Yet this attitude changes gradually, bringing Job closer and closer to God, as we learn from reading his speeches straight through, skipping those of the other speakers. In chapter 10, he states: “I will say to God: Do not condemn me; show me why you contend with me.”¹³³ In these passages, Job is not actually addressing God, but he has begun to discuss the possibility. Only in chapter 13 does Job initiate a real dialogue with the divine: “I would speak to the Almighty, and I desire to reason with God.”¹³⁴

This is the point at which Job rejects his friends’ flattery toward God and begins to believe that a frank communication with his Creator is possible; and for the first time, he stakes a self-affirming claim to virtue: “I know that I am righteous,”¹³⁵ and continues to assert his goodness rather than mere innocence.¹³⁶ These claims, despite—or even because of—their demanding tone, demonstrate a new level of closeness to God. But even now Job is still skeptical about a reciprocal reply: “I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard,” he says.¹³⁷

Parallel to Job’s sudden cry for immortality, his first hint at accepting divine revelation occurs in 19:26 when he says: “From my body I shall vision God.” The dramatic breakthrough, however, comes when Job is willing to accept the position of listener as well as advocate:

From this point on, love begins to complement and even replace fear. Abandoning his sycophantic religiosity, Job now claims a new relationship to God, one between a non-repressed self and a non-idealized Deus.¹³⁹ Propelled by Elihu’s imploring: “Why do you contend against him, saying, ‘he will answer none of my words,’” Job turns his focus inward and silently opens himself up to the climactic resolution of the book: hearing God’s words out of the storm and learning the secrets of Wisdom directly from the divine.¹⁴⁰

We should note that the standard translation that God “answered” Job from the storm is inaccurate, for no questions have been posed for many long chapters. It is more accurate to say that God “responded” to Job. The storm of prophecy is God’s response to Job’s altered state of being, to his inner call, and to the purity of mind which our hero has so painfully achieved.¹⁴¹ Such revelation equals ultimate consciousness, or a qualitative change in one’s awareness, similar to how James Norton describes the pained hero Ajurna of the Indian Gita: “His vision is, as it were, a welling up of his own inner consciousness.”¹⁴²

Job’s long spiritual journey has come to a close. He began it by denying the very possibility of gaining God’s attention, and he completes it by declaring with confidence: “I will question you, and you will respond to me.”¹⁴³ The transformed Job then adds: “I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.”¹⁴⁴ In the book’s opening, Job’s knowledge of God is mere hearsay; at its conclusion, his obtuse faith has been replaced by direct experience. According to the mystical teaching conferred in this book, such inner prophetic revelation is something we all must strive for.¹⁴⁵

 

We may conclude that the Book of Job is indeed about suffering, but not the suffering of injustice. It is, rather, about the agony of the human condition. Job’s travails are not intended to test his acceptance of God’s will, nor are they a punishment or a means of attaining merit. Job’s suffering is meant to undermine his normative religious life and shatter the mental complacency that characterizes his early self. It shakes the foundations of his contented world. The author goes to great lengths to suggest that the early Job, however decent, lived in an inner world of oblivion. He deceives the innocent reader into thinking that Job starts out as a good man, the likes of which cannot be found, because this is exactly how we deceive ourselves, thinking we are good simply by avoiding sin.¹⁴⁶

Job’s painful journey heals the introverted autism which he has wallowed in all his life and connects him to the source of true, external reality. This transformation is the purpose of human existence and the universal goal of the spiritual seeker. The Book of Job, with its complex layers and secrets, teaches that such experience is always on the verge of our consciousness, resonating with the Song of Songs: “I sleep, but my mind is awake; hark, my beloved is knocking!”¹⁴⁷ Until we undergo Job’s odyssey, however, we react to such revelations with fear and repression, and the light is rendered voiceless. Perhaps, for most of us, it is impossible to confront God—a terrifying prospect—until we have nothing left to lose.

Even after Job’s inspiring achievements, the book that bears his name still ends in mystery. In 30:19, Job defines man’s seemingly lowly state by saying: “[God] gave birth to me unto clay, and I am likened to soil and ashes.”¹⁴⁸ Job ultimately returns to this metaphor in order to express an opposite sentiment:

In his final words Job takes solace in the existential human condition, understanding its potential for divinity despite the impermanence and suffering of earthly life. Job does not rest his case, but he does rest. He no longer wants to rebel or to die. Many of his questions are unresolved. Details of his revelations are obscure. The reason for this is that Job’s prophecy is intended for his ears alone. The reader must pose his own questions to God and hear his own replies. All we are taught is that direct, personal communication with the divine is possible. When Job achieved it, he and God began with a clean slate. The new, knowing Job now re-states his inquiries using the future tense.¹⁵⁰ What did Job ask, and what replies did he get? That is between the two of them.¹⁵¹

The book leaves us with one, final secret. Prophet Job says that “man lies down and rises not again; until Heaven is not woken and not roused out of its sleep.”¹⁵² Contrary to simplistic readings, the verse’s double negative states that man does rise again when Heaven does awaken. The root word for this waking, “er,” is also the semantic root of Job’s prophetic storm, se’ara, from which God’s crowning words were spoken.¹⁵³ The literal meaning of this heavenly “storm” is, in fact, “an awakening.”¹⁵⁴ Job’s ultimate experience, therefore, is the antithesis of his early craving for the darkness of sleep, signifying the completion of his epic transformation. Furthermore, the typical translation of se’ara as “whirlwind” is inaccurate, as the element of “wind” is absent from the Hebrew original. A se’ara is, rather, an erupting storm of fire and lightning.¹⁵⁵ Such storms appear throughout the prophetic literature: Isaiah uses this term as “the flame of devouring fire,”¹⁵⁶ Zachariah compares it to lightning,¹⁵⁷ and Amos to a kindled blaze.¹⁵⁸ In the Book of Psalms, it appears in the verse “As the flame sets the mountains on fire, so persecute them with your storm.”¹⁵⁹ And Elijah ascends to Heaven in a similar “storm” of fiery chariots.¹⁶⁰ Thus, the prophetic se’ara links the concrete manifestation of God with the motif of light associated with Wisdom—describing Job’s actual experience of enlightenment. As this literary masterpiece of ancient Israelite philosophy teaches, when “God responded to Job from the awakening,” it was Job’s own share of Heaven, the burning “lamp light” of his knowing consciousness, which flared up stormily out of sleep and oblivion to exist forever.¹⁶¹

 

1. Yair Hoffman, A Blemished Perfection: The Book of Job in Context (Bath: Sheffield, 1996), p. 42.

2. Moses Maimonides, The Guide for the Perplexed, trans. Michael Friedländer (New York: Dover, 1956), p. 296. Maimonides soon clarifies that this common presupposition is inapplicable to Job. Carl Jung takes the idea of the early Job’s righteousness to its logical extreme when he claims that Job transformed God, not vice versa. According to Jung, Job’s admonition of God’s injustice results in a God who “raises himself above his earlier primitive level of consciousness by indirectly acknowledging that the man Job is morally superior to him.” Carl Jung, Answer to Job (London: Routledge 1984), p. 69.

