BACKGROUND NOTES (& OTHER NEAT INFO)

THE BOOK OF JOB (pronounced ‘jobe’).
Takes a long hard look at the tough question of why bad things happen to good people. This book is such a timeless work because it doesn’t pretend to provide an easy answer to this question, and uses some of most soaringly lyrical language in the Bible in its exploration. This Old Testament book leads off the books of Wisdom literature in the Bible, which include Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon.


KEY CHAPTERS.
The whole thing is well worth a read-through, of course. But perhaps enough of the richness of the book comes out in the following chapters:

Chp 1. Sets up the situation where Job is a prosperous, God-fearing man; Satan makes a wager with God about how to break down the good man’s piety; Job’s family and herds are killed (he gets them back at the end!).

Chp 2. When the above doesn’t work on Job, Satan afflicts Job’s body with boils; Job’s wife isn’t much help; neither are his 4 friends who arrive on the scene ‘to comfort and console.’

Chp 3. Job starts questioning why all this has happened to him and feeling pretty sorry for himself; his friends begin many chapters of unhelpful advice.

Chp 19. Job is desperate for an advocate to plead his case before God.

Chps 29 – 31. Job’s poignant summarizing speech about the human situation (specifically his).

Chps 38 – 42: 8. God speaks to Job out of a whirlwind. Several chapters of uncommonly eloquent poetry on the nature of creation.

Chp 42: 9 – 17. Describes the restoration of Job’s fortunes. Children and livestock are returned to him in abundance and he lives to a ripe old age.


WOMENFOLK.
Canadian writer and former UCC moderator Lois Wilson offers an interesting review of the female characters in the Book of Job in her own book, Stories Seldom Told. Wilson makes the case that when Job’s wife urges him to ‘Curse God and die,’ Job’s faith changes from a passive one to a healthier, active questioning one (SST, p. 138). The new dynamism in his faith sets the stage for his deliverance. Wilson also points out that when Job’s daughters return home, he gives them beautiful names and property — “both unusual acts in biblical history (p. 139).” These unusual acts come from Job’s new clearer vision following his ordeal.


TWO KINDS OF TRIAL.
This book is chock full of references to courtroom style trial proceedings. Right from Chp.1, the Satan character is introduced as one of the ‘heavenly beings’ , and his name is derived from the Hebrew word for ‘accuser’ or ‘adversary.’ (See footnotes to Job, Chp.1 in the New Oxford Annotated Bible.)

The word ‘Redeemer’ in a key verse at Job 19:25 has legal undertones, also coming from the Hebrew tradition and meaning something like ‘vindicator’ or ‘mediator.’ (Also from footnotes, NOAB.

The huge amount of language related to legal trials in this book emphasizes Job’s eureka moment when he realizes that what he has really undergone is in fact a testing kind of trial. This shift happens in Chp. 38 when God finally speaks to Job “out of the whirlwind.” Or as Canadian scholar Northrop Frye puts it in his book Words with Power, “ the judge himself comes down from the bench (WWP, p. 311).”

Job’s awareness (and the reader’s!) of this different rubric is crucial. Frye further explains: “Job is not allowed to look back at the chain of causation in the past, which would be a matter of relying on the wrong kind of memory. He has reached the end of his narrative in his present situation and must now look up and down. What he sees is the good creation in its original unspoiled form: at one pole there is the intelligible harmony when the morning stars sang together; at the other is the leviathan who is king over all the children of pride (41:43).


SO WHY DOES BAD STUFF HAPPEN TO JOB?
Let’s turn again to Frye. In his book The Great Code , Frye makes this suggestion: “The case against Job is simply that he lives in a world in which a good deal of power is held by Satan. Job, like the Good Samaritan in Jesus’ parable, comes from [a country outside Israel.] ... Job lives in enemy territory, in the embrace of heathen and Satanic power which is symbolically in the belly of the leviathan, the endless extent of time and space (GC, p. 195).”


CELEBRATION OF ACTIVE FAITH.
Lois Wilson in the quote cited above flagged us to this. Frye develops this idea further (WWP, p. 311): “What is finally restored at the end of the story, however, is a society... and Job is not restored until he prays for [his friends] (42:10).” Frye goes on to explain that Job has arrived at a place where “the Biblical perspective of divine initiative and human response passes into its opposite, where the initiative is human, and where a divine response, symbolized by the answer to Job, is guaranteed (WWP, p. 313).”


JOB IMMORTALIZED BY GF HANDEL.

German composer and European gadfly George Frederick Handel inscribed indelibly on the modern mind Job’s line, ‘I know that my Redeemer lives.’ This is the title of a well-loved aria in Handel’s Messiah. This line also appears on Handel’s memorial in Poet’s Corner at Westminster Abbey in London, England. To hear a 90-second mp3 sample of this aria, click here. Then scroll down to Disk 2, Track 18. Enjoy!


TIMELESS IMAGES BY WILLIAM BLAKE.
British poet and painter William Blake produced a book of colour engravings inspired by the Book of Job. To see these (in black & white or colour!), click here. Enjoy them too!

ALL RIGHT, ALL RIGHT, LET'S GET SPECIFIC.
N. Frye wrote a seminal book on Blake in 1947 called Fearful Symmetry. In this book, Frye traces the influence of the Bible on Blake, as well as the influence of Blake on the English speaking world around 1800. Blake's iluminated plates on the book of Job are an integral part of the poet's oeuvre. Here's a telling footnote on one of Blake's Job plates in Frye's book:


"...Job is not restored to his former state of pastoral innocence, but raised to the unfallen world which that state reflected, a world in which his "emanations" are united to him, and in which the tragedies that befell him are portrayed as works of art existing "in the shadows of Possibility." These pictures are on the walls of Job's mind, for the room he is in is identical with his own body. That does not make them subjective, for Job is no longer subject: he is one with God, not the Creator of the natural leviathan shown in our first illustration, but the creative Word of God who tames it."

Here's a direct link to the Vision of Job, plate 20, in black and white with handlettering.

Here's the link to the same plate in colour.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Has it ever happen to you that you felt something bad or unfair happened to you and it was distinctly not your fault?

2. Are we very impressed with God when things like this happen to us?

3. How do we deal with situations where God feels remote? Who do we talk to? How do we get through it?

4. What does ‘passive faith’ mean to you? [Something like trusting in God to the point of being a doormat...]. What does ‘active faith’ mean to you.

5. What are some examples of how our actions may demonstrate an active faith. [Situations requiring forgiveness. Interacting with ‘outsiders’ that we may be a little afraid of.]


*******WORKSHOPS*******



IN REAL TIME WITH THE CHILDREN IN YOUR WORKSHOPS COVER THESE TWO POINTS:

1. REVIEW THE STORY WITH THE CHILDREN. HAVE THEM SUMMARIZE TO DEMONSTRATE TO ALL HOW MUCH MORE THEY REMEMBER FROM PAST WEEKS.

2. EXPLAIN HOW YOUR ACTIVITY CONNECTS TO THE STORY.

Job 2 © December 2006, LD McKenzie

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BIO

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