September 1, 2001 Job 1:1-5
The “perfect” man!
Prologue: A Dialogue of Heaven and Earth 1:1--2:13 Dialogue: First Cycle 3:1—14:22 Dialogue: Second Cycle 15:1—21:35 Dialogue: Third Cycle 22:1—27:23 Sililoquy 28:1—31:40 A Voice for God, the Voice of God, and Job’s Response 32:1—42:6 Epilogue: Order and Freedom in Felicity 42:7-17
Two recent Newsweek articles (8/12/02), a long one on heaven followed by a one page article on hell, are worth pondering. In the latter Kenneth Woodward makes an aside pertinent to our study:
Historians tell us that hell began to fade, at least among liberal Protestants, during the 19th century. By the end of the millennium, it was a doctrine that most Christians cheerfully ignored. Today, few Roman Catholics line up on Saturday nights to confess their sins, even the “mortal” kind. For born-again Christians, hell functions mainly as a goad for the unconverted. Once saved, the twice born have only to worry--as Graham himself once put it—about how high a place they’ll reach in heaven. On television, celebrity preachers discourage negativity, Robert Schuller says he hasn’t preached on hell in 40 years. Asked which kind of God they believe in, most Christians prefer to think of him as a friend in high places. (Apparently no one reads the Book of Job anymore.) And hell, for those who think about it at all, is a place for other people.
To follow this sideline a moment Woodward asks significantly, “Can we have a heaven without a hell? Not if, according to the three prophetic religions, we all live under divine justice.” And then concludes in a great way:
Ultimately, we become what we love. Hell is not a not place, but a community of those who remain outside the circle of Divine Embrace. All are called to enter heaven, but it is hubris to suppose than any one of us is worthy of a free ticket.
This last line sets us up perhaps for our topic:
What do you mean, Perfect?
“There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. That man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil” (1:1, NRSV).
The names of Job and Uz “introduce the story as happening ‘long ago and far away’” distancing the reader and us for a “perspective on a problem which, considered in its present immediacy, would be so overwhelming as to render even clarity of questioning all but impossible.”
Job is possibly “the real name of a prepatriarchal hero” around whom the author “masterfully composes a literary piece in which Job is representative of all who suffer.”
Job is pictured as a man exceedingly blessed of God in verses 2-3;
There were born to him seven sons and three daughters. He had seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred donkeys, and very many servants; so that this man was the greatest of all the people of the east.
Hartley notes that “the author uses the numbers three, seven, and ten, all symbolic of completeness, to demonstrate that Job’s wealth was staggering.” The combination of “seven sons and three daughters . . . symbolized an ideal family.”
The King James Version renders verse 1 as follows: “There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect (tam) and upright, and one that feared God and eschewed evil” (1:1. See 1:8).
The language of the “perfect man” belongs to our Wesleyan heritage. We need only to think of our historical mentor, John Wesley, and his A Plain Account of Christian Perfection, the book that Art was so enamored by when we studied it a few years ago!
Our church Manual states that the term “Christian Perfection” is one of the various terms representing the different phases of “entire sanctification,” a cardinal doctrine in our heritage. The Manual defines entire sanctification as
that act of God, subsequent to regeneration, by which believers are made free from original sin, or depravity, and brought into a state of entire devotement to God, and the holy obedience of love made perfect. It is wrought by the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and comprehends in one experience the cleansing of the heart from sin and the abiding, indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, empowering the believer for life and service. Entire sanctification is provided by the blood of Jesus, is wrought instantaneously by faith, preceded by entire consecration; and to this work and state of grace the Holy Spirits bears witness.
In full alignment with this Manual definition I once heard a camp meeting evangelist preach a sermon on the entire book of Job expounding the above as its first meaning! However off target such a limitation of Job’s message may be
The use of the language of perfection is biblical!
In Genesis 17:1 When Abraham (Abram) was ninety nine years old the LORD appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty (El Shaddai); walk before me, and be blameless (tamim, “perfect” KJV).
Jesus said in Matthew 5:48: “Be perfect (teleioi), therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (teleios, NRSV).
Paul wrote in Philippians 3:12 & 15: “Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect (teteleiomai) . . . let us therefore, as many as be perfect (teleioi), be thus minded” (KJV).
The writer to the Hebrews exhorts in 6:1: “Therefore let us go on toward perfection (teleioteta), leaving behind the basic teaching about Christ” (NRSV).
John’s first letter admonishes that “but whoever obeys his word, truly in this person the love of God has reached perfection (teteleiotai). . . . No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected (teteleiomene) in us. . . . Love has been perfected (teteleiotai) among us in that we may have boldness on the day of judgement, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect (teleia) love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection (teteleiotai) in love” (2:5; 4:12, 17-18, NRSV).
The word family telos in the New Testament designates an “end” or “goal” as defined by its particular contexts. As we read above in Philippians Paul uses the word with differing contents. One he has not attained, the other he has!
The most helpful clue for me as to the first meaning of “perfect” or tam in Job 1:1 and 1:8 is in Genesis 25:27 where tam is used in a very interesting fashion if not somewhat mysteriously:
When the boys grew up, Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field, while Jacob was a quiet (tam, perfect?) man, living in tents (NRSV).
