Faith and Loss in The Stories of - Abraham and Job

Journal for the Study of the Old Testament
Vol 34.2 (2009): 115-129

© 2009 SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore)
DOI: 10.1177/0309089209356417
http://JSOT.sagepub.com
They Save Themselves Alone:

Faith and Loss in the Stories of
Abraham and Job
HENRIETTA L. WILEY
College of Notre Dame of Maryland, 4701 North Charles Street,
Baltimore, MD 21210, USA
Abstract
In the stories of Abraham and Job, Yahweh’s favor is an ambiguous blessing that comes
at great cost to the favored one and those closest to him. Yahweh professes his
condence in Abraham’s and Job’s faith, but tests that faith with devastating loss of
family members. The deity then rewards the men with a ‘consolation family’. The intent
appears to be blessing, but, like most consolation prizes, the arrival of the new families
fails to console either the main characters or the reader. They are essentially objects,
empty of personal value, and serve to emphasize the original loss and the patriarchs’
solitude. Yahweh’s limitless power renders any affectionate bond with him inconceiv-
able, but his demanding attention crowds out the possibility for the men to preserve
bonds of affection with their families. Faithful Abraham and Job, deemed most blessed
by God, ultimately suffer deepest isolation and loss.
Keywords: Abraham, Job, faith, loss, blessing, family, patriarchs.
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116 Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 34.2 (2009)
For centuries, the patriarchs Abraham and Job have been celebrated for
their favored status with Yahweh, their exceptional blessedness by him,
and their corresponding faithfulness to him. In these men’s stories, as in
most of the Hebrew Bible, the greatest of God’s blessings are a long life
and a large family; and yet, while both patriarchs enjoy these blessings,
they also share the experience of isolation and familial loss.1 Yahweh
professes his condence in Abraham’s and Job’s faith (Gen. 15.6; Job
1.8), but perversely tests that faith with devastating loss of family
members, and then rewards them nally with what I call a ‘consolation
family’ (Gen. 25.1-6; Job 42.13-16). Like most consolation prizes, the
intent behind these families appears to be encouraging. The blessing of a
family is offered as a reward for Abraham’s and Job’s perseverant faith
and afrmation of their favored status. Still, like most consolation prizes,
the arrival of the new families fails to console either the main characters
or the reader. Instead of giving encouragement, the consolation family
functions as a symbol of loss.
Readers have long deplored the loss of Job’s children, and morally
questioned their simple replacement with another batch, yet no one has
produced an entirely satisfying justication.2 Some of the pat answers
one may hear to the problem include: (1) that the mortality rate was so
high in ancient times that the death of a young person was not as devas-
tating as it is now; (2) that family members were legally the property of
their patriarch and their group identity was more important than their
individual identity; and (3) that the sons and daughters in Job are merely
rhetorical devices in a book uninterested in specic personal matters. All
of these statements may be true to some degree—Levenson’s work on
sons redivivi shows how biblical texts may describe one child as being a
replacement for another3—but they reect an overzealous emphasis on
how different the ancient world was from ours, and fail to satisfy. We are
1. We see the comparison as early as the second-century BCE book of Jubilees, where
the Joban frame tale of a hostile angel challenging God to test his favored devotee is
transposed onto the story of the binding of Isaac (Jub. 17.15-16).
2. This failure of consolation may be inferred from interpreters’ ongoing efforts
either to condemn God or to rescue God from condemnation. For a helpful review of
recent Job research, see Carol A. Newsom, ‘Re-considering Job’, Currents in Biblical
Research 5 (2007), pp. 155-82.
3. For example, Eve states in Gen. 4.25 that God gave her Seth in place of (EIE)
Abel. See Jon D. Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Trans-
formation of Child Sacrice in Judaism and Christianity (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1993), p. 78.
WILEY They Save Themselves Alone 117
mistaken if, in our responsible eagerness to distinguish Israelite culture

