ENGL 204 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Zophar, Satan, Divine Retribution
8 Jun 2018
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The Book of Job Tuesday, October 10, 2017
Next Thursday: mid-term
Book of Job
-Considered post-exilic writing
•post 60 BCE Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar takes over the Jews
-They are exiled from their land again and lose their temple
•Afterwards, the Babylonian king Cyrus takes over and the Jews can go back home
again (they start calling themselves the Jews after this point
-A uniquely monotheistic problem is who is accountable for the evil in the world?
•Why do bad things happen? And why do they happen to God’s people?
-One way to provide an answer is that evil exists as Divine punishment
•Successful people are successful because they are favoured. People who
experience bad things is because they are being punished one way or another
-An idea that persists to this day
•If the world is good, then the “evil” in it is to maintain a sense of justice
-A righting of wrongs (divine retribution)
-Retributive justice
-The book of Job questions this sense of justice and punishment
•God is called in to account for the evil
•The book suggests that evil is not always a form of punishment
-Job is a righteous man
•Not an Israelite - universalizes the story
•“Perfect and upright” - we are asked to remember this about Job throughout the
story
-He comes across as being divinely favoured because of his success
-A sense of transaction or some sort of deal between God and Job
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-“the satan”
•means “adversary”
-Satan is not really named Satan until much later
-Considered as a prosecutor, or some sort of underling
•He does not represent evil the way we consider “Satan” (with a capital S) in
modern days
•He just wanders on the earth and reports back and challenges God in small
dares
-“Job likes you because you’ve made him successful. If you remove all that,
he wouldn’t be loyal to you”
-Job becomes the bet between these two divine figures.
•God is proud of him, but the satan challenges him in a bet
-The story plays itself out almost like a Shakespeare play
•Messengers start coming in and telling him about everything Job has lost
-Job handles the affliction of loss pretty well
•He passes the first challenge
-Part 2: God and the satan meet up again
•The repetition of the first part
-It’s like a joke “on the second day, the guy walks into a bar…”
-God does not allow Job to be killed, but he does cause more problems
•Job still handles his afflictions well, but he starts to crack a little
-He does not verbally challenge God, but does start to feel like it’s a little unfair
-The Book of Job has 2 parts:
•The story of Job going through problems, and he passes, and then he is restored
all his goods.
-Told like a story
•The argument or more philosophical part
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Document Summary
Considered post-exilic writing: post 60 bce babylonian king nebuchadnezzar takes over the jews. They are exiled from their land again and lose their temple: afterwards, the babylonian king cyrus takes over and the jews can go back home again (they start calling themselves the jews after this point. One way to provide an answer is that evil exists as divine punishment: successful people are successful because they are favoured. People who experience bad things is because they are being punished one way or another. An idea that persists to this day: if the world is good, then the evil in it is to maintain a sense of justice. The book of job questions this sense of justice and punishment: god is called in to account for the evil, the book suggests that evil is not always a form of punishment.
