Job of Uz 9781611434200, 2012035268, 1611434203

Citation preview

Job of Uz

Biblical Intersections

7

Including the Hebrew Bible and New Testament this series presents studies that explore the biblical literature as a product as well as a reflection of the world in which it was produced. In addition to studies that take an historical approach, this series also examines the biblical text from alternative perspectives, including social-scientific, theological, literary, and cultural studies approaches.

Job of Uz

Suffering of the Righteous and the Justice of God

Edited by

Mishael M. Caspi John T. Greene

9

34 2012

Gorgias Press LLC, 954 River Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com Copyright © 2012 by Gorgias Press LLC

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC. 2012

‫ܛ‬

9

ISBN 978-1-61143-420-0

ISSN 1943-9377

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Job of Uz : suffering of the righteous and the justice of God / edited by Mishael Caspi [and] John Greene. p. cm. -- (Biblical intersections) 1. Bible. O.T. Job--Criticism, interpretation, etc. I. Caspi, Mishael, 1932- II. Greene, John. BS1415.52.J635 2012 223'.106--dc23 2012035268 Printed in the United States of America

TABLE OF CONTENTS Table of Contents ..................................................................................... v  Prolegomenon ......................................................................................... vii  Mishael M. Caspi John T. Greene  The Book of Job as Text: Deconstruction ........................................... 1  Albert McClure  Duality in The Relationship of “Man-God” in the Book of Job: Two Readings or Two Jobs?........................................................ 29  Itzhak Peleg  Job: The Darkness of the Curse ........................................................... 47  Mishael M. Caspi  Job’s Hidden Way: Understanding Job as a Wisdom Figure in the Poetic Dialogues ................................................................. 75  Sophia Magallanes  Complaint, Imprecation, Lament, and Special Pleading: How Righteous Men Manage Suffering ................................... 91  J. Harold Ellens  On Solidary with Creation: Job, Jonah, Levinas ..............................113  Theodore A. Perry  Religious and Rhetorical Drama: Job in the Company of Plato, Aristophanes and Other Related Literature. Berit Meets Rhetoric: Job in the World of Late Classical Antiquity ..........................127  John T. Greene  Job in English, Welsh and Irish Literature .......................................153  Anthony Swindell  Futility in the Search for Job in the New Testament: the Case of Phillippians 1:19 ........................................................183  Felix H. Cortez  A Study of Job in Music and Image ..................................................195  Max Stern  v

PROLEGOMENON MISHAEL M. CASPI JOHN T. GREENE Like flame the lyrics flower In every heart that hears; I’ve spoken, with all my power, The pain of a thousand years.1

A. To offer a significant critique on the story of Job one needs to examine many texts of different traditions, as well as literary and professional texts. Through this critique it is possible to get a glimpse of the human problem hidden in the biblical text. The story calls into question the conventional wisdom regarding adversity and suffering: that unrighteousness leads us there while righteousness will lead to prosperity. Such superficial interpretation is very common not only in folk literature but it is also accepted by some interpreters of Job’s story. One 19th century commentator on the Book of Job2 suggests that the book is arranged so that on the one hand there is a group of philosophers who are protecting the faith and on the other hand there is Job who opposes and contradicts their rationale. Simha Aryeh accepts the idea that Job was one of his generation and, Heinrich Heine, Prologue: The Rabbi of Bucharash, E. Wen’ef al, tr. (The Citadel Press, 1948), p. 268. 2 Aryeh Simher, Sepher Iyyob me-ha-ke-tuvim, (Warsaw, 2ed., 1848). 1

vii

viii

JOB OF UZ: SUFFERING OF THE RIGHTEOUS

indeed, was very honorable; following the notion of the sages, he agrees that he was one of the Pharaoh’s advisors who was punished for keeping quiet while Moses was on trial. Following the Be-rai-ta (an external source) that Moses wrote his book and the Book of Job,3 but also states: …who ever said that Iyyob lo ha-ya ve-do nib-ra, ella ma-shal ha-ya… Job never lived: he served merely as a parable…

is also right, but the other possibility is to explain that: Lo ha-ya ve-lo nib-ra

is about the book and not about the person named Job. He goes on to support his argument by stating: The fact that Ezekiel the prophet mentions Daniel (Dan’el) before Job, despite the long time between them is to the fact that Job was not one of the Israelites and thus he did not precede the prophet of God (Daniel).4

S. Aryeh testifies that as much as he could he tried to understand the true meaning of each response. In his Introduction he writes some verses where he opens an aperture to his approach and interpretation: Who of all these interpreters Will solve for us the truth And of someone (who) speaks of his heart, Others will deny (reject) him… The wise Raba’5 Who indicated as a wise man That he cannot interpret clearly the book, On one thing he was (wrong) When he decided to say That the book was copied Out of the nation’s books…6 See BBat. 14b. Aryeh Simher, Op. Cit., Introduction. 5 Abraham ibn Ezra, poet and Biblical commentator, 12th century. 3 4

PROLEGOMENON

ix

Jewish sages were bewildered. They have tried to understand the time in which Job lived and the purpose of his book and in one statement where the Sages discuss both the time and the purpose: Now on the view that Job lived in the days of Moses, should not the Book of Job come first. We do not begin with the record of suffering. But hath also it a record of suffering? It is a suffering with a sequel (of happiness).7

On the other hand few of the sages view the story as a parable. One who did was Resh Laqish.8 If indeed it is a parable, then we have a fictional account of the suffering of a person. Such a fictional account is a myth, since a myth is a fictional account about the origin of ideas or about the life of certain individuals. Although myth usually deals with the creation of the world and the gathering of different deities in the celestial world, such nuances exist also in this story. Moreover, such fictional work is also dramatized by dialogues between the main actors. The actors in such dramas incorporate within their roles the details of the story from its beginning to its end. They emphasize within the story details which seem to be true. Such assumptions lead us to ask: Is the story of Job a myth? Or could we be witnessing mythical elements in this book? At the beginning of the story readers are introduced to a character that is well-to-do, who lives in a land that hardly can be located. The author-story teller goes on to tell the readers about a man whom he emphasizes is perfect and upright. With this short definition, he impresses on the readers information about the qualities of the man. Indeed, we accept this notion since we trust the observations of the storyteller. But here we also face the confrontation between heaven and earth. The perfect and upright man on earth is about to be challenged by an adversary from the celestial world. It seems that the narrator of the story of Job wishes the readers to trust his presentation and to do so he uses pseudohistorical data to authenticate the events. In our story he tells, for Aryeh Simher, Op. Cit. BBat. 14b. 8 Simeon b. Laqish, the 3rd. century. 6 7

x

JOB OF UZ: SUFFERING OF THE RIGHTEOUS

example, about the land of Uz. This land is mentioned in the Book of Lamentation: Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom, that dwellest in the land of Uz… (Lam. 4:21)

Edom is also known as Teman, the land of Eliphaz. However, medieval interpreters, such as Rashi Ibn Ezra, suggest that it is the land of Aram Naharayim, since the first-born of Nahor was Uz. All of this suggests that the name of the land in the Book of Job is a fictitious one. Professor Tur-Sinai holds the notion that the land of Uz is the land of Edom according to Genesis 36:25, 1Ch. 1:42, and Jer. 25:20.9 Then we are facing another difficulty. The adjectives perfect and upright are found in certain places in the Bible relating, especially, to moral teaching.10 The storyteller introduces the reader to the way that God describes Job to the Satan: And the Lord said unto the Satan, hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and upright man, one who feareth God and shunneth evil? (1:8)

The Aramaic text translates ba-a-retz, be-ar-’ah da-’anma-me-it; it is not only in the land, but land of many nations. The end of the verse, Ve-sar me-ra; ve-’a-de min bish

is translated as ‘and removed from evil’. So is God a deceiver? Presenting Job as an ‘upright’ person, yet at the same time offering him to the Satan? Deceit contains untruthful aspects. In this case, our hypothesis that this story is a myth can’t be supported, since myth contains some truth or certain claims for truth. The biblical storyteller presents God as an omniscient character. He knows all. From the beginning of the story, the readers are following the bet waged between God and the Satan and the only question that remained was: If God is omniscient, is he also sure that Job will retain his faith in God? So why does God

9

See N. H. Tur-Sinai, Sefer Iyyov, (Jerusalem, 1951), p. 1. See Ps. 25:21; 37:37; and probably the adjectives in Job 8:6.

10

PROLEGOMENON

xi

test Job? Does the storyteller present omniscience as a literary device? Or does he make any theological statement? Now in the other realm of our examination of the Book of Job let us point out certain aspects which grow out of the following question: What is special about this book so that it was included in the canon? After all, Job is not a Hebrew person. He does not live in the land of Israel. He does not mention any of the Jewish laws or ritual sacrifices relating to the Temple. It seems that he is removed from any relationship with the Hebrews and, yet, he is characterized as a highly moral person, the servant of the Lord, descriptions that are presented several times.11 Is it possible that the inclusion of the story of the wager between God and the Satan is an attempt to disprove or discredit the Satan? These questions are raised since as readers we wish to understand the narrator and his reasons for the presentations in this story. And the first question to be asked is why must a righteous man suffer so much? Heinrich Heine wrote: The Book of Job does not solve that horrible problem. On the contrary, it is the Song of Songs of (?), and in its pages are audible the (?) and rightful (?) with their eternal “Wherefore?”12

Do we listen to Heine’s stream of thoughts?

B. Thus, in biblical scholarship there is no need for any method or methodological system. Biblical scholars need to master certain languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek) and to produce a sensitive reading of the text. Sensitive readers must ask the storytellers or the redactors of the texts hard questions, and not accept simple answers, or to deal much with historical analysis of the time when the text was composed. Jewish sages in their midrashic interpretations offer an example of such sensitive and imaginative reading. They were not worried about some statements they made, which sometimes could 11 12

See 1:8; 2:3; 42:7,8. H. Heine, Op. Cit., pp. 667–668.

xii

JOB OF UZ: SUFFERING OF THE RIGHTEOUS

be perceived as heresy. Their reading and interpretation increased the drama of the biblical texts and challenged the readers to ask questions. In many ways it was an outcome of their religious ambiance, where they emphasized the moral dimensions and the involvement of the deity in human life. But when we carefully read their texts we find that they did not hesitate to use outside literary texts, although they did not footnote them, and foreign languages, such as Aramaic and Greek. Thus, we would like to posit that besides mastering the languages mentioned above, biblical scholars ought to be familiar with world literature, both ancient and modern. It is impossible for such scholars to read the narrative of Joseph and his brothers without reading Thomas Mann, or to know about the ancient Egyptian story. S. Freud’s theories could be used in the examination of many biblical narratives. In sum, many biblical texts are connected and influenced world literature, and their links are impossible to ignore. Since we examine a literary text, we are not looking for the universal truth nor for historical data, but for the creative work of the people. In this case the people are the Hebrews and their views on life, morality, religion and overall stories, which speculate about actual life, the beginning and the end as a social entertainment. The Jewish sages could not accept the fact that Job was not sinful. Thus, they created the hemistich with his lips and they clarified it by stating not in his lips but in his heart. This simple alteration reveals, albeit slightly, the Hebrews’ belief in the sin of Job.

The wager between God and the Satan plays an important role in the story of Job, but there are no traces of it in the philosophical discussions. In the Bible we find the Satan named as an adversary of God. He is named in the prophecy of Zechariah, where he is supporting God. Is it possible that the description of the Satan as an evil entity originated here? (In what follows, the reader will notice a subtle change in how we refer to the Satan=the Adversary: now the definite article, the, is omitted. Satan is a different figure from the Satan, and has a totally different function and origin. (MMC/JTG) According to the author of the Book of Enoch (3 Enoch 26:9–12) Satan has two companions, Sam(m)ael, who is the Prince of Rome, and Dubbi’el, who is the Prince of Persia. He appears in the celestial court as the accuser who has the record of the sins of

PROLEGOMENON

xiii

Israel. In this story, Satan is the primary accuser and his two companions represent the great foes of Israel, Rome and Persia.13 In the New Testament (NT) Satan’s role is to bar the kingdom of heaven. The Christian tradition accepts the belief that upon God’s creation of the angels he gave them free will. One angel, Lucifer, sinned by having pride and he led other angels who followed him. Through the hemistich of the Church Fathers, Satan acts as an anti-Christ, ready to battle against the community. The Islamic tradition holds that Allah suggests to Iblis (Satan) that he tempt Job (Ayub) because Allah knew Job was a righteous man. Iblis could find none of Job’s property not sealed with a stamp of thanks or not purified by alms, and Iblis became jealous of Job. Thus, with a violent gust of wind, Iblis lifted off the foundation of his castle and then had it fall on his family. Muslim scholars continue to elaborate on Iblis’s tricks and to tell that he also tried to trick Job’s wife twice. Once he claims he could heal Job if Job would kill (slaughter) a bird without expressing the name of Allah. Another time he impersonated the God of earth and told Job’s wife that he was responsible for what had happened to Job. Jewish Sages, as well as Jewish scholars of the Middle Ages, viewed Job’s trial as follows. Those deemed righteous were afflicted with suffering merely because God knew they could withstand the test and remain faithful and submissive. The test of Abraham and that of King Hezekiah occurred for the same reason. However, the biblical narrator does not provide the readers with any information about the meaning of God’s testing of Job. Yet, the author of the Testament of Job (T. Job)14 tells us that Job was informed of the events: …If you purge the place of Satan he will rise against you with wrath for battle, he will take away for himself your goods, he will carry off your children. But if you are patient, I will make your name renowned in all generations of the earth till the consummation of the age.15 The name Dubbi’el is mentioned in BQid. 78a. See also a possible relation to this name in Dan. 7:5. 14 A work of the 1st century B.C.E. 15 T.Job 1:15. 13

xiv

JOB OF UZ: SUFFERING OF THE RIGHTEOUS

While the author of T.Job speaks about the Light, an angel who informed Job of coming events, the dramatic translation offers the readers another view: Zmargad suddenly fell upon and seized them, killed the young men, the workers according to the law of war.16

Zmargad is a known place that is also known as Lilith, which in Arabic literature is where the queen of Sheba, Bilkis or Bilkis bint al-Bshrich17, was raised by the daughters of genii following the death of her mother. When the Fathers of the Church speak about Satan, they view him as an instrument fighting against humanity, using different weapons in his battles. Yet, they believed that had Satan recognized the Lord he would not have dared to approach him. The biblical narrator offers readers a figure who is not faithful to God and who is a member of a different heavenly class. He is the only one who questions God’s effusive praise of Job. Is he the ‘dark side’ of God as M. Weiss suggests?18 If it is so, then Stan is omnipotent like God. On the one hand, St. John Chrysostom saw Satan in the Book of Job as the adversary, the prosecutor who spies on a person’s transgressions and reports them to his master. The devil did not want to rob Job of his possessions but he did want to strip Job of his piety (Note the change of names): This is what happened with Job. After the devil took away Job’s possessions and wounded his body, he saw Job giving thanks. So he no longer dared to attack Job but went away. Why? He had suffered a disgraceful and irreparable defeat, he had made God’s athlete shine with greater splendor.19

Targum Job. 1:15. See al-Tha’labi, Qisar al-anbiya. 18 M. Weiss, The Story of Job’s Beginning, (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1883), p. 37. 19 St. John Chrysostom, Homiliy IV. 16 17

PROLEGOMENON

xv

On the other hand, St. Ambrose saw Job as a mortal, as the son of a woman and a being who was destined to a short life. In a very beautiful passage he wrote of Job: He bloomed like a flower and fell.20

Job kept silent and St. Ambrose explained why it was important for a holy man to be silent, even if he suffered: The holy man is silent, even if a servant abuses him, even if a poor man insults him, the just man is silent, even if a sinner casts his reproaches, the just man laughs, even if one that is weak gives a curse, the just man gives a blessing.21

Indeed, the story deals with the problem of evil, but it is not the evil of a person on earth. Rather, it deals with the evil emanating from the celestial world. As in the story of the Binding of Isaac (Gen. 22), one questions the right of God to require an old father, whom he called my servant, to sacrifice his son, even if it was for the sake of testing the father’s faithfulness. In both cases God tested people whom he called my servant. Job is depicted as a person who controlled himself in spite of the misfortunes that befell him. He is the man that God describes as: My servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth. (2:10)

This same person experienced a very cruel trial created by God. The catastrophe which befell Job had the signature of God. Is this terrible trial commanded by a cruel God? No answer is given. What we find is an attempt to avoid the question: Has God the right to inflict terrible suffering upon his servant in order to prove his faithfulness? Jewish sages wanted to understand the role of the Satan in the whole drama. To do so they developed the dialogue between God and the Satan. Although this dialogue has its roots in the biblical narrative, in rabbinic literature it received a new dimension:

St. Ambrose, “The Prayer of Job and David”, The Fathers of the Church, p. 343. 21 Ibid., 356. 20

xvi

JOB OF UZ: SUFFERING OF THE RIGHTEOUS When the Holy One saw that they all came then to accuse, he said unto the Satan, Whence comest thou? And Satan replied, From going to and fro in the land. Now we know that the control of all the lands is entrusted to the supernal Chieftains save that land of Israel alone. Hence when Satan said ‘the land’ God knew that he intended to accuse Israel and therefore straightaway asked him, Hast thou considered my servant Job?22

In this passage of rabbinic literature Israel is a focal point, although the biblical narrator does not do so. In fact, Job is not an Israelite, nor does he live in the land of Israel, nor is he connected to Israel in any way. What is quite obvious from the presentation of the story is that the sages were trying to establish their religious ideology by demonstrating that humanity is not free or independent of God. He is the one who established the Cosmos, he alone is ‘all knowing’, omnipresent, and he comprises all that is good.23 After this brief exordium, the question remains: Does this unscrupulous deity win the cruel bet? What one can read is that God abandons his faithful servant and places him in the hands of a cruel entity. This image of God contradicts the picture humanity has of God the creator of the universe, as that deity, which is described as ‘full of grace’ and who extends loving kindness, is missing from this story where he is portrayed as cruel, and one can also argue is immoral. But, indeed, God remains omnipresent and humankind cannot comprehend his ways. But as much as we are not capable of understanding God’s ways, we can always question them. To say it bluntly, to question the religious meaning of it, thus denying the omnipresent and the omnipotent God, is to test humanity. In this respect, we also refuse to accept the right of any person to put his fellow man to such a test, or to even judge him. Satan encroaches on the bond between God and human beings in their mutual mystery. He succeeds in dissolving those See BBat. 15a–17a for a long discussion about Job the person, the book, and the confrontation between God and the Satan. In this text a comparison is also found between Job and Abraham. 23 See St. Thomas Aquinas, Contra Gentiles, AF. Pegis, tr., (University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), pp. 85–90. 22

PROLEGOMENON

xvii

bonds and plunges humankind into emptiness. From the beginning, humanity was pushed into the dark by an outside force. Yet, we do not learn from this and we do not understand how this dark power, this adversary, confirms with God and destroys humanity. What we are able to perceive is the effect of this power. In some ways it is a way to explain the mythical representation of the story of Job.

THE BOOK OF JOB AS TEXT: DECONSTRUCTION ALBERT MCCLURE DUKE UNIVERSITY

Open the book of Job (henceforth BOJ) at any chapter, choose any verse, and begin reading. Chances are you will meet aporia before long. About the meaning of BOJ Cooper writes: “Only by oversimplifying, harmonizing, or ignoring data can the reader get the book’s multiple image[s] into focus.”1 Historical-critical conclusions about BOJ have met similar impasses where either/or situations have not resulted in synthesis. Lawrie describes the situation thus: “In the case of Job, two centuries of historical-critical research have not led to either generally accepted answers to the traditional questions of historical criticism or a radically new understanding of the book.”2 Ambiguity and indeterminacy greet the reader whether one reads BOJ or critical literature about BOJ. In order to solve some of the historical-critical problems one may always hope for more data (e.g., a non-biblical folktale about a protagonist named Job), but this information would not move the discussion of the canonical BOJ’s meaning further along. Some scholars no longer try to provide a coherent meaning for BOJ, but instead, describe why and how BOJ has an indeterminate meaning. To explain how and why a biblical text is paradoxical is certainly a non-traditional approach, but this approach, I think, remains true to the nature of BOJ. In addition, because producing Alan Cooper, “Reading and Misreading the Prologue to Job,” JSOT 46 (1990): 75. 2 Douglas Lawrie, “How Critical Is It to Be Historically Critical? The Case of the Composition of the Book of Job,” JNSL 27 no. 1 (2001): 141. 1

1

2

ALBERT MCCLURE

one coherent meaning for BOJ or solving even a few of its many historical mysteries seems out of reach at present, another trajectory for research on BOJ is suitable and necessary. The insights and conclusions of scholars such as Clines and Cooper as they describe the reasons BOJ is ambiguous are provocative, and as such their work must be considered a point of departure for others. In hopes of compiling many of the thoughts about the incoherencies of BOJ and in order to further the work of describing why and how BOJ produces an indeterminate meaning I offer this essay. First, I will briefly survey the state of historical-criticism in order to demonstrate the ambiguity there, after which I will demonstrate some of the ways BOJ deconstructs itself thereby creating an incoherent meaning. To conclude, I shall explain why BOJ is both about and not about theodicy—it is certainly about suffering—given a closer inspection, and offer one comment about what an ambiguous text means for those who suffer. The Book of Job is fraught with historical-critical questions which have continually perplexed scholars. Who authored the BOJ?3 What is its genre? What is the Sitz im Leben of BOJ? Is it a pre-exilic, exilic, or post-exilic work? There are numerous questions about its structure: What was the original relation of the prose and poetic portions of BOJ? When and how were the prose and poetic portions combined if a secondary combination took place at all? What is the structure of the poetic portion of BOJ? Has the ‘third’ cycle of speeches been corrupted or altered? These questions are only further complicated by the numerous lexical difficulties the Massoretic Text (MT), i.e., the Received Text, presents. The most important question (of Historical-Criticism), that of ‘original’ meaning, which all the previous questions are meant to help elucidate, is equally if not more elusive. Some of these conundrums have been solved by recourse to other textual traditions (e.g. the Septuagint (LXX) and the Aramaic/Syriac Peshitta), while others have been resolved with the assistance of Ugaritic and other Semitic languages. Yet, gaps in our knowledge remain. Answering the questions above, although they are ultimately tangential to our main trajectory because our goal is not to create a coherent 3

Here and throughout I refer only to MT and not the LXX.

THE BOOK OF JOB AS TEXT: DECONSTRUCTION

3

meaning but to demonstrate why doing so is naïve and in some way infeasible, is very important and worthwhile work, but will be left aside, except for a short conclusion in this essay. What, then, do we possess in terms of historical-critical conclusions? Our text has implied author(s) and redactor(s) who could come from any epoch of biblical history. The overall genre of BOJ is sui generis, although it contains distinct genres throughout. There is not apparent Sitz im Leben, although a strong case could be made for a hypothetical folktale. The structure of the book is the soundest piece of data; we can be sure that our text has a narrative frame, a dialogic exchange between four men, and a few monologues. The date of the text on thematic and linguistic grounds leaves us with a span of five-hundred years (700–200 B.C.E.) in which BOJ may have been composed and later redacted. With the preliminary historical-critical work done, work which does not provide us with many interpretive clues, let us move on to the core of our essay. What I insinuate with the title of this essay, “The Book of Job as Text”, is that there are a few interpretative maneuvers one can use when approaching BOJ that are useful, and especially because classic methods have faltered in producing a singular, coherent meaning for BOJ. The critical reading strategy of deconstruction will be used in this project to demonstrate features of BOJ which cause the meaning(s) of this eloquent book to fall apart. I have chosen deconstruction for this endeavor because many of the symptoms of a deconstructable text leapt out at me as I read more and more of BOJ and scholarship on this text. The basic, underlying principle of deconstruction is that the signifier (e.g., the word “fish”) and the signified (e.g., the idea of a fish which the word “fish” represents) are divided. Eagleton, commenting on post-structuralism, describes the way language and signs compose a text: [A]ny such theory of history or language as a simple linear evolution [e.g., structuralism] misses the web-like complexity of signs … the back and forth, present and absent, forward and sideways movement of language in

4

ALBERT MCCLURE its actual processes. It is that web-like complexity, indeed, which poststructuralism designates by the word ‘text.’4

These comments point toward a more elaborate idea of ‘text,’ one which admits to its own simultaneous relativity and indeterminacy of meaning. It is this relative indeterminacy of meaning, the différance of each sign, which I would like to exploit in our study of BOJ. Yet, it is not my intention to give this text free-play as such. What I hope to convey is not that by some slight-of-hand one can manipulate BOJ to become incoherent, but that BOJ is imbued with deconstructability from beginning to end therefore creating relativity of meaning. The goal of this endeavor, then, is to demonstrate some fundamental features of BOJ as ‘text,’ all the while keeping in mind the need for a coherent, but not necessarily monologic, meaning for this provocative text.

