Barely Disguised

“Violence is the true ‘referent’; barely disguised in the threats of the friends and not disguised at all in Job’s laments. Although our two types of discourse seem so different, each deals, in its own way, with the same. They both refer to the process whereby a hero becomes a scapegoat; they both refer to the phenomenon of lynching — the first stages of which Job has already savoured” (Girard, Job, p. 25).