Can I Get a Witness (Part 3)?

To be clear, I have to acknowledge that once the Lord begins to speak, the Lord doesn’t answer Job’s charges as such.  Instead, the Lord testifies to the glories of Creation.  In the end, we all become clear that the Lord will not be used as a character in Job’s personal drama.  Job is not the author, the director or the producer of this theatrical tragedy.  

Job is a bit player on the great stage of Creation.  Of course, that clarity of roles makes it all the more impressive that the Lord shows up and answers at all.  Again, it seems that the specifics of Job’s charges are not nearly so important as Job’s demand that the Lord would simply show up and acknowledge what has happened.

In addition, this is a dialogue—not a monologue.  In chapter 40 of Job, verses one and two, we encounter the word for “answer.”  This time the challenge comes from the Lord to Job.  “Anyone who argues with God must respond,” says the Lord.  Job must enter into the dialogue of question and answer.  The Lord expects full partners in the conversation, not mere whiners and complainers who wish to cry out but avoid true dialogue. “Gird up your loins like a man,” the Lord demands, “and I will question you, and you declare to me” (Job 40:7).  

Asking the Lord to answer the summons requires a dialogue with the Creator of the universe—a dialogue the Lord seems to desire passionately.

There is, however, more that happens.  In chapter 42, we read that God will find Job’s prayer for his friends “acceptable” (Job 42:8-9).  The Hebrew phrase that is translated as “accept” is really a phrase that says God “lifted up Job’s face.”  There is a deep sense of direct contact here.  When Job prays that his friends will be forgiven their arrogant presumption, God promises to have a face to face conversation with Job—to acknowledge him, his prayers and his personhood.  No longer will the “system” mediate between Job and God.  Instead, they will have this deeply interpersonal connection.  That is the new thing that comes out of Job’s experience.

An alert reader might note that God also makes restitution at the end of the story.  “And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job when he had prayed for his friends” (Job 42:10).  A sharp attorney could surely make the case that this restitution is a tacit admission of guilt on God’s part.  The Lord gives Job twice the wealth and property he had before.  His family comforts him with “sympathy and compassion” (more on that later).  He gets new sons and daughters.  And he lives one hundred forty years more after the tragedy—twice the normal “three score and ten” that the Psalms describe as the span of human life.

It is the face to face acknowledgment, however, that heals Job: “The power of a mediated dialogue to be a transformative experience is to be found in the parties speaking directly with each other about issues and concerns of importance to them” (Jean Greenwood, (Victim Sensitive Victim offender Mediation Training Manual, page 79).  


I want to suggest that Job’s longing for such a dialogue is not a lack of faith but rather a new and deeper experience of faith.  Job’s demand for acknowledgment and his desire for this divine/human dialogue is a venture into the deeper waters of faith where the rules of the system will not protect.  Those same rules, however, will no longer separate him from direct relationship with the Lord.  It is that direct engagement, I would argue, which the Lord seeks out in the story and struggles of Job.