Construals of job's pain and interpretations of pain

When great distress comes into our life it brings not only itself but an interpretation with it. Or, better said, when we experience significant pain we often react to it on two levels: the level of physical or emotional anguish that it brings and the level of meaning that we give to the pain. Just as work takes up so much of our time because we work AND talk about work, so pain can occupy so many RAMs of our mental space because we feel the pain and come up with a construal of what the pain must mean. Even those who seemingly are most accepting of the losses that come to them have managed to control its potentially disastrous effect by putting a meaning on the pain (e.g., loss is a natural consequence of living, bodies wear out and hence the illness ought not to be unexpected, etc.). Life is a process not simply of experiencing loss but of coming up with interpretations of the loss that either mollify or exacerbate the pain.

You might think at first that our mental powers are always directed to "controlling" or limiting the effect of pain. After all, the anguish of a broken leg or cancer is bad enough. Isn't it "natural" to try to resile from the bad news or intrusive agony by not letting the physical pain also control the way we interpret it, by not letting it determine our life? Not on your life. Many of us are skilled at reading negative meanings into the distress that comes our way; we often prolong the agony precisely because we have married the agony with an interpretation that seems designed to worsen it. The dual construals of Job's pain, by Job himself and by Eliphaz, show this problem in its starkest form. Let's turn to it.

Job's Reading: God Hates Me

One way to look at Job's first and second speeches (3; 6-7) is to see them as, respectively, Job's feeling of the pain and Job's interpretation of it. He feels it deeply in ch.3, using the language of darkness and abortion, of fear and unquiet, to capture the tsunamic effect on him of the loss of his children, his goods and his health. But only in ch.6 does he begin to put an interpretation on his distress, a construal of the meaning of his pain.

He says in 6:4, "For the arrows of the Almighty are in me; my spirit drinks their poison; the terrors of God are arrayed against me." Now he speaks not simply of the debilitating agony of his loss. He is willing to assess blame for it. God is behind it. It is God's piercing arrows that are behind this. Later in the book Job will refine this point, saying that God has "torn me in his wrath and hated me; he has gnashed his teeth at me" (16:9), but that explanation is of a piece with the interpretation in 6:4. It is as if Job is saying, 'God is behind my pain. He has done it to me. It means that God hates me. It is an unjust act by a powerful God that has completely undone me.' Job burrows deeply into his distress because he weds his interpretation to the distress itself. You can almost hear Pachelbel playing in the background.

Eliphaz's Reading: God's Discipline

Eliphaz will have a completely different "take" on Job's loss. He is not only a speaker in his own right but is a representative of the wisdom tradition, a person who believes in its explanation of life. The Book of Proverbs, the Magna Carta of this movement, "explains life" in very catchy and pungent apophthegms. Its basic principle is articulated in 3:9-10.

"Honor the Lord with your substance and with the first fruits of all your produce; then your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will be bursting with wine."

But the Book of Proverbs is also ready for an explanation of how life "works" even if it doesn't seem to be working well at all. Read the next two verses in Prov. 3.

"My child, do not despise the Lord's discipline or be weary of his reproof, for the Lord reproves the one he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights" (3:11-12).

Eliphaz takes over the precise Hebrew wording of Prov. 3:11 in Job 5:17. "How happy is the one whom God reproves; therefore do not despise the discipline of the Almighty." If you were to ask Eliphaz point blank for his construal of the meaning of Job's pain, it would be that it is an example of the Lord's discipline (musar). And, since God only disciplines those whom he loves, Job's faithful reception of this discipline by calling on God and seeking God (5:8) is exactly the right thing to do.

Two Ships in the Night

So each has his own explanation of Job's distress. And, because they are so diametrically opposed to each other, the parties will become hardened in their explanations and be unwilling to see life from the other's perspective. The long and painful dialogue from 3-31 is an illustration of what happens when two different construals of pain are put forward, and no middle ground is found.

Once you realize that this is what is taking place during the dialogue in Job, you begin to develop a real appreciation for that most under-appreciated character in the Book of Job, Elihu. For six chapters, from 32-37 he struggles to give an alternative construal of Job's distress, a construal that both honors Job's experience but rejects the dismal conclusion that Job has drawn. Elihu, truly, along with God (38-41) will be able to "break the logjam." But before we can understand the remarkable nature of Elihu's words, we have to see the way that all of life can become subsumed under the one's interpretation of one's own distress.

And, I write this, of course, because this "problem" is not confined to the ancient world. Whom do you know (including yourself) who is locked in not only to their pain but to a certain interpretation of it? What method can you do to try to bring an alternative explanation of it? Do you think it will work? In ways like these the Book of Job shows its continuing appeal and power for us today.

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