Killing Job / Dissecting Job

By Dr. Stephen Harrison and Richard Huizinga

The Job story involves a paradoxical confrontation with his friends that he doesn't want and doesn't get the confrontation that he does want with God. The whirlwind representing God allows a multi-sensory experience not only for Job but for those of us in the audience of this morality play. We are meant to see the devastation in Job's life, feel

• Language: English
• Publisher: Westwood Books Publishing
• Release date: Apr 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9798888872178

Dr. Stephen Harrison

Dr. STEPHEN HARRISON is a preacher's kid with forty years of medical experience, and RICHARD HUIZINGA is a retired healthcare executive who enjoys explaining the motivation of our complex social situations. The authors enjoy reflecting and mediating on biblical stories, discussing them in small-town restaurants and then writing about them in a way that will draw believers back to the original stories to uncover the new meaning.

Book preview

Copyright © 2023 by Dr. Stephen Harrison and Richard Huizinga.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

Foreword

Introduction to Job

1. History Taking and History Making

The Perfect Legend

Coming to His Senses

Patience? Who Started That Rumor?

Introspection

Contrast/Formulas

God of Job’s Understanding Versus the Whirlwind

2. Perspective

Looking for God in All the Wrong Places

Job Mimics Satan

Job Knew Evil

Sexism or Anachronistic Gender Prejudice

Perspectives on Key Players

God Highlights Job for the Angels

Satan: Vicarious Pathologist’s First Cut

3. Starting Propositions1

God’s Nature

Satan: Vicarious Pathologist Round 2

Why Do Key Figures Want Job to Curse?

Job’s Support System

Some Pretty Good Theology by Job’s Maligned Friends

Job Starts Cursing with the Best of Them

4. Pervasive

Darkness

Spirit

Embrace Ambiguity

Three Friends Go Fishing

Maybe

With Friends Like These

Reputation

5. Elihu—Master Pathologist

Intercessor

Justice: God’s Way

Humans Have More Choices than God Does

The Elihu Question

The Code: As Good as It Gets?

6. Night

The Night Judges Job More Than the Prince of Darkness Does

Nightmares

Adultery Versus Lust—Does Job Need to Distinguish?

Perhaps …

7. God: Supreme Pathologist

Job’s Day in Court

Killing the God of Job’s Understanding

Job Can’t Count

Job’s Preoccupation with Himself

Here’s … God!

God’s Grandiosity

Anger

Justice

Conclusion

Abbreviations

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am most grateful to the Reverend Dave Smazik. Your encouragement and suggestions on expanding the medical analogies were most appreciated. Equally appreciated was your suggestion to include questions for consideration as a study guide. Even more so, your friendship over the years has been most gratifying to our family.

Finally, I give strong and heartfelt thanks to Reverend Phil Doeschot and Reverend Stephanie Durband Doeschot. You are an inspirational team; it is difficult to separate where I should begin to thank you. Phil, your tolerance of me thinking outside of the box has been helpful over the years. Stephanie, your sharing of material years ago on the feminine perspective was appreciated. I cannot begin to thank you enough for the work you did in reviewing the material on Job and making key suggestions. Your efforts indeed helped to sustain the project and key elements. Thank you both for a friendship over the years.

Dissecting Job

PREFACE

When we first conceived of revising our treatise on Job, I wished to include the input of my good friend and coauthor Rich Huizinga. There were 2 main challenges to that. The first was that Rich did not necessarily share my suggestion of a certain specific sin of Job. To me that was not a problem as the conjecture was mainly to try to provoke thought by utilizing the words of the text along with the implications. We meant it to be a call to examination of our own moral code as well as a call to action. Certainly, Job did make some monumental adjustments both in his concept of God as well as in his actions. While Rich agrees that Job has his very evident faults, he is not convinced of the specifics as I allude to. This makes for rich speculation over food and coffee. We suggest that you find those who you can discuss and disagree with some measures while advancing a deeper truth in action.