DECONSTRUCTION What would happen, that is, if instead of assuming that elements of the text were subservient instruments of a controlling meaning or total and governing attitude, readers were to explore every resistance to meaning?5

This question serves as the starting point for the work of our deconstruction. Before we move to BOJ, however, I will provide two definitions of deconstruction: the first is taken from the field of literary criticism, and the second, from the work of David Clines. Our project will build on what Clines and others have already provided and suggest some further complications to their ideas about BOJ and its incoherencies. As this essay is an explication of a text, our description of deconstruction will hone in on the work of deconstruction. A very succinct description of deconstruction is the process of destabilizing the ability of a text to hold a consistent, hierarchical meaning. Bertens describes this process: Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction, (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1983), p. 114. 5 Jonathan Culler, On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism, (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982), pp. 242–243. 4

THE BOOK OF JOB AS TEXT: DECONSTRUCTION

5

At the heart of deconstruction is the effort to dismantle the cover-ups that texts use to create the semblance of stable meaning: their attempt to create ‘privileged’ centres … Deconstruction tries to demonstrate that the apparent either/or patterns of texts mask underlying both/and situations and to reveal those texts’ fundamental undecidability. In literary terms, a text never achieves closure…6

Because of this inability of language to maintain one meaning, any text composed of language, of signs, lends itself to multiple and endless meanings. Accordingly, the question still remains: How does a critic demonstrate these effects for her/his readers? Deconstruction can be, but never always is a number of maneuvers because deconstruction ‘is’: [A] multifaceted project: in general, it will attempt to display logocentric operations in the text, by focusing on a close reading of the text’s language, its use of presuppositions or transcendental signifieds, its reliance on binary oppositions, its self-contradictions, its aporiai or points of conceptual impasse, and the ways in which it effects closure and resists free play.7

Once these kinds of features are identified, the critic demonstrates how a text attempts to conceal these inconsistencies in hopes of creating a systematic meaning. Therefore, it is the location of a text’s underlying, either/or structures where the work of deconstruction begins. These structures are not usually on the surface of the text, but are assumptions or ideas which the text takes for granted. There are a few specific features in every text which lend themselves to deconstruction: “the asymmetrical opposition … points of condensation, where a single term brings together different lines of argument or sets of values … dramas within the text are reproduced as conflicts in and between readings.”8 In sum, the work of deconstruction is a process whereby oppositional structures are undermined in a

Johannes Willem Bertens, Literary Theory: The Basics, (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 131. 7 Rafey Habib, Modern Literary Criticism and Theory: A History, (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2008), p. 106. 8 Culler, On Deconstruction, pp. 213–214. 6

6

ALBERT MCCLURE

number of ways to demonstrate the inability of a text to hold a coherent and hierarchical meaning. The definition of deconstruction provided by Clines in his article “Deconstruction and the Book of Job” focuses on the way texts make primary, philosophical assertions while at the same time undermining those primary claims: “For a discourse to need deconstructing or to be susceptible of deconstruction the undermining has to be latent, as indeed the metaphor of undermining already tells us.”9 Clines’ idea of deconstruction is a ‘latent’ ‘undermining’ of the primary philosophical assertion(s) of a text. In BOJ, Clines perceives that each philosophy about causality is being undermined; retribution theology is undermined by the poetic sections, while this second philosophy is deconstructed by the epilogue.10 With these two definitions of deconstruction in hand we are nearly ready to begin our deconstruction. In order to organize our deconstruction of BOJ we will divide the work into six categories in accordance with the descriptions of Bertens and Habib (nts. 6 and 7) above: (1) transcendental signifieds, (2) binary oppositions, (3) self-contradictions, (4) resistances to free-play, (5) convergence of competing discourses into a single term, and (6) conflict in the text mirrored as conflicts in secondary literature.

TRANSCENDENTAL SIGNIFIEDS A transcendental signified is a term or idea which the text implicitly uses to govern the text in such a way as to create a coherent, hierarchal, authorized meaning. One term that BOJ uses to centralize meaning is “bless” (√B.R.K.), while the idea of “piety” (or that there are pious people) implicitly runs throughout our text, structuring a discourse on theological perspectives. What follows is a deconstruction of these two terms. David Clines, “Deconstructing the Book of Job,” in The Bible and Rhetoric: Studies in Biblical Persuasion and Credibility, (Martin Warner, ed.; Warwick Studies in Philosophy and Literature; London: Routledge, 1990), p. 66; Clines takes his definition from Culler; Culler, On Deconstruction, 86. 10 Clines, “Deconstruction and the Book of Job,” p. 73. 9

THE BOOK OF JOB AS TEXT: DECONSTRUCTION

7

Lying beneath the presentation of theological perspectives in BOJ is the assumption that there exists an innate quality called piety. The schema of terms and concepts which designate piety are drawn, for the most part, from the Wisdom Literature discourse. The descriptions of Job in the prologue are in keeping with an idyllic, standardized depiction of a pious person: morally superior (tām wəyāšār and ‘abdî), extremely wealthy (Job 1:2–3), religiously observant (1:5), and humbly thankful (1:21; 2:10). The motivations of individuals are not important according to the standard model, not even by the deity—not until BOJ. The physical actions and possessions of the individual decide whether she/he is pious. Enter the Adversary. The Adversary does not discount that Job is “upright or blameless,” nor that he is wealthy, religious, and humble. Instead, it is the connection between the standard schema of terms and ideas drawn from Wisdom Literature and ‘piety’ which comes into question. In the ensuing dialogues and monologues (Job 3:1–42:6) Job, who by all accounts had the trappings of ‘piety,’ but who has now been divested of his wealth, his ability to make sacrifices, and his humble, thankful words, is blamed by his neighbors—who still associate ‘piety’ with the standard schema—for his low-down situation. ‘Piety’ has been cleaved from the standard schema. What, then, is ‘piety?’ Is it the standard schema of Wisdom Literature or the bold, boisterous character exhibited by Job in the remainder of BOJ, or neither, or both? The deity is another controlling, centralizing feature in our text. The authorization of Job as ‘pious’ is given by the deity (1:7; 2:3; 42:8). But, this designation is also removed from Job when the deity allows him to be afflicted (1:12; 2:6) and when the deity confronts Job from the storm (38:1–2; 40:2).11 The deity affirms and rejects both schemata Job operates within as he suffers. This affirmation by the deity—the deity is another controlling feature of the text—of both matrixes for ‘piety’ creates relativity. ‘Piety’ is(n’t) Job is not considered impious or ‘pious’ because he is afflicted, becomes poor, and has lost the standard trappings of piety in Chapters 1–2. The deity has allowed free-play for ‘piety’ and Job’s moral/ethical nature is deferred. 11

8

ALBERT MCCLURE

equated with being “upright” (1:1, 8; 2:3), is(n’t) equated with darkening the deity’s counsel (38:2). The debate about which instances of √B.R.K. in the narrative frame are euphemistic complicates any reading of BOJ. To begin our discussion, however, let us read each instance of √B.R.K. as ‘bless.’ This is its standard meaning.12 Job 1:5 describes how “blessing Elohim” in one’s heart is a sin, which was perhaps committed by Job’s children.13 The deity’s blessing of Job’s work is our second instance in Job 1:9–10. The third and fifth instances are the same (1:11; 2:5): The Adversary contends that if the deity does not afflict Job, then Job will continue to greedily bless the deity.14 The fourth occurrence depicts Job blessing the deity after his children and wealth are demolished (1:21). Job’s wife bids him to “bless Elohim and die” (2:9). The final usage, in the Epilogue, tells us that the deity blesses Job more after his suffering than before it (42:12). Because we can read all the instances of √B.R.K. as ‘bless’ coherently, and because the idea of ‘blessing’ has a standardized meaning in MT (except 1 Kings 21:10), this term appears to stabilize our text. The text uses √B.R.K. assuming that it is a ‘positive’ deed which ‘pious’ individuals enact toward the deity, and which the deity enacts towards ‘pious’ individuals. Yet, if reading √B.R.K. as ‘bless’ is possible, then, why does the history of interpretation differ from this standardized reading so often?

Linafelt has demonstrated that only one instance in MT uses √B.R.K. as “curse” (1 Kings 21:10), and one instance certainly does not create a precedence to read √B.R.K. as a euphemism throughout BOJ; Todd Linafelt, “The Undecidability of ‫ ברך‬in the Prologue to Job and Beyond,” BibInt 4 no. 2 (1996): 159–160. 13 The wāw separating the clause creates ambiguity. A preposition (e.g. kî) would have allowed us to understand the “blessing Elohim” as the “sin.” 14 My translation of 1:11: “Rather, stretch out your hand and afflict all which belongs to him, if not, he will bless you to your face.” The Adversary is opining that once the deity afflicts Job, Job will stop greedily blessing the deity to his face; here ’īm-lō’ is translated “if not,” (HALOT ‫ אִמ‬1.60.1) as opposed to “certainly” (HALOT ‫ אִמ‬1.60.4b). 12

THE BOOK OF JOB AS TEXT: DECONSTRUCTION

9

The first instance of √B.R.K. (Job 1:5) opens the door for deconstruction, and thereby insinuates that ‘bless’ may have a euphemistic meaning elsewhere in the text. The standard usage of √B.R.K. when placed next to the idea of ‘sinning’ deconstructs the idea of ‘blessing’ because the opposite terminology (√Q.L.L. or √’.R.R.) is associated with ‘sinning.’ The ‘impious,’ those who ‘sin,’ cannot √B.R.K.. They can only √Q.L.L.. This process is what Linafelt describes when he writes: “[T]he four texts [Job 1:5, 11; 2:5, 9] above may be read in any combination of primary or euphemistic senses, and the reader is in the position of constantly re-negotiating the meaning of [√B.R.K.].” In order to demonstrate the relativity of meaning created by this situation let us explore three of the possible problems created by the ‘undecidability’ of √B.R.K. The Adversary, by most readings, is proved wrong by Job’s actions, making the deity the winner of a heavenly contest. Yet, depending on the way one reads √B.R.K. in the Prologue, the Adversary is (1) always correct, (2) always incorrect, or (3) once correct and once incorrect.15 The destabilization of the meaning of √B.R.K. gives the (in)correctness of the Adversary’s statements free-play. Job rebukes his wife for her advice to “√B.R.K. Elohim and die.” Why? Is it because she tells him to ‘curse’ Elohim, or because she advises him to ‘bless’ the deity even though Job is once again afflicted? Or maybe, Job finds her comment about his death odious, and he agrees with her statement about ‘blessing/cursing’ the deity, whichever the case may be. This situation is akin to our third example where Job offers sacrifices on behalf of his children when he thinks they may have ‘sinned.’ But what did they do? Both the passage about Job’s wife’s comments and the one about Job’s children’s actions have ‘negative’ connotations. The context does not aide us in deciding how to render √B.R.K. in either case. The term, therefore, is a signifier without a sign, holding no presence, If we read Job 1:11, 21 and 2:5 with the same meaning (either ‘bless’ or ‘curse’), then the Adversary is correct. If we read Job 1:11 and 2:5 with a different meaning than 1:21, then the Adversary is incorrect. If we read Job 1:11 and 1:21 with the same meaning, and 2:5 with a different meaning, then the Adversary is correct then incorrect. 15

10

ALBERT MCCLURE

no authority. It is meaningless because one can read coherently without deciding whether ‘curse’ or ‘bless’ is intended. When we combine both of the terms which have just been deconstructed we end up with an idea which is key to BOJ: The ‘pious’ are ‘blessed.’ This idea runs throughout the entirety of BOJ, whether it be underlying Job’s complaints toward the deity because of his suffering and apparent ‘piety,’ the interlocutors’ qualms with Job, or the Adversary’s suspicion that Job is ‘blessed’ despite appearing ‘pious.’ We can no longer determine what ‘piety’ is in BOJ. Should the ‘pious’ be ‘blessed?’ We cannot tell.

BINARY OPPOSITIONS The binary structure (‘piety’/‘pious’ vs. impiety/impiety) is not totally in line with Berten’s description of binary oppositions because ‘piety’ and impiety are both mentioned explicitly in BOJ, and are on the lips of all the speakers except Job’s wife. BOJ uses a different strategy to give primacy to ‘piety.’ Instead of marginalizing impiety by omitting it from the text altogether, the impious are silenced by disallowing their voices to speak. Impiety is only spoken about from the perspective of the ‘pious.’ Speech is the primary mode of representation in BOJ, and so it comes as no surprise that when a character is deemed impious the text seeks to silence that person: Job silences his wife when he associates her advice (“√B.R.K. Elohim and die”) with impiety (“like the words of a fool you speak”; kədabbēr ’’ahat hannabəlôt tədabbērî). The disappearance of the Adversary is another example of silencing as the afflicting of an innocent person is associated with impiety (“and the Adversary struck Job with evil sores”; wayyak ’et-’îyôb bīshîn rā’).16 The deity silences Job after describing Job’s actions as “darkening” the deity’s order (mî zeh mahšîk ‘ētsāh). Admittedly, Job speaks twice after the deity’s indictment, but his two statements are movements toward silence. Job first announces his silence (40:3–5). In his second response Job addresses the superiority of the deity’s power (42:2), quotes the deity’s words (42:3a, 4), negates his previous speeches (42:3b-c), and finishes with a shift from speech/hearing to 16

Because the Adversary afflicts Job “evilly” (rā‘), he is silenced.

THE BOOK OF JOB AS TEXT: DECONSTRUCTION

11

sight (42:5). Job finally silences himself after 42:6. The deity, after finishing with Job, silences the friends. Their comments were destabilizing (not nəkônāh).17 They too, quickly and silently, do as they are told by the deity (42:7–9). In BOJ, a text where speech is power, the silent (or impious) are powerless. Another feature of binary structures, one which at first seems surprising, is that “we do not only find an oppositional relationship between the two terms involved, we also find a strange complicity.”18 In these oppositional structures the primary term—‘piety’/‘pious’—is defined in contradistinction to the inferior term. To demonstrate this process let us look at one passage about the ‘pious’ (Job 29:2– 13) and one passage about the impious (Job 15:20–30). We are especially interested in descriptions which contain more oppositions (e.g. light vs. dark). Our first passage associates light (v. 3), children (v. 4), milk and oil (v. 6), judgeship (vv. 7–17), long life (v. 18), and fertility (v. 20) with the ‘pious.’ The impious are associated with pain (v. 20), terrifying noises (v. 21), death by sword (v. 22), darkness (vv. 22, 23), hunger (v. 23), distress and anguish (v. 24), uninhabited cities (v. 28), and poverty (v. 29). The ‘pious’/impious dichotomy has echoes of the opposite term in each association. Long life is related to the ‘pious.’ Death (by sword) is related to the impious. With every association of something with the impious, the text also relates an opposite idea with the ‘pious’; the difference between the two terms creates meaning, a fuller sense of what it means to be ‘pious’ and impious. The next step in our deconstruction of ‘piety’/impiety is to show how this either/or structure is really a both/and situation. The concept of reversal (henceforth RVR) deconstructs the distinction between ‘piety’ and impiety in BOJ demonstrating how one term is also the other. Job 1:4–5 contains our first example of RVR. In fear of his daughters and sons running afoul of the deity nəkônāh comes from the niphal of √K.W.N. There are a few meanings for the term, all of which have to do with something established, stabilizing: (1) “to be established,” (2) “to be steadfast, be sure,” (3) “to be completed, be arranged,” (4) “to be permanent, endure,” and (5) “to be ready”; HALOT ‫ כון‬1.464.1–5. 18 Bertens, Literary Theory, p. 129. 17

12

ALBERT MCCLURE

Job makes a sacrifice to restore them in case they have sinned at their soiree. Job believes he can redeem his children, if indeed they have transgressed, from impiety to piety.19 Let us look next at RVR’s underlying assumptions: (1) there are two opposing valences—for our purposes they are ‘piety’ and impiety, and (2) movement from one valence to another is possible. Therefore, RVR, at its essence, does not include the idea of ‘piety’/impiety, but once it is included into BOJ’s theological systems of causality RVR is the concept which allows movement from impiety to ‘piety.’20 Once a RVR takes place the meaning of one’s character is deferred. If a ‘pious’ person sins, therefore becoming impious, RVR can once again be enacted, returning them to a ‘pious’ state. However, one is only always ‘pious’ in distinction, in deference, to her/his former ‘impiety.’ Thus, RVR creates différance in oppositional structure of ‘piety’/‘impiety’, and within BOJ. So now we have ‘(im)piety.’ ‘Piety’ cannot escape the reminder [‘(im)’] that it retains meaning only in distinction to ‘impiety.’ Yet, this is only part of the work of deconstruction because the critic’s goal “is not to destroy [the opposition], leaving a monism according to which there would be only absence,” but she/he also “maintains the opposition by (1) employing it in one's argument … and (2) reinstating it with a reversal that gives it a different status and impact.”21 This reinstatement should implicate a new relationship between the terms, one where they are similar, but not oppositional or hierarchical, and where both are included in a different discourse than before.22 Because there are texts in the Hebrew Bible where RVR is no longer an option (e.g., Deut. 17:1–7; Prov. 1:24–31), RVR is not something innate to retribution theologies categorically. 20 The act of committing transgression causes a person to be impious. Transgressions are the actions which divide individuals into the two categories, and therefore, the idea of transgression comes from within the discourse of ‘piety’/impiety. The idea of RVR is not innate to that discourse. 21 Culler, On Deconstruction, p. 150. 22 The term ‘impîous,’ written differently, can represent those who are silent and suffering. The negative prefix im- shows that the mouth of 19

THE BOOK OF JOB AS TEXT: DECONSTRUCTION

13

SELF-CONTRADICTIONS A description and example of this variety of deconstruction has already been provided by Clines above. Both Clines and I draw our definition of this phenomenon in BOJ from Culler: “To ‘deconstruct’ a discourse is to show how it undermines the philosophy it asserts.”23 Stated differently, self-contradictions are places where the text tries to create an either/or situation in terms of logic, but which in actuality is a both/and situation. This engenders incoherence in BOJ, incoherence which can only be pacified by ignoring another portion of the text. In Job 1:9–10 the Adversary accuses the deity of protecting and increasing Job’s possessions. He does not, however, accuse him of doing so because Job is ‘pious.’ His contention is exactly the opposite. Job is not ‘pious,’ but greedy and manipulative. The Adversary states that Job is ‘impious’ and ‘blessed.’ Job is only reacting to ‘blessing’ with insincere gestures of ‘piety.’ If the deity agrees with the Adversary—that Job’s ‘piety’ is only a reaction to divine ‘blessing’—there would be no need to test Job. But, because the deity allows Job to be stripped of all his wealth and health we can draw two conclusions about causality. First, because the deity expects Job to remain ‘pious’ in the absence of his wealth and health, the deity believes there is no connection between divine and human actions; ‘(im)piety’ has no divine consequences (cf. Job 2:3). Second, if the deity is willing to allow Job to be ‘cursed’ while admitting that he was ‘pious,’ then, for Job at least, his ‘piety’ has these individuals is being silenced. By writing -pî- into the signifier we remind ourselves that those who are silenced can be given a voice through “my mouth.” These ‘impîous’ individuals are waiting to speak, to give voice to their experience of anguish. They are patient and humble. The term ‘pîous’ represents individuals who speak about their experiences of suffering and the experiences of others. They call on society to validate their experiences. Both the ‘pîous’ and the ‘impîous’ are in solidarity with the marginalized and silenced sufferers, one speaks for them, the other sits silently with them, weeps with them, mourns with them, suffers with them (as them). This discourse is not theological, but ethical, and seeks to give primacy of place to those suffering, silent, and humble. 23 Culler, On Deconstruction, p. 86.

14

ALBERT MCCLURE

resulted in being ‘cursed.’ In these two verses, then, the deity affirms that there is no causality between human and divine actions while simultaneously causing a man to suffer because, according to the deity, he is ‘pious’ and wealthy. Because of this paradoxical state of affairs many scholars have sought in vain to determine which theological system of causality is being advocated by BOJ. This situation has detracted from a more pressing question in BOJ: Is Job ‘pious?’ Both the reason why Job suffers and the deity’s expectation of Job during his suffering come from the assumption that Job was/is ‘pious.’ This assumption, however, when appended with a question mark—Job was/is ‘pious?’—is precisely the question which the deity and the Adversary are attempting to answer (Job 1:12; 2:7). The assumption which subtends the belief and actions of the deity, and as such the plot of BOJ, is the same thing which is being questioned. If Job is ‘impious,’ the entire story falls apart. Because of the Adversary’s meddling Job’s ‘(im)piety’ is deferred. This statement both acknowledges Job’s former ‘piety’ and directs the reader to examine his speeches in order to determine whether or not he remains ‘pious.’ His actions under duress will determine whether or not his former ‘piety’ was ‘impious.’24 Our text begins by very blatantly stating that Job is ‘pious’ (1:1–3), and if that is not enough proof the deity confirms this statement a few short verses later (1:6–9). This is enough evidence for Clines, along with a vast majority of other scholars. The only scholar across whom I have come who notes an inconsistency from the Prologue on the issue of Job’s ‘piety’ is Hoffman. He writes: “Actually, there is even an inner logical contradiction in the prologue, which axiomatically states that Job is a perfect saint and at the same time comes to examine this very statement.”25 If we can stand to take the Adversary’s accusation seriously, then, we will peruse Job’s speeches, not assuming that he is undeserving of suffering because This is not to say that others have not asked similar kinds of questions, but when one does not allow Job’s ‘piety’ to come into question even though the deity does, I find their conclusion(s) naïve. 25 Yair Hoffman, “The Relation between the Prologue and the Speech-Cycles in Job,” VT 31 no. 2 (1981): 165. 24

THE BOOK OF JOB AS TEXT: DECONSTRUCTION

15

his character is truly under question, and because his ‘(im)piety’ is deferred. The Prologue of BOJ is told by a narrator privy to information directly from the divine council. More specifically, the narrator relates two conversations that took place in the heavens concerning whether or not Job is ‘impious,’ and what the deity and the Adversary plan on doing to determine that very question. This kind of reporting is standard for the Hebrew Bible and so all seems well and good. When we read Job 38–42:6, however, another picture of human reliability is presented. Watts writes: “The book of Job, however, reaches its climax in a pair of divine speeches (Job 38—41) that question any human’s ability to comprehend God’s actions.”26 The deity flatly states in so many ways that Job—and by synecdoche humanity which includes our narrator?—cannot understand how, why, or what the deity is doing. And if that was not enough, Job 28 drives this point home even before the deity begins speaking. For Watts the implication of Job 38–42:6 is that the narrator cannot know what goes on in the heavens. For him, the testimony of the deity trumps that of the human narrator: “The author of Job attempted to use one literary convention, that of a divine omniscient character [the deity], to attack the use of another literary convention, the omniscient narrator.”27 The problem of ‘who-to-trust’ becomes more complicated once another question is introduced: If the narrator is intermittently present to introduce speakers (e.g. 9:1), and if the narrator has proven utterly unreliable in the Prologue, then how can we trust her/his introductory comments to the speeches? In fact, of all the voices of BOJ, the narrator is the most unreliable; the narrator could not only be lying about Job’s ‘piety,’ but also about the divine debates in heaven. The narrator could be lying about everything and anything? BOJ will fall wholly apart if we begin taking this line of reasoning—but wasn’t that Culler’s challenge: ‘to explore every resistance to meaning’? James W. Watts, “The Unreliable Narrator of Job,” in The Whirlwind: Essays on Job, Hermeneutics and Theology in Memory of Jane Morse, (Stephen L. Cook, Corrine L. Patton, and James W. Watts, eds.; New York: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), p. 171. 27 Watts, “The Unreliable Narrator of Job,” p. 179. 26

16

ALBERT MCCLURE

In addition to our deconstruction of Job’s ‘piety’ vis-à-vis the narrator, Job, too, suggests that he may not be a vision of moral perfection. Twice in his first response to Zophar Job describes his past actions with ‘impious’ terminology (Job 13:26 ‘aônôt “iniquities”; 14:16–17 hattā’tî “my sin” and ‘aônî “my iniquity”).28 Do these admissions, along with the unreliability of the narrator, disqualify Job from being ‘pious’? The problem with answering this question relies on the definition of ‘piety’/‘impiety,’ a binary opposition which, as we demonstrated above, becomes incoherent in BOJ. Job’s character remains infinitely deferred. As Job is the main character in BOJ, it is only fitting that he does the most deconstructing in his book. Focusing our description on how Job contradicts the theological systems of causality, let us begin with the most obvious deconstruction. Job deconstructs the assertion of the Adversary that Job is only as ‘pious’ as he is ‘blessed’—by not ‘blessing/‘cursing’ the deity once his suffering ensues (Job 1:11; 2:4).29 Job deconstructs retribution theology because he suffers as one ‘cursed’ while remaining ‘pious’ in the deity’s eyes (Job 2:3).30 The last theological perspective, that there is no causality between human deed and divine reaction, is deconstructed by the reasons for Job’s suffering. He suffers because the deity believes he is ‘pious.’ He suffers because the Adversary knows he is wealthy. Job not only contradicts these theological systems, but is so deconstructive he deconstructs his own complaint that he is being treated unjustly. Clines writes: “Job has not been treated unjustly—not unless the doctrine of retribution is true … unless his piety should have been rewarded with wealth and health, there is no injustice in what he suffers, and no deserving in his restoration.”31 In all the instances where Job contends Neither example is hypothetical like Job 7:21 and 19:4. Good shares this opinion; Edwin M. Good, “Job: A Response,” Soundings 56 no. 4 (1973): 476. 30 We cannot cite Job 1:8 because Job has not yet suffered at all until after this verse. 31 D. J. A. Clines, “Why Is There a Book of Job and What Does It Do to You if You Read It?,” in The Book of Job, (Willem A. M. Beuken, ed.; BETL 14; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1994), pp. 16, 18; Fleming 28 29

THE BOOK OF JOB AS TEXT: DECONSTRUCTION

17

that human deeds and divine actions have no causal connection,32 underlying his complaint is a belief that retribution theology should be in effect.33 Job’s complaints point toward a time in the past when he was ‘blessed’ because he was ‘pious’ (e.g. Job 29:1–25), and his constant search for the cause of his suffering suggest a hope that he will once again be treated positively according to his ‘piety.’ The result of this hopeful reminiscence for the readers is that Job describes two theological systems of causality which phase in-andout for no reason thereby creating a both/and situation for any reader who seeks to find one constant theological system of causality which underlies BOJ. The deconstruction of BOJ by Job disallows the reader to rest too long on any one theological perspective before having to hop to another only to find it crumbling too. Skipping to the Epilogue, verse 42:10 gives an explicit reason when, and probably not why, the deity restores Job’s possessions: “when he interceded for his neighbors.”34 This brings us no closer to understanding causality in BOJ. It only teases us, inciting us to make one interpretive step too many. Just two verses later the text reads, “And Y-H-W-H ‘blessed’/‘cursed’ the anteriority of Job more than before,” but fails to give a reason for the ‘blessing.’ What, then, is the connection between Job’s intercession for his friends, the subsequent restoration of his possessions twofold, and the theological systems of causality? Have Job’s possessions been restored because of an obedient action, or is it because he has notes this paradox as well; Daniel E. Fleming, “Job: The Tale of Patient Faith and God’s Dilemma,” VT 44 no. 4 (1994): 480. 32 Job 1:20–21; 2:10; 6:10; 7:1–3; 9:17, 22–24; 10:7–8, 14–17; 12:4–6; 16:16–17; 19:7; 21:7–16a, 17–26, 30–33; 24:2–8, 21–25; 30:25–31. 33 In order for the Adversary’s question to be taken seriously Job must believe that the world should be governed retributively, ironically, to prove his ‘piety,’ and that the deity ‘blesses’ him, hinnam. 34 The verb bəhītpallô can either be an infinitive or a qatal. If it is an infinitive, then the beth is temporal (WO 11.2.5.c), and if it a qatal, then it is more likely causal beth (WO 11.2.5.e). Because the preposition beth precedes the verbal-form it is more likely that this is a temporal beth attached to an infinitive construct and not a causal beth (WO 36.2.2.b).

