She had been unjustly jailed and spent a horrible night in a dank cell in a small town, until her friend and lawyer showed up to read the sheriff and deputies the riot act and get her out. That’s part of the story line in C. J. Box’s latest novel, The Bitterroots. His private investigator heroine, Cassie Dewell, is overcome with relief when her friend appears to pull her from a bad situation.
Our text from Job 19:23-27a displays Job expressing in verse 25 a hope for a deliverance similar to Cassie’s, for Job’s own “Redeemer” to appear and vindicate or save him from the trials he is experiencing. Capitalization of the word “redeemer” in many modern English translations reflects the ancient Christian consensus that we find here a reference to the divine Redeemer Himself, Jesus Christ.
Yet modern (since the nineteenth century) interpretation of this text in Job has tended to downplay or try to debunk the notion that the “redeemer” Job expects is divine. Even more, they seek to dissuade us from the familiar, traditional (in Handel’s Messiah for instance) understanding of verse 26, that the hoped for experience of a Redeemer will involve a resurrection, that Job looks forward to seeing God “in my body” (“flesh” in many translations).
I confess that I lack the skills in Hebrew to properly evaluate the arguments of the scholars pro and con for seeing here in Job’s words an expression of hope in a divine redeemer and in a bodily resurrection. There is at least some ambiguity in the words. But it seems the case for a negative evaluation of the traditional view turns in part on one simple linguistic matter and a couple of non-linguistic considerations.
Linguistically, the word for “redeemer” in Hebrew here is ga’al, which often signifies a human vindicator or avenger. However, the word is clearly also used to refer to divine activity and even to God Himself, as in the familiar Psalm 19:14.
Non-linguistically, one argument is that a lively expression of hope in a redeemer and resurrection does not really fit Job’s overall pessimistic tone in the course of his conversation with his “comforters.” This is somewhat true, but needs to be tempered by recognition of Job’s unwavering commitment to God despite feeling unjustly treated by God.
There is also lurking in the background of the modern interpretations the often asserted but often poorly argued position that there is no theology of resurrection or even the concept of an afterlife in the Hebrew scriptures. If one points to Daniel 12, modern scholars will often argue that this is a late (second century B.C.) text and thus not truly reflective of the mindset of ancient Israel in regard to what follows human death.
Though it takes us somewhat astray I will simply note that it appears to me that the odd story of the witch of Endor summoning the spirit of Samuel in I Samuel 28 pretty much devastates the notion that the Hebrew people had no concept of an afterlife. Whether or not the story of Samuel’s appearance after death is truth or fiction, it would have been incoherent to those who first heard and passed it along if they had no notions regarding human existence after death.
And of course, Jesus Himself in our Gospel reading for this Sunday, Luke 20:27-38, finds evidence in the Hebrew Bible for resurrection in the simple fact that Moses’ and then Israel’s expression of faith in “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” implies that those patriarchs are still alive, because “he is God not of the dead, but of the living.”
So I plan this Sunday to unabashedly affirm Job’s belief in a divine Redeemer and hope in bodily resurrection from the dead. He almost certainly did not grasp all that it would come to mean and imply, but he suffered his trials in the same faith and hope by which we as followers of Christ also endure and look forward.