Whereas the Song of Songs can be said to be about Eros, the Book of Job could be about Thanatos. Yet, the Song ends with a crucial reference to death, and in the Book of Job there are subtle traces of sexuality: the first chapter tells about probably promiscuous parties held by Job’s children who then die during such a feast. Job reacts by referring to the womb, which presumably has sexual connotations. The womb is once again an issue in chapters 3 and 10. Twice he mentions breasts, although negatively connoted. In his last speech, Job suddenly refers several times to hypothetical transgressions with women, which betrays his hidden desires behind his piety. In addition, apart from body-parts such as the feet, hands and heart, a tail, loins and even a nose might sometimes be interpreted as euphemisms with phallic hints. In the final chapter his three ‘new’ daughters are the most beautiful in the world, perhaps presenting him as eventually allowing his libido to be re-introjected. Through a psychoanalytical lens it is, however, possible to make sense of this unexpected presence of sexual traces in a book about death.
Approaching texts from a psychoanalytical perspective challenges historical-critical exegesis by questioning its assumption that universality dissolves into historicity. It adds unconscious aspects of a text, here interpreting unexpected traces of sexuality in a book about mourning. This is done in a divergent way by pointing out various possible understandings.
The context of this study are two previous publications by Van der Zwan (
The hypothesis of this study is that there is a psychoanalytically meaningful connection between death and sexuality in the Book of Job.
This will be explored by first summarising and reorienting the findings from the previous studies about death, then by carefully scanning through the book for traces of sexuality and finally by meaningfully integrating death and sexuality through psychoanalytic theories.
The book almost starts with the death of Job’s servants in 1:15, 16, 17 and then of his children in 1:19, all in the first chapter. In 18:19, Bildad subtly blames him for their death. Except for once in 29:5, Job never speaks about them. Instead, his wife’s suggestion of death or suicide in 2:9 adumbrates his own death wish, of not having been born or as a stillbirth in 3:3–13 and 10:9, 18, 19, 20, 21.
What is absent in a text should also be taken seriously, especially when its mention is reasonably expected. This is the case with Job’s father precisely because he does mention his mother, even only a few times. He might therefore be projecting his own sad feelings into others when he refers to a יָתוֹם [orphan, fatherless] in 6:27, 24:3.9, 29:12 and 31:17.21. The יָתוֹם [fatherless] whom he cared for like a substitute father since leaving his mother’s womb, according to 31:18, might have been a (half-)brother or (half-)sister, as his mother might have been the אַלְמָנָה [widow] in 31:16. That would mean that his father has died when his mother was pregnant but before this sibling’s birth.
On the other hand, if he adopted the orphan in 31:18, it might have been because his mother has died as well, further explaining why he mourns his birth and the womb, which he lost in chapter 3. There might therefore be more deaths in the background than those of his children in the foreground.
The book ends with the last verse mentioning the death of Job himself, after an exceptionally long life, even when he has been begging for death during his trials. This is only one of several frames of the book. Another is that of his children, implying life and sexuality (
Even when chapter 2 narrates a second step in the secret deal between God and the Satan, where the latter is allowed to attack the body of Job, his subsequent illness threatening him with death may be interpreted as a somatic reaction to his traumatising experiences about the death of his loved ones in the first chapter, as Halliday (
Amongst the more than 70 body-parts referred to in the Book of Job, the mouth of the main protagonist plays a particularly important but subtle role in the bodily expression of introjection (eating) and projection (speaking) in the mourning process (Van der Zwan
The grotesque body (cf. Van der Zwan
The sexual in the Book of Job is thus part of the grotesque, which misreads the tragic reality and in its ‘riot of semiosis’ (Eagleton 1981:145) blasphemes even the ‘holiness’ and seriousness of death and disability. In this way, deconstruction by the grotesque body is liberating (Black
Although body-parts such as the hands, nose and feet can be used as sexual euphemisms, these will be ignored in this study, as they have elsewhere been dealt with in this regard (Van der Zwan
Sexuality is implied in 1:2 already by referring to Job’s 10 children
The inner, poetic part of the book is also framed by more subtle references to sexuality ‘contaminated’ by death wishes in Job’s first speech, when he immediately curses the night he was conceived in 3:3, 6, 7 and the day of his birth in 3:3, 11, 16. Not only birth, then, but even conception, and therefore sexual intercourse, is on his mind in 3:3b. Death and sexuality are intertwined, as it has been adumbrated in 1:21 already. In the final and exceptionally long chapter of his last speech he also – but now more blatantly – refers to his potentially lustful eyes in 31:1, an organ related to sexuality in the Dead Sea Scrolls (Lau
For seven verses, from 31:2–8, he tries to avoid this theme of lustful longing but reverts to it and then mentions אִשָּׁה [a woman] as he fantasises about his neighbour’s wife in 31:9. What is single adultery in the first verse has now become ‘double’ adultery, as both parties are married, supposing that Job’s absent wife is still around somewhere. In fact, she is suddenly mentioned in 31:10, as if out of the blue, as her voice has last been heard in 2:9, whereafter she was silenced in 2:10. He imagines her having sexual intercourse with a third party as well, allegedly as punishment for his own sexual sins. These sexual hints go further to recall his mother’s womb in 31:15, 18, apparently mentioned incidentally, although explicitly. Unlike his first speech, this last one now also explicitly mentions his mother in 31:18, alluded to but eclipsed in 3:10, 11. The words in 31:9, אִם-נִפְתָּה לִבִּי(if my heart has been enticed), are virtually repeated in 31:27 but then intensified, as his desire would be hidden in his unconscious or from others: וַיִּפְתְּ בַּסֵּתֶר לִבִּי [and my heart has been
It might be more than coincidental that the metonymic body-part for the whole body according to Clines (
In 31:31, there is even a possibility of homosexuality, depending on the contextual meaning of מִבְּשָׂרוֹ [of his flesh]. There is much hidden in his heart in this chapter, however, betrayed in 31:27, 28, 33, 34. It is significant that these framing chapters of Job’s speeches repeat the same themes of sexuality and death by cursing, here in 31:30; however, it is refrained from and now has someone else as object.