from our own, we neglect any possible human commonalities. A high
mortality rate does not prevent David’s anguish over the death of his son
Absalom (2 Sam 18.33–19.4). Patriarchal family structure does not make
the concubine Bilhah an emotionally equivalent substitute for Jacob’s
beloved Rachel (Gen. 30.1-8). Grief over the loss of a child, especially
the loss of an only child, is biblically proverbial (Jer. 6.26; Amos 8.10;
Zech. 12.10). On the whole, people love their children and grieve their
loss. That will be an assumption in the analysis that follows.
The close reading that follows explores the signicant tension between
familial relationships and relationship with God in Abraham’s and Job’s
stories. In each case, this tension culminates with the arrival of a con-
solation family. The brief and jarring notices of these new families do
not relieve the desolation that each patriarch has endured. Instead, they
symbolize and emphasize the patriarchs’ isolation as a favorite of God,
and so represent profound ambiguity in divine blessing. The dominant
discourse both in Genesis and in Job seems to dictate that faith and
blessing are interrelated and mutually benecial, but in these narratives,
faith and blessing are inextricably linked with loss. Familial loss is the
chief means by which Yahweh breaks down Job’s and Abraham’s attach-
ments to all but himself, and so builds up their acquiescence to divine
will. Their confrontational spirits do eventually relent, but submission
does not necessarily diminish their pain. The consolation families are
meant to replace the irreplaceable. Far from resolving the sense of loss,
they serve as a reminder of loss and even the prospect of future losses,
not in spite of but because of God’s blessing.
For Abraham, the loss of family is excruciatingly slow, and his
resistance diminishes gradually from one narrative episode to the next,
while Job’s losses and his ultimate surrender are sudden and shocking.
Even given the length of the poetic dialogues, there is nothing there to
suggest that Job is likely to abandon his complaint until his abrupt sur-
render. For both characters, their consolation family’s arrival is rushed,
unexpected, and disturbingly joyless for the patriarchs themselves. These
new relatives are not so much human sources of affection or comfort as
they are objects whose meaning lies solely in indicating God’s power
and each man’s dependence on his divine patron. The apparent emptiness
of these new relationships can offer no consolation for the loss of the
previous relationships. God’s exclusive preference for each patriarch
ultimately requires that patriarch to be in exclusive relationship with
Yahweh, exclusive not just of other deities but of anyone at all. While
God does not explicitly set out to strip his favorite of family bonds, he
seems uninterested in making room for them either. These themes of
faith, loss, and isolation depict Yahweh as a god whose jealous favorit-
ism requires total detachment from other meaningful relationships, and
ultimately deprives his favorites as much as—or more than—it rewards
them. With only the maker of the universe to talk to, our protagonists
are left profoundly alone, and their consolation families only serve to
emphasize their solitude.
Abraham may be fully aware of God’s jealousy and its hazards in
Genesis 18, where he negotiates for the citizens of Sodom and Gomor-
rah. Is it possible that Abraham is in reality pleading for the life of his
nephew, Lot? The text does not tell us this, but such a reading is defen-
sible in light of Genesis 14. In that story, the foreign invasion and terrible
devastation described do not convince Abraham to enter into battle. Only
Lot’s kidnap launches him into action (14.14). This suggests that Abra-
ham has signicant affection or at least a sense of loyalty toward the
young man from whom he has recently separated (13.11-12). Abraham
may therefore argue with the Most High in Genesis 18 not to save a
dozen strangers, but instead to save his nephew. If we accept such a
reading, then the fact that Abraham does not ask specically for Lot’s
life is instructive. Perhaps the patriarch knows that such a petition would
be useless or even hazardous for Lot. Instead of calling God’s attention
to his concern for Lot, he frames his plea in terms of a hypothetical group
of righteous citizens. Divine efforts on behalf of Lot and his family ensue
(19.12-22), but it remains unclear whether the rescuing angels in ch. 19
are an entirely compassionate response to Abraham. In Gen. 19.29a we
are told that God ‘remembered’ (C<KJH) Abraham when he destroyed the
cities of the plain, but in 19.29b where God removes Lot from the
destruction, Lot’s residence is the dening feature of the cities destroyed:
H= *93 3JC )JC9 (‘the cities in which Lot dwelt’). The blessing of
Lot’s escape remains ambiguous. While he and his daughters survive,
Lot is lost permanently to Abraham. There is no reunion of the two men,
and Lot exits the story in shame (Gen. 19.31-36).4
Perhaps Abraham’s circuitous appeal in Genesis 18 reects his
experience in Genesis 17. There Abraham begs God to preserve Ishmael
with mixed results. The deity agrees to bless the boy; he will father a
4. It may be worth noting that Lot’s own family is also quite the worse for wear by
the end of his own story.
great nation, too, but he and his descendants will enjoy no permanent
covenant with God (vv. 20-21). Ishmael is required to undergo the rite
of circumcision, but its covenantal signicance is only guaranteed as a
member of Abraham’s house. Not only is Abraham’s affection for
Ishmael nearly meaningless to the deity, it also presents a threat to
Yahweh’s intention for his relationship with Abraham. The petition for
Ishmael’s welfare receives only partial assurance of the boy’s well-being
and a guarantee that their family ties will be severed.
Later, in Genesis 21, Ishmael pays the price implied by Yahweh’s
half-blessing in 17.20-21. The young man and his mother are evicted
from Abraham’s tents with token provisions for survival and a vague
promise of future progeny and nationhood without covenantal bond
(21.12-13). We know that this loss causes Abraham some pain, but its
description is spare: )9C3 J?J3 5> C359 CJH (literally ‘The thing
was very bad in Abraham’s eyes’, v. 11). The phrase )J?J3 C indi-
cates Abraham’s perception of injustice, but in many other places it also
seems to indicate distress or anxiety beyond mere moral indignation.5
Yet, the deity denies him even this natural emotional response to the loss
of his son: C?9= (J?J3 CJ= (‘don’t feel bad about the boy’, v. 12).
The implication is that God requires nothing short of total detachment
from any other intimate relationship. God’s response to Abraham’s
distress emphasizes the value of sons only as vehicles for progeny: Isaac
as Abraham’s name-bearer, Ishmael as the father of his own nation. This
is cold consolation for a man commanded to abandon his son. Abraham
makes no effort to plead his case, though, and must be content with
God’s assurance that his lost son will go on to prosper elsewhere. Of
course, Abraham will not see Ishmael again, nor will he have the oppor-
tunity to delight in the company of Ishmael’s promised offspring.
Recall that this is the same day that the household is celebrating the
weaning of Isaac. We are perhaps meant to share Sarah’s concern for her
son’s status on this day, so that Ishmael’s exile should complete our
sense of relief that Isaac has survived infancy and his future is now clear.
All the same, our text does not permit us to relax into celebration. The
joy of one son’s survival is cut off by the distress of sending the other
son to a probable death. This irony heightens the tragedy of Ishmael’s
banishment and plunges even our condence in Isaac’s future into
renewed anxiety. All paternal bonds look very fragile at this moment.
5. Gen. 48.17; Num. 11.16; 22.34; Josh. 24.15; 1 Sam. 8.6, 18.8; 2 Sam. 11.25; Neh.
12.10; 13.8; Prov. 24.18; Jer. 40.4; Jon. 4.1.
If the description of Abraham’s pain is spare in Genesis 21, it is

