Dumb Suffering: A Consideration of Silence in Job 2:7-3:1 and 42:1-6. Austin Campbell

Transcription

1 Dumb Suffering: A Consideration of Silence in Job 2:7-3:1 and 42:1-6 Austin Campbell [Originally published in Cult/ure: The Graduate Journal of Harvard Divinity School, vol. 5, a web-based publication at the time that is no longer online.] 2 7 So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord, and inflicted loathsome sores on Job from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. 8 Job took a potsherd with which to scrape himself, and sat among the ashes. 9 Then his wife said to him, Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God, and die. 10 But he said to her, You speak as any foolish woman would speak. Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad? In all this Job did not sin with his lips. 11 Now when Job s three friends heard of all these troubles that had come upon him, each of them set out from his home Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. They met together to go and console and comfort him. 12 When they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him, and they raised their voices and wept aloud; they tore their robes and threw dust in the air upon their head. 13 They sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great. 3 1 After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth Then Job answered the Lord: 2 I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. 2 Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge? Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. 3 Hear, and I will speak; I will question you, and you declare to me. 5I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; 6 therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes. Job 2:7-3:1 and 42:1-6 (NRSV) Introduction Sounds clatter through the imagination while reading Job. 2 The sinister voice of Satan, marauding Sabeans, fire from heaven, angry rants hurled back and forth between friends, a whirlwind, and a divine challenge issued to an importunate plaintiff all contribute to the 2 I will refer to the book of Job in italics, reserving unaltered script for the book s protagonist.

2 unfolding drama s vividness. But at times, there is silence. Cessations in sound per se may be unremarkable for a dramatic work like Job for, like music, in which rests figure at least as significantly as intervening notes, the action of drama draws strength from well-placed moments of quiet. The silences of Job and his friends, however, extend beyond dramatic effect in their significance. Through their placement in the narrative, such silences present a substantive response to the problem of innocent suffering. In this paper, I will analyze and interpret one of the most important passages in which Job turns to silence, 2:7-3:1, and then connect that passage with Job s final return to silence in 42:1-6, showing how the passages relationships to their contexts and to each other suggest this response. Silence as a response to suffering does not amount to quietism. As it appears in Job, silence implicitly challenges the adequacy of any verbal response to the problem and creates a space in which one can offer support to the suffering or simply persevere through the mystery of one s pain. Literary Background The Prologue of Job is a prose narrative which has the feel of an ancient folktale. The first verse introduces Job in a manner akin to our once upon a time formula, and the narrative places particular focus on him as opposed to merely the events of his life. 3 Stark simplicity characterizes the Prologue s language, contrasting with and perhaps accentuating the gravity of the subject. 4 Repetition is also a prominent feature, and through the familiarity which repetition creates 3 D. J. A. Clines, Job 1-20 (Dallas, Texas: Word, 1989), 6; Carol A. Newsom, The Book of Job, in New Interpreter s Bible, vol. 4, edited by L. A. Keck (Nashville, Tennessee: Augsburg, 1996), J.E. Hartley, The Book of Job (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans), 64.

3 readers may have a sense of participation and even anticipation of the successive parts. 5 Six scenes compose the narrative in a fairly well-balanced and defined structure, divisible into three sets of two. 6 The introduction (1:1-5) forms half of one set. This is followed by a complete set formed by the first heavenly court meeting (1:6-12) and the destruction of Job s family and possessions (1:13-22). The second heavenly court meeting (2:1-7a) and the affliction of Job s body (2:7b-10) form the second complete set, and they are followed by the introduction of Job s friends (2:11-13), which forms the second half of the first set. Put schematically, the scenes proceed as follows: A1, B1, B2, C1, C2, A2. Job s curse in 3:1 begins another literary unit, but it is nevertheless connected to the proceedings of the previous two chapters by its conspicuous opening words, after this. In the context of the Prologue, 2:7-13 is atypical. Unlike the three scenes preceding it, 2:7-10 omits the formulaic beginning one day. That formula creates a relatively clean division between scenes and thereby reinforces a division between the heavenly court and the earthly realm. Verse 7 instead depicts Satan in the same sentence moving directly from the presence of the Lord to earth, where he afflicts Job heel to head. Although 1:7, 1:12 and 2:2 also show a porous border between the heavenly and earthly realms, the scene of 2:7 portrays an irruption into our realm which fractures the orderly structure of the Prologue. This fracture seems so deliberate that one may wonder whether the author erects an orderly narrative structure only to 5 Carol A. Newsom, Job, The New Interpreter s Bible, vol.4 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996) In this division I follow Hartley as opposed to Clines, who instead divides the prologue into five scenes. See Clines, Job, 8-9 and Hartley, The Book of Job, 37. Clines division makes vv.2:7-13 all one scene. This seems problematic because v.2:10 ends with an affirmation that Job did not sin with his lips, which has a clear parallel with a similar affirmation in v.1:22. If v.1:22 forms the end of a scene, it seems reasonable to mark v.2:10 as such also. Besides, three sets of two conveys a stronger sense of balance with the Prologue, which seems well within the capacity of the author(s).

