Article
Rhetoric of Condemnation in the Book of Job
Journal of Biblical Literature
(2020)
Abstract
The relationship between speech and a person’s identification as righteous or
wicked is a recurrent topic in the Joban dialogue. The objective of this article is
to demonstrate how Job and his friends link Job’s protest to his potential or realized
condemnation. The multiple evaluations of Job’s speech by the friends and
Job himself reveal a development within the dialogue. The friends move from
consolatory rebuke toward condemnation and blatant accusation not on the
basis of secret sin that Job committed prior to his calamity but because of his
words in chapter 3 and following. Job knows the rashness of his words, but he
decidedly speaks them anyway, eschewing caution and proceeding with his accusation
against God. Paradoxically, it is by means of his supposed self-condemnatory
speech that Job moves from hope for death to hope for vindication. YHWH
also evaluates Job’s words, assessing them as both ignorant (38:2) and right (42:7),
thus rejecting the dialogue’s assumed retributive relationship between accusatory
protest and condemnation.
Disciplines
Publication Date
2020
Citation Information
Lance Hawley, Ph.D.. "Rhetoric of Condemnation in the Book of Job" Journal of Biblical Literature Vol. 139 (2020) p. 459 - 478 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/lance-hawleyphd/1/