20200922 T&MP

T&MP 2020-9-22 The Book of Job and the Problem of Evil - Centre Place

The Book of Job and the Problem of Evil

Transcript:

Introduction and Welcome

(00:24) Good evening and welcome to our history, theology, and philosophy lecture series. Get over here and get this going. Um we're been continuing our uh our meetups even though we're not meeting up in person. Uh and continuing to explore a wide variety of topics under those um general ideas of history, theology, and philosophy, those general fields, but obviously hopefully with an idea of uh exploring things that are meaningful in our lives today.

(00:58) My name is John Hamer and I serve as the coordinator of the meetup. Uh by background, I'm a historian and a professional mapmaker and also a theologian within my church and I serve as pastor of Toronto Centreplace which hosts uh this lecture series. We always begin with Centreplace's mission which is to invite everyone into community, to continually learn and grow, to abolish poverty and end needless suffering, to promote peace and justice, and to live life meaningfully together.

(01:29) Um our all of our ministries, all of our uh content that we live stream, and our archives, digital archives are made possible because of your generous contributions. Uh we are uh definitely listener supported and if you um want to support what we're doing, uh you can always go to our website centreplace.ca and your contributions are tax deductible in the US and Canada.

(01:57) Next week, our topic is a history of the end of the world and specifically we're going to look at um people who uh read the Book of Revelations uh just every generation for thousands of years uh and read it and think it's speaking directly to them in their time and predict that a calendar date for uh the world ending based on their particular reading.

(02:23) And actually what I'm going to suggest misreading of the Book of Revelations. So, we're going to look at what uh the book actually says and the kind of the history of misreadings of it. And so, I think it'll actually be quite an interesting uh lecture next week. Our topic tonight is the Book of Job and the problem of evil.

Defining the Problem of Evil

(02:44) The problem of evil is probably the central theological question and it is in fact like the um out of all of the different philosophical uh and theological arguments against um the existence of God, the problem of evil is is probably the hardest one or the most difficult one um to actually square everything with and we'll look into why that is and try to get a sense of it and we'll also look at uh how this theological question is being addressed all the way back in Old Testament times, the authors of the Book of Job and the different answers that they propose and

(03:24) we'll look at how satisfactory or not those answers seem to be. So, let's get into it um just a little bit and get a sense of this question. So, what is the problem of evil? So, people ask often, you know, why why is life filled with suffering? Why do bad things happen to good people? You did everything right and yet somehow you seems like you're being punished in the world.

(03:51) Why do the righteous suffer? And on the flip side, why do the wicked prosper? Why are people who um seemingly just rotten people seem to be very successful and maybe live a a long and healthy and wealthy life. Um despite the fact uh that they by all all um standards that we might think of generally understood to they seem to be really quite awful people.

(04:19) Um if there is specifically in terms of this problem, if there is an a God who is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent and there is perfectly good, why would such a God allow such a thing to happen or why does the universe set up this way? So, prior to um the development of monotheism, prior to um the sort of modern world religions that exist now, uh the Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, um but also even frankly the other world religions uh that also address this, the religions of the old gods that existed before that

(04:57) um didn't have this problem as much because the explanation in a way is built in. If there are multiple gods, if every sort of force um that you including uh that you that you encounter, everything from uh let's say death to the river to lightning bolts, if every single one of those things is in fact a different god, um it it's possible to understand why um even though you may well be doing uh good things, uh you may get be getting off with one of these forces.

(05:31) So, you may well be beloved of Neptune, but uh it may well be that that Hera or Juno doesn't like you and has, you know, a kibosh on you. And so, paganism is always able to kind of make these kind of explanations of of why you've been particularly cursed, why the fates or the furies are following you around uh because there's multiple uh competing forces of chaos and that was baked into that kind of a religion and religious explanation prior to let's say the uh the development in antiquity of world religions.

(06:05) But what happens if um once you get past that? So, what if the universe is orderly? So, as people established orderly state societies with law, literature, as priests and philosophers began to observe, for example, the orderly movement of the heavenly bodies and they could tell, "Wait a second, this isn't just all chaos.

(06:28) The sun and the moon, they're all doing these things uh in a very regular and predictable way." Those thinkers then began to speculate that the universe at its root might not be uh as chaotic as their ancestors had originally assumed and in fact even that the universe has a prime mover or a central source uh which is in fact a force of order and they often speculated a force of good.