4 break it for effect. 7 If this is indeed the case, after the irruption may be where the author intends for the reader who has been following a relatively comprehensible narrative sequence up to this point to pay particular attention. The three preceding scenes have primarily conveyed action through speech, whether in dialogues between the Lord and Satan or a messengers reports of disaster. In 2:7-13, however, silence figures prominently also atypical for the rest of the Prologue appearing first in v.8 and then in the final scene of vv In the context of the book itself, 2:7-13 stands as a transition from the prose Prologue to Job s chapter three curse on his life in verse, followed by the verse dialogues. Although one accustomed to hearing folktales might expect some kind of resolution by the end of the third set of scenes, one receives no such resolution, 8 creating a sense of anticipation that lingers throughout the dialogues. Silence emerges as a recurring theme in the dialogues after being introduced in these last two scenes of the Prologue, usually through references to the futility of speech or as something that Job seeks but cannot find. Consider 6:24-27, where Job says, Teach me, and I will be silent; make me understand how I have gone wrong. How forceful are honest words! But your reproof, what does it reprove? Do you think that you can reprove words, as if the speech of the desperate were wind? And Job s remark in 13:4-5 is exemplary: As for you, you whitewash with lies; all of you are worthless physicians. If you would only keep silent, that would be your wisdom! Job is of course far from silent in the dialogues; he has a case to bring before God and is determined to have it heard. But since the dialogues are preceded by a dramatic scene of silence, we might reasonably suspect that the periodic references to silence throughout them are part of a larger pattern. At the very least, we can see that the silence of 2:7-7 Clines, Job, Newsom, Job, 366.

5 13 is not thematically isolated. Exposition of Verses 2:7-3:1 2 7 So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord, and inflicted loathsome sores on Job from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. 8 Job took a potsherd with which to scrape himself, and sat among the ashes. 9 Then his wife said to him, Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God, and die. 10 But he said to her, You speak as any foolish woman would speak. Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad? In all this Job did not sin with his lips. 11 Now when Job s three friends heard of all these troubles that had come upon him, each of them set out from his home Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. They met together to go and console and comfort him. 12 When they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him, and they raised their voices and wept aloud; they tore their robes and threw dust in the air upon their head. 13 They sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great. 3 1 After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. Job 2:7-3:1 (NRSV) When the orderly structure of the Prologue fractures at v.7, it does so as ruin comes upon Job s very body. Much ink has been spilled in attempts to diagnose the specific condition with which Job suffered at the hands of Satan, but even without a correct diagnosis, the author provides enough description for readers to grasp the severity of Job s malady. Sores completely cover his skin, and to make sure readers do not miss the point, the author calls the sores loathsome. The locus of Job s affliction is significant. On the one hand, skin diseases have biblical precedent as a vehicle for divine retribution (see, for example, Numbers 12:10). That Job suffers in this way rather than another reinforces the notion that his condition was divinely willed and thus creates a site for the debate between Job and his friends, but there could be deeper significance, as well. As opposed to some internal malady, skin diseases are visible. The sight of

