Bible Commentary - Job Introduction

Having just completed the book of Esther, we now move on to the book of Job.

This is a big change.  The previous 12 books (from Joshua through Esther) were all written in a historical narrative style, and all represent a fairly continuous linear history of Israel from their first entrance to the promised land through the Babylonian exile and a brief period after their return from the exile to Jerusalem.  This historical narrative section is sometimes called “the historical books” or in other places “the former prophets”.  On the other hand, Job is assigned to what is usually called “the wisdom literature” or by the Jews it is called “the writings” (Hebrew: Ketuvim).  My point here is not to get into all the details of how these categories are segmented or defined but rather to emphasize that Esther and Job fall into different categories, and this is manifestly evident in the writing style and topic of the two respective books.

Some of my readers may be wondering why this is relevant.  One of the most important principles for proper bible reading and interpretation is to understand the intent of the author, and I believe the literary style is an inseparable reflection of the author’s intent.  In fact, I would go further and say that one of the most common misinterpretations of the bible is to take a poetic book and interpret it literally.  For instance, you could take nearly any popular song and it will have some lyric like “I can’t live without you.”  If interpreted literally, this actually has grave consequences for the songwriter who might die after their next breakup. Most people will realize this is an absurd deduction and that “I can’t live without you” is just a figure of speech.

And yet people make these kinds of interpretation errors with the bible all the time, for instance taking obscure verses from the Psalms as evidence for flat earth theology.  I wish I could say I’m joking but I really have seen people write essays about the theological contradictions in Psalms or like bad scientific claims in the Psalms because they are taking what are literally song lyrics and interpreting them as scientific claims.  To the surprise of everyone, poetry often contains non-scientific claims.

Let me say it again: Job is part of the wisdom literature.  It is not a historical narrative, and it is not intended to be a historical narrative.  It is part of the same category as Psalms and Proverbs, not Kings or Judges.  Once must exercise caution when attempting to derive a theological framework from Job because the book is arguably much more of an allegory than a literal history.

I think for most of my readers, a sensible and intuitive understanding will flow naturally so I don’t expect this to be a big problem, but I also think it’s important for my readers to be looking for the right things as we go through this book.

I’ve been spending a lot of time talking about what Job is not, so now I would like to talk about what Job is.  At its heart, Job is grappling with the central question of what causes human suffering, and how should we respond to suffering.  It is a book of philosophy, and not stories.  The book has four main actors: Job and his three friends.  There is also a variety of minor actors such as a fourth friend who shows up later, Job’s wife, God and the devil.  Job is the subject of his book and the various actors do not as much represent distinct people as they represent different opinions about that central question of suffering.  As a brief aside, this is very close to the rabbinical tradition that developed later in Jewish history as represented in the Talmud.  Both the Mishnah and the Gamarah (the two main books of the Talmud) are structured as dialogues or debates between various rabbis.  Without going into all the details, using possibly-fictional characters to represent different perspectives in a philosophical debate is part of the Jewish literary tradition.

What do we know about the origin and authorship of the book?  Some people regard Job as the oldest book in the OT, both because of language features as well as the literary structure and relatively undeveloped theology.  There are many things that are striking in their absence from this book: the temple, the priesthood, the nation of Israel or even the land of Israel, the covenant, and nearly any aspect of the redemptive arc of sin and God’s forgiveness.  Many critics regard these omissions to indicate an early and possibly non-Jewish origin for the story of Job.  That said, it was almost certainly written down by a Jew, but we don’t know who and we also don’t know when.  It does not make reference to any verifiable historical events, so attempts to date Job typically depend on linguistic analysis, which is not precise and sometimes also unreliable.

The book of Job is structured as follows: it has a two chapter introduction, roughly one chapter conclusion, and 39 chapters in the middle of people talking.  There is so much talking it’s like Deuteronomy on steroids.  In my experience, it’s a very difficult book to read, especially the first time, because the dialogue can be boring and difficult to follow.  I personally found it very boring the first time I read it and more interesting every time I went through it again.

The story opens with Job suffering a catastrophe.  His children all die in accidents, his property is destroyed and all his livestock are stolen by bandits, amongst other things, and his three friends go to comfort him.  The comfort doesn’t last long as they eventually get into a disagreement regarding why Job is suffering (but all of them implicitly assume it is God’s punishment).  Towards the end, God appears and rebukes all four of them for their mistaken opinions.  God resolves the question of suffering by asserting his supremacy over human understanding and that some things are too mysterious and complex for us to fully grasp in this time.  Job admits that God is great and that understanding the true reasons and wisdom of God is beyond his capabilities.

In the conclusion, Job’s family and wealth are restored and he lives happily ever after.  Life turns out well for Job, but there have been many times in my life when I’ve questioned whether God’s response is satisfactory.  Frankly, it feels evasive to me; in a sense God is answering the question, but in another very literal sense he is refusing to answer the question on the grounds that he is beyond human reasoning.  I think it’s a very challenging answer.  To me it seems like another way of saying, “trust me”.  God is saying that his answer is beyond our understanding and we have to simply trust him and trust that human suffering is somehow part of his redemptive plan.  We must be satisfied to know that a reason exists, even if we do not know it.  I don’t know if I’ve attained that kind of satisfaction, but I believe it is God’s challenge to us.

Bible Commentary - Esther 10

In this chapter, we learn the final fate of King Xerxes and Mordecai.

