Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [92]
Furthermore, that is exactly what Job expected. All he wanted was the legal attention-to know that his suffering was for a purpose. That is what God’s appearance on the scene tells him. This episode of man visited by God is another example of a person who appeals to the heavenly court and receives wisdom as a solace for his suffering.
Job contends that he is too obedient a creature for God to bring before the court. In doing so, he states that there is no life after death worth having (14:1-2):
A mortal, born of woman, few of days and full of trouble, comes up like a flower and withers, flees like a shadow and does not last.
In chapter 14, Job provides a parable comparing trees to people. Job states that humans, unlike trees, have no chance for resuscitation. God allows trees to sprout new life even when their trunks are shrunken and their roots are dried up. At the scent of water, they freshen up and bring forth new shoots. But humans are different; when they grow old, they die. God changes their faces, allows them to age, then sends them away forever to a place where they cannot know even the honors that come to their children (Job 14:1-22). According to Job, a painful fate awaits us all. Nothing in the Bible tells us more clearly of the Hebrew notion of life and death. The notion was fatalistic in the sense that it understood life as a single, non-repeatable event, ending always in death, its natural finality.
THE HEAVENLY DEFENSE ATTORNEY TAKEN FROM GOD’S DIVINE COUNCIL
The theme of a heavenly counselor is touched upon several more times in Job, although no specific person is designated; perhaps this means that one of God’s angels could be appointed as a “court-appointed” attorney to bring Job’s case to the heavenly court. God is depicted as having a large retinue as well as a divine council. The satan, the antagonist, is a divine counselor. Job is saying he is entitled to representation in the divine council as well to God. It is crucial to understanding the notion of afterlife in the Hebrew Bible, or more precisely, how the lack of one functions in the Hebrew sensibility. We have several examples in the Hebrew Bible where various divine courtiers serve in specific roles, seemingly in the course of ordinary deliberations. Legal representation is immaterial because in the end it is Job himself who presents his own case.
Job slowly comes to the conclusion that a counselor in the court of God will represent him: “Even now, in fact, my witness is in heaven, and he that vouches for me is on high” (Job 16:19) may imply that God Himself is his counselor or that he will find a special relationship with some other angelic creature. But the latter seems the most likely: “That he would maintain the right of a mortal with God, as one does for a neighbor” (Job 16:21). The issue which Job brings before a heavenly court cannot be resolved by ordinary courtroom procedure. It is an anomalous legal situation.
This situation puts the usual translation of Job 19:25 into sharp relief, which because of its relationship with Christianity has been seen as an affirmation of life after death. Actually the text has been garbled, and we cannot tell exactly what Job intended to say. But he is talking in legal vocabulary (qum of 19:25 has a legal context in Deut 19:15ff; Pss 27:12; 35:11; Isa 54:17; Mic 6:1; Job 30:28; 31:14). Verses 28 and 29 of Job 19 clarify that the setting is indeed a courtroom. The legal arbitrator (go’al), who is not yet present will eventually prove Job right, even if it occurs years after his death. Other than this, it is very hard to make good sense out of the following famous lines:54
“O that my words were written down! O that they were inscribed in a book!
O that with an iron pen and with lead they were engraved on a rock forever!
For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth;
and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God,
whom I shall