The Book of Job in Medieval Jewish Philosophy

by Robert Eisen

Medieval Jewish philosophers have been studied extensively by modern scholars, but even though their philosophical thinking was often shaped by their interpretation of the Bible, relatively little attention has been paid to them as biblical interpreters. In this study, Robert Eisen breaks new ground by analyzing how six medieval Jewish philosophers approached the Book of Job. These thinkers covered are Saadiah Gaon, Moses Maimonides, Samuel ibn Tibbon, Zerahiah Hen, Gersonides, and Simon ben Zemah Duran. Eisen explores each philosopher's reading of Job on three its relationship to interpretations of Job by previous Jewish philosophers, the way in which it grapples with the major difficulties in the text, and its interaction with the author's systematic philosophical thought. Eisen also examines the resonance between the readings of Job of medieval Jewish philosophers and those of modern biblical scholars. What emerges is a portrait of a school of Joban interpretation that
was creative, original, and at times surprisingly radical. Eisen thus demonstrates that medieval Jewish philosophers were serious exegetes whom scholars cannot afford to ignore. By bringing a previously-overlooked aspect of these thinkers' work to light, Eisen adds new depth to our knowledge of both Jewish philosophy and biblical interpretation.

Genres: Judaism

336 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Yalla Balagan · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1986, the distinguished scholar Frank Talmage showed a young graduate student named Eisen a bibliography of seventy-six medieval Job commentaries in his Toronto apartment, exclaiming that almost all of them were strangers to modern scholarship. Talmage died before the project began.

Job, for the uninitiated, is a righteous man whom God allows Satan to ruin, losing wealth, children, and health as proof of his virtue. Three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, gather to explain his suffering with supreme confidence and uniform wrongness. A fourth figure, Elihu, materializes uninvited and claims to possess the answer the others missed. God then speaks from a tempest so cosmically oblique that three thousand years of readers have been arguing ever since.

Eisen's cast is a celebrity roster of medieval Jewish thought, each thinker convinced the last reader got Job wrong. Saadiah Gaon turned Satan from rebel angel into a jealous human neighbor, argued Job suffered as a public trial before skeptical witnesses, and renamed the book "The Book of Theodicy."

Maimonides declared it a parable, characterized Job as philosophically unschooled, and argued his error lay in equating happiness with wealth and children.

Samuel ibn Tibbon pushed this into abstraction: true providence belongs to the afterlife of the perfected intellect alone. Gersonides, who owned Ibn Tibbon's work but elected silence on the matter, reversed everything.

The study's keenest provocation is Eisen's finding that these thinkers were esoterically trained writers who, when views grew too radical, expressed the opposite of their true positions or buried them under outwardly orthodox piety. Decoding them, Eisen admits, resembles solving a murder mystery, and the victim is God's reputation for transparent justice.

Saadiah read Job as a symbol of Israel's ordeal among the nations, with his companions enacting the argument in which Christians and Muslims accused Jews of meriting humiliation, while Job answered with the stubbornness of a people certain of their election.

Robert Eisen is a scholar who, in rescuing seventy-six medieval Jewish commentaries from unread obscurity, has written a very Jewish book about books about a book. His medieval Jewish philosophers are serious, original, and frequently devious exegetes whose biblical commentaries deserve the same attention scholars give their systematic treatises.

Job was a philosophical Rorschach test across five centuries of Jewish thought. Saadiah saw divine patience rewarded in the afterlife, Maimonides saw intellectual poverty getting what it deserved, Ibn Tibbon saw a treatise on the immortal intellect, and Gersonides saw all three of them looking at the wrong half of the painting. The question of why the righteous suffer has gathered full urgency with every passing century since.
❤️ 🇮🇱

[Matt Schneeweiss · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks to Alex K. for recommending this book to me at the start of the summer. It has already proven indispensable in my prep for teaching Iyov in high school.

Eisen, Professor of Religion and Judaic Studies at George Washington University, is what I call “the good kind of academic”: not just interested in historical influences and context, but genuinely committed to presenting each thinker’s ideas on their own terms, in a way that serves both Beis Midrash learners and academics.

He surveys six approaches to Iyov:

1. Saadia Gaon (882-942) — the first philosophical commentary on the sefer.

2. Rambam (1138-1204) — whose chapters on Iyov in the Moreh (3:22–23, built on 3:8–21) shaped the trajectory of later commentaries more than any other.

3. Shmuel ibn Tibbon (1150-1230), — arguably more radical than his rebbi, the Rambam.

4. Zeraḥiah Ḥen (early 13th c.) — a Maimonidean who held firmly to Rambam's philosophy but read the sefer differently, the first Rishon to write a full pasuk-by-pasuk commentary, and my new best friend (more on him in a Substack post later this week).

5. Ralbag (1288-1344) — who, as usual, followed Rambam’s lead but forged his own path.

6. Rashbatz (1361–1444) — the representative anti-Maimonidean.

Each chapter analyzes the background, antecedents, philosophy, exegesis, and (for the three who wrote them) commentary. The seventh chapter, "Medieval Jewish Philosophy and the Exegesis of Job," compares and contrasts these six approaches against the backdrop of medieval Jewish commentary and philosophy. The brief final chapter, "Job Medieval, Job Modern" shows how sophisticated and original these commentaries remain by modern standards.

Unlike many academic works that can feel dry, this one kept me rapt. Clarity, readability, and real insight are never guaranteed in books like this, and I was glad to find all three.

Next time someone asks me how to learn Iyov, I’ll point them here. Given how many pages I've bent down and how many times I’ve already gone back to review, I know it’ll stay on my desk all year.

[John Antony · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very important book that fills a gaping lacuna in the reception history of the Book of Job.