000 Allen FMT (i-xxii) - The Presbyterian Leader

196 Proper 25 [30]/Year B
reflecting Job’s own perspective (42:3). Job goes along with God’s earlier
statement that he does not have God’s perspective on such matters
(42:4–5). Unfortunately, Job 42:6 is difficult to interpret. 56 Some scholars
think that Job recognizes that both the Deuteronomic viewpoint on blessing
and curse (represented in the book of Job by the friends) and Job’s persistent
demands to understand this notion in another (but unnamed)
framework of meaning come up short. Having been addressed directly by
the awesome God, Job recognizes that chaos is innately a part of creation
and that neither chaos nor prosperity can be neatly explained. While
chaos is powerful, God’s speeches in chapters 38 through 41 assure Job
that it will not destroy the patterns of life through which God supports
the world.
J. Gerald Janzen poses an inspired interpretation of the phrase “dust
and ashes” as referring to God’s image in Job. 57 To “repent in dust and
ashes,” therefore, is for Job to recognize the limits on being human (and
not knowing all that God knows) but also to accept the purpose of the
divine image, namely, to rule or to help the many pieces of the created
world live together with as much possibility as can occur in a universe still
infused with chaos.
In 42:10–17, God restores Job’s life. Interpreters struggle to make sense
of this part of the text. 58 A persuasive suggestion is that the book of Job
here presumes the Jewish notion that those who deprive others of property
or other means of life should pay the injured person double the loss
(Exod. 22:4). God’s restoring the fortunes of Job would be restitution for
causing the losses in Job’s life.
Given finitude, human beings cannot understand all things. However,
if God is omnipotent in the way assumed by the book of Job, then God is
responsible for everything that happens. God either initiates or permits
all things. God, then, is not only responsible for all suffering, but has the
power to end suffering. 59 The authors of this book are among those convinced
that God is unconditionally loving and just. Such a God could not
initiate or permit suffering. We conclude, with other relational theologians,
that God is not unqualifiedly omnipotent. God does not have the
power simply to change situations. Instead, God is ever present in every
situation seeking to lure participants into decisions that promise blessing.
When people (and elements of nature) make choices that do not promise
blessing, God works with those reduced possibilities to try to draw us to
as much blessing as they offer. Conditions that communities today associate
with curse and blessing typically result from people making choices
that move in the direction of such conditions. However, because the ele-