18

ALBERT MCCLURE

retained, amidst a slew of accusations and trials, his integrity? Or is it something else? The ‘text’ is silent. The implication of Job 28, and especially its conclusion (28:23– 28), is that only the deity knows where to find wisdom, and thus, is the only one with access to it. Humans cannot be wise except by ‘fearing the deity and turning from evil.’ Job, then, is the only character who is wise (1:1). The intrusion of Job 28 has contradictory implications for all of the dialogues and monologues of the human characters because all claim to know about proper religious and social conduct—wisdom and understanding. Some of the speakers even attribute wisdom to the deity (Zophar: 11:5–11; Job: 12:13, 16; Eliphaz: 15:7–9; Elihu: 32:8; 33:14–15; 36:3), but this is itself contradictory because they do so while offering their own wise words.35 Job, who meets the description of a wise man in Chapters 1–2, and whose ‘piety’ is deferred beginning in Chapter 3, does not fit the description of wisdom and understanding for the final 39 chapters of BOJ (e.g., 12:1–3). Chapter 28 undercuts the authority of our text, claiming that it holds the key to righteous living. Yet, Job 28 concludes by pointing us back to the beginning of our story, to a man who lost everything, everyone—save his wife and a few servants—and his ‘wisdom and understanding’ because he was wise. To summarize, BOJ (1) asserts that Job is ‘pious’ while concurrently remarking in a number of ways that he is not, (2) provides two theological systems of causality which are mutually exclusive and which are contradicted by Job along with the statements of the deity more than once making it impossible to determine when each system is at work in BOJ, (3) concludes with a happy ending, but does not provide a satisfactory answer as to why the ending ended so happily, and (4) interjects a poem about ‘wisdom’ and ‘understanding’ which wholly discredits most of the text and suggest that Job lost his wisdom because he possessed it in the first place.

Eliphaz’s comments (4:12–21) come close to claiming revelation from the deity, but he identifies the phantom as a “spirit” (rūah). 35

THE BOOK OF JOB AS TEXT: DECONSTRUCTION

19

RESISTANCE TO FREE-PLAY The presence of free-play in a text implies “that there is no ending to reading, no conceivable horizon of interpretation,” and “that no one reading will ever be able to claim to have exhausted the textual resources available in the text being read.”36 In order for a text to produce one coherent, hierarchical meaning free-play must be hidden. Two instances in BOJ, one at the beginning (1:1–3) and one at the end (42:12), are locations of free-play which the text seeks to conceal amidst what Clines has argued are instances of retribution theology. In the first chapter of BOJ, Job is described as incredibly ‘pious’ (1:1), and then, incredibly wealthy (1:2–3). Something more than ‘temporal progression,’ notes Clines, may be implied in 1:2: “Nothing here says explicitly that we are dealing with cause and effect, nothing prevents us from insisting that here there is a mere temporal progression,” nevertheless, he adds that “most readers find here more than mere temporal progression.”37 This is the first point of ambiguity we meet in BOJ. It unmasks the reader’s underlying ideology about causality, asking her/him whether this equality of ‘piety’ and wealth could simply be a happy coincidence. By placing a traditional description of ‘piety’ directly before an elaborate description of wealth, the text tries to assert that Job’s possessions are ‘blessings.’ Yet, there is no syntactic connection between Job’s piety and wealth as Cooper notes.38 A wāw is used to adjoin 1:1 and 1:2. Neither Job’s ‘piety’ nor the deity’s actions are responsible for Job’s wealth according to the text. It is the reader in the end who must decide why Job is wealthy. The use of bērak in Job 42:12, like wāw in 1:2, is confrontational: “And The deity ‘blessed’/‘cursed’ the end of Job’s (life) Geoffrey Bennington, Interrupting Derrida, (Warwick Studies in European Philosophy; New York: Routledge, 2000), p. 11. 37 Clines, “Deconstructing the Book of Job,” p. 67; In a later article Clines describes this wāw in Job 1:2 as “faux naïf” suggesting that it encourages readers to see in 1:1 the cause of 1:2–3; Clines, “Why Is There a Book of Job and What Does It Do to You if You Read It?,” pp. 17–18. 38 Cooper, “Reading and Misreading the Prologue of Job,” pp. 69–70. 36

20

ALBERT MCCLURE

more than its beginning.” The two preceding verses depict the restoration of Job’s wealth (42:10–11), and the final five verses recount Job’s possessions by number and type along with a description of his long life (42:13–17). This final usage of √B.R.K. is enclosed by traditional definitions of the ‘blessings’ of the ‘pious’ even more than the introductory description of Job (1:1–3). Job, however, is not labeled with any ‘pious’ axioms in this section (42:7–17).39 There are two positive descriptions of Job vis-à-vis the deity in the Epilogue (42:7b, 9c). Job’s words are described in contrast to his neighbors as “stabilizing” (nəkônāh) and the deity “lifts up his face.”40 Neither of these descriptions correlates with the traditional description of ‘piety.’ Because Job is not described as ‘pious’ in 42:7–17, the presupposition that the deity ‘blesses’ him because of ‘piety’ is false. The opposite meaning of √B.R.K. is ‘curse,’ but this definition would be contradictory (cf. 42:10–11, 13–17) as Job’s new possessions would hold a negative connotation. Both meanings of √B.R.K., and thus both meanings associated with retribution theology, are incoherent, and the text allows free-play in determining what √B.R.K. signifies in 42:12. Job 42:12 presents an opportunity to find out if the reader has learned a lesson. Will the reader assume that retribution theology is in effect as she/he did before in 1:1–3? Will the reader assume that she/he knows what √B.R.K. means? The final instance of ambiguity can be understood as a didactic device used to determine whether or not the reader has learned that ‘(im)piety’ and √B.R.K. Instead, the description matches the language of lawful restitution; cf. Pietro Bovati, Re-Establishing Justice: Legal Terms, Concepts and Procedures in the Hebrew Bible, (JSOTSupp. 105; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1994), pp. 144– 146, 377–380. 40 There are five instances where nəkônāh is used to mean “true” of heart, which is a moral designation (Pss. 51:12; 57:8; 78:37; 108:2; 112:7). Job 42:7 is closer to the usages of nəkônāh in legal contexts (Deut. 13:14; 17:4) where it signifies that information has been ‘certified’ or ‘established.’ Both passages in Deuteronomy and in Job 42:7 use nəkônāh to describe “a matter” or “words” (from √D.B.R.). Because the deity is describing Job’s words, and not his heart, Job 42:7 is not a moral judgment, but a legal one. 39

THE BOOK OF JOB AS TEXT: DECONSTRUCTION

21

are slippery subjects indeed; is Job ‘pious’ because he is surrounded by wealth and ‘blessed’/‘cursed’ by the deity? So the BOJ begins and ends attempting to support retribution theology by placing traditional terms for ‘piety’ and ‘blessing’ alongside each other, attempting to resist free-play. Yet, read differently, BOJ does not begin or end affirming retribution theology, as Clines argues in “Deconstructing the Book of Job,” but begins and ends ambiguously, leaving open the nature of causality in BOJ.41

CONDENSATION Culler describes condensation as a location “where a single term brings together different lines of argument or sets of ideas,” because “[t]hese terms are the points at which the strains of an attempt to sustain or impose logocentric conclusions make themselves felt in a text, moments of uncanny opacity.”42 In other words, places of condensation are locations where the meaning of a signifier is being wrestled with by more than one discourse within a text, creating an either/or situation. In addition, this either/or situation is usually imbued with a hierarchical distinction whereby one discourse is privileged. What deconstruction reveals, because of the multiple meanings supplied by the discourses for the signifier, is that the text is unable to structure the meaning of the signifier. Culler writes: “When [a critic using deconstruction] cites the range of meanings listed for a word in dictionaries or assembled around it by morphological and etymological links, it is in order to dramatize, through these contingent associations, connections that repeat themselves in various guises and contribute In a later article Clines himself states that Job 42 advocates no causal connection: “Nothing in chap. 42, we could say, finally relates Job’s prosperity to his piety,” and his denouement “is a mere serendipity”; David Clines, “Does the Book of Job Suggest that Suffering is Not a Problem?,” in Weisheit in Israel: Beitraege des Symposiums “Das Alte Testament und die Kultur der Moderne” anlaesslich des 100. Geburtstags Gerhard von Rad (1901–1971), Heidelberg, 18.–21. Oktober 2001, (Gerhard von Rad, David J. A. Clines, Hermann Lichtenberger, and Hans-Peter Muller, eds.; Munster: LIT, 2003), pp. 106, 107. 42 Culler, On Deconstruction, p. 213. 41

22

ALBERT MCCLURE

to a paradoxical logic.”43 In BOJ ‘death’ is one location of condensation. ‘Death’ (from √M.W.T.) creates condensation between the two competing theological systems of causality—retribution theology and a theology which claims that human actions do not affect divine reaction. The use of death can be divided into three categories: instances where ‘death’ is (1) not used to privilege either theological system of causality, (2) used to favor retribution theology, and (3) used to favor a theology that makes no connection between divine and human actions. We will not be dealing with the first category in our deconstruction at first, not the least because these instances would not be deconstructive, but because the usages by both theological systems of causality are our main focus. Of the twenty-four usages of ‘death’ eleven of them support retribution theology. Eliphaz uses a description of how all humans are debased (4:17–19) and accordingly die without ‘wisdom’ to argue that all humans are ‘impious,’ deserving death with respect to the deity’s righteousness (4:21). His next usage of death is an aphorism about “fools” (5:2). Again, in the same chapter he mentions ‘death,’ noting that the deity will redeem one being reproved, and therefore one who is ‘pious,’ from ‘death’ by famine (5:17–20). Job compares the death of a tree, which can be revived after a long period of desiccation, with that of a human. He does so in the midst of a larger complaint about unfair treatment by the deity (14:7–14), but Job admits of some wrongdoing in this passage (14:16–17) which allows this instance of ‘death’ to be considered retribution theology, even though it is couched within a larger complaint against that same theology.44 Bildad provides a violent description of the fate of the wicked, depicting how ‘Death’ eats the limbs of the ‘impious’ (18:3). In a section which many scholars have reapportioned to another speaker, Job describes how neither the ‘impious’ nor their children will escape death (27:15). Those considered ‘pious’ by an advocate in the heavens may be redeemed Culler, On Deconstruction, p. 146. Job 7:15 may be a similar case, but it is unclear whether 7:20–21 is an admission to sin. 43 44

THE BOOK OF JOB AS TEXT: DECONSTRUCTION

23

from ‘death’ according to Elihu, making near-‘death’-experiences the sign of redemption to come (33:22). In the following chapter he argues that only one as just and powerful as the deity can govern the world, comparing this ability with that of ‘impious’ humans who will eventually ‘die’ (34:20). The final usage of ‘death’ within the discourse of retribution theology is Elihu’s comment that ‘impiety’ results in premature ‘death’ (36:14). ‘Death’ or a near‘death’-experience, in the retribution discourse of BOJ, are either a punishment for the ‘impious’ or a signifier that redemption is soon to come. Eight of the usages of ‘death’ in BOJ support a theology which posits no connection between human and divine actions. Job’s children are killed by a strong wind (1:19) which is caused ḥinnam (2:3). Twice in Chapter Three and once in Chapter Seven Job describes his longing for ‘death’ (3:11, 21; 7:15) because the deity has afflicted him unjustly (3:23b; 7:17–18). For Job ‘death’ is better than a life of unwarranted suffering. Job also accuses the deity of mocking the ‘death’ of the innocent (9:23) as he describes abuses of justice by the deity (9:22–24). Job complains that the ‘impious’ are ‘blessed’ and the ‘pious’ are ‘cursed’ during their lifetimes, and that in ‘death’ it seems as though ‘piety’ has negative consequences (21:23, 25). Job wants justice to be administered during each individual’s lifetime (21:19–20). In his monologue Job describes how he was ‘pious’ during his lifetime, and then, depicts his present misery which he is sure will end with his ‘death’ (30:23), an end which is incongruous with his former ‘piety.’ These meanings of ‘death’— ḥinnam, an end to unjust suffering, an opportunity for mocking by the deity, and a missed opportunity for punishing the ‘impious’ by the deity—point toward ‘death’ as a consequence which individuals cannot predict, but which can at least end suffering. The usages which are supported by one theological system of causality or the other have been sorted. Let us look, instead, at the last verse of BOJ in order to demonstrate how the meaning of ‘death’ has been disrupted. “And Job died, old and full of days” (42:17). What, then, does Job’s ‘death’ signify? Is it punishment for ‘impiety’; is it meaningless; does it suggest that because the deity did not redeem Job from death he was not a ‘pious’ sufferer; or, is it simply the end of Job’s unjust suffering? Because of the multiplicity of meanings for ‘death’ the text cannot say. Job’s ‘death,’ then, takes on multiple meanings depending on how one

24

ALBERT MCCLURE

reads. Meaning in BOJ, as Job’s ‘death’ demonstrates, is always already passing away from one perspective to another.

SECONDARY LITERATURE CONFLICTS Instead of presenting the numerous ways the speeches of the deity and the subsequent responses by Job are interpreted, I will comment on the process which usually creates an interpretation of this one-sided dialogue. When most readers approach these sublime speeches they have questions which they want answered already in mind. Most readings divide into two variations at this point: (1) either the deity answers their questions, but usually in a roundabout way seeking to reorient Job into a ‘different’ kind of cosmology than he believed to exist, or (2) the deity does not address their questions at all, choosing instead to overwhelm Job with a barrage of unanswerable questions. Job’s response, depending on the ‘meaning’ of the deity’s speeches, is usually (1) understood to be conciliatory if the deity seeks to answer the reader’s questions in a roundabout way, or (2) to be rebellious, possibly even deceitful, if the deity’s speech is understood to be filled with animosity, not answering the reader’s question. A comment about the work of deconstruction is instructive here: “[T]he critic will be on the lookout for different sorts of conflict … [her/his] is an interest in the way conflicts or dramas within the text are reproduced as conflicts in and between readings of the text.”45 What most scholars have turned into an either/or situation, we should understand to be an instance of the both/and possibility of our text. With certainty we can state that any interpretation of the speeches of the deity and the responses by Job holding to a singular meaning is ignoring something present in our text. To demonstrate this ambiguity let us look briefly at Job’s final response to the deity in Chapter Forty-Two. Morrow gives us a triply ambiguous translation of Job’s last rebuttal: “Wherefore I retract (or I

45

Culler, On Deconstruction, pp. 213–214.

THE BOOK OF JOB AS TEXT: DECONSTRUCTION

25

submit) and I repent on (or on account of) dust and ashes.”46 Does Job retract or submit? Of what does he repent? Is ‘dust and ashes’ meant to be taken literally or metaphorically? Morrow’s translation lacks one meaning because this verse, which readers expect to finalize our text creating closure, is ambiguous, instead allowing BOJ to remain open to further interpretations. The attempt to supply a singular interpretation of BOJ despite its indeterminate nature is criticized by Lawrie: “[A]nalyses are not undertaken in order to understand the book better, but in order to defend a particular understanding that the person already has,” and he continues, “I am not saying the actual features of the text play no role; I am saying that these features can be stressed or made light of, depending on what one wants.”47 To privilege one’s own interpretation is the misstep in 42:6, or any portion of BOJ for that matter. Producing a single, coherent message for the BOJ is not.

DECONSTRUCTED Our deconstruction has come to a close. The meanings of words such as ‘(im)piety’ and √B.R.K. are deferred. A number of logical paradoxes have been uncovered: can we trust the narrator; is Job ‘pious’; which theological system of causality is in effect; which character truly possesses ‘wisdom?’ BOJ begins and ends, not asserting retribution theology, but leaving causality open to freeplay. What BOJ leaves the reader after deconstruction is confusing. Suffering unjustly can create confusion and a text which mirrors this emotion lends itself to answering questions about theodicy.

THEODICY Is BOJ about theodicy—we know it is about suffering—or is this simply a naïve way to read? Historically, BOJ is about theodicy so much so that individuals who feel they are suffering unjustly turn William Morrow, “Consolation, Rejection, and Repentance in Job 42:6,” JBL 105 no. 2 (1986): 211; Cf. Ellen van Wolde, “Job 42, 1–6: The Reversal of Job,” in Job 28: Cognition in Context (BibInt Series vol. 64; Ellen van Wolder, ed.; (Leiden: Brill, 2003), pp. 223–250. 47 Lawrie, “How Critical Is It to Be Historically Critical?,” pp. 136, 137. 46

26

ALBERT MCCLURE

to this book for comfort and inspiration (e.g., On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent by Gutierrez and O’Connell). For this reason alone BOJ is about theodicy. Yet, the question remains whether BOJ is about theodicy if given a careful, literary reading. The comments of Clines are instructive: [M]ore subtly read, what it [BOJ] is doing is to offer no reason for any suffering at all—except Job’s … For a moment it encourages us to believe that there is no mystery at all about suffering; but in the next moment we recognize that what was plain and unmysterious about Job’s suffering was trivial, and only its inexplicability is serious.48

What Clines articulates is the clever way this text’s creator(s) have constructed a story which appears to be about theodicy, but which is actually about one character’s suffering used as a means to demonstrate that piety and blessing do not always correlate. In some ways the question of theodicy assumes a correlation between ‘piety’ and ‘blessing,’ a principle which many scholars argue BOJ is trying to undermine.49 It would be very surprising, then, if BOJ was not about theodicy, but about it in such a way as to discredit it as a foundational principle of Israelite/Jewish culture. Is it not ironic, then, when Job—whom some hail as the champion of anti-retribution theology—becomes angry with the deity for ‘injustice’ because he is under the assumption that his own ‘piety’ should be met with material reward? Job’s story, while it can be taken as an attack on retribution theology, is subtended by Job’s continued desire for the rewards of his ‘pious’ actions. It seems that Job suffers as much from unmet expectations after the calamities befall him, than he does in terms of physical pain and anguish. This realization begs the question: Why does Job suffer?—leaving aside for the moment whether or not it comes justly or unjustly.

David J. A. Clines, “False Naivety in the Prologue to Job,” HAR 9 (1987): 134–135; Clines’ later comments retain this argument; David J. A. Clines, “Does the Book of Job Suggest that Suffering is Not a Problem?,” p. 96. 49 Clines has earlier made this same point; Clines, “Does the Book of Job Suggest that Suffering is Not a Problem?,” pp. 93–95. 48

THE BOOK OF JOB AS TEXT: DECONSTRUCTION

27

Turning now to the text, let us try to determine what if any are the cause(s) for Job’s suffering besides what we noted earlier: Job may not be ‘pious.’ Job has two characteristics which make him the perfect candidate to test the causal relationship between ‘piety’ and wealth: his incredible wealth and unmatched righteousness (Job 1:1–3). The Adversary twice argues that Job only serves the deity because Job is rewarded (1:9–11; 2:4–5), and both times the deity retorts that Job’s ‘piety’ is disinterested. Let us remove the affirmations of Job’s ‘piety’ from the equation. Could Job be an ideal candidate for this test if he was extremely wealthy and ‘impious?’ No, Job is drawn to the Adversary’s attention because the deity believes Job is ‘pious’: “Have you considered in your heart my servant Job because there is not anyone like him in the earth: blameless and upright, he fears Elohim and turns from evil” (Job 1:8). At this point in the narrative Job is not being tested, but exemplified. Job only becomes a candidate for the Adversary’s test after his exorbitant wealth is mentioned (Job 1:9–10). Job’s ‘piety’ allots him adoration by the deity. It is his wealth, his apparent ‘blessing,’ which affords him suffering. What then, can we conclude about the reason for Job’s suffering? Job’s worldview, his wealth, and his apparent ‘piety’ are the causes of his psychological and physical suffering respectively. After the first calamities befall Job’s possessions, his servants, and his children the deity admits that Job was afflicted hinnam (2:3). After the second round there is no reason given for the deity’s actions, but one can only assume its reason too was ‘for nothing.’ Therefore we can deduce that if the deity does not believe there need be a connection between ‘piety’ and wealth according to the first two chapters of BOJ, then Job, indeed, does not suffer unjustly.50 BOJ, then, is not about theodicy, but certainly about suffering, given a careful analysis. Yet because of deconstruction BOJ has become a text with ‘both/and’ meanings, and as such it is more open than before to those who are suffering, whether they be ‘impîous’ or ‘pîous,’ those who recognize Job as their biblical Other scholars have reached the same conclusion; e.g., Gerald Wilson, “Preknowledge, Anticipation, and the Poetics of Job,” JSOT 30 no. 2 (2005): 246. 50

28

ALBERT MCCLURE

counterpoint, those who do believe that BOJ is about theodicy, those who read differently than I.51

From a literary perspective BOJ is not about theodicy, but this essay, along with the other presentation I gave at ISBL 2011 (entitled “The Book of Job as Text: Bakhtin”) is an effort to get around the idea of theodicy while making BOJ applicable to those who suffer—to get around metaphysics because BOJ is not about theodicy. Whether one suffers or not the perspective of sufferers is valid and necessary, a comment with which Newsom concurs: “[T]he best defense against self-serving rewritings of the text [BOJ] is the continual encounter between well-grounded interpretations deriving from widely differing hermeneutical perspectives”; Carol Newsom, “Re-considering Job,” CBR 5 no. 2 (2007): 175; There is little doubt that the book of Job is a ‘text,’ but to many individuals of various religious affiliations, individuals who were alive over two thousand years ago and those living at this present moment, BOJ is more. I was reminded of this fact in 2009 when Madipoane Masenya asked me an important question after I presented a paper about BOJ at the International SBL in Rome. She asked me how people with HIV or AIDS in Africa should read BOJ. I was nonplussed. After a few seconds, I told her that they should “read the book with their pastor so the pastor could tell them what the book means.” To my relief the audience had a good laugh at this response— or possibly just at me. Ever since that encounter, however, her question has been heavy on my mind; the Book of Job is not just a ‘text.’ It can be, and most definitely has been, a comfort to those who suffer. I dedicate this essay to Madipoane Masenya and to those of whom she was thinking when she asked me that important question; For a discussion of the ethical implications of deconstruction see David Clines, “Ethics as Deconstruction, and, The Ethics of Deconstruction,” in The Bible in Ethics: The Second Sheffield Colloquium, (John W. Rogerson, Margaret Davies, and M. Daniel Carroll R., eds.; JSOTSup. 209; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1995), pp. 77–106, esp. pp. 97–106. 51

DUALITY IN THE RELATIONSHIP OF “MAN-GOD” IN THE BOOK OF JOB: TWO READINGS OR TWO JOBS? ITZHAK PELEG BEIT BERL COLLEGE

THE PROLOGUE The Book of Job raises issues of human suffering and divine righteousness via Job’s story. According to the Talmud: “Job never existed; he was a proverb.” (Baba Batra 15:62) The claim that Job did not really exist, bears an apologetic tendency meant to reject the idea that the Deity is a cruel God. This doubt as to the “reality” of the story, in my opinion, does not diminish the importance of the story and its messages. After all, a great work of literature is timeless, and speaks to all people. I shall approach the Book of Job as a great work of literature focusing on human suffering1 and divine

Naomi’s husband, Elimelech, and also her two sons died. We learn about her response to her tragedy from her words to Ruth and Orpah (her daughters in law): “My lot is far more bitter than yours, for the hand of the Lord has struck out against me.” (Ruth 13) and from her words to the women of Bethlehem: “Call me Mara (=bitterness) for Shaddai (=God) has made my lot very bitter…How can you call me Naomi when the Lord….has brought misfortune upon me?” (Ruth 1:19–20) See Job 27:2: “By Shaddai who has embittered my life”; Job and Naomi place responsibility for the tragedies which have befallen them on the Deity. A comparison with Naomi of the 1

29

30

ITZHAK PELEG

righteousness from a human viewpoint: on the one hand Job, his wife, his friends, and on the other hand, the reader. The prose tale itself that opens the book provides support for the decision to view human suffering from a human standpoint: the location of the events in the plot moves from earth to heaven, with most of the events taking place on earth, as Meir Weiss has pointed out: “Most of the scenes take place on earth. Moreover, the first and last scenes take place, not in heaven, but on earth. This shows us that the story’s intention is to tell us, not what happens above, but what happens below.”2 Let me add, that readers in our time are influenced by our knowledge of the Holocaust and the questions which it of necessity raises as to human suffering. Yet we’ll try to focus on the text, and not on ourselves…3 Our outlook as readers is influenced by our knowledge of the dialogue between God and the Satan which results in Job’s trial and suffering. We know that the hero’s ordeal is not a divine punishment for having sinned. The hero’s suffering results from God’s testing of Job in order to prove Job’s righteousness to the Satan: certainly a cruel and painful trial. But of course Job, his wife and his companions do not have our knowledge. If they had, they would have responded differently, and we would have a different story. The gap between what we know and what Job, his wife and his companions knew, has a double lesson: first, that human understanding is limited, and second, that the story of Job is meant to teach a lesson not only to the heroes, but also to the readers.

TWO JOBS OR TWO READINGS? The possibility that there are two Jobs is based on the contrast between Job’s responses in the Prologue to the book and in the dialogues with his companions, who represent the divine doctrine Book of Ruth in which she places responsibility for the tragedies which have befallen her on the Deity goes beyond the framework of our essay. 2 Meir Weiss, The Story of the Beginning of Job, (Jerusalem, 1969), p. 9. [Hebrew] 3 Meir Weiss dedicated his book The Story of the Beginning of Job to the memory of the victims of the Holocaust.

DUALITY IN THE RELATIONSHIP OF “MAN-GOD”

31

of reward and punishment, as they understand it. Job’s verbal response to the catastrophes which are visited upon him as told in the frame story (in Chaps. 1–2) is: “The LORD has given, and the LORD has taken away, blessed be the name of the LORD.” (Job 1:21) Job does not argue with the Deity, does not judge him, but rather accepts his fate and even blesses the God who took from him his beloved sons and daughters. However, in his dialogues with his companions, beginning in Chap. 3, he is critical and even enraged: in 9:22 he says: “It is all one, therefore I say He destroys the blameless and the guilty…The earth is handed over to the wicked one”. Job even invites God to stand trial: “He is not a man, like me… That we can go to law together.” (9:32) See also Job 13:18: “See now, I have prepared a case, I know I will win it.”4 How then are we to explain these opposing reactions: acceptance of divine punishment in the frame story, and anger and the criticism in the dialogues with the companions? Is this the same Job? Do we have two separate stories of two Jobs, composed by two different writers? We may find, by the way, literary justification for this when we note that the frame story is written in prose while the dialogues with the companions are written in poetic language. One can still question it.5 See also: E. L. Greenstein, “Chapters In Job’s Biography,” Studies in Bible and Exegesis, vol. x, (Ramat-Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2011), pp. 396–397. [Hebrew]. 5 See: Ian Young,” Is the Prose Tale of Job in Late Biblical Hebrew?”, Vetus Testamentum 59 (2009): 606–629. Young wrote that “In conclusion, the Prose Tale of Job is not Late Biblical Hebrew (LBH), neither in the old sense of being chronologically late, nor in the new sense of being in the same style as the core LBH books.” (p. 629). I wrote to Ian an email asking: “I would like to ask you if it is OK to say that even from linguistic point of view we can’t date the Prose Tale of Job and therefore it does not lead us to say that there are two Jobs, two writers...?” Ian’s response was very clear: “My point about language, and this applies to the allegedly “Archaic Biblical Hebrew” of the poetry of Job, is that linguistic variety in the Bible, while it may have its roots in historical developments, is not represented in such a way in our current biblical texts that we can use linguistic evidence to date the composition of any texts either early or late. 4

32

ITZHAK PELEG

I propose, however, to suggest another solution, a synchronic one, to this perceived duality in Job’s response to his own suffering and in his approach to the Deity. Duality in the relationship between man and God is not, of course, unique to Job.

LET US LOOK AT DUALITY IN TWO STORIES OF ABRAHAM IN GENESIS

In Genesis 18:23 Abraham argues with God as to the latter’s intention of destroying Sodom: “Will You sweep away the innocent along with the guilty”? In the background we hear Job: “It is all one, therefore I say, He destroys the blameless and the guilty.” (9:22) On the other hand, in the story of the binding of Isaac, Abraham remains silent when the Deity commands him: “Take your son, your favored one, Isaac, whom you love, And go to the land of Moria, and offer him up there.” (Gen. 22:2) Abraham simply rises in the morning without arguing, and sets out to fulfill the divine commandment. How can we explain the duality of Abraham’s response to God’s commands? As we asked earlier in reference to Job, are there two Abrahams here? By the way, the comparison of Job and Abraham is not a coincidence. Much has been written on the Deity’s trial of both of them.6

DUALITY IN THE CREATION NARRATIVES (GEN. 1–2) AND IN PS. 8:4–9

As far back as the creation narratives of Genesis we find duality in the relationship between God and man. In 1:26–28 Adam is created in God’s image and assigned the task of ruling over the animals, while in 2:7 man is created from the dust of the earth and Therefore, I see no reason that you couldn’t argue that one author wrote the prose in one style and the poetry in another (poetic) style.” 6 Regarding the linkage between Abraham and Job, please take a look at E. L. Greenstein, “Chapters In Job’s Biography,” Studies in Bible and Exegesis, vol. x, (Ramat-Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2011), p. 393, note 47. [Hebrew]

DUALITY IN THE RELATIONSHIP OF “MAN-GOD”

33

placed in Eden in order to work the garden and preserve it. In other words, man is shown to be close to God, both literally and metaphorically (Gen. 1), and at the same time distant from the Deity. (Gen. 2) Researchers, whose work is based on “source criticism”, have suggested that the duality in the creation narrative can be explained by the presence of two different sources. This does not, however, explain a similar duality in Psalm 8: ‫כוֹכ ִבים ֲא ֶשׁר כּוֹנָ נְ ָתּה‬ ָ ְ‫ יָ ֵר ַח ו‬,‫( ִכּי ֶא ְר ֶאה ָשׁ ֶמיָך ַמ ֲע ֵשׂה ֶא ְצ ְבּע ֶֹתיָך‬v. 4) ‫וּבן ָא ָדם ִכּי ִת ְפ ְק ֶדנּוּ‬ ֶ ‫( ָמה ֱאנוֹשׁ ִכּי ִתזְ ְכּ ֶרנּוּ‬v. 5) ‫ֹלהים וְ ָכבוֹד וְ ָה ָדר ְתּ ַע ְטּ ֵרהוּ‬ ִ ‫( וַ ְתּ ַח ְסּ ֵרהוּ ְמּ ַעט ֵמ ֱא‬v. 6) ‫( ַתּ ְמ ִשׁ ֵילהוּ ְבּ ַמ ֲע ֵשׂי יָ ֶדיָך כֹּל ַשׁ ָתּה ַת ַחת ַרגְ ָליו‬v. 7) ‫( צֹנֶ ה וַ ֲא ָל ִפים ֻכּ ָלּם וְ גַ ם ַבּ ֲהמוֹת ָשׂ ָדי‬v. 8) In verse 5 man is presented as distant from the Deity: “What is man that You have been mindful of him, mortal man that You have taken note of him?” (v. 5), while in the very next verse man seems close to God: “that You have made him little less than divine…” (v. 6) That is to say, in comparison to the Deity man is nothing. But in comparison to the “Sheep and beasts and birds and fish (vv. 7–9) he is “little less than divine.” (v. 6) It depends on with whom you compare him. The “waw-hahibur”=“the conjunctive waw” (in Hebrew grammar) in “‫”ותחסרהו‬7 = “little less than divine” which functions as a “waw-hanigud” (“waw” of contrast) and expresses the duality in man’s relationship to God. (I of course refer to the letter “waw” in Hebrew in the verb ‫ וַ ְתּ ַח ְסּ ֵרהוּ‬which is not a separate word, but is rather attached to the following word an). “waw” in its contrastive “waw hahibur” in the verb ‫ ותחסרהו‬is ambiguous and enables two readings (”and” or “but”), however the translation into English the ambiguous is lost. See: In JPS: “What is man that Thou art mindful of him, And the son of man that Thou thinkest of him? Yet Thou hast made him but little lower than the angles, And hast crowned him with glory and honour.”; but see the NJPS translation: “What is man that You have been mindful of him, Mortal man that You have taken note of him, That You have made him little less than divine…?” See also Meir Weiss, Readings As They Mean to Be, (Jerusalem, 1987), p. 163. 7

34

ITZHAK PELEG

sense serves as a literary device which strengthens the opposition in content between verses 4–5 (distant from the Deity) and verses 6–8 (close to God). Much as there is duality in the biblical image of God—he is both merciful and jealous—(see, for example, Exodus 20:5–6)8 there is duality in the man-God relationship. At times the Deity seems distant from man and at times close.9 Let me note that when I refer to God as close to man I mean that God’s ways are comprehensible to man: therefore, a man can argue with the Deity because he is capable of understanding the Deity.10

“A CLOSE/COMPREHENSIBLE GOD” IN THE STORY OF SODOM AND GOMORRAH (GEN. 18:17–22) In the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, in which the Deity is pictured as “a comprehensible God”, the Deity even provides support for this sense of closeness: “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?” (Gen. 18:17) And when Abraham continues to contend with the Deity in verse 25: “Far be it from You to do such a thing, to bring death upon the innocent as well as the guilty”, God does not reproach him, but even takes part in the argument: “If I find within the city innocent ones I will forgive the whole place for their sake.” (v. 26)

You shall not bow down to them or serve them. For I the Lord your God am an impassioned God, ‫ אל קנא‬visiting the guilt of the parents upon the children upon the third and upon the fourth generations of those who reject Me, but showing kindness ‫ עושה חסד‬to the thousandth generation of those who love Me and keep My commandments. (Ex. 20:5–6) 9 The duality in God’s response, from a different point of view, is seen in Jeremiah 18: At one moment I may decree that a nation or a kingdom shall be uprooted and pulled down and destroyed, but if that nation against which I made the decree turns back from its wickedness, I change My mind concerning the punishment I planned to bring on it. At another moment… (Jer. 18: 7–10). 10 Regarding the biblical definitions of “a distant God” and “a comprehensible God” see: Am I only God near at hand, says the Lord, and not God far away? If a man enters a hiding place, Do I not see him? says the Lord. For I fill both heaven and earth, declares the Lord. (Jeremiah 23: 23–24) See also: Zvi Adar, God in the Bible, (Israel, 1984), pp. 44–45. [Hebrew] 8

DUALITY IN THE RELATIONSHIP OF “MAN-GOD”

35

“A DISTANT GOD IN THE STORY IN THE “BINDING OF ISAAC” (GEN. 22) In other cases, God appears distant from man, i.e., man cannot understand God’s ways and does not expect to do so. Man’s understanding is limited; since he does not try to understand the Deity, he does not contend with him, but simply obeys. This explains why Abraham does not attempt to argue with God when the latter commands him to sacrifice his son. (Gen 22) And when Isaac asks his father: “Here are the firestone and the wood, but where is the sheep for the burnt offering?” (v. 7), his father Abraham merely answers him: “God will see to the sheep for His burnt offering, my son.” (v. 8) Man’s inability to understand God’s ways is reflected in many other places in the Bible. Let me point out Psalm 115:16 that shows the distance between man and God: “The heavens belong to the Lord, But the earth He gave over to man.”11 To sum up: According to my distinction between a “distant God” and a “comprehensible God”, on the basis of Abraham’s contradictory responses to God’s commands in the stories of Sodom and Gomorrah and the Binding of Isaac, we can understand Job’s contradictory responses in the Prologue to the book and in the dialogues with his companions. In the Prologue God

The “waw -hahibur” in “veha’aretz”=“The earth” (Psalm 115:16) functions as a “waw hanigud” (“waw “ of contrast); in other words: “BUT the earth is given to the children of men.”; See also Isaiah 55: 6–9: “Seek the Lord while He can be found, Call to Him while He is near. Let the wicked give up his ways, The sinful man his plans; Let him turn back to the Lord, and He will pardon him; To our God, For he freely forgives, For My plans are not your plans. Nor are My ways your ways, declares the Lord. But as the heavens are high above the earth and My plans above your plans.” Yair Hoffmann wrote in Encyclopedia of the World of the Bible (Olam Hatanach): Jeremiah, (Ramat Gan: Revivim, 1994), p. 251 [Hebrew]: “The whole passage of verses 6–9 may be understood on the basis of this contradiction. In v. 8–9 the prophet explains that the distance between God and man and between “His thoughts” and human thoughts is so great that the Deity cannot be understood, known, found via cognition or study: “As the heavens are high above the earth and My plans above your plans” (v. 9). 11

36

ITZHAK PELEG

does not speak directly to Job and Job does not address the Deity, but rather speaks of him in the third person.12

A PSYCHOLOGICAL ARGUMENT Job’s response in the Prologue takes place immediately after the catastrophes which were visited upon him; while his responses to his companions take place sometime after his terrible losses. Might the passage of time explain the duality, or the change, in Job’s relation to God and to his personal situation? Perhaps we have a depiction of “the stages of Job’s mourning”, as defined by psychologists?13 A sensitive reading of the Prologue of the Book of Job reveals even at this point a change in Job’s relation to God and to his personal situation. Rashi and Meir Weiss14 call attention to Job’s words immediately after the catastrophe: “The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord.” (Job 1:20) And in the following chapter Job answers his wife: “…Should we accept only good from God and not accept evil?” (2:10)15 In comparison with his previous response, we discern a development in Job’s response to his own situation, wherein he differentiates between good and evil and admits that God is responsible for his suffering. Meir Weiss claims that:

Edward L. Greenstein, “The Loneliness of Job,” in Job in the Bible, in Thought, in Art. Leah Mazor, ed., (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1995), p. 47. 13 Regarding the stages of mourning, see: Ofrah Ayalon, A Delicate Balance: Coping with Pressured Situations in the Family [Hebrew]. Ayalon depicts 7 stages that a mourner has to confront in his/her mourning. 14 Meir Weiss, The Story of The Beginning of Job, p. 9. 15 There is more than one way to read Job’s wife’s words: “You still keep your integrity, Blaspheme God and die.” ( Job. 2:9) ‫ֹלהים וָ ֻמת‬ ִ ‫ע ְֹדָך ַמ ֲחזִ יק ְבּ ֻת ָמּ ֶתָך ָבּ ֵרְך ֱא‬ See: Edward L. Greenstein, “Job’s Wife—Was she right after all?”, Beit Mikra, Quaterly, Amira Meir, ed., 49, Jerusalem (1994): 19–31. [Hebrew] 12

DUALITY IN THE RELATIONSHIP OF “MAN-GOD”

37

The narrator understands that from a psychological standpoint there cannot be the same emotional stability during the second stage of the ordeal as there was in the first stage.16

And in fact, when we carefully compare the narrator’s response to Job’s words in each case, the wording is identical, with the exception of the word ‫“( בשפתיו‬with his lips”) which was added in/to Job’s second response. (Job 2:10) The narrator tells us (KJV): “In all this Job sinned not …” (Job 1:22) “In all this did not Job sin with his lips?” (Job 2:10)

My synchronic approach, according to which every word must be taken seriously, leads me to ask what is the purpose of the word ‫ בשפתיו‬in its context. In my opinion ‫ בשפתיו‬reveals a fine distinction between what Job was thinking/ feeling and what he said “with his lips.” We find a similar usage to the word “bisfatav” in the word “bidorotav” in the story of Noah and the flood.17 Regarding the word ,‫ בשפתיו‬in the Talmud, Baba Batra, we find: “He did not sin with his lips, but in his heart.” I see this as a literal reading which engages with Job’s words at the beginning of the book, after his sons’ and daughters’ feast: “Perhaps my children have sinned and blasphemed God in their thoughts.” (1:5) The word Meir Weiss, The Story of the Beginning of Job, p. 9. We find a similar usage to the word “bisfatav” in the word “bidorotav” in the story of Noah and the flood: “Noah was righteous man; he was blameless in his age.” (Gen 6:9) Since this also leads in a direction which goes beyond the framework of our essay, I’ll just call attention in this note. “Noah was a just man [and] perfect in his generations.” (Gen. 6:9) Is the intention here that Noah was righteous only in his own generation, i.e. had he lived in a different period he would have been seen as less righteous? Or are we to understand that when everyone else is evil, it is especially difficult to be righteous? The story continues: “Then the Lord said to Noah, Go into the ark with all your household for you alone have I found righteous before Me in this generation.” (Gen. 7:1); Rashi has written: “There are those who interpret Noah as praiseworthy; if he had been part of a generation of righteous men he would have been even more righteous. There are those who interpret him as worthy of blame; had he lived during Abraham’s time he would have been thought unworthy.” 16 17

38

ITZHAK PELEG

‫“( בלבבם‬thoughts in their hearts”) engages with ‫ בשפתיו‬in 2:10. This teaches us, the readers, that the distinction between “what Job thought in his heart” and “what he said ‫=[ בשפתיו‬with his lips] is the heart of the story, and not a mere implication drawn by the reader.18 If one accepts the suggestion that, in the Prologue to the Book of Job we already see a process of change in Job’s attitude toward his own situation and toward the Deity, we may see this as proof of a tendency to see Job’s development as that of a “bereaved father”. The process which he goes through, as I’ve already hinted, is that of the mourner.19 In the book: Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl—noted psychiatrist (and Holocaust survivor)—contends that every person searches for meaning in his/ her life, and especially for the meaning of his suffering.20 Frankl cites Nietzche’s claim that: He who has a Why to live for [an aim] can bear just about any How [any suffering].

Thus, Job continues to seek a meaning for his suffering throughout the book. Job’s dialogues with his companions are meant to explain the hero’s suffering. The companions defend their adherence to the divine doctrine of reward and punishment, and to a sense of God’s righteousness. In their eyes Job’s suffering is punishment for sins which he committed.21 Job, on the other hand, contends that he

See: E. L. Greenstein’s differing viewpoint. Prof. Greenstein argues, when we discussed it, that Job’s trial involves speech: to curse or not to curse. Thus what is relevant to Job’s trial is that he did not sin with his lips. 19 See above note 13. 20 Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, an Introduction to Logotherapy, (Dvir Publishing, 1970); See Greenstein: “Truth or Theodicy? Speaking Truth to Power in the Book of Job”, Princeton Seminary Bulletin, 27 (2006): 71–82. 21 “The suffering is a sign of the Divine displeasure, and presupposes sin on the part of the sufferer.”—S. R. Driver. From E. L. Greenstein, “Truth or 18

DUALITY IN THE RELATIONSHIP OF “MAN-GOD”

39

has not sinned; Job, therefore, seeks for another explanation for his unbearable suffering. Indeed, in his frustration Job turns to God and demands an explanation.22 The very fact of Job’s turning to God for an explanation of his suffering reflects the view of the Deity as a “comprehensible God”, one whose ways can be understood by humans. Towards the end of the book (Chaps. 38–42) Job receives an answer from the Deity. Both Job and the reader eagerly await this reply; but God’s response does not contain an explanation of the hero’s suffering. Regarding that point, Jacob Klein wrote: “From God’s talk we learn that the complexity of nature teaches the contradictions inherent in God’s traits; Job quickly understands that human intelligence can understand neither the secrets of the Creation nor the laws according to which the cosmos functions.”23 Indeed, God puts Job in his place: in comparison to the Deity he is nothing. The poet of Psalm 8:4–5 expresses this feeling: “When I behold Your heaven, the work of Your Fingers…What is man that You have been mindful of him.”24

TO SUM UP: God’s answer to Job, accords with the concept of a “distant God”, whose ways cannot be understood by humans. Job’s questions in his dialogue with his companions and his call on God to stand trial, accord with the view of a “comprehensible Deity”, one whose ways can be understood by human beings. Job and his companions are arguing on two different planes, with no common denominator;25 there is a similar gap between Job’s questions and God’s answers. Theodicy? Speaking Truth to Power in the Book of Job”, Princeton Seminary Bulletin, 27 (2006): p. 239, note 7. 22 Ibid., “Job insists on his own truthfulness.”, p. 248. 23 Jacob Klein, in Encyclopedia of the World of the Bible (Olam Hatanach) Olam Hatanach, Job, (Tel Aviv, 1996), p. 10. 24 See ibid. 25 The same idea that Job and his companions are arguing on two different planes is depicted also by Y. Gitay from a rhetorical point of

40

ITZHAK PELEG

WHAT HAPPENED TO JOB’S SEARCH FOR THE MEANING OF HIS SUFFERING? In the light of this gap, we might expect the hero to express frustration and even demoralization at the divine answers. This is not the case, however: in Chapter 40:4–5 Job responds: “See I am of small worth, what can I answer you…” Despite their apparent lack of clarity, Job’s words express his acceptance of his own lowliness (and loneliness). In his second response to God Job says: “I know that You can do everything, That nothing you propose is impossible for You. Who is this who obscures without understanding of things beyond me, which I did not know?” (42:2–3) It seems as if Job bows down before the Deity and expresses the concept of the “distant, incomprehensible God”. Job then depicts himself as dust and ashes: “Therefore I recant and relent, Being but dust and ashes.” (verse 6)26 view in his article that exposes it: “The Failure of Argumentation in the Book of Job: Humanistic Language Versus Religious Language”, Journal of Northwest Semitic Language 25/1 (1999): 239–250. Gitay speaks of Job’s Humanistic language versus the friends’ Religious language.” See also E. Greenstein, “On My Skin and in My Flesh”: Personal Experience as a Source of Knowledge in the Book of Job”, Bringing the Hidden to Light: The Process of Interpretation, Studies in Honor of Stephen A. Geller, ed. by K. F. Kravitz and D. M. Sharon, (JTS, 2007), pp. 63–77. Greenstein wrote that: “I am referring to the difference between Job and his friends in the way they adduce epistemological support for their positions. The companions rely primarily on traditional wisdom, while Job warrants his views with observations drawn from his personal experience.” 26 These words remind us simultaneously of the creation story in Genesis 2:7 [”The Lord God formed man from dust of the earth.”] and of Abraham’s depiction of himself as dust and ashes in his argument with God as to the future of Sodom; Although when Abraham says: “Here I venture to speak to my Lord, I who am but dust and ashes.” in 18:27 he is not expressing a concept of a distant God, but rather using this reference to his own lowliness as a rhetorical device in an argument about the fate of the men of Sodom; See a different view of it in: Rudolf Otto, Das Heilige, (Jerusalem: Carmel Press, Jerusalem, 1999), pp. 14–29 and in particular

DUALITY IN THE RELATIONSHIP OF “MAN-GOD”

41

After God reveals himself to the hero, Job suddenly accepts the idea of “a distant God” when he says: “Indeed I spoke without understanding of things beyond me which I did not know.”27 How can we explain this sea-change in Job’s relation to his own situation and to the Deity? Is it possible that in the contention between “the distant God” and “the comprehensible God” the former won? What happened to Job’s search for the meaning of his suffering? We can, apparently, find the explanation of Job’s surprising response in his words: “I heard you in my ears, But now I see You with my eyes.” (42:5), and especially in the words “But now I see You with my eyes.” From this we can learn that the very revelation of the Deity is the answer to Job. It is not the answer which is important, but rather the fact that God revealed himself to the hero, and thus related to him.28 At this point we can claim that more than he wanted an explanation of his suffering, Job desired a relationship with God; it is this relationship, ultimately, which gives meaning to his life, and especially to his suffering, as Frankl showed in his book.29 Regarding this point Greenstein wrote: “It seems that there is only one thing which gives Job the strength to continue: his internal drive to tell the p. 14. [In Hebrew]; More about his theory of “mysterium fascinans et tremendum” in his book. See about Jacob’s Dream (in Gen. 28:17), p. 135; See also: George Savran, “He Came Upon the Place”, Biblical Theophany Narratives, (Tel Aviv, 2010), pp. 167–104. [Hebrew] 27 At this point we can read again Abraham’s words to God in Sodom and bring up the idea that maybe after God’s revelation Abraham felt all of a sudden how small he is in comparing with God. Therefore he said: “I who am but dust and ashes.” (Gen. 18:27) If so, we might say that we have here a good example for a man’s mixed feelings toward God that express the duality in the man-God relationship. 28 Greenstein notes that according to Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig: “the figure of the tragic hero is redeemed from ruin by divine grace, i.e., by divine revelation.” Greenstein then argues that “Rosenzweig does not refer to the book of Job; but in his words we can find an interpretation of Job.” (”Loneliness,” p. 51). 29 See Greenstein, “Loneliness,” p. 47: “According to Job the Deity is hiding behind the clouds (Job 22:13–14) and is unable to relate to his creatures.”

