Sotah 062

On that very day Rabbi Yehoshu'a ben-Hyrcanos gave the following exegesis: Job served God only from love, since it says [Job 13:15]: "Though He slay me yet will I await Him." Yet this matter is not decided: is the word to be understood as 'I look to Him' or 'not look'? Scripture says [Job 27:5]: "Until my dying day I shall not forego my steadfastness" - this teaches that he acted out of love. Rabbi Yehoshu'a said: Would that the dust might fall off your eyes, Rabban Yoĥanan ben-Zakkai! Throughout your life you used to say that Job served God only from fear, since it says [Job 1:1], "a steadfast and upright man who feared God and avoided wrongdoing" - and here is your student's student, Yehoshu'a, teaching that he served out of love.

1:
This mishnah brings to a close the material unrelated to the general topic of the tractate, which has been prompted by an associational format: midrashic explications given by Rabbi Akiva "on that very day" - on the day that Rabban Gamli'el was deposed from the presidency of the Sanhedrin and replaced by Rabbi El'azar ben-Azaryah. However, in this last mishnah of chapter 5 it is Rabbi Yehoshu'a who offers the exegesis and not Rabbi Akiva.

2:
The book of Job is one of the greatest literary gems of the third section of the bible, the hagiographa. Despite the fact that the Gemara [Bava Batra 14b] suggests that the book of Job was written by none other than Moses himself, the absolute consensus of modern scholarship is that its language, its content and its style all point to it as being a product of the period of the second Bet Mikdash, probably during the 3rd or 2nd century BCE. (The very fact that the book is included in the hagiographa and not in the Torah or the prophets is conclusive evidence of its lateness.) The book consists of an outer literary framework (chapters 1,2 and 42) and the main kernel of the work (chapters 3 to 41). The outer framework presents a picture of the perfect man who is subjected by God to heartbreaking tragedies simply in order to prove that he really is God-fearing and that he is not a time-server, as Satan claims. This outer story is either borrowed by the author from an already existent literature about the Canaanite hero, Job, or it was specially written by the author in order to contrast starkly with the main burden of his message. (Concerning the Canaanite origins of Job see what I wrote about Parashat Noaĥ: the comment is available at our website )

3:
In the outer story Job is portrayed as an impossibly pious man who absolutely refuses to doubt God's essential righteousness even when he believes that God is almost thrashing the very life out of him. The portrayal borders on the comic. The main part of the book shows Job as full of doubts: he desperately wants to understand why there is suffering in God's world. The format is that of a Greek tragedy (such as those of Sophocles, Euripedes etc) in which various friends come to comfort Job in his great tragedy and he enters into argument with them. The friends offer various theological propositions which serve to 'explain' suffering in general and Job's suffering in particular. Job refutes these specious arguments one by one. Ultimately Job summons God to appear in court to justify Himself. God answers the summons (chapters 38-41) and the general thrust of his argument is that mortal man is not capable of understanding divine purposes. (I have often described the whole of the book thus: for dozens of chapters Job asks 'why?', and at the end God answers 'because!'.)

4:
The dialogue format of the book is typical of the Greek tragedy as I have already pointed out. But among the sages there was not unanimity as to how to relate to the book. In the Gemara [Bava Batra 15a] we find an anonymous sage who claims that "Job never existed, he is just an allegory" - a claim which shocked other sages. I do not think that we should have any qualms about seeing the book of Job as one of the greatest dramatic philosophies ever composed - by an unknown author.

To be continued.

Dan Weber writes:

You mention in the last shiur that in Mishnaic times the Shaliach Tzibbur would sing each verse of the Hallel and the congregation would follow with, "Halleluljah." However, if a child lead the Hallel, that child would say a word and the congregation would repeat the word, etc. until the end of Hallel. That makes perfect sense in that a child cannot be the Shaliach Tzibbur for those who have an obligation to say Hallel. However, does this imply that children did, in fact, lead Hallel in ancient times and, if so, 1) why would that situation occur if they could not be a true Shaliach Tzibbur and 2) what implications does that have for modern-day services?

I respond:

The Mishnah [Sukkah 3:10] tells us that "if someone has a [Canaanite] slave, a woman or a child recite [the Hallel] for him he should say after them everything that they say (and let him be ashamed of it)..."

From this we can see that where men were unable to recite Hallel (because of their own ignorance) they could fulfill their duty by having a slave, a woman or a child who did know dictate to them the whole of Hallel, word for word.

I am not certain that this has any real implications for our modern services since the format of our services is now essentially different. But there could certainly be circumstances in which someone could perform their duty by repeating word for word what a child dictates to them - someone blinded for instance who cannot recite the Amidah, Shema, Hallel etc from memory.