Brandon Grafius: A World Embedded with Terror

Brandon R. Grafius, Reading the Bible with Horror, Horror and Scripture (Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2020), 45-46.

The book of Job also reveals connections to horror narratives in the vision of the world that it presents. As the book begins, Job’s life is calm, predictable, and pleasant; he is fenced in by God’s protection. But this world is revealed as incomplete, first through the calamities that puncture Job’s hermetically sealed universe, and then in the mind-expanding tour of the cosmos on which YHWH takes Job. It’s a cosmos that features lonely mountains, raging seas, and a great beast at the heart of the ocean, the terrifying Leviathan. This is the world as it truly is, riddle with danger and uncertainty, full of awe and wonder, but also with terror embedded within.