The Deuteronomic Perspective

(06:54) And so, if that's the case though, that changes the equation in terms of why uh the problem of evil, why do the righteous suffer? So, as that is developing early on, people come up with uh different early ideas. And so, in um the very in the biblical era uh of uh when the Old Testament is being written by uh the Israelites, by ancient Jews, the central thesis of uh the section of the books that come after the Torah, after the five books attributed to Moses uh is generally called by scholars the Deuteronomic uh histories.

(07:33) These are the books of Joshua, of Judges, of First and Second Samuel, First and Second Kings. Um those form the kind of quasi or supposedly historic cycle of ancient Israel. So, um what the solution in terms of the the thinkers who composed that text um what they always show in these cycles is that Israel or Judah prosper when the people turn away from paganism and idolatry and instead they worship the God of Israel, the one God, Jehovah, Yahweh in the temple in Jerusalem in a centralized setting. So, in other words,

(08:09) in support of this sort of state monotheism. Um Israel and Judah then are punished in these stories when the people forget Yahweh and turn to other gods. So, the problem of evil in this period, uh according to the Deuteronomic writers, the priests and uh prophets who wrote these texts of the Bible, the problem is in fact corporate, not individual.

(08:38) So, they're not thinking about it in terms of why does an individual person suffer? They're actually saying, "Why does the people suffer? Why does Why does the Israel suffer? Why does the tribe Why does our kingdom suffer?" And so, Yahweh blesses the people and their king when the people turn away from idols and worship only Yahweh at his cult center at the temple in Jerusalem.

(08:59) That's the only place where the worship is allowed. And if in the course of um uh of of your generation, if the Philistines or the Midianites or the Moabites, the Egyptians, whoever come in and attack and oppress the people, it's because they and their king or earlier in the Judges period, uh they and the judges who have been ruling over them have turned away from the worship of Yahweh and have returned to idolatry, worshipping all of the different pagan gods of their Canaanite neighbors.

(09:29) And so, in the way these legends are remembered in the biblical narrative, this always works. So, um the the cause is very clear, it's turning to idolatry. Uh the God raises up a judge, the people remember, uh they turn back to Yahweh and and the the Egyptians or the Philistines are are vanquished. Um so, it works in the uh in the let in the let's say literarily.

(09:55) Um the problem is when we actually get to actual history. And so, and so the Deuteronomic history is written towards um, beginning texts of it probably are are likely to be written towards the end uh, of the first uh, uh, temple period. And so towards the reigns of Hezekiah, Manasseh, and Josiah, and the and the final kings after right before the destruction of Jerusalem.

(10:22) And so when the Deuteronomists get to their own time and are writing about what happens, um, they encounter a problem. So, uh, you know, whereas, um, out of those last three major kings, um, the wicked pagan king Manasseh, which is he's absolutely, um, hated by uh, the Deuteronomist who's writing the book of Second Kings, he actually ends up having the longest uh, and most peaceful reign.

(10:51) So, so he has a very, um, you know, here he is, he should be being punished according to how the Deuteronomic cycle works, but when they're actually living it out it turns out that this wicked pagan guy, um, you know, king who's reestablished all of the idols in the temple in Jerusalem and so on, uh, nevertheless has a very peaceful and prosperous and long reign.

(11:12) By contrast, his father who had been the righteous king Hezekiah, Hezekiah faced a horrible attack by Assyria and almost everything the whole kingdom was devastated. He just barely they're able to hold it out and the Assyrians are not able to uh, they besiege Jerusalem but they're not able to actually conquer it.

(11:30) And so it's a Why is he being punished by the Assyrians given the fact that he was such a righteous king who was eliminating all of the pagan idols and cults? Likewise, his righteous grandson Josiah, who again uh, got rid of all the the idols and everything that Manasseh had put in, um, he just is inexplicably killed by Pharaoh at the age of 39.

(11:51) So, why why would the Egyptians be able to um, just kill off this uh, king who had been um, anyway, so he's so honored by he's like thought of it in the in the text as being like unto David. Uh, and yet nevertheless he doesn't have a uh, career like unto David. So, that was already problematic in in real life when the Deuteronomist was actually writing their history.

(12:18) Um, it actually it actually gets more problematic after um, the end of the first temple period after the Babylonian and after um, the exiles from Babylon, uh, the Jewish nobles come back and refound uh, Jerusalem in the Second Temple period. So, after they get rid of idolatry entirely, all of the suffering remains.

(12:42) So, the Deuteronomic answer, you know, was that why why do the people suffer? It's because they turned to idolatry. Um, and and that was maybe understandable or maybe possible when in fact during the First Temple period the people of Judah were largely pagan in the sense that they were not only worshiping Yahweh, they worshiped multiple gods.