Have you ever seen one of those movies that has a based-on-a-true-story ending title cards of “what happened” to the main characters in the movie but like, after the movie was over?  Like if there is some kind of drama flick and it’s all like, “Bobby Jones was later convicted and is now serving seven consecutive life sentences” or whatever?  That is basically what I think about this chapter.  It is the ending title cards for the book of Esther, where the narrator tells us “what happened” to Xerxes and Mordecai, but interestingly does not tell us “what happened” to Esther.

For Xerxes, it tells us that he had many accomplishments because of his strength and authority, so it was a good ending for him.

For Mordecai, the king advanced him into greatness, he was second only to the king and widely honored by the Jews.  What did he use his position for?  To advance “the good of his people” and “the welfare of his whole nation”.  In other words, he didn’t use his position to advance his own personal interests or his immediate family, but rather used it to advance the interests of the entire Jewish people.  This presents Mordecai as an example for the rest of the Jewish community to emulate during the period under foreign empires (whether during the exile or post-exile).  The model for good Jewish behavior under Gentile rule is to cooperate, seek a position of power and then use that power to benefit the Hebrew nation.  It is important enough that this is the very last sentence of the book.  I already discussed this general point in my Introduction to Esther, however, so I won’t repeat that here.

This concludes the book of Esther; I hope my readers enjoyed it as much as I have, and next we will be moving on to the book of Job!

Bible Commentary - Esther 9

In this chapter, the Jews execute the king’s decree, wipe out their enemies, and inaugurate the festival of Purim.

We are now drawing near to the conclusion of Esther; while there is one chapter left after this one, it is a very short chapter of only three verses, so for all intents and purposes we can treat chapter 9 as the conclusion of Esther.

Verse 1 opens the chapter by referring once again to a “reversal of fortunes”, which I have been writing about so often.  I personally interpret this verse as the author’s summary of Esther almost in its entirety.

In verses 3-4 we see Mordecai’s continued ascendancy into power.  In the previous chapter we saw Mordecai honored by the king with the signet ring and purple robes (purple being a royal color).  In this chapter, we see the bureaucrats and courtesans of the empire fearfully assisting the Jews, anxious to avoid Mordecai’s wrath.  One can imagine they saw the destruction wreaked upon Haman’s household and did not want to share his fate.  As we see in verses 7-10, Haman did not die alone: the Jews also killed all of his sons, partly as an act of vengeance against Haman and partly to prevent Haman’s family from retaliating in the future.  Perhaps to make an example, as well.

In verse 12, the king asks Esther for a third time what she wants, which is a bit strange because in this case the book doesn’t report Esther approaching the king or petitioning him in advance.  Perhaps it is implied because in verse 13 she does make a request of the king, asking permission to continue the massacre into the following day.

In the end, it tells us the number of people who died was around 76,000, which is a lot but comparable or perhaps less than the number of Jews who would have died if the decree hadn’t been reversed.  Then in verses 18-19 it uses the nuance of the “second day” in Susa to explain why rural Jews and urban Jews celebrated the festival on different days.

Verse 22 explains once again the reversal of fortune theme in Esther, with sorrow turning into gladness and mourning turned into a holiday.  Verse 25 continues the theme with Haman’s “wicked scheme… returning on his own head”.

Verses 24-26 offers an etymology for the name of the festival, Purim, and explains that it is because of the “pur” or lot that Haman had cast to choose the date on which they would be destroyed.  The remainder of the chapter is just repeated confirmation that Purim should continue to be celebrated as a perpetual memorial to their deliverance.

Taking all these things together, there are two obvious themes to this chapter.  The first is that the author wants to repeatedly demonstrate the “reversal of fortune” theme, that everything meant for evil turned to good, sorrow turned to joy, etc., etc.  I’ve identified at least three examples of that (v. 1, 22, 25).  The second obvious theme is the establishment of the Purim festival as a memorial and celebration of this specific deliverance.  The writer of Esther goes at length to explain on what day the festival is celebrated, why it’s different between the city and the countryside, why it is called Purim, and to affirm that the festival was duly instituted by the authority of Esther and Mordecai themselves.

From my point of view, I think it’s clear that the author of Esther is writing from some later time period, possibly from a later generation, when the Purim festival was celebrated but the people of his time might not know how Purim came about or why it was celebrated.  The way that this chapter closes with so much detail about the festival and its assocation with the Esther story is a fairly transparent attempt to tie the Esther story in with the Purim festival.

The way I imagine it going is like this: Purim is celebrated every year by the Jews, and every holiday is a memorial to something, so children would naturally ask what event Purim was supposed to commemorate.  The father in the household (and it would almost always be the father) would then recite the story of Esther and conclude, “therefore, this is why we celebrate Purim, why it’s called Purim and why it’s on these particular days”.  That is, I imagine the author of Esther as someone who was almost working from Purim backwards to Esther, because Purim was the occasion when the story of Esther would have been recited.  To put it another way, we can imagine the entire book of Esther is an answer to the question, “why do we celebrate Purim?”  After the whole story is finished, the author concludes, “therefore this is why we celebrate Purim” and that is an answer to “the question” that prompted the book, as well as a few Frequently Asked Questions like “why is it called Purim”, and so forth.  I think this also helps to explain the formal style of Esther and heavy use of chiasmus, because it was written after the fact as a poetic recapitulation of the story and not e.g. a historical record like Kings or Chronicles (which tend to have a much more prosaic style).

Meanwhile, “reversal of fortune” is something like the payload or the moral of the story, because it reminds the Jews that if they are ever suffering hardships or sorrow of any kind, that God can reverse their problem and turn it into a blessing through some kind of miracle.

In any case, we have one last short chapter in Esther and then we move on to the book of Job.