3. Epistle of James 5:10-11.

4. Ambrose J.R. Baskin, “Job as Moral Exemplar,” Vigiliae Christianae 35:3 (September 1981), p. 222.

5. Job 2:9. All biblical quotes have been translated by the author on the basis of the New King James Version and the original Hebrew.

6.Job 2:10.

7. Concerns about style and editorial changes are valid. Ibn Ezra saw the Book of Job as a translation of an earlier Aramaic source, a fact that allows for scribal errors in the Masoretic text. I believe that Zofar’s final speech should be attributed to Elifaz, as its wording closely follows two previous speeches by him. Cf. note 115. The structure of the book, therefore, is simple: (1) prose prologue; (2) the Job-Elifaz-Job-Bildad-Job-Zofar dialogues (split into two); (3) the Job-Elifaz dialogue (split into two); (4) two long speeches by Job and Elihu; (5) the God-Job dialogue (split into two); (6) prose epilogue. The inner logic of each speaker over the duration of the book teaches more than the Ping-Pong dynamic of the spliced speeches. Indeed, though it is beyond the scope of this essay to address, the three friends represent three different schools of thought which Job must confront: Elifaz is the mystic—and thus the most important of the three—as well as a true prophet in his own right. Bildad is the traditionalist, and Zofar the rationalist.

8. See, for example, the story of King Harishchanra, dubbed “The Indian Job.” With the king replacing Job, Vasishta sitting in for God, and Shiva “the destroyer” playing Satan, the entire episode is explicated—and the moral of it taught—in a single paragraph: “Shiva… submitted Atschandira to all sorts of trials, deprived him of his wealth, kingdom, wife, and only son, but the prince persisted in his virtue. The gods rewarded him… and returned to him his previous estate.” From Markandeya Puraan, English translation from S. Terrien’s commentary in George Arthur Buttrick, ed., The Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 3 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1954), p. 879. Cited in E.J. Brill, “In Search of the Indian Job,” On the Way to the Postmodern: Old Testament Essays 1967-1998, vol. 2 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1998), pp. 771.

9. Genesis 22:16-17.

10. Job 1:21.

11. Job 27:2.

12.Job 30:21.

13. Job 7:20-21. In point of fact, Satan was perfectly correct about the state of Job’s faith. This assertion is troubling only if you believe in Satan as an independent, ungodly force. The author does not. For him, had Satan been mistaken about Job, God would not have allowed the test to commence.

14. See Job 33:12, 34:35-37, 38:2. It should be noted that God’s rejection of Job’s claims of purity does not contradict God’s condemnation of the three friends. The atrocities they accused Job of were way out of proportion to his actual shortcomings, and these friends neglected to see how he was changing before their eyes.

15. Job 1:1.

16. The four traits which typify the early Job are repeated in 1:8 and 2:3. Individually, fear of the Lord is also repeated in 1:9, and “turning away from evil” in 2:3 and 1:9.

17. Deuteronomy 10:12.

18. Psalms 34:14. It cannot, of course, be proven that these verses were known to the author of the Book of Job. Nonetheless, “fearing God” and “turning away from evil” are clearly negative attributes, whereas “loving God” and “doing good” are their logical positive counterparts. The text is strict in its use of the negative “sinned not” to describe Job’s reaction to his calamities. See Job 1:22, 2:10.

19. The word tam appears over a dozen times in the Book of Job and hardly anywhere else in the Hebrew canon. It seems, therefore, to be the essential aspect of the early Job. The “unaware” nature of this characterization is shown in the case of the young Jacob, who is called tam as opposed to his brother, the shrewd hunter Esau. The description of Jacob as tam implies naןvetי and childishness, emphasized by the depiction of his still-tender hands and reclusive attachment to his mother’s tent. Both Jacob and Job grow out of this credulous character. Unfortunately, the word tam is frequently confused with tamim, which means “perfection.” Strong’s Concordance, for example, defines the word as “complete; usually (morally) pious.” It is, in truth, a closer cognate to tama, meaning “bewildered” or “perplexed.”

20. Nietzsche states: “Well-being… [is] a state which soon renders man ludicrous and contemptible.” Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Harmondsworth, United Kingdom: Penguin, 2003), p. 155, par. 225.

21. Job 1:5.

22. To underscore this failing, we return to precisely the same issue at the end of the book, when Job offers sacrifices on behalf of his friends. In this case, God makes it clear that the demand is for prayer to be offered in conjunction with a ritual act. In addition, he demands the physical participation of Job’s friends as well as their active repentance. All three elements are absent from the sacrifice in chapter 1. Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik directs the reader to the fact that, in this manner, God teaches Job to pray for altruistic reasons, whereas at first he did no such thing: “Job!… When my graciousness engulfed you… you did not fulfill the role that my grace placed upon you… (a) never did you bear the communal yoke, nor did you participate in the trouble and grief of the community, and (b) you did not feel the pain of the individual sufferer…. Loving-kindness means empathizing with one’s fellow man, identifying with his hurt and feeling responsibility for his fate.” Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Kol Dodi Dofek: Listen—My Beloved Knocks, trans. David Gordon (New York: Yeshiva University, 2006), pp. 14-15.

Indeed, the idea that Job’s suffering is a necessary means of character development has been expressed by various thinkers, specifically Maimonides, as well as by artists such as William Blake. Jeanne Moskal’s essay “Friendship and Forgiveness,” discusses Blake’s famous illustrations of the book, stating that “for centuries, theologians had taken the Book of Job as a struggle to justify the undeserved suffering of the righteous. Blake, however, shifts his attention to the content of Job’s ‘righteousness,’ depicting in Job a progression from mere observance of the obligations of the law to a religion of imaginative fullness.” Jeanne Moskal, “Friendship and Forgiveness in Blake’s Illustrations to Job,” South Atlantic Review 55:2 (May 1990), p. 15. Moskal’s essay claims that Blake sought to overturn the presumption that the book deals with the suffering of an a priori righteous man.

