The Greatest Among Equals

The following is an essay I wrote last year about the book of Job for a class I took on Justice.

Job as Primus Inter Pares

If we take the prologue seriously, Job had it all; He had wealth, power, a good family, and friends. However, after that first chapter, he's left with nothing, and the four people who are even around him at all are just there to gang up on him. By drawing on Girard and Nietzsche, we can see that Job's friends' speeches of temporal retribution are justifications for why they have removed him from his place in society.

Girard claims that Job is a broken Idol.¹ His initial economic success results in his friends making him the "primus inter pares," or first among equals. Because he is better than them, they strive to be like him, imitating him as a model. However, this creates resentment, "why is Job the one on top and not me?" they all ask, and so they begin to loath him.²

This ties in with Nietzsche’s writing "Homer on Competition," where we read about how the Greeks had two gods named Eris, or "Strife". One was a bad Strife, which causes people to kill and fight; the other is a good Strife, one which causes people to want to be the best.³ In a polis where everyone is roughly the same, then looking at the primus inter pares (to use Girard's term) inspires you to become better because you know that you can reach that goal. This pushes everyone to go forward, working harder and harder for your goal. However, if the primus inter pares is way above you, then competition becomes pointless, if you know you will never be as good as them, you will never even try.

In the Greek polis, they had a method to deal with this, when someone got too good, they would be ostracized, as the Ephesians said when they banned Hormodor "Amongst us, nobody should be the best; but if someone is, let him be somewhere else, with other people".⁴

In Highshool, I was on the wrestling team. I fought in the Heavyweight division. In that division there were about 7 of us who would compete regularly at tournaments, and so we got to know one another. However one wrestler, Fitzgerald, was way better than the rest of us; so it was always a given that he would win the tournament. Therefore we did not bother comparing ourselves to him. Instead, we looked at the rest of the pack. At any given match we could lose or win. Yes some of us won more often than not, but there was genuine competition between us as we tried to make it to the top of the pack. I remember the first time I beat Gallant who was older and bigger than I was, I can tell you exactly what five moves I used, but I don't remember any matches I had with Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald was ostracized from the group.

In Job's culture, they did not have this mechanism of exclusion, so as Job becomes more and more great/ powerful socially, there was one of two options, either let competition die, the culture around him becoming stagnant as he remained at the top, or find a reason to get rid of Job. When Job loses all of his possessions and gets sick the community uses this opportunity to scapegoat him, claiming that their total rejection of him, from his friends down to the people he would not even let watch his dogs, is because they are merely following God's will. Job must have done something to upset God, and if God has punished Job, then they should stay away from him.⁵

After Job loses his family, wealth and health and social standing, three of his friends come to him. After seven days Job opens his mouth and laments that he was ever born. His friends respond telling him that he has brought this disaster on himself, that God is punishing him for something that he did because "who that was innocent ever suffered?"⁶ According to them, God gives good things to those who are good, and punishes those who are wicked. Therefore Job must have done something to make God mad at him.

So they begin listing off things that Job has done. They think that he has not been treating the poor fairly. By charging unfair collateral for loans he's made, and being uncharitable with his actions, sending away the hungry and thirsty, he has set "snares... all around" himself.⁷ When he protests his innocence, Zophar sees this as blaspheming God. Obviously Job has sinned, or else he would not be getting punished, his suffering is proof that he has done something wrong.⁸

Girard looks at these speeches and says that this is only what's happening on the surface, that the friend's need for finding some reason that Job is suffering is in fact a means for his scapegoat process to work. Because they do not have a means to ostracize him the same way that the Greeks do, they sacralize their actions by putting blame on Job.

Job fights this, while he originally agrees with their understanding of temporal retribution, Job knows that he has not done anything worth the amount of punishment he is receiving. Over time he begins to realize that since he is innocent, he can find assurance knowing that the true God, his witness, is alive and will defend him against the "God" of mimetic rivalry and temporal retribution, even if this occurs only after death.⁹ He no longer needs his old standing in society because that is no longer the measure by which he defines success.

1 Rene Girard, “The Ancient Trail Trodden by the Wicked,” 20.

2 Ibid., 31.

3 Friedrich Nietzsche, “Homer on Competition,” 189.

4 Ibid., 191.

5 Rene Girard, “Job as Failed Scapegoat,” 191.

6 Job 4:7 English Standard Version.

7 Job 22:5-9, ESV.

8 Job 15:5-6

9 Rene Girard, “Job as Failed Scapegoat,” 202.