Job 1 and 2

THE PROLOGUE

As an introduction to the Dialogue (4-27), Job’s curse on the day of his birth
(3), his oath of purgation and its prelude (29–31), the Theophany and Divine
Declaration (38.2–40.2, 6-14) and Job’s response (40.3-5; 42.2-6), the author
of the Book of Job reworks his source in the popular Hebrew form recast in a
patriarchal setting, but showing evidence of elaboration, probably by the
author of the book as late as the end of the sixth century BCE. See further,
General Introduction, pp. 56-75. The narrative prologue to a sapiential work
recalls the Protest of the Eloquent Peasant on social injustice (ANET, 407-10),
the Aramaic Proverbs of Ahiqar (ANET, 427-30) and the Book of Tobit.
The literary form of the Prologue is the oral saga or folk legend, with quick
succession of dramatic events, dramatic direct speech, verbal repetition, round
numbers, seven, three, ve and their multiples, and the remarkable survival of
one man only in all the disasters. This indicates the author’s familiarity with
the Job tradition in popular oral form on the subject of a man’s faith in God’s
just and benecent providence in face of all appearances to the contrary. The
narrative is reminiscent of the narratives of the Hebrew patriarchs in the
earliest sources of the Pentateuch, but the cadence is more regular and is often
almost as regular as poetry. The assonances, word-plays, rare vocabulary and
forms are more characteristic of poetry than of prose.
The Prologue falls into two parts:
1. Job’s prosperity (1.1-5), his faith impugned (6-12), the test of
adversity (13-19), Job’s declaration of steadfast faith (20-22).
2. Further impugning of Job’s faith (2.1-6), the intensication of the test
of his faith (7-8), Job’s faith despite counsels of despair (9-10), the
visit of his friends (11-13).
The scenes in the heavenly court (1.6-12; 2.1-6), which are each followed
by tests of Job’s faith (1.13-19; 2.7-8), are particularly signicant as emphasiz-
ing that, however critical the sage intends to be in the Dialogue, he is a con-
structive writer who is prepared to consider human contingencies sub specie
aeternitatis, which is the view eventually expressed in the Divine Declaration
in the Dialogue (38.2–40.2, 7-14). As Fohrer (1963b: 69) rightly stresses, the
Prologue emphasizes not the question of the theodicy, but that of human
reaction to the vicissitudes of life, where the attitude of traditional wisdom is
going to be critically examined in the Dialogue.
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