Harding/Job, 4. Irony and Ambiguity in the Book of Job

The deliberate use of ambiguity and irony plays an important but often underestimated role in the book of Job. The juxtaposition of the narrative framework, which portrays Job as a model of submissive patience and faith, with Job’s accusations and verbal attacks against God in the poetic core, creates an unavoidable ambiguity concerning the central character of the book. In the prologue, the sixfold recurrence of the ambiguous verb berekh, “to bless/praise/curse” allows for the possibility that Job might in fact have “cursed” God (Job 1:21), as predicted by the Satan, while pretending to “praise” him. In the dialogue with his friends, Job questions his interlocutors’ pretense of wisdom and superior knowledge by means of rhetorical irony (“No doubt you are the people, and wisdom will die with you” – Job 12:2). Yet in the end it is Yhwh who, in the divine speeches addressed to Job, makes use of irony in order to make him realize the limits of his insights into God’s rule of the world. On the whole, ambiguity and irony serve as crucial rhetorical means of challenging traditional wisdom and thereby point to the limits of human knowledge.