Job 28 as a Thematic Unifier Clarifying Human Responsibility through the Revelation of Wisdom and Understanding in Relationship to Yahweh

The goal of the project was to discern and articulate the literary relationship of Job 28 to its larger literary context and demonstrate that the chapter serves the rhetorical purpose of the author to legitimize the kingship of Yahweh over creation. The study argues that Job 28 functions as a thematic unifier that clarifies human responsibility in relationship to Yahweh. The project demonstrates that Job 28 functions as the integrative center of the book and is a figurative interpolation, a metaphorical embellishment to the search for wisdom and answers observed in the defense and debate cycles (Job 4-27; 28:1-22) while it prepares the reader to encounter the solution to the concerns raised in the book in the forthcoming context (Job 28:23-28; 38-41). The project proposed a plurality of interpretive methods used conjunctively from chapters two through five to accommodate the interpretive challenges observed in chapter one regarding authorship, the identity of the speaking character, the lack of geographical and genealogical indicators that complicate efforts to reconstruct the context that shaped the book, and the proposed emendations to the final form of the book recommended by Clines and Greenstein. Chapters two through five of the project provides a literature review (chapter two), an aesthetic, grammatical approach to discern the compositional nature and function of Job 28 to its larger literary context (chapter three), comparison and engagement with a sample of ancient Near Eastern conflict myth (chapter four), and an exposition of Job 28 to balance the inherent subjectivity of the aesthetic methodology detailed in chapter three of the project (chapter five). The plurality of interpretive methods used conjunctively demonstrate the thesis that Job 28 can be understood in its final form, serves the rhetorical purpose of the author to legitimize the kingship of Yahweh, and functions as a thematic unifier that clarifies human responsibility in relationship to Yahweh.