They load the wheat and die of hunger

Notes for a Marxist reading of exploitation in Job 24:1-12

Abstract

This article proposes an analysis of the dynamics of exploitation in Job 12:1-12 based on the critical contributions from the Marxist tradition. Starting from the inhumane realities of exploitation experienced by large groups of people in contemporary capitalist societies, the text explores some of the instruments that biblical interpretation has taken from critical Marxism over the last century and a half to read the text. The article identifies some historical and literary trajectories that guide the analysis of the biblical text based on the theory of exploitation, and based on the categories of mode of production, ideology, social classes, and alienation, it explores the forms of dispossession and domination that the text of Job 24:1-12 seems to describe without criticism. We propose not only that the poem literarily captures a systemic reality of exploitation that leads to the breakdown of the legal structure and the questioning of the text's traditional theology. Additionally, we maintain that reading it in contexts of impoverishment and oppression has the potential to raise awareness about the urgent need to transform inherited oppressive relationships and to encourage us to fight against any social system that turns people into a resource for enrichment and accumulation.