John Mark Hicks

I have uploaded to my General Materials page two items related to the biblical book entitled “Job.” I gave a series of lectures at Lipscomb University entitled Faithful Lament: Job’s Response to Suffering and the handouts for those lectures are now available. I have also provided the powerpoint presentation that accompanied the lectures.

The first lecture is structural in nature. I suggest that the Prologue and Epilogue are hermeneutical perspectives for the readers–they offer perspectives for reading the dialogues and monologues (Job 3-42:6). For example, they establish that Job is righteous (innocent suffering), what Job says is “right” as opposed to the friends, and that the suffering of Job functions as a cosmic test of whether any human can actually serve (love) God for nothing other than relationship with God. The prologue reminds us that we should read Job’s words sympathetically and the epilogue offers a kind of eschatological understanding of God’s grace to the suffering and his ultimate reversal of suffering itself.

Lecture two outlines the laments contained in the book of Job. There are many and they form the main point of the dialogue as well as Job’s monologue. The substance of the book is Job’s struggle with faith in the midst of a chaotic and unjust world. The question “why” looms large in Job, but more important is the question whether Job will continue to trust the God whom he thinks unfair.

Lecture three suggests that the Yahweh speeches are more about reminding Job of what Job already knows–God is transcendent, worthy of praise, and he runs his world with wisdom and care. He does what humans cannot do–he sovereignly reigns over the evil in the world. But the critical point, I think, is that Job receives this encounter with Yahweh in humility and finds comfort in the encounter. Unlike most Christian translations, I understand Job 42:6 as “comforted” (or his change from lament to comfort) rather than “repented.”

It seems to me that if “repent” is the correct translation then the friends were right. “Job,” the friends said, “if you repent, God will give it all back to you.” The friends stress that God’s grace to his people is a quid pro quo: I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine. Instead, I would suggest that the lament of the dialogues finds resolution in the encounter with Yahweh. Job is comforted before God restores his wealth and happiness.

Lament, I believe, ultimately finds its answer in divine encounter. God comforts his people through his presence and through the presence of his people with his people. God gives hope through the power of his Spirit (Romans 15:14). There is no formula; there are no magic words. There is ultimately only the presence of God through encounter and in community with his people.

This entry was posted on April 12, 2008 at 6:58 pm and is filed under Pastoral Care. Tagged: Bible-Job, Grief, Lament, Suffering. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.