The second major challenge was how to make the book flow without a major overhaul to the structure. While 8-10 years lapsed from the first conception until this finished product, we felt that there was much to offer in the original format. It was not merely the time factor as a practicing physician, nor was it that we felt that the original work was without flaws. Rather the metaphor of an autopsy on Job still serves a useful backdrop. So as some other authors have done, we have added reflections. Because the style is changed and some of the essays don’t readily fit into the prior body, we felt the flow and metaphorical picture would best be maintained in this fashion. We felt the flow would go better by having the original dissection portion before the Killing Job section. This reversal does not change the metaphor and thoughtful readers will understand.

FOREWORD

If you enter this physician’s postmortem analysis of Job somewhat wary of a tedious, overly detailed analysis of every detail, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to find another type of experience awaiting you. Dr. Harrison has engaged his subject with a medical practitioner’s eye for detail as it relates to the whole. So he holds up each detail in the story of Job that has stimulated his interest and examines it from various angles and posits potential conclusions as to the pertinence of its presence.

What I have found most compelling in this book is that as the reader, I am invited to share in the wondering about potential meanings and effects each detail has on the story’s message.

The author blends sharp, incisive analysis with conclusions that make sense. What takes this analysis into the realm of good theological/biblical work as most assuredly is also present in good medical practice is the openness to theorize possible meanings yet set aside dogmatic assertions until other pieces of the puzzle are examined.

You will be treated to an examination of some of the typical questions that arise from the book of Job but also from themes that you may have previously overlooked. Themes such as sacrifice, righteousness, evil, atonement and others may draw you into the story in unexpected ways. Taste the multisensory experience of Job as he encounters the whirlwind through the trained eyes of a physician. You may come to appreciate the dark side of the book of Job while Job’s own darkness is uncovered.

If you are approaching Dr. Harrison’s work looking for the true meaning of the puzzling story of Job, you will find yourself redirected along the journey toward meanings you possibly had not previously considered. Somehow, the expansiveness of this intriguing story pulls the reader in, and in the process, the pathos of humanity and God’s involvement with it take center stage.

Does it really matter that we know only in part but that at some point we shall see and know more fully to reference another book of the Bible (1 Corinthians 13:12) as much as it matters that humankind and God are indeed involved in dialog, drama, and relationship? I invite you to take the journey with my friend and fellow theologian Dr. Stephen Harrison. For as much as Dr. Harrison is an accomplished and ever committed to becoming a more accomplished physician, I have also experienced him as a continuous seeker of knowing and living into the revelation of the Bible. Questioning, examining, and wondering about meaning are the modus operandi of this author. As a pastor and biblical student myself, I believe that those operational functions are important for anyone who seeks to meaningful engage holy scripture.

Therefore, I commend this book to you to read on your own with pen in hand to note whatever intrigues you. It is highly likely that you will also want to engage in this journey with others who wonder about the very relevant questions to faithful living that the book of Job and this author’s work pose. Enjoy the ride!

—Rev. Stephanie Durband Doeschot

INTRODUCTION TO JOB

Job commands our intrigue because we, as Job did, demand a universe with justice. Job is a paradigm for moral order as he himself notes in chapter 31 of the biblical book with his name in which he describes the moral code. Yet it is a paradox because we discover right along with Job that moral order is not enough. Job is the role model for when being good isn’t good enough. Except in Job’s case, he is perfect, at least according to God.

As the standard bearer of moral righteousness, Job will be at the center of a disagreement between God and Satan. Satan maintains that Job appears perfect because he has been so blessed by God. God sees it differently. Both parties agree that Job is morally upright and even perfect in some versions; they simply disagree as to why.

Job shares this perspective of considering himself morally upright. He differs from Satan, though, in that there are hints that he believes people who follow the code deserve to be blessed and punishment should fall on those who do not. God does not appear to favor either Satan’s or Job’s version; rather, he seems willing for Job to learn a lesson to carry the moral standard even higher than it had been previously and higher than Job himself suggested. Job will have to struggle with this indeed far more than a righteous man should in his mind. In so doing, he will need to deal with some of the dark nights of his past, which has not remotely dawned upon him.

