“If our translation is correct, Job is describing in this passage the beneficial effect of his unjust persecution on his own community. I know of no other text where that effect is so bluntly articulated (17:6-9). It is the same as the tragic effect, the Aristotelian catharsis, but this is not a theatrical representation, and Job is not trying to embellish the truth of the operation with aesthetic flourishes. The explicit revelation of the scapegoat mechanism and its consequences is moral in the highest sense of the word, and reveals the imperturbable aestheticism of Aristotle and his literary followers as profoundly immoral” (Girard, Job, p. 71).
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