Poetry in Job

I wanted to share with you something I read this morning about the poetry in Job. Scholar Robert Alter says there are three levels of poetry in Job -- the three friends have one level, with some high points but ultimately repetitive and uninspiring. Job has another level, more passionate and creative with its attention to the details of nature. And finally, you have the poetry of the Lord's response, which surpasses them both. 

See below: 

The third—and, ultimately, decisive—level of poetry in the book is manifested when the LORD addresses Job out of the whirlwind.

Here, too, the Job poet’s keen interest in nature is evident, but in an altogether spectacular way that, one might say, trumps Job in the game of vision. 

The poet, having given Job such vividly powerful language for the articulation of his outrage and his anguish, now fashions still greater poetry for God. 

The wide-ranging panorama of creation in the Voice from the Whirlwind shows a sublimity of expression, a plasticity of description, an ability to evoke the complex and dynamic interplay of beauty and violence in the natural world, and even an originality of metaphoric inventiveness that surpasses all the poetry, great as it is, that Job has spoken. 

Many readers over the centuries have felt that God’s speech to Job is no real answer to the problem of undeserved suffering, and some have complained that it amounts to a kind of cosmic bullying of puny man by an overpowering deity. 

One must concede that it is not exactly an answer to the problem because for those who believe that life should not be arbitrary there can be no real answer concerning the good person who loses a child (not to speak of ten children) or the blameless dear one who dies in an accident or is stricken with a terrible wasting disease. 

But God’s thundering challenge to Job is not bullying. 

Rather, it rousingly introduces a comprehensive overview of the nature of reality that exposes the limits of Job’s human perspective, anchored as it is in the restricted compass of human knowledge and the inevitable egoism of suffering. 

The vehicle of that overview is an order of poetry created to match the grandeur—or perhaps the omniscience—of God. 

The visionary experience that this poetry enables for Job is of a vast creation shot through with unfathomable paradoxes, such as the conjoining of the nurturing instinct with cruelty, where in place of the sufferer’s longing for absolute darkness the morning stars sing together and there is a rhythmic interplay between light and darkness. 

Source: Alter, Robert. The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary: Three-Volume Set (pp. 5889-5890). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition. 

I thought that was really cool how, even through the levels and styles of poetry and dramatic-descriptive vision, the Holy Spirit working with the writer of Job can let us pour out our complaint, and then when we've exhausted our ability to speak, He shows us something wider and more mysterious than we knew to look for, lifting our eyes off ourselves to see the Creator's vision of the whole creation. 

 Hope this encourages you today.

Biblical roles and a deeper law

Biblical clothing

Exodus 28: Priests were to wear sacred garments for dignity and honor when they served in the tabernacle.

Matthew 22: In one of Jesus' parables, a man was ejected from a wedding for not wearing wedding clothes.

Conclusion: Biblical worship means wearing your best.

John 13: During the Passover meal, Jesus took off his outer clothing, wrapped a towel around his waist, and washed his disciples' feet.

New conclusion: Biblical worship means wearing your best unless dressing down helps you serve others.

Biblical gender roles

Genesis 24: Rebekah gave Abraham's servant a drink from her water jar at the spring of Nahor and watered his camels.

John 4: Jesus asked a Samaritan woman for a drink from her water jar at the well of Sychar.

Conclusion: Biblical manhood means letting women carry the water jars.

Luke 22: Jesus told Peter and John to follow a man carrying a jar of water to the house where they were to prepare the Passover meal.

New conclusion: Biblical manhood in Jewish culture usually meant letting women carry water jars, but Jesus broke the stereotype to give his disciples a sign.

Where else does the Bible break its own stereotypes to unveil a deeper law?

Notes on Gideon (Judges 6-8)

Midian

Moses's father-in-law was called a priest of Midian in the Pentateuch, but in Judges he is called a Kenite. The Midianites in Judges 6 are raiders allied with Amalekites and other "eastern peoples". They live in tents, invade the land, and camp there, raiding crops (Judges 6:3-5). These raiders wear gold earrings and are called Ishmaelites (8:23). The Midianite leaders are named Oreb and Zeeb (7:25). Their two kings are named Zebah and Zalmunnah (8:5,12). They are also known as nomads (8:11). Their warriors fought with swords (8:10). There were originally 135,000 in their "armies of the eastern peoples", but 120,000 were killed (8:10) and the remaining 15,000 were routed by Gideon's forces (10:12). They spoke a language which Gideon could understand (7:13-14).

The angel of Yahweh

Yahweh had promised to send his angel ahead of Israel "to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared" (Exodus 23:20). The Israelites were to "[p]ay attention to him and listen" in order that the angel would drive out the Canaanites. The angel came to the Israelites at Bokim in the first part of Judges, and berated them for not obeying and for letting the Canaanites remain and for worshiping other gods. The Israelites mourned and wept, but didn't really do anything. Later on, the angel appeared to Gideon, and told him to be courageous because God was with him, and to fight and defeat the Midianites. Yahweh, I guess through the angel, later told him to tear down Baal and Asherah's altar in his hometown and to erect a proper altar to Yahweh. And he did so.

Anxiety

God reassured Gideon's anxiety and gave him courage in several ways, including words from the angel, the test of tearing down Baal's altar and not being punished for it by the townspeople after his dad defended him, the two episodes with the fleece, and the Midianite's prophetic dream. God lessened Gideon's confidence, however, by making him send most his army away -- this was so that his confidence would not be in the size of his army, but in the Lord. And by the end, much of northern Israel was joining his army anyway, although Ephraim was pissed at him for not inviting them sooner, and the men of Succoth and Peniel didn't want to give him provisions because he hadn't completely defeated the Midianites yet. In sum, God provided words, signs, and small tests to increase his confidence in God, and yet through those tests, he temporarily diminished his confidence in people.

Mountains, valleys, and rivers

In Gideon's story, like in many other episodes in Judges, Israel's enemies camped en masse in a valley or on a plain, while the Israelites assembled on a mountain and then came down to fight. The Israelites chased their enemies (or the enemies chased them) to a river, and then more Israelites guarded the fords of the river and killed their enemies as they tried to cross. This may relate to how the Israelites took possession of much of the hill country but the local non-Israelites retained control of the plains. 

The enemy's animals

The non-Israelites often had military equipment and swift animals, such as camels (in the case of Midian) and horses and chariots (in the case of other nations), but these didn't determine the outcome of the battle when God was on the side of Israel.

Confusion in the enemy's camp

In the story of Gideon, and later on in 1 Samuel with the story of Jonathan, the enemies of Israel are taken by surprise and are so confused that they start fighting each other and running away, even before a very small number of Israelites. This is also meant to show that God put them in a panic and the battle was not determined by the number of Israelite fighters.