Abstract
Sara Cobb begins her book, Speaking of Violence by stating that “stories matter. They have gravitas; they are grave. They have weight. They are concrete. They materialize policies, institutions, relationships, and identities.”[1] Applied to the book of Job 1—2, one can ask, how grave is the story of Job? What conflict does it create? What is at stake in this conflict? What does the story concretize? In this paper I point out that there are two narrative approaches to reading Job's conflict with God. One is that Job does not resist divine power and the other is that he does. If we take it that job does not resist divine power, we implicitly begin fostering stories that can create docility/passivity in the face of imperial power. If we argue that he resists divine power, we create stories that enable people to stand up for their freedoms/rights, hence fostering the idea that conflict cannot be solved by docility but by confronting the powers-that-be, which create conflicts in the first place. In this paper, I argue for the later position.[1] Sara Cobb, Speaking of Violence: The Politics and Poetics of Narrative in Conflict Resolution (Oxford and New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2013), 3.
Highlights
Sara Cobb (2013) begins her book, Speaking of Violence by stating that “stories matter
Applied to the Book of Job 1-2, one can ask, how grave is the story of Job? What conflict does it create? What is at stake in this conflict? What does the story concretize? In this paper I point out that there are two narrative approaches to reading Job's conflict with God
One is that Job does not resist divine power and the other is that he does. If we take it that Job does not resist divine power, we implicitly begin fostering stories that can create docility/passivity in the face of imperial power
Summary
The possibility that the book of Job employs irony as a communicative tool has been raised by a number of scholars. In this paper I would like to push Hoffman’s assumptions further to argue that irony (in selected passages) functions politically to resist divine tyranny Another scholar that discusses use of irony in Job is Edwin Good.. While Good’s attention to the use of irony in the book of Job is admirable, he neglects the irony in crucial statements that Job makes He ignores completely the prologue and the epilogue, which I believe contain some of Job’s subtle ironies against the divine. I would counter that God punishes Job, or at least inflicts pain upon him, to satisfy God’s doubt about Job’s piety In his attempt to push the themes of faith and reconciliation, Good misses completely the import of the oppressive divine power over Job’s life, the power that occasions the story, pervades its discourses and shapes Job’s protest. Dariusz Iwanski’s gives the following as the structure of the prologue of the book of Job:
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