The Ecology of Death in the Book of Job

Abstract

Ruminations on death recur throughout Job. Equally, language of the non-human world is prevalent. This article examines the coalescence of these tropes in the implicit “necro-ecology” of the book. As though observing the decomposition of a corpse, it focusses on four Joban images, each expressing human death in non-human terms: maggots colonise the cadaver; scavengers consume it. The body disintegrates into dust; plants grow and wither there. At each stage, the article shows how death and life are entangled together, the one requiring and enabling the other. Equally, beings are entangled with each other, challenging the human pretence to self-contained individuality. The article thus fits into a broader trend in the (post)humanities to cultivate scholarship conducive to multi-species flourishing, showing how Job provides fertile compost for symbiotic inter-species alliances of living and dying together.