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Job's Unfinalizable Voice: An Addendum to David Burrell's Deconstructing Theodicy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Abstract
Modern theodicies often offer definitive explanations for the unsolvable problem of human suffering. This philosophical enterprise was challenged by David B. Burrell's book, Deconstructing Theodicy: Why Job Has Nothing to Say to the Puzzle of Suffering (2008). His observations about the book of Job and the way it militates against theodical speculation are compelling, but there is a missed opportunity with his exegesis of Job 42:6. The Hebrew of Job's last words can be translated in at least five distinct (and legitimate) ways. Using this grammatical characteristic, this paper argues that the ambiguity in 42:6 creates an “unfinalizable” quality that allows sufferers to be unsilenced and participate in the meaning-making process. Situating the addendum with philosophical ruminations on theodicy, the argument turns to an exegetical section that comments on Burrell's discussion in “Denouement and Epilogue” and analyzes the Hebrew grammar of Job 42:1-6. This addendum compliments Burrell's deconstruction of theodicy, adding a further pool of resources for sufferers to remain unsilenced and narrate their own questioning of God.
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References
1 Burrell, David B., Deconstructing Theodicy: Why Job Has Nothing to Say to the Puzzle of Suffering (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2008)Google Scholar. This book is already several years old, but it remains one of the most interesting theological reflections on Job.
2 Ibid., p. 13.
3 This paper will follow SBL Academic Style for Hebrew transliteration.
4 Newsom, Carol A., “The Book of Job: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections,” in Keck, Leander E., ed., The New Interpreter's Bible: A Commentary in Twelve Volumes, 12 vols (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), pp. 4:318-637Google Scholar. There are other studies that find anywhere between three or eight different translations of 42:6. These studies have been consulted in the writing of this paper, but Newsom's summary of five was chosen because she grounds it in the well-argued studies of other scholars. For the view that there are three readings, see: Morrow, William “Consolation, Rejection, and Repentance in Job 42:6,” Journal of Biblical Literature 105.2 (1986), pp. 211-225CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the view that there are as many as eight readings, see: Perdue, Leo G., Wisdom in Revolt: Metaphorical Theology in the Book of Job, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 29 (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991), pp. 197-198Google Scholar.
5 Burrell, Deconstructing Theodicy, p. 49.
6 There are numerous ways that scholars have tried to resolve the problems of 42:6 through diachronic methods. This paper approaches the text in a synchronic way because Newsom suggests that one of the goals of reading texts in different ways is in discovering why a text continues to be useful in similar and contradictory ways within communities. Newsom, Carol A., “Narrative Ethics, Character, and the Prose Tale of Job,” in Brown, William P., ed., Character & Scripture: Moral Formation, Community, and Biblical Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), p. 122Google Scholar.
7 Burrell, Deconstructing Theodicy, p. 14.
8 Pike, Nelson, “Hume on Evil,” in McCord Adams, Marilyn and Merrihew Adams, Robert, ed., The Problem of Evil (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 38-52Google Scholar.
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11 Ibid., p. 3.
12 Ibid., pp. 4-5.
13 Plantinga, Alvin, God, Freedom, and Evil (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), p. 11Google Scholar.
14 Ibid., p. 44. Plantinga's argument is much more complicated than this, but this summarization of his conclusion suffices for our purposes here.
15 Hick, John, Evil and the God of Love (Rev.ed.; San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1977), p. 336, 340Google Scholar.
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17 Ibid., p. 235.
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19 Ibid., p. 7.
20 The distinction between “theoretical” and “practical” theodicies is made in Kenneth Surin's book as a way to describe the approaches of theologians and philosophers. Surin evaluates the positive and negative qualities throughout and lands on his own conception of how the more practical approaches are actually more serious, Christian ways of handling suffering and evil (ibid., pp. 70-141). These terms are present in other theodicies and will be reflected in alternative language as well.
21 As a matter of clarification, the word “existential” is used here to refer to the more personal aspects of suffering and how it impacts human existence. It is the lived and embodied responses and answers to which this word refers. This is opposed to the “logical” problem which has more to do with explaining how different beliefs can be reconciled together.
22 D.Z. Phillips, The Problem of Evil & the Problem of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004), p. xi.
23 Ibid., pp. xi-xii.
24 Tilley, Terrence W., The Evils of Theodicy (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2000)Google Scholar; and McCord Adams, Marilyn, Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999)Google Scholar. For more connections on biblical reception, see Seow, Choon-Leong, Job 1-21: Interpretation and Commentary, Illuminations (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), p. 231Google Scholar.
25 Tilley, The Evils of Theodicy, pp. 9-32. Tilley provides an account of speech act theory throughout the first chapter of his book.