(13:02) However, when we get to the Second Temple period, this time period from 516 BC to 70 AD, um, paganism was largely extinguished. So, the Jewish people at this time, um, really do only worship Yahweh. So, they are not worship Asherah and all the other all the other um, gods that they'd been worshiping previously. Um, and so uh, the problem is though, um, if you think of the Second Temple period and all of the problems the Jewish people have in terms of uh, you know, the Persians, Alexander the Great, the Greeks, the Romans, um, Herod,

(13:38) um, this is not a time of where there's no suffering for the people despite the fact that they have done what God wanted, right? So, other biblical authors therefore have to come up with, okay, what is the what's the reason for this ongoing suffering? So, in other words, what's another answer to the problem of evil? It's clearly not just whether we're idolatrous or worshiping Yahweh properly cuz that obviously doesn't doesn't play out.

Prudential vs. Reflective Wisdom

(14:02) And so in this Second Temple period, um, there are two more types of books that get added to the Bible, two types of wisdom books, um, where people are speculating about this or trying to come up with answers or solutions to both both this issue and then the other issues as well. And so, um, these are divided into two types of of wisdom books and we'll talk about each one of these types.

(14:28) Um, they're called either prudential wisdom or reflective wisdom. And so among the earliest of these is the book of Proverbs, um, which is actually multiple collections of wisdom sayings. Then the book of Job, which is what we're going to talk about tonight. Uh, then more the later books are Ecclesiastes and then and then within the um, Apocrypha or within the the Deuterocanonicals, so what's not in the Protestant Bible but in the uh, Eastern Orthodox and Catholic uh, Bibles, the book of Sirach, which is also called Ecclesiasticus, and the book

(15:04) of Wisdom of Solomon, which are both again prudential just like Proverbs. And so we'll talk about what all those are. So, what's prudential wisdom? So, the book of Proverbs is the is the key example of this. And so these are the kinds of um, uh, pithy sayings that you remember uh, and that there are um, you know, it's the kind of thing like Ben Franklin, penny saved is a penny earned kind of thing.

(15:29) And so these sayings that from Proverbs are such things as idle hands make for penury, diligent hands make for riches, hate is always picking a quarrel quarrel, but love overlooks every offense. He who loves correction loves knowledge. He who hates reproof is stupid. To be patient shows great understanding. Quick temper is the height of folly.

(15:54) To the downtrodden every day is wretched, but to have a merry heart is a perpetual feast. Even a fool, if he keeps his mouth shut, will seem wise. So, anyway, in many cases these these may well be good advice, you know, and everything like that. The problem sometimes is is if you if you dig down a little too deep behind the before these and and take them as being, you know, always true, right? So, just because, you know, so yeah, if you have if you're idle hands, you may you know, may well be if you're not doing anything, you you

(16:24) won't become rich, but just because you are diligently working, you could work a lot and still not be paid, right? So, that doesn't necessarily mean you'll be be become rich despite uh, the Proverbs uh, Proverbs 10 verse 4. So, in general though, the idea of prudential wisdom of these common sense saying, they're almost like the original memes, you know, and so these things could just be made a meme and and shared on on Facebook, on social media.

(16:52) Um, so it's like look ahead, don't act rashly, have a good attitude, keep your mouth shut. These kind of good common sense things. It's actually part of a what wider Near Eastern tradition. So, um, Proverbs 30 is subtitled a collection of Agur son of Jakeh of Massa, which is a place in Arabia. So, in other words, this is even wisdom that is coming from a non-Jew.

(17:14) So, it's a person who's a wise man who is not an Israelite. It's an Arabian, right? Uh, likewise, uh, the section of Proverbs in from the beginning or middle of chapter 22 through the middle of chapter 24 is actually um, totally dependent on an earlier ancient book of Egyptian wisdom called uh, the instruction of Amenemope.

(17:36) So, anyway, they had been written centuries earlier and now gets um, changed and translated into Hebrew and brought in as if it's just part of this collection of Proverbs um, that are supposedly from from Solomon, but that's just um, anyway, not not the case. So, um, the wisdom traditions, unlike uh, what um, we have see in the prophetic works, um, aren't actually focused on Yahweh then.

(18:06) They're actually focused on on wisdom and what to do uh, to be wise as opposed to um, being focusing your religious devotion, right? And so the authors of the wisdom tradition were often at odds with the prophets and the prophets um, didn't really like the people who were espousing uh, the wisdom or writing the wisdom books.

