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The Book of Job has attracted the attention of exegetes and theologians for centuries. Several topics have been the focus of scholarly consideration, most importantly the problem of theodicy. Job, the hero of this book, suffers undeservedly, and the consequences of his affliction are manifold. Among his sufferings are a progressive alienation from his social network, family, and loved ones, leading to his total social breakdown. This social disorientation reaches its first climax in chap. 19, particularly in 19:13-22, where Job claims that everyone has abandoned him; nowhere else in the Book of Job does Job express this social alienation. Taking Job 19:13-22 as its point of departure, the dissertation studies how social isolation based on the concept of "deed and consequence" aggravates the suffering of Job and what theological solution the author of the Book of Job suggests. The dissertation explores this important issue. Job strongly believed that he had done nothing wrong to deserve his fate; yet, Israel's theodicy held that God rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked. According to this principle, Job is suffering for the wrong he has done. His family and loved ones reinforce that notion by making judgments on behalf of God. This made Job's suffering more unbearable and his demand for a hearing by God more urgent. Hence, Job recounts and examines his past life in chaps. 29-31. It is at this point (chap. 31), when Job forcefully and truthfully maintains his claim of innocence, that the theologically based conviction about divine retribution, proposed as one of the concepts of traditional wisdom literature begins to crumble. Physical and mental suffering is not always, as it now emerges in the Book of Job, a punishment from God, and the social rejection the sufferer goes through in the society is ethically wrong and unjustified. Since social isolation as a sufferer's fate is not uncommon in the OT, diachronic and intertextual approaches of the relevant materials are used to analyze the problem fully. In this regard, the dissertation illustrates Job's social alienation with theories of social concepts and similar stories like Job from the Ancient Near East and in the Book of Psalms.
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