4
‘wicked’ and doesn’t know God (:5,21). This is
the problem when we don’t engage with the
words and arguments of another, or pay mere
lip service to doing so; we can fall headlong
into a feeding frenzy of angry accusation,
resulting in doing what God condemns - con-
demning our brother, imputing sin rather than
righteousness to a person we have created in
our own minds, who merely bears the name of
the one who began merely with a theological
difference with us. Hence Elihu laments that
the friends hadn’t answered Job’s words
(32:12). Job begs to be listened to and en-
gaged with: “Listen… Hear me… After I have
spoken, mock on” (21:2,3). Let us not catch
ourselves thinking “I know what you think,
because… you’re from the X ecclesia, you’re
a white man, I remember many years ago you
saying you believed Y”.
This lack of engagement with each other leads
to both Job and the friends repeating them-
selves. In Job 25, Bildad is merely using the
previous arguments of Eliphaz. This is another
sign that dialogue has failed - when one side
starts quoting the words and arguments of
their own side, rather than engaging with
the actual words of the other side. These
dialogues are recorded to teach us how not to
dialogue, and to see the extreme consequence
of refusing to even want to understand each
other.
Misquotation
Their desire to be ‘right’ led the friends to
misrepresent Job’s words (22:15-20) to fit
their own agenda and straw man image of Job.
Job has said that he felt as if God were tearing
him apart like a wild beast (Job 16:9); but
Bildad twists this in Job 18:4, or simply misre-
members it, to Job saying that he was tearing
himself apart. Elihu misquotes Job as saying
he is more righteous than God (35:2). The
friends became so certain they knew what
Job thought that they put words in his mouth
he never said; and then proceed to ‘quote’
them and demolish them (e.g. 22:13), often
sarcastically. The descent into sarcasm is a
sure sign that genuine dialogue is over.
Editorial | To Understand Each Other ... continued
Forgetting the parameters
The reasoning of the friends consistently
departs from the parameters set for their
relationship with Job by the prologue. Job was
there declared righteous, not suffering for
personal sins, and his life would be preserved.
His suffering was for their benefit as the ob-
servers. But they repeatedly claim the very
opposite, straying from the original issues, and
are sure he is about to be killed by God, be-
cause he is “wicked… Godless” (20:5). All our
dialogue is to be framed within the parame-
ters defined by the ties that bind; the ‘other’
is your brother, your mother, your husband,
your fellow member of Christ’s body,
esteemed as “better than ourselves to be”,
with the love which seeks to believe good
rather than evil and dialogue must not be con-
ducted as if those parameters aren’t there.
Those parameters cannot be ignored just be-
cause a pre-existing agenda has become the
basis for so called dialogue, and the other
party must be condemned at all costs. Elihu
seems to suggest that unless Job makes use of
Elihu’s offer of being a mediator/’inter-
preter’, then he is going to die the death of
the condemned (33:6,23,24). But this again
misses the point of the parameters set in the
prologue. Job is not going to die as a result of
his sufferings. Elihu is not going to prove Job’s
saviour, nor shall our dialogues of themselves
save ‘the other’.
Repeating the same arguments
We the audience become almost bored by the
way the friends keep on claiming that ancient
sage wisdom is the source of truth, and any
new revelation must be wrong just because it
is new. But this sense of weariness at their
repetition is intentional. We are led to realize
that indeed, dialogue cannot progress if the
participants simply return to the same old
arguments all the time and refuse to engage
with the responses. This repetition of the
same arguments leads to the friends dogmati-
cally asserting what they had previously begun
by surmising. This again is how relationships
go wrong when there is no actual engagement