42

ITZHAK PELEG

truth as he sees it and to discover the truth which is hidden from him.”30 Frankl in his book wrote about some Holocaust’s survivors who survived because they wanted to tell their story to the world. This aim gave them the strength to survive. That was their “Why” to live, their aim and that why they could bear just about any How [any suffering].

TOWARDS THE END OF THE BOOK THERE IS ANOTHER CHANGE God reveals himself to the companions and speaks to them directly. To Eliphaz he says: “I am incensed at you and your two friends, for you have not spoken the truth about Me as did My servant Job.” (42:7) ‫לֹא ִד ַבּ ְר ֶתּם ֵא ַלי‬ ‫נְ כוֹנָ ה ְכּ ַע ְב ִדּי ִאיּוֹב‬.31

In the argument which we have proposed, as it were, between the concepts of “a distant God” and “a comprehensible God”, does the latter win? It is not clear to which of Job’s words God is relating (in Chapter 42 verse 7): to Chapter 9:22, in which Job says: “It is all one, therefore I say He destroys the blameless and the guilty.”(?) To the frame story (Chapter 1): “The LORD has given, and the LORD has taken away, blessed be the name of the LORD.”(?) (Job 1:21) Or perhaps to the hero’s last words, in which he bows his head and admits that he does not understand? It is clear, however, that God does not accept the companions’ explanation of Job’s suffering as punishment for sins which he had committed.

Edward L. Greenstein ”Some Chapters in the Biography of Job, Studies” in Bible and Exegesis, vol. X, eds. M. Garsiel, R. Kasher, A. Frisch, D. Elgavish, (Ramat-Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2011), p. 339. 31 See: E. L. Greenstein, “Truth or Theodicy?” p. 257, note 78: “elay in the sense of “about me”; see Jer. 40:16”; see also, Tur Sinai, Job, (Jerusalem: Reuben Mas Publications, 1972), p. 351. See Brown, Driver, Briggs, 1937, p. 41, note 2: There is a tendency in Hebrew to use ‫ אל‬in the sense of ‫“[ על‬el” as “al”]. 30

DUALITY IN THE RELATIONSHIP OF “MAN-GOD”

43

In my opinion, this lack of clarity is not coincidental: it is meant to enable two simultaneous readings. There is the possibility of duality in the man-God relationship. It seems that the words of the poet in Psalm 62:12 : “One thing God has spoken, two things have I heard”, allow for two readings in the biblical story generally, as well as in the word/s of God. It is of interest to note, moreover, that God’s message is clearly presented at the close of the Book of Job. As in the Book of Jonah, the divine words are directed both at the hero of the story and at future generations of readers. In the Book of Jonah the quarrel between the merciful God and the jealous God is decided by the Deity, who presents himself as a merciful God. The close of the Book of Job is dialectic, allowing for a merging of “the distant God” and “the comprehensible God”: as we understand from God’s words spoken from out of the storm, the Deity is “a distant God”, whose ways cannot be understood by human beings. On the other hand, God tells the companions that Job spoke the truth. Vis-a-vis Job’s fate and suffering, God rejects the doctrine of reward and punishment. Perhaps the lack of clarity is most important here: this lack of clarity creates the duality in the man-God relationship which bears witness to the complexity of life and rejects the companions’ judgmental doctrine of reward and punishment. When terrible suffering is visited on a man, it may not be the penalty for sin, but rather the result of God’s decision to try him. The Book of Job, therefore, may be telling us: Dear readers, please be careful how you judge one another! You have no right to take on yourselves God’s role as judge. God does not expect that of you.

The man-God relationship is complex; the duality of Job’s and God’s responses do not result from two narrators, but rather reflect this complexity.

*** That brings us to the end of my essay. At the beginning I mentioned the Holocaust and now, at the end, I would like to read a poem that I wrote on Holocaust Memorial Day, after a visit to Yad Vashem Museum in Jerusalem, It is dedicated to the memory of the million and a half children who perished during that time.

44

ITZHAK PELEG

The Yad Vashem Childrens’ Memorial-Poem A million and a half children perished in the Holocaust. I look to the heavens and ask: Good Lord, Why? I enter the darkened hall, filled to capacity With stars, Each star carries the name Of a child who perished in the Holocaust. In my mind, I see our Father Abraham Come out by God’s command, and his voice resounds with the blessing: “Look toward heaven and count the stars… So shall your offspring be” And seven Chapters later The same God commands Abraham: “ake your son, your favored one, Isaac, whom you love And go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there…”

There, as you know, his son Isaac is saved. And suddenly, from heaven, an angel’s voice is heard: “Abraham, Abraham! Do not raise your hand against the boy, or do anything to him” And I ask: God, abounding in mercy Where were you when a million and a half Yitzchaks perished?! The Memorial Hall in Yad Vashem is filled with stars In memory of the million and a half childrenOur father Abraham’s children. And I wonder and sigh: Oh my God Everything is upside down That which you promised to give — You took away. It was Job who said: ”The LORD has given, and the LORD has taken away,

DUALITY IN THE RELATIONSHIP OF “MAN-GOD” blessed be the name of the LORD” And I say: The Lord God gave, and the Lord God took away. The Lord’s name may be blessed there, But not here. The Memorial Hall in Yad Vashem is filled with stars. Each star has a name In memory of the Jewish child who was taken, May their names and memories be blessed.

45

JOB: THE DARKNESS OF THE CURSE MISHAEL M. CASPI BATES COLLEGE

A. THEY PITYING STAND AND WEEP I was angry with my friend. I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe; I told it not, my wrath did grow.1

The questions asked are: Why do human beings suffer? Does the story of Job represent human suffering? Why do we complain when we suffer? Who is to be blamed for our suffering? It is not an easy task to answer these questions. The first reaction is to blame a certain person, or a certain political event, but if they are not on hand, then we search for higher authority, as Job claims: God has delivered me to the ungodly, and turned me over into the hand of the wicked. (16:11)

This accusation is very strong as Job lays blame on God for causing him to fall into the hand of the wicked ones. The verb yir-te-ni of the stems R.T.H. or Y.R.T. means to disorient, to divert from the main path, as we find it used in Num. 22:32:

1

William Black, Song of Experience, (NY: Orion Press, 1967), p. 49.

47

48

MISHAEL M. CASPI ki ya-rat ha-de-rekh… thy way is perverse…

Here the meaning of the complaint is that he was handed into the land of the wicked. Then the Arabic stem Wa-Ra-Ta is probably better. But yet Job does not ask the question we wish to hear, which is “Why does God allow me to suffer so much?” Scholars divide this book into four parts: the Prologue (Chapters 1–2), Epilogue (42:7–17), Job’s poem (Chapter 3), and the last part, the set of dialogues’ between Job and his friends and between Job and God. It is very shocking literary text when God turns to Job and says: e-zor na- ke-ge-ver ha-la-tse-kha Gird up now thy loins, like a man. (38:3)

The same formula is repeated in 40:7–8: e-zor na ke-ge-ver ha-la-tse-kha esh-al-kha ve-ho-di-‘e-ni Gird up thy loins now like a man, I will demand of thee and declare thou unto me.

In fact, in this entire encounter the two formulas, 38:3 and 40:7, are repeated exactly word for word together with the opening statement: va-ya-‘an YHWH et Iyyov min ha-se-‘a-rah… Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind…2

The two verbs: esh-al-kha ve-ho-di-‘e-ni I will demand of thee and declare thou unto me…

are repeated again in 42:7. These repeated formulas intend to show Job that he has limited knowledge of the creation and of the divine order in the universe. Indeed, the result is that Job responds:

KJV does translate the same formula as it appears in 40:7 in a different order. 2

JOB: THE DARKNESS OF THE CURSE

49

hen qa-lo-ti ma a-shi-ve-kha Behold, I am vile. What shall I answer thee…?

He asks what can he, the one who lacks knowledge, respond to God. Chapter 40 presents the readers with a beginning of a dialogue between man and God. This encounter has a great effect on the drama within this dialogue: God ha-rov im shad-day yis-sor mo-khi-yah e-lo-ha y-‘a-nen-nah Shall he that contendeth with the Almighty instruct him? He that proveth God, let him answer it. (40:2)

Job hen qa-lo-ti ma a-shi-ve-kha ya-di sam-ti le-mo fi Behold I am vile, what shall I answer thee? I will lay mine hand upon my mouth. (40:4)

Is this a short dialogue? Or does God pose a question and when Job tries to answer it he is again interrupted so God will be able to put him down? Moreover, to emphasize this idea, we must pay attention to the verse: a-hat dib-bar-ti ve-lo e-‘e-net ush-ta-yim ve-lo o-sif Once I have spoken, but I will not answer. Yea, twice, but I will proceed no further. (40:5)

Was Job refusing to accept God’s control of the universe? If so, then Job contradicts and opposes divine power. Earlier, we pointed out some reading difficulties we encounter and the questions we wish to resolve, yet we are still overwhelmed by the wisdom this story generates. Indeed, this book is one of the three books in the canon known as “Wisdom Literature”. In this case they are distinctly separated from the rest of the books in the canon. Another important aspect is the time of its composition. It seems that there is a kind of consensus that the book is a product of the postexilic era, i.e. 6th century B.C.E. However, the problem remains with the name Job, which appears in the Book of Ezekiel who refers to three people, Noah, Job, and Danel (Daniel) (14:20). It seems that the prophet refers to these three figures, who were probably well known as legendary characters in his time. If we pay

50

MISHAEL M. CASPI

attention to the special introduction of both characters Noah and Job then we find some similarities: Noah No-ah ish tsad-diq ta-min ha-ya Noah was a just man and perfect. (Gen. 6:9)

Job ve-ha-ya ha-ish ha-hu tam ve-ya-shar ve-ye-re e-lo-him ve-sar me-r’a And that man was perfect and upright… feared of God and shunned evil. (1:1)

The adjectives used to describe these two legendary men are also similar. Does this suggest that there were legends about such characters that were known by the Israelites? The Prologue/ Epilogue (Chapters 1–2; 42: 7–17) include(s) mythical elements and happy endings found in folk literature. In the prologue we are introduced to a celestial retinue and a sort of ‘dialogue’ between a deity and the celestial figures. The storyteller does not offer us the ‘dialogue’ with them but points out: The sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord… (1:6)

Yet, he targets one of them, who is called the Satan, although the stem S.T.N. is found in the Bible3 as a verb and as a noun (as a proper name). However, it seems that as a noun it is found in the later books of the canon and in the Book of Job. Can we thus draw the conclusion that it is a post-exilic story? Moreover, the Satan is mentioned twelve times in the Prologue but not within the ‘philosophic dialogue’ nor in the epilogue, which is an integral part of the Prologue. So the question arises: Do we have two different texts, the dialogues and the Prologue/Epilogue combined together? Let’s examine the Satan’s appearance in the celestial world. Indeed, it is one of the starting points in the story. God and the Satan conspire against a righteous man. Yet, it seems that God is led by the Satan. If that is so, then this is the most disturbing point in the legend. The Satan is playing a very important role in It appears 15 times as a verb or as an adverb and 18 times as a noun. In the Book of Job it appears as a noun 14 times; in Zach., 3 times, and in the Book of Psalms, once. 3

JOB: THE DARKNESS OF THE CURSE

51

this legend. His role in Zechariah appears to support God in 3:1–2 where we are introduced to a full description of an evil entity. Each of the three traditions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam associates the serpent in Eden with (the)Satan. This association is described as: And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly. (Rom. 16:20)

In several of the Pseudepigrapha writings we find a different perception of Satan: Then Satan was angry and transformed himself into the brightness of angels and went away to the Tigris River to Eve and found her weeping. (Life of Adam and Eve 9:1)

In 3 Enoch, Satan and his two companions, Samael, the Prince of Rome, and Dubbi’el, the Prince of Persia, appear in the celestial court as accusers, recording the sins of Israel on tablets given to them by Serapi’el.4 Here Satan serves as the main accuser and his two princes are the representatives of the great foes of the Jews: Rome and Persia.5 In the New Testament (NT) we find Satan taunting Jesus (Matt. 4:2; Lk. 4:3). In this tradition his role is to bar the kingdom of heaven through possession. Christianity accepts the belief that upon God’s creation of the angels, he gave them free will. One of the angels, Lucifer, sins by having pride and leads other angels to follow him. In this story we are examining the Satan’s actions as those of a heartless tyrant, one who, with the help of God, degrades the righteous human. Yet, one can suggest that the inclusion in the story of the wager between God and the Satan is intended to disprove the Satan’s power and to lead to God casting him out of the celestial world. That possible interpretation can be found in He was in charge of the Seraphim and the Seraphim of flames are under his care. 5 3 Enoch 26:9–12. The name Dubbi’el is mentioned in BYoma 77a. The name, probably derived from the word Dob (Dov), bear, is the symbol of Persia. See Dan. 7:5; BMeg. 11a; BQid. 72a; BAv.Za. 2b. 4

52

MISHAEL M. CASPI

two places. In our story the Satan is not mentioned in Job’s drama any more and in the second instance is what we find in the NT: And the seventy returned again with joy, saying, Lord, even the demons are subject unto us through Thy name. And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as Lightning falls from the heaven. (Lk. 10:17–18)

In Genesis 26:21 we find the noun Sit-nah. This noun can be translated as ‘hatred’.6 Sa’adiah b. Yoseph (Rasag, 882–942) writes the following: So commonly is this word (Satan) applied to people who oppose one another that it occurs in many passages of scripture…On the basis of this and another parallel, the adversary here (in Job’s story) would be a human being. It is farfetched in the extreme to infer that he would be an angel.7

Then we should ask: What kind of God is introduced in this story? In the Prologue/Epilogue God is presented as one who likes to play with his subjects. He entices the hinderer/adversary to test his servant. Is there a need to test a subject who is known as being perfect and upright? It is a deity who plays hide and seek with his subjects. Job-the-servant, cries out and asks: Why hidest thou thy face, and holdest me for thine enemy? (13:24)

And at a certain moment this deity ends the game and appears with all his might: Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind… (38:1)

The question of Job is not to question God’s justice but to accentuate his understanding that justice is related to human activities. Thus, the question is related to Job’s objections of God’s acts. It is also possible to extend this idea and say that Job firmly believes that God is just and that humans ought to follow in God’s way. Yet, this belief is not holding strong when Job cries:

Rashi (11th century) includes the word hinderung, obstruction, in his interpretation of this verse. 7 Sa’adiah b. Yoseph, al-Fayyumi (Rasag), The Book of Theodicy, L. E. Goodman, tr., (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988). 6

JOB: THE DARKNESS OF THE CURSE

53

This is one thing. Therefore, I said: He destroyeth the perfect with the wicked. (13:22)

It is a serious accusation. God, who is known as the ‘Ultimately Just’ is accused of violating justice and even more. He is accused of searching for the inequities of the righteous showing them no mercy.8 The author presents his protagonist as one who is in search of divine justice, which remains hidden. Chapter Three begins with the poem of Job. It begins: Yo- vad yom i-va-led bo Let the day perish in which I was born. (3:1)

In fact, Job does not curse the day of his birth, as we find in Jeremiah, saying: a-ruur ha-yom a-sher yul-la-d’ti bo … Cursed be the day on which I was born. (20:14)

R. Abraham Ibn Ezra in his interpretation of this verse states: (Job) wished to be lost (die) first in the day he was born.

It is also possible that this verse contains another folkloric element and the noun lay-lah, night, is the name of the angel responsible for pregnancies.9 His wish for death contradicts his later demands for divine justice, for which a righteous man is searching. It is here that readers are overwhelmed. The opening story is not just a legend but it is one that contains mythical elements. Yet, some scholars also point out that the three companions of Job are a part of the folklore but later were included in the philosophical dialogue. Examination of the linguistic aspects of the poetic part of the book, including the philosophical dialogue, reveals that they are, as professor Avi Hurwitz suggests, to be as early as the legend.10 Yet, while early Jewish Sages suggest that Job is a contemporary to

Read: 7:18; 21; 10:3,6; 9:17. See BNid. 16b. 10 Avi Hurwitz, “The Date of the Prose-Tale of Job Linguistically Reconsidered”, Harvard Theological Review, 67 (1974): 17–34. 8 9

54

MISHAEL M. CASPI

Abraham, others point out Job is a contemporary of Ahasuerus.11 Modern scholars consider the book a product of the postexilic 6th century B.C.E. and not later than the 4th century B.C.E. The storyteller emphasizes that Job did not sin with his lips. The Jewish Sages, justifying the punishment Job endures, maintain his sin, though not on his lips, was in his heart. This contradicts the verse where Eliphaz states: And thou shalt know that thy tabernacle shall be in peace; and thou shalt visit thy habitation, and shall not sin. (5:24)

By this does Eliphaz indicate that Job did not sin and that he shall be able to entrust his household?: u-fa-qad-ta na-ve-kha

However, this contradicts another idea that Eliphaz shared: Are not thy wickednesses great and thy iniquities endless? (22:5)

It is here that the readers become aware that these two verses illustrate Eliphaz’s uncertainty concerning the sin of Job.

B. THERE WAS A CERTAIN PIOUS MAN Where was the judge whom he had never seen? Where was the high court, to which he had never presented? He raised his hands and spread out all his fingers.12

This book entails a mystery because there is no way to discover when it was written down or to find out how many redactors had their editorial hand(s) in its compilation. The readers struggle with the text, which is considered a part of the wisdom literature, but it also includes stories which probably are myths, along with many questions that philosophers ask. From this perspective, the book very likely underwent a lengthy redaction until its canonization and its inclusion in the Massoretic Text (MT), the so-called Received Text. For roughly two millennia sages, theologians, commentators, artists and literati have argued about the book and the ideas found in it. 11 12

BBBat. 159–166, Shimoni, Job 891. Franz Kafka, The Trial, (New York: Schoken Books, 1968), p. 228.

JOB: THE DARKNESS OF THE CURSE

55

Over these years there have been attempts to gain insight into the origin of the book. It has remained grounds for scholarly research. This is a story about a man who did not fall from the zenith to the nadir because of his sins, rather, he suffered from the Satan’s manipulation of God. The storyteller introduces a man who is a paradigm of piety and generosity. Or as it appears in another text, he is one of the three people the prophet describes as: Though these three men, Noah, Daniel and Job were in it, they should deliver their own souls by their righteousness, saith the Lord God. (Ezek. 14: 4–20)

In Professor Yehezkel Kaufmann’s magnum opus, The History of the Israelite Faith, he suggests that the story of Job is part of the ancient moralistic literature of Israel. He contends that the story examines the extent to which a pious man can withstand a divine test. According to him, suffering serves to test the righteous one. But perhaps the story of the suffering pious man was adopted by a certain storyteller/philosopher in order to discuss or challenge the concept of divine justice. If so, then the story of Job serves as a framework for a philosophical argument about a suffering man who was tormented just because in the celestial (high) court, the judge and the manipulator conspired against him. Thus, we can suggest that the storyteller presents an event that describes the complete lack of concern for the human condition in the celestial world. If that is so, then we are dealing with a heretical text. Since the high court demands that the human confess to sins he never committed, the cry of Why? implies the desire to understand the decision of the high court without letting Job be present. Why? is used as an adverb to interject surprise while it also tries to determine cause. Thus, Job does not present his philosophical points but instead challenges the right of the judge, God, to allow the Satan to harm a human. Job expects God to prevent the Satan from playing with a human soul and he accuses him of being imperfect: Though I were perfect, yet would I not know my soul; I would despise my life. This is one thing, therefore, I said he destroyeth the perfect and the wicked. If the scourge slay suddenly he will laugh at the trial of the innocent. (9:21–23)

56

MISHAEL M. CASPI

These verses accuse God of being imperfect and unjust. Such a powerful accusation cannot be found in the MT. The Psalmist states something similar but it is said in a voice that is pianomissimo: How long will ye judge unjustly and accept the persons of the wicked? Selah. (82:2)

By remarking that: …He will laugh at the trial of the innocent

we recognize the problem Job faces. His only witness is not on earth but in heaven. Job’s friends present a meaningless attack on him and this causes a rift between them. Their intention to comfort Job ends with them accusing him. Eliphaz states: Ye, thou castest off fear, and the restrainest prayer before God. For thy mouth uttereth thine iniquity, and thou choosest the tongue of the crafty. Thine own mouth condemneth thee, and not I, yea, thine own lips testify against thee. (15:4–6)

Even though Job remained faithful to his notion that he had been inflicted with undeserved and unjust punishment, in his response to his friends he loudly expressed the following verse: For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at latter day upon the earth. And though after my skin has been destroyed, yet without my flesh, shall I see God. (19:25–26)

For I know that my redeemer liveth is where Job admits that he sees God and thus my heart be consumed within me is linked to how he feels when he beholds the awe of God. Job uses the noun ‘redeemer’, go’el. But its meaning is not just as we find it translated in the Aramaic text as pa-ri-qi, but it is also used in the sense of ‘vindicator’, as one who avenges the blood, redeemer, as well as being a sponsor or guardian. In this respect, we can assume that Job is expecting God to descend from heaven to be his protector. Here Job considers God as his refuge, Eloah, of salvation. But still the use of the term go-a-li, my redeemer, remains unclear. The noun, indeed, is rendered ‘my redeemer’, but the question remains concerning what kind of redeemer he is. In the Bible we find different interpretations. When Zimri left Ba’asha not one male, neither of his kinsman, the translation of ‘kinsman’ is a

JOB: THE DARKNESS OF THE CURSE

57

rendition of the Hebrew noun go-a-lav. The noun in the Book of Ruth refers to the ‘guardian’ of the family who must perform the Levirate Law (Ruth 4:1–12). The go-el in this story is still alive, contradicting the dying condition of Job. It is important to note that Job is expecting God himself to be the go-el and to restore his life and his family to him. Thus we face a problem with the translation of this noun. Some translate it as ‘vindicator’, suggesting that he will be the avenger of blood. Some translate the noun as ‘liberator’, ‘defender of justice’ or as the Psalmist emphatically declares, that God is the redeemer. (Ps. 19:14–15) However, in Elihu’s speech the noun go-el is not used. Instead, we find the noun mal-akh, which is rendered either as ‘messenger’ or ‘angel’, as follows: im yesh ‘a-lav mal-akh me-litz If beside him stands an angel… (33:23)

The Greek translates mal-akh as angelo(oi). The Aramaic text translates the adjective (noun) me-litz as pe-raq-li-ta, ‘the one who serves as an advocate’. In Hebrew and in Greek the nouns mal-akh and an-ge-los are rendered as either ‘messenger’ or ‘angel’. As was stated earlier, the Book of Job is one of the genre of wisdom literature. As such it can be defined as a literary work consisting of: • Questioning attitudes about life; • Instructions for young people on how to distinguish good from evil; • An examination of the human experience in relationship with other people and with God. However, the inclusion of this book in the wisdom literature is perplexing since it has another, deeper dimension. It is asking why suffering exists in the world and why the wicked prosper. On this level, Job does not question suffering, but he does raise questions about God’s justice. Rene Girard’s notion is that Job’s complaint is not directed toward God but instead it is directed

58

MISHAEL M. CASPI

toward people. He draws a relationship between the complaint of the Psalmist and that of Job.13 Job claims: I made covenant with mine eyes. Why then should I think upon a maid? (31:1)

The Aramaic translation uses the verb es-ta-kal, which means ‘to look at’. The Septuagint (LXX) translates sinesou as ‘to befriend’. Here Job is like a man who speaks before his accusers. In no place in this work does Job state that he had not sinned, nor does he defend himself as a righteous, upright person. Though he does question the suffering and the disrespect he experiences. Consistently the whole text reflects the idea that Job is not guilty of any crimes against his community. According to his responses to Eliphaz he rejects the accusations and he defends himself as one who has not failed to protect orphans and widows: If I have withheld the poor from their desire, or have caused the eyes of the widow to fail. Or have eaten my morsel myself alone, and the fatherless hath not eaten of it… (31:16–17)

However, some Jewish and Muslim sages define him as a sinner because he was the Pharaoh’s counselor. The suffering of a righteous person is an old theme that appears in other literatures. Often the theme involves people who become victims of cruel punishments. The Sumerian Wisdom Text tells a story about an unnamed wealthy person who is wise and righteous and yet was inflicted by the gods with sickness. Yet he does not defy the gods but with tears he cries for help and salvation: How long will you neglect me, leave me unprotected… My righteous word has been turned into a lie. The man of deceit has covered me (with) the

Rene Girard, Job The Victim of His People, Yvonne Freccero tr., (San Francisco: Stanford University Press, 1987), pp. 8–9. 13

JOB: THE DARKNESS OF THE CURSE

59

South wind… My companion says not a true word to me, my friend gives the lie to my righteous word.14

At the end of the story the gods restore his life and the poet declares: He turned the you(ng m)an’s suffering into joy.

