Commentary Compass

Clines’s three-volume Word Biblical Commentary on Job is one of those works whose value is not best measured by asking whether it should be read straight through. Its scale and density make selective reading not a compromise but often the most fruitful way to use it. Clines himself distinguishes between gaining a large-scale view of Job and doing close “microscope” work on particular passages. I would therefore begin with his overall argument, then move deliberately to the places where his interpretation is most distinctive, illuminating or provocative.

Start with the Orientation, not chapter 1

The first thing I would read is the “Orientation to the Book of Job” in volume 1, especially Clines’s discussion of the book’s argument. This is unusually high-yield because it gives, in concentrated form, the interpretive framework that will govern much of the three-volume commentary. Clines deliberately begins with the book in its present form as a coherent work before turning to more speculative questions of origins and composition.

Here Clines traces the movement from the patient Job of the prologue to the protesting Job of the dialogues. He argues that when quiet acceptance is no longer possible, Job’s anger is still religiously significant because it remains directed toward God: Job insists on encounter rather than abandoning the relationship. At the same time, Job’s experience exposes the inadequacy of any exact equation between righteousness and prosperity, or sin and suffering.

The Orientation also previews some of Clines’s most characteristic conclusions about the end of the book. He reads the divine speeches not as a direct explanation of Job’s suffering, but as confronting Job with a natural world whose purposes frequently escape human understanding and using that mystery as an analogy for the moral order. Retribution is therefore pushed to the margins rather than simply affirmed or denied. Job finally yields before a God whose purposes he cannot fully comprehend—only for the epilogue, provocatively, to restore Job’s prosperity and partly reinstate the very retributive pattern the book has destabilised.

Then read Job 9–10 and 16–19

Job’s developing legal struggle with God is one of the best reasons to read Clines selectively. In Job 9–10, Job recognises the fundamental problem: God is both his opponent and immeasurably more powerful than he is. What he longs for is an independent mediator who could place a hand upon both parties and make genuine adjudication possible. Clines stresses that no such mediator actually exists; the wish is precisely powerful because it is impossible. Yet imagining the possibility gives Job enough resilience to address God directly and continue pressing his case.

The theme becomes still more distinctive in Job 16 and 19. Clines connects Job’s “witness,” “spokesman” and “advocate” language with Job’s own protestation of innocence. Rather than identifying the famous “redeemer” of 19:25 with God or another heavenly figure, he understands Job’s own testimony—his enduring cry of innocence—as the advocate that can outlive him and continue speaking his case. In Clines’s reading, Job is forced to become, in effect, his own defender because the heavenly mediator he needs is unavailable.

I would read these sections even if I ultimately disagreed with Clines. His interpretation of Job 19:25–27 is controversial, and other major commentators understand the redeemer quite differently. But this is precisely the sort of passage where Clines earns his place on a selective reading list: he reconstructs the development of Job’s legal imagery across several speeches and offers an interpretation sufficiently coherent and provocative that it forces the reader to reconsider familiar assumptions.

If time is very short

Within this cluster, I would prioritise Clines on Job 9:32–10:22, 16:18–21 and 19:21–29. These passages allow the reader to watch the legal metaphor develop from the impossible wish for mediation to Job’s increasingly determined search for a testimony that can vindicate him.

Then read Job 27–28 and Clines on Elihu

One of the highest-yield portions of volume 2 is Clines’s treatment of Job 27–28 and the Elihu speeches, because here he advances an unusually bold reconstruction of the book. He argues that the Elihu speeches originally followed Job 27 rather than Job 31, and that Job 28—the poem on wisdom—originally formed the conclusion to Elihu’s speeches. On his reconstruction, Job 29–31 then follows as Job’s final speech, leading directly into Yahweh’s reply.

This is not merely rearrangement for its own sake. Clines sees a significant theological link between the end of Elihu’s present speech in 37:24 and the conclusion of Job 28. Elihu ends by associating wisdom with fearing God, while Job 28 culminates in “the fear of the Lord” as wisdom. Clines therefore reads the wisdom poem as the natural climax of Elihu’s argument about how human beings learn from God and recognise the limits of their knowledge.

Whether or not one accepts the reconstruction, it is worth reading because it changes the interpretive question. Instead of asking simply, “Who speaks Job 28?”, Clines asks what happens if the poem is heard as the culmination of Elihu’s theology. Likewise, relocating Elihu restores an immediate sequence from Job’s demand that God answer him in 31:35 to Yahweh’s appearance in chapter 38. The proposal therefore attempts to solve literary problems at more than one point in the book.

I would read Clines here primarily because the proposal is distinctive, not because it should be accepted without reservation. A reader who prefers to interpret the received form of Job will find Garrett an especially useful counterweight. The value of Clines is that he makes the structural problem impossible to ignore and offers a worked-out alternative rather than merely noting the difficulty.

