Wisdom therapy and the Book of Job

Review: God Trauma and Wisdom Therapy: A Commentary on Job, Norm Habel, Fortress Press 

The biblical character of Job is famously known for his patience, but it’s not entirely true that he is patient – it may be more accurate to talk about the undeserved misfortune of Job. Australian biblical commentator Norm Habel sees what happens to Job as traumatic, and he surmises that the Book of Job is a deliberate working out of how to deal with bad things happening to good people, a work of trauma therapy that is a reflection of the traumatic exile experience of Israel. 

Job is described as blameless before God. He is blessed with family and wealth. Then things go pear-shaped. A ‘dubious’ deity has a gamble with Satan at Job’s expense. And what an expense: the deaths of his livestock and workers, destruction of his house and family. After God ‘brags’ about Job’s piety, Satan further afflicts him with illness. 

Job then suffers further, with unhelpful friends and wife. He displays the symptoms of trauma: denial, anger, being unable to deal with complete upheaval, both physical and philosophical, feelings of being abandoned by God, wishing to die. This is all compounded by the fact that he knows he has not done anything to deserve his lot. 

It is Habel’s contention that in reading between the lines of the Book of Job we can make out a group of philosophers arguing against the covenant tradition of Israel held by Israelite priests. The covenant tradition sees Israel being blessed when faithful to God, and being punished when they are not. The Book of Job was likely written in the wake of the exile, and priests in the covenant tradition would have been arguing that Israel’s exile was punishment for their wrongdoing. 

Job’s friends argue that this is what has happened to Job – he is clearly not blameless, deserves punishment and had better ‘fess up to his sins. But the Book of Job pushes back against this cause/effect argument, effectively arguing, in the tradition of other wisdom books of the Bible, that things are more complicated, and that sometimes bad stuff happens (as Jesus would later point out). Job’s trauma, as it is portrayed, argues against the narrative that natural justice is in play: that God punishes the wicked. 

Job’s friends are portrayed in the Book of Job as wordy buffoons (with Job sarcastically noting that they would be wiser if they just shut up), but they are indicative of a human tendency to rush to judgement or blithely embrace superficial explanation that can infect the church too. It is sometimes implied by churchgoers that calamity befalls the sinful. People suffering from traumas such as depression are sometimes told they merely need more faith (‘advice’ that often further traumatises).  

The Book of Job suggests instead that the better friends are those who sympathetically sit in silence with the traumatised, who keep God in sight when the traumatised can’t themselves see God.  

This, I think, is a key lesson from Job. Habel goes on further to argue how the Book of Job depicts a version of wisdom therapy, where at first Job rails against God but is then convinced that there is a bigger picture that God understands, and this may be a helpful part of the later healing process. But I think that in the negative portrayal of Job’s friends is a suggestion to us of an opposite, positive, non-judgemental approach, and this is one of the more critical insights of this strange but profound book.  

Nick Mattiske blogs on books at coburgreviewofbooks.wordpress.com and is the illustrator of Thoughts That Feel So Big.