Job’s Intercession: Antidote to Divine Folly 463 rather than with praise. From chapter 3 onwards, Job displays no such attitude of praise, no stoical acceptance of his fate. The mistranslation of Job 2,10 as a rhetorical question erases the narrative progression intended, wherein the Epilogue teaches Job to take into account an element of divine nature he had overlooked in the Prologue. Because divine folly is a possibility, evil often strikes the innocent as much as the guilty. Job is a case in point. That on legitimate theological grounds Job refused to accept evil from the hand of YHWH is irrelevant, as much as whether he blessed or cursed God. Monotheism offers a limited number of options to integrate evil. Steering a careful course between the Charybdis of blaming another divinity for evil and the Scylla of attributing evil directly to YHWH, the Joban scribes use folly as a shield. Folly protects YHWH and the Joban scribes by deflecting the negative impact of attributing the evil that befell Job directly to YHWH. But divine folly also protects Job’s innocence. If the evil that befell Job is not a punishment, YHWH is necessarily the author of that evil. This is nothing new since the Egyptian sage Ipu-wer expressed doubts over the common notion that the Creator is the herdsman of all, and that there is no evil in the divine heart. After considering the evils that befell his land, Ipu-wer concludes that “Fighting has come and the punisher of crimes commits them”(28). Since YHWH insists upon his role as creator in Job 38–41, evil actions are to be attributed to YHWH, but if they spring from bouts of folly rather than from a inherently evil nature, these evil deeds need not be justified or explained. Folly, however, does not reduce YHWH’s liability. For this reason, the Epilogue from verse 10 onwards is strictly devoted to economics; carefully taking stock of how YHWH doubles Job’s possessions to confirm the full payment of legal compensation for the damage incurred as required by Exod 22,1-9 (29). The notion of compensation is not an easy one to swallow either. Job 1,21b read as “YHWH gave and YHWH took back; may the name of YHWH be blessed” has recently been adduced as evidence against (28) Admonitions of Ipu-wer (12:1-5); M. LICHTHEIM, Ancient Egyptian Literature (Berkeley 1973) 160; W.W. HALLO (ed.), The Context of Scripture (Leiden 1997) 97. (29) F.I. ANDERSEN, Job (Leicester 1976) 293; M. GEEVARUGHESE, The Role of the Epilogue in the Book of Job (PhD dissertation, Madison 1995) 37-54; J. MILES, God. A Biography (New York 1995) 327. D. GEERAERTS, “Caught in a Web of Irony”, Job 28 (ed. VAN WOLDE), 53, even finds a hint of over- compensation.