(18:24) And so for example, the prophet Jeremiah wrote concerning wisdom books, "How can you say, we are wise and the law of the Lord is with us, when in fact the false pen of the scribes has made it into a lie? The wise shall be put to shame. They shall be dismayed and taken, since they have rejected the word of the Lord.

(18:47) What wisdom is in them?" So, Jeremiah is saying really you really should be listening not to um, these guys who are talking about what's wise or not wise. What's really wise is listening to prophets like me, Jeremiah. Likewise, Isaiah, another um, important prophet in the Old Testament concerning wisdom books wrote, "The Lord said, because these people draw near with their mouths and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their worship of me is a human commandment learned by rote.

(19:18) So, I will again do amazing things with this people, shocking and amazing. The wisdom of their wise shall perish and the discernment of the discerning shall be hidden." So, Isaiah is not a fan fan here of the wise or of wisdom. Um, you know, perhaps uh, unsurprisingly though, um, uh, the anyway, the wisdom does have an answer to the problem of evil uh, separate from what the Deuteronomists have.

(19:46) And in for the wise, for the wisdom writers, the solution to the problem of evil is in fact wisdom, wisdom herself. Wisdom is often um uh personified as a kind of a female um angel who is an aspect or attribute um of God. So, in Proverbs, wisdom declares, "The Lord created in his work with the first of his acts long ago.

(20:12) Blessed are those who keep my ways. Hear instruction and be wise and do not neglect it. Those who miss me injure themselves. All who hate me love death." So, um if you if you reject wisdom and teaching and being thoughtful about all these things, you're you're asking for uh for death. So, um in uh Proverbs, like I say, is is supposedly um written by Solomon, uh although it's it's clearly not.

(20:43) But anyway, pseudo-Solomon in Proverbs promises uh "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, and fools despise wisdom." Uh "My child, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments. For long life and abundant welfare, they will give you." So, if you are listening to wisdom, you're going to get well long life and welfare.

(21:06) So, again, why are you avoiding um uh you know, you know, through how do you be righteous in order to and and avoid suffering? By by following uh wise precepts. And so, "Blessed are those who find wisdom. Long life is in her right hand, and in her left is riches and honor." So, it's pretty clear what they're suggesting here is that uh why do uh why do people why do people prosper? Because they are um following the precepts of wisdom.

(21:36) Why do you um suffer? Because you've been dumb. So, this is the the kind of the basic uh answer that's in the beginning kind of wisdom literature, the earliest ones here in Proverbs. However, just in the same way that there were limitations of uh the solution offered by the Deuteronomist, in other words, idolatry isn't the answer for why suffering exists for Israel only or specifically for individuals, um nevertheless, this is also a problem for wisdom.

(22:09) So, if embracing wisdom and following her tenants yields health, wealth, and long life, the logical conclusion is that a person in poverty and poor health or who dies young is or was foolish. As wisdom said, as I read before, "All who hate me love death." The problem there is, of course, lots of people who are wise and smart and things like that nevertheless might might die accidentally or through getting a disease or any other thing that wasn't of their fault.

(22:35) So, so, as a result, um there is a tradition then that disagrees with this kind of common sense prudential wisdom, and that's the reflective wisdom authors, uh people who wrote the books of Job and Ecclesiastes especially. And then we'll get back to the answer to those in the later ones with the new prudential books of Sirach and Wisdom of Solomon.

(22:59) So, um just to kind of show the difference, um in Sirach here, which is one of those prudential um uh wisdom stories or wisdom um texts, um Sirach writes, "Wisdom was the first of all created things. She built an everlasting home among mortals, and with their descendants she will keep faith." Um and so, that's like essentially saying wisdom is if you're going to follow in this path and be wise and do all these right things, wisdom is going to keep faith with you.

(23:32) You're going to be healthy, wealthy, and wise, right? Uh whereas in the reflective wisdom writers, who think about it and who look at this stuff like Ecclesiastes, they say Ecclesiastes writes, "I have seen it all, from the righteous perishing in their righteousness to the wicked growing old in their wickedness." So, the author of Ecclesiastes has said, "You know what? I've seen some wicked people who've become really wealthy and very healthy and lived all a long life, too. So, that's not the case.

(23:57) And whereas I've known some very righteous people who died very righteous, very young." Likewise, we hear in Job, "It is all one." The author of Job says, "Therefore, I say God destroys both the blameless and the wicked. When disaster brings sudden death, he, God, mocks the calamity of the innocent.

(24:18) " That's a very strong um I mean, really critique of God here in in the book of Job um in terms of the problem of evil or identifying the problem of evil, which is to say, as we very well know, in when disasters like uh are occurring, it's not it's not that the pandemic has only um taken down the wicked. In fact, unfortunately, uh there are all kinds of people who are um the most affected, who uh Anyway, that and not that anybody deserves it.

