The Suffering of Innocents, Martin Buber, and a Covenantal Reading of the Book of Job

Buber’s analysis of Job, offering four responses to the theodical questions that innocent suffering raises, has been highly influential since its publication in 1942, as has been Steven Kepnes’s more recent application of Buber’s analysis to the Nazi Holocaust. Each of Buber’s specific responses has been, at various points in history and today, taken up by sufferers and by those pondering suffering’s theodical implications. Yet each response retains troubling features. This article, building on Buber and Kepnes, offers an alternate reading of the Book of Job, centering on two points: (i) a possible covenantal, rather than retributive, nature of the God-Job relationship and (ii) an understanding of God’s response to Job as covenantal. This is not to suggest that such a response “solves” suffering, but it is comprehensible to Job from his own knowledge and experience of the world—an important aspect of the covenantal relationship—and is in some measure helpful. The article first reviews Kepnes’s reading of Buber, discusses four aspects of it that remain theodically troubling, and then sketches a covenantal reading of Job, drawing on the work of Edward Greenstein, Moshe Greenberg, David Burrell, Bill McKibben, Susannah Ticciati, and other more recent Jobian scholars. This discussion explores the following: (i) covenant in the Wisdom literature, (ii) a universalist reading of covenant entailing human integrity, reasoned dialogue, and the validity of human knowledge within natural, human capacity, (iii) why Job’s request to God is covenantal, and (iv) why God’s response is as well.