Michael V. Fox, «God's Answer and Job's Response», Vol. 94 (2013) 1-23
The current understanding of the Book of Job, put forth by M. Tsevat in 1966 and widely accepted, is that YHWH implicitly denies the existence of divine justice. Retribution is not part of reality, but only a delusion. The present article argues that the book teaches the need for fidelity in the face of divine injustice. The Theophany shows a God whose care for the world of nature hints at his care for humans. The reader, unlike Job, knows that Job's suffering is important to God, as establishing the possibility of true human loyalty.
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GOD’S ANSWER AND JOB’S RESPONSE
Psalm 104 and other psalms with descriptions of natural wonders and
blessings, such as 19,1-7; 74,12-17; 147,8-11.16-17, show that all
these natural phenomena can be, and were, adduced to show God’s
goodness. This is true even of the raven (Ps 147,9) and the lion who
beg their food from God (Pss 147,9; 104,21). God is shown as the
great huntsman (and scavenger) on behalf of carrion eaters. If God’s
giving predators their food elicits exclamations of exultation in Ps
104,21, there is no reason to suppose that the same deed in Job would
show YHWH nurturing “an element of creation hostile to humansâ€,
as Newsom says 28. Psalm 19,2 epitomizes the idea that God’s good-
ness is declared by the natural world. Of course this cannot be pre-
sumed to apply to the book of Job, but it is the assumption that
readers can be expected to bring to the book, and nothing in God’s
words contradicts this assumption.
VI. Behemoth and Leviathan
In an effort to bring to the fore the chaos and danger thought to
inhere in God’s description of the cosmos, contemporary commen-
tators have dramatized the evil of Behemoth and Leviathan. The
beasts are described as “horridly terrifying creatures†and “uncon-
trollable, except to a limited degree by God†29. But I doubt that the
ancient reader would have been quite that distressed. After all,
YHWH always defeats Leviathan, even when portrayed in its full-
blown, primordial ferocity (Isa 27,1; Ps 74,14). One sign of the
beast’s dreadfulness, according to J.G. Williams, is the statement
that Behemoth is the “first of God’s works†(Job 40,19a). This sup-
posedly displaces wisdom from the primogeniture it has in Prov
Aton and their shared sequence proves that the Hymn, or some derivative
thereof, is one of the sources of the psalm. We must minimally assume indirect
transmission of Atonist motifs and imagery. This is affirmed by A. KRÃœGER, Das
Lob des Schöpfers. Studien zu Sprache, Motivik und Theologie von Psalm 104
(WMANT 124; Neukirchen-Vluyn 2010), who rightly insists on the influences
of other literary traditions as well (2-22 [with history of research], and 403-422
[with motif-historical analysis]). Still, the concentration of motifs from the Hymn
in these eleven verses of Psalm 104 (with some shared motifs elsewhere) indi-
cates a more specific literary connection than just diffusion of motifs.
NEWSOM, Book of Job, 246.
28
GREENSTEIN, “Problem of Evilâ€, 355.
29
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