Components of the Book of Job

(24:51) But anyway, the point of it is is that there's all kinds of innocent people that are that are hurt in calamities. So, so, the book of Job is part then of this reflective wisdom tradition, um and we want to look at that tonight so that we can see how the book of Job not only identifies the problem of evil, but how um it presents a couple ideas or tries to present um its potential answers to the problem or how these authors have worked through the problem.

(25:19) So, Job. Job is uh who's the central character of the book is among the Bible's most memorable characters, I think. Job is this long-suffering, patient man. He has kind of a nagging wife, and he has rotten friends. And and through the course of this book, he's really quite badly mistreated by God. Um I want to look at the text as we now have it.

(25:46) We um if you've read been with us for several of these lectures, you realize or we've talked about how um often happens in ancient texts, uh texts are in fact uh um combinations of texts that are come together by different authors or have maybe been um uh edited together by later editors, or maybe you have a little text and then a later writer comes on and makes it bigger.

(26:10) So, we certainly have that with books like Isaiah, books like the Torah, books like uh the Gospels, um uh at least Matthew and Luke, uh and probably John, uh where where essentially you'd have um a text that isn't by just one author, but in fact is a combination of per- perhaps smaller texts edited together into the final form that we have it.

(26:35) And we can see this pretty clearly cuz in in the book of Job, because the seams are are are very stark. Um one of the ways that you can tell kind of uh is very different uh different parts or different seams is that at both the prologue, the first two chapters, and then the epilogue, the last chapter of the book, are in prose, and the whole rest of the text is in poetry.

(27:02) And so, um while it's completely possible for somebody to write that way, it's actually also fairly clear that there's a different voice going on because um what's attached at some point or other to the whole text is um a beginning and an end that are not even po- poetry. It's actually a prose um anyway, prologue and epilogue that are appended.

(27:24) Um and then likewise, then we have uh through the middle of it, several segments that are poems. First, Job's opening monologue, then kind of this long back and forth uh between Job and his three friends, which uh is a long argument that happens in three cycles. Then there is a kind of a an aside which is a poem or a hymn to wisdom, which is almost like its own out of the blue, completely other book uh uh wisdom text that has gotten stuck in here, that maybe doesn't even belong.

(27:56) Uh then we have Job's closing monologue, which is a poem. Uh and then suddenly, Job has a fourth friend who hasn't been mentioned before, and he comes and he has a bunch of speeches. And then finally, there's this kind of amazing um section where there's again a poet poem, God speaks from the whirlwind. And so, um anyway, we want to look at all of these different parts and maybe how they all came together.

(28:22) They're not all from the the sources that it had originally been. So, let's try to make sense of this kind of crazy text. Um biblical scholars on the text of Job um agree that this is a problematic text as we now have it. So, James Crenshaw argues, quote, "More critical problems surround the book of Job than perhaps any other book in the Old Testament.

(28:47) " So, how does this all this craziness fit together, in other words? Uh Randall McCraw Helms calls the text as we now have it, quote, "An incoherent, contradictory muddle." Um so, the component pieces here are written by different authors at different times, and the seams are very evident, but are also really problematic.

(29:05) And so, we'll look at what we got going on here with this text. So, first off, let's look at that um beginning and the ending. So, the prose prologue and epilogue and God's speeches from the whirlwind are probably the most famous sections of the books, and they're also probably the last additions to the text. So, this is the part you probably are aware of if you're aware of any of it, which is to say, the the setup at the beginning as we'll go over it, and the end, and then this amazing famous speech from God when he's talking to Job from

(29:37) the whirlwind. Um you know, so given that these sections have a very different answer to the problem of evil than the whole core of the rest of the book, um the overall message of the text has been complicated by the fact that we include those. So, so the fact is that there was an original book that has a different sense and a different thesis even, and now, um, these kind of famous framing devices are put on either side of it, which muddle that answer and meaning.

(30:06) So, what's going on in the in the prose pro- prologue? So, uh, the prose prologue here is, uh, set says the story is set in the merry old land of Uz. So, Job is like, um, like the wisdom writer in the book of Proverbs and one of the collections of the book of Proverbs is non-Israelite. He's a guy who's from the land of Uz, which is probably in Arabia, who, um, was, quote, "blameless and upright and devoted to God.

