job and spiritual formation and two readings of job 42:1-6 and I despise and too wonderful for me

17. Most scholars recognize that among the most crucial verses to understand in the Book of Job are 42:1-6. Job has stopped speaking (31:40). Elihu gave his "take" on Job's distress (36:15-16). God entered and changed the terms of the debate (38-41). Now the ball is in Job's court, as it were. He is required to respond just as he thought he had forced God to answer him after ch. 31. And so he answers. The interpretive question of 42:1-6 is the nature of Job's response. Point 17 is one reading of Job's answer and Point 18 is another.

One reading of Job's answer is to see it as Job's humble acceptance of his limitations and his overwhelming reception of God's self-revelation in 38-41. This reading arises from at least three points. First, when Job says, "I know that you can do all things" (42:2), he is saying it with as much certainty and hopefulness as he says "I know that my redeemer lives" (19:25). He now has another kind of knowledge, knowledge that is "too wonderful" for him (42:3). That phrase, "too wonderful," is highly suggestive of Ps. 139:6, a Psalm with which Job seems to be contending for most of the book. In ch. 42 he finally seems to be accepting Ps. 139's "view of the world"--that God's ability to search and know him is actually a good thing and not something oppressive. This is a "breakthrough" realization for Job, because previously, especially in 7:11-21, Job understood God's presence to be oppressive.

Second, Job now talks about seeing God, an experience that was vouchsafed only to a few biblical worthies. He formerly had heard of God, but now he sees God (42:5). He doesn't go into what this seeing means. It is ironic that his "seeing" of God comes directly after he has "heard" God's long speech in 38-41. Moses was only able to see God's back in his time of revelation, even though he and the elders "saw the God of Israel" (Ex. 24:10) when they came up on the mountain.

Third, Job repents in dust and ashes (42:6). One reading of this verse stresses Job's abashment, or, as the Oxford English Dictionary defines abashment, Job's "confusion from surprise, shame, or sudden check." He despises himself and repents in dust and ashes. His world view, where everything revolved around Job and his distress, was shattered. He was surprised, shamed and suddenly checked. In this condition Job is finally able to listen to God, to hear the words of God. His life has been reoriented, and Job is lost in wonder, even though some confusion continues.

18. Another reading of Job 42:1-6 stresses the emotional vacancy of Job after the encounter with God. That is, this reading of the text points primarily to one word in 42:6 and builds its interpretation off that word. Job says, "I despise." That word appears without an object, and so it is best not to translate it reflexively, as many translations do. It is not "I despise myself," but rather "I despise." One of the other instances where this Hebrew verb, maas, is used without object in Job is 7:16, where Job says, simply, "I despise." Most translations of 7:16 add "my life" in order to "fill out" the meaning, but I think that Job is saying, rather, that he simply despises everything about his existence now. Why would he have chosen the same word to say in 42:6? Because he has returned emotionally to the same position he was in 7:16. To use psychological jargon from the 21st century, he has suffered a second emotional breakdown.

The pain of chs. 1 and 2 has shamed Job. He is able to be the "big guy" no longer. People mock him. His confidence has been shattered. He despises everything about his life. He had tried valiantly to build up some hope in chs. 9; 14; 16; and 19. But Elihu and God enter in and define his life differently than the way he had previously seen it. It is all too much for Job. He has to give up his most precious possession--his complaint. After the death of his children he gave birth to his legal complaint, which he cherished with as much fervor as he had his lost children. What Elihu and God ask him to do is to give up this complaint and see/hear life differently. It is all too much for Job. He realizes that his complaint is on shaky ground. For the second time, then, the thing most dear to Job have been taken away from him--his children and his complaint. He has another emotional collapse in Job 42 and he just despises. He despises everything about life--God, Elihu, the friends, his situation, himself, his having been duped into believing that God and life was a good thing. He can't cope anymore with the tremendous dissonances of life and he collapses emotionally. He despises it all.

Then, the text says that he despises "in dust and ashes." Though there are at least two defensible translations of this phrase, I understand it to mean that Job has to return, figuratively if not literally, to the ash heap upon which he placed himself in 2:8. The ash heap is not only the place where he can nurse his pain but it gives him a place to think. He simply needs to process all that has happened to him, and he is as vacant and confused as he was in 2:8. Rather than being restored in fellowship with God, as he had optimistically envisioned in 14:15, he now feels completely abandoned by this God. He will be unable to get beyond the sense of despising. He is not able to throw it off. Rather than being a mantle or a cloak which could easily be changed, it has become almost like a garment stitched to the body. He is now the man who despises. That is Job's new identity after he has "seen" God. He is emotionally burned-out, vacant, depleted. Just as Achilles might be the permanent "man of anger" in the Iliad, so Job might be the eternal man who despises. The only place he can go is the ash heap. Just as the heap was the place of amazing creativity previously, maybe it will hold the key to his future thoughts. At least he still has his mind, even though everything else of his has been taken away.*

[*There is a question of where Job's wife is while all this is going on. I may try to reflect on that in another essay.]

Conclusion

So, which interpreation shall we select? I confess that I select one or the other depending on the day of the week and my mood. I think there is something troubling about the words of God to Job in 38-41. Just as the Virgin Mary was troubled by the angel visitant when she received the "good news" that she was pregnant with Jesus, so I remain troubled by God's words to Job. I can see ba lot to be said for both interpretations, and I don't feel any need to opt for one over the other. At least today...

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