Second String Saints

As I've said multiple times now, Reading God's Story moves from Genesis to Job. When trying to highlight the big story of the Bible, it makes sense to move Job directly after Genesis is because Job is clearly set in a similar time and culture as Abraham's. Job's wealth is counted by his many animals; he makes sacrifices for his family himself (rather than going through a religious authority); and he lives in Uz, a place named after one of the ancestors of Shem. Its exact location is unclear, indicating that this book is situated in a time prior to the period when we can date and locate people and places in more precise ways.

One of the downsides of moving Job to immediately after Genesis is that it may give the impression that the narrative of Job is of the same genre as Genesis; it is not. Genesis traces the story of the lineage of blessing that has come to the people of Israel as God's chosen people; Job is a book of wisdom literature that explores the mysteries of God. The original ordering of Scripture highlights this by placing Job just before Psalms and Proverbs. In our reading elsewhere, it is quite common to accept that there are different genres of literature and that we will read each genre in a particular way. For instance, we do not read the newspaper and a children's book in the same way. Yet sometimes we can struggle with the question of genre when it comes to the Bible, because it might suggest that we consider some books better or truer than others. I will say more about genre as we move along in the Bible, but for now, just keep in mind that Job is wisdom literature. To learn more about the genre of wisdom literature, see this article from The Voice.

I have never read Job and Genesis alongside each other, and I've found some of the following connections between the two:

1. Genesis described God as Creator who intentionally made a good world. It is vital to keep in mind that God's original plans for the world did not include a place full of suffering and misery. We see throughout Genesis that God loves to and longs to bless creation and humankind, and God does so both before and after the dislocation of the fall. I see Job and all of his questions and sorrows as describing humankind's vantage point after the fall, when they are alienated from God and trying to make sense of their situation.

2. Note that the "satan" (which simply means accuser) in Job takes on a similar role here to the snake in the garden. In both stories, the snake and the satan seek to pull apart God and humankind. The NIV Study Bible gives an apt description of this role: "As tempter he seeks to alienate man from God... as accuser... he seeks to alienate God from man" (pg. 723, emphasis mine.) God allows the satan to assail Job with all manner of suffering in order to test his character. I don't think, however, that the descriptions in Job 1 and 2 of the arrangements between God and the satan are normative descriptions of how God acts on a regular basis. For instance, I would not recommend telling a friend of yours going through horrific suffering that God has clearly handed him or her over to Satan to test their righteousness.

3. The theme of Job's righteousness echoes the story of Noah, who was also known as a righteous man and was chosen on that basis to continue the human race after the flood.  After Noah, Genesis no longer says that God chooses people to be his chosen vessel of blessing for the world based on their righteousness. The people God chooses are clearly flawed, usually not first-string recruits (to get back to a football analogy). In fact, God seems intent on choosing people who are unlikely stars, such as second-born sons.
Even in the choosing of Abraham, the father of the people of Israel, there is no mention of Abraham's merit as the basis for God's initial call on his life. When Genesis does speak of Abraham's righteousness, it describes how God credits Abraham's faith as righteousness. (Gen 15:16) Abraham's standing before God is not dependent on Abraham being a perfect saint, but on Abraham's trust that God will be faithful and will keep his promises to him. This is illustrated in a graphic way when God makes a covenant with Abraham at the end of Genesis 15 by cutting animals in half and walking between the parts. This is not some crazy ritual that God invented; when two parties made a covenant, they would butcher some animals, cut them in two, and then walk through the separated parts as a sign that they are agreeing, "Let the same thing be done to me if I do not uphold this covenant." God, symbolized by the smoking firepot, passes between the carcasses but does not ask Abraham to do the same. That is huge! God is the powerful one in this agreement; God could demand just about anything from Abraham, and yet God takes all the conditions of the covenant upon himself. This is a foreshadowing of the way that God takes the punishment of the world upon himself in the person of Christ... but we'll get to that :)

To get back to Job, the book of Job breaks down the idea that the righteous will be blessed by God and the unrighteous will be punished by God, which is the vantage point of Job's friends. Job's example shows that life - and God - are much more complicated than that, because though he is probably a first-string pick for sainthood due to his righteousness and his devotion to God, he encounters massive suffering. We have seen the flipside of this in Genesis, where God chooses Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob by his own wisdom and in order to show his grace in their lives, not because they are already the holiest people on earth.  The blessing that they receive is not due to their righteousness but simply to God's choosing them. Both Genesis and Job subvert the simplistic equation of righteousness with physical blessing in this life.

Next time I'll write some more about how the book of Job looks ahead to the person of Christ.