23. Jeremiah 12:2.

24. Isaiah 29:13. In biblical Hebrew, the word lev stands for the breast, chest, or—literally—the central “core” of the body, never for the blood-pump muscle; cf. Moshe David Kasuto, ed., The Biblical Encyclopedia, vol. 4 (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1972), s.v. “lev,” pp. 412-415 [Hebrew]. Figuratively, this physical “core” is considered to be the seat of the Cartesian “mind.” The biblical lev, therefore, is hardly the bodily home of the emotions, and it does not stand opposed to a rational faculty of a “head” or a “brain” (concepts unknown to the Bible). A midrash on Ecclesiastes lists over fifty cognitive faculties that the biblical “core” is reported to possess (Ecclesiastes Raba 1:16). Translating lev into modern English as “heart” brings with it connotations of emotion and sentimentality which are completely misleading.

25. Job 1:6,13, 2:1.

26. Job 1:21.

27. Genesis 37:35.

28. II Samuel 19:4.

29. Jeremiah 31:15.

30. At most, they kept a silent mourning, as Aaron did when informed of the death of his two sons (Leviticus 10:3). See the reactions of the widow in I Kings 17, and of the Shunammite woman in II Kings 4. Job’s stoic reaction is also in stark contrast to similar “Jobs” in ancient Near Eastern literature, such as the Mesopotamian Shubshi-Meshre-Shakkan, who express an acute awareness of their pain and grief. See S. Shifra and Jacob Klein, In Those Distant Days (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1996), pp. 546-563 [Hebrew].

31. Shakespeare urges: “Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak, whispers the o’er fraught heart and bids it break.” William Shakespeare, Macbeth (London: The Folio Society, 1951), act 4, scene 3, p. 74. The young Israeli writer Hanoch Daum writes to his departed, pious father: “A man needs a measure of connection to his feelings in order to relate the feelings of those around him, but you, goodhearted and wise as you were, did not know how to appreciate your feelings; you could not explain them to yourself. There is no sin in this, it is not a moral fault, but it is a dire failing.” Hanoch Daum, God Won’t Allow (Tel Aviv: Yediot Aharonot, 2007), p. 54 [Hebrew].

32. Job 2:10.

33. Job 2:10. I translate nevala as “degenerate” because it is a derogatory term that is semantically close to, yet more logical than, “carcass.” “Stinking degenerate” better conveys the feel of the Hebrew. Israel J. Gerber, for his part, tries to justify Job’s problematic response to his wife by claiming that he was not angry with her, he was only being “instructive.” Israel J. Gerber, The Psychology of the Suffering Mind (New York: Jonathan David, 1951), p. 76. While this explanation is dubious, Gerber clearly recognizes that Job’s sinful behavior poses a serious problem for those who insist upon his saintly status.

34. Though Job is devout on the surface, then, his spurious responses fall within the category of “Be not righteous overmuch” (Ecclesiastes 7:16), just as his offering on his children’s behalf is precisely the shunned sacrifice of the ignorant, who “do not know to commit evil” (Ecclesiastes 5:1).

35. Job 1:21, 2:10.

36. Francis Andersen reconciles Job’s presumed righteousness with his later speeches, in which he lashes out at God, by claiming: “Only a false piety… would expect in Job an unflinching fortitude in the midst of such loss and pain. Job rightly grieves his bereavement…. He is human. The untrammeled serenity which some describe as the goal of ‘victorious living’ is a negation of whole areas of our experience as God has made us.” Francis I. Andersen, Job: An Introduction and Commentary (Leicester, England: Inter-Varsity, 1976), p. 68. This is a beautiful insight. Nonetheless, it is clear that Andersen, like so many others, accepts the fallacy of Job’s initial reactions. Instead of correctly labeling them—in his own words—as “false piety,” he praises “the noblest expression to be found anywhere of man’s joyful acceptance of the will of God.” Andersen, Job: An Introduction, p. 88. It is possible that, as a devout Christian, Andersen is compelled to ignore the contradiction because, for Job to prefigure Jesus, he must be saintly to begin with. In contrast, Rabbi Abraham Kook states: “Fear of the Lord must not displace man’s natural morality, for then it is no longer a pure fear of the Lord.” Abraham Isaac Kook, The Lights of Holiness [Orot Hakodesh] (Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1985), 3:27 [Hebrew]. Similarly, Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin, dean of the Volozhin yeshiva, opens his commentary on Genesis (Haamek Davar) with a justification of God’s destruction of the Temple: “For they were righteous and pious and earnest scholars, but they were not straight in the ways of the world… for God is straight, and he cannot stand such tzadiks.” Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin, Haamek Davar, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Yeshivat Volozhin, 1989).

37. Lawrence Kohlberg’s empirically based theory of moral development is uncannily similar to the text’s description of Job’s moral journey. Kohlberg describes six stages of inner change:

(1) Obedience and Punishment Orientation defines Job’s moral outlook at the beginning of the text, when he acts only out of fear and respect for God’s authority.

(2) The Instrumental and Relativist stage is the least moral of all stages, in which external authority is challenged but an inner, personal morality has yet to replace it. Job reaches this state in chapter 3. While Job theorizes about humanity, he is still focused on an egoistic, “instrumental” desire for death. Job is angry because he sees that all of his toil, and his assumed piety, did not serve his self-interest (i.e., did not “instrument” any gain). The speech also exemplifies what Kohlberg calls an isolative perspective. In keeping with the relativist tendencies of this stage, Job’s first speech expresses the belief that everyone—victims and sinners alike—is equal in death, no matter how he behaved in life.

(3) The Interpersonal Relationships stage involves a small-scale moral code in relation to one’s immediate companions. This takes shape as Job begins to talk about his friends, family, servants, etc. To enter society through social roles, as depicted in the text, is mentioned by Kohlberg as well. He also describes a third-stage child who claims to be a “good boy,” just as this is the first time Job asserts his own virtue.

(4) Maintaining the Social Order is the primary concern of a person in Kohlberg’s fourth stage. Starting in chapter 24, Job accuses God of presiding over a chaotic society, in which people are oppressed and mistreated: “Stage 3 reasoning works best in two-person relationships with family members or close friends…. At stage 4, in contrast, the respondent becomes more broadly concerned with society as a whole.” William C. Crain, Theories of Development (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1985), p. 138. As Job continues to speak, he clearly moves from one-on-one relationships in his closed circle of friends to a vision of society at large.

(5) The Social Contract stage, in which a person begins to accept his own role in helping society, as Job does from chapter 29 onward.

