Narrative Lectionary Summer Series – Job, Week 4
Job 31:35-37; 38:1-11 [25-27]
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Furthering the Power of God’s Story – Narrative Lectionary Commentary
by Rev. Dr. Clint Schnekloth
Eventually Job sings a song of himself. It fills chapter 31, and immediately precedes these final verses of the chapter included in the narrative lectionary for this week, verses 35-37.
Job offers evidence of his righteousness and faithfulness. It’s an incredibly impressive list.
He made a covenant not to look lustfully at a young woman.
He has not walked in falsehood or deceit.
He has been faithful to his spouse.
He is fair and just with his employees.
He shares his bread with the poor and widows.
He offers fleece for those who are not clothed.
He advocates for the orphaned in courts of law.
He has not idolized gold, the sun, or the moon.
He has not rejoiced over his enemy’s misfortune.
He has not hidden his sin for the fear of the judgment of crowds.
He then concludes, based on this long length of evidence of his righteousness, “Would some judge look at the evidence, and see if anyone has brought an indictment against me. Because if you do, I can wear my evidence like the crown of a prince!”
Notice first of all how broadly Job’s righteousness functions. This isn’t just pietistic, religious self-righteousness. The man has social justice chops. He’s legit.
In this sense, the book of Job challenges any reader to consider goodness and justice in the broadest possible sense, justice for the marginalized, advocacy in the face of the law, righteousness in spite of the pressure of peers and the crowd.
It’s important to keep that in mind if we are to make sense of what comes next in our readings for the day.
All of that being said, all of us including God (and Satan) acknowledging that Job is a righteous man among righteous people, nevertheless, when it comes time for God to respond to Job’s “evidence,” God goes for the jugular,
“Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me.
Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?”
Yeah, Job, where were you!?
If anyone in the courtroom were on God’s side rather than Job’s, and if this were an actual court of law, with sides and juries and judges, then those who are Job’s enemies would respond with God, “Yeah, Job where were you during all of that?!”
Then they could lean back and scoff.
God then continues with God’s counter-evidence, a list to compare itself with the list of Job’s righteous deeds:
God lays the foundations of the earth.
God measures and stretches the line upon it.
God laid the cornerstones and bases of it.
God shut in the sea with doors.
God make the clouds and darkness.
God prescribes the bounds of all of it.
God cuts a channel for the rain and a way for thunderbolts.
God brings rain on lands even where no one lives.
God satisfies the wastes and desolate lands.
Keep reading, and God also organizes the stars.
Okay, now line up God’s list next to Job’s list.
There’s your answer, Job. Satisfied?
What we have here is a case of incommensurability. One list is simply not like the other.
The problem: we have previously known God in many other places in Scripture to care about the righteousness of God’s people. God cares how we treat our neighbors. God established and gave us the law and the 10 commandments, after all.
So Job could think he was on solid ground offering a catalog of his fastidiousness to these laws. It illustrates he has kept his part of the covenant.
Why hasn’t God?
In a way, the answer is sheer capriciousness. “Because I can!” Or, “Because we are so unlike, I am the creator and you aren’t, so you just can’t get it, don’t get it, won’t get it.”
In another sense, the back and forth brings God as close to the human level as God can get.
Okay Job, if you are going to make a list of what you’ve done that is your best work, I’ll make my list too, and we can stack them up against one another.
So in that sense also it is not judgment per se, or condescension. It’s simply an honest description of the difference of scale between God and Job. Which then affects everything else.
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The following links and resources are not produced or maintained by Clergy Stuff. However, at the time of this posting, the links were active and considered to be good source material for proclamation for the text for this week. Please scroll down or click on the quick jump menu you find below. For more free worship resources & planning materials, please visit our links for RCL Worship Resources.
Historical Exegetical Resources
Chapter XX of The First Epistle to the Corinthians, Clement of Rome (ca. 96)
Rashi's Commentary, c. 1075. chabad.org.
Dick, Michael B., "The Neo-Assyrian Royal Lion Hunt and Yahweh's Answer to Job," Journal of Biblical Literature, 2006. EBSCO ATLASerials, Religion Collection
Contemporary Resources
Great Quotes
““Do you know when the mountain goats give birth?
Do you watch when the doe bears her fawn?
2 Do you count the months till they bear?
Do you know the time they give birth?
3 They crouch down and bring forth their young;
their labor pains are ended.
4 Their young thrive and grow strong in the wilds;
they leave and do not return.”
A Good Read
Job: A Comedy of Justice
by Robert A. Heinlein
A stunning fictionalized account of Job on the scale of a multiverse.
Video Resources
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Free Dramatic Reading For This Text (NRSV)
Readers: Job, Narrator, Lord
Job: “Oh, that I had one to hear me! (Here is my signature! let the Almighty answer me!) Oh, that I had the indictment written by my adversary! Surely I would carry it on my shoulder; I would bind it on me like a crown; I would give him an account of all my steps; like a prince I would approach him.”
Narrator: Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind:
Lord: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me. Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy? “Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb?— when I made the clouds its garment, and thick darkness its swaddling band, and prescribed bounds for it, and set bars and doors, and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stopped’?
[Lord: Who has cut a channel for the torrents of rain, and a way for the thunderbolt, to bring rain on a land where no one lives, on the desert, which is empty of human life, to satisfy the waste and desolate land, and to make the ground put forth grass?”]