Metaphor Competition in the Book of Job

by Lance R. Hawley

Book cover: Metaphor Competition in the Book of Job

Extent: 256 pages

Publisher: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

Subjects: Biblical Studies

Series: Journal of Ancient Judaism. Supplements

Series volume number: 26

Language: English

Hardback (Published)

(March 2018)

ISBN: 9783525531358

6.06 x 9.09 inches

Price: $115.00

In stock

Within the book of Job, the interlocutors (Job, the friends, and Yahweh) seem to largely ignore one another’s arguments. This observation leads some to propose that the dialogue lacks conceptual coherence. Lance Hawley argues that the interlocutors tangentially and sometimes overtly attend to previously stated points of view and attempt to persuade their counterparts through the employment of metaphor. Hawley uses the theoretical approach of Conceptual Metaphor Theory to trace the concepts of speech and animals throughout the dialogue. Beyond explaining the individual metaphors in particular texts, he shows how speech metaphors compete with one another, most perceptibly in the expressions of job’s words are wind. With regard to animal metaphors, coherence is especially perceptible in the job is a predatory animal metaphor. In these expressions, the dialogue demonstrates intentional picking-up on previously stated arguments. Hawley argues that the animal images in the divine speeches are not metaphorical, in spite of recent scholarly interpretation that reads them as such. Rather, Yahweh appears as a sage to question the negative status of wild animals that Job and his friends assume in their significations of people are animals. This is especially apparent in Yahweh’s strophes on the lion and the wild donkey, both of which appear multiple times in the metaphorical expressions of Job and his friends.

  • By (author) Lance R Hawley

". . . an engaging read that yields perceptive insights throughout the entirety of the book . . . Hawley's work is well-researched and is remarkably interdisciplinary- incorporating scholarship from the diverse fields of biblical studies, cognitive linguistics, zoology, zooarchaeology, and botany. Hawley's methodology in searching for traceable cognitive metaphors is laid out in an organized manner and is precisely followed throughout the examination of metaphors, with Hawley frequently pausing to reflect on the exegetical conclusions of his work. . . . Hawley's well-outlined methodology is one of the major reasons why his conclusions concerning metaphor questioning are so convincing." --Hernandez, Dominick S., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Hebrew Studies, 61 (2020): 391-415