6 such a disease, especially when acute, can be downright repulsive. On a basic level, our skin is the means through which we interact with the world, and even if a few kind souls are not repulsed, a condition like Job s largely transforms the skin into a barrier between the sufferer and the world. In such a transformation, we can expect a less tangible means of interacting with the world to be transformed as well namely, speech. It may not be surprising then that Job s response in v.8 is silence. It is a sharp contrast to his reaction to the loss of his family and possessions in the earlier parallel scene, in which he dramatically blesses the name of the Lord. Here the only sound is a potsherd moving roughly over his blighted flesh. Job s silence, together with his location on the town ash heap, suggests that his affliction has indeed given him solitude. That ash heap as the author probably understood it was a mound of excrement and other refuse taken out of town by the basket full and burnt once monthly, after which time the remaining ashes would form a landmass through exposure to the elements. 9 The gesture of sitting among ashes is a sign of mourning with biblical precedents (see, for example, Jonah 3:6 and Isaiah 58:5), but Job s mourning also takes him outside the bounds of civilization perhaps even outside the bounds of dignity. Both D. J. A. Clines and Carol Newsom point out that the syntax of the Hebrew suggests a continuation of Job s place on the ash heap, as though he were already there when afflicted in his body. 10 Still, the author refers to the ash heap in connection with Job s bodily affliction, not the loss of his possessions, which could suggest that Job s bodily affliction along with his silent response to it 9 S.R. Driver and G.B. Gray, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Job (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1921), Clines, Job, 49; Newsom, Job, 355.

7 consummates the isolation which his losses had already begun. We can picture the scene: Job is moping among the ashes, and suddenly, physical agony comes upon him rivaled in intensity only by his grief. Overwhelmed, he can only lower his head, take a breath, and reach for a potsherd. The silence was not to last. Job s wife speaks for the first and only time in v.9, but her two sentences are at least as important as any others in the book because she forces Job to address the subject of the divine wager directly. She asks Job whether he will persist in his integrity. With the same phrase, the Lord had boasted in 2:3 that Job did in fact persist in his integrity when he lost everything. In effect, she asks Job to confirm whether the Lord was mistaken about him. An important ambiguity in the word integrity (tûmmâ) raises the stakes for Job s answer. It can mean both conformity to moral-religious norms and complete sincerity. 11 Normally there is no conflict between the two meanings, but with Job the meanings have come apart, for it seems that he and God cannot both be innocent. Job may hold to religious norms, but that may move him into insincerity. Likewise, if he is sincere about what is happening, he may break some important religious norms. Job s wife confronts him with this dilemma in his silence, essentially asserting that silence is an inadequate response. By having her evoke a rebuke from Job in v.10, the author offers the reader some assurance about the constancy of Job s pious character in his turn to silence. 12 Such assurance is in order because, in itself, silence is ambiguous. Job may have turned to silence in humble submission, bitterness, or something else entirely. In his rebuke, Job accepts neither horn of the dilemma. He simply rejects her question as impious, asking whether they shall not accept both the good and the bad from God. In these remarks Job seems as faithful as ever, for the sort of 11 Newsom, Job, See Driver and Gray, Critical and Exegetical Commentary, 25.

8 acceptance he invokes is an active participation, not a passive, begrudging reception. 13 And yet, Job s response sustains the tension which his wife s remark creates. Stopping short of direct engagement with her remark allows the dilemma she articulates to continue exerting pressure on the narrative. Moreover, the narrator s comment on Job s remark contains an important ambiguity. Job does not sin with his lips. We could suppose that, even with his bodily affliction, Job has retained control over himself and persevered in utmost righteousness, but the comment leaves us to wonder whether Job did not sin elsewhere perhaps in his heart, in the silence. The righteous image of Job in the foregoing narrative would resist such an interpretation, but the comment s power may lie in merely opening the possibility of sin in Job. With this comment in view, Job s speeches cannot be the only occasion for considering the success of the divine wager; his silences become fraught with significance as well. The entrance of Job s friends momentarily sets these tensions aside and begins to bring the Prologue to a close. Far from providing resolution, however, the closing verses of the Prologue show the severity of Job s plight with even greater intensity by shifting the narrative s perspective to that of his friends. 14 Verse 2:11 shows their response to hearing the news about Job s plight: they meet together and go to break the solitude of Job s suffering. Much about this gesture of paying a consoling visit is traditional, since being with a friend in a time of trial was seen as a way of making the burden lighter (see, for example, Psalms 69:21; Isaiah 51:19; Nahum 37). But their meeting together before going to Job could suggest that they saw the situation as so grave that they preferred not to go alone and face Job without the support of the others. 15 Verse 13 Hartley, The Book of Job, Newsom, Job, Ibid.,