virtually absent in Genesis 22. When we get to Genesis 22, Abraham
is all but an automaton. The deity is unambiguously aware that his
command to Abraham is to destroy his last remaining bond of affection
(E39C (5JIJ), but Abraham makes no arguments, no pleas, and
expresses no emotions in any overt way. The heart of the story’s tension
lies in the text’s constant emphasis on the father–son relationship
coupled with Abraham’s incomprehensible calm. The trauma of loss has
become a habit after the losses of Lot and Ishmael, and resistance to it
has expired within him. Abraham seems resigned to or else detached
from the inevitable loss of Isaac by the end of the chapter. Isaac lives, but
Abraham loses him just the same. There is no small irony in Yahweh’s
rehearsal in vv. 17-18 about how blessed and innumerable Abraham’s
descendants will be, while Abraham, wordless, descends the mountain
alone in v. 19. Isaac does not depart with him and we never see father
and son together again. The news that follows of Nahor’s twelve children
seems cruel in contrast (22.22-24). These many distant and unfamiliar
relatives accentuate Abraham’s separation from his son and the remote-
ness of his posterity.
Then Sarah dies after an apparent estrangement.6 Only here is Abra-
ham’s detachment briey broken. Abraham weeps for Sarah and weighs
out an exorbitant and unnegotiated price for her gravesite (Gen. 23). And
yet, Isaac is not present for these events. Then, when Abraham sub-
sequently takes on the task of arranging his son’s marriage, usually a
mother’s responsibility, the whole affair passes without a word between
them. Abraham’s delegation of these arrangements to an unnamed ser-
vant indicates even further his emotional distance (24.2-4). Eventually
the bride Rebecca arrives, the newlyweds move into Sarah’s old tent, and
Isaac is consoled for his mother’s death (24.67). Strikingly, father and
son are completely absent for each other both in their grief and in their
joy.
After this sprawling tale of steady loss, we are suddenly presented
with a wife and six sons—Abraham’s consolation family. But what is the
value of this family whose arrival and departure come in the span of six
verses? Does it truly compensate for the loss of other wives and sons?
This inclusion is undoubtedly meant to show how God continued to bless
Abraham: a new wife, a full complement of sons, and the vigor to have
6. Gen. 22 tells us Abraham dwelt in Beer Sheba, while Gen. 23 describes Sarah as
having lived near Hebron.
them at an advanced age.7 The woman Keturah, however, is in no way

