Job 42 and Knowing and Book of Job

These six verses are among the most explosive and variously interpreted verses in the Bible. Almost nothing one says about them is completely incorrect, and so I take heart in advancing this interpretation. It is a mixture of the two leading readings of the text.

The Theories

On the one hand, scholars have taken Job 42:1-6 as an expression of Job's being overcome by a new knowledge of God that he did not previously have. When he learns of God by "seeing" rather than merely by "hearing" (42:5), he sees how wrong, arrogant, and mistaken he has been all along and he despises himself, repenting in dust and ashes (42:6).

On the other hand, more recent scholars have taken Job's reaction both in chapters 40 and 42 to be anything other than one of heartfelt submission. Instead, under this thesis, Job is knuckling under because he can do no other; God has driven him to surrender. This approach then would read 42:6 as saying not that Job despises himself but that he "despises and repents of dust and ashes." That is, he has seen God, and this knowledge of God makes him see the flimsiness of religious claims and rituals. Rather than despising himself, then, he abandons the traditional religious life.

Sorting it Out

A partial way through the maze of conflicting interpretation lies in paying close attention to the verbs of chapter 42. My claim is that the two verbs of 42:6 ("despise" and "repent") are best understood in the context of three previous verbs which provide their proper interpretive context. These verbs are "knowing," "hearing," and "seeing."

Knowing

The primary emphasis of 42:1-6 is on new things that Job learns. Four times in two verses appear verbs or nouns suggestive of Job's ignorance and knowledge. (1) He now knows that God can do all things (42:2); (2) his (mis)quotation of God's word in 38:2 emphasizes his ignorance; (3) his confession is that he uttered things he didn't "understand," (4) wonderful things that he did not "know (42:3)." The conclusion of the book is about the discovery of a different mode of knowing. It is as if Job has discovered a new faculty within him, one that is charged with fresh, strange and wonderful knowledge of God. He greets this discovery with the same intensity as he latched onto the idea of darkness in chapter 3 to summarize his first entry into distress. All is now knowledge.

Hearing and Seeing

What has changed for Job? His mode of perceiving God. He previously had "heard of God" but now "I see you (42:5)." This fantastic statement is uttered in the context of a biblical tradition that says no one can "see" God and live, even though Moses and some of the elders "saw" God or talked to God "face to face" (Ex. 33:9-11; 24:9-11). What did Job see? This needs to be interpreted in the context of the knowledge of 42:2-3. Job "saw" that God's basic character is raw energy and power, and that is what God admires. Job "saw" that any attempt to confine God to categories devised by humans, even biblical categories, is, quite simply, wrong. Job's physical body was riddled with ailments; now his mental world has completely collapsed.

Despising and Repenting

In this context, the despising and repenting make sense. The verb despise ('maas') appears here without an object (as in 7:16) to express the abiding sense that one's life is now utterly worthless. Wracked by pain was Job in chapter 7, and his life was empty; now the intellectual agony is so severe that he likewise "despises." The vision of God in 42:5, then, is not the mystic vision of eternal sweetness and peace; it is an agony-riddled realization (a "knowing") that life has completely come apart.

All Job can do in this context is to sit on the ash heap. One can imagine Job lowering his eyes, barely moving, barely breathing, completely undone. The springs of life have departed from him completely.

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