Finally Comes the Poet: Brueggemann on Job

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One of the long term benefits of conversation with Walter Brueggemann is the familiarity of surprise. That isn't an oxymoron. It's a promise. Those who read Brueggemann will find that his take on a text can seem at first odd and off centre – surprisingly so. And then you realise that the text he is exploring is itself odd and off-centre. Indeed texts that deal with God, human longing, a broken, angry or frightened world, are likely to be texts that don't easily fit our conceptual comfort zones.

Take for example the two or three pages on Job, when Brueggemann is dealing with God's response to the insistent human voice of faith. Last autumn I read the superb commentary on Job by Samuel Balentine – that was an education in exegesis, pastoral theology and literature-enriched reflection on human life as free and constrained, as tragedy and praise, as faith at the wild extremes of created experience. That great nugget masterpiece Job, attracts some of the most creative theological minds and sympathetic textual interpreters – including Brueggemann.

Amongst the comments of Brueggemann on Job, (I so wish he would write a commentary on that book), are several paragraphs where his concern is to point to an honest preaching of texts whose oddity defies neat categories, and whose purpose is to embrace the strangeness of texts which deal with the ultimacy of God for human life. So here is some of Brueggemann on Job (illustrated by one of William Blake's paintings – themselves eerie and profound commentary on Job):

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"Job pushes his attack on God as far as a voice in israel dare push. In chapter 9 Job asserts not only that God is unrelaible, but is in fact a liar (20-22). Job never pushes to God's nonexistence, for then he would quit speaking and be reduced to silence. Muteness is practical atheism. Job keeps believing and speaking; he lives for the dispute. Likely that is why in ancient israel there are no atheists. The conversation of faith is the best action in town. Job is characteristic of Jewishness that finds dispute a viable, crucial form of faith. Job delineates his experience of negation, of God's absence and silence, of God's refusal to deal with his issues. Job yearns most for an anaswer, any answer, because he prefers harsh dialogue to an empty monologue.


….Faith if it is to survive knowingly and honestly, must live in an unjust world….Job learns that while the world may not be to his liking, the world will hold at its centre because it is God's world. The world does not rest in Job's virtue. In the end Job is released for yielding and submission, for trust and praise, and finally he is released for freedom to live."
(Finally Comes the Poet, 61, 62)

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