The Pious Sage in Job

Eliphaz in the Context of Wisdom Theodicy

Dunham

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781498274593
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Due to the complexity of the speech-cycles in the book of Job, scholars have struggled to resolve interpretive tensions in the author's characterization of Job's three friends. This book focuses on the significance of the ancient Near Eastern social and wisdom contexts for understanding the role that Eliphaz, the leading sage-counselor, fulfills in Job. Given the likely Edomite provenance of Eliphaz and the archaeological evidence linking the respective Israelite and Edomite schools of wisdom, Eliphaz articulates a polished wisdom tradition, the epitome of a worldview shared by Job prior to his calamity. Beyond a simplistic retribution perspective, Eliphaz draws from and refines each of the established sources of wisdom--experience, tradition, and revelation--to ground his counsel and censure of Job. Although Eliphaz is expected to exemplify the role of distinguished counselor-advocate in leading Job out of suffering into reconciliation with God, his ineffectual efforts highlight a significant purpose for the book of Job. The Joban author masterfully undermines conventional wisdom theodicy by exposing its inadequacy to reconcile the suffering of the righteous with divine compassion and sovereignty.

1

Interpretive Ambiguity in Eliphaz

For millennia interpreters of the book of Job have struggled to grasp the complexities of this literary masterpiece.1 For many readers the intricacies of the dialogue in Job exhibit its greatness, and the book commonly garners literary praise.2 Yet the interpretive difficulties intensify when the reader attempts to assess the role which the author3 intended for the three companions of Job: Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. The biblical narrative reports unexpectedly and succinctly that the friends, upon hearing of “all this evil” that had befallen Job, “made an appointment together to come to show him sympathy and comfort him” (Job 2:11).4 The friends’ abrupt appearance, not to mention ensuing long-windedness, incites the reader’s curiosity to determine who they are, what exactly they are saying, how they are to be perceived as saying it, and the rationale for speaking as they do. Moreover, the unfolding book increasingly teases the reader to comprehend the nature of the purported “sympathy” and “comfort” that the friends intend to deliver to their erstwhile friend.

In any such assessment of the friends, the interpretive ambiguities implicit in the primary interlocutor Eliphaz emerge quickly to the fore.5 Eliphaz ranks ostensibly as the eldest and most respected of the three companions for he is the first to speak and his speeches are longer than the others’.6 A number of scholars thus repute him to be the orthodox warden of traditional wisdom theology who, if in any way blameworthy, little more than errs in the application of his theological principles.7 In addition, Eliphaz has an integral, even paradigmatic, role in the book as the chief counselor among the friends.8 His speeches touch upon each of the various theodicies put forth by the human speakers in Job. Still, others soundly criticize Eliphaz for the asperity with which he relentlessly upbraids Job, particularly in his later speeches.9 A few cast him as a villain who wishes ruthlessly to destroy Job at once.10 With more pointed angst, some accuse Eliphaz of turning into a diabolical tool exploited inadvertently to foist the sinister deception of Satan upon the hapless—and helpless—victim Job.11 A cursory reading of the book of Job confirms that it is little wonder such a range of interpretations for Eliphaz has arisen. Eliphaz, on the one hand, ranks among the most eloquent speakers in the book—indeed perhaps all of Scripture12—yet Yahweh singles him out for harsh rebuke.13 At first blush one struggles to resolve these apparent inconsistencies.

At least as early as the translation of the Septuagint, interpreters of Job have deliberated over the intended role for the three friends.14 In the earliest Greek rendering of Job, the Septuagint translator(s) appears to soften the harshness of Eliphaz and the other friends, turning them (along with Job) into petty kings15 and rendering their speeches more urbane and sophisticated than one might construe from an observant reading of the Hebrew text.16 In the New Testament the apostle Paul appears to quote authoritatively from the sage, leading to further interpretive uncertainty.17 Yet this citation would not presage that all would turn out well amongst Eliphaz’s literary audience. Although the early church would treat him ambivalently, by the Middle Ages a handful of earnest but narrow interpreters would all but come to blows with him. An interpretive bipolarity would hound Eliphaz following the Reformation and Enlightenment. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with few exceptions interpreters kept him at arm’s length, denouncing his apparent theological excesses. By the middle of the twentieth century Eliphaz would emerge from an “interpretive rehab” to enjoy something of a renaissance among critical scholars which has lasted in some circles to the present day. Into the twenty-first century, a growing number of synchronic and literary studies suggest an emerging minority voice that the author of Job intended Eliphaz’s role to remain purposively ambiguous and indeterminate both in semantic meaning and in literary purpose.18

Eliphaz as Pernicious Counselor with No Theological Contribution

In its interpretative history the perceived role for Eliphaz and his compeers tended to divide primarily along two lines. On the one hand, the friends were scoundrels who were to be summarily dismissed as the shallow counterpoint to Job, manipulated skillfully by the author (then exposed and contravened) to emphasize by contrast the principal tenets of the book.19 The friends thus construed merely illustrate more vividly the chief challenge addressed by the book: How must one reconcile the sufferings of the innocent with the righteousness of God? Through this heuristic lens the author makes glib use of the friends in order to scandalize the perspectives they hold to and to assert that such theological criteria could no longer be sustained.20 Typically a corollary to this view is the judgment that the speeches of the friends are wooden and static—with little variety of expression and no variety of substance.21 These perspectives hold in common that the reader must disavow the role and vantage point of the friends both in their intended purpose and approach, as the friends offer no viable contribution to the theodicy or theological outlook of Job.

Eliphaz as Sophisticated Counselor with Substantial Theological Contribution

Recent studies, on the other hand, such as that of Newsom, seek to rehabilitate Job’s friends in hopes of perceiving more acutely “the sense of moral dilemma which the dialogue is capable of providing.”22 Newsom observes that “the literary genre of the wisdom dialogue, which serves as the model for the conversation between Job and his friends, suggests that the exchange was probably intended as a more evenly balanced debate.”23 Manfred Oeming likewise contends that the friends have fared badly at the hands of interpreters in spite of clues in the text that the reader ought to perceive them as “true friends and good ministers”:

The friends of Job set out to try numerous ways to provide relief in external and internal adversity as confidants in his contestation by reference to God and his earlier relationship to Him. In the reception history, they have, however—like Job’s wife—encountered extremely negative reviews. They are considered as insensitive phrasemongers, pitiful comforters who did not perceive the needs of their specific opponent, who rather with only a dogma which protects God, ‘gave a whipping.’ I regard these negative opinions as not appropriate to the text; it appears to me that the intention of the poem goes along to draw them as genuine friends and good ministers.24

Oeming identifies three specific areas in which he argues that the author purposively underscores the friends as effective counselors.25 First, by their silent presence at the outset of the interchange (a noteworthy feat in its...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Chapter 1: Interpretive Ambiguity in Eliphaz
• Chapter 2: The Reception History of Eliphaz
• Chapter 3: Contemporary Approaches to Eliphaz
• Chapter 4: The Meaning, Origin, and Theological Provenance of Eliphaz
• Chapter 5: Exegesis and Correlation of the Eliphaz Speeches
• Chapter 6: Conclusion
• Appendix
• Bibliography