The Shadow of Christ in the Book of Job

C. J. Williams

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781532608339
• eBook ISBN: 9781532608346
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

The Book of Job has been a rich source of truth and comfort for its readers throughout the ages, but the crowning glory of this book is the prophetic testimony it bears to the sufferings that Jesus Christ would endure as the savior of his people. The Shadow of Christ in the Book of Job examines the historical character of Job as a typological figure, whose experience of suffering leading to glory was meant to portray the work of Christ, and provide assurance and comfort to all who bear affliction in faith.

1

What is Typology?

“For your first lesson in typology, take out your laptop and place your pinky on the A key, your ring finger on the S key, and your middle finger on the D key . . . ” Sighs and groans emanate from my students as I attempt this joke every year in the classroom, but that never stops me from trying it again the next year. On one occasion, a bright-eyed student carefully placed his fingers as instructed, and looked up at me anticipating further direction. I knew I had to begin at the beginning, and focus on the basics, which is what I hope to do in this chapter.

What is typology? In spite of its technical sound, and the many involved treatments of it, the crux of biblical typology is not difficult to explain or understand. In essence, it is the way that God used history to bring his promises to life. God’s plan of redemption, brought to its fullness in the work of Christ, was not carried through history on words of prophecy alone, but touched down in the life and experience of God’s people, as particular individuals and events illustrated and animated the promises and provisions of God in the Covenant of Grace. More specifically, the person and work of Jesus Christ was imprinted on the history that led to his incarnation, through people and events that were invested with prophetic meaning by God, offering glimpses of the coming Savior, and reassuring God’s people of the promise of his coming.

This makes typology a vital link between the Old and New Testaments, and gives us a fresh reassurance of the continuing power and relevance of the Old Testament as a revelation of Jesus Christ.

Most words with the “-ology” suffix denote the study of a certain branch of knowledge, and “typology” is no different. In one sense, it refers to the study of biblical types. However, typology is not merely an academic discipline. It is the term we use to describe the Bible’s own method of using people, events, or institutions, to foreshadow a greater reality yet to come. The type is the foreshadow; the antitype is the reality.

The Greek word typos is used variously in the New Testament, usually translated as “form,” “image,” “pattern,” or “example.” It is used in such contexts as 1 Timothy 4:12, where the Apostle Paul exhorts Timothy to “be an example (typos) to the believers in word, in conduct, in love, in spirit, in faith, in purity.” In some texts, however, it is clear that typos is used as a more precise term to designate those elements of Old Testament history that were designed to foreshadow New Testament realities. Paul refers to Adam as a “type of him who was to come,” explaining how Adam foreshadowed Christ in his representative capacity (Rom 5:14–21). The writer of Hebrews, contrasting the heavenly, high priestly ministry of Jesus with the earthly ministry of human priests, characterized the latter as those “who serve the copy (typos) and shadow of the heavenly things” (Heb 8:4, 5). While typos came to have this technical sense in the New Testament, not all types are labeled with this term. By a simple metaphor, Paul posits the typology vested in the Paschal Lamb: “For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us” (1 Cor 5:7).

To summarize, typos is a general term in the New Testament, but used in a more specific way to refer to elements of Old Testament history that foreshadow the person and work of Christ. We call these elements types. However, the foreshadowing of Christ by historical events, people, and institutions goes well beyond the few instances where the word typos is used to describe it. This system of foreshadowing we call typology.

What are the main characteristics of types, or, how do we know one when we see one? In his classic work Typology of Scripture, Patrick Fairbairn gives us an adequate starting point:

There are two things which, by general consent, are held to enter into the constitution of a type. It is held, first, that in the character, action, or institution which is denominated the type, there must be a resemblance in form or spirit to what answers to it under the Gospel; and secondly, that it must not be any character, action, or institution occurring in the Old Testament Scripture, but such only as had their ordination of God, and were designed by him to foreshadow and prepare for the better things of the Gospel.1

The first element of typology identified by Fairbairn is “a resemblance in form or spirit” between the type and the antitype, which is a condition in need of a caveat. Not every superficial parallel between the Old and New Testaments is an instance of typology, but only that which substantively foreshadows the work of God in redemption. Typology does not amount to literary déjà vu, meant only to delight the reader with subtle connections. It is God’s method of illustrating and authenticating divine promises on the stage of history, and as such, typology will always reflect the promise and fulfillment of his work of redemption.2

Fairbairn’s second qualification is that a genuine type must be designed by God to foreshadow and prepare for the better things of the gospel. If it is designed by God, then Scripture can be our only infallible guide for identifying a true type, and understanding its significance. Typology is not the art of making creative or intuitive connections within the Bible. It is an exegetical discipline that must be textually controlled. If types are designed by God, they will be accompanied by biblical evidence that substantially validates their typological purpose and meaning.

