Job’s Intercession: Antidote to Divine Folly 469 the link between the Epilogue’s explicit mention of divine folly and its implicit reference in the Prologue. The devilish rhetoric of the narrator misleads the audience in considering the question the satan puts to YHWH “Is Job fearing Elohim for naught?” (Job 1,9) as the point of the whole book. That Job is pious and therefore rich (Job 1,1-2), and that Job may become impious once poor is but a foil. Job is well aware that the wicked are doing very well (Job 21,7-26) and thus dispels all suggestions that he considers his wealth as proof of his righteousness. It was and still is common knowledge that the wicked prospers as much as the righteous, if not more. The Book of Proverbs does claim that wisdom rewards the righteous with wealth (Prov 8,18.20-21), but who believes that the rich is necessarily righteous? It was probably obvious to all that evil often pays, and for this reason the wise elders of the Book of Proverbs concede that it is better to be poor because honest (Prov 16,19; 19,1; 28,6) and to satisfy oneself with wisdom rather than with gold (Prov 8,19). Proverbial wisdom admits that the promises of wealth and happiness are incentives to seek wisdom rather than guaranties for success. It is thus illegitimate to conclude from a few verses in Job which applaud examples of retribution as justice in action (Job 5,3-4) that the wise elders of Israel had actually come to equate retribution and justice (51). Such statements are caricatures, rhetorical devices that should not be taken as reflecting the positions of particular teachers or wisdom schools in Israel. Rather, it is the narrator who purposefully introduces a false problem. YHWH and the satan debate an issue which everyone knows to be a false dilemma. By this token, the entire debate in the Prologue is for nothing, but not in vain since it prepares the Epilogue’s verdict. The Epilogue puts a name on the foregone link between piety and riches — folly — and pushes it in the divine sphere. That Job is twice as rich at the end does not prove that piety leads to prosperity in the end (52). The Epilogue has moved beyond reward, and it is only when folly is attributed to the friends that the red herring of the causal link between fortunes to piety remains, and that Job’s partial —————— hand of God leads to his life-saving swallowing (Jon 2,1). Instead of divine folly, Jonah discusses the inability to comprehend or to make sense of divine compassion. At the end, divine compassion is no more predictable than divine folly. (51) As claimed by J.E. HARTLEY, “From Lament to Oath: A Study of Progression in the Speeches of Job”, The Book of Job (ed. W. BEUKEN), 99. (52) CLINES, “Why”, 18.