Perhaps one of the most frustrating things in the life of a student is books which do not cite things easily or well. A case in point is David Clines’ Job commentary. On the whole the commentary is excellent, and normally Clines is careful to cite his sources. However, on occasion he forgets (?) to include the proper information so that I can go look up the origin for myself.

I’m currently attempting to understand what Elihu offers (if anything) to the Book of Job. Clines has an enticing quote from Carol Newsom (on pg 710 of his second volume) which he does not cite. He says only that Carol Newsom said it. I have checked his bibliography at the beginning of the section, and there are no works by Newsom cited there. My first thought was that it would be in her book, A Contest of Moral Imaginations. However, it could also be in her NIB commentary on Job, or possibly in one of the articles she has written. Below I’ve included the entirety of the quote which Clines gives–if anyone knows where I can find the context, that would be extremely helpful.

into an intense moment, not just among the characters in the book, but also between the reader and the book. He breaks the dramatic spell and spoils the integrity of an aesthetic, emotional, and religious encounter at the climax of the book….By the end of chap. 27, Elihu has distanced the reader from the immediacy of Job’s passion and has changed the nature of the reader’s experience of the book, so that ideas dominate over passions….Elihu’s need to control–to control the reader’s perception of God and perhaps even to control God–is amply on display when he speaks. This dynamic, coupled with Elihu’s unconcealed conviction that he alone understands what is said and can point out and remedy its defects is what earns Elihu the undying resentment of generations of readers.

I have been a little busy for the past week or so. As a result updates have been fairly rare. However, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to quote Michael Fox quoting Ben Sira on the strange woman.

In my view, the Strange Woman is another man’s wife, whose transgression is thus adultery. She is not a prostitute but a wanton amateur of the sort who “opens her quiver for every arrow,” as Ben Sira puts it.

I have had a wonderful time working my way through Proverbs 1-9 recently. Part of the reason that the labor has been so enjoyable is that I have been refreshing my own knowledge of the various aspects of this part of the Book of Proverbs. I have always found Proverbs 1-9 to be fascinating; the interplay between Lady Wisdom and the forbidden woman, the father and the son, the My Son poems and the various interludes, are all intriguing. When I read through Proverbs 1-9 recently I noticed a pattern in the first several poems that I would like to wax eloquent about for a few sentences. I will then wildly speculate about what this pattern might indicate. I’m sure some of you will be kind enough to correct me in the comments thread, and I welcome this.

To begin, it might be wise to establish a few assumptions that I’m making. The foremost of these is that repetition is an aid in learning. The more a teacher repeats something, the more likely a student is to remember it. A second assumption that I’ve made is that Proverbs 1-9, in its received form, has been shaped and that there is a reason and/or logic to this shaping. That is not to say that scholars completely understand this reason, but such a reason existed in the mind of the redactor/writer/editor.

Turning to the text itself, the intriguing pattern I was referring to is the tendency, early on in the poems of Proverbs 1-9, to conclude a poem with a summary statement concerning the fate of the wise over against the fate of the wicked. This juxtaposition of the wise and the fool occurs in 1.19 (but only concerning the fool), 1.32-33, 2.21-22, and (possibly) 3.32-35. Each of these sections deal somehow with the fate of the wicked, and most also deal with the fate of the wise as contrasted with that of the fool. Furthermore, each of them reinforces the doctrine of retribution as the governing law of life.

The first three poems (My Son poem #1, Interlude A, and My Son poem #2) all conclude with such statements. The final statement, in 3.32-35, comes at the end of a My Son poem, though Interlude B and My Son poem #3 both lack a similar concluding proverb. What I think may be going on here is that the editor is using these statements as a kind of pedagogical tool.

