Morality and mortality: The dialogical interpretation of Psalm 90 in the book of Job

Abstract

This article identifies dialogical interpretation in Job as a form of aggadic inner-biblical exegesis. Job and the friends frequently attack each other through allusions to each other’s words. This interpretive dispute spreads into their allusions to other texts, which are drawn into the dialogue and caught up in the conflict. Job and the friends frequently interpret these texts differently, capitalizing on their tensions and manipulating them into weapons in their debate. Ps. 90, with its ambiguous presentation of specific and universal referents, God as deliverer and destroyer, and human transience as punishment and grounds for pity, becomes one of these weapons. While the friends appeal to the psalm to urge Job from complaint to confession, Job incorporates it into his divine confrontation. By depicting this contentious dialectic between his characters’ interpretations, the Job poet produces a meta-interpretation that represents the psalm’s conflicted advocation for sufferers courageously to confront God.