Now My Eyes Have Seen You. Images of Creation and Evil in the Book of Job

Now My Eyes Have Seen You. Images of Creation and Evil in the Book of Job. By Robert S. Fyall. New Studies in Biblical Theology 12. Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2002, 208 pp., n.p., paper.

This book is a further expansion of the author's doctoral dissertation completed at Edinburgh under John Gibson in 1991. As indicated by the subtitle, Fyall examines the images of creation and evil in a book that has been so thoroughly combed over (in the opinion of some) that finding new things to say about it is a difficult task. However, Fyall does scholarship a great service in this study. This book is a specialized study of Job's creation theology, as well as an argument that Behemoth is a figure of death, and that Leviathan is a guise of Satan. Holding this position requires the author to take an extensive look at Canaanite and, to a lesser extent, Mesopotamian sources to undergird his thesis. He further argues that the author of Job imaginatively used ancient Canaanite and Mesopotamian mythology and integrated it with the revelation given about the true nature of God and his relationship with creation.

The plan of the book proceeds with an introduction to the study in chapter 1. This is followed in the next chapter by a discussion of the legal metaphor that underlies and gives coherence to the book. The legal theme is traced throughout Job and focuses on the "Redeemer" passage in 19:21-27. The heavenly court is seen as an expression of the doctrine of providence. This leads to chapter 3, where a discussion of creation theology in Job takes place. Then chapter 4 examines the raging sea, which is the most basic OT image of the forces of evil. That study then lays a foundation for the next four chapters, where the implications of all these other images are focused on Behemoth and Leviathan. Chapter 9 concentrates on Job 42, arguing that this is not an anticlimax, but a powerful climax of the book's theology and the unifying point of its prose and poetry. Concluding the book is an appendix, which very briefly discusses Job and Canaanite myth. One could have wished this topic to be discussed in more detail, but that may have required a separate monograph to do the subject justice.

Fyall's argument runs counter to the naturalistic interpretation of Behemoth and Leviathan expressed by Driver/Gray, Dhorme, etc., but Fyall asserts that his interpretation of Behemoth and Leviathan and other mythological references to death and evil allows interpreters to find the Satan (or personified evil) throughout the book. This would answer the nagging question posed by so many regarding the apparent disappearance of the Satan after Job 1-2.

The book is interesting and well worth reading. It should be considered in any discussion of the interpretation of Behemoth and Leviathan, even if one disagrees with Fyall's position. The author has gone to great lengths to find intertextual links within Job, and between Job and other parts of the OT to back his claim, though at times this linking may be a bit strained. The same may be true of his linkage with Canaanite sources. None of the presented evidence is proof when taken individually, but the cumulative effect of so many links to other OT passages and Canaanite sources makes Fyall's argument worth considering.

Daniel P. Bricker

Azusa Pacific University, Azusa, CA

Copyright Evangelical Theological Society Jun 2003
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