Stranger Than Fiction

The Lord said to Satan, “Have you ^[b]considered My servant Job? For there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man ^[c]fearing God and turning away from evil. And he still holds firm to his integrity, although you incited Me against him to ^[d]ruin him without cause.”  Job  2:3 NASB

You incited Me – It seems to me that I remember a passage which proclaims it is a sin to tempt God.  What does that mean?  Well, it must mean something like the use of the verb sût in this verse.  It seems very, very strange to discover that God acknowledges that haśśāṭān has “incited” Him against Job.  What?  Is that really possible?  Consider the word-umbrella covered by sût.  “Entice, allure, instigate, incite—the verb typically has evil connotations.  Later in Job we find that God rescues the righteous from such nefarious behavior (Job 36:16), but apparently God allows such deceptive provocation to affect Him.  Doesn’t this imply that haśśāṭān has some kind of persuasive power independent of God’s rule?  And how is that to be understood?  The only unambiguous element of this conundrum seems to be the reiteration of two things: first, it is God who brings that ruin upon Job even if haśśāṭān is the agent, and second, God seems to be moved by haśśāṭān’s wager even though He is in charge of the whole drama.

The repetition of the description of Job’s sterling character, even after the initial onslaught of woes, only sets Job up for more tragedy.  Why doesn’t God defend His champion and stop the charade?  There’s nothing in the text that diminishes our anxiety.  If the greatest saint among us is subject to haśśāṭān’s enticement, how can we expect any protection from God?  God admits that He Himself has acted against Job without cause (ḥinnām)!  This is the scariest scenario imaginable.  We who are far less righteous than our human exemplar certainly cannot expect any more justice than he deserves, and yet, God delivered Job to unspeakable tragedy.  What does that say about us?

The Greek world believed in the conflict of divine powers, some good, some evil.  Western civilization has pretty much incorporated this idea into its ethical systems.  Westerners tend to believe that Man is the nexus of the conflict between Good and Evil (a devil on one shoulder, and angel on the other).  We consider “choice” the fundamental distinction between Man and animals, and choice, of course, implies the existence of real alternatives.  Man has the power to decide between Good and Evil—and is called upon by divinity to choose the Good.  But this verse tends to undermine all of this ethical foundation for it suggests that Good and Evil are not our choices but are rather the whims of divine contests.  No matter what Job chooses (and we also), divine gamesmanship determines the outcome.  We become pawns, sacrificed on the cosmic chessboard, in order for celestial beings to prove a point.  That doesn’t sit very well with me, nor does it seem to be the tenor of the rest of Scripture.  Maybe that’s why Job is such a disturbing story.  It just doesn’t seem fair!  And we desperately want God to be fair.  This verse is uncomfortably close to the idea that haśśāṭān is more than a functionary in God’s government.  It suggests that haśśāṭān is the personal embodiment of Evil (with a capital E) and that he has independent persuasive powers such that he can incite God to do what is patently unfair.  How such suggestions were even allowed into the sacred text is a big question—not answered today.

Topical Index: haśśāṭān, evil, choice, incite, sût, unjust, Job 2:3