What I mean by this is that the summary statements serve to do exactly that: summarize the poems that have come before. By repeating similar statements, or at least statements with a similar moral, at the end of the first three poems, the editor is driving home the point that A) each of these poems is, to some extent, saying the same thing and B) obedience==blessing while disobedience==cursing (cf. Deut. 28). The end of chapter three would then serve to again drive home this point. Interestingly these verses juxtapose the wise and foolish in a somewhat unique way (when compared with the other verses listed above); line A of each verse discusses the negative things which YHVH will do to the foolish while line B contrasts the positive things which YHVH will do for the upright. Perhaps also worth mentioning is the fact that these verses represent the first cluster of antithetically parallel verses in Proverbs. That may or may not be significant. I haven’t decided.

By means of conclusion, I think that the various summary statements in Proverbs 1.19, 1.32-33, 2.21-22 and 3.32-35 are intended to drive home a very specific point to the reader. On the one hand it is the point that each of the poems makes in a more specific and verbose way: obedience to YHVH==blessing while disobedience==cursing. As for why the statements cease after the first few poems, my off-the-cuff theory is that having firmly established the point, the editor feels free to begin allowing the specifics of the poems themselves to take center stage. Not that this wasn’t taking place before, but the summary statements certainly draw ones attention back to the overarching point which is being irrespective of the specific content of each poem.

Earlier posts in this series are available here, here, here and here.

In a previous post I discussed that verse two is a fairly straight forward distitch wisdom saying. Specifically this saying is concerned with the fate of the fool. Verses six and seven are also wisdom sayings. Although verse six could stand alone, verse seven appears to be predicated upon verse six. The two verses together form a quatrain, verse six with a quasi-chiastic structure that is carried on in stitch A of verse seven. It is now time to turn to the interior of this pericope, verses three to five.

This section is the most difficult to identify within the pericope. On the one hand one might take it as an admonition to avoid foolishness, since the fool is consumed. However, there is never an actual admonition to turn from being a fool. The section might also be taken as a paranesis, or in layman’s terms, “an address to an individual (or group) that seeks to persuade with reference to a goal.”¹ However, again there is no goal that is specified in the text.

Murphy classifies this as an “example story.”² Norman Habel takes these verses as an attempt “to substantiate the proverb he quotes[in verse 2] by citing his personal experience of fallen fools.”³ This appears to agree with Murphy’s classification of these verses as an example story, which the latter defines as, “a genre that provides a concrete example as an illustration of a point that an author…is making.”⁴ Interestingly, Habel associates these verses with the wisdom saying in verse two, while Murphy associates them with the wisdom sayings in verses six and seven. ⁵

Of course, the whole point of working to establish the various forms used in a passage is to compare the use of those forms in the present passage to their use in other passages. What light might similar pericopes shed on Job 5.3-5? Proverbs 7.6ff is the quintessential example story within the wisdom literature of the Hebrew Bible. It is, in every way, more involved than the comparatively laconic example story found in the present pericope. Even so, the stories are introduced similarly with a form of ראה followed by the story proper. Beyond this there are no clear similarities in form between the two passages. The Proverbs passage is longer, and contains embedded speech. It, furthermore, has the feel of a narrative, whereas the passage in Job has the feel of a report.

Using a form of ראה to introduce a topic is also used in Qohelet (cf. Qohelet 3.16; 6.1). There is an important difference between the use here and in Proverbs 7 on the one hand, and the use in Qohelet on the other. In the latter אני ראיתי is used to introduce a general truth that the sage has observed, whereas in Job the same phrase is used to introduce a particular–although possibly(probably) fictionalized–story.

Identifying these verses as an example story form is not so much helpful in finding exact parallels as much as it is helpful in more clearly establishing the purpose and function of the verses. These three verses serve as an example of the fool who is destroyed, not randomly, but because he is a fool. In this way, it serves to illustrate the point which Eliphaz is striving to make in much the same way that a modern member of the clergy might use a story from her own life to illustrate a point.

Earlier posts in this series may be found here, here and here. Of particular interest is this post, since it contains the Hebrew text (see here for an English translation) of Job 5.2-7 with which I am working. In this post, I intend to survey the literary forms which are used in Job 5.2-7. The particular forms have some bearing on the structure of the passage, which will be discussed in a future post.

