What is it about?
In Job 1:20, Job performs four actions: 1) he rends his garment; 2) he shears his head; 3) he falls to the ground; and 4) he prostrates himself. The third of these can be read either (with the first two) as an act of mourning or (with the last) as an act of worship. I suggest that this is a deliberate literary choice: the poetic technique called Janus parallelism.
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Why is it important?
Since Janus parallelism has already been demonstrated to be both frequent in the book of Job and significant for its meaning, this unexpected Janus parallelism in the prose portion of the book confirms that they are not an early survival but a creation of the author of the book as a whole.
Perspectives
I would like to thank Donald Antenen and Zachary Miller, the students whom I was teaching when this insight occurred to me.
Michael Carasik
independent scholar
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Janus Parallelism in Job 1:20, Vetus Testamentum, January 2016, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/15685330-12301222.
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