equivalent to Sarah. She has no apparent stake in Abraham’s story, and
no story of her own. All we know about her is her name, which means
‘smoke’, suggesting how insubstantial she is. Abraham’s marriage to her
is, like smoke, quick to rise and quick to dissipate. Her presence serves
largely as a sign of all of his sacrices, the dissipating remnant of all his
personal loss.
What of the six sons? Now in the habit, Abraham sends them all away
for the sake of Isaac (Gen. 25.6), and then he dies apparently alone.
There is no deathbed scene, no bedside vigil, and no prophetic blessing
uttered with Abraham’s nal breath. There is in fact not much in the way
of mourning. Isaac and Ishmael arrive only in time for a burial (vv. 9-10).
The unsentimental description of the burial gives us no indication of the
brothers’ emotional state, but instead dwells on the gravesite. Neverthe-
less, their presence—especially of Ishmael, who stands to gain nothing—
and their performance of their duty express the essential contrast between
Abraham’s rst disintegrated family and his second ‘consolation’ family.
The latter was quickly formed and easily dissolved, with no lasting bond
and no real part to play in Abraham’s life or death. The former family,
however, persists in spite of long estrangement and much injury. Isaac
and Ishmael are the family that mattered, although God’s favor forced
them away.
The consolation family therefore does not indicate Abraham’s blessed-
ness so much as it emphasizes Yahweh’s power to bless. Divine blessing
in patriarchal stories is generally a matter of wealth and progeny, but
throughout Abraham’s story either God seems to postpone Abraham’s
blessing or else the blessings of wealth and progeny are mitigated.8 God
promises that he ‘will bless’ Abraham, but the fulllment of his promise
always seems to be just beyond reach.9 Sadly, the rst unqualied
statement of Abraham’s blessing (24.1) does not appear until after the
horror of Isaac’s near sacrice on Moriah and Sarah’s death and burial,
7. This last burst of potency is similar to the notice in Deut. 34.7 that Moses’s ‘sap’
(I=) had not run dry when he died.
8. Robert Polzin (‘The Ancestress of Israel in Danger’, Semeia 3 [1975], pp. 81-98)
has explored this issue at some length. His article is primarily concerned with risks,
threats, and perpetration of adultery, but his analysis of blessing is useful here.
9. (<C3 appears in Gen. 12.2 and 22.17. There are other promises of blessing
without any explicit statements of divine follow-through: Sarah—17.16; Ishmael—17.20;
those who bless Abraham—12.3; nations through Abraham—18.18; 22.18.
where a notice of blessing rings somewhat hollow. The determining