(30:35) " Um, so he possesses seven sons, three daughters, 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, and 500 donkeys, many servants. So, he's very well, uh, very prosperous. Obviously, he's called the greatest of all the people of the East. And he perform forms his own religious observances. And then, after he does all of the things that he's supposed to do, uh, for himself, he actually does extras for his children just in case, uh, they're not, they're failing to do what their, uh, obligations are for God.

(31:06) So, in the given that there that guy exists, we now have in the, uh, prose polar prologue, um, a a setting that is held in the heavenly court. Um, this is one of our also ways really that we understand that this story of Job is is not even written really to be a historical story, but is rather, um, like a play or a parable.

(31:30) You know, it's a it's a thought experiment. But in any event, um, uh, part one of the members of the heavenly court, a guy named the accuser, uh, and the word here for accuser is the Satan, uh, comes before Yahweh among along with all the other divine beings. Um, but this accuser, even though, uh, this is where we get the word Satan, is not really the incarnation of evil.

(31:57) So, this is an idea of a person or a being that is part of the heavenly court, an angel, um, who serves Yahweh in this sort of pantheon pre, um, uh, before the idea of a cosmic devil, uh, has in- become into Second Temple Judaism, so it predates that. So, the accuser here argues, um, he's, you know, part of God's court.

(32:25) He's not ov- off down in hell somewhere, um, as as God's terrible enemy or something like that. He's fairly, uh, respectful in terms of the conversation that he's having with God. So, the accuser argues, uh, that Job worships Yahweh only because he's been blessed. So, um, God is really happy about how what a wonderful guy Job is.

(32:47) Um, the accuser says, "Look, anybody who you give all that wealth and and all those goats and oxen and things like that is going to of course they're going to be nice and happy. They're happy that you get you bribed them, essentially." So, Yahweh disagrees and says of Job, "He's in your power.

(33:02) So, you go ahead and prove you prove it that it's not it's not because he's gotten all these goodies, he'll still be blameless, he'll still be devoted to me, God, uh, even if you took all that away." So, um, what ends up happening again in the prologue, Sabean marauders, Chaldean soldiers, along with a firestorm and a whirlwind kill all of Job's children, uh, and livestock.

(33:26) Uh, Job mourns, but he says, "The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord." So, he doesn't, um, reject God just because all of his children have been killed by firestorm, a whirlwind, and marauders. The Satan then the accuser then argues, "This isn't a sufficient test because Job still's got his health.

(33:47) Health's the most important thing." So, Yahweh says, "Very well, he is in your power, only spare his life." And so then Satan inflicts loathsome bo- sores on Job from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. Even Job's wife advises, "Just curse God and die." Guy, I mean, everything has gone wrong here.

(34:06) We were doing great, now you're doing terrible, everything's gone, uh, even your health, everything. Just die and curse God. Um, later scribes, because this is such a, um, this is such a, uh, to say curse God and die in the Bible is actually quite a, uh, strong and, uh, shocking phrase. This is a shocking text. Um, uh, often scribes would change it to bless God and die, so that, um, because they couldn't take what that what was even being said here.

(34:34) So, Job replies, you know, "You speak as any fool would speak. Shall we receive the good at the hand of God and not receive the bad?" So, Job understands that he's had all these blessings and now he's not and it's all been and he essentially has to it's his responsibility to, um, to be devoted to God regardless, come what may. Okay.

(34:56) So, in the prose epilogue, so if we take that was what's happening at the beginning and that added text and now here at the end, um, the Job's three friends show up at the end of the prologue and in the epilogue, uh, God explains that they have not spoken of me what is right as my servant Job has. And so in the end, in um, in the prose epilogue, Yahweh restores the the re- fortunes of Job.

(35:20) He gives Job twice as much as he has before. He gets seven new sons and seven new daughters. Uh, and he lives to be 140 years old, so as long as any human's allowed to live. And there's no mention actually at that point of Satan and his wager, but in any event, that's how the pro- prose epilogue ends. Um, so the prose author then on the problem of evil, I'm going to argue here is kind of like the prudential wisdom.

(35:45) So, the prose author is technically really not addressing the problem of evil directly. The wager is meant to illustrate that truly wise people act righteously whether they're blessed or cursed in the short term. And his argument is is that righteous the righteous will eventually be rewarded with long life and prosperity, which is what ends up happening in the end.

(36:05) And and this is a point though I think and many people think, excuse me, is undercut by, you know, the part of this reward is replacement children, right? And so, I don't know, you know, maybe it was people you want to think that people in antiquity, um, uh, understood a lot more about the mortality of kids and that kind of a thing, but the idea that you could have, uh, children that had lived to adulthood and they're all get killed by marauders and and and so on.

