Job 2:12--The Visit of the Friends I
Bill Long 4/17/05
For the Adult Education Class, First Pres. Church, Portland OR
After Job suffers the humonguous losses of his possessions, his children and his health in chs. 1 and 2, and after he and his wife react to his loss, the friends visit. They are identified in 2:11, but then their actual visit is described in this verse. A literal translation of Job 2:12 runs as follows:
"And they lifted up their eyes from afar and they did not recognize him, and they lifted up their voices and wept, and each man tore his garment and they sprinkled dust upon their heads towards the heavens."
Trying to put meaning into this verse is both a linguistic and an imaginative enterprise. This essay will try to understand the turns of phrases that are used here; the next essay will address the issue of how other biblical characters (and we) either recognize or ignore the "plain events" right before our eyes.
Understanding the Verse
The friends have come to comfort Job in his woes. As a preliminary matter, nothing is said about how the friends heard the news nor how long it took them to make arrangements to arrive. Later (7:3), Job will talk about "months" of misery he endures; presumably it took the friends several weeks to leave someone else in charge of their affairs so they could come to visit their friend. Another preliminary remark or two arise from reading the last prose section of the book (42:10-17). After Job is restored, we are informed that his brothers and sisters came to visit him and show him sympathy (42:11). Some might be tempted to wonder where these family members were during Job's horrendous ordeal. At least the friends are present with Job, despite the way that he will treat them in ch. 6. But family has fled. Another small point is that the restoration narrative in 42:10-17 speaks about all the evil that THE LORD had brought upon Job. Here (2:11-13) there is only a reference to the troubles that came upon Job--no source is directly implicated.
Now, moving to v. 12. If we look closely at v. 12, translated above, we recognize, as do some commentators, that the first words seem to be so compressed as not to make full sense as they stand. They say that the friends didn't recognize Job from afar, and then they wept. As Clines has noted, nothing is unusual in the first phrase. Usually we don't recognize people from afar; only when we are closer do their facial and bodily features become clear to us. What seems to be suggested by the Hebrew is that Job was unrecognizable from a distance (that much is clear) but that even "close up" he might be well-nigh unidentifiable. The Hebrew word (and it is only one word) "and they did not recognize him," might also be translated, "and they did not really recognize him" or, as Clines suggests, "they hardly recognized him." The picture thus painted is that even in close proximity the disfigurement was so great and Job's pain so evident that he was almost unidentifiable to the friends. The sense of the verse is that they saw him from afar and didn't recognize him; they drew clearer and barely recognized him. Hence, they wept.
They knew it had to be Job--for who else could it be?--but they had never previously seen their friend in such straits. This may be why the text emphasizes the difficulty of recognition even when the friends are close to each other. Then the friends begin to weep and tear their garments--they know this IS Job but he is only a shadow of his former self. They couldn't believe their eyes, but they knew that their eyes did not lie. The fact of considerable compression of langauge in the prose part of Job prepares us for that same characteristic in the poetry. Like Shakespeare in English, Homer and Aeschylus in Greek, and Dante in Italian, the author of the Book of Job is a master of compressed language.
Sprinkling Dust Toward Heaven
In addition to their weeping, the friends sprinkle dust "upon their heads toward the heavens." This is a literal reading of the last phrase, and it deserves a brief comment. It is unusual, to say the least, that dust would be sprinkled on the head "toward heaven." Does this mean that it was thrown up in the air and then settled on their heads? And, if so, why the unusual phrase? The only other place in the OT where something is sprinkled "toward the heavens" is in Ex.9:8, where God tells Moses to sprinkle soot towards heaven and this will result in the plague of boils upon the Egyptians. I think thae Exodus reference is useful to understand the context here. When the friends are sprinkling the dust they are doing it not only as a mourning gesture, but with the same kind of motion as Moses did with the soot--with the result that maybe some of the sores in the last "dusting" will come on them, too. Read in this way, the friends' sprinkling of the dust is a consummate expression of their solidarity with Job. It is as if the author is saying that the friends are taking on the pains of Job, even to the extent of their willingness to develop bodily infirmities also.
Conclusion
Thus, the friends demonstrate a number of sympathetic acts of kindness toward Job in these verses. Not only do they come from afar, sit with him and weep with him, but their act of sprinkling dust "toward the heavens" is an expression of their willingness to suffer the same kind of physical debility as now plagues Job. With these acts of friendship, it is all the more interesting to note that the conversation breaks down within just a few short chapters. Later essays will explore how this happens. But now we return to the first point--recognition--and how our ability or inability to "see" what is before us affects our lives.
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