02_Burnight-co_347_370 28/10/14 10:35 Pagina 369 DOES ELIPHAZ REALLY BEGIN “GENTLY”? 369 for death) and his tacit claim in 3,23 that God does not see his “righ- teous ways”. In 4,7-8, Eliphaz “answers” Job’s question about why God allows suffering (3,20) by asserting that lm[ is inextricably re- lated to sin. He then attempts to support his assertion with a series of what Habel terms “validating proverbs” in 4,9-11 60, implying with his reference to the “roaring” lion in 4,10 (cf. 3,24) that Job’s tacit critique of God places him in danger of becoming one of the wicked. When read this way, Eliphaz’s position is consistent throughout not only chapters 4–5, but also in his subsequent speeches in chap- ters 15 and 22 (which would then not differ materially in content, but only in intensity of expression): he believes that Job and his family must have sinned to have suffered so, but asserts that if Job would only acknowledge his sin and accept the divine chastisement (5,17), he would be restored (5,18-26). As the prologue makes clear, however, Job cannot repent, for he knows of no sin that he has committed; Eliphaz’s accusations thus provoke him to anger, explaining the tenor of Job’s remarks in chapters 6–7 (see especially 6,14-18), which indicate that he feels anything but comforted by his friend’s words. On the contrary, Eli- phaz’s defense of the traditional doctrine of retribution fails utterly to convince Job, and the tone of the exchanges between Job and his “friends” will grow ever more contentious as the dialogue continues. The recognition of the intertextual element of the poet’s strategy can, in not a few cases, help to illuminate some of the otherwise puzzling lexical or rhetorical choices found in the poem. It can also demonstrate that, rather than “talking past each other” (as has often been alleged) 61, the characters are in fact “conversing”, albeit in an ingenious and subtle way. University of Northern Iowa John BURNIGHT Cedar Falls, IA 50613 U.S.A. 60 HABEL, The Book of Job, 123. 61 Norman Snaith’s comments (The Book of Job; Its Origin and Purpose [Naperville, IL 1968] 8) typify this view; he writes that the series of speeches is “scarcely a dialogue in any normal sense of the word. In the Book of Job we have a dialogue only in the sense that they all speak in turn, one after the other […]. The content of each speech is usually strangely independent of what has gone before and what follows”.