Job's Final Seven Strange Words

Job 42:6

"Job reminds us that God does not micromanage the world. Creation’s freedom, which allows for beauty and growth, also allows for tragedy. Faith, then, is not about receiving an answer but about finding courage and love in the face of the unknown."

Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson

Rabbi Artson’s words help bring us to the finish line of the Book of Job. The 42nd and final chapter includes both genres of the book - poetry and prose, real and idealized. The poetic part that is the bulk of the book ends with the final words that Job says to God and to us as he steps off the stage. The prose section, known also as ‘the fable’ is a sort of epilogue with a happy-ish end - Job’s fortune is restored, and he even has ten new children - although no wife is mentioned.

There is much curiosity about the new family, especially the three named daughters - no names are given to the seven sons - but that is for another time. What interests us at this time, as Job is on our minds in the midst of such sorrowful times in the world - are the final seven words that he utters - words that many claim are severely mistranslated and misunderstood.

Rabbi Harold Kushner, who’s been our helpful guide through this book, helps to unpack the multiple ways of understating this closing thought:

“Job has evolved from the realm of theology to that or religious experience, from discussing God to encountering God. Job’s questions have been answered, his doubts erased by the content of God‘s words from the whirlwind, but by the contact he has met God and all theological quibbles have melted away .

Then Job concludes his response, and the author of the Book of Job concludes his masterpiece with seven words of Hebrew that seem to be the key to understanding the book, and that are, alas, untranslatable with any degree of certainty.”

What are those seven words?

עַל־כֵּן אֶמְאַס וְנִחַמְתִּי עַל־עָפָר וָאֵפֶר׃

“Therefore, I recant and relent,

Being but dust and ashes.”

Job 42:6 (Revised JPS Translation)

So that’s how the book ends? Job says that he’s sorry?

There are radically different ways to read some of the words in this enigmatic verse. In (God) After Auschwitz: Tradition and Change in Post-Holocaust Jewish Thought, Zachary Braiterman explores some of the different ways two such words can be understood - with very different theological implications:

“I can think of no other case in which the interpretation of an entire text hangs on one such punchline, on the precise interpretation of two words. Does the Hebrew word emas mean retract or despise? Why does Job despise? Of what does he recant? The word nichamti is also unclear. Does it mean Job ‘repents? Or does nichamti reflect a turn of mind? If Job never retracts his complaint, the protest stands, and the book remains consistently anti-theodic until the end.”

Greenstein’s translation approach also takes issue with the humble and meek version that most translations adopt. He presents a clear grammatical case for coming up with his defiant version:

“That is Why I am Fed Up, I take pity on ‘dust and ashes’ “

And finally, in a similar vein, Kushner suggests that there’s much more here to explore, and a very different message to end the book with:

“The King James translation renders it “wherefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes”. The Revised Standard Version understands it in a similar vein: “therefore, I despise myself and repent.”

For both of those traditional, theologically driven translations, the ending of the poem has Job admitting that God was right, and Job was a sinner for doubting God. I find it hard to believe that the author of the poem means to portray Job as the villain of the story…The poet and scholar Stephen Mitchell challenges the King James/Revised Standard rendering of the verse on linguistic as well as theological grounds.

Not only are they rooted in a theory of man as a depraved sinner who has no right to challenge God, they misunderstood the Hebrew terminology in the process.

Mitchell translates that last line “I am comforted about being mortal.”

My own understanding of this crucial verse largely follows Mitchell, it would read “I reject everything that has been said to this point by me and my visitors, and having met God and being reassured that I am not alone and abandoned in this world, I am a comforted, vulnerable human being.”

On that note, the poem of Job ends.”

The Job poem ends with verse 6 but 11 more verses, prose style, matching the opening chapters, bring the book to its odd happy end: Job dies peacefully, at the age of 140, surrounded by a new family, with four generations.

So what are we to make of Job in 2025 and what are those seven words from different perspectives come to teach us?

Perhaps that it’s on each of us to keep exploring further. To take Job as a test case for how we rise up when injustice and suffering occur, as they will, and how we make sense of a world in which there is a lot of everything -- a world in which even the creator is challenged to co-exist with natural forces, suffering and hope.

The Rev. Dr. Serene Jones, a friend and mentor, leaves us with this thought:

"The story of Job resonates today because it acknowledges the brutal randomness of suffering in the world. But it also points us toward community, and that we, not God alone, must be the ones to care for each other in the face of injustice."

We close this book with gratitude and turn our eyes towards the next selection of poetic mystery in the Hebrew Bible, and the most erotic book of them all - stay tuned for the Song of Songs, coming next week.

Below the Bible Belt: 929 chapters, 42 months, daily reflections.

Become a free or paid subscriber and join Rabbi Amichai’s 3+ years interactive online quest to question, queer + re-read between the lines of the entire Hebrew Bible. Enjoy daily posts, weekly videos and monthly learning sessions. 2022-2025.

Become a Paid Subscriber? Thank you for your support!

#Job #IYOV #Job42 #hebrewbible #כתובים #Ketuvim #Hebrewbible #Tanach #929 #איוב #חכמה #labshul #belowthebiblebelt929

#RebuketoGod #heresy #Job’slastwords #Theodicy #repent? #dustandashes #Dr.SereneJones

#peace #prayforpeace #nomorewar #hope #peaceisposible #life’sbigquestions #patriarchy #injustice #Poeticjustice #theend