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But Job's words only seem to egg his interlocutors on. Eliphaz had implied that Job was a sinner.
Bildad had baldly asserted that his sons had died for their sins and now Zophar's going
to claim that actually Job is suffering less then he deserves. And Job isn't persuaded.
He isn't persuaded that he has sinned or more precisely, that he has sinned in proportion
to the punishment he is now suffering. God is simply unjust. The Job of this poetic dialogue
portion of the book is hardly patient or pious. He is angry, he is violent, he argues, he
complains and vehemently insists upon his innocence. In the fourth speech by Job--now
this is the speech that opens the second cycle of speeches--Job appeals to creation. God's
controlling power is arbitrary and unprincipled. He interferes with the natural order, he interferes
with the human order, and this is itself a subversion of the Genesis portrait of creation
as a process whose goal and crown is humankind. Again, Job demands a trial. He demands a trial
in the widely quoted and mistranslated verse--this is Job 13:15: "He may well slay me. I may
have no hope-- but I must argue my case before Him." In other words, Job knows that he can't
win but he still wants his day in court. He wants to make his accusation of God's mismanagement.
He wants to voice his protest even though he knows it will gain him nothing. In a pun
on his name, Iyyov, Job asks God, "Why do You hide Your face, / And treat me like an
enemy?" ,treat me like an oyev, 13:28 [correction: chapter 13:24; JPS translation]. In his second
speech Job fully expects to be murdered, not executed, but murdered by God and hopes only
that the evidence of his *** will not be concealed he says in 16:18, "Earth, do not
cover my blood" [JPS translation]. Job's third speech reiterates this desire, the desire
that the wrong against him not be forgotten. "Would that my words were written, would that
they were engraved in an inscription, with an iron stylus and lead, forever in rock they
were incised," 19:23-24. Job's three speeches in the second cycle become increasingly emotional
and for their part the speeches of his friends in this cycle become increasingly cruel. Their
insistence that suffering is always a sure sign of sin seems to justify hostility towards
and contempt for Job. He's now depicted as universally mocked and humiliated and despised
and abused. One cannot help but see in this characterization of Job's so-called friends,
an incisive commentary on the callous human propensity to blame the victim, and to do
so lest our tidy and comfortable picture of a moral universe in which the righteous do
not suffer, should come apart at the seams as Job's has.