(6) Universal Principles is the highest moral level. Job reaches it in his final speech by asserting not only his personal responsibility but also higher, abstract principles of morality and justice.

While Kohlberg’s analysis is decidedly modern, it allows us to conclude that the author of Job had a particularly keen eye for changing behavioral patterns, from a toddler’s egocentric judgment to an adult sense of morality.

38. Job 1:21.

39. I favor the reading that Job made only seven offerings, as this was the number of his sons. This is a typical number of animals to be sacrificed, and the same number is repeated in 42:8 with the parallel story.

40. Job 4:3.

41. Job 22:5-9.

42. In the end, the three friends fail to console Job because they all believe he is being rightfully punished. This belief disables compassion: “Attempts to make suffering good blind us to the reality of our and of others’ suffering by allowing us to view it as something that ought to happen or that ought to be accepted. Cruelty and insensitivity lie down this path.” Stan Van Hooft, “The Meanings of Suffering,” Hastings Center Report 28:5 (September/October, 1998), p. 10.

43. Job 2:10.

44. Job 3:1.

45. Amazingly, the speech does not mention Job’s lost riches, children, or health; it is simply a summary of life’s futility, based on his personal experience of the loss of everything he had attained in life. When Job curses his birth because it revealed the toil to his eyes, he uses the same term for “toil” (amal) that Ecclesiastes uses so frequently, which stands for the natural condition of man, “born to toil” (Job 5:7). Therefore, it does not concern only the “miserable.” Qohelet, the main character of Ecclesiastes, asks: “What profit has a man from all his toil?” even as he refers to prosperous kings (Ecclesiastes 1:3). Instead, in its fixation on death, Job’s desperate speech reflects the universal impetus to search for life’s meaning. Job’s outcry also concurs with the first chapters of Ecclesiastes, which state: “The day of death is better than the day of one’s birth” (Ecclesiastes 7:1). Both books drive the point home by suggesting that the fate of a stillborn child is enviable (Job 3:16 and Ecclesiastes 6:3-4). Likewise, when Job ends his outcry by saying: “My sighing comes as my bread, and my groanings are poured out like water… I am not at ease, nor am I quiet; I have no rest” (Job 3:24, 26), he echoes Ecclesiastes’ impression of the bread-maker: “His days are pains, and his travail anguish; his mind takes not rest in the night” (Ecclesiastes 2:23). It is interesting that Job also makes multiple use of Qohelet’s key term—hevel—to signify that life is as fleeting as breath. Hevel appears in Job six times, meaning “fleeting,” but with an undertone of futility (Hevel is a concept identical to the Pli term anicca, or anitya in Sanskrit). Job’s words: “I loathe my life; I would not live forever. Let me alone, for my days are but a breath” echo Qohelet’s: “I hated life… for all is but a breath” (Job 7:16 and Ecclesiastes 2:17). Likewise, compare “Why labor for a fleeting breath?” with “What profit has he who has labored for the wind?” (Job 9:29 and Ecclesiastes 5:16). At this stage, Job’s calamities force him to face the impermanence of life and his achievements—not God’s inequity. As he lies in the ashes, Job faces the reality of his impending death. Seven days of meditation lead him to see the truth in his wife’s harsh wisdom, and to confront mortality.

46. Cf. “the experience of suffering appears to be the opposite of activity.” Eugene Thomas Long, “Suffering and Transcendence,” Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2006, p. 141. In describing Job as an anxious “soul in waiting,” Philippe Nemo comments how, in the Bible, silence is typically a prelude to revelation. Philippe Nemo, Job and the Excess of Evil (Pittsburgh: Duquesne, 1998), pp. 3, 65.

47. Job 3:3, 10, 20, 24.

48. Job 3:11-13.

49. Freud might say that, for Job, God is the “father figure” who prevents the desired return. Cf. Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle (London: International Psycho-Analytical, 1992).

50. Except for an abstract prayer that God grant his wish to die (Job 6:8), God is not yet described as one who fulfills wishes, but merely as a force of destiny. The author may be hinting that Job never prayed when, in 1:22, he compliments Job for not giving God any tifla (“folly”), a very peculiar word and conspicuously similar to tefila, or prayer. This typifies the author’s use of literary nuance.

51. It is reasonable, then, to compare the speech with an Egyptian text from the third to second millennium b.c.e. describing an introverted man in a dialogue withhis own soul: “Death is in my sight today, Like the recovery of a sick man, Like going out into the open after a confinement.” “A Dispute over Suicide,” in James B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (Princeton: Princeton, 1969), p. 407.

52. Ecclesiastes 7:3.

53. Gerber points to the cathartic value and the interpersonal support they provided, despite—or because—of their accusatory approach: “By [Job’s] receiving one shock after the other via the mouths of his friends, the desired therapeutic result was achieved.” Gerber, Psychology of Suffering, p. 65. Likewise, James Norton contrasts Job with the calm suffering hero of the Gita: “Job’s growth is dramatic rather than meditative, interpersonal rather than introspective.” James Norton, “Gita and the Book of Job,” in Shri P.T. Raju and Albury Castell, eds., East West Studies on the Problem of the Self (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1968), pp. 179, 189.

54. Job 14:21.

55. Job 6:15.

56. Job 19:14-19.

57. The full quote is as follows: “This development implies an ego that begins to be independent of the mother’s auxiliary ego…. This personal richness [of the emerging inner psychic reality] develops out of simultaneous love-hate experience which implies the achievement of ambivalence, the enrichment and refinement of which leads to the emergence of concern.” Donald Winnicott, The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment: Studies in the Theory of Emotional Development (New York: International Universities, 1965), p. 75.

58. Job 24:3-12.

59. Job 29:12-17.

60. This is a psychological device explained in White’s “Narrative Therapy”: “A narrative therapy is about… a re-engagement and a reproduction of history through the alternative presents of people’s lives.” Michael White, “Narrative Therapy,” Massey University, www.massey.ac.nz/~alock/virtual/white.htm. There are a growing number of researchers and theoreticians in this emerging field of psychotherapy.

61. Job 30:25.

62. We might similarly interpret Job’s nostalgia for his lost children (Job 29:5) and his evocation of mourning (Job 30:31) as emerging signs of genuine grief. The text, however, is unclear about whether Job’s children really died. There is no mention of his daughters’ dying, and as for his sons, chapter 1 speaks only of the death of ne’arim (“lads,” Job 1:19), a term previously used to describe Job’s servant-boys. Also, unlike his wealth, the number of his children does not multiply at the conclusion of the book, and the text quite conspicuously avoids talking about new children being born. One could conclude that the author wants it both ways: Job’s children are presumed dead, so his indifference to their fate reflects his self-centeredness; but they are ultimately not dead, so the children will not have suffered unjustly because of their father’s inadequacies.