The keys to understanding Job as he ultimately takes the standard to a higher level are first of all to recognize the key metaphors of the night, sacrifice, and the whirlwind. Appreciation for the text, meanwhile, is enhanced through the tour-de-force sensory description of these metaphors and others.

Job’s imagery of the night may have some clues about measures that he needs to deal with to be effective at a higher level and remain God’s standard bearer for morality. These nighttime references occur throughout the ordeal. The book of Job meanwhile is framed by sacrifice, but what is shocking to Job is that neither of the key sacrifices in the first chapter or the last chapter achieves his initial expectations for these sacrifices. His personal sacrifices, however, seem much greater.

The ultimate metaphor, though, is God as the whirlwind. The whirlwind comes without warning with these distinct sensory images to draw our attention. Sometimes, the whirlwind upsets Job’s and our own comfort zones and challenges Job’s and perhaps our understanding of God. Job indeed will not be cleansed until he has entered the dust of the whirlwind, be shaken to his foundation, confess his ignorance as well as some unknown sin, and finally emerge as once again a standard bearer in perpetuity.

Perhaps we do not identify with Job, because we know we are not remotely close to perfect. Perhaps we recognize that whatever our losses may be, they are not nearly as serious as Job’s and therefore cannot begin to fully identify with him. Like Job, though, we ultimately identify with the story and the suffering through questions. But the questions Job raises through his tribulations are meant to provoke us to question the nature of justice as it applies to humanity as well as ourselves. Therefore, there are questions at the end of the chapters that apply not only to Job, but also to ourselves to generate introspection.

While Job has its own rich metaphors, I have chosen the metaphor of the autopsy as we reflect on Job. In this sense, we might think of the autopsy as a bit unusual in that we are examining Job as he dies to himself and his former reputation. Also, it might even be considered an autopsy on the death of the God of Job’s understanding. We begin our first chapter with the mechanism with which all autopsies begin—obtaining a thorough history. In subsequent chapters, we will have occasion to see various cuts into Job by a variety of pathologists including Satan, Job’s three friends, Elihu (God’s messenger), and God himself.

You will notice that I have taken the liberty of employing multiple versions. This is actually quite simple to do with the Bible app available for home computers and cell phone. I found multiple versions helpful in giving nuances. I realize there could be criticism that I have selected and rotated versions to fit my perspective, but in the long run, it’s inconsequential. The meaning of Job can be found in any version no matter what perspective even Job himself had, let alone the reader.

The key to dissecting and uncovering Job is to be like Job himself. Job chose a perspective, defended it vociferously, and changed his perspective. My viewpoint is that Job changed his perspective after much introspection that was fostered by time, suffering, and a young intercessor as much as God himself and a look into the nights of Job’s past along the way. Different versions, meanwhile, capture elements of the sensory perspective that is so rich in Job.

In working through our reading of Job, keep in mind the change in perspectives of the multisensory experience. Each reading of Job can give different tastes or insights depending on our perspective of that reading. I ask you to consider suspending your perspectives and biases to revisit and possibly revise your positions.

As a physician, I have eternal fascination of the story of the discovery of chromosomes. Just after the turn of the twentieth century, a renowned researcher stated emphatically that there were forty-eight chromosomes. That was considered gospel for nearly fifty years until better technology allowed for better counting. When the new number of forty-six was announced, even the researchers themselves had some disbelief until they verified this several times. This new information took a while to circulate in the academic arena, but there was no refuting it. The multiple versions and perspectives available to us for reading Job allow us to see some things more clearly that may have previously been hidden from us even though they were there all along with proper viewing.

CHAPTER 1

History Taking and

History Making

The Perfect Legend

Coming to His Senses

Patience? Who Started That Rumor?

Introspection

Contrast/Formulas

God of Job’s Understanding Versus the Whirlwind

Though Job has been dead a few thousand years, inescapable lessons from his story are very much alive and applicable to all times. Perhaps we will hear some of these lessons when a catastrophe precipitates a sermon