Job 1-21: Interpretation and Commentary.
Klein, Ralph W.
Job 1-21: Interpretation and Commentary. By C. L. Seow. Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013. ISBN:978-0-8028-4895-6. xxviii and 971 pages.
Cloth. $95.00.
This commentary, when completed in its second volume, will be the
best in the field.
It is the first volume in a new series Illuminations, in which each
portion of the text begins with the author's
"Interpretation," written in non-technical fashion, that will
be followed by "Commentary" in which the author explores the
text in its original language and enters into dialogue with other
scholars. "Interpretation" will be sufficient for most
readers. The series also examines how the work has been interpreted over
the centuries and what it has come to mean. This history produced
results both witting and unwitting and is labelled in this series as
"the history of consequences."
The 248-page introduction to this commentary alone justifies the
price of this book. Seow gives exhaustive, fair, and well-argued
attention to texts and versions, language, integrity (which parts of the
book, if any, are secondary?), provenance (6th-5th century in Yehud),
setting (a legendary figure from long ago in the desert region of
southern Edom), genre, structure, artistry, and theology. The author
looks at the theology of Job, the friends, Elihu (a character whom Seow
takes seriously!), Yahweh, and the narrator. He sums up the section on
God in this way: "The God one encounters in these speeches is one
who refuses to conform to any human expectation or demand for order or
right. There is no claim of divine righteousness, no hint of resistance
to cosmic chaos and disorder ... Rather, God is simply God, and the
world--with all that is in it that is disorderly, strange, dangerous,
and tragic--is ruled not according to the demands of human
'right' (the demand for justice), but according to the
'right' of God alone. This is an utterly free God." The
book of Job is ultimately not about theodicy, in Seow's view, but
how one speaks of God in the face of chaos.
Then Seow turns for almost 140 pages to the consequences the book
of Job has had for Jews and Christians. In each era Seow pays attention
to the consequences in literature, visual arts, and music, in addition
to the expected exegetes and theologians. There is even a short chapter
on consequences in the Muslim tradition.
At this point comes Seow's nearly 650-page commentary on the
first 21 chapters. But remember how this is structured, taking ch. 1 as
an example: translation 1.5 pages; interpretation (the well-written
results of Seow's research) 11.5 pages; history of consequences 1.5
pages; commentary (philological notes, discussion with other scholars)
20.5 pages; bibliography 6 pages--on this chapter alone. A reader can
really get by quite well by reading less than 15 pages. But advanced
students who know Seow for the master philologist he is will relish
every line of the commentary section.
You will have noticed my enthusiasm for this volume. If you care at
all about suffering and/or the book of Job, you will not want to do
without this book.
Ralph W Klein
Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago
