Having Two Legs

Nahum Sarna suggests that there is a seven-step sequence in the calamities that befall Job:

1. Sabeans raid oxen and donkeys
2. Sabeans kill the servants
3. Fire of God consumes sheep
4. Fire of God consumes servants
5. Chaldeans raid camels
6. Chaldeans kill the servants
7. Wind strikes the house and kills children

Lawrence Besserman writes that one widespread practice in the middle ages was the veneration of Job as the patron saint of those who suffered from worms, various skin diseases, venereal disease, and melancholy. In fact, if one wanted, one might find a number of Latin and German charms against worms, in which Saint Job is invoked.

And somewhat mysteriously, Job was also the patron saint of musicians. Figure that one out.

Job longs for the grave in 3:19: “the small and the great are there, and the slave is free from his master.”

Yahweh has claimed Job as His “slave” twice in chapters 1 and 2, and now Job longs for death where that relationship can be severed. He longs for the place where a “slave” is free from his “lord.”

This can be taken as pure pain or anger or nihilism, but the word for “free” is the same word used in Exodus 21 and Deuteronomy 15 in regulations specifically designed to protect Hebrew slaves. They may serve for six years, but in the seventh year, they are to be freed. Job not only longs for freedom, he longs for the seventh year, the year of Sabbath, the year of release.

As becomes more explicit as the dialog goes on, Job longs for the grave not as a nihilistic end, a plunge into the void. Rather, Job longs for the grave because he fully expects to be raised up from it. Perhaps Job is not only looking for freedom but also for maturity and a standing before his master.

Besserman writes:

“For what Samuel Johnson said of readers of Paradise Lost — ‘none ever have wished it longer than it is’ — probably holds true for most readers of the Hebrew Book of Job. The Septuagint is only five-sixths the length of its exemplar, a disparity that was already noted by Origen in the third century, who observed that ‘often four or three verses, and sometimes fourteen or fifteen’ are missing from the Greek.”

The Legend of Job in the Middle Ages, 38.

Davis points out that one of great insights of William Blake found in his famous Illustrations of the Book of Job is the resemblance between God and Job.

Blake underlines this point in Illustration Number XVII pictured here. Above the picture runs the quotation from 1 Jn. 3:2: “We know that when He shall appear we shall be like Him, for we shall see him as He is.”

What is really cool is the fact that Job resembles God from beginning to end. This underlines the image of God, Job as Adam before God. But by the end, there is an implied eschatology to this image. Job is growing up into the glory of God.

“Such a diversity of opinions has prevailed in the learned world concerning the nature and design of the Poem of Job, that the only point in which commentators seem to agree, is the extreme obscurity of the subject.” Bishop Lowth

Cited in The Legend of Job in the Middle Ages by Lawrence Besserman