Job 1-20, Volume 17 by David J. A. Clines

Author:David J. A. Clines
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL006060 Religion / Biblical Commentary / Old Testament
Publisher: Zondervan

Explanation

The language of this address has been rich in the metaphors of legal disputation. Job has—hesitatingly and adventurously— ontemplated means of winning legal vindication from God. The futility of the undertaking becomes only the more apparent as the speech progresses, so that it may appear that the whole subject is in danger of coming to a complete dead-end.

Something is in motion, however; and that is Job’s growing recognition of the divine hostility. What thwarts Job’s ambitions, he comes to recognize in this speech, is not so much the majesty and omni-competence of God which dooms any attempt to compel him, but the divine anger that cannot be deflected, a studied hostility that flings into battle against Job all the resources of a God.

On the level of rationality, then, the whole line of approach toyed with by Job in this speech—a legal confrontation on a grand scale—seems to fall to the ground, and only a mood of sour resignation can be expected to survive. But on the level of feeling, the conflict has only just begun; for the fact is that, for the first time, Job has brought to the surface his sense of the anger of God. And that anger, whether or not it is a reality, must be met by a radical anger within Job. Intellectually the game may be at stalemate; but emotionally everything is still at stake.

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