(36:32) And then it and then it's just as good to have now replacement children. Anyway, it does seem to be kind of a, uh, a hollow or problematic, uh, expression of trying to make this character's or I'm sorry, this author's point. There's another famous section then right before the prose epilogue, um, is the God from the whirlwind section.

(36:56) So, in one of the book's very harsh scenes, a final friend, Elihu, shows up. And he makes several speeches through chapters 31 and 37, arguing that God is too cosmically powerful to be questioned. God is so far above us that we can't even question what God is doing. As Elihu concludes uh, in chapter 38, um, it should abruptly begins, "Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind.

(37:23) " So, there's really almost no, um, no lead up to this or or an an idea that this was ever going to happen. And so now we have a new section where, uh, it's God speaking to Job out of the whirlwind, which are poetic statements put into the mouth of Yahweh, which follow. Um, but even though it says the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, the words don't really answer Job.

(37:46) So, here's the cosmic God confronting Job. Um, God says, "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements? Surely you know. Have the gates of death been revealed to you or have you seen the gates of deep darkness? Can you draw out Leviathan, the the cosmic force of chaos, uh, the sea monster, with a fishhook? Excuse me.

(38:14) Or press down its tongue with a cord? Were not even the gods overwhelmed at the sight of it? Shall a faultfinder contend with the almighty?" So, this is powerful speech, but I mean, obviously, I'm I'm writing here anyway, it's it's kind of like God being a real jerk to Job because in fact, Job wasn't being a faultfinder really.

(38:37) Uh, the whirlwind author's argument is that mortals inherently lack the perspective to answer the question, "Why do the righteous suffer?" And he doesn't actually attempt an answer. He's essentially saying God is too big, you can't see the whole plan. Uh, the author does not attempt, uh, the related theories like God acts to teach you or to test you or that he's working for a greater good.

(39:00) He's just kind of saying it's too big for humans to understand and that's kind of what the the whirlwind author's answer to the problem of evil is. Okay. So, the whirlwind speech, um, most scholars argue is probably a late insertion. And why? Um, so the reason why is that if, and you know, where we have this kind of amazingly eloquent argument, um, by God and God's own voice in chapters 38 through 41, that that argument that is being made is almost exactly the same as the argument in chapters 32 through 37 made by this unexpected fourth friend Elihu has made.

(39:42) So, since Elihu's speech is just not very good and not very compelling, um it's it's also probably a late insertion since it's not mentioned in the prologue or the epilogue and it's not mentioned among all the other talks that Job has with his friends. Um but it's also hard to imagine um that the person who wrote that Elihu part would have bothered to make such a poor insertion if the text had already included the whirlwind speech, right? So, it seems much more likely um that the text existed as it is, that the

(40:14) author of the Elihu speech um was upset with the text and wanted to make these additional arguments, so inserts it. And then later what happens is that the author of the whirlwind speech is had the same problem and found this Elihu stuff totally uncompelling and so wrote this much more powerful God out of the whirlwind speech. And so added that.

(40:35) And so that's why probably those are later components to add. Again, it's hard to imagine why the Elihu one would have come after if somebody had already written the whirlwind one. So, um Job had already actually understood the cosmic argument. Um so, in response to his friends' first discourse in the central part of the text, Job actually acknowledged, "How can a mortal be just before God, who shakes the earth out of its place and its pillars tremble, who commands the sun and it does not rise, who seals up the stars, who alone

(41:08) stretched out the heavens and trampled the waves of sea, who made the bear and Orion, the Pleiades, and the chambers of the south?" In other words, all these constellations. "Who does great things beyond understanding and marvelous things without number? Look, he passes by me and I do not see him.

(41:25) He moves on, but I do not perceive him. He snatches away, who can stop him? Who will say to him, to God, what are you doing?" So, Job already um the the original text already understands this cosmic argument and so God doesn't actually have to show up to make it. Um anyway. So, what's the core component of Job? So, I'm going to suggest that the original core component um is um is this Job 3 and then 4 through 27 and then 29 and 31.

(41:58) Um uh the core text um apparently, you know, when it was first written was so disturbing that multiple biblical authors and editors felt the need to revise the text and add to the text, which is why we have the Job that we have. And so I'm going to suggest the short answer is that the original text is a reflective wisdom text similar to Ecclesiastes, a text that really directly challenges the ideas and common sense and happiness life thinking of prudential wisdom.