Thus OT research can no longer be carried on in a cultural vacuum. Many discoveries remain to be made that will reveal the relationship and connections between the many cultures of the Near East and beyond. In Egyptian literature, for example, there is tale of “The Talk of a Man Who Was Tired of Life With His Soul”. The man descries the corrupt condition of his time and then complains about his own life: Death stands before me this day like a smell of myrrh and the sitting under the sail of a boat on a day with a fresh breeze… Death stands before me like a brook filled with rain water, and like a return of a man to his own house from the ship of war.15

Examining this we can recognize a parallel to Job’s story, but while the Egyptian man is probably tempted to commit suicide, Job struggles on with no intention to commit suicide. Instead he focuses his energy on intensely expressing his personal agony and he argues about God’s sense of justice.16 14

“Sumerian Wisdom Text”, S.N. Kramer (tr.) in ANET, pp. 588–

591. E. A. Wallis Budge, The Literature of Ancient Egypt, (London, 1914) pp. 231–240. 16 Stories about a suffering man are also found in other cultures. We suggest the following reading: “The Book of Job in the Context of Near Eastern Literature” by John Gray in ZAW 82 (1970): 251–269; Cuneiform Parallels to the Old Testament by Robert William Rogem, (NY, 1912, pp. 164–169; The Asiatic Society of Bengal by Markandeya Purana with Pargitar F. Eden (tr.), (Calcutta, 1904), Cantos 7–8 L, pp. 263–268; The Book of the Ways of God by Emil G. Kraeling, (NY, 1938), pp. 185–189; Horace M. Kallen, The Book of Job as a Greek Tragedy,(Moffat, Yard and Co., 1918). 15

60

MISHAEL M. CASPI

Rabbinic literature contains some contradictory views about the Book of Job and its protagonist. Ever since the book became a part of the Jewish canon not only was the holy text itself discussed, but the issue of Job’s existence has been debated. The statement of Resh Lakish of the 3rd century C.E. is famous: Iyyob lo ha-yah ve-lo nib-rah, el-la ma-shal ha-ya Now, the book seems to serve merely as a parable.

One sage who was sitting before R. Samuel b. Nahmani remarked: Job was and never existed, but in (as) a typical figure…17

Although sages expressed some doubt about Job’s existence the tradition that tried to prove his historicity could not produce any strong data about the man and his time. In Midrash Genesis Rabbah there are fourteen statements by the sages that attempt to prove his existence and his time.18 For the biblical storyteller Job is simply an upright, rich man who bears the title of Servant of God, which is a title God bestowed upon him. According to the midrash this honor was also bestowed upon Joshua, Caleb, Eliakim, Zerubbabel, Daniel, Hanania, Mishael and Azariah.19 Post-biblical literature was focused on defining the time of the Book of Job and on its authorship. It was also asking questions about the man himself, such as:20 Was he a Jew or a gentile? Moreover, when searching for explanations about his virtues and merit several texts introduced Job as one of the Pharaoh’s servants, as we find in the following teaching: R. Hiyya b. Abba said in the name of R. Simai: There were three in that plan, Balaam, Job and Jethro. Balaam, who devised it, was slain; Job, who silently acquiesced, was afflicted with suffering; Jethro, who fled,

BBab.Bat. 15b. All fourteen statements are in Gen.Rab. 57:4. See Genesis Rabbah, Midrash Rabbah, Friedman, H., and P. Epstein eds., (New York: Soncino Press, 1939). 19 Sifre on the Book of Deuteronomy, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986), Piska 27). 20 BSot. 11a. 17 18

JOB: THE DARKNESS OF THE CURSE

61

merited that his descendants should sit in the Chamber of Hewn Stone. (1 Chr. 2:55)

Throughout the book there is no attempt to solve the problem of suffering. The great poetic speeches of the four friends and the question of suffering appear only to justify God’s actions. Indeed, he is quite effective in inflicting suffering upon Job. Moreover, although God’s omnipotence has never been questioned, the suffering of Job remains unexplained. The way it was brought upon him and the reward, which was bestowed on him, were done in the celestial world as God and the Satan played with humanity as though they were pawns on a chessboard. Throughout the poetic speeches Job does question God’s justice, mercy, and divine goodness. Job’s denial of wrongdoing and his protestations on his sufferings not only anger his friends but they also become stumbling stones from a theological perspective. In the mind of the Jewish Sages, Job comes to represent the embodiment of the sufferer, and the book itself was seen as a portent for disaster: Of three holy writings, if one sees a book of Psalms in his dream, let him look forward to humility; if Proverbs, let him look forward to wisdom; if Job, let him fear calamity.21

Such teaching does not reaffirm the doctrine of the reward as found in the Torah and/or in the Prophets. Moreover, we find in the sages’ teachings the expansion of the notion that the calamity which befell Job was of his own choosing. When the Satan came before God and indicted Job, God asked him: What do you want, poverty or suffering? Job answered to him, I shall accept all the suffering of the world but not poverty…at that moment the Satan went forth from the presence of God and smote Job with sore boils.22

ARN 39, p. 163. Samuel b. Nissim Masnut, Ma’ayn Gannim, (Berlin: Solomon Buber, 1889), pp. 2, 7. 21 22

62

MISHAEL M. CASPI

In another source the sages teach that, indeed, Job had to accept suffering rather than poverty: Lord of the Universe, I am ready to accept all the troubles in the world but not poverty; for if I go into the market without a perutah for buying, what shall I eat?23

The biblical storyteller, however, claims that Job was not informed of the choices he had in the test and that the plan was one created in the celestial realm. The author of The Testament of Job24 presents a different notion. According to him, Job was informed of the coming events: The Light (the Angel) answered me and said, You shall be able to purge this place. But I am going to show you all the things the Lord charged me to tell you. And I said, Whatever he has charged me, his servant, I will hear and do…If you purge the place of Satan he will rise up against you with wrath for battle, he will take away for himself your goods, he will carry off your children. But if you are patient I will make your name renowned in all generations of the earth till the consummation of the age.25

Some modern interpreters try to find physical border indications for the Sabeans who fell upon Job’s livestock. The commentary of Dhorme, for example, concludes: In any case, we are on the southern border of the Land of Uz.26

However, in an earlier Aramaic source the foes who assailed Job are the Lilith. There are no geographical boundaries named but it contains a probable remnant of a folk story about the enemies of Job. It tells: Un-fa-lat bit-kef lilit mal-kat zmar-gad ud-var-ti-nun Ve-yat ul-le-ma-ya ke-ta-lu ukhh-lu-sa-ta le-fit-gam de-ha-rev…

Ex. Rab. 31:12. The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, James H. Charlesworth ed., Vol. 1, pp. 829–868. 25 T. Job 4:1–6. 26 E. Dhorme, A Commentary On The Book of Job, (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1934), 1:15. 23 24

JOB: THE DARKNESS OF THE CURSE

63

And Lilith the queen of Zmargad fell upon and seized them, killed the young men, the workers according to the Law of War.

The kingdom of Lilith was known as Zmargad. In Arabic literature, the queen of Sheba, Bilkis, or Bilkis bint al-Bsharkh, who was raised after the death of her mother by the daughters of the genii, is thus known as a female demon and a great witch.27 She traveled with a great army for three years and then assailed Job’s property by killing his livestock. The question arises: Why was Job’s property seized first? It is said that God does not take the soul of the people first but he takes their property, in order to give them time to repent. Thus the verse: …fell upon them and took them away. (1:15)28

Oral tradition indicates that what was left by the queen of Sheba was taken away by the Chaldeans. It was then that Job wanted to war against the attackers but when fire from heaven consumed the rest of his property he realized that the heavens were against him, too.29 From the Prologue to the Epilogue it is understood that Job suffers because he is pious. Both God and Satan test him. Although Satan tries every possible means to make Job commit a sin, Job overcomes all of Satan’s temptations. However, his companions did not believe Job would maintain his piety. A statement within Eliphaz’s speech echoes this doubt: But now it is come upon thee, and thou faintest; it toucheth thee and thou art troubled. (4:5)

Early sources cast aspersions on Job’s piety, as seen in these two verses in the Aramaic translation: In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God with folly. (1:22) In all this did not Job sin with his lips. (2:10)

Tha’labi, Qisas al-anbiya. Masnut, Op. Cit. 6. 29 L. Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1913). Vol. 2, p. 235. 27 28

64

MISHAEL M. CASPI

These verses are open to several possible interpretations. One question cannot be ignored. Why did the storyteller state “…not with his lips”? Does this suggest we should doubt Job’s piety? The Aramaic translation offers the following translation of verse 2:10: …be-khol da la hav iyyov be-sif-va-to-hi bram be-ra’-ya-neh hir-her be-mi-lin. In all this Job did not sin (in his lips) but in his thoughts he pondered.30

The same idea is presented in the rabbinic literature: In all this did not Job sin with his lips. Raba said: With his lips he did not sin, but he did sin within his heart. What did he say? The earth is given into the hand of the wicked, he lowereth the faces of the judges thereof: if it be not so, where and who is he…?31

C. TOUCHING THE ALMIGHTY I want to see you, Lord, and then die, die wholly, but to see you, Lord. To see your face to know who you are! Look at me with your eyes, those searching eyes, look at me and let me see you! Let me see you, Lord, and then die!32

The storyteller tries to present a story about a man who asks many questions. His companions do not respond to the questions that are asked. They give evasive replies, sometimes presenting their view that Job is a problematic rebel. In some ways it resembles the long monologues found in Greek tragedies where each character relates to things of concern to him or her but not directly to the See also Rashi for the same verse. Read BBab Bat. 16a. A long discussion about this verse and the relationship between the houses of Jacob and Job can be located in Mishael M. Caspi’s and Sara J. Milstein’s Why Hidest Thy Face? (Bibal Monograph Series 6, 2004), pp. 46–54. 32 Miguel de Unamunu, Dios en la Possia Actual, Madrid, (BAC, 1976), p. 37. 30 31

JOB: THE DARKNESS OF THE CURSE

65

main subject. Thus, when we read about Antigone we can define her as a tragic heroine or as a suffering woman who tries to defy the law of mankind in order to bury her brother Polyneices. Was she a rebel? She does not question the laws of the gods but she does question the laws of man. She is not against the laws of the old tradition but she does defy modern laws decreed by a tyrant. Job, similarly, objects to the decrees of a tyrant. In this case both Job and Antigone can be defined as rebels. Creon, Antigone’s uncle, who succeeds to the throne of Thebes, is, indeed, a tragic hero. As an arrogant ruler he is unsure about his decrees. He seems to fear Antigone’s power, as when he says: As long as I live, no woman shall rule me.

Creon admits that he is the sole ruler of his land and he states that no one else has the right to any judgment except to those held by Creon. God is the sole ruler and the ultimate judge. His rules are not to be questioned. He can be a tyrant who plays with his subjects to prove that they are righteous or evil. In both cases, Job and Antigone are lonely individuals. Yet, their loneliness has a special value because they each question the rules of a tyrant. Even though the Book of Job can be grouped with other works in wisdom literature it does differ from the Book of Ecclesiastes, and even contradicts that work, because Job emphasizes his dependence on trust. Like Antigone, he, too, is a rebellious person. Thus, Professor Buber suggested that the Book of Job ought to be read from an anthropological point of view and not be considered a theological text, because the central problem emphasized in the story is not focused on evil but on humankind, as it is presented in Job’s speech: What is man that thou shouldest magnify him, and that thou shouldest set thine heart upon him? (7:17)

Job does not curse God but he does curse the day of his birth, which is actually worse than cursing God. Here, when his wife urged him to curse God, Job rejects her suggestion and we witness his first act of rebellion. The theological aspect can be argued when his companions come to comfort Job. They proclaim that God only rewards those who are good and that God punishes those who are evil. But Job was declared by God to be ‘perfect and

66

MISHAEL M. CASPI

upright’, and that presents his companions with a great dilemma. Eliphaz asks a rhetorical question: Shall mortal man be more pure than his maker? (4:17)

This question pushes the reader to consider the theological point of view. Yet, Job decides he will not argue using this line of thought and he responds: Oh, remember that my life is a breath, mine eye shall no more see good. The eye of him that hath seen me shall see me no more, thine eyes are upon me, and I am not. (7:7–8)

Job, being afraid of dying, asks God to come closer to him while acknowledging the justice he requests. Indeed, in the subsequent verses Job does not appeal to his companions but instead he turns directly to God. Job demands answers from God which his friends cannot offer. Perhaps the hemistitch “…that my life is a breath…” is not directed to Job’s companions but, instead, to God as if Job pleads to God to leave him alone. Is man wrestling with God being described here? If so, then this is an example of a real dialogue. But another question arises: Does God listen to Job? In Job’s speech we find no evidence of that: If I justify myself mine own mouth shall Condemn me, if I say I am perfect, he shall Prove me perverse. (9:20)

But Job does not give up his trust in God. Along with the superficial dialogue he shares with his companions, Job speaks for himself, witnessing himself. He can be seen at this point as an existentialist. His trust in God appears in another verse: hen yig-te-le-ni lo a-ya-hel akh de-ra-khai el pa-nav o-khi-yah. (13:15)

KJV translates: Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him, But I will defend my own way before him.

REB translates: If he wish to slay me I have nothing to lose I shall defend my conduct to his face.

JOB: THE DARKNESS OF THE CURSE

67

The Aramaic text and its translation states: ha in yiq-te-li-na-ni qod-moi a-tsa-le be-ram or-ha-ti qod-moi akh-san. If indeed he will kill (slay) me before him I shall turn, however, my path (way) before him I face.

Professor Buber suggested another possible translation: He may slay me, I will await it, yet I will defend (my) ways to his face.

Professor Tur Sinai’s interpretation of the Book of Job suggests that the reading of the noun de-ra-khai, my ways, should be read darko, his way. Then the reading of this hemistitch would be: …yet I will defend his way to his face.

This reading is similar to that found in verse 21:31: mi yag-gid al pa-nav dar-ko Who shall declare his way to his face.

Maurice Fridman states that the philosophy of the dialogue grew with the understanding of biblical Judaism: In the dialogue between God and man…God’s address and man’s answer.

So he views the complaint of Job and God as a renewed nearness. Buber views the Book of Job as the one which: …rests on the faith of God who transcends nature which he created.

Readers are troubled by the complete silence of God during Job’s friends’ accusations. It seems that God does not want to lift a finger to re-state the title he bestowed earlier on Job: av-di, my servant. Job calls for God’s help from the abyss. Buber, speaking about Nazi Germany and the gas chambers, posed this question: Did Job call for God’s kindness?33

Buber goes on to suggest that Job: 33

M. Buber, Two Types of Faith, pp. 166f.

68

MISHAEL M. CASPI …charges that the cruel God (30:21) has ‘removed his right’ from him (27:2) and thus that the judge of the earth acts against justice. 34

Job accuses God of injustice and then God draws himself near to Job, who can then see God. At this point the question arises: Why hidest thy face? Unlike the mainstream scholars who consider Job to be a patient person, we choose to describe him as an angry one and that his anger grew along with his patience. He demands justice but God hides his grace from Job, even when Job challenged God and demanded an explanation for his suffering. Throughout the whole dialogue with his friends, God is not present, but when he chooses to come in Chapters 38–42 he comes with his divine power that dwarfs Job. It has a great effect on Job, the ‘self-centered’ man, the impatient one who out of fear or because he is overwhelmed by the divine power submits himself to God. The early Jewish sources do not argue aspects of the story. In fact at that time, rarely is God accused of anything. Most of the commentators of that time accused the Satan or Job or his wife. They go on to suggest that the reward bestowed upon Job, in fact, affirms Job’s victory over the Satan. These early sources also suggest that Job asked his friends to continue supporting the poor as he had, even though they had not believed Job had remained righteous.35 The only one who speaks harshly to Job is his wife. The storyteller uses the euphemistic verb bless instead of the verb to curse. But Masnut suggests that she said: Confess before God and give him thanks, but do not hope that he will relieve you of your suffering.36

The Targum to the hemistitch of verse 9: Then said his wife unto him,

34

M. Buber, At the Turning Dialogue: Between Heaven and Earth, (1952),

p. 61. 35 36

Leket Midrashim, 5a. Masnut, Op. Cit., 21a;8.

JOB: THE DARKNESS OF THE CURSE

69

is translated from ve-a-ma-rat leh Dinah it-te-teh And Dinah his wife said unto him…

The reference here denotes the daughter of Jacob. The storyteller of T. Job tells us that Job had two wives. The first one was named Sitis. The second one, the mother of Job’s ten children, was Dinah. The author specifically states that the first wife had died. Indeed, the Jewish Sages did not want to deal with the philosophical question of “Why?” so they chose not to examine why the righteous one was tested. However, they pointed out, instead, Job’s wealth, his origin, and his time. Several could not agree upon Job’s time. Bar Kapara said Job lived in the time of Abraham, while R. Abba b. Kahana said he lived during the days of Jacob since Dinah was one of his wives.37 They also drew parallels between Abraham and Job. They highlighted Job’s generosity, which was similar to Abraham’s. They pointed out the shared faithfulness to God of Job and Abraham. Each was also known as one who feared God. Both men asked similar questions. For example, Abraham commented: …to slay the righteous with the wicked, and that the righteous should be as the wicked. (Gen. 18:25)

while Job declares: He destroyeth the innocent and the wicked. (9:22)

Yet, God rewarded Abraham and he punished Job. The sages stated: The reason is because Abraham said (it) in confirmation, while Job said it in cavil: It is all one.38

The sages emphasized that both Abraham and Job experienced personal tribulations, with Abraham walking through ten trials with the final one being to sacrifice his son, Isaac. This trial was the flame of suffering God created to make him the perfect father of 37 38

Gen. Rab. 57:4. Gen. Rab. 49:9.

70

MISHAEL M. CASPI

the nation. Likewise, Job’s suffering is also a test. Job does not know it is a test. It was done by two other characters who plotted against him. Abraham did not know he was being tested. But the storyteller tells us: …that God tested Abraham.

In Job’s case the storyteller shares that everything that was done to Job was created in the celestial world. In both cases the reader questions God’s way, pondering why God would allow the righteous to suffer. How much was God involved in Job’s punishment? We read this verse: va-ye-tse ha-sa-tan me-et pe-ne YHWH va-yatch et iyyob bish-him ra’…(2:7) So went the Satan forth from the presence of the Lord and smote Job with sore boils…

But, it is possible to read this verse differently: va-ye-tse ha-sa-tan me-et pe-ne YHWH So went the Satan forth from the presence of the Lord (va-yakh) YHWH et iyyob bish-hin ra’… (and) the Lord (smote) Job with sore boils…

Such a reading proves that God was involved in Job’s suffering and that after having lost everything he valued in life, Job was in shock. But when Job awakens from his dismay and grief, he says: The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord. (1:21)

When Job is stricken with ‘sore boils’, the storyteller remarks: And he took potsherd with which to scrape himself. (2:8)

Is Job silent here? Perhaps with his silence Job expresses all of his anger toward heaven but he does not say one insolent word toward heaven. Abraham, likewise, is silent. He comes down the mountain alone with his young men and together they go to Beer-sheba. There is silence. Abraham speaks not a single insolent word toward God even when he is expected to sacrifice his son. Through his silence does he, too, express his anger toward heaven? During the so-called dialogue Job has with his companions the response of Job to Elihu is missing. While Job does not

JOB: THE DARKNESS OF THE CURSE

71

condemn Elihu in the book itself, the author of the Testament of Job said: Elihu, Elihu- the only evil one will have no memorial among the living. His quenched lamp lost its luster… (T. Job 43:5)

This description contradicts the biblical storyteller who describes Elihu as a young man who had waited for his turn to speak. Yet, through his speech he seems to be a very bold and impulsive young man. In the Jewish interpretation of Job created in the Middle Ages we find, on one hand, an expansion of the rabbinical literature and, on the other hand, a philosophical agreement dealing primarily with the issues of justice and suffering. Bahya Ibn Bakuda (11th century) deals with some of the problems in the Book of Job. In his book, Ha-vot hea’-le-va-vot (Duties of the Heart), he wrote: I quote also Saints and Sages of other nations Whose words have come down to us.

It is obvious that Bahya was influenced by the Greeks as well as by the Arabic philosophers. The struggle between faith and reason began, we assume, toward the end of the 8th century. But rather than a struggle for dominance, it was an attempt to reconcile these two concepts.39 When he mentions the Book of Job he presents a dialogue between the soul and the mind. Then the mind responds to the question asked by the soul about various aspects of obligation of obedience to God as follows: The graces given to mankind are four different kinds. The first is God’s grace given to all people… Therefore they are obliged to give a general obedience to God, an obedience composed of all the commandments imposed by the mind and accepted…40

Arguing about the love and fear of God, he claims that Job behaved like a merchant. He wanted to get in return twice as much Bahya Ibn Pakuda,(Bakuda), The Book of Direction to the Duties of the Heart, Menachem Mansur (tr.), (London: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1973), Ch. 1. 40 Ibid, p. 204. 39

72

MISHAEL M. CASPI

as he gave, looking for honor and the material rewards of the world. Maimonides (1135–1204 C.E.), in his remarkable work, claims to find support in the Book of Job for the idea that the trials and sufferings along with the experience of pain given to the righteous should not be perceived as an accusation by (of) divine justice. According to Maimonides, a good and upright person will always encourage himself to rise above acting or rebelling against God. He views two types of Job: one who knows God by the material things he possesses. This Job’s happiness is connected directly to his material well being and when misfortune befalls him, he faults God. The second type of Job is the one who knows true happiness and realizes God despite suffering. He rises above the affliction and the pain. When Maimonides explains the nature of divine providence he says: The most marvelous and extraordinary thing about this story is the fact that knowledge is not attributed in it to Job. He is not said to be wise or a comprehending or intelligent man. Only moral virtue and righteousness in action are ascribed to him.41

Job fell into a state of suffering and because of this suffering he also fell into a state of great perplexity. A mixture of Italian-styled novella, midrash and theology are found in the 16th century work of Abraham ben Hananiah Yagel, A Valley of Vision, Gei Hizzayon. In this work he demonstrates his extensive knowledge of Jewish writings as well as the Italian literary works. In his description of Job he states that Job was not born in Israel but in Aram Naharayim (Syria-Palestine). From there Job went to the land of Uz to a town named Kinianon and it was in that town that Job became afflicted. Job associated with his friends during his affliction. They came to comfort him, as did his friends from Aram Naharayim. This book is written in the style of an

Moses b. Maimun (Rambam), The Guide to the Perplexed, Shelom Pine, tr., (University of Chicago Press, 1963), pp. 23, 111. 41

JOB: THE DARKNESS OF THE CURSE

73

Italian Renaissance novella and thus allegory is used in it to reflect on the spiritual life and values of a society.42

D. waadh-kur ‘ab-da-naa ayyuba idh ba-da rab-ba-hu And remember our servant Job who cried to his Lord. Grief for you has thrived from my hand both patience and peace of heart. I’m not burning from winds of passion, from truest grief-I burn.43

See Rabbinic Fantasies, David Stern and Jay Mirsky, eds., (NY: JPS, 1990), pp. 313–331. 43 Ottoman Lyric Poetry, Walter G. Andrews, Najaat Black and Mehmet Kalpakli, ed. and tr., (University of Texas Press, 1997), p. 27. 42

JOB’S HIDDEN WAY: UNDERSTANDING JOB AS A WISDOM FIGURE IN THE POETIC DIALOGUES SOPHIA MAGALLANES UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

1. INTRODUCTION TO JOB AS A WISDOM FIGURE The Book of Job is unique to the Hebrew Bible for various reasons, one of which is that it devotes itself to focus on the integrity of one of its characters. Both the poetic core of the book and its prose frame are concerned with the righteousness of the character Job. This is probably the one unifying theme between the two contrasting parts of the book. Even though this the case, the Prologue gives a straightforward character description of Job, while the poetic dialogues give conflicting perceptions of who Job is based on what either Job and his friends say about him. In the Prologue, Job’s character description is depicted with use of sapiential terms and concepts. He is mature, a righteous man who fears God and avoids evil (Jb. 1:1, 8–9; 2:3). This type of piety and wisdom (i.e. fear of the Lord) is the main feature in common among what is called biblical wisdom literature. The narrator, God and ha-Satan all recognize Job’s pietistic nature as his defining characteristic. Without reading the poetic dialogues, it is easy to see Job as a model figure for a biblical wisdom tradition; he is the ideal fearer of God. Unfortunately, the text as preserved through the centuries does not give us one flat portrayal of Job as a wisdom figure as 75

76

SOPHIA MAGALLANES

clearly as it is depicted in the Prologue. The Book of Job also gives the reader a picture of an angry and bitter man defending his integrity in poetic arguments with his friends. Be that as it may, this does not mean that the poetic dialogues are not also conveying Job as a wisdom figure, one whose fear of God is misunderstood. I suggest that the best way to know how the character Job is portrayed as a wisdom figure in the poetic dialogues is to examine what he says about his ‘hidden way’ (Jb. 3:23) throughout his poetic speeches and how his friends respond to it. The method of analysis I find most helpful in considering Job as a wisdom figure in the dialogue section of the Book of Job is by seeing if how the character Job speaks of his darkô nistarah ‘hidden way’ is consistent with how the concepts of the ‘way of wisdom’ and ‘hiddenness’ are conveyed in biblical wisdom. These ideas of the ”way of wisdom’ and the concept of ‘hiddenness’ can be illuminated by what the three main biblical wisdom texts (that is, Job, Proverbs, and Qoheleth) have in common in teaching wisdom. It should come as no surprise that not only do Proverbs and Qoheleth have much to say about the fear of God and or wisdom’s ‘way’ (both dogma and praxis), but also that these same wisdom books have much to say about the way in which hiddenness is conveyed. It is for this reason that I propose that the best way in which to consider Job as a wisdom figure in the poetic dialogues is to look at his hidden way within view of the other biblical wisdom texts, mainly Proverbs and Qoheleth.