Establishing the precise forms which occur in Job 5.2-7 is not an easy task.¹ Clearly verse two is a wisdom saying. Verses six and seven also appear to be a wisdom saying, though whether a single saying or two juxtaposed sayings is a more complex question to answer. The interior of the section is more difficult to categorize. It has certain affinities with several forms, which will be discussed below.

The pericope with which this paper is concerned (Job 5.2-7) is found in the first cycle of speeches, in Eliphaz’ first speech. Most scholars would outline the Book of Job thusly:²
I. Prologue (Chapters 1-2)
II. Dialog (Chapters 3-27)
    A. First Cycle (Chapters 3-14)
    B. Second Cycle (Chapters 15-21)
    C. Third Cycle (22-27)
III. Monologue (Chapters 28-42)
    A. Job (Chapters 28-31)
    B. Elihu (Chapters 32-37)
    C. God (Chapters 38-41)
IV. Epilogue (Chapter 42)
Murphy labels Eliphaz’ first speech as a disputation speech.³ Regarding Job 5.2-7 he says only that “wisdom forms prevail.”⁴

Verse two is a simple, bicolon wisdom saying. Murphy defines a wisdom saying as “a didactic saying, based on experience and/or tradition that inculcates some value or lesson.”⁵ In this case, it would appear that the saying is based on both tradition and experience, as the discussion of verses three to five (in the next post in this series) will make clear. The bicolon or distitch proverb is among the most common in the Book of Proverbs.⁶ The Book of Job, although it favors longer speeches, still makes use of this basic(?) proverbial form. This is also a very common pattern in Egyptian literature. In this light, Job 5.2 falls well within a common proverbial form attested in both the Bible and ancient near east.

Specifically, Job 5.2 is a wisdom saying that deals with the fate of the fool. Such sayings are very common in the book of Proverbs. Proverbs 17.20 is an example:
      He who has a crooked heart finds no good.
      He who is perverted in his language falls into evil.
There are also wisdom saying which deal with the fate of the wise. In form these sayings are identical to the wisdom sayings which deals with the fate of the fool. In content, however, they are quite different. Proverbs 11.25 is an example:
      The generous man will be made fat
      he who waters will himself be watered
As can be seen from these two examples, as well as Job 5.2, this type of wisdom saying follows the form: A-B-C-A’-B’-C’, where A’, B’ and C’ are synonymous with A, B and C. This can be easily illustrated with Job 5.2:
      For anger (A) slays (B) the fool (C)
      and envy (A’) kills (B’) the simple (C’)
Interestingly, none of the verses cited are chiastic.⁷

Job 5.6-7 likewise comprise a wisdom saying, or possibly two such sayings that have been juxtaposed to further drive home the point which Eliphaz is seeking to make; namely that human beings bring about their own downfall because of sin. Morris Jastrow agrees with the idea of both verses six and seven being proverbial sayings. However, he incorrectly removes them from the text as the later additions of “a pious commentator.”⁸ Murphy appears to take them as separate when he calls verses six and seven “wisdom sayings,” but he does not discuss this at any length. ⁹ Verse six is a wisdom saying which is similar to verse two above, though not dealing with the fate of any particular group. Rather it is a simple statement that trouble does not come from nowhere. It is possible that it could stand alone and be entirely understandable. Verse seven, on the other hand, appears to require some explanation beyond itself. This may be evidence that the author of Job knew the saying reproduced in verse six, and so created verse seven. However, the exact process that lead to the creation of the extant text is impossible to determine for certain–and even if it were not so, the exact development is not necessary to ascertain.

Verses six and seven, when taken together, as they are obviously meant to be in the present passage, form a quatrain. Verse six is quasi-chiastic, with an A-B-C-B’-A’-C’ structure:

כי לא יצא מעפר און
ומאדמה לא יצמח עמל

Verse seven picks up from verse six, using some of the same vocabulary (עמל), and then furthers the first stitch in the second. Stitches A and B of verse seven do not represent a synonymous parallelism, but rather a so-called synthetic parallelism.¹⁰

The form of the internal portion of Job 5.2-7 will be dealt with in my next post on the topic.