforts to establish wisdom through searching dialogue have failed. The fact that no one can convincingly sort out the speeches and speakers in the third cycle may be an indication that no one is listening to each other any more. A new approach is called for.

In addition, it functions as a "hinge" between two parts of the book. In this regard Job 28 acts similarly to the chorus of a Greek tragedy in Aeschylus, where it both gives a break from the intensity of the action, assesses where things are at this point and foreshadows coming events. Job 28 "assesses" where things are by giving a plausible reason for the failure of the conversation (wisdom's inaccessability--28:12) and "foreshadows" the rest of the book by suggesting that only God has the secret to the needed wisdom (28:23).

Meaning

Three themes emerging in Job 28 are the value of wisdom, its elusiveness, and the fact that only God knows the way to it. Together these themes gradually take us out of the brief, biting and bitter conversations (3-27) to more ruminative soliloquies (32-41). The value of wisdom is stressed by likening the search for it to the search for precious jewels and metals (28:1-11). Miners so desire these goods that they will "overturn mountains by the roots" (v.9) and "search out to the farthest bound" (v.3) to find them.

Second, this highly prized wisdom is elusive (28:12-22). In a few rhetorically powerful images various created beings come forward to admit they do not possess it. "The deep sea says, 'It is not in me,' and the sea says, 'It is not with me' (v.14)."* Even the threatening realms of Abbadon and Death can only say, "We have heard a rumor of it with our ears (v.22)." No one seems to know where this precious and utterly necessary commodity is.

[*The rhythm of the Hebrew of 28:14 should not be missed. A transliteration of the nine Hebrew words is, 'tehom amar lo bi he; yam amar lo im di ('di' rhymes with 'he' and 'bi').']

Third, God is uniquely positioned to know wisdom's place and meaning (28:23-28). Unlike the miners who search for ore to the farthest bound, God looks to the ends of the earth "and sees everything under the heavens (v.24)." Wisdom was one of the things God "saw" when he "gave to the wind its weight, and apportioned out the waters by measure (vv.25-27)." Not only did God see it, but God also "declared it, he established it, and searched it out (v.27)."

God knows wisdom thorougly. Wisdom is going to be the instrument through which resolution of the dilemma will come. In language familiar to the wisdom tradition, the author says, "Truly, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom (v.28)." But before wisdom can enter and do its work, through the blustery words of Elihu (32-37) and the even more clamorous words of God (38-41), Job has to have his last words. We wouldn't have expected anything different.

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