63. Job 31:15.

64. Job 31:9-11.

65. Kohlberg teaches that at this final stage of moral development, what is right is defined by the decision of conscience. At heart, these are universal principles of justice, regarding reciprocity and equality of human rights, and of respect for the dignity of human beings as individual persons. Cf. “Kohlberg’s conception of justice followed that of the philosophers Kant and Rawls, as well as great moral leaders such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King. According to these people, the principles of justice require us to treat the claims of all parties in an impartial manner, respecting the basic dignity of all people as individuals. The principles of justice are therefore universal.” Crain, Theories of Development, p. 140.

66. Job 31:21-40. The conclusion of the book brings Job’s newfound humanism to fruition. He offers prayers for his friends, names his daughters, and gives them land—all expressions of repentance for his early deficiency toward them.

67. Emmanuel Levinas, “Useless Suffering,” in Robert Bernasconi and David Wood, eds., The Provocation of Levinas: Rethinking the Other (London: Routledge, 1988), p. 159. For a dynamic existentialist account of Job in the face of an evil that is “a gnawing away of human identity,” thus bringing out a first “intentionality” of transcendence, see Emmanuel Levinas, “Postface: Transcendence and Evil,” in Nemo, Job and the Excess of Evil, pp. 165-182. Nemo and Levinas read Job correctly as an exercise in revelation, though they completely ignore the content of the revelation itself.

68. The identification of Wisdom with light starts hesitantly with Job and the three friends. It is then picked up and highlighted by Elihu and by God. Job is thus likely to be the doctrinal source of much Kabbalistic thought.

69. Job 10:21-22.

70. Job 22:11.

71. Job 38:16-17. See also Job 27:20. When a dead man descends, “the underworld (balahot) takes hold on him as waters.” That the biblical underworld is a world of water is also evident, for example, in Exodus 20:4 and Deuteronomy 4:18, 5:8.

72. Job 26:5.

73. Job teaches that man’s flowing lifeblood (i.e., nefesh, the liquid, animate soul) runs out of the body at death, seeping down to a bloodlike reservoir at the bottom of the cosmos. This is the general understanding of nefesh in the Hebrew Bible: “The blood flow is the nefesh” (Deuteronomy 12:23 and elsewhere).

A fascinating example of this understanding can be found in Job 2:6. God secures Job’s essential prowess by allowing Satan to harm Job’s body—explicitly his flesh and bones—but not his nefesh, or lifeblood, which is responsible for vigor. God does not order Satan to preserve Job’s life, as a mistaken reading suggests, since this goes without saying. Were Job to die, the entire experiment would be pointless. A midrash describes God’s demand as a requirement to “Break the [earthenware] cask, but keep the [blood-red] wine.” Yalkut Shimoni, Job 2. (Deuteronomy 32:14 establishes the connection between wine and blood.) Accordingly, Job is never described as feverish or too frail to respond. Superficial boils, a festering type of affliction which even “bloodless” trees can have, were a satanic enough fulfillment of God’s dual requirement.

 In keeping with Hebrew Scripture in general, the Book of Job brushes away all simplistic solutions regarding the afterlife. Not a single speaker mentions the picturesque idea of an unearthly Garden of Eden, for no such place existed in Jewish theology. Not for a moment would Job accept that some ghostlike double can live in bliss, drinking heavenly nectar under the wings of angels. Various shamanistic notions—where the dead maintain some power over the “real” world—are also off the table.

74. Job 7:21.

75. Job 10:19.

76. Job 9:22.

77. Job 21:26. Likewise, “For the morning is to them even as deep darkness” (Job 24:17). In these verses, death is not presented by Job as a sign of divine malevolence, but rather of the insignificance of man: “When a cloud vanishes, it is gone; so he who goes down to Sheol does not come up” (Job 7:9). Job’s egalitarian view of death is similar to Ecclesiastes’ early rhetorical claim: “Do not all go to the one place?” (Ecclesiastes 3:20).

78. Alice K. Turner, The History of Hell (Orlando: Harcourt, 1993), p. 11.

79. Job 11:8.

80. Genesis 1:2. What may rightly be termed the book’s Zoroastrian streak even recalls the Zoroastrian name for “hell,” Yama, which echoes the Hebrew “yam” of the primordial sea.

81. Job 26:12-13. The two last words—nahash bariah—refer not, in fact, to a “fleeing serpent” but simply to a “copper bar,” the strong, metal bar that locked the gates to the underworld. The verse’s verb is “bolted” or “created,” not “speared.” Note that the word bariah here is the exact same as the one unanimously translated as “bar” in Job 38:10. The “serpent” mistranslation is understandable because of the sea monster in the mythic story, but the root nun-het-shin appears repeatedly in Job, always as copper.

82. Job 38:8-11.

84. Job 36:30.

85. Job 26:10.

86. Job 28:3.

87. Job 28:11. True wisdom must ultimately inquire: “In which way does light reside, and where is the place of darkness?” (Job 38:19). We can surmise that the firmament of creation’s second day congealed the light created on the first, and made possible the life created on the third. In Job, light is considered to be the very substance of Heaven: “Do you know when God… caused the light of his cloud to shine?" (Job 37:15)  "The bright light which is in the sky…. Out of the north comes the golden sun; God is clothed with terrible majesty” (Job 37:21-22). Also: “I have observed the Light when it shines; the moon moving in brightness” (Job 31:26). Job’s concept of white clouds, called anan, is always of light, not water; this is the case in most of the Hebrew Bible (in contrast to av—a dark raincloud).

88. Job 14:13-14.

89. Job 14:15. Gerber commented on the first phase of this development as well. Gerber, Psychology of Suffering, pp. 61-62. Maimonides sees this change in Job’s outlook—where he first sees death as an equalizer, but at the end believes in a heavenly afterlife for the deserving—as the main purpose of the book. Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed, p. 296.

90. Job 19:23-24. Here, the author’s pen foreshadows the connection between meaningful immortality and wisdom. His concepts of (1) language and (2) being inscribed forever in a “book” are anything but accidental. Elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible these are the precise means whereby man’s eternal light is inscribed forever in the fire book of Heaven. See Ethan Dor-Shav, “Soul of Fire: A Theory of Biblical Man,” Azure 22 (Autumn 2005), pp. 78-113.

