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“Let Love Clasp Grief Lest Both Be Drowned”

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“Let Love Clasp Grief Lest Both Be Drowned” chapter 3 “Let Love Clasp Grief Lest Both Be Drowned” The Book of Job is about friendship.* For all its heavy hitting on such impor- tant theological topics as innocent suffering and the justice or injustice of God, it is the theology of friendship that provides the frame for the book’s central concerns. At the beginning of the book, Job sits on an ash heap of suffering, surrounded by three friends who come to “console” and “comfort” him, only to find they have no words, at least at the outset (!), equal to the challenge his suffering presents. They sit with him in silence for seven days and seven nights (Job 2: 11–13). At the end of the book, Job is once more surrounded by friends, “brothers and sisters and all who had known him before.” They share a meal of communion with him, they “console” and “comfort” him, and they bring him tangible gifts – “a sizeable amount of money and a gold ring” – that contribute to his blessing and his restoration (Job 42:11–12). In between the beginning and ending of the book, the twists and turns of Job’s painful journey tracks through the dialogues with various “friends” – Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar, Elihu, … and God – who make their way to his ash heap with words meant to make a differ- ence in his situation. Indeed, of the forty-two chapters that comprise the Book of Job, no less than thirty-eight of them, roughly ninety percent of the entire story, are forged in the crucible of a lingering, but never articulated question: Who will be Job’s friend? Let me stretch the imagination by suggesting that we read Job as the Old Testament’s version of the Good Samaritan story (Luke 10:29–37). When the lawyer asks Jesus, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus points him to the abiding summons of Deut 6:4–5: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” The lawyer presses for more clarity by asking a follow-up question: “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus responds by tell- ing a story about “a certain man” who was traveling the dangerous road from Jerusalem to Jericho. Through no fault of his own, he fell victim to random acts of violence and brutality and was left for dead. Three travelers, a priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan, each would-be friends, journey on the same road. The priest and the Levite pass by without offering assistance. The Samaritan, * In memoriam D. N. D. (1950–2000). An earlier version of this essay was presented as one of two Nils W. Lund Memorial Lectures at North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago, Illinois. Many thanks to the friends, colleagues, and students for their warm and gracious hospitality. © Samuel E. Balentine, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004459212_004 “Let Love Clasp Grief Lest Both Be Drowned” 53 “moved with compassion,” stops and pours oil on the beaten man’s wounds, bandages him up, and then carries him to an inn, where he pays for his care and safekeeping. When Jesus finishes this story, he asks the lawyer to think about what it means for him: “Which of the three, do you think, was a neigh- bor to the man?” For the remainder of this paper, I invite you to reflect on the meaning of this story, if the name of the beaten man in the ditch were Job. 1 Models of Friendship In Jesus’ story, neither the three travelers on the road to Jericho nor the beaten man in the ditch speaks a word. We do not know what reason the priest and the Levite may have given for neglecting the man, or why the Samaritan was moved with compassion to care for him. By the same token, we do not know what the man may have said to the two passers-by who left him there to die, or how he might have responded to the one who bandaged his wounds and carried him to safety. If his name were Job, however, and if the priest and the Levite traveled in the company of Job’s “friends,” Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, then we have a rich deposit of references to friendship from which we may reconstruct the dialogue Luke does not provide. 1.1 The “Friends’ ” View of Friendship Let me set the table for a survey of the friendship offered Job by Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar with a scene from Edward Albee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play A Delicate Balance.1 One night, while Agnes and her husband Tobias were idling away their time in their comfortable suburban home, Edna and Harry, two life-long friends, showed up uninvited at their door. Something was clearly wrong, although Edna and Harry could say nothing more than “We got fright- ened.” “We got scared” (Act I, 49). Only gradually did it become clear to Agnes and Tobias that their friends had come to seek refuge in their home. When that realization sunk in, another quickly followed. Agnes and Tobias had become ensnared in something that threatened to undo their world. One morning, after Tobias had stayed up all night pondering how to help these friends, Agnes offered her own assessment of the situation: [T]hey’ve brought the plague with them, and that’s another matter. Let me tell you something about disease … mortal illness; you are either immune to it … or you fight it. If you are immune, you wade in, you treat 1 E. Albee, A Delicate Balance (New York: Penguin Books, 1966)..
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