Abstract
Interpreting this text as an admission of sin on Job’s part makes nonsense of the book for Job is specifically rewarded by God for what he has said. Rather, it is to be seen as recognition by Job of what it means to be human: faith must of necessity be agnostic. This is in the end a comfort.
Both the translation and the interpretation of Job 42.6 are contentious. But from the context two things are clear. First, Job is silenced by God’s challenge to him. Second, he is to be rewarded for what he has said.
From the beginning, the reader knows Job to be innocent. In the prologue, by refusing to accept his wife’s advice to commit suicide (Job 2.9), Job has shown that his faith is disinterested. But the dialogue pictures a very different scene. There, a furious Job puts God on trial, refusing to give up his case until God can explain why he has treated him so unjustly. Job believes that if he can get God to answer him, he must exonerate him (Job 23.3–7).
On the other hand, the three friends assume that they are acting properly on God’s behalf by upholding traditional theology. Their defence of God is simple. Since Job is suffering, he must have sinned and therefore is being properly afflicted by a righteous God. If only he would admit his guilt, God would restore him. His suffering proved his guilt. Yet, in any event, in their opinion Job should never have challenged God, for in the end he is unknowable save insofar as he wills to disclose himself (Job 15.7–13).
In fact, God makes no attempt to explain himself. Job’s temptation is clear enough: to deny God or his own innocence. Instead he affirms both by forcing God’s hand by cursing not God but himself. In desperation at God’s continual silence, he lists every conceivable wrong he might have committed and for which God could rightly be punishing him (Job 31). If God can show that Job is guilty of any of these offences, then he will accept his present position as just. But by resorting to the curse formula, Job ensures that God can no longer remain silent. He must either condemn or acquit Job. To the end, Job has kept his integrity.
The surprise is that, far from a simple vindication of Job, God proclaims his utter transcendence, using very much the same language as the friends (Job 11.7–12), and confirms that men and women cannot know as God knows (Job 38.4–7). God remains God and Job remains man (Job 40.6–9).
In effect, the book of Job reaffirms what was spelled out in one of the earliest writings in the Hebrew Scriptures: the Eden narrative (Genesis 2—3) – namely, the perimeters of what it means to be human. There the first man and woman are placed in a garden of abundance where they are given rule over creation, which they are to order. The only limit on their freedom was that God forbade them to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil – the kind of knowledge that only God can have – and through their expulsion prevented them from eating from the tree of life.
The story thus spells out the perimeters of what it means to be human: men and women are mortal and their knowledge is limited. While they can, and indeed should, seek to discover everything within creation itself so as to order it aright, there are mysteries that God alone can know because he is outside the system he has created.
However our text is translated, it indicates that, in the face of God’s onslaught, Job acknowledges the limitations of human knowledge. But far from condemning Job for his attempt to take God to task for challenging his unjust suffering, God rewards him for what he has said and the friends are condemned because they have spoken inappropriately about God. They had failed to enter into the reality of Job’s experience, while Job had refused to deny his belief in God or his own integrity. Over some things we have to remain agnostic, but we can be agnostic believers. That is the nature of faith. In their ability to express faith, men and women are every bit as much a mystery as God.
How, then, should we render Job 42.6? Clearly, ‘repent’, with its connotation of having sinned, is inappropriate. For Job is rewarded for having spoken rightly. We should not take the unfairness of life lying down. There are times when it is appropriate to argue with God. And that will not destroy faith; rather, as in the case of Job (Job 42.5), it will deepen it, even if in the end we can find no answers to our questions.
But having recognized the limitations of his humanity, Job yields. He realizes that to continue to argue with God is futile. He is man and not God and must accept the limitations of his human nature.
Cleverly, in our text, the author echoes the prologue. The narrative has gone full circle. While Job is still among the ashes, his inward condition has changed markedly. What has happened to Job is that, through his discourse and God’s reply, he has found peace, thereby ridding himself of that anger which had led him to begin the dialogue with the friends (Job 3). We should then expect Job’s final utterance to reflect this new contentment, the relief of his recognition that faith can only be agnostic.
The Hebrew word meaning ‘be sorry’ or ‘repent’ can also be rendered as ‘console oneself’ or ‘comfort oneself’ (Genesis 24.67; Jeremiah 31.15). It is in this latter sense that we should interpret our text. Because of his new understanding of the nature of faith, Job is able to accept his miserable lot. So he can conclude: ‘Therefore I yield, comforting myself among dust and ashes.’ Knowing God, however inscrutable, is all that matters. That is his comfort and secures his peace even before he is rewarded.