Who's In Charge Here (Part Three)?

Now you might suggest that it is too much to say that Job’s suffering is meaningless.  After all, if God is the author of it, then there must a point—even if we cannot discern that point.  However, let’s read God’s own words on the subject in chapter two.  

Again, the Accuser appears for an audience in the heavenly court.  God continues to brag on poor Job, even as the wretched fellow lies prostrate, robes torn and head shaved in mourning.  “He still persists in his integrity, although you incited me against him, to destroy him for no reason” (Job 2:3). 

Isn’t that an interesting remark!  It is Job who holds fast in his blamelessness.  God carefully pushes the responsibility for Job’s suffering off to the Accuser—“you incited me against him…”  Just who, exactly, is in charge at this point?  Even God can say, it would seem, that “the Devil made me do it.”  

More to the point, however, is God’s description of Job’s suffering.  It is “for no reason” (the Hebrew word is “chinnam”).  The word has several meanings, including 1) freely, for nothing, without cause, gratis, gratuitously, for nothing; 2) for no purpose, in vain; or 3) gratuitously, without cause, undeservedly.  Several times in the Old Testament, the phrase refers to working without compensation. 

This isn’t the word that shows up, for example, in Ecclesiastes (“Vanity of vanities, all is vanity…”).  This is not mere emptiness, vapor or fog—to be blown away at some point by the winds of mortality.  The use of “chinnam” here refers to doing something with no expectation of gain or reward.  

God notes that Job’s suffering is gratuitous, without point, not intended to accomplish any particular purpose.  It is not merely empty.  Neither Job’s trust nor his suffering is intended to produce any particular personal benefit for Job—or perhaps for God either.  So it is God, not the Accuser, who identifies Job’s suffering as without compensation or reward.

The Hebrew word in question shows up elsewhere in the text.  We look at Job 1:9 to find the word on the lips of the Accuser: “Does Job fear God for nothing?”  That is, does Job’s devotion to God arise devoid of any self-interested desire for protection, gain, safety and security?  

The Accuser doesn’t believe that for a minute.  The Accuser is certain that Job loves God for the goodies, not simply for God.  So the question is not really the modern one of what the suffering means.  Rather the word here leads us to consider whether we love God for the benefits or for God.

Even though we cannot place the composition of the book of Job on an historical timeline with any great certainty, this word helps us to locate it in the historical conversation of the Jews after the Babylonian exile.  Our word is the drumbeat, for example, of the paragraph that makes us Isaiah 52:3-6.

“For thus says the Lord: You were sold for nothing, and you shall be redeemed without money. For thus says the Lord God: Long ago, my people went down into Egypt to reside there as aliens; the Assyrian, too, has oppressed them without cause. Now therefore what am I doing here, says the Lord, seeing that my people are taken away without cause? Their rulers howl, says the Lord, and continually, all day long, my name is despised. Therefore my people shall know my name; therefore in that day they shall know that it is I who speak; here am I.”

These words are written some time after the physical return from the Exile.  However, the question presented by the Exile and Return remains fresh and powerful.  When will all this be over, Lord?  You have returned the Chosen People to the Promised Land.  When will the Promised Land be returned to the Chosen People?  Why do foreigners still rule the land where the Temple stands and the people now worship in peace and purity?

It is clear that Job is an echo of Judah in exile.  His visible “symptoms” justify a simplistic diagnosis (see Deuteronomy 28).  Job has violated the covenant, say his “friends.”  He is suffering the precise consequences listed in Deuteronomy 28 and 1 Kings 9.  So Job’s friends have every reason to draw the conclusion they do.