[July 2006 journal entry]
Peterson’s translation (4:3a) says Job has “spoken words that clarify” to sufferers (the RSV’s “instructed”). The Hebrew word/idea is to discipline, to admonish, to correct. Is ‘to instruct’ a healthy aim for responding to sufferers’ lament? to their agony? No. Efforts to clarify/explain the breadth and depth of human suffering invariably diminish and/or draw away from a respectful focus on the sufferer/s. Eliphaz apparently intends to comfort the ‘scrapheap’ Job by correcting his thinking. Is this what Job has previously attempted with sufferers? Perhaps whether to hear Job’s first words from the ‘scrapheap’ as lament gets to the crux of the three close friends’ problem. If Job’s ‘scrapheap’ thoughts are only therapeutic or liturgical lament (e.g., the ‘lament psalms’), then the ‘religious’ T/O paradigm holds. If Job’s ‘scrapheap’ thoughts represent radically (i.e., into the root) altered insights into what is true/real, then the ‘religious’ T/O paradigm does not hold.
Peterson’s translation (4:3a) says Job has “spoken words that clarify” to sufferers (the RSV’s “instructed”). The Hebrew word/idea is to discipline, to admonish, to correct. Is ‘to instruct’ a healthy aim for responding to sufferers’ lament? to their agony? No. Efforts to clarify/explain the breadth and depth of human suffering invariably diminish and/or draw away from a respectful focus on the sufferer/s. Eliphaz apparently intends to comfort the ‘scrapheap’ Job by correcting his thinking. Is this what Job has previously attempted with sufferers? Perhaps whether to hear Job’s first words from the ‘scrapheap’ as lament gets to the crux of the three close friends’ problem. If Job’s ‘scrapheap’ thoughts are only therapeutic or liturgical lament (e.g., the ‘lament psalms’), then the ‘religious’ T/O paradigm holds. If Job’s ‘scrapheap’ thoughts represent radically (i.e., into the root) altered insights into what is true/real, then the ‘religious’ T/O paradigm does not hold.