I wonder if it could be construed not as a humility statement but as a statement of consolation. Could not the “repent in” be rendered “consoled about”, so that the point is not that Job stays in the ashes (as per his resignation in verse 2:8) but that he in fact arises from them?
Also, in regards to it being a humility statement, doesn’t Job say it directly after saying he now sees God? That before he only heard God but now has had a face to face encounter? That sounds rather uplifting, not humiliating…
Hmm. I get that Job wants to die. I would stress the same thing. But it seems to me he only wishes he was dead. In truth, Job stays firmly committed to God and to God’s grace, or to the giving and taking of the Lord. I don’t see where Job ever questions this. He bemoans the fact that God has yet to wipe him out, but he leaves it to God to decide when.
Anyways, this all seems to confirm my own thinking, that what Job laments is himself, or the loathsomeness and insignificance of his life. With this in mind, if we treat God as consoling Job about this (such that 42:6 is not a humility statement but a statement of being consoled) then maybe the rest of the book will become clear, and the point won’t be so, well, discomforting as the one you derive. (No offense, but I find little edification from the lesson you draw! Which is not to say that you’re wrong, but only that I expect more from God, and I think Job does too.)
Humility refers to being humble; not being humiliating in the sense you are using it.
When I wrote that it was a humility statement; that means it was a statement from being humble.
In the old Hebrew, repenting and consolation are the same act.
To repent is to seek consolation.
To be repented is to have been consoled.
I also don’t see anything discomforting in what I offered.
But either way, ignore what you don’t like. Pretty easy to do.
I’m trying to draw a meaningful distinction. If what Job is saying in 42 is, “in short, an apology for thinking he, as the wounded ox, knows when his master should slit his throat and when his master should nurse him back to health,” then how is that not humiliating or a making one humble through humiliation?
Isn’t your point that Job has dared challenge or rival God and, as a result, has needed to be put back in his proper place? Or that he needs to be reminded of the great disparity between him and God?
It feels like disparity between Job and God is at the bottom of your thinking, while for me it is precisely the opposite, and God declares Job’s equality to God in both wisdom and life.
Anyways, if I’m somewhat right about your view, I think the text absolutely supports it. It seems to me that the book of Job calls us to discern the truth between the two: whether God’s point is Job’s disparity or equality to God.
To this end, just think of Job’s friends, who could not more obviously be espousing the disparity side (and who we know speak falsely).
Not quite the way you are thinking.
It’s more soft than how you are think of the apology.
It is more the concept that he thinks he should have remebered to have faith in the only aspect he really possibly lacked; that his god had a good reason and wasn’t in need of his advice.
It’s not so much the western idea of being put in your place, but the idea of being thankful to that which causes you to rember your place.
There is a subtle difference.
I hear you. But the point is disparity between Job and God either way. Not the potential equality that I’m after.
Hmm. I wonder what that “good reason” is… (Doesn’t God say Job was punished “for no reason”?..)
I do believe God had a good reason mind you. But it is a hard one to show. On the surface it looks like pride/bragging is the reason behind Job’s suffering. And that certainly is not a good reason.
The reason God did not kill Job was that he did not intend to kill Job, nor did he wish Job ill.
Job suffered that all may know that Satan was wrong.
Job suffered so that others would not.
He was the first Jesus in that specific aspect.
You’ve shrouded the reason with your response. You’ve hidden it in your statement that the satan was wrong.
Wrong about what?
The answer to that question can unlock the book of Job.
(To that end, I hope you don’t think that the satan was wrong about Job, or about Job being “in it for himself”… I hope you’ll see that what the satan is wrong about was not Job per se but rather humanity, of which Job is God’s chosen representative. (“Look at Job!” God says to the satan, just as God will later say to Job “Look at Behemoth and Leviathan!”…)
How could one person suffer for others if the question of the wager was not humanity??
That’s what confuses me about your comments.
You are posting like I’m arguing with you.
Fair enough! In my defence, usually you don’t seem to agree with me! And there is the issue from before of what seems a basic disagreement between us, i.e., you seem to see the book as teaching a disparity between Job and God, while I see it teaching an equality.
If you agree with me that the basic problem of the satan is humanity, then would you further agree that Job has the same basic problem, and that the poetic dialogue of the book can be understood as a repetition of the heavenly scene?
i.e., the satan and Job are both asking “what is humankind?”, and in response to both the satan and Job God is offering a defence? i.e., to defend humankind before the satan God puts forth Job, and to defend humankind before Job God, details aside, urges Job to compare himself to God?
That’s the real difference I’m after. I see Job consoled about dust and ashes, i.e., given confidence in both his value and future life, while you see him humbly embracing this human fate / disparity before God.
That’s the point of Job.
It was written (most likely, considering it surfaces relatively after) during a really, really dark period when the Hebrew peoples lost everything; much of their families were killed off or taken, and all of what little land they had was taken completely from them and they were driven out.
This countered everything about their rather karmic sense of their god, and therefore, of life and humanity.
This is yet another reason that I say that Job is like a prefacing Jesus.
It was the event that changed the faith radically; not just the book, but what the book addresses - the issue the Hebrew peoples would undoubtedly been wrestling with.
No, that’s not what I meant.
I meant that they are one in the same.
Why have confidence? Why have value in the future?
Why Hebrew people, when everything around you shows you that your god obviously does not care.
Look how he even spares your life for further suffering rather than killing you!
No, says the Hebrew people.
Our god has a reason for the whole, and for that, we have faith.
The humility is more something that you see in Job because if that wasn’t there, then the Hebrew peoples would not have an answer of how to return back to their god in grace after seriously questioning their faith during a very dark hour.
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