factor of Abraham’s blessing seems to be his acquisition of Canaanite
land, albeit land specically designated for graves. Indeed, all of Abra-
ham’s actions from here on seem to be directed toward putting his affairs
in order. All we know of his relationships with his consolation family
pertains to the making of faithful arrangements to dispatch them, so that
they do not interfere with his god’s plan for his inheritance. This has the
effect of associating divine blessing and death, which may not be acci-
dental. Only in death is Abraham at last united with his kin.10
In contrast with Abraham’s saga, the prose narrative of Job’s loss is
brief and sudden. In Job’s rst trial, misery is piled upon misery with
relentless immediacy, and almost no narrative time passes before the
second trial is administered. After a week, the whole thing is over, Job
with more than he had before and his friends shamed by his vindication
by God. The dizzying pace of the narrative sections contributes to the
horror of this story. In the short space of the frame tale, there is almost
no time to register and react to Job’s specic experiences of loss and
pain. Instead, the shock and trauma mount into an amorphous mass of
generalized suffering. The apparent purpose of the whole book of Job is
to address the problem of suffering as a subject for debate, as opposed to
telling a straightforward story like Abraham’s. As such, the concept of
suffering demands some degree of rhetorical generalization. Neverthe-
less, the ideas presented in Job are placed within a narrative of particular
catastrophes. The form of the story does not seem to be a parable, a story
in which the characters are merely symbolic, but instead suggests that the
narrative frame is a greatly abbreviated epic of a known heroic character.
Ezekiel’s reference to Job together with the epic heroes Dan’el and Noah
supports this theory (Ezek. 14.14, 20). Ezekiel focuses on the question of
the men’s salvic righteousness, but their stories also share complicated
and painful family narratives that add meaning to the prophet’s declara-
tion that the men could not save their sons or daughters (14.16, 18, 20).11
10. Note HJ>= ,DJH, Gen. 25.8, where we are also told that Abraham died *BK
3H, usually translated ‘old and content’, literally ‘old and full’. To be 3 is to have
enough and more than enough. Perhaps we may think of Abraham in his last breath as
having had quite enough, thank you.
11. The Ugaritic text KTU 1.17 tells the story of Dan’el and the loss of his son Aqhat
to a jealous deity, the goddess Anat. For further exploration of this theme and others that
parallel the Abraham saga, see E.C. McAfee, ‘The Patriarch’s Longed-for Son: Biologi-
cal and Social Reproduction in Ugaritic and Hebrew Epic’ (ThD dissertation, Harvard
University, 1996). Noah’s story in Gen. 6–9 does not include so close a parallel, only his
If, like Dan’el and Noah, Job was a familiar gure of epic narrative, it
increases greatly the probability of an early reader or listener’s knowl-
edge of and interest in the specics of Job’s suffering as well as any
rhetorical purpose behind the story.
The biographical information on Job tells us that Job loved his chil-
dren. His sacrices on their behalf spring from patriarchal conscientious-
ness, while his inner thoughts reect a genuine affection and concern for
his children’s wellbeing (Job 1.5). After their death and the deaths of his
servants and livestock, Job gives us only a grief-stricken outburst that
contains a lackluster blessing. Once infected with diseased sores, he
speaks only once to reprimand his wife, who may in fact be verbalizing
Job’s own anguish.12 Job then descends into seven days of depressive
silence. The absence in the prose narrative of details about Job’s grief
encourages a reader to supply them. Can we imagine Job to be in a state
of profound shock? Is he too overcome with misery to even know what
he is feeling, let alone to express it?
Job’s poetic explosion of emotion after days of stunned silence con-
rms it. His outpouring of grief is a veritable torrent of resistance to
divine ‘favor’ and lament over faith, loss, and isolation. The poetry of
Job relies heavily on the Psalms, mirroring their forms, but often distort-
ing or reversing their lyrics’ meaning. As with Abraham, we see here that
Job is aware of the perils of favored status and is quite cynical about it.
Job inverts the praise of Ps. 8.5-6—
What are human beings that you are mindful of them,
mortals that you care for them?
Yet you have made them a little lower than God,
and crowned them with glory and honor
—into the complaint of Job 7.17-19:13

What are human beings,
that you make so much of them,
that you set your mind on them,
own cursing and estrangement from his son Ham (Gen. 9.24-27), and of course God’s
annihilation of the rest of the human race.
12. See Claire McGinnis, ‘Playing the Devil’s Advocate in Job: On Job’s Wife’, in
Stephen L. Cook, Corrine Patton, and James Watts (eds.), The Whirlwind: Essays on Job,
Hermeneutics, and Theology in Memory of Jane Morse (JSOTSup, 336; Shefeld:
Shefeld Academic Press, 2001), pp. 121-41.
13. See M. Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1985), pp. 285-86.
visit them every morning,

test them every moment?
Will you not look away from me for a while,
let me alone until I swallow my spittle?
Likewise the devotion of Psalm 139, especially vv. 13 and 15—