That distinction is important for the purpose of this article: high-yield reading includes arguments worth thinking through even when another commentary may ultimately be more persuasive.

If time is very short

Read Clines’s explanation of the role and location of the Elihu speeches, his discussion of the closing movement of Job 37, and his treatment of Job 28. It is not necessary to work consecutively through every verse of Job 32–37 to grasp what is distinctive about his proposal.

Above all, read Job 38–42

If I had to choose only one substantial passage from Clines after the introductory Orientation, I would choose his treatment of Job 38–42. Here the major themes of the commentary converge: Job’s lawsuit against God, the problem of retribution, the significance of the natural world, and the question of what Job finally does—or does not—concede.

Clines’s central insight is that the parade of creation and wild animals is not simply intended to overwhelm Job with God’s superior power. The striking feature of Yahweh’s world is how little of it exists for human purposes. Wild creatures live independently of human usefulness, and God appears to delight in them precisely as they are. Behemoth and Leviathan are not evil forces that need eliminating; they are creatures belonging within a world whose order cannot be reduced to human expectations of utility or immediate moral recompense.

This becomes Clines’s answer to the apparent irrelevance of God’s speeches. Job has demanded an account of divine justice, but Yahweh largely refuses the terms of that demand. Instead he presents a world whose design includes mystery, wildness and realities that cannot be explained by a simple principle of retribution. By the end, the discourse itself shifts from argument toward wonder: the extended contemplation of Leviathan becomes almost lyrical, inviting Job to perceive the world differently rather than supplying the explanation he originally demanded.

Does Job finally repent?

Clines is especially worth reading on Job’s two responses to Yahweh. He argues that 40:3–5 is not yet a capitulation: Job decides not to repeat his case, but he does not retract his words, confess wrongdoing or concede that God has proved him wrong. His accusations remain, as it were, on the record. That helps explain why a second divine speech is still necessary.

His treatment of 42:6 is even more distinctive. Rather than the familiar “I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes,” Clines translates Job’s response along the lines of submission and accepting consolation. He understands Job as abandoning the lawsuit and bringing his mourning to an end, not primarily as confessing a previously hidden moral sin.

This is another place where I would read Clines even if I were not persuaded by every conclusion. His philological discussion makes clear why Job 42:6 admits several competing interpretations, while his larger reading forces the reader to ask exactly what has changed between Job and God. The value lies partly in the argument itself and partly in making an over-familiar “repentance” reading feel exegetically unsettled again.

A practical reading plan

For a commentary of this size, I would think in tiers rather than attempt to read evenly. The aim is to capture Clines’s distinctive interpretive contribution first, then expand outward where additional time permits.

If you have roughly 10% of the time: read the Orientation to the Book of Job; Job 9:32–10:22; 16:18–21; 19:21–29; and then Job 38–42. This gives you Clines’s overall map, his distinctive reconstruction of Job’s search for an advocate, and his mature interpretation of the divine speeches and Job’s final response.

If you have roughly 20%: add Job 3; Clines’s treatment of the end of the third cycle, Job 27–28 and the placement of Elihu; selected portions of Job 36–37; and Job 29–31. The result is a much fuller view of how Job’s protest develops, how Clines reconstructs the literary architecture of the latter half of the book, and how Job’s final legal challenge sets up the divine response.

If you have substantially more time: work selectively through the dialogue cycles, especially passages where a linguistic or structural question interests you, rather than simply proceeding page by page. Clines is exceptionally useful as a “microscope”: once the larger interpretation is understood, his detailed philological and textual discussions become much easier to use purposefully. That is close to the way Clines himself describes the relationship between his large-scale Orientation and detailed exposition.

Where I would not read Clines alone

Clines is often most valuable precisely where I would least want him to be my only commentator. Three examples stand out: his interpretation of the advocate and redeemer language in Job 16 and 19; his reconstruction of the third cycle and relocation of Elihu and Job 28; and his reading of Job 42:6. In each case the argument is substantial and illuminating, but each also represents a contested position on which comparison with another strong commentary materially improves judgment.

For that reason, Clines works particularly well alongside a commentator such as Garrett, whose reading of the received form of Job is considerably more conservative at precisely these points. The disagreement is productive. Reading both makes the underlying exegetical decisions visible rather than allowing either interpretation to appear inevitable.

Bottom line

If I were approaching Clines’s three volumes for the first time, I would resist both extremes: neither attempt to read every page consecutively nor reduce the set to a reference work consulted only for difficult Hebrew. Begin with the Orientation, follow Job’s legal struggle through selected passages, spend serious time on the structural proposals surrounding Elihu and Job 28, and read Job 38–42 closely. That route captures much of what makes Clines distinctive: philological depth, literary imagination, theological provocation and an unusual willingness to make a large interpretive argument.