Article: Geoffrey J. Aimers, “The Rhetoric of Social Conscience in the Book of Job,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 91 (2000): 99 – 107.
Summary
Was the book of Job intended as a critique of social injustice? Using socio-rhetoric analysis, Geoffrey J. Aimers proposes an alternative perspective on Job that challenges traditional interpretation. Aimers's thesis is that the book of Job is a political satire depicting the story of a political figure who undergoes conversion.
To reach this conclusion, the author admits to liberal extrapolation in terms of figurative language, historical context, and author's style and intention, but claims the results justify the means—that the issues regarding the significance of Job's suffering, the role of the speeches of God and of Elihu, the composition's integrity, and the literary genre are all addressed.
From the sociological perspective, Aimers proposes that “Job belongs to a class of noble sages” in a covenantal relationship with a “God of Wisdom [who] guarantees him his honour” (p. 100). Honor becomes the primary value and its loss is the test of Job's disinterested piety.
Wisdom tradition is depicted by the author as a guarantor of this honor and as a source of piety, but in a negative sense because the honor or piety is a false or hypocritical form that 1) is based more on material wealth than anything else, and 2) maintains a system of class exploitation (see pp. 105, 106).
Rather than a wisdom tradition concerned with universal themes, Aimers claims an ideological conflict between prophetic tradition and wisdom tradition. The author sets the perspective of the prophets as being against that of the wisdom tradition, where the prophets are most concerned with a magnanimous implementation of the law in favor of the poor whereas the wisdom tradition represents the interests of the land-owning elite. Job, as a judge, is proposed as the key agent in the political struggle between rich and poor because he is responsible for the “agrarian reform” in ancient times, i.e., the just distribution of land.
Aimers maintains that Job has a grievance against God for breaking his end of the deal, i.e., guaranteeing Job's honor if the latter adheres to the ways of Wisdom. Job's friends assert that he must have violated the ways of wisdom, thus the resulting dishonor of poverty. Job rejects such mediators.
From a rhetorical approach, the author suggests that the exchange of dialogues between Job and his friends is actually a verbal duel, “a contest of rhetorical skill in which one's honour is at stake” (p. 101); Elihu is the duel's adjudicator, but he favors neither side as both appear equally conceited to him.
Similarly, the author asserts that Job's encounter with God is also a specific form of verbal duel called “flyting,” where two warriors try to impress [or psyche each other out?] before the actual battle. When Job speaks of his past deeds and former prestige in an attempt to bolster his present honor, Aimers says it is the first stage of flyting (the mutual identification), except in Job's case, God, his “rhetorical rival... [is] remote and detached” (p. 101). There is no opportunity to restore honor since God is unavailable for confrontation. Aimers proceeds to identify Job's allusion to his future vindication as the projective stage of flyting.
The author then associates the speech functions of flyting in God's responses: God begins by identifying his opponent (identification); recalls how he made the world (retrojective); alludes to his power over monstrous beasts (attributive); and then challenges Job if he can do the same (projective).
Aimers concludes that if Job is accepted as initiating the flyting dialogues, the God speeches are the necessary reply which “implicitly demand Job's compliance on the basis of the greater honour God possesses” (p. 104). The author reads an implicit message therein that Job is called to be more generous to the less fortunate since he cannot be a hypocrite, a conceited fool nor act dishonorably toward God.
Instead of seeing Job 31: 13 – 25 as a final plea of his innocence, Aimers asserts that chapters 29 to 31 mark Job's conversion as a judge. Ultimately, the author sees Job as being restored, not as a vindication of his righteousness, but rather as a result of the disillusionment of his self-righteousness.
Reflection
Is Aimers simply trying to assert his honor in scholarly circles by offering a novel perspective on Job? Is he the one engaged in flyting where his opponent is the majority of wisdom scholars? It seems his proposed statements contain an undercurrent of hostility against wisdom tradition, under which the book he is analyzing is categorized.
I found the pitting of prophetic tradition against wisdom tradition off-putting because it seemed the author has an inexplicably antagonistic approach to wisdom itself or to a whole set of books in the Hebrew bible. If Aimers's article only meant “wisdom tradition” to refer to the honor system he is proposing as the primary value system in Job's world, perhaps it would not seem so hostile.
However, even if that was the case, the universal appeal of Job is in the story of suffering and the accompanying questioning of God. In presenting a hypocritical form of honor as Job's primary value, Aimers seems to gloss over the losses Job has undergone. Material poverty through the theft and destruction of his livestock could perhaps be associated with a loss of prestige, but to equate the death of Job's ten children and his own physical suffering to merely a matter of losing face seems very superficial and artificial. Even in a society that has an honor-shame value system, the story of Job is not simply about honor lost and regained. There is a grappling with the question of suffering that comes to each reader who has experienced loss. Job is there as a companion who knows what the sufferer is going through, asks the tough questions, and encounters God in his perplexity. In this encounter, there are no cut-and-dry answers but only a coming together with the infinite, transcendent God who cannot be fully grasped by our limited human understanding.
The intrinsic mystery and perplexity in Job which makes it a fascinating read is explained away by Aimers as the story of an unjust judge who is tested in order to purify any impediments in his proper administration of the law and implementation of social justice. If solving mysteries is the result that justifies huge leaps of speculative scholarship, I would prefer to continue contemplating the unsolved mystery than have a solution that no longer struggles with the real questions of why there is suffering.