For it was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb…
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth
—devolves into the frustration of Job 10.8-14, and especially vv. 13-14:
Yet these things you hid in your heart;
I know that this was your purpose.
If I sin, you watch me,
and do not acquit me of my iniquity.
Furthermore, in 10.12, Job claims God’s 5DI—usually translated ‘loving-

kindness’ or ‘steadfast love’ or ‘covenantal commitment’, and usually a
source of life in the psalms14—but indicts that 5DI as the origin of his
misery. Job begs God over and over to ‘leave me alone’, ‘stop watching
me’, ‘give me a break’.15 The cumulative effect of these pleas is to depict
God as a kind of stalker, obsessively watching, following, and harassing
the object of his ‘delight’.16
The dubious quality of such blessedness comes into focus upon con-
sideration of the book’s indistinct use of the root (C3. In its rst appear-
ance the word means ‘curse’ (1.5), and in its nal appearance it means
‘bless’ (42.12). These meanings alternate as the verb comes up, mostly
in the frame tale.17 The word’s ambiguity in the opening narrative
destabilizes the idea of Yahweh’s blessing on Job, and may even inject
some uncertainty into Job’s blessing of Yahweh’s name (1.21). In the
poetic material, the verb occurs only once (31.20), but its force there is
14. Pss. 6.4; 42.8; 63.3; 103.4; 119.88, 149, 159.

15. Job 7.19; 10.20; 14.6, 13-16.
16. R.C. Schlobin uninchingly refers to God as a monster who pursues his victim
Job in a manner that conforms to the genre of ‘horror’. See his ‘Prototypic Horror: The
Genre of the Book of Job’, Semeia 60 (1992), pp. 23-38 (29-33).
17. Four times (C3 signies ‘bless’ (1.10, 21; 31.20; 42.12) and four times it signies
‘curse’ (1.5, 11; 2.5, 9). James L. Crenshaw (‘Job, Book of’, in ABD, III, pp. 858-68
[859]), among others, has noticed this, but only cites the use of the verb in the frame
tale(s).
clear and signicant. In a long series of rhetorical questions and self-