What, then, is the biblical criteria for which we should look? Sidney Greidanus offers four helpful measures of a genuine type.3 First, a genuine type must be historical. That is, it must be an actual event, character, or institution from Old Testament history. Second, it must be theocentric, meaning that the symbolic message conveyed by a type must directly relate to the character, works, or promises of God. Third, a type must exhibit significant analogy with its antitype in the realm of theological meaning rather than in superficial details. Fourth, the relationship of the type to the antitype must exhibit significant escalation, meaning that the antitype is always superior in the qualities that were more dimly reflected in the type.

To these I would add a fifth criterion, that Old Testament types are prophetic in nature, and were meant to be understood in tandem with, and as illustrations of, the literary prophecies and promises of the Old Testament. They were meant to have value, not only to those who see them retrospectively, but also to those who originally experienced them. After all, types are foreshadows, not aftershadows.

Of course, Old Testament believers did not have the advantage of the clarity of the gospel that dawned with the coming of Christ and the completion of the New Testament. It is certain that many gospel truths, which we see so clearly, were not nearly as distinct to them. We cannot say with certainty how much they understood or did not understand about the historical types and literary prophecies that made up their experience of faith, but there is little reason to believe that the typology of the Old Testament took place all around them while they themselves were utterly unaware of it. The types of the Old Testament are described as a “shadow of the good things to come” (Heb 10:1), but a shadow is still a shadow, after all.

If we understand that types had original prophetic meaning, and do not only serve a retrospective purpose, then two important implications follow. First, that typology in the Old Testament is not necessarily circumscribed by the New Testament. In other words, there can be types in the Old Testament that are not identified or discussed as such in the New Testament. Granted, the apostolic writers lose few opportunities to point them out, but the presence of New Testament commentary is not an absolute criteria for identifying a genuine Old Testament type. There is no indication, and no reason to presume, that the types identified as such by the New Testament exhaust the typological content of the Old Testament. Geerhardus Vos comments:

The mere fact that no writer in the New Testament refers to a certain trait as typical, affords no proof of its lacking typical significance. Types in this respect stand on a line with prophecies. The New Testament in numerous cases calls our attention to the fulfillment of certain prophecies, sometimes of such a nature that perhaps we might not have discerned them to be prophecies. And yet we are not restrained by this from searching the field of prophecy and looking in the New Testament for other cases of fulfillment. The instances of typology vouched for by the New Testament writers have nothing peculiar to themselves. To recognize only them would lead to serious incompleteness and incoherency in the result.4

Great care must be taken, and substantial proof must be sought, when discerning Old Testament types not identified as such by the New Testament, but the prospect remains open. This point has great bearing on the discussion of typology in Job, who is mentioned only once in the New Testament (Jas 5:11), and only as an example of perseverance.

The second implication is that Old Testament types will ordinarily be accompanied by some textual indication of their prophetic value in the original context, if indeed they had such value to their original audience. It may be faint, but something will give the original audience of the text an intimation, at least, when a person, event, or institution bears prophetic meaning beyond itself. A type in the Old Testament will show itself by how it is described, how it is reacted to, or how it impacts the life and faith of the believing community. The full meaning, or ultimate fulfillment of the type is never fully disclosed to its original audience, yet there is almost always some textual indicator that typology is in play, when the import of a particular person or event distends beyond its historical provenance into the realm of prophecy. In the chapters that follow, we will be looking for these textual indications in the book of Job.

The purpose of biblical typology may be discerned from two different outlooks, namely, from Old Covenant and New Covenant vantage points. From the former perspective, typology served to breathe life into the promises of God by personifying and illuminating the promise of redemption. We may think of types as living sermon illustrations that brought the words of prophecy to life. Types are what gave the Covenant promises their movement and embodiment in history, so that divine promises became palpable, and anticipation became experiential. It is truly a wondrous method of divine reassurance that redemption was built into the very fabric of history, and that history itself was moving toward its crescendo in Christ.

From the New Testament vantage point, the outlook is different. Living in the full light of the Advent, we may wonder what present value the Old Testament types have in the life of faith and in our perception ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Preface
• Chapter 1: What is Typology?
• Chapter 2: Typology in the Book of Job
• Chapter 3: The Messianic Trajectory
• Chapter 4: The Man from Uz
• Chapter 5: The Trial Begins
• Chapter 6: The Poetry of Suffering
• Chapter 7: The Role of Job’s Friends
• Chapter 8: Royal and Priestly Imagery
• Chapter 9: The Mediator Foreseen
• Chapter 10: The Soliloquy of the Last Adam
• Chapter 11: Out of the Whirlwind
• Chapter 12: What the Book of Job Means Today
• Bibliography