PHIL4205 - Job and the Comforters

Today in our final class, we read the story of Job with the intention of asking what the story says about knowing the Other. The Christian tradition has often favored the interpretation that the story provides an account of how Christian faith reconciles the understanding of God as "good" with the realities of evil in the world. In a way, Job's faith through suffering gestures towards what is left when all things material have been stripped away leaving only what the soul has constituted. But is the suffering without justification an illustration of faith that is to be imitated? Who among us would choose to be tested in this way?

The description offered of the human condition by this biblical story echo many of the themes within existential philosophy. What might be called "negative" meaning attests to Job's own rational of faith that excludes the concept of reward as a basis for understanding one's relation to God. Alternatively, Job's three comforters Eliphaz the Temanite, Zophar the Naamathite, and Bildad the Shuhite urge him to search within himself for what he had done to anger God and bring upon his punishment, for indeed if God is just then there must be a reason for Job's suffering. Job dismisses his comforters views as not only offence and accusative but he sees it as ultimately empty way to understand man's relation to God.

I found it interesting that Job speaks of his obedience to the law, a fact that God agrees with and even boasts about in chapter one when he turns to Satan and says "Have you considered my servant, Job? For there is none like him in the earth, a blameless and an upright man, one who fears God, and turns away from evil" (Job 1:8). Indeed, there is no question of Job's obedience to God and even takes extreme precautions like burning offerings for his children in case any had "renounced God in their hearts" (Job 1:5). All these descriptions of Job provide evidence of his righteousness which goes further to emphasize the fact of his innocence. Even the reader knows after reading the dialog between God and Satan that Job's suffering was for indeed for nothing, or at most a wager that neither God nor Satan had anything at sake except their pride. Though Job would have been justified to curse God having fulfilled the law only to receive punishment, he instead asks "why?". God appearing from out of a "whirlwind", emerging out of chaos, asks Job "Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding." (Job 38:4) This among a series of other questions posed to Job contrast the difference between omnipotent and human being. Ultimately, Job can only admit his inability to understand God and in doing so receives his praise for speaking truthfully.

I believe the story highlights may of the tensions that form our relation to the irreducible Other. While we are always seeking to understand we cannot make any claims to knowing the Other. Job's comforters merely assumed to know God, the absolute Other, and his justice as a reward system. I find it interesting the Job's comments were often directed at God posing questions and stating his grievances while his comforters only accused Job of his many unknown indiscretions. The irony is that the comforters provide no comfort to Job in his suffering who must always defend his innocence. In accusing Job the comforters sooth the anxieties about their assured salvation through obedience to the law. These are two contrasting ways of addressing the Other. To the comforter Job as the Other, who is close in proximity, receives no sympathy while Job in his regard for God, the absolute Other, treats him with the utmost compassion given the severity of the injury caused. Perhaps we can take a lesson from this story and what it has to say about the relation to the Other; one cannot truly know the Other no matter how close or separated we might be but in our relation to the Other we recognize ourselves as Others.