Job’s Intercession: Antidote to Divine Folly 471 of justice and retribution. Traditional theodicy blames Job in order to justify YHWH, but Job’s innocence is coming back to the fore (56) which forces theodicy to weaken divine power in order to preserve divine goodness (57). The bombastic theophany in Job 38–41 is read as a rejection of omnipotence which allows YHWH to decline responsibility for injustice (58). Taking divine folly seriously opens a third way which takes Job’s words “you know that you can all” (Job 42,2) at face value. Creative power is not limited, it is brutal and indiscriminate. Its working out on the micro-level of individual human destinies excludes the notion of justice (59). Justice is replaced by folly. Divine folly avoids attributing evil directly to divine nature and puts evil out of the reach of human wisdom. Only fools try explaining folly. Theodicy is irrelevant (60). The corollary of a God who assumes responsibility for evils he may commit is a human intercessor and a reinforced piety system to cope with the dark side of both divinity and humanity (61). In this sense, the fear of the Lord mentioned in Job 28,28 attains full significance. Potential folly renders YHWH fearful indeed, in spite of his positive attributes. Downplaying the element of dread in the fear of the Lord is as unsatisfactory as the doctrine of retribution. Job’s audience is spurred to offer holocausts and to seek the intercession of Job to mitigate the effects of YHWH’s folly. With these ten verses, the Book of Job gets a proper sense of closure. The position delineated in the Book of Job avoids the pitfalls of the Deuteronomistic and Christian ways to cope with evil. Instead of clearing God by denying human (56) J. KALMAN, With Friends like These: Turning Points in the Jewish Exegesis of the Biblical Book of Job (Ann Arbor 2006) 258-336. (57) J.E. THIEL, God, Evil, and Innocent Suffering (New York 2002) 32-62. (58) LACOCQUE, “Deconstruction”, 96. (59) “YHWH never set out to police the universe”: D.J.A. CLINES, “Does the Book of Job Suggest that Suffering is not a Problem?”, Weisheit in Israel (eds D.J.A. CLINES - H. LICHTENBERGER - H.-P. MÜLLER) (Münster 2003) 107. (60) A.E. STEINMANN, “The Structure and Message of the Book of Job”, VT 46 (1996) 85-100. (61) See U. BERGES, “Hiob in Lateinamerika. Der leidende Mensch und der aussätzige Gott”, The Book of Job (ed. W. BEUKEN), 316. For MILES, God, 328, “After Job, God knows his own ambiguity as he has never known it before”. Contrast with M.B. DICK, “The Neo-Assyrian Royal Hunt and Yahweh’s Answer to Job”, JBL 125 (2006) 269: “Evil is not to be attributed to God, as Job had done, nor to humans, as the three friends had insisted; there are independent evil forces, symbolized by the undomesticated animals of the wilderness, but they are held in check (fpçm) by Yahweh, though not annihilated”.