91. Job 21:16. Perhaps there is a scribal error in Job 21:19, and Job actually says: “God stores up his light (oro) for his sons”—rather than his “iniquity” (ono), a word which makes the verse nonsensical.

92. Elie Wiesel, Messengers of God (New York: Random House, 1976), p. 224.

93. Job 15:30.

94. Job 18:5-6, 18. Bildad’s pivotal speech on the subject is based on the awareness that man’s highest soul (neshama) is in truth a form of light, distinct from the life force (nefesh) that bleeds from the body and descends to Sheol. In fact, Bildad articulates an entire system regarding the different souls of man: “The light of the wicked shall also be put out, and the spark of his fire shall not shine” (Job 18:5). This is a reference to the heavenly soul, or neshama, composed of light. “The light shall be dark in his residence, and his candle shall be put out on him” (Job 18:6). The “residence” refers to the body, the temporal home of the self. “And they parade him before the king of terrors” (Job 18:14). This describes the descent of the life force, the nefesh, into the underworld. “Brimstone shall be scattered upon his habitation…. His roots shall be dried up beneath, and above shall his harvest dry out” (Job 18:15-16). This refers to the total annihilation of any genetic future—or offshoots—for the sinner’s earthly body. “His remembrance shall perish from the Earth, and he shall have no name in the outer region” (Job 18:17). The name “in the outer region” refers to a man’s eternal name (shem in Hebrew) which is inscribed in Heaven. “He shall be driven from light into darkness, and chased out of the cosmos. He shall have neither son nor grandchild among his people, nor any remaining in his dwellings” (Job 18:18-19). This last predicament is the opposite of the blessed state of those biblical figures who “gather unto their people” when they die. It likely refers to the “social” soul, called ruah, which is the “wind-spirit” of man.

95. Job 20: 26.

96. Proverbs 20:27.

97. Job 38:15. The verse is referring to the Light of the joyous “children of God,” who are the singing “morning stars” of dawn (see Job 38:7). It is imperceptive to read these verses as if they deal merely with the visible light of daytime, shining above people who are still in the flesh. Note, also, how the book starts with an assembly of the children of God and later, to close the narrative loop, God returns to the issue of these angelic “children of God” in 38:7, placing them squarely in Heaven as stars, without the material Satan.

98. Job 33:28-30.

99. Psalms 36:9. Also: “In the light of the King’s face is life” (Proverbs 16:15). Cf. Psalms 27:1; Proverbs 6:23; and the genius hymn which opens the prayers on the Day of Atonement: “Eternal light in the treasury of life, lights from darkness—he said and it was so.”

100. The usage is in line with Genesis, where this lamp-type soul is designated as a higher order of reality, for its very inception is as “a neshama of life” (Genesis 2:7). Semantically, we have no other frame of reference for eternal life aside from the temporal, animal-type one, which we enjoy on Earth. The dual use of the same term, for almost opposing concepts, is apparent in all cultures and languages.

101. “Where is Wisdom found? And where is the place of understanding? Man does not know its measure, and it is not found in the land of the living [i.e., it is not on Earth]. The Abyss says, ‘It is not in me,’ and the Sea says, ‘It is not with me’” [i.e., it is not in the underworld realm of water] (Job 28:12-14). Then again: “From where does Wisdom arrive? And where is the place of understanding? It is hidden from the eyes of all living and concealed from the birds of the air [i.e., it is not from Earth]. Avadon and Death say: ‘We have only heard a rumor of it with our ears.’” [i.e., it is not in the underworld either](Job 28:20-22). And finally: “Aha! God understands the way to it, and he knows its place [i.e., it does have one]. For he looks to the confines of the Earth and sees everything under all of Heaven” [i.e., this is it] (Job 28:23-24).

102. Job 28:28. Adding the “a” and “an” are legitimate, due to Hebrew grammar. Even without the device, the statement “Fear of the Lord is Wisdom” should be read like “Butter is milk!” Do not stress the “is.”

103. Job 36:4.

104. Job 38:19.

105. Job 38:37.

107. Job 38:33, 36. I.e., innards, the inner seat of instinctive Wisdom, translated according to the Targum and the Talmud. The word “mind” is a likely translation of shekui according to Rashi and Ibn Ezra as well as the Targum. Even if it means a type of bird, it represents a symbolic idea, like the modern “wise” owl.

108. In verses 38:39-40 God talks about the cunning hunting skills of lions; he does not imply a power simply to place food on their plates, like a child feeding a silkworm, just as God doesn’t spare ravens their need to hunt artfully. This is the way to read the entire vision—from the design behind rain, which grows the grass to feed the animal kingdom.

109. Men use animals in three ways: to work fields, to spawn food, and to provide transportation. All three uses are covered in turn. In verses 39:9-12 God compares the wild ox with the domesticated cow. The impossibility of taming the ox highlights the opposite in his brethren that work the fields. Of domestic birds (coexisting in human habitation) God points out how they leave their eggs for man: “forgetting that a foot may crush them…. She deals forgetfully with her young, as if they were not hers… because God disowned her of Wisdom and given her no share in understanding.” The bird’s poor memory is the blessing of its carefree life but also the source of man’s omelets. Last is the cavalry steed: “He laughs at fear and is not dismayed; he does not turn back from the sword…. When the trumpet sounds, he says ‘Aha!’…” Like cow and fowl, the horse is ignorant of its potential fate, which makes the creature jubilant and fearfully useful to mankind. There is, evidently, much Wisdom behind these animals’ created attributes.

110. Job 39:26-29.

111. The prophecy also suggests that understanding animals is a key to true knowledge, just as Solomon “spoke also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes.” I Kings, 4:33.

112. Proverbs 8:22-27. “In Proverbs we meet another metaphysical being—wisdom…. The Book of Proverbs never uses the Hebrew word malach in the sense of angel; instead we have wisdom, begotten before the beginning of creation, the darling of God then, taking delight in men after the world came into being, singing, and calling upon all to follow in its ways.” Israel I. Efros, Ancient Jewish Philosophy (Tel Aviv: Bloch, 1976), p. 20 [Hebrew}. According to the Hechalot literature that developed afterward, wisdom, or hochma, “herself makes men prophets.” Efros, Ancient Jewish Philosophy, p. 30.

