Chapter 5 ,,,_ - THE --.--satan IN THE BOOK OF JOB

But in the book of Job, Milton's Messiah is call'd Satan. - William Blake, Ih~ M~II!~g~ QI H~~Y~n ~n~ H~ll~ You realize by now the part you played To stultify the Deuteronomist And change the tenor of religious thought. My thanks are to you for releasing me From moral bondage to the human race. - God, addressing Job, in Robert Frost's 4 M~!~~~ QI I~~!Qn•

The book of Job is, in many ways, the most challenging book of the Hebrew Bible. From those trained in Hebrew its grammar and diction command as a response both awe and humility, a reaction consistent, perhaps intentionally consistent, with the book's portrayal of Job's response to revealed deity. 1 On the compositional level it defies neat categorization, bursting the bounds of any genre thus far proposed to contain it . And on the level of message, the widely and wildly divergent interpretations offered throughout the ages bespeak its tangled complexity .

There is no "correct" reading of the book of Job . It sets up a hypothetical situation which it asks the reader (or, more primitively, the listener) to contemplate: a man a man of exemplary integrity, is made to suffer. In what follows I will be

1. Contra John Briggs Curtis, "On Job's Response to Yahweh," J!!1 98 (1979) 497-511. Curtis sees in Job's response (40:4-5, 42: 2-6) a rejection of transcendent deity (p. 510).

- 69 - 70 AN ADVERSARY IN HEAVEN

arguing that the story is told in such a way that, initially at least, it need not be regarded as factual in the same way as the Deuteronomistic history, for instance, portrays David's dealings with the ousted house of Saul. In the latter example, propaganda is presented as historical fact; in the book of Job we are presented, initially, with a folktale. In the Deuteronomistic history, it is clear what we are being asked to believe; in the book of Job, there is room for discussion, and more important, individual reaction. The book of Job seeks to inspire thought, to endorse complexity, ambiguity, and paradox. It actively challenges the reader or listener to contemplate its contents and debate its meaning, and because of this very dialogue between 2 the work its elf and its audience it is in the final analysis multivalent.

Having granted that the reader or listener, both modern and in antiquity, has a certain amount of interpretational autonomy when approaching the book of Job, I would like to distinguish between the modern reader and his or her ancient counterpart. A book is read or a story heard against the backdrop of cultural and political context, and thus resonates differently for different audiences. In what follows, hope to reappropriate something of the social and theological context against which the book of Job was primitively heard. In preparation for this and other tasks, I shall first discuss the compositional integrity of the Masoretic book of Job.

The book of Job can be broadly divided into

2. Cf. Edwin M. Good, "Job and the Literary Task: A Response," ~QY!~!ng~ 56 (1973) 472-473.