Job, the resurrection, and his redeemer.

Job 19.25-27.

Same as my article “Dem bones,” you might be thinking, “What does the book of Job have to do with advent?” And again: Resurrection is part of Jesus’s second coming, and in this passage Job speaks of the resurrection.

Job was written in the fourth century before Christ. A lot of Evangelicals think it’s a way older book; even that it predates Abraham and the writing of Genesis! This, despite the fact every scholar can tell you it can’t have been written back then. It’s written in late biblical Hebrew, as we can tell from the sentence structure and all the Babylonian loan-words. Uz, Job’s homeland, was in Edom, and all the people’s names are Edomite. Edom—another name for Esau—is Abraham’s grandson. So why do Evangelicals insist it’s a much older book? Because young earth creationists have told them so. For various crazy reasons, YEC proponents have decided the words בְ֭הֵמוֹת/vehemót (KJV “behemoth”), likely meaning “hippopotamus,” and לִוְיָתָ֣ן/livyatán (KJV “leviathan”), likely “crocodile,” aren’t really west Asian and north African animals like you would reasonably think. They’re dinosaurs. Which makes Job proof humans and dinosaurs coexisted on earth, just like in The Flintstones. So every other bit of historical and linguistic evidence for when Job was written, is tossed aside in favor of their harebrained theory. Job must be really, really old. Gotta be.

Of course an old date for Job would mean resurrection is likewise a very old idea, for the Edomite prophet Job talks with his useless comforters about his own resurrection in chapter 19.

Job 19.25-27 KWL

25“I’ve known my redeemer is living.

At the end, he will stand on the dust left over

26after this flesh of mine was destroyed,

yet from my body

I will see God.

27Whom I will look upon for myself!

My eyes get to see him.

Not another’s—

though my kidneys fail within me.”

When Job fell ill, his so-called friends assumed—as those who believe in karma will—that he must’ve brought his disasters and illness upon himself, thanks to some secret sin, or from hubris which made him imagine he was greater than he was. The fact Job kept protesting, “But I didn’t sin,” simply proved to them he was too proud to acknowledge he had to have sinned. But Job clearly believed in a future divine judgment—that at the end, God will sort out right from wrong, once and for all. And believed he’d be alive to see it. After he’d died and his body decayed into dust.

Job would physically see this. He’d have eyes. And, he admits, he’d probably have to pee really bad. God-appearances have made braver men than Job wet themselves. Although having one’s kidneys fail is also a middle eastern metaphor for an emotional breakdown; it doesn’t have to literally mean a lapse in bladder control, or even organ failure.

Job’s statement is evidence of how, by the fourth century before Christ, the LORD’s followers had adopted (however loosely) the idea of bodily resurrection. After we die, we’re not merely gonna become ghosts and live in the afterlife forever, nor take on some quintessential physical form in the underworld. God means for us to live. When he created humanity, we became living souls; Ge 2.7 he intended his first humans to eat of the tree of life and live forever. Sin got in the way of that plan, but God never ditched the plan. He meant to redeem us; he meant to become human and atone for our sins and extinguish the sin problem. And once Jesus returns—once it’s the time of his second advent—we get to live again.

Yep, Job foresaw that. Not all of it; he doesn’t go into any detail, likely because the Holy Spirit hadn’t given him all the details. But he knew this much. He knew what he said in his book.

The Edomite idea of a redeemer.

What I described thus far, is the most common Christian interpretation of this passage. Some Jews agree; some don’t. Of course there are Christian commentators who think the common Christian interpretation is incorrect—and claim it’s because of historical context.

Here’s their reasoning. Most of the naysayers point out how a redeemer (Hebrew גָּאַל/gahál) in Israeli culture was a close relative, ideally your closest male relative in the same tribe. He acted on your behalf, like a lawyer or agent, to make right whatever had gone wrong. (If you know the book of Ruth, y’might remember Boaz pointed out he couldn’t take Ruth into his household because there was a closer male relative than he, and that needed to be sorted out first. Ru 3.12-13) They avenged you when you were murdered, freed you when you were enslaved, cared for you when widowed or orphaned, paid your debts, pursued your defrauders and got them to pay you back. Job, who maintained he hadn’t done anything to deserve his misfortune, was therefore being wronged by God, so Job’s redeemer wouldn’t be God. Job was the plaintiff and God the defendant. Job’s redeemer would be whoever grabbed God like a bounty hunter and dragged the Almighty before some other judge.