(42:30) So, in some senses the um story of Job, this original one is similar to a Babylonian uh poem uh uh written maybe 300 years before that, 900 BC or earlier, known as the Babylonian Theodicy, which is 27 dialogues between a righteous sufferer and his friend, at the end of which there's no divine answer. So, uh in this text, the central part of the earliest part of Job, um in a way the dialogue is a is a dialogue between proponents of prudential wisdom and reflective wisdom.

(43:08) So, Job's three friends spend the narrative cycle making the standard pronouncement of prudential wisdom, things that they could have just pulled directly out of the book of Proverbs. So, Eliphaz, one of his friends, says, "Who um who that was innocent ever perished? Or where were the upright cut off?" Their argument, extrapolating from the logic of prudential wisdom, is, "Look, Job is suffering, so he must have himself to blame.

(43:34) He must have done something wrong and he needs to repent and and and don't and stop it so that he can so that things will turn around because that's why um that's how prudential wisdom works." However, insisting in insisting that he has lived a totally blameless life and followed all the precepts of prudential wisdom and has nevertheless experienced calamity, Job himself then poses a very powerful challenge to his complacent friends that they don't want to accept.

(44:02) Job's uncomfortable reflective wisdom argues that God quote God destroys the blameless and the wicked. The blameless are meant to made to suffer and the wicked are spared in the day of calamity. Um which is something that he's observed and he thinks to be the case and and it's flies in the face of what the people who are reading Book of Proverbs say.

(44:27) Um Job has a really powerful then complaint on behalf of um mortals. He says in Job 27:2, "God has denied me justice." So, this is a disturbing um challenge for uh uh the providential wisdom and which is given without giving a new answer. So, um because there isn't that answer, because the uh reflective wisdom identifies this problem and and just brings it out and makes it um you know, very painful and obvious, uh that's one of the reasons why the other writers felt the need to add their own answers or their own understandings of

(45:09) it uh to the text. So, why do um the righteous suffer? So, lots of answers aren't appearing in the in the Book of Job. They They may be surprising to us if you are, you know, familiar with Abrahamic religions now. So, Christian answers or Jewish answers today. So, later answers that develop don't appear in the text.

(45:32) So, there's no notion that the wicked are going to be punished in hell or that the righteous will be rewarded in heaven um because this idea doesn't exist yet in Israelite religions. So, there's no sense that Job is going to go to heaven and and and that's when he'll be rewarded for all of this loyalty or anything like that.

(45:49) Um there's also no idea that God is responsible um uh for just for good and evil is merely lack of good, which is what uh Saint Augustine taught, for example. Um God is responsible for good and is also allowing the evil or is actually the cause of it here in in the Book of Job. Um um likewise, there's no idea um where there's an argument that somehow free will is the cause here, that humans require suffering to develop as free moral agents in the likeness of God, uh which is what theologians like Irenaeus um have argued and is generally speaking

(46:29) one of the core um answers throughout all of um Abrahamic Christianity, you know, in Judaism theological and philosophical exploration subsequently. This is all predating those ideas and so they don't actually exist in the problem of Job. Uh the evil. And so So, in that sense, what I would suggest is that um that the solutions um that the Job as a thought experiment brings up the problem and shows it shows it very clearly, um but it doesn't actually include a fully satisfactory answer, which is one of the reasons why um

(47:06) Christian thinkers have continued to and Jewish thinkers have continued to wrestle with it ever since. So, um one time So, for a lot of people in the secular 21st century or increasingly secular society, um you know, maybe it's no big deal because maybe they don't believe in God anyway. So, if there's no God, is there no problem? Um so, one modern answer that is also unconsidered by the authors of Job is maybe there is no God.

(47:33) Maybe that's what it means. And so while I think that this may solve seem to solve the problem, I think it actually returns us to Plato's question, um which is is it good to be good? You know, so why you know, if the if the wicked suffer, I'm sorry, if they're if everything's relative and people who do horrible things uh end up uh six being amazingly successful and people who do uh really good things end up having just horrible fates, um is does it make any sense to be good? Is it good to be good? Um Plato of course answers, you know, two different

(48:07) kinds of yes, so even God or no, uh uh Plato definitely thinks, you know, it is good to be good. Uh but nevertheless, it's that question is open, right? So, if good is only relative, by what standard do we say that someone is doing something bad if bad is a behavior allows uh them to achieve results that are perceived as good from their perspective.

(48:31) So, in that sense, I think this question is with us depend no matter what your um theological uh bent is. So, that is my kind of brief thumbnail of what the problem of evil, but also how the Book of Job uh answers it and why its answers are so muddy as this uh interesting collection of texts evolved uh in the first Sorry, in the Second Temple period.