Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [90]
Job
THE BOOK OF Job is a major Biblical voice on the issue of afterlife, a fact that has been noticed by many scholars. What is not so obvious is that it is, in a way, a development of the Israelite covenant metaphor. Many of the prophets take up this metaphor of the prophetic law-suit against Israel. Hosea himself uses the notion of a marriage gone sour, which is another obvious contractual obligation sworn by an oath. In so doing, he again and again uses images of marriage that were used by the Canaanites beforehand. Indeed, Ba’al’s name itself literally means “husband” as well as “master.” But God is not a contented partner; He periodically contemplates suing his adulterous spouse for divorce, invoking stringent penalties and threatening the ultimate penalty for his adulterous partner.
Only in the book of Job is the converse notion ever articulated, that human beings can justifiably sue God for nonperformance of His contractual duties. For that particular argument to be at all logically convincing, there cannot be a notion of life after death of any real consequence. If there were an afterlife of substantial consequence, then Job’s suffering would not reach the level of a legally actionable suit against God. If there were an afterlife, Job could say that he is falsely accused by his friends, and that his predicament is painful. But he could not challenge God’s justice because the score would not be complete in this life. That is why one finds the notion of Sheol present in the book of Job-not postmortem reward or punishment, merely the final disposition of souls. Indeed, it is the book of Job that shows us the very limits to which the older metaphor can go. It was the solace of l’anclen regime. The solace which the book of Job provides was not one which the majority of the people of Israel understood or accepted in the Second Temple period, where God was viewed as having made far better provision for rewards in the afterlife.
An enormous amount of research has been done on the book of Job. It is one of the most arresting, puzzling, and provocative pieces of ancient literature to have reached modern eyes.52 Yet it is still not well understood. Part of our puzzlement is due to its composition, which is complex, layered, and not entirely consistent. The Job of the prose narrative at the beginning and end of the work finds an entirely different consolation and resolution to his plight-patience and acceptance-than the Job whose irascible words are part of the body of the text. Indeed, it is difficult to see where the notion of the patience of Job comes from at all, since he is irascible throughout the book. Then too, arguments which are discussed and dismissed are consistently brought up again by Job’s friends and by Elihu, only to be shown irrelevant again at the end of the poetic section and yet receive a kind of limited validation in the prose conclusion. No doubt this was an issue over which the ancient culture itself was deeply conflicted.
To explain these phenomena, we must understand that the poetry within the book of Job, with its arguments about wisdom and justice, was characteristic of the entire ancient Near East. A large part of Job is merely an anthology of interesting poetry, which the editors preserved by including it in this pseudodrama. Consequently, we should not look for the kind of character or thought development that we associate with Western drama.
THE ABSENCE OF SATAN IN JOB
Many scholars