exonerating imprecations Job claims the blessing of the needy that he has
clothed. Job 31.19-20 reads:
If I have seen a man perishing without clothing,
or a poor man with no covering,
if his loins have not blessed me
as he warmed himself with the eece of my lambs.
This is ironically the only place where Job himself is the direct object of
blessing. The blessing of the poor man stands in signicant contrast to
Yahweh’s blessings. The Adversary states that Yahweh has blessed the
work of Job’s hands (1.10), and the narrator tells us that Yahweh blessed
Job’s later days (42.12). These blessings are not insignicant to the story,
but they lack the emotional force behind Job’s boast in 31.20 that he has
been blessed by the poor (literally by ‘his loins’, H4=I). The image of the
man’s ‘loins’ blessing Job implies an immediate response to Job’s good-
will, not a formal blessing. Any blessing generally assumes a wish for
material prosperity, but in this case there is also a sincere wish for Job’s
overall wellbeing. Job claims this blessing as truly authoritative. The
poor man’s blessing is a response to Job’s charity, whereas Yahweh’s
indirect blessings function primarily to emphasize Yahweh’s power to
the wider world. The intensity of Job’s relationship with Yahweh does
not come with a correspondingly intense bond. Divine (and somewhat
dubious) blessing not only cannot offer genuine connection, but it also
eventually leads to terrible suffering and loss.
Job only once, in 19.13, names the loss of his family as part of his
suffering, but here again the language suggests the kind of systematic
isolation that is a hallmark of domestic abuse:
He has taken my kin away from me;
My friends have become complete strangers to me.18
Textual variants could call the cause of Job’s isolation into question.
Greek texts read BJI:C9: as plural HBJI:C9:, and so make JI (‘my kins-
men’), the subject of the verb to remove: ‘my relatives desert me’. This
18. Many psalms differ in the way the singer implicates God in his loneliness. In
Ps. 38, for example, the psalmist’s isolation seems to be the result of people’s revulsion
from acute physical ailment. While this is the case for Job in 19.17-19, vv. 13-16 names
the isolation itself as the ailment. In Ps. 69 the psalmist’s own devotion to God has driven
off his friends and neighbors, and the singer tries to draw God’s attention to himself and
urges him into action. If anything, Job yearns for a little less divine attention.
reading corresponds with the lack of direct object marker in the Hebrew
text, and so indicts Job’s kin for willfully shunning him. Still, Hebrew
poetry often permits the absence of a direct object marker. An example
can be found in Job 22.23, where unmarked 9=H is the object of the
same verb, BIC. Moreover, the accusation in Job 19 is almost identical to
Ps. 88.19, which states clearly that God has taken away the psalmist’s
family, friends, and neighbors, and hidden them. On the whole, the MT
gives us a better reading of Job 19.13, supplying a clear transition from
v. 12, which describes in military terms God’s siege against Job, to an
explanation of how that metaphorical campaign is playing out in Job’s
life. God is clearly responsible for cutting Job off from others, and so is
the direct agent of Job’s miserable solitude.
This isolation from family leads Job to look upon the life of the
wicked with envy. In Job 21.14-15 the man who scorns God lives a full
life surrounded by his family, even though he rejects God outright and
dismisses God’s favor as an empty resource for a fullling life. More
than any other blessing, Job mentions the blessing of family: the pres-
ence of children and grandchildren, the joy of crawling infants and
playing youngsters (vv. 8 and 11). His ‘wise’ friends claim the wicked
man’s punishment will be carried out on his children (v. 19). Job sees no
justice in this, only a further cause for grief, because the wicked man
does not love his children enough to be concerned for them after his
death (vv. 19-20). He enjoys his family life without care for his family’s
future (v. 21). Meanwhile, Job—whose care for his children is pro-
found—is bereft of them.
Job’s outcries are ultimately overwhelmed by God’s sudden presence
and indignation. Yahweh’s speeches swell to a magnitude that Tod
Linafelt calls ‘sublime’.19 The unrelenting litany of Yahweh’s creative
power leaves no room for Job’s resistance or will. Twice Job declares his
submission, and then descends again into silence (40.4-5; 42.2-6). Job
may not know how God singled him out for ‘honor’ in the divine coun-
cil, but he cannot miss the signicance of God appointing him as inter-
cessor for the friends (42.8). Such responsibility weighs very heavily,
redoubling the burden of Yahweh’s relentless blessing. This divinely
favored status is juxtaposed with God’s disinterest in the particular
19. T. Linafelt, ‘The Wizard of Uz: Job, Dorothy, and the Limits of the Sublime’,
BibInt 14 (2006), pp. 95-109.
meaning of Job’s lost sons and daughters. In all his bluster, God does not
once mention them.20
How empty this leaves God’s reward, the ‘consolation’ family. If an
essential question of the book is ‘Does anyone serve God for nothing?’
(1.9),21 we may infer from Job’s restitution and his response to it that the
answer is ‘yes’. This afrmative, however, implies rather less nobility
and sincerity than bleak resignation. Nothing is precisely what one may
end up with after serving this deity. In his vulnerable position as God’s
darling, Job must go through the motions of gratitude, receiving so-called
compensation and consolation for his loss, but we never once read that
he takes joy in his prize. The replacement sons and daughters are all but
tokens tossed in at the end of the list of Job’s reimbursement. Their
presence is less a comfort than a constant reminder of God’s terrifying
power, and his willingness to treat people as objects.
There is at least one distinction that Yahweh makes between Job’s
offspring and his goods. God’s doubled restoration of Job’s material
property suggests that the loss of it was tantamount to theft (Exod. 22.4,
8). Whether there is an intentional reference to the laws of double resti-
tution in Exodus 22 here cannot be certain, but the implication remains
that Yahweh acknowledges his previous injustice by doubling Job’s
former wealth. That he does not double Job’s children places them in a
different category. Yahweh treats them like objects, easily destroyed or
replaced, but does not treat them as Job’s possessions, stolen and
restored. It would appear that they were never really Job’s to begin with.
This is a pervasive biblical understanding about rst-born children, espe-
cially sons, that here extends to cover all offspring.22 Their destruction
and restoration therefore not only emphasize Yahweh’s omnipotence, but
also invalidate any personal claim Job might make on these young
people. This is a strong point of comparison with Abraham’s story. The
children in fact belong to Yahweh, meaning that it is not logically
possible for him to steal them. They are a blessing that he may bestow or
remove at will.
20. We might also notice that God did not think to restore Job’s family immediately
after he passed the rst trial.
21. Crenshaw, ‘Job, Book of’, p. 861.
22. See Susan Ackerman, ‘Child Sacrice: Returning God’s Gift’, Bible Review 9
(June 1993), pp. 20-29, 56; Levenson, Death and Resurrection, p. 117.
While some readers may rejoice when the Bible undermines the notion
of children as their parents’ property, it should be noted that here the text
also undermines a parent’s entitlement to emotional connection. This
message is driven home in Genesis through a relentless imperative that
Abraham let go of his attachment to his nephew Lot and sons Ishmael
and Isaac. By the time we get to Keturah’s sons, Abraham’s detachment
seems effortless. In Job, the imperative of detachment is communicated
only in the ‘return’ of Job’s sons and daughters. Not only are these chil-
dren not really his, he now must understand that the children he loved
before were never his either. Family is exposed as an illusion, a kind of
cruel ction in which he must play a role, but which can never offer him
genuine connection.
Job therefore renews his role as family patriarch, but without the
affection we noted at the beginning of his story. For example, we see
some care for his new daughters, as when Job gives them an inheritance.
Even this, though, seems primarily aimed at adding to their marriageabil-
ity: they look good, they smell good, and now they are rich.23 The best
thing about these daughters is how easy it will be to marry them off and
be rid of them. We do not read of any sacrices on their behalf or on
behalf of their brothers. Nor do we hear of Job’s concern for their rela-
tionships with God as we did for his rst family in Job 1. Job simply
fullls his social obligations, silently, remaining faithful to the God who
has selected him for preferential treatment. Job does not, however, act
with any obvious affection, and while he does not die alone like Abra-
ham, he does die in silence.
Where is Yahweh at the end of these stories? Throughout the narra-
tives of Abraham and Job, the deity has imposed himself dramatically
and sometimes catastrophically. He has required their complete devotion
and thus isolated them from the people they love. For both men, Yahweh
is their only remaining relationship, but neither of them can experience
genuine intimacy with him, and once his purpose is achieved—and he
has their full attention—they lack even his clear presence. There is no
easy, unguarded friendship with a god of such terrifying jealousy. Given
the effect of God’s presence on the protagonists, their nal solitude may
be the truest comfort they can have.
This is a disturbing picture of God in which faith leads relentlessly to
loss. If there is any redeeming message here, it may lie in an unintended
23. Thanks to Stephen Vicchio for this pithy insight.
critique of a patriarchal worldview that objecties families as the

