Individual Submission Summary
Share...

Direct link:

Job, Joseph, and Brothers Reunited: Allusion and Polyvalence in Job 42

Sun, December 16, 12:30 to 2:00pm, Seaport Hotel & World Trade Center, Beacon Hill 1 Complex

Abstract

Scholars, particularly in the last generation, have recognized the important roles played by inner-biblical allusion and polyvalence in the book of Job. For example, the book’s framing chapters contain several meaningful references to the Patriarchal narratives, and its final chapter yields varying interpretations of Job’s response to God. In the present paper, I propose an allusion to the story of Joseph and his brothers, signaled initially in chapter 2 when the text—especially by way of the phrase LO HIKKIRUHU—underscores a disconnect between Job and his friends. This correlation finds further expression in chapter 6, such as when Job, responding to his friends for the first time, complains about the betrayal perpetrated by his “brothers.” The allusion culminates in chapter 42 by way of several salient expressions and motifs, and it functions in conjunction with a wider set of allusions, some of which I likewise propose here for the first time.

Crucially, this correlation to the Joseph story yields multiple interpretations, which, together with numerous polyvalent formulations in Job 42, give rise to distinct, complementary readings of Job’s response to the God speeches. On the simplest level, Job’s friends, like Joseph’s brothers, are guilty of mistreating the story’s protagonist, whereas an innocent Job, having submitted to God at the beginning of chapter 42, holds the key to his friends’ absolution. Simultaneously, another reading finds Job, even as he acknowledges a moral order known only to God, maintaining a bitter attitude toward the elusiveness of that moral order and toward God himself. According to this reading, Job, in a variation of the challenge faced by Joseph, must subsequently yield some ground to his God-defending antagonists, a step that marks his reunification with them and serves as a prerequisite to his restoration. Either way, however, the text presents Job’s response to his suffering as superior to that of his friends. Ultimately, the text thereby endorses multiple legitimate attitudinal trajectories in response to the experience of suffering, even if the sufferer must, in the end, concede the presence of an inscrutable moral order and abandon any oppositional posture toward the divine.

Author