Job’s Restoration as a Metaphorical Return from Exile and a Preview of In-Christ Living
I recently finished reading the book of Job, and came across a few surprising verses in the last chapter. For example, at the end of Job, we read that part of Job’s restoration included ten more children-seven sons and three daughters-and that Job “named the first [daughter] Jemimah, the second Keziah, and the third Keren-happuch.” The text goes on to say that Job “gave them an inheritance along with their brothers” (Job 42:13-15). First of all, it struck me as very unusual, particularly in an Old Testament book, to find a listing of the daughters’ names and not the sons’ names. Likewise, I wondered whether, in light of the cultural practices of the day, it was significant that the text highlighted the fact that the daughters also received an inheritance from their father. Lastly, it seemed that a number of redemptive historical connections that might be drawn from these “clues.” So I ran these questions/thoughts by a friend of mine who happens to be an Old Testament scholar, Professor Douglas J. Green (Ph.D. Yale University). Below is a summary of what he said:
(1) It is indeed unusual that the daughters are named and the sons are not.
(2) It is also surprising that the daughters along with the sons receive an inheritance, as this instance in Job is unlike some cases that we find in the OT where daughters receive an inheritance because there are no male siblings.
(3) If we read the end of Job as a metaphorical return from exile, i.e., as a proleptic view of what things will be like (or at least will begin to be like) in the age to come (i.e., our present age), then a number of interesting possibilities present themselves.
In other words, the end of Job can be understood as a proto-resurrection story and, as mentioned above, as a foretaste of kingdom life in which both sons and daughters receive an inheritance from the Father, and male and female are given an equal status in the Resurrected One (Gal 3:28) to whom Job’s proto-resurrection points!
I haven’t done justice to Green’s insights on Job-trust me he has significantly more to say than what I’ve summarized briefly above. Perhaps he will publish the detailed version of his reading of Job sometime in the near future, until then, I’ll leave you with a lengthy quote from Green from one of his lectures on the topic.
Allowing for a reading that transcends (strict) authorial intention, Green suggests that there are a number of connections to be made between Job and righteous Israel’s suffering in exile, and that even if some readers refuse to listen to these clues because they have been overly influenced by modernist hermeneutical assumptions, such was not the case for readers of the late or post-exillic period. As Green explains,
perhaps readers in the late Exilic or post-Exilic period, readers familiar with Deuteronomy and the Prophets, readers struggling with questions about the suffering of righteous Israel similar to the ones that Second Isaiah is trying to answer, might read Job very differently. The language of Job as Yahweh’s servant, the apparent “echoes” of Second Isaiah in Job 16-19 (or are they echoes of Job in Isaiah?) and the use of Deuteronomic-prophetic “return from captivity” language to describe Job’s reversal of fortunes – all this may have provided more than adequate grounds for these ancient readers to pull Job into the orbit of the Suffering Servant of Second Isaiah and even to (metaphorically) identify the two.
If this is what happened – and yes, it is speculative but in the light of some hints in later exegesis, not entirely so – then this might explain why Job eventually found its way into that body of literature that Israel eventually labeled as “Scripture.” My contention is that Job came to be read, not as the story of the suffering of “Any Man.” Rather, later readers have pulled Job into the metanarrative of redemptive history, interpreting and valuing the book as another creative commentary – like Second Isaiah – on the meaning of one of the great conundrums of the Exile: the inexplicable suffering/exile of the righteous remnant of Israel.
In suggesting that Israelite readers made this connection, I realize that I am pulling both the question of Job’s meaning and the question of its canonicity out of the realm of authorial intention and into the realm of reader-response. Not wild reader response. Not deconstruction or ideological criticism. A reader response that has its roots at least in the text’s connotations if not its denotations. There are enough “hooks” in the text – again, whether they are authorially deliberate or accidental is of no consequence at this point – to invite and encourage, or at least make Job susceptible to, a reading that connects the story to the metanarrative of redemptive history. A reading that makes Job a parable (extended metaphor) of the Exile and Restoration of righteous. A reading that turns it into an additional commentary (besides Second Isaiah) and theological reflection not merely on the generic problem of the suffering of the righteous, but the very specific problem of the God’s apparent violation of the (Mosaic/Deuteronomic) covenant when he brought the covenant curse of Exile/Captivity (Deut 28) on the covenant-keeping remnant of Israel.
Whether I am right my speculations about the reasons behind Job’s canonicity matters little. What I am arguing for here is a way of reading Job – as an intertext to the story of Isaiah’s Suffering Servant. I am not suggesting that this is the only right way of reading Job, only that it is a good reading – a good midrash! – (that is, a profitable interpretation that creatively reads with rather than against “grain” of the text, and a reading that will conform to the shape of the Gospel once it is fully revealed to us).