It is not only on Job’s mind that one detects traces of sexuality but also in the very mouth of God, if those words are not Job’s own psyche speaking to him in his visions. It would be easier to project sexuality knocking at the door in chapter 31 onto an animal. In any event, ‘God’ openly introduces and normalises sexuality in nature in the first divine speech. For God, birth is much more in the foreground, such as God’s reminder of the pregnancy, birth and offspring of wild-goats and hinds in 39:1–4.
In the second divine speech there is also a sexual description of Behemoth (Wolfers
All of this ideal model focusing on the penis makes sense against God’s call to Job in 38:3 and repeated in 40:7 to gird his ‘loins’, as a way to regenerate him as a phallic and fertile man so that he would have 10 children again in the last chapter.
Even when the masculine singular verbs are used for Behemoth, it has traditionally not been far-fetched to consider the two beasts of different genders, where Behemoth is feminine because of the suffix, which is usually considered as an intensive plural with an augmented meaning.
Despite these sexual undertones in the background, feelings for the feminine remain problematic and even hostile until almost right at the end. Job’s emotional struggle with the womb (cf. Van der Zwan
One is tempted to explain this denigration of the feminine culturally, as Bildad in 25:4 also declares humanity impure because of women, to whom sexuality is linked, subtracting in this way by implication from Job the virtual perfection asserted in the first verse of the book (cf. Kahn & Solomon
However, among all the women, his daughters have taken the most prominent place, being mentioned in 1:2, 4, 13 and 18, first neutrally but then in a context of sin, and again in 42:14–15, where they are surprisingly elevated and named by their father against the cultural practices of the time, celebrated as (equally) the most beautiful in the country and given the same inheritance as their brothers, also against the cultural norms. Their names refer to sensual delights (Clines
Several aspects of sexuality and of Job’s gender attitude can therefore be identified in the Book of Job, each needing a different interpretation to presumably add up to an overall perspective. The main question, however, remains why sexuality is on the mind of and is mentioned by a mourning man.
The first, reflexive response from a psychoanalytical perspective is that sexuality in the book is a manic defence against unbearable depression because of the loss of loved ones. Mania then even masks suicidal impulses expressed through perverse sexuality (Meltzer
Depression after victory, just as a sense of post-orgasmic ‘nihilism’, is well known.
One can also understand this psychic motive as comic relief, because play and perverse caricaturing form clear ingredients in the description of at least Behemoth, but also partially of Leviathan, which narcissistically pretends to be omnipotent. This happens when the infantile psychic organisation puts the
Regression of the
Linking the womb from which he was born with death is reminiscent of Sándor Ferenczi’s thesis (
For Chasseguet-Smirgel (
Perversion can be regarded as transgressing boundaries of separation laid down by a
Then, perverse sexuality, as subtly expressed by the animals presented by God, cannot be excluded either (cf. Van der Zwan
The three above-mentioned aspects of sexuality in a context of mourning death can all tie in with trauma, where manic defence, psychic regression and the development of perverse sexuality can be symptomatic.
Britton (
Likewise, in Nordic mythology, maidens serve sex in death to the warriors, and
Hyper-sexualisation and sexualisation of violence are sometimes the consequences of trauma (Fontanesi et al.
Although individuation is a Jungian concept, it is related to the
Probably without knowing it, Job is fighting for sexual liberation from the oppressive
Closely related is, however, the assertive healing process included in mourning. The God-part of Job’s psyche, his mature
This happens when the
If ever there has been reason for Job to feel guilty, his last speech in chapter 31 might be the first time to justify that, as mourning hardly allows for carnal cravings. Yet Pope (
Job’s sexual side is reminiscent of Rebecca, who seems to assist Isaac in closing his mourning about his deceased mother through their romantic and sexual relationship, according to Genesis 24:67 (cf. Rachmuth
Likewise, Job’s
Török (
The Book of Job is in various respects unique in the Hebrew Bible, and more so because it also confronts the recipient with the shocking reality of libidinal desire during mourning.
The hypothesis of the study has been hiding an assumption that death and sex are somehow mutually exclusive opposites, which has been proven to be incorrect, because psychoanalytic interpretations have shown both death and sex to be connected in the unconscious. The psychoanalytic exploration has not only shown a fair amount of overlap but also some mutually exclusive options amongst the possible theoretical foci.
The author declares that he has no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced him in writing this article.
P.v.d.Z. is the sole author of this research article.
This article followed all ethical standards of research without direct contact with human or animal subjects.
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated agency of the author.
Cf. Olley (
This is an important concept in Meltzer’s (