Arresting God’s Attention: The Rhetorical Intent and Strategies of Job 3 Available to Purchase

Interpreters have struggled to make sense of Job’s opening speech in Job 3; the speech seems out of place following the prologue. This article uses rhetorical criticism to understand Job’s rhetorical aim and strategies and thus attempts to bring clarity to the current understanding of Job’s rhetorical goal. To do this, the article establishes Job’s rhetorical situation, analyzes the forms (Gattungen) Job uses, and identifies and analyzes five rhetorical strategies: imprecation, tropes, pseudosorites, allusion, and rhetorical questions with delayed disambiguation.