Where Everybody's Crazy

Otherwise titled "Still A Biblicist?"

The more of the Bible that I read, and the more I respect the Bible, the less that the individual words of the Bible are significant and the more I have a sense of the whole. I guess I'd better explain that.

The book of Job is amazing book, as I've mentioned before. The main story is of a character who, after receiving a complete nightmare of a time from God, asks a load of difficult questions of God, and, instead of getting a sensible answer, gets put in his place. Meanwhile, three people tell him he must have sinned, but he hasn't. (I eagerly await those comments which say that, because my precis of the book is wrong, then my thoughts about textual criticism must be wrong also.)

Anyway, the whole climax of the book comes when Job has had a heck of a time at God's hand, and he decides that he's going to ask God a few questions. The turning point of the book is Job 13:15, which is held up as an example of amazing faith by many evangelicals:

Though he may slay me, yet I will hope in him; I will surely defend my ways to his face.

This is an amazing verse! I remember on my WEC orientation, the UK director pointing to this as the high point of faith in the Bible - a man who will trust in God even though God appears to be against him.

Or at least, that's what the NIV says. The authorised Jewish version, the JPS, (and the ASV and the RSV, and...) says something that can be seen as the exact opposite:

He may well slay me; I may have no hope; Yet I will argue my case before Him.

What has happened here? How can the translations be so divergent? At this point, the crux of the entire book, we have either a faithful Job who will trust implicitly in a God who seems to have it in for him, or we have a cynical and despondent Job who will argue with God even though it's completely pointless. Commentators will try to tell you that "the context requires" one option or the other, but actually, in context, both possible readings make sense. So which is it?

Well, the problem here is one of qere versus kethib. Basically, in the Hebrew Bible texts, we have certain passages which have two readings. One reading is what is written, but the Masoretes, who prepared the Hebrew Bible, wanted to preserve all the texts that they had received, even the mistakes. They worked out what the mistakes were probably meant to be, but they wanted to preserve the integrity of the text that they had received. So they wrote little notes in the margin saying "We have written (Hebrew 'kethib') the text as this, but when you read it, read it like this (Hebrew 'qere')."

Usually, there's a very slight difference between the Qere and the Kethib but a very slight difference in Hebrew can completely change the meaning. (And I hope the Biblicists are listening at this point.) So the Kethib of our verse in Job is "lo'" but the Qere is "lo". Like I said, a slight difference. The Qere then reads "I will trust him". ("lo" means "to him") But the Kethib reads "I will not trust". ("lo'" means "not")

What do we do with this? Is Job saying that he will trust in God, or that he will not trust? It depends on which translation you read. That can't be satisfying, can it? Well, at these junctures, Bible scholars look for an alternative translation, such as the Septuagint.

The Septuagint is an authoritative Jewish translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, prepared by seventy Jewish scholars before Christ's birth. From a Christian point of view, it gets a few things "more right" than the Hebrew text - for instance, in Isaiah, where the Hebrew says that a young woman will become pregnant and bear a son, which is not exactly a fantastic miracle, the Septuagint says that a virgin will become pregnant and bear a son. Which is a little more surprising. So some Christian confessions, particularly the Orthodox ("It's Greek so it must be good") rely heavily on the Septuagint rendering of the Hebrew Bible.

Unfortunately, for this verse, the Septuagint is, let's face it, a complete crock.

ἐάν με χειρώσηται ὁ δυνάστης ἐπεὶ καὶ ἦρκται ἦ μὴν λαλήσω καὶ ἐλέγξω ἐναντίον αὐτοῦ

I'm really not sure how best to translate this, because it's incredibly confused Greek, but let's have a stab.

Because even if the ruler overpowered me, and surely he ruled over me, indeed I will I speak and plead before him.

Is this indicative of a depressed but hopeful Job, or a despondent and cynical Job? I can't tell, because it doesn't make very much sense.

This is precisely the point where theology overpowers exegesis. If you think that theologically Job ought to trust in God despite his situation, you choose the Qere reading. If you think that Job is completely fed up and is howling pointlessly at God, you choose the Kethib. Half of the commentaries you read will spend this verse slagging off the other half.

Well, I don't care. Whichever reading you choose is between you and God, and completely changes the dynamic of the story, and - hopefully - the nature of your faith in God in difficult times. I hope it does change the nature of your faith, because otherwise you're reading the book of Job and getting nothing from it. If reading the Bible doesn't change the way you live, why bother doing it?

But whichever reading you decide suits you best, please don't tell me that "The Bible says..." whatever, unless you believe that you're qualified to make a judgment why the kethib is correct and the qere is wrong or vice versa.

The Bible doesn't say things. People do. (Lots of people get really lost at this point, but it's true.) The Bible does not make definitive theological statements. It can't. It's a book. It's an inanimate object. The Bible doesn't "speak today", and InterVarsity Press be damned. The Bible doesn't "say" anything. It's a book, savvy? People read from it, and sometimes they read into it rather than reading out of it. Sometimes they read the qere, sometimes they read the kethib.

Sometimes they just read whichever bit of it suits their own blessed theology. Real Live Preacher, with whom I rarely agree, but frequently love, absolutely nails this one. The Bible doesn't say anything. People do. So which set of people you follow is an important decision.

The important thing about the book of Job is not whether you read the qere or the kethib, but how your relationship with God changes as a result. If it makes you more humble, more mystical, more caring for your fellow man, and more devoted to God and to finding out more about him, then you chose the right reading. At that point, arguing over what "the Bible says" becomes meaningless.

Once we put down our biblicist weapons - because they are weapons for political control over one another - and start on the narrow path of humility and love, we can learn to embrace the ambiguity of the Bible; it shows us a little more of the ambiguity of life, and it challenges us to deal with that ambiguity in the way that Jesus would.