113. Job 38:4.

114. It is, in effect, similar to the Zen koan that asks: “What did your face look like before your parents were born?” There is much more to be said about Job’s cosmology and its teaching of light and darkness. Above all, we haven’t touched on the appearence of the Leviathan and the Behemoth in God’s final revelation, beings that are “the first of God’s creation.” It is nonsensical to regard them as a hippo and a whale, just two formidable animals in a long list. The mention of the Leviathan was presaged by Job, stressing its cosmic importance. Job mentions the Leviathan (Job 3:8) in the context of its momentous “waking up,” the same context that God relates to it (Job 41:1). Job also talks of an “alligator” (Job 7:12), which is equal to the (monster) Sea. This speaks to the unity of the text. It is just as questionable to equate the Leviathan and the Behemoth with Canaanite deities. The Qumran scrolls render Leviathan as “alligator” (or “sea monster” in the new Dead Sea Scrolls translation); the Aramaic does not retain the original Hebrew name, as a capitalized “Leviathan” implies. Perhaps they refer to prehistoric animals, but I believe that these two creatures are symbolic of the whole cosmic creation, a metaphor complementary to Ezekiel’s chariots. It can hardly be coincidental that their description concludes with a “trail of light” that turns the black abyss into white.

115. The canopy of Heaven is a pure realm of light, the equivalent of elemental fire. Heaven’s canopy is held up by foundation “pillars” erected from beneath the Earth (Job 9:6, 26:11, Isaiah 40:21-22). All illumination and warmth shine upon the Earth from this brimming realm of sapphire-blue fire (the same fire that came down from Heaven onto Job’s sheep). Most importantly, Heaven is populated with fiery angels and stars that are truly one and the same and are also called “the children of God” or “the holy ones.” Indeed, the mystic Elifaz twice contrasts humans with angels: “[Of angels:] Behold, even in his servants he does not trust; and his angels he charges with folly [Of men:] How much less so those that dwell in clay vessel, whose foundation is soil…?” (Job 4:18-19). Then again: “[Of angels:] Behold, even in his holy beings he does not trust; and the Heavens are not clean in his sight. [Of men:] How much less so the abominable and filthy man?” (Job 15:15-16). These verses demonstrate that stars and angels are interchangeable, an idea made even clearer later on: “[Of angels:] Behold even to the moon—it shines not, and the stars are not pure in his sight. [Of men:] How much less so man…” (Job 25:5-6). The similarity of this passage to the previous ones leaves little doubt that this third parallel is also from Elifaz and falsely attributed to Bildad. Other star-angel parallels appear in Isaiah 14:12, and elsewhere. I understand that the human “lamp” is not placed in Heaven at the moment of passing, when the shade of the nefesh seeps down to Sheol. Rather, it coexists with the body during man’s life on Earth, inherently linked, as it glows to a lesser or greater degree according to one’s merit. After death, this lamp (if not extinguished by sin) simply remains in Heaven, no longer changing—an autonomous entity.

116. Job 4:21.

117. Job 24:13.

118. Job 36:12.

119. The fruition of this new knowledge may also be found in the book’s epilogue. It concerns the curious names that Job gives to his three daughters, as they reflect the three cosmic realms. First, the name “Yemima” relates to yam, the Sea. “Keren-Hapuch” means the luster of a precious gem. As such it represents Heaven, sparkling in its crystalline Light: “Its stones are the place of sapphires, and its dust is of gold” (Job 28:6. see also 28:1-2). That puch is a precious gem, similar to
sapphire, we see in I Chronicles 29:2 and Isaiah 54:11. The two mentions of women’s eye makeup, under the same name, refer to ground crystal, or another type of “shimmer-powder.” In between, the name “Ketzia” references a form of fragrant flora, a growing progeny of Earth. Regarding Ketzia, Job may also be hinting at ketzot ha’aretz, his recurrent term for “the corners of the Earth.” In any case, using a fragrant growth indicates smell and also encompasses the sub-realm of Wind (in Job the atmosphere is part of the land of the living). The metaphor is nothing short of brilliant.

In Job, all gems are from Heaven, likely because of their perceived inner flames. Many verses in Job are clarified when we bear in mind that crystalline gems and Light-reflecting metals are all referring to Heaven. Indeed, being white, snow too is perceived to be of Light. It appears, we must admit, only on the highest mountain peaks, close to Heaven, and ours is a book written in a desert land.

Job’s emphasis on the three cosmic realms, and on their respective inhabitants, found its way to the opening set of three blessings that start every “silent prayer” in Jewish tradition: The first blessing talks of the chief living inhabitants of the Earth, of God’s grace to the living and to their earthen genealogy; the second talks of the dead, and of those afflicted with any illness, which is a touch of death. As the underworld is the water domain, it is within this second blessing that rain and dew are prayed for. The third blessing talks of the heavenly inhabitants, referred to by Elifaz’s term, kedoshim, namely the holy ones. This blessing is where kedusha is recited, highlighting the celestial praise “Holy! Holy! Holy!” given by the “swarms of angels above.”

120. Job, Elifaz, Bildad, Zofar, and Elihu. The relevant midrash appears in Baba Batra 15b. That God never speaks to three of them is beside the point, or it may be based on Job’s saying: “you have all had visions” (Job 27:12).

121. A full account would be excessive. Here is, however, a minute sample of the suffering of prophets, emphasizing Job-like cries and death wishes. First, Abraham is famous for his tribulations. Everything seemed meaningless to him because he was childless: “what will you give me, seeing I go childless…?” (Genesis 15:2). Likewise, Isaac believed Rebecca when she cried, “I am weary of my life” (Genesis 27:46). Jacob, who refused to be comforted for Joseph, summarized his life to Pharaoh: “few and evil have the days of the years of my life been…” (Genesis 47:9). Rachel, for her part, cries heatedly to Jacob, “Give me children, or else I die!” (Genesis 30:1). Then, after the horrific ordeals of Joseph, we arrive at Moses, who prayed to God “Kill me, I pray thee… and let me not see my own wretchedness” (Numbers 11:15). Stripped naked on display, prophet Samson, too, begged to die (Judges 16:30), as later did Elijah (I Kings 19:4). Later, God commands Ezekiel to lock himself at home, lying down for four hundred thirty days, eating dung-covered barley cakes and drinking only measures of water: “I will lay bands upon you, and you will not turn yourself from one side to another” (Ezekiel 4:8). A festered Job, scratching himself in the ashes, would sympathize. He could just as easily identify with Jeremiah’s cry “Cursed be the day on which I was born” (Jeremiah 20:14), and with Jonah’s repeated death wish: “for it is better for me to die than to live” (Jonah 4:3). Finally, one would think that God’s ultimate king and prophet would have a charmed life. Instead, King David’s words betray acute anguish: “When the waves of death compassed me, the floods of ungodly men made me afraid…. In my distress I called upon the Lord…” (II Samuel 22:5, 7). Psalms signed in his name echo this sentiment, and for good reason: “I am poor and needy, and my heart is wounded” (Psalms 109:22). From his entry on to the stage of history, King Saul tried to kill David, forcing his young son-in-law into an exile during which David’s wives were kidnapped, and his own people wanted to stone him to death (I Samuel 30:1-6). David had to bitterly mourn Jonathan (II Samuel 1:26), Avner (II Samuel 3:32), a dead son from the wife of Uriah (II Samuel 12:14), his son Amnon, who was murdered by Absalom (II Samuel 13:31), and later Absalom himself, leading him to proclaim in grief: “Would I had died instead of you” (II Samuel 19:1). This same Absalom led a successful rebellion against his father: “And David went up by the ascent of the Mount of Olives, and wept as he went up, and had his head covered, and he went barefoot: and all the people… weeping as they went” (II Samuel 15:30). Suffering and tragedy accompanied the anointed’s every step.

