Job 5:1-2 and vexation kills the fool and eliphaz speaks and conversational verisimilitude

As ch.5 opens, it seems to me that Eliphaz has backed himself into a conversational corner. That is, he has started out in ch.4 with a series of double entendres, which my earlier essays illustrate, and then turned to his night vision--a vision that only seemed to lead to death. Four times in three verses (4:19-21), Eliphaz gives images of death--"they crush them" like a moth (4:19), between morning and evening they are "destroyed" (4:20) , they "perish forever" (4:20), and "and they die" (4:21). If darkness and desire for death was Job's incessant desire in ch.3, death seems to be Eliphaz's destination in ch.4. But, by arriving at the hopelessly negative 4:21, Eliphaz has become like the running toddler whose torso gets out too far beyond his legs, and he falls on his face. Where can he possibly go in conversation after the night vision and the fourfold mention of death? I think part of the dynamic of Job 5 is both how Eliphaz burrows deeper into his "conversational cul-de-sac" and then tries to extricate himself in 5:8ff. For the first seven verses of the chapter, however, he continues with images of death and misery. Job reacts so negatively to Eliphaz/the friends in 6:14ff. because he "reads" Eliphaz as not-so-subtly telling him that death is his fate.

Suggestive Language

More interesting to me in the first verses of ch.5, however, is not the way Eliphaz continues his barrage (I will pick up on that in a later essay), but the way that certain words he uses in 5:1-2 are picked up by Job in his later speeches. That is, despite the fact that most scholars say that no conversation ever takes place between the friends, I think that a true conversation is unfolding. After all, words are like arrows--they are shot into the air and they may hit unintended targets. Job will not ever respond point-by-point to Eliphaz's words, but he does pick up on three of Eliphaz's words in 5:1-2 later in his speeches. I think that this, actually, is one of the marks of conversational verisimilitude in Job. Have you ever noticed the way that actual conversations "work?" Someone will say something and the other person then says, "That reminds me of X" to which the other will respond in kind, "What you said triggers the following memory..." Even though Eliphaz's words will partake of a certain brutality, they will be useful to Job as he formulates his complaint.

Picking up on Eliphaz

The three words or concepts spoken by Eliphaz and later picked up by Job are: (1) "calling and answering" (5:1); (2) "turning" (5:1) and (3) "anger" or "vexation" in 5:2. Let's look at turning and anger first. Eliphaz asks, "to which of the holy ones will you turn?" (5:1). Though the question is quite insensitive [Eliphaz is asking the question rhetorically], Job pickes up on the precise word (panah) and the concept of turning in ch.6. After berating the friends for several verses, Job says,

"But now, be pleased to look at me (panah); for I will not lie to your face. Turn (shub), I pray you, let no wrong be done. Turn (shub) now, my vindication is at stake" (6:28-29).

There are as many "turns" here as in the Birds' song of that title. The verb panah is closely related to the popular noun for "face"--panah. Thus, in this passage Job is asking the friends to look at him, to turn to him. Possibly during Job's harsh preceding words the friends had turned away; now he wants them to turn back to him and not ignore the painfulness of his plight. Thus, we can see Job's use of panah that then turns into shub as an indication that Job may have "heard" Eliphaz in 5:1. 'To whom will you turn?' asks Eliphaz. Job responds, 'Why don't you guys even turn to me, face me, look right at me?' Job has reversed Eliphaz's otherworldy use of panah and has made brought it right before their eyes.

Eliphaz also says, in 5:2, that anger kills the fool. The phrase sounds proverbial and shows Eliphaz's remarkable versatility. Not only will he represent the theology of the wisdom tradition and have a vision that usually is reserved for prophetic types but now he makes up a proverb himself. Proverbs are not so easy to invent, as any who have tried to do so have discovered. "Anger kills the fool, and jealousy slays the simple." Job, then, picks up on the word "anger" (kaash) in 6:2, when he says, "O that my vexation (kaash) were weighed and all my calamity laid in the balances." Here is another defiant use of Eliphaz's word. Eliphaz has said that kaash kills. Job responds that his kaash, if properly weighed, would be heavier than the sand of the sea.

But nothing is as dramatic as Job's use of Eliphaz's first statement and question: "Call now; is there anyone who will answer you?" (5:1). To that we now turn.

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