9 2:12 shows their response to seeing Job s plight firsthand: they are not silent. The text is unclear whether they actually say anything, and scholars puzzle over what their specific gestures mean, but the text s general point is clear; the sight of Job s disfigured body prompts his friends to create a dolorous commotion. By v.2:13 the friends have calmed down and fallen silent. Their mourning has changed from wailing to being simply present with their suffering friend, and they now sit with him on the ground though apparently not on the ash heap. This difference in their respective places of mourning seems to underscore the distance which Job s suffering has placed between him and the rest of human life. Speculation about why the friends do not join Job on the ash heap could be endless. Their maintaining this distance seems clearly to foreshadow the distance that will appear between them in the dialogues. Perhaps they dare not suggest that their mourning is equivalent to Job s, or perhaps they just have too much pride. In any case, this symbol of distance makes their silence seem particularly apt, for what do words do if not attempt to overcome our distance from each other? These gestures are nevertheless ironic, for the friends have obviously been at pains to overcome much of the distance between Job and themselves. Within this irony the author may wish for us to see wisdom. Even well-intentioned outreach does not completely bridge the gap between the sufferer s and the non-sufferer s worlds. The friends could have found a place on the ash heap and begun speaking words of consolation, but that would not have changed and perhaps would have ignored the most important feature of the situation. Job had lost everything, even his health; they had not. As the author reminds us, the enormity of suffering can itself be a reason for silence.

10 The length of their silence is a testament to the enormity of what they saw. For seven days and seven nights, sitting on the ground, no one said a word. A silence of such length extends well beyond the silence one may generally expect from people who discover the suffering of a friend, for such silence generally proceeds from shock. To be silent for a whole week suggests an act of will, or even a vow. Beholding Job s plight has prompted his friends to recognize his prerogative to be the first to speak, but this makes Job s own silence enigmatic. Whereas the author provides us with clues for understanding the silence of his friends, the Prologue concludes with no such clues about Job. Looking back through the Prologue, we can see that both times Job has spoken during his affliction, he did so in response to someone addressing him. He blessed the Lord when his servants recounted his losses and he defended the Lord when his wife urged him euphemistically to bless the Lord. Together with the Job s remark of pious solicitude in 1:5, Job has already spoken three times and any further speech would ruin the thematic completeness; however, Job s prolonged silence, placed over against his responses to the speech of others, may also suggest that silence was what he actually sought from the beginning of his suffering. Perhaps, like his friends, he sees the monstrosity of his suffering and can find nothing to say about it. Only silence seems adequate, and it would not do for anyone to speak until after a length of time obviously symbolic for its completeness. Job breaks the silence in 3:1 with his only speech-act that is not a response to someone else. It is a curse. The author makes sure we do not have to wonder whether the curse is merely in Job s heart by letting us know that to utter his curse Job opened his mouth. As if breaking the silence with a curse were not alarming enough, the author leaves his pattern of using the euphemism bless (bērēk) and employs the actual word for curse (qillēl). That Job curses the day of his birth is significant. Most obviously, Job does not direct his curse at God, and so retains his

11 role as the righteous sufferer. Perhaps less obviously, this curse also radicalizes the silence with which the Prologue ended. Job has decidedly turned to silence and his friends have followed suit. By cursing the day of his birth, Job longs for all that his life has been to be replaced by utter silence. 16 There would have been no cry on the night of his birth, no joyous celebrations in his family, and certainly no occasion for suffering. The day itself would no longer exist, removing all chance of his silence ever being broken. We could suppose that when Job opens his mouth he still is not interested in starting a dialogue with his friends. Had Eliphaz not spoken, Job might return to another extended silence, waiting in desperate hope for the efficacy of his curse. Connection With Verses 42: Then Job answered the Lord: 2 I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. 2 Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge? Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. 3 Hear, and I will speak; I will question you, and you declare to me. 5I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; 6 therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes. Job 42:1-6 Job s final recorded speech in 42:1-6 is a response to the Lord. This portion of the book is rich with exegetical possibilities and worthy of extended consideration. Unfortunately, I will only skim the surface by connecting it with the Prologue to illuminate the theme of silence a bit more. Throughout the book, Job has longed to put God on trial or at least receive some kind of heavenly response. He has surprisingly little to say when he finally receives his wish. In this second of two responses to the Lord, Job acknowledges the challenges of the Lord and concedes 16 Indeed, Job explicitly refers to his desire for silence in 3:13 and 3:26.