So the Hebrew word tam as used in Genesis 25:27 cannot be first a word of morality, given the Genesis picture of Jacob as a “heel-grabbing” deceiver, but a word describing Jacob as “bent on one purpose. . . . This singleness of purpose constitutes Jacob’s ‘integrity’, his ‘being a man of character’. Thus it looks as though the only mysterious adjective in the Story of Jacob describes his personality most tersely.” It is a word about being sensitive to spiritual values—contrary to Esau Jacob knew the value of his birthright (25:27-34) and the significance of his father’s blessing (27:1-46)!!
Thus in Job 1: 4-5 we begin to see the meaning of “perfect” in 1:1 as the narrator describes Job’s behavior in regards to his family:
His sons used to go and hold feasts in one another’s houses in turn; and they would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. And when the feast days had run their course, Job would send and sanctify them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all; for Job said, “It may be that my children have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts.” This is what Job always did (NRSV).
Job was indeed sensitive to spiritual values! So much so that he would “sanctify” his children “just in case” they may have sinned.
The NRSV translation of 1, “that man was blameless,” is the usual current translation of tam in Job 1:1 & 1:8. Janzen, noting the parallelism in the verse, concludes that
this means, then, that (a) “blameless” stands in a parallel and synonymous relation to (a’) “fearing God” and so refers to the character of Job’s piety. . . . According to the general meaning of the word tam, piety so described is not nominal, flawed, or partial, but genuine, whole, and complete; and it constitutes the central principle of Job’s individual integrity.
Janzen adds that the two pairs of expressions, “blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil,” taken together, “sum up the Israelite conviction as to the distinguishable but inseparable relation between authentic piety and genuine morality.” The language (tam) thus in Job 1:1 has a much fuller meaning than in Genesis 25:27.
As this point the action of Job on behalf of his sons and daughters is not a bad example for us “old” folk with grown children! Job
shares the common parental concern—a concern and a pathos which, for all that a parent may wish to do and may be able to do, in its helplessness finally can enact itself only in symbolic action heavenward-—over what his children may do in the blithely heedless activities and spontaneous projects of youthful zest.
But most of us face or have faced concerns relating to our children far beyond those of Job’s concern in our text, but like Job, we in our helplessness know that prayer is often our only, and certainly our most sure recourse! Lectionary readings for Sunday, September 1, are Jeremiah 15:15-21; Psalm 26; Romans 12:1-8; Matthew 16:21-27. Janzen., 24-29. A recent scholarly treatment of heaven is Jerry L. Walls, Heaven: The Logic of Eternal Joy (Oxford University Press, 2002). William J., a Wesleyan evangelical at Southern Methodist University, writes that “Walls has taken the intellectually despised notion of heaven and put it to work to illuminate a whole network of philosophical and theological topics. . . . This is philosophical theology at its very best.” The publisher adds that “Walls argues that the doctrine of heaven is ripe for reconsideration and that we profoundly need to recover the hope of heaven in order to recover our very humanity.” Christianity Today (August 5, 2002). His autobiography is now out, Robert H. Schuller, My Journey (HarperSanFrancisco, 2002?). It is reviewed in Chritianity Today (August 5, 2002), 57-59. Kenneth L. Woodward, “Why We Need Hell, Too,” Newsweek (August 12, 2002), 52. This, as we remember from our study of St. John of the Cross, was one of the sainsts key concepts. Woodward, 52. Janzen, 34. John E. Hartley, The Book of Job: The New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1988), 66-67. See Ezekiel 14:14, 20. Janzen, 5, states that there is no scholarly consensus as to the date and place of the author but concludes for his purposes “that the book of Job was written in the exile and that the problems with which it deals arose in the existential tension between that historical upheaval and Israel’s religious traditions.” “The camel was a prestigious animal, and such an enormous number symbolizes great status.” Ibid., 68-69. Ibid., 68. The emphasis on “seven sons” in the Prologue is balanced in the Epilogue (42:14) by the naming of the daughters in his new family, and the comment that “in all the land there were no women so beautiful as Job’s daughters.” Manual, Church of the Nazarene, 1993-1997, 30-31. This same word is on Job’s lips in 9:20. 21, and 22, translated as”blamesless” in NRSV, “guiltless” in NASB, and “perfect” in KJV. KJV translates tam here as “plain”! This use of “integrity” reminds me of Phil Nevin on Friday speaking of the baseball’s settlement in terms of “respect” and “integrity”! Jarvis had it more right when he said in Saturday morning’s Union-Tribune that “damage has been done”! J. P. Fokkelman, Narrative Art in Genesis (Amsterdam: Van Gorcum, 1975), 91. Look up Cassuto on Genesis 25:27. Note the length of this latter narrative indicating its importance in the story of Jacob. See the repetition of this language in Job 1:11 by Satan and in 2:5, 9 by Job’s wife. Janzen, 35. Ibid. Ibid., 36.
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Frank G. Carver San Diego, California