Sarcastic Introduction

Job’s response to Bildad’s third speech is extended (six chapters long)—even for the usually loquacious Job! Many commentators divide up the chapters attributed to Job to supply an extension to Bildad’s brief speech, as well as to wholly reconstruct a missing third speech for Zophar. Such reconstruction, however, can only proceed on a presumptive assumption of what each speaker would have said—and is thus controlled ultimately by the reconstructor’s theory rather than challenged and shaped by the text’s own structure. There is no clear consensus regarding how the materials in chapters 26–31 ought to be sorted among the various possible speakers. In what follows, therefore, we honor the existing form of the text and seek to explore the effects of its final shape on the…