Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 67:2 (Jun 2024)
Article: ‘Twas Divine Of You: Job’s Hedge Of Protection As A Defense Of God’s Action In Job 1–2
Author: Cooper Smith

JETS 67:2 (June 2024) p. 221

‘Twas Divine Of You: Job’s Hedge Of Protection As A Defense Of God’s Action In Job 1–2

Cooper Smith*

* Cooper Smith is an adjunct professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and an affiliated faculty member at Trinity Christian College. He can be contacted at [email protected].

Abstract: This article proposes a construal of God’s action in the Joban prologue (Job 1–2) that is theologically consistent and exegetically compelling. Articulated by Thomas Aquinas, a traditional theological account of God’s orientation toward evil affirms that God only permits evil; he never wills the evil itself nor is its direct cause. Despite such theological boundaries but based on certain exegetical evidence, many interpreters affirm or imply God’s culpability in desiring or directly causing Job’s suffering. Those who defend God’s action do so with valid theological conclusions but on an insufficient exegetical basis. I retrieve theological concepts from Thomas Aquinas while correcting several of his exegetical conclusions about Job 1–2. Specifically, I propose that Job 1:10 is the interpretive key that signifies that God is the efficient cause of removing the hedge around Job and the permissive cause of Job’s calamities. This proposal allows God to be both narratively active and ontologically perfect, thus satisfying both exegetical and theological concerns. Far from being an interpretive problem, Job 1:10 serves as a textual grounding for the perfection of God’s action in his causal relationship to evil.

Key words: suffering, problem of evil, divine action, efficient cause, permissive cause, theological interpretation of Scripture, retrieval, hedge of protection, theodicy

While sufferers often identify with Job, the God of the prologue does not fare as well. Robert Frost typifies the basic contours of much contemporary interpretation in his Masque of Reason, a play purporting to be a new concluding chapter of the book of Job. In this work of fiction, God explains to Job the reason for his suffering by saying, “I was just showing off to the Devil, Job, as is set forth in chapters One and Two. Do you mind?” To which Job responds poignantly, “‘Twas human of You. I expected more.”1 Many consider the God of the prologue to be manipulable, erratic, and lowly, a being far inferior to the God of classical theism.

When considering the God of the Joban prologue, interpreters struggle between two seemingly opposed forces. On the one hand, Ch...