TL;DR

A great book on lamentation and vigorous prayer. Just don’t get triggered by passing references to left-leaning socio-political stuff, which is very few and far between.

Contents

This may be a strange thing to start a review off, but I’ve always found presenting the table of contents for a book useful for any potential reader. I don’t know how many people skip the TOC or actually read it, but I find that showing it here at least gives one a bird’s eye view of what he’s getting out of it. So here’s the road map for this book:

  • Part 1 Models of Vigorous Prayer in the Bible

    • Voices from the Ragged Edge
    • God’s Loyal Opposition

  • Part 2 Making Sense of the Book of Job

    • The Question of Appropriate Speech
    • Does God Come to Bury Job or to Praise Him?

  • Part 3 Unbinding the Aqedah from the Straitjacket of Tradition

    • Is It Permissible to Criticize Abraham or God?
    • Reading Rhetorical Signals in the Aqedah and Job
    • Did Abraham Pass the Test?

  • Conclusion: The Gritty Spirituality of Lament

Review

With a provocative subtitle like “how to talk back to God” or sub-headings like “Is It Permissible to Criticize Abraham or God?”, you might be inclined to pass up a book that seemingly tries to argue for back-sassing the Lord of Hosts or claiming that God’s testing of Abraham was sinful.

But neither tenet is actually argued here. Instead, the author, J. Richard Middleton, runs through the aspect of vigorous prayer, specifically the sub-genre of lamentation, then goes on to the wisdom book of Job and re-examines the final speeches that God utters as one of reorientation and comfort, and finally delves into the titular event of the ‘Aqedah’, that is, the binding of Isaac.

Middleton does a great job in keeping to the texts with careful exegetical analysis and explicitly denoting his own postulates and speculation. He also pulls in other historical sources/commentaries, Christian and Jewish, to give the reader a feel for how these texts are and were handled and thought of throughout the course of history.

Even smaller things such as “speech resumption patterns” are helpful not just within the context of Job and Genesis, but to Scripture as a whole as yet another useful marker to be on the look out for when trying to aim for the truth and better clarity in Scripture.

I think calling his views “novel” or “modern” might be overstating the case. Middleton is as I’ve said careful to stay within the confines of the scriptures and notes on multiple occasions to not blithely and recklessly throw out the traditional interpretations of Job’s suffering and the Aqedah.

And I did not sense any sort of subversive propaganda–any sort of conceit or deceit–in this book. As one based comedian states, “I may be wrong, but I’m not lying”, and this holds true here.

Now, is this the be-all, end-all interpretation of these two characters and the events that happened to them? No, I don’t think so, and the author is not ideologically possessed such that you must believe this or else! I personally need to delve further into the texts themselves to validate a few questions I have, but it’s definitely refreshing to see a different perspective.

Perhaps equally or more importantly than that is the awareness the oddity of certain passages that should give pause and warrant more attention than we had initially assumed. When I mean “odd”, I don’t mean it in the sense of being incongruous to our own sensibilities and values, but “odd” as in what the text says, doesn’t say, textual patterns being broken, where characters are, where they’re not, etc. To use a videogame analogy, it’s a bit like seeing a circle of equidistant stones with one missing in Breath of the Wild out in the world randomly, an aspect of the game that quietly nudges the player (rather than explicitly with a cutscene or text marker) to investigate further once they realize the intentional formation.

My one critique I do have is that, as you can tell by the table of contents, the titular events of this book are written last. I understand the pedagogical approach of this way of building the reader up to properly explain the argument, but I and perhaps some other readers may want to get into the ‘meat’ first and explanation second rather than having that morsel teased in the beginning.

Signal Vs Noise

The author of this book appears to me to be at least center-left on the American socio-political spectrum based on certain comments regarding such issues like climate change, racism, and white nationalism. However, I must applaud Middleton for his laser-like focus on the scope of his thesis, and those farther right on the socio-political spectrum (as I am) can still greatly benefit from wealth of knowledge, research, and insight that he has mined.

As comments on these issues are in passing and used in lists of examples to flesh out a more salient point rather than being the crux of any argument, there is no need to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

End

In the end, I found this book to be a very fun read. The last third of the book really had me gripped and caused me to “slow down” and think through the text methodically and with a keen investigative eye. I’d highly recommend the book, as it not only provides a possible alternate understanding of Job, Abraham, and Isaac, but also practically in how we pray and how we can incorporate lamentation (alongside other types like thanksgiving or supplication) in our lives as Christians as well as further mining the depths of God’s tender loving-kindness and mercy He has for us.