Which… sounds insane. Even if Job took issue with the Almighty, he can’t be treated the same as any common defendant, for he’s the supreme judge of the whole earth. He can’t be brought before any other judge; there’s none higher. A redeemer like they’re thinking of, would have no role in this story. Would be ridiculous in this story. Would be ridiculous to Job himself, who knew full well there’s no overruling the LORD: We either gotta get him to change his mind, or we gotta suck it up and accept in faith God knows best.

The whole problem with these commentators is they’re forgetting who Job is. He’s not Israeli! The Israeli concept of a redeemer, as spelled out in the Law of Moses, doesn’t apply to Job. His ancestors weren’t slaves in Egypt, freed by the LORD’s mighty hand, who now have a special covenant with their God based on their God-experiences, and now have to follow the commands he gave their countryman Moses. Moses is not Job’s countryman; Moses’s commands apply to Job no more than they apply to any other gentile. Edom has different God-experiences. A different national origin story involving God, whom they called 𐤒𐤅‬‬𐤎/Qôs. A different relationship with God. He’s the very same God; he’s still the God of their ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Esau. They’re likewise Hebrews; they likewise speak Hebrew. But Job is Edomite.

So… how do Edomite redeemers work?

And there we’re in a pickle. We don’t know. Edomite scriptures no longer exist, and were probably eliminated when King John Hyrcanus forced the Edomites to assimilate and become Judeans. Maybe they were like Israeli redeemers… but maybe not. We can guess they were similar to the way just about every human culture works when we take up a family member’s righteous cause on their behalf.

Thing is, Israeli instructions about redeemers expect them to be close relatives. No stranger was to buy you out of slavery, nor buy your family land back after you sold it for debt, nor track down your murderer and bring them to justice. Only close relatives. But if you’re a United States citizen like me, y’notice our culture doesn’t expect close family members to do such things. Our law enforcement has the duty to free us from slavery or track down murderers. Our legal system provides us bankruptcy and debt protection. Our state and federal bureaucracy provides welfare money for the destitute—even though many a Mammonists would love to eliminate that system, ’cause they don’t want the government doing any such thing with their tax dollars, ’cause they’re social Darwinists who believe the poor should suffer, and ’cause they’re stingy. So most of our culture’s redeemers don’t come from our families, but the state. We can certainly help out our family members in many ways, and some of us have, and should. But the state usually takes action—and often it should be the state. Family members are seldom objective, and often we need to practice some objectivity—and grace—when we help.

So again: Whom did Edomites consider their redeemers? Family members for sure, but could friends do it too? Local nobles? The king? Their God?

’Cause we Christians think of Jesus as our redeemer. But you notice at the time he saved us, he wasn’t a family member. Is now, because God adopted us, but when he gave his life for us, he wasn’t yet. He’s a fellow human, and his family tree is connected to every family tree through Adam, but that wouldn’t have counted in ancient Israeli culture. He couldn’t simply be a fellow human, or even a fellow Israeli, or even a fellow Judahite. a fellow Galilean, or even a fellow Nazarene. He’d have to be a cousin. He probably couldn’t have redeemed seven of his own Twelve!

And yet we teach Jesus has redeemed the whole world. How?

Because we’re not using the Law’s definition of redeemer. We’re actually borrowing the Edomite idea of a redeemer, which comes from Job. His redeemer didn’t have to be a family member. He could be anyone who nobly took up his cause, and rescued someone who was gonna perish without him. Job looked upon God, who would raise him from the dead and judge him rightly, as his redeemer. And we look upon Jesus, who will raise us from the dead and judge us rightly, as our redeemer.

So yep, this Job passage is a significant scripture for advent. It helps us develop a little bit of our resurrection beliefs, and our salvation theology. And it’s good source material for gospel songs, not to mention George Frederic Handel’s Messiah.