Job 19:23-27a

Today's selection from Job, the conclusion of one of his speeches insisting that he has done nothing to deserve his misfortunes, is a familiar one, especially the latter part which the Church has long quoted at the beginning of the Burial Office, as an affirmation of the Resurrection and Continuing Life of Christ, in which the believer hopes to participate. The compilers of our current Lectionary confirm this interpretation by coupling our passage with a Gospel lesson in which Jesus affirms that there is resurrection in a confrontation with Sadducees.

However, attention should be paid to the context of the saying in Job itself. In verses 23 and 24, Job demands the right o vindicate himself; it is only in the next three verses that he declares his faith - indeed, he says he "knows" -that he will be vindicated by a figure we translate as "redeemer". The question is, who was Job envisioning as his "redeemer".

By capitalizing the "r" in redeemer in some English versions of the Bible, and in the Book of Common Prayer (pages 469 and 491 of BCP 1979, but not at page 324 in BCP 1928), the Church has, in a sense, pre-judged the question, and has implied that we have here a proleptic reference to Christ.

This is as good an example as one might hope to find of what theologians mean when they refer to "tradition" as a source of our revelatory knowledge. That is, it is an example of a "traditional" interpretation by the Church in some official way of a biblical passage.

If we seek to interpret the passage apart from this tradition, we see that the Hebrew word, though to be sure it can properly be translated as "redeemer", really has more a meaning of "advocate" where it appears in other contexts - perhaps in contemporary terms, "public defender". In other words, he is an entirely human figure. Yes, it's true Job does envision that his vindication by his "Geol" is to be in the future, but it's unclear whether he means simply after his anticipated death, or whether he's referring to some eschatalogical "time after time". The Hebrew phrase, which our NRSV translates as "at the last" is really not clear.

It seems impossible to answer with certainty, but the impression from Job as a whole, and from the Wisdom Literature generally, of which it is an example, suggests that its author was probably thinking in more mundane terms than our Christian traditional interpretation suggests.

And yet, can we deny that Old Testament writers sometimes - in fact, quite often - wrote more truly than they themselves knew or understood? Is the Church not justified in seeing Christ- though hidden - in the Old Testament? If not, in what sense can we affirm that the Old Testament is Holy Scripture for us?