[July 2006 journal entry]
Eliphaz introduces the “correction”/“discipline” motif to explain the ‘scrapheap’ Job’s plight. Has this line of thought been used previously by Eliphaz? Is this interpretation used subsequently in the story/play? What place does this motif have in the ‘religious’ T/O paradigm? The word for ‘correction’ occurs throughout the story -- 6:25-26 (Job), 9:33 (Job), 13:10, 15 (Job), 15:3 (Eliphaz), 16:21 (Job), 19:5 (Job), 22:4 (Eliphaz), 23:7 (Job), 32:12 (Elihu), 40:2 (‘God’). The word for ‘discipline’ occurs less often -- 20:3 (Zophar), 33:16 (Elihu), though it is found frequently in Proverbs. The ‘religious’ T/O paradigm holds the ‘correction’/‘discipline’ motif as a trump card to explain suffering that seems at odds with the paradigm – e.g., if the ‘scrapheap’ Job is not being punished, perhaps he is being blessed with suffering to make him a better person and prepare him for greater use by and honor from ‘God’.