122. “These ideas presented themselves like an inspiration [‘vision’ in the original Arabic] to me.” Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed, part 3, ch. 22, p. 297. See Abraham Joshua Heschel, “Did Maimonides Strive for Prophetic Inspiration?” in Louis Ginzberg Jubilee Volume, Hebrew section (New York: The American Academy for Jewish Research, 1945), p. 162.

123. Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed, p. 226. Maimonides stresses the additional prerequisite of subduing all material desires.

124. Job 4:13-14, 16. This description follows the Book of Numbers: “I, the Lord, make myself known to him in a vision; I speak to him in a dream” (Numbers 12:6), and is consistent with the experiences of a dozen biblical figures, mostly gentiles, who are reported as having true prophetic dreams: Abimelech, Joseph, Laban, Jacob, the Chief of Butlers, the Chief of Bakers, Pharaoh, Solomon, a friend of Gideon, Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar.

125. Job 11:5.

126. Job 33:14-16. See also Job 34:32, 36:10.

127. Job 6:4.

128. Job 7:14. Job’s description directly addresses Elifaz’s own fear-induced vision experience. Elifaz and Job are describing a type of terror that accompanies a true dream vision, even if its content is not fearful. See, for example, Daniel 4:5.

129. Job 9:17. The Midrash stresses the connection as well: “Raba said: Job blasphemed with a storm and was countered with a storm.” Yalkut Shimoni, Job 9.

130. Job 9:16.

131. Job 13:22.

132. Job 7:20.

133. Job 10:2.

134. Job 13:3.

135.Job 13:18.

136. Job 16:17.

137. Job 19:7.

138. Job 23:3-5.

139. Job 27:4, 8.

140.J ob 33:13.

141. Just like Job’s servants didn’t fail to “answer” any questions. They simply didn’t respond to his calling (Job 19:16). The same term is used after the crossing of the Sea of Reeds, when Miriam “responded” with her own song to that of the men (Exodus 15:20). Obviously, no question was posed in that scene.

142. James Norton, “Gita and the Book of Job,” p. 185.

143. Job 42:4.

144. Job 42:5. The Hebrew word for “now” also points to God as a “you.”

145. Cf. “The person praying must concentrate in his heart on the words that he utters; and he must think he has the divine presence before him; and he must remove all thoughts that occupy him until his thinking and his intention remain pure in his prayer.... And this is what the pious ones and men of deeds would do; they were solitary and intent on their prayers until they attained consummation and augmentation of mental power, approaching the level of prophecy.” Joseph Karo, Shulhan Aruch, Orach Haim 98:1. This idea regarding the nature of prophecy is summarized in a single verse: “A prophet [is] a mind of Wisdom” (Psalms 90:12). Thus Elihu’s last words before the storm of prophecy erupts are “every wise mind” (Job 37:24).

146. Anyone who reads through the witty exchanges between Job and his friends must admit that the author has an unsurpassed gift for sarcasm.

147. Song of Songs 5:2.

148. When Job says, “gave birth to me unto clay,” he is using the root word hara for pregnancy and fathering children. Sadly, all translations completely miss the simple meaning of this verse. In Genesis 18:27 Abraham, too, describes man’s existential state within the material world as being of soil and ashes.

149. Job 42:1-6. The root nun-het-mem is used five times in the Book of Job in the context of consolation. The verse can also be read as “I took back what I said about ‘soil and ashes.’”

150. Job 42:4.

151. In a magnificent conclusion to his article, in which he appreciates the gradual arousing of Job into full consciousness and compares the process to that described in the Indian Bhagavad Gita, James Norton writes: “The choice that I make depends on the answer to the question, ‘Who am I?’ And the answer to this question, in the analysis of both the Bhagavad Gita and the Book of Job, is not to be found in the self. They both indicate the wisdom of the author of the Book of Ecclesiastes, who long ago observed that ‘[God] has put eternity into man’s mind, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end’ (Ecclesiastes 3:11). If it is true that God has put eternity into the minds of men, it would suggest that man is not the measure of all things, not even the measure of his own self.” Norton, “Gita and the Book of Job,” p. 192.

152. Job 14:12.

153. Job 38:1, 40:6.

154. Cf. Jeremiah 25:32, “a great storm (sa’ar) will awaken (ye’or).”

155. While se’ara can definitely relate to a windstorm elsewhere in the Bible (normally with an explicit mention of “a wind se’ara,” which would be rather redundant if it meant “a wind whirlwind.” Cf. Psalms 55:9, 107:25, 148:8; Isaiah 41:16; Ezekiel 13:11; Jonah 1:4-13), in Job it is in line with the stand alone type of fire and lightning storm quoted in the body of the essay.

157. Zechariah 9:14.

158. Amos 1:14.

159. Pslams 83:14-15.

160. II Kings 2:11. The clearest portrayal of this storm may be found in the vision of Ezekiel 1:4: “Behold, a spirit-storm (ruah-se’ara) came out of the north, a great cloud of light, and a fire enfolding itself, and a brightness was about it… out of the midst of the fire.” Ezekiel combines the concept of a visionary firestorm with the “spirit” of divination seen elsewhere in the Bible.

161. See Isaiah 34:4, 65:17, 66:22. Also Daniel 7:27 in conjunction with 12:2-3. The Septuagint adds that “He will rise again with those whom the Lord raises up” (Job 42:17), qualifying Job as one of Daniel’s maskilim, or enlightened ones.