12 in a gesture of deference, albeit an equivocal one. In v.2, he recognizes that someone knows that God can do all things. It could be Job, reflecting a pious attitude, or it could be God, reflecting insolence. In vv.3-4, Job loosely quotes from the Lord s earlier statements, again offering responses which could be either pious or merely perfunctory acknowledgements of authority. We can see the ambiguity of Job s pious silence from 2:10 resurfacing here. Job s remarks in vv.5-6 create a clear if not intentional parallel with 2:11-13 and begin to close the book in a similar way in which it began. Notice the sequence: Job acknowledges that he had heard of the Lord, but has now seen him as though hearing had been inadequate. As a result of seeing, he returns to silence. This is the same sequence Job s friends follow when they come to see him. Each hears of Job s plight, prompting them to go to him. But when they finally see him, they recognize the situation as being much more grave than hearing could suggest. In view of what they find, they resolve to be silent. The parallel seems unmistakable, but the question follows: what do we make of it? The answer partially depends on what we make of Job s remark as he returns to silence. Though the vocabulary of Job s remark is simple, each word has multiple meanings, which creates an even broader range of possible meanings for the statement as a whole. In short, the text resists any decisive rendering. Job could be expressing anything from humble repentance to bitter defiance, and the vast difference between these possible meanings could be instructive. We could, of course, try to decide which possibility the author really intended, but an equally plausible approach is to view the ambiguity as deliberate. 17 In making the final statement of the righteous sufferer so multivalent even when addressing God the author could be modeling the utter 17 See Carol A. Newsom, The Book of Job: A Contest of Moral Imaginations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), , 260.

13 incapacity of language to bring resolution to questions surrounding innocent suffering. Job had thought that surely addressing the cause of his suffering would bring him resolution, but the appearance of God only brings an overwhelming litany of questions. Regardless of his interlocutor, speech has only exacerbated Job s anguish; so, he simply gives up. After the torment of the dialogues and the divine speeches, he again settles down upon his ash heap in silence. Conclusion Job begins and ends with its protagonist in remarkably similar positions. He begins wealthy and with a large family. He ends in the same way indeed, to an even greater extent. These features of his story are well known. Less famously, he begins his suffering in silence and he ends in silence as well. 18 My exposition of verses 2:7-3:1 and their connection with verses 42:1-6 suggests that silence is a major theme woven through the book. A more detailed investigation could examine the ways that the theme emerges throughout the dialogues and compare them with the exposition sketched here. Nevertheless, it seems that attempts to understand the book as a whole would be well-served by reading it with special attention to silence. The book may even present silence as an essential element of any plausible response to the problem of innocent suffering. Dialogues do occupy the bulk of the book, but the dissatisfaction with which they can leave readers may tempt toward the conclusion that they are 18 This could be contested. We could say that Job s suffering ends when he offers a prayer to the Lord for his friends. This may even form a parallel with Job s initial pious remark of blessing the Lord upon receiving news of his children s deaths or his sacrifices for his children in 1:5. Nevertheless, 42:6 is the end of Job s speech as quoted by the author.

14 a long testament to the futility of language for resolving this problem. Job seems to gravitate toward silence at the outset of the book, and if he learns anything by its end, he seems to learn that silence is his only recourse. This seems true regardless of how we interpret the character of his silence, whether pious or rebellious. This is not to say that Job presents silence as a complete response to the problem of innocent suffering. A complete response, if we are to take the book as a guide, would also include expressions of doubt, anger and interrogations of heaven. Whatever elements we include in such a response, however, Job seems to insist that silence figures prominently among them. This may not resolve the problem it may not even be comforting but this is the suggestion we have from a work of scriptural literature whose theme is wisdom.