property of men. Both stories emerge from such a worldview, but they
are also inadvertently critical of it, exposing the ‘possession’ of family
members as an illusion. An unintentional ‘revelation’ of the text, then,
may be that patriarchal structures ultimately undermine themselves,
doing as much to rob fathers of meaningful lives as they do to privilege
them.24 That being said, it seems unwise to grasp for a message that
satises modern concerns about social justice. This dodges the problem
of ambiguous blessing as much as the ‘that’s how they thought back
then’ kind of argument. There are few narratives in the Bible where
people get what they deserve by modern, Western standards. God’s free-
dom and power are routinely emphasized over any gratifying notion of
divine justice.
In the stories of Abraham and Job, God’s favor is a fearful thing, an
ambiguous blessing that comes at great cost to the favored one and those
closest to him. At the same time that Job and Abraham are ‘rewarded’
with consolation families, objectication of those new families empties
them of true value, makes them more a burden than a blessing, and ren-
ders the loss of original families all the more tragic. This is not a matter
of voluntary sacrice, but an imperative born of the deity’s omnipotent
nature. God’s demanding attention crowds out the possibility for these
men to preserve bonds of affection and support with their families, while
God’s limitless power renders any affectionate bond with him incon-
ceivable. This leaves the faithful men who are deemed most blessed by
God in a state of deepest isolation and loss.
24. This sense of vain paternity may support the suggested translation of Job’s
Hebrew name ‘Where is the father?’ At the same time, it makes the explanation of
Abraham’s name—‘father of a multitude of nations’ (Gen. 17.5)—somewhat ironic.

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Journal for the Study of the Old Testament

Vol 34.2 (2009): 115-129

They Save Themselves Alone:

Keywords: Abraham, Job, faith, loss, blessing, family, patriarchs.

mistaken if, in our responsible eagerness to distinguish Israelite culture

If the description of Abraham’s pain is spare in Genesis 21, it is

them at an advanced age.7 The woman Keturah, however, is in no way

where a notice of blessing rings somewhat hollow. The determining

—into the complaint of Job 7.17-19:13

visit them every morning,

Likewise the devotion of Psalm 139, especially vv. 13 and 15—

Furthermore, in 10.12, Job claims God’s 5DI—usually translated ‘loving-

14. Pss. 6.4; 42.8; 63.3; 103.4; 119.88, 149, 159.

clear and signicant. In a long series of rhetorical questions and self-

23. Thanks to Stephen Vicchio for this pithy insight.

critique of a patriarchal worldview that objecties families as the

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