2. JOB’S WAY 2.1 Job’s Derek in The Poetic Dialogues An important concept that helps us get an idea of Job’s integrity, tummah,1 is the use of the word derek. In the poetic dialogues, derek The word used for Job’s ‘integrity’ is tummāh [Job 2:3, 9; 27:5 31:6; “completeness in regard to one’s relationship with God” (HALOT: 1745); “perfection” (Gordis, Job, p. 11; Dhorme, Job, 15); “completeness, soundness, wholeness” (Balentine, Job, 46); “blameless” (Hester, Job, pp. 9–10); Pope comments on Job’s holding fast to his integrity by referring 1

JOB’S HIDDEN WAY

77

“way” is used to speak of God’s way (Jb. 26:14;2 36:23; 40:19), the way of wisdom (Jb. 28:23), and the way of creation (Jb. 28:26; 38:19, 24, 25). Derek also is used to speak of the way of a righteous person (Jb. 8:19; 17:19) and the way of the wicked (Jb. 21:14; 24:13, 23). This idea that there are two ways in which to live (i.e. in wisdom/righteousness or in folly/wickedness) resembles the main thrust of the teaching found in the Book of Proverbs.3 What is more interesting is that derek also refers quite frequently to the way of Job’s integrity (Jb. 3:23; 4:6; 13:15; 22:3 [15], 28; 23:10, 11; 31:4, 7). Job makes the first reference to his ‘hidden way’ in Job 3:23, darkô nistarah.4 After this, the next person who speaks of Job’s ‘way’ is Eliphaz as he criticizes Job for having hope in the “integrity” of his “way” (tom derakêka, Jb. 4:6). In Job 13:15, Job exclaims that in the throes of death, he is willing to defend his ‘way’ to God’s face. In Job 22:3, Eliphaz asks Job whether or not God benefited from Job “making complete” his “way” (im besa kî tattem derakêka).5 to the MT examples of holding fast to deceit (Jer. 8:5) or to anger (Mic. 7:18)]. 2 “way” can be understood as “realm”, which is in keeping with the second definition of derek, “power”, dominion” (DCH, 2:472; Clines, Job 21–37, p. 903). Suggested by Dahood is understanding derek as “dominion, power” because of the Ugaritic drkt (HULL II, Bib. 45, 1965, 393–412). Habel proposes that within the creation contexts of Job, “’way’ refers not to the works themselves but to structures or laws of the cosmic order (Job 38:19–20, 24–25)” and that it is “clear from 28:6 that derek …is synonymous with hoq, “decree, rule, law.” (Habel, Book of Job, pp. 365–366). 3 Way of the wicked: Prov. 1:15, 31; 2:12, 13; 3:31; 4:14, 19; 5:8; 7:8, 19, 25, 27; 9:6; 10:9; 12:15, 26, 28; 13:15; 14:2, 12, 14; 15:9, 19; 16: 25, 29; 19:3; 21:8; 22:6; 28:6, 10, 18; 30:19–20; 31:3; Way of righteous: Prov. 2:20; 3:17, 23; 4:11, 26; 6:6; 11:5, 20; 13:6; 16:17, 31; 19:16; 21:29; 22:5; 23:19; 29:27. 4 Pope notes that the “path of a fortunate man is illuminated, xxii 28, and level and smooth, Isa xxvi 7; Prov xv 19, but that of the unfortunate, and thus presumably wicked, is the opposite; cf. xvii 9.” (Pope, Job, p. 33). 5 Job 22:3b as “Does he gain if your conduct is blameless?” based on the Hebrew idiom “perfect of way” in Job 4:6 and Prov. 13:6 (Clines, Job 21–

78

SOPHIA MAGALLANES

Eliphaz does this just right before he uncovers the allegations against Job (Jb. 22:5–11)6 that he and his friends have only alluded to in the other dialogue cycles. 2.2 Concept of Job’s ‘Way’ Illuminated by Proverbs and Qoheleth Proverbs gives a fuller description than Job of what the way of wisdom looks like (Explanation of road: Prov. 6:23; Wisdom’s way: Prov. 8:2, 22, 32; 9:15; 21:16; 7 Way of the Lord: Prov. 10:29). 8 Qoheleth’s use of road and way images for the fool and the upright person is actually is not as consistent with it as Proverbs is in conveying it as a dominant in its wisdom teaching.9 Even though each wisdom text presents its own take on wisdom, there are unifying commonalities across the biblical wisdom tradition. In both texts, the wise person is to be understood as being one who knows how to conduct his or herself appropriately in moral 37, 538–40) even though the literal meaning is “if you make your ways perfect”; “tu perfectionnes tes voies” (Dhorme, Job, 297); “What gain if your conduct be perfect?” (Pope, Job, pp. 164–166); “Or his gain if you keep your ways blameless?” (Gordis, Job, p. 245). 6 Note that Eliphaz is accusing Job of exacting pledges “without reason/ for nothing” in Job 22:6, cf. Job 1:9 (Gordis, Job, 245); the widow, orphan in Job 22:9 are objects of particular concern; cf. Exo. 22:21; Deut. 24:17; Isa. 1:17 (Pope, Job, p. 165); Clines points to the importance of Job as being the one being accused of crushing the arm of the orphan (Clines, Job 21–37, p. 541). 7 Personified wisdom calls out on city streets (Prov. 8:2; 9:15). Therefore, the context of the “way” is in the urban centre and/or the centre of socio-economic interaction (Murphy, Proverbs, p. 49). In regards to the “way” in the context of Women Wisdom as being the beginning of creation, Murphy says that derek indicates the “divine pattern of creative acts.” (Murphy, Proverbs, p. 52). 8 Qoheleth is actually ambiguous about these two distinct ways altogether (Qoh 10:3; 11:5, 9; 12:13). Key to note is that Qoh 12:15 says to “fear God and keep his commands” which look very much like the recontextualization of Torah into the “way of wisdom”. 9 Qoh. 10:3; 11:5, 9; 12:5.

JOB’S HIDDEN WAY

79

matters, and the fool is the one who lives wickedly. Both are depicted as walking a path or way of their choosing, where each road leads either to wisdom or folly. In fact, in both books, the wise person’s moral actions are linked to a personal piety that is the result of that person’s “fear of God/Lord’. In Proverbs, The noun yirah10 usually has a construct relationship with divine titles so that God is understood as the object of fear. This fear has pietistic implications that are to dictate the life and morality of an individual in his or her interaction with his or her community.11 In Job, the noun yirah is always linked to an individual piety. In most cases that this idea is expressed it is in reference to Job’s personal integrity (Jb. 4:6; 15:4; 22:4). In Job, yirah has a construct relationship to šaddai (Jb. 6:14) and ‘adonai (Jb. 28:28).12 In Proverbs, yirah is in construct with the Tetragrammaton13 and it is this fear that commands one to “hate The verb yāra in many cases has God as its object, and also is linked to the concept of turning away from evil. The verb yāra is overtly associated with elōhîm in Job 1:9, but also in Job 9:35 and 37:24, God is understood as the object of yāra. In the Prologue of the Book of Job, the adjective yĕrē, is used to describe Job as “one who fears God.” (yĕrē ĕlōhîm, Job 1:1, 8; 2:3) and it, like Proverbs 14:16, links this fear with “turning aside from evil” (wĕsār mērā). The adjective in Proverbs is employed as a title of commendation for one who acts in proper moral conduct. The one who fears the Lord is to be praised (Prov. 31:30; 14:2). Proverbs 14:2 says that the one who walks in uprightness is “one who fears the Lord”, hôlēk bĕyāšĕrô yĕrē yĕhwāh. Qoheleth also commends the one who fears God because he understands that, for the most part, life goes well with that person and poorly with the one who does not. (Qoh. 8:12, 13) 11 For this essay I am focusing on the use of the specific use of yāra in connection to cultic fear of ‘God’ (DCH, 4:279, 2c; Joachim Becker, Gottesfurcht im Alten Testament [Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 1965]; Mitchell J. Dahood, “Hebrew-Ugaritic Lexicography III”, Bib 46 [1965], pp. 311–32). 12 This divine designation is only used this one instance in the three main wisdom books. It appears to be a later replacement for the Tetragrammaton. 13 Proverbs 1:7, 29; 2:5; 8:13; 9:10; 10:27; 14:26, 27; 15:16, 33; 16:6; 19:23; 22:4; 23:17. 10

80

SOPHIA MAGALLANES

evil”, śenot ra’ (Prov. 8:13).14 In Proverbs 16:6, one is told that one avoids evil by fearing God. In Qoheleth, God also is to be the object of one’s fear (et ha elohîm yera, Qoh. 12:13). In fact, the preacher concludes that this is the “whole duty of humankind” and that the implications of this fear result in keeping God’s commandments. (Qoh. 12:13) In addition to the idea that God is the object of one’s fear, Qoheleth adds to the verb the concept of fearing before the divine presence (Qoh. 8:12, 13). The phrase can then be translated as “to turn aside from evil”. Sûr mera is an important phrase that helps convey what the main canonical wisdom texts understand wisdom to be. Sûr is a Hebrew verb meaning “to turn aside/away”. It is used 18x in Job,15 17x in Proverbs16 and only once in Qoheleth (Qoh. 11:10). For the sake of my study in Job, I want to focus on how the verb is understood in the phrase: sûr mera. The word oâ∂r is a word for “evil”.17 Wisdom is the fear of God. Because sûr mera is often paralleled to “fear of God”, the concept of “turning away or aside from evil” becomes essential in understanding what the fear of God looks like in a person’s life. The evil that one is to avoid appears to be understood as both evil conduct18 and the evil that

Evil here is depicted as inappropriate conduct: “arrogance, pride, the way of evil, and perverted speech”. 15 Job 1:1, 8; 2:3; 9:34; 12:20, 24; 15:30; 19:9; 21:14; 22:17; 27:2, 5; 28:28; 33:17; 34:5, 20, 27. 16 Proverbs 3:7; 4:24, 27; 5:7; 9:4, 16; 11:22; 13:14,19; 14:16, 27; 15:24; 16:6,17; 22:6; 27:22; 28:9. 17 oâ∂r occurs around 70 times in canonical wisdom (HALOT, 1250– 1253; Lisowsky, Konkordanz zum Hebräischen Alten Testament, 1340–1343): Job 1:1, 1:8; 2:3, 7, 10; 5:19; 21:30; 28:28; 30:26; 31:29; 35:12; Proverbs 1:16; 2:12, 14; 3:29; 4:14, 27; 5:14; 6:14, 24; 8:13; 11:15, 21; 12:12, 13, 20, 21; 13:17, 19; 14:16, 19, 22; 15:3, 10, 15, 26; 16:6, 17; 17:11; 19:23; 20:8, 14, 22, 30; 21:10, 12; 23:6; 24:20; 25:20; 26:23; 28:5, 10, 22; 29:6; 31:12; Eccl. 1:13; 2:17; 4:3, 8; 5:1, 14; 6:2; 7:3; 8:3, 5, 9, 11, 12; 9:3; 12:14. 18 The following are examples of how the adjective rā is understood as evil conduct: Job 1:1, 8; 2:3; 28:28; Proverbs 1:16; 2:12, 14; 3:29; 4:14, 27; 6:14; 8:13; 12:20; 15:26; Qoheleth 4:3; 8: 11; 12:14. 14

JOB’S HIDDEN WAY

81

befalls a person19 seemingly as the direct a result of one’s immoral conduct. One avoids both by living a righteous life. To avoid death (anything associated with evil, both literally and figuratively) then becomes a core value of the wise person. Both one’s conduct and one’s lot in life determine whether or not someone is wise. To turn away from evil is a key concept in wisdom literature.1 In the first two chapters of the book, Job is described as one who “turns from evil”. 2.3 Conclusions for Job’s Way The character Job uses the concept of his way to refer to his integrity, which centers on the fear of God, the core teaching of the biblical wisdom literature. Not only does Job use the terms for the ‘way’ of wisdom in the dialogues, but he also uses it interchangeably with the important wisdom concepts such as pious practice of appropriate action that is in keeping with fear of God and avoidance of evil. Not only is this the case in Job’s speeches, but also Job’s three friends all refer to Job’s way using wisdom language and conceptuality in order to accuse him of not maintaining fear of God.

3. HIDDENNESS 3.1 Hiddenness in Job’s Dialogue and Wisdom Literature The character Job speak of his hidden way, darkô nistarah (Jb. 3:23). It is interesting that the character Job uses nistarah (coming from the verb satar) when there are are five lexemes that the wisdom texts use to depict the concept of hiddenness on and in the earth.20 The following are examples of how the adjective oá∂r is used to convey the idea of evil catastrophe/consequence: Job 2:7, 10; 5:19; 21:30; 30:26; 31:29; Proverbs 5:14; 11:15;12:13, 21; 15:15; 19:23; 31:12; Qoheleth 8:5, 9. 20 Samuel E. Balentine, “A Description of the Semantic Field of Hebrew Words for ‘Hide,’”VT 30 (1980): 137–153; Gregorio del Olmo Lete, “Nota sobre Prov 30, 19 (wederek geber be’almâ),”Bibl. 67 (1986): 68–74; Gillis Gerleman, “Die sperrende Grenz, “ZAW 91 (1979): 338–349. 19

82

SOPHIA MAGALLANES

Satar21 may be understood as both “to hide/be hidden”, “to conceal/be concealed”, “to be undiscovered/undetected”, “to be separated”). 22 The other four lexemes do convey both passive and active uses: alam23 (“to hide”),24 taman25 (“to hide, conceal” esp. in the earth),26 safan27 (“to hide”, “to keep”, “to save up”, “to keep hidden” “to conceal [oneself]” or “to lie in wait”),28 and hava29 (“to withdraw, hide”). 30 Satar is only used in Job and Proverbs to describe an object that is “being hidden”. In Job, both Job and Elihu speak of the hiddenness of God (Jb. 13:24; 34:29), Job asks to be hidden in Sheol (under the earth) by God until his wrath has passed (Jb. 14:13), and in Job 34:29, Elihu warns Job that there is no darkness that can hide the deeds of the wicked. In Proverbs, the upright person hides him or herself from danger. (Prov. 22:3; 27:12) alam is used in wisdom literature to describe the action of concealment. Proverbs say that it is the glory of God to hide a matter. (Prov. 25:2)31 Qoheleth 12:14 proclaims that God will judge every action, including all that that he is hiding.

Job 3:10, 23; 13:20, 24; 14:13; 28:21; 34:22, 29; Prov. 22:3; 25:2; 27:5, 12; 28:28. 22 HALOT, 771–772; DCH, 6:202–205. 23 Job 6:16; 28:21; 42:3; Prov. 28:27; Qoh. 12:14. 24 HALOT, 834–835; DCH, 6:427–428, I; Note that definition II of alm is “to be dark”/”to make dark” (to obscure, HALOT, 835; DCH, 6:428); These two definitions are not so far apart, depending on context, both meanings can be maintained, thus indicating the type of hiddenness connoted (i.e. one caused by darkness). 25 Job 3:16; 18:10; 20:26; 31:33; 40:13; Prov.19:24; 26:15. 26 HALOT, 377; DCH, 3:371–372. 27 Job 10:13; 14:13; 15:20; 17:4; 20:26; 21:19; 23:12; 24:1; Prov 1:11, 18; 2:1, 7; 7:1; 10:14; 13:22; 27:16. 28 HALOT, 1048–1049. 29 Job 5:21; 24:4; 29:8, 10; 38:30. 30 HALOT, 289; DCH, 3:157. 31 Also, whoever conceals his or her eyes to the poor will be cursed. (Prov. 28:27) 21

JOB’S HIDDEN WAY

83

In addition to the explicit words that convey hiddenness, there are three concepts (darkness, death, and invisibility) that give nuance to the different aspects of ‘hiddenness’. A hidden thing is invisible (not within view), and this invisibility is most often linked to darkness or to death. A revealed thing is something that is brought to light so that it may be seen and recognized by the human eye. Both visibility and light work together as metaphors for being dead or alive, where to be seen and to be in the light is to be alive, while being in the dark and invisible is to be dead. 32 Because of this, we can see that these three concepts gain special significance when used together. 3.2 Job’s Hidden Way Illuminated by Proverbs and Qoheleth Job frequently expresses the concept of ‘hiddenness’ by using words for death, darkness, and invisibility in his speeches. Because his ‘way’ is hidden (darkô nistarah, Jb. 3:23), Job’s primary request in the whole of the Book of Job is for vindication. Because his way is being obscured by his present state of suffering, Job wishes that darkness (hošek we tsalmavet) would seize the day of his birth (Jb. 3:4–6). Job experiences the hiddenness of his way because, according to Job 19:8, it is God who darkens it. It is for this reason that Job complains that his righteousness is ‘invisible’ and ‘dead’ to those who surround him. He thinks that he might as well be dead Helmer Ringgeren, “Light and Darkness in Ancient Egyptian Religion,” Liber Amicorum. Festschrift C.J. Bleeker, (Leiden, 1969), pp. 140– 150; Within this canonical wisdom literature, only the Book of Job employs it as a subject (Job 3:5; 20:26; 34:22) and an object of verbs (5:14; 12:25; 19:8; 22:11). All other times the noun is in construct with other nouns (“ways of darkness”, Prov. 2:13; “land of darkness”, Job 10:21; “day of darkness”, Job 15:23; “days of darkness”, Qoh. 11:8) or linked with propositions (“from darkness”, Job 12:22; Job 15:22, 30; “from the face of darkness”, Job 17:12; 23:17; 37:19; “at dark/in(to) darkness”, Job 17:13; 24:16; Prov. 20:20; Qoh. 2:14; 5:16; 6:4; “into darkness”, Job 18:18; “with darkness”, Job 26:10; “to darkness”, Job 28:3; “than darkness”, Qoh. 2:13). Sometimes it is used in a synonymous parallel relationship with tsalmāvet (Job 3:5; 10:21; 12:22; 34:22; 38:17). Other times it is used paired in contrast to rwñøa (Job 24:16; 26:10; 29:3; 29:24; 38:19). 32

84

SOPHIA MAGALLANES

(“not seen by the eye” and hidden by darkness) rather than go unrecognized as a righteous person. Being recognized by the eyes of others as himself and not a stranger, zar, is important to Job. (Jb. 19:15, 27) Vision, as well as visibility, are important in everyday living, and are of greatest importance, especially in wisdom literature.33 Being seen and seeing with the eye, ‘ayin, is often associated with being alive (Jb. 3:10; 7:7– 8; 10:18; 11:20; 17:5, 7; 20:9; 21:8, 20; 28:21; 31:16), where its opposite signifies death. In Job and Qoheleth, both seeing and being seen is associated with the light/sun, and is used as a metaphor for being born and/or alive (Jb. 3:9, 16; 7:8; 20:7; 10:18; 22:11; 33:21, 28; Qoh. 4:3; 6:5; 7:11; 11:7; 12:3).34 In addition to this, it important to note that the eye (‘ayin) of God is vital when establishing whether or not someone is righteous/wise, since God’s eyes see everything in the land of the living (Jb. 10:4; 14:3; 15:15; 16:9; 24:23; 25:5; 34:21; 36:7). Pidoux reflects on the eyes of humanity being opened by the tree of life and contrasts how God’s eyes see better than human eyes even though the humans were told that their eyes would be open to be like God.35 Thus, God’s ability to see has implications for his role as judge since he is the only one who can see everything under heaven. Oppenheim refers to the eyes of lord(s) as being the office of a sovereign.36 To the character Job, it is important to be recognized by the eyes of his community as himself and not as a stranger (Jb. 2:12; 19:15, 27). The character Job finds himself forgotten by three groups of his own social sphere: his household, servants and E. Ebeling, “Auge,” RLA, I: 313. idem, “Blick, böser,” RLA II: 55. To “see good” in both Job and Qoheleth has to do with one’s quality of life (Job 7:7; 9:25; 20:17; 21:20; Qoh. 2:1, 3; 2:24; 3:13; 5:17; 6:6). The eye is the perfect indicator of the quality of life since the eye expressed the ‘totality’ of the human life (Kraus, “Hören und Sehen in der althebräischen Tradition,” ß84). 35 Georges Pidoux, “Encore les deux arbre de Genese 3,” ZAW, 66 (1954): 37–43. 36 A. Leo Oppenheim, “‘The Eyes of the Lord,’” JAOS 88 (1968): 173–80. 33 34

JOB’S HIDDEN WAY

85

sojourners (Jb. 19:14–15— “the ones knowing me have forgotten me, v. 14; “sojourners of my house and my handmaids consider me as a stranger, I have become foreign in their eyes”).Whether or not Job is the speaker of Job 28, the literary thrust of Job 28:4 reiterates an aspect of Job’s innocence that will be defended in Job 31. Job affirms his righteousness in Job 31:32 by saying he has sojourners, gērim, in his household. It is in this chapter that he is defending his innocence of the particular wickedness of which he is being accused directly (Jb. 29–31 address especially the explicit allegations of Job 22:5–9, which is proper treatment of the marginalized in society). Job finds himself forgotten and unrecognized by his household, servants and sojourners included (Jb. 19:14–15). In his vow of innocence, Job speaks of a time when his ways were not hidden in the dark, but when the Almighty’s lamp lights his steps. (Jb. 29:3) It was in the light of God that all of his righteous dealings as a wise judge and head of household were clearly seen. (Jb. 29:7– 25) The depiction of apparent piety to which God gave light (Jb. 29:1–25) is contrasted with Job’s current situation of obscured righteousness. (Jb. 30:1–31) The dominant image Job uses in his speeches is that of darkness.37 Job is the only speaker who uses ofel for darkness in his speeches (Jb. 3:6; 10:22; 23:17; [28:3?]; 30:26).38 Three of those hōšek (“darkness”—3:4–5; 10:21; 12:22, 25; 17:12–13; 23:17), ōfel (“darkness” [poetic]—3:6; 10:22; 23:17; 30:26), and tsalmāvet (“shadow of death”—3:5; 10:21–22; 12:22; 16:16; 24:17). 38 ōfel is the least common Hebrew word in the Bible that means “darkness” (HALOT, 1:79; DCH, 1:358; Lisowsky, Konkordanz zum Hebräischen Alten Testament, 134), occurring only 9 times. Out of the three main canonical wisdom texts, it only occurs in Job and it does so 6 times. The character Job is the only speaker who uses this word for darkness in his speeches (Job 3:6; 10:22; 23:17; [28:3?]; 30:26). Three of those times the noun is used as a subject (Job 3:6; 23:17; 30:26) and the other times in syntactical relationships with tsalmāvet (in construct with it Job 10:22; in hendiadys with it Job 28:3). hōšek means “darkness” or “obscurity” (HALOT, 1:361; DCH, 3:331; Lisowsky, Konkordanz zum Hebräischen Alten Testament, p. 538). Proverbs uses the word only twice and Qoheleth uses it 6 37

86

SOPHIA MAGALLANES

times the noun is used as a subject (Jb. 3:6; 23:17; 30:26) and the other times in syntactical relationships with tsalmavet (in construct with it Jb. 10:22; in hendiadys with tsalmavet in Jb. 28:3). The character Job wishes that darkness would seize the day of his birth (Jb. 3:6), complains of the looming darkness that has caused him to be outspoken (Jb. 23:17), and bemoans his unmet expectations (i.e. when he expected light, he got darkness, Jb. 30:26).39 Proverbs uses hošek only to speak of the dark way of the wicked that leads to death (Prov. 2:13; 20:20) in contrast to the light/lamp of the righteous which leads to life. (Prov. 4:18; 6:23; 13:9) So, we see that death is attached to darkness and light is associated with life. Qoheleth associates light with wisdom and darkness with folly (Qoh. 2:13–14) and the vanities of life. (Qoh. 5:16; 6:4; 11:8) In the Book of Job, hošek is frequently used by the character Job (Jb. 3:4–5; 10:21; 12:22, 25; 17:12–13; 19:8; 23:17; 24:16; [26:10; 28:3?]; 29:3), but is also included in the speeches of Eliphaz (Jb. 5:14; 15:22–23, 30; 22:11), Bildad (Jb. 18:18), Zophar (Jb. 20:26), and Elihu (Jb. 37:19). hōšek is paired in contrast to ôr (Jb. 24:16; 26:10; 29:3; 29:24; 38:19). times. Sometimes hōšek is used in a synonymous parallel relationship with tsalmāvet (Job 3:5; 10:21; 12:22; 34:22; 38:17). tsalmāvet is a word signifying “deep gloom”. This darkness word has a morbid undertone to it. It only occurs 18 times in the Hebrew Bible, 10 of which are found in the Book of Job (Job 3:5; 10:21–22; 12:22; 16:16; 24:17 [x 2]; 28:3; 34:22; 38:17). Job is the only canonical wisdom book that uses tsalmāvet for darkness. In the Book of Job, Elihu and God are the only other characters besides Job who use tsalmāvet. (Job 34:22; 38:17) tsalmāvet is used once as an object. (Job 12:22) Other times in Job, it is used with propositions (Job 24:17), in a construct (Job 10:22; Job 16:16; Job 38:17), in parallel (hōšek in Job 3:5;10:21; 34:22; māvet in Job 38:17), or hendiadys (Job 28:3) relationship with other nounsts. tsalmāvet is a word signifying “gloom”, “deep darkness” or literally “shadow of death” (HALOT, 1029; Lisowsky, Konkordanz zum Hebräischen Alten Testament, p. 1219; D. Thomas, “Salmawet in the Old Testament” JSS 7:191–200). Jones is right to highlight the connection with tsalmāvet and the Netherworld (Jones, Rumors of Wisdom, p. 134). 39 Other places that use ōfel are once in Isaiah (Isa. 29:18) and twice in the Psalms (Ps. 11:2; Ps. 91:6).

