Introduction
Among today’s faithful in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, there exists a widely accepted understanding of the biblical figure of Job that portrays him as the quiet sufferer, sitting on a dung hill (Job 2:8), patiently enduring poverty, pain, and rejection, yet remaining steadfast in his belief in God even in the face of unspeakable adversity. Job helps us find our path through suffering, and hopefully reap the rewards of a faith tested by trial in this life or eternity.
This understanding of Job has biblical roots. It originates in the prose folk tale (Job 1:1–2:13 and 42:7–17), which frames the much larger poetic remainder of the book. In the folk tale, Job’s poverty and suffering is the result of a heavenly wager between God and Satan meant to test Job’s faith. And Job patiently endures and is proven faithful. The Job of the poetic portion, however, is an entirely different character. His misfortune is, as René Girard observed, “not divine, satanic nor physical, but merely human.” 1 Job vociferously laments and protests his descent into poverty and his declining health and social standing; he defiantly shakes a fist 2 at God; he forcefully rejects allegations of wrongdoing as possible explanations for his suffering.
How did it happen that Job, the rebel, has been eclipsed by Job, the patient sufferer? William Morrow argued convincingly that during the Second Temple period (530 BCE to 70 CE) “theological constructs shifted and became increasingly uncomfortable with protest against God,” 3 so much so that this biblical tradition and with it Job, the rebel, was eclipsed. While rabbinic Judaism has always preserved some aspects of a tradition of protest against God, the full force of this tradition was heard again only in recent history when survivors of the Holocaust attempted to come to terms with the unspeakable atrocities perpetrated upon their community. In Christianity, the theological developments of the New Testament and possibly even more so “the encounter of the early Church with Hellenistic philosophy, especially Stoicism” 4 caused Job, the rebel, to retreat into oblivion for many of the Christian faithful. He has, however, been rediscovered in the poverty-stricken faith communities of the global south and the unique brand of theology, that is, liberation theology, that emerged from their experience.
The ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor, and the unspeakable suffering poverty produces for so many, continues to challenge faith communities everywhere. How do we speak of God in the presence of someone who lives in grinding poverty, who suffers from an agonizing disease, has suffered the loss of a loved one, or who has been condemned to live on the margins, on the dung hills of our ‘oh-so-accepting’ societies? The ‘eclipsing’ of Job, the rebel, is alive and well in today’s world, yet people of faith are called to truly heed to the vociferous protest of those living in grinding poverty, to stand with the poor against their poverty, 5 before they engage in God-speak, in theology, which has the power both to unfold and to obscure an encounter of the divine.
Job’s friends set out to console him (Job 2:11–13), yet their words throughout the dialogues are anything but compassionate. Job’s poverty transmutes into unbearable suffering because it is accompanied by the loss or transformation of his relationships with his fellow human beings (Job 19:13–19). The experience of social alienation strengthens his conviction that he has also lost his God. We are reminded of Jean-Paul Sartre’s famous line from the play Huis clos: “Hell is—other people.” Job’s suffering takes on a distinctly social quality. Can a sociological—in particular, a symbolic-interactionist—approach help us uncover the agency that Job’s interactants have in the creation of poverty and suffering?
Symbolic Interactionism
Symbolic interactionism is a “sociological approach to the study of human group life that emphasizes the centrality of activity, language, and human interchange. This perspective builds on the pragmatist philosophy with an emphasis on community, self, and reflective activity, and it relies on ethnographic research.” 6 This methodological approach considers all human reality as socially constructed.
Central to the symbolic-interactionist perspective is the concept of self. Self refers to how a human being recognizes himself or herself. According to Herbert Blumer, “the self … emerges from the process of social interaction in which other people define a person to himself.” 7 In this process of social interaction, the individual is both a social product and an agent and develops a concept of self in relation to both. These two conceptions of self are not always congruent. When they are incongruent, the individual is frequently labeled deviant.
Deviance is created in a process of social interaction among members of society that renders some to be insiders and others outsiders. How are outsiders chosen and labeled? Why does society select members of certain groups and label them outsiders more readily than others, such as persons living in poverty or those who belong to a particular race or ethnic group? Howard Becker claims that the underlying mechanism is one of power differentials, which are often based on distinctions of age, sex, ethnicity, socio-economic class, and degrees of ability. 8
As long as deviance occurs with little change in the lifestyle of the individual, as long as it remains undiscovered by society, symbolic-interactionists speak of ‘primary deviance.’ 9 An individual moves into ‘secondary deviance’ 10 when the deviant condition or act comes to the attention of social control agents who then apply a negative label, which in turn amplifies deviance.
The deviant self emerges as the cumulative result of a train of experiences suffered by the individual: betrayal by the individual’s intimates and kin, mortification of self upon application of the deviant label, and the subsequent discrediting of every attempt to sustain a viable self. Individuals labeled deviant see themselves as victims of an ‘alienative coalition’ that includes those kin and friends who should protect their interests. 11
Behavior is condemned as evil when it offends people who have control and power to establish norms that conform to their interests. ‘Moral entrepreneurs’ 12 shape and influence the process of norm creation and subsequent deviance. They rally the masses in support of the status quo and have often been found to be instigators of moral panics. 13 Once a person is labeled deviant, fewer chances are available to achieve and make good in the conventional world. Poverty begets poverty.
Society reacts to those labeled deviant by condemning them. These condemnations occur in public ceremonies such as trials or other rituals. These public ‘degradation ceremonies’ 14 create stigma and cause a re-evaluation of self-concept. Stigma refers to such visible things as signs of illness and poverty and anything that tends to belittle a person, including being labeled. Once the person is stigmatized, new restrictions are placed on the person’s legitimacy in society. Stigma may lead to the individual being shunned by family and friends, being prevented from participating in activities of the group, and losing possessions and social esteem. How persons manage stigma affects their concept of self. Individuals may begin to re-evaluate their own identity based on the evaluation of others. The deviant label, initially attached by others, is thus adopted by the individual and becomes a hallmark of their concept of self; it becomes the individual’s master status, which defines a person’s social position. 15 Once an individual has attained a deviant master status, it is difficult to imagine that the characteristics of the deviant label were not there before. This final step of retrospective interpretation overshadows and calls into question all of the individual’s behaviors and actions, past, present, and future. The deviant is caught in a vicious circle; his/her hell is socially constructed.
Understanding Job 19:2–22
In Chap. 19, Job addresses his friends. The structure of the poem is usually determined by one of two criteria: thematic considerations or strophic analysis (ie formal). Pieter Van der Lugt summarizes the history of investigation and ...