26 Ibid., p. 89.
27 Ibid., p. 107.
28 Ibid., pp. 109-110.
29 Ibid., pp. 109-110.
30 Ibid., p. 231.
31 Ibid., p. 249.
32 Ibid., p. 251.
33 Adams, Horrendous Evils, pp. 3-4.
34 Ibid., p. 3.
35 Ibid., p. 3.
36 Ibid., p. 26. Cf. Adams, Marilyn McCord, “Theodicy without Blame,” Philosophical Topics 16 (1988), pp. 215-45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
37 Ibid., pp. 28-31.
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39 Adams, Horrendous Evils, p. 155.
40 Ibid., pp. 155-56.
41 Ibid., pp. 156, 159-77.
42 Ibid., p. 179.
43 Ibid., pp. 179-80.
44 Burrell, Deconstructing Theodicy, pp. 27-44.
45 Ibid., p. 49.
46 Ibid., p. 49.
47 Ibid., p. 49.
48 Ibid., p. 49.
49 Newsom, “The Book of Job: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections,” pp. 4:318-637.
50 Morrow, “Consolation, Rejection, and Repentance in Job 42:6,” p. 212.
51 As a point of clarification, Hebrew utilizes an elaborate system of vowels and markings around the consonants that help the reader navigate the text and understand its correct pronunciation. The Hebrew language uses certain formulations of consonants with a variety of different meanings that are dependent on which vowels are present. An example of this is with the word dābār. If the vowels remain as they are it will typically be understood as a noun for “word” or “thing.” However, if it is rendered with different vowels such as dābar, then it is the Qal verb “to speak.” Alternatively, if it has other vowels such as dāber, then it is understood to be the noun “pestilence.”
52 Timmer, Daniel, “God's Speeches, Job's Responses, and the Problem of Coherence in the Book of Job: Sapiential Pedagogy Revisited,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 71 (2009), pp. 286-305Google Scholar.
53 Newsom, “The Book of Job,” pp. 4:318-637.
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58 Ibid., p. 90.
59 Ibid., p. 96.
60 Ibid., p. 96.
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62 Ibid., pp. 28-29.
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64 The above quotations of the theophany are affirmed by Tremper Longman III, but he also observes language from the Tower of Babel story (Gen 11:6) where Job realizes what the tower builders attempted to deny by acknowledging that God alone controls events. Additionally, Longman III draws a parallel with Psalm 73 and its concern with dealing with retribution, both Job and the poet realizing that having bitterness toward God made him a “brute beast” (Ps 73:22). Tremper Longman III, Job, Baker Commentary on the Old Testament Wisdom and Psalms (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012), pp. 448-450. These insights offer an intense analysis of 42:2-5, but they are also a huge part of what interpreters solely focus on; indeed, Longman III comes to this conclusion himself by stating that understanding 42:6 as ambiguous ignores the context that shows that Job repents because of “his impatient insistence that God justify himself to Job” (ibid., p. 450). Of course, these are interpretive insights that Longman brings into the text, but they are interesting to say the least.
65 Newsom, , The Book of Job: A Contest of Moral Imaginations, p. 29Google Scholar.
66 Dailey, Thomas F., “And Yet He Repents – On Job 42,6.,” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 105 (1993), p. 205CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
67 Ibid., pp. 205-206.
68 Morrow, “Consolation, Rejection, and Repentance in Job 42:6,” p. 224.
69 van der Lugt, Pieter, “Who Changes His Mind about Dust and Ashes? The Rhetorical Structure of Job 42:2-6,” Vetus Testamentum 64 (2014), pp. 623-639Google Scholar.
70 Dailey, “And Yet He Repents – On Job 42,6.,” p. 206.
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72 In his own work, Muenchow places 42:6 within the cultural conceptions of honor and shame, which Muenchow believes constricts the possible meanings of the text. Of course, what Muenchow is admitting here is that philological considerations are not enough to restrict the meaning; therefore, Muenchow finds it necessary to search for a background that would do that for him. In this case, the background he uses to form his assumptions is from anthropological insights of the Mediterranean basin. For 42:1-6, Muenchow attaches to the phrase which Muenchow takes to mean as a cultural gesture where Job gives “a vivid demonstration of the essence of the shame response” (ibid., p. 610). In this way, Muenchow advocates the idea that such a gesture of shame ultimately affirms God's acknowledgment of his lowliness as well as his worthiness (ibid., p. 611). Muenchow ends up affirming that speculative insights from anthropology are the only way to settle the text, but this is exactly the beauty of the indeterminate nature of 42:6.
73 Cf. Genesis 18:16-33 and Habakkuk 1:1-4.