JOB’S HIDDEN WAY

87

In Job, the way in which Job’s friends use hōšek corresponds to the way Proverbs and Qoheleth speak of darkness—that is, in association with the way of the wicked/foolish person. Eliphaz also uses the image of darkness to speak of the wicked (of their schemes in Jb. 5:14; of their death in Jb. 15:22–23, 30; of Job in particular in Jb. 22:11). Bildad and Zophar also join in using the image of darkness specifically as the outcome of the wicked. (Jb. 18:18; 20:26) In addition to this, Elihu speaks of not being able to draw up a case for Job because of the darkness that surrounds him. (Jb. 37:19) In biblical wisdom, ôr, translated as “light”, has the highest frequency in the Book of Job. ôr appears in Proverbs 4 times (Prov. 4:18; 6:23; 16:15; 13:9) and 3 places in Qoheleth (Qoh. 2:13; 11:7; 12:2), and in Job 32 times (Jb. 3:9, 16, 20; 12:22, 25; 17:12; 18: 5–6, 18; 22:28; 24:13–14, 16; 25:3; 26:10; 28:11; 29:3, 24; 30:26; 31:26; 33:26, 28, 30; 36:30, 32; 37:3,11,15,21 38:15,19, 24; 41:10). There are instances in wisdom literature when the light is explicitly a metaphor for being alive (Jb. 3:9, 16, 20; 33:28; Qoh. 11:7; 12:2)40 but it is important to see how this applies in its usage concerning the wicked in wisdom literature. In Job, ôr is employed quite frequently in relationship to the wicked as they are depicted as having their light extinguished (Jb. 18:5–6) referring to the death of the wicked, as rebelling against the light (Jb. 24:13), as being in the darkness without light (Jb. 12:25; 17:12; 18:18), or as not knowing light because of the darkness of their actions (Jb. 24:13–14, 16). Outside of Job, the only overt links to this concept can be found in Proverbs 13:9 and Qoheleth 2:13. In Proverbs 13:9, there is a stark contrast made between the bright light of the righteous over against the extinguished lamp of the wicked, where the former signifies life and the latter signifies death. Prior to this condemnation of the wicked in Proverbs, the book only gives overt commendations to the light/lamp of the righteous. (Prov. 4:18; 6:23) Extending our view to Qoheleth, we see that the preacher merely alludes to this concept when he says that wisdom is better than folly just as light is better than darkness. (Qoh. 2:13) Ringgren, “Light and Darkness in Ancient Egyptian Religion,” pp. 140–150. 40

88

SOPHIA MAGALLANES

Because Job’s true identity is darkened and virtually invisible to his community, he turns to death as relief from all of his societal pain. In Job, death, māvet,41 is where Job wants to find comfort, and yet it is a place Job’s companions want him to avoid. Job looks for death as he would for hidden treasures (Jb. 3:21) and says that he prefers it to life (Jb. 7:15). Job also uses darkness, hōšek, to speak of the way of the wicked (Jb. 24:16), but also speaks of it when saying that God has darkened his path. (Jb. 19:8) It is because God has darkened his path that Job appears to be a foolish and wicked person. It is because of this association with the wicked that Job uses darkness to speak of his longing for death. (Jb. 3:4–5; 10:21; 12:22, 25; 17:12–13; 23:17) In fact, within the same speech, Eliphaz accuses Job of treading the ancient (or dark)42 ‘ways’ of the wicked. (Jb. 22:15) At the end of this Eliphaz speech, he pleads with Job to admit his evil deeds, stating that God would shine on Job’s ways as a result (‘al dĕrākêkā nāgah ôr, Jb. 22:28). In response to this, Job asserts that he knows that God knows the ‘way’ he takes (Jb. 23:10a) and that, in fact, this ‘way’ is God’s way. (Jb. 23:11) The last two times Job’s ways are spoken of are in Job’s final speech concerning his innocence (Jb. 31:4, 7) and in both instances Job maintains that his ‘ways’ are those of righteousness. Job asks to be hidden in Sheol by God until his wrath has passed. (Jb. 14:13) He complains of the obscurity of his situation that has caused him to be outspoken (Jb. 23:17), and laments that Hebrew word meaning “death” (HALOT, 563; DCH, 5:199–202.). In canonical wisdom, it is used 8 times in Job (Job 3:21; 5:20; 7:15; 18:13; 27:15; 28:22; 30:23; 38:17), 19 times in Proverbs (Proverbs 2:18; 5:5; 7:27; 8:36; 10:2; 11:4, 7, 19; 12:28; 13:14; 14:27, 32; 16:14, 25; 18:21; 21:6; 24:11; 26:18), and 6 times in Qoheleth (Qoh. 3:19; 7:1, 17, 26; 8:8; 10:1). 42 Dahood (Dahood, NWSPJ, pp. 65ff.) suggests that ‘wlm should be connected with the Ugaritic glm, “grow dark” (used in Job 42:3; Qoh. 3:11; cf. Qoh. 2:14; Prov. 2:13). Bloomerede and Pope follow Dahood’s understanding (Pope, Job, p. 163), although most commentators take it as “ancient” or “old” (eg. Gordis, Job, p. 246; Habel, Book of Job, p. 341). Along the lines of “dark” ways, Hartley understands it a “hidden” path (Hartley, The Book of Job, p. 328). 41

JOB’S HIDDEN WAY

89

when he expected light, he got darkness. (Jb. 30:26) Even though Job accuses God of darkening his path (Jb. 19:8), in his earlier speech he expresses the hope of God being able to bring what is in the darkness to light (Jb. 12:22) because he is able to command it in creation.43 It is interesting that Job 28’s ‘hymn to wisdom’ in Job 28:11 (ta’ālumāh yōtsī ôr) echoes Job 12:22 (wĕyyōtsē lāôr tsalmāvet). In further defense of his integrity, Job tells of a time when God’s light shone above him in order to guide his path. (Jb. 29:3, 24) The twist is that he also declares that, in the end, God met him with darkness when all he ever sought after was the light. (Jb. 30:26)44 3.3 Conclusions for Hiddenness Job initially uses nistārāh in Job 3:23 to express overtly the concept of hiddenness he already conveys within the initial lament in Chapter 3. Within Job’s first lament in the dialogues (Jb. 3), the reader sees that Job longs for darkness, death and invisibility to finish their job of hiding his integrity. Job longs to be swallowed up in this death, and invisibility. Job sees his way as being darkened, unable to be seen, and leading to death, which are all aspects that are usually linked with unrighteousness. Job’s way is obscured so much to the point that his integrity is not seen for what it is and therefore he is as good as dead to his community. In the end, Job embraces death, which is the outcome of the righteous and the wicked, even though it has the connotation of wickedness in the eyes of his three friends.

4. CONCLUDING THOUGHTS In the Book of Job, the character Job defends his “hidden way”. This essay has evaluated the words and concepts used to depict hiddenness and also Job’s way of righteousness in the Book of Job, starting with Job’s lament in Chapter 3 and then culminating in his last vow of innocence in Chapters 29–31. Upon consideration of Elihu agrees with this. (36:30, 32; 37:3,11, 15, 21) Notably, light is many times associated with justice in ANE thought (Ringgeren, “Light and Darkness in Ancient Egyptian Religion,” pp. 140– 150). 43 44

90

SOPHIA MAGALLANES

Job’s ‘hidden way’ in his speeches, we are able to see that the language and concepts used correspond to how the ‘way of wisdom’ and the concept of ‘hiddenness’ are conveyed in the two other biblical wisdom texts, Proverbs and Qoheleth. Because of this, we can see that the character Job is conveyed as a wisdom figure in his poetic speeches. Also, the reader is able to make connections between the language used of the hiddenness of wisdom in Job 28 and the way in which the character Job speaks of his obscured righteousness. This correlation may help make sense of why Job 28 would be set before Job’s last vow of innocence.

COMPLAINT, IMPRECATION, LAMENT, AND SPECIAL PLEADING: HOW RIGHTEOUS MEN MANAGE SUFFERING J. HAROLD ELLENS UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

Estimable figures throughout history have suffered enormously and unexplainably. Consequently, thoughtful persons, suffering or at relative ease, have raised questions about the problem of pain. These questions have tended to center around correlations between sin and suffering, virtue and prosperity. No correlation has ever been established. Virtue and vice seem to be their own reward. Philosophers and theologians have addressed the question of pain and suffering under a set of five standard rubrics: 1) arbitrary predestination, 2) divine providence, 3) blind fate, 4) chastisement, and 6) purification (as gold refined in fire). Suffering righteous persons have tended to process their suffering against the background of one or more of such constructs and, therefore, tend to express their disposition regarding pain in one or more of five models: a) complaint, b) imprecation, c) lament, d) special pleading or e) consolation. The disposition expressed by each sufferer depends directly upon which of the five standard rubrics prevails in that person’s belief system and world view. This essay discusses the nature and function of the five rubrics of belief in terms of the five models of its expression. This analysis is illustrated by five (or more) cases: 1) Job, 2) David (the Psalmist), 3) Boethius, 4) Gower, and 5) Dante. In conclusion, Fox News broadcasting is used as a humorous illustration of the 91

92

J. HAROLD ELLENS

trivialization of the biblical problem of pain and suffering in contemporary American culture. In his The Consolations of Philosophy, Boethius (480–524 C.E.), a 6th century Christian philosopher, was enticed by Lady Philosophy to find resolution of the anguish of life in the consolations of the underlying rationality that human growth comes only through pain. The consolations of philosophy in the end offer a mixture of the Greek Stoic notion of settling with beneficent fate and a Hebrew Covenant notion of discerning and acquiescing to a mindful providence. Boethius struggled with the question whether this is a copout or good sense. The theme of this struggle pervades great literature, particularly in the West. That literature is influenced equally, as was Boethius, by Platonic Idealism and the Hebrew Bible. Two centuries later this was to manifest itself in the Qur’an and Hadith of Islam. Such themes generate a literature filled with the five rubrics mentioned above: 1) arbitrary predestination, 2) divine providence, 3) blind fate, 4) chastisement, and 6) purification (as gold refined in fire); and their five expressions: Complaint, Imprecations, Lament, Special Pleading, and Consolation. In Boethius it takes the form mostly of lament, plus some complaint, virtually no pleading, and in the end at least a pseudo-consolation. Gower (1330–1408), a 14th century philosopher, expresses much lament, less complaint, and a little pleading to Jupiter. Dante’s consolation is expressed in the form of a pre-commitment to providence that is conditioned and constrained by foreknowledge. Is this an orthodox rationality or delusion? This set of patterns is interesting psychologically: Complaint is driven by anger, Imprecations by arrogance, Lament by grief, Special Pleading by despair, Consolation by rationality, or rationalizations. The biblical epitome of this quandary is presented intensely and dramatically in The Book of Job. It is mostly the aggressive complaint (anger) expressed in a tort case against God. Job also contains a few brief moments of pleading (despair). The relevant Psalms are mostly of lament (grief), with an admixture of pleading, as in Psalms 22, 80, 88, and many others. The Corpus Paulinum champions rationality by urging the consolation derived from being assured of divine foreknowledge and foreordination (Romans 8). This perspective was mediated into Western literature and philosophy by Augustine’s rationalizations in The City of God, and in

COMPLAINT, IMPRECATION, LAMENT

93

De Doctrina Christina. This essay raises the unspoken and unspeakable question implied throughout Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, “Are complaint, lament, and pleading honest expressions for a person living out life before the face of God and under pressure of eternity? Can we be certain that rationality is not just rationalization, i.e., mythic fantasy?” Are Job, the Psalmist, Boethius, Gower, Dante, and Fox News affording us models for facing reality or are they really afraid to face reality—a subterfuge? EXPOSITION: PHILOSOPHICAL AND THEOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS Plato was certain that an Ideal world existed in the transcendental arena and that it determined the nature and shape of the material world of mundane human existence. His paradigm explained to his satisfaction a number of essential matters. It allowed him to project upon the map of his imagination a perfect ethereal world as the root and ground of all we know and all that is. He theorized that such ethereal existence is the world of the spirit or of the spiritual, and is essentially superior to material existence, since the latter is finite in time and space, while the former is infinite in its perfection and transcendence of both time and space. The nature of the Ideal world is such that it contains the pressure or necessity to articulate a material world in which its ideals are tangibly expressed. The problem of how an ethereal source of existence, that is infinite in nature and perfection, could create a limited, inferior, even flawed world, was resolved by the simple equation of the differential between the material and the spiritual. Lurking around the edges of the world view of Boethius, Gower, and Dante, is this Platonic Rational Idealism, with a surprisingly thin biblical overlay of a theology of divine providence. Lady Philosophy does not distinguish between the two and the historical figures under consideration here have difficulty doing so as well, in their struggle with the issues of pain, suffering, and the inherent unfairness of human life. The Hebrew Bible is a composite story of a different but comparable attempt to come to terms with the same issues. In his attempt to understand its complex dynamics, Walter Brueggemann has given us some help in sorting out these biblical things. He has developed two different models or paradigms for discerning how these significant literary traditions have viewed life and the historic

94

J. HAROLD ELLENS

human struggle with prosperity and adversity. In his 1978 book, The Prophetic Imagination, and two subsequent journal articles he developed his early model for solving Boethius’ problem1 of discerning how to legitimate or critique the socio-political order, and hence, to assess how one should find the wise, sensible, workable, or godly stance toward irrational, unjustified, and inescapable suffering and injustice. Brueggemann contended that the Old Testament (OT) has two trajectories of thought, a dyad: 1) structure legitimation and 2) embrace of pain. These are in mutual tension regarding the socio-political turbulence of history. The former is represented by the covenant traditions of Abraham and David which stand for the universality of order and structure in the universe: God is good, provident, and predictably gracious. Humans must line up properly with that structure, theologically and morally—maintaining the status quo. The latter is represented by traditions of Moses and the prophets, which embrace the fact that the ideal and universal moral order or social structure does not exist and must be imposed. The divine justification for imposing this Torah-based moral order, with its call for socio-political justice, is the divine feat of the Exodus, the defining fact of Israelite history. Middleton notes, “These traditions... claim... that life is not as it ought to be and thus they articulate, in the name of Yahweh, the covenant God, a critique of the present order and a call for moral and social transformation. In these traditions, God functions primarily as the free and transcendent ground of criticism of the status quo.”2

Walter Brueggemann (1978), The Prophetic Imagination, (Philadelphia: Fortress); Idem (1979), “Trajectories in Old Testament Literature and the Sociology of Ancient Israel”, JBL 98: 161–85; and Idem (1985) “A Shape for Old Testament Theology, I: Structure Legitimation”, CBQ 47: 28–46. See also idem (1985), “A Shape for Old Testament Theology, II: Embrace of Pain”, CBQ 47: 395–415. 2 J. Richard Middleton (1994), “Is Creation Theology Inherently Conservative? A Dialogue with Walter Brueggemann”, The Harvard Theological Review (HTR) 87.3: 257–277 (quote is 259). See also 1

COMPLAINT, IMPRECATION, LAMENT

95

Brueggemann argues that the structuralist trajectory reflects the perspective of the Israelite king and priests who wished to keep things the way they had always been. This posture became first maximized in Solomon’s reign, and then destabilized by the rise of inflexible Rehoboam. This contrasts radically with the fact that the Exodus tradition is a vigorous critique of the royal establishment of Egypt and represents a revolutionary critique of injustice and entrenched power. However, only 250 years after the Exodus, the oppressive Egyptian regal structure became the model for Solomon and Rehoboam and is celebrated in the royal Psalms. Middleton cryptically clarifies this aspect of Brueggemann’s thought. “The oppressive royal consciousness of Egypt had been the context for the radical, liberating event of the Exodus, which arose out of and articulated an alternative vision that Brueggemann calls the ‘prophetic imagination.’ Similarly, the monarchy, especially in the South [Judah], with its templeZion complex, required the rise of the prophetic movement which proclaimed God’s intrusion into Israelite history to judge and to liberate.”3

In his work on the Psalms, Brueggemann articulates a somewhat more complex paradigm for describing the biblical model of the turbulence of history and the ordeal of human suffering. In The Message of the Psalms4 and David’s Truth in Israel’s Imagination and Memory5 he describes a picture in which his dyad has become a triad of trajectories. He calls them the views of orientation, disorientation, and new-orientation or we may call it reorientation. The orientation outlook coincides with the former law and order trajectory of structure-legitimation. Middleton observes that the “typical psalms of Brueggemann’s response: Walter Brueggemann (1994), “Response to J. Richard Middleton”, HTR 87.3: 279–289. 3 Middleton, Op. Cit., p. 260. 4 Walter Brueggemann (1984), The Message of the Psalms, A Theological Commentary, (Minneapolis: Augsburg). See also Brueggemann (1980), “A Convergence in Recent Old Testament Theologies”, JSOT 18: 2–18; and “Old Testament Theology as a Particular Conversation: Adjudication of Israel’s Sociological Alternatives”, TD 32: 303–325. 5 Walter Brueggemann (1985), David’s Truth in Israel’s Imagination and Memory, (Philadelphia: Fortress).

96

J. HAROLD ELLENS

orientation are royal psalms, Torah [sic] Psalms, wisdom psalms, and creation psalms. These psalms make claims concerning the way the world is normatively ordered and generate an attitude of confident security for those who conform to this order,”6 and for those, we might add, who unlike Boethius are not victims of the injustice of entrenched power, and are not suffering the ordeal of human travail. Disorientation is the perspective of those who face up to the realities of life, embrace human pain, make claims for justice and for the succor of the needy or abused, and do not close their eyes to or rationalize away the turbulence of the human predicament. Persons who adopt this perspective express their clear-headed sense that life down on the ground is not like the official view from the White House, Capital Hill, or the Pentagon describes it. Lament and imprecatory psalms, for example, criticize and judge as wrong the way things are in reality, facing up to the size of the human pain and refusing naive rationalizations for the way we always did it. In his category of new-orientation Brueggemann wishes to capture the prophetic imagination that endeavors to move from criticism to hope. This is grounded in the claim that God intends a future which is different from the way things are. Job despairs of his current state, rages against the irrationality of it, shakes his fist at heaven, demands that God stand toe to toe with him and make sense of it, and persists in his hope and assurance that if he could just get a look at it from God’s point of view it would all be rational. David laments, blames, pleads, and protests his virtue, bargains with God, and persists in his hope that God is personally on his side or in favor of him. Boethius grieves his losses and pain, moves out of his heart into his Platonic head where he encounters Lady Philosophy, and is seduced into the stoicism and hope that there is an ordering providence, or really fate, in it all. In this royal and universal structure of things he concludes that this view of all things being rational and orderly is more important than his own personal comfort. One is never really persuaded that Boethius is fully convinced. As in making love to any great lover, he gives himself over with abandon to the immediate consolations of Lady 6

Middleton, Op. Cit., p. 261.

COMPLAINT, IMPRECATION, LAMENT

97

Philosophy, avoiding deeper thought about the long term consequences. In Vox Climantis and Cronica Tripatita, John Gower criticized the imperial order of Richard II while persisting in the hope for a day of decency and justice. He later believed he had realized that more idyllic age in the new regime of Henry of Lancaster (Henry IV). Dante evinces an orthodox adherence to a world view of providential divine order, but if we are to take his Divine Comedy seriously, we must come away with the impression that there is less consolation in it and more of his vengeful rage. Brueggemann thinks that psalms of the new-orientation and hope include the biblical songs of trust and confidence; as well as those of gratitude and thanksgiving for divine deliverance from disorienting experiences. They reflect and create memories of liberation from irrational and mystifying suffering. However, Brueggemann sees psalms of exaltation, triumph, enthronement, and hallelujah, as insensitive to human realities, oppressive of the unempowered, ignorant of operations down on the ground, triumphalist, and abrasive of the pain of the marginalized. He assumes one underlying principle to be true throughout the Bible, namely, a creation theology. This is the driver behind the notion that there is an original order which is the correct and divinely given order. In classic Mediterranean Vassal King models, the imperial powers are commissioned to keep the divine order. Therefore the general state of affairs in history seems always to support that orientation and worldview, at the expense of the marginalized. All disempowered or suffering persons are forced into disorientation in which they have only two options, to hope for a chance to participate in power, or to hope for an age of reorientation or revolution. With his tripartite paradigm, Brueggemann endeavors to come to terms with and condemn the remarkable ease with which those who are not thoroughly disempowered, oppressed, and marginalized are able, despite a world full of pain and misery, to rationalize that “God is in his heaven and all’s right with the world.” The prophet’s voice sounds, “Woe to those who are at ease in Zion.”

98

J. HAROLD ELLENS

WRESTLING WITH THE ORDEAL: CASES The Case of Job It is the purpose of this essay to apply the insights of Platonism’s Rational Idealism and the Hebrew Bible’s theology of divine covenant providence to six cases. I will ask of each case whether it handles the problem of pain primarily by complaint, lament, special pleading, consolation, mythic ideation, or rationalization. Job is a straightforward and dramatic chancel drama in the form of a legal case in which God is on trial. The critical nature of this case is heightened by establishing from the outset through God’s own testimony that Job is a righteous man who deserves the best of divine goodwill and providential prosperity, or the beneficence of a good fate. Instead he gets the very worst of it. Anyone can immediately see that Job’s suffering does not bring into question his legal, moral, or spiritual quality. It brings into question the moral and legal status of God. Job’s four friends spend 37 chapters creating a theodicy, to defend God against the facts of life: humans suffer unjustly, unreasonably, and disproportionate to any human flaws, failures, or inadequacy. Everybody knows that if God has anything to do with it, either irrationally and unjustly causing or permitting it, he is a monster; for the “wicked prosper and the righteous are cut down.” Job rejects out of hand the theodicy of his four friends, but he also rejects the notion that God is a monster, that is, he endeavors to hold on at all cost to the notion that divine providence is rational, despite our inability to discern how that is true. He has a towering need to maintain Brueggemann’s structured—orientation point of view. Moreover, Job continues to insist on taking God at his word, namely, that the terrors and irrationality of human suffering are not about any failure in Job or humankind, but about some other cosmic matter. Job’s problem is not so much that God seems to be causing or permitting him or anyone else to suffer, but that God is silent. God offers no explanation. Job celebrates the fact, even in his misery, that his former halcyon days were from the provident hand of God (29:1–25), not merely a blind but blessed fate. However, he rages against heaven demanding that God explain himself (19:23–27), obviously operating on the assumption that if God did reveal what it all means, suffering would be

COMPLAINT, IMPRECATION, LAMENT

99

meaningful, and perhaps even tolerable; and then the world would be rational and ordered. Job handles the problem of pain first by the complaint of his anger about ever being born, criticizing the poor judgment of God in bringing him into the travail of such a kind of human existence. This leads him into his lament over the enormity of his grief-loss (wealth, health, children, friends, and disillusioned wife). However, he moves surprisingly quickly past that initial rage about God or fate, and spends many chapters displacing his anger on his four friends (interestingly, not on his wife who has abused him). One might even think, from how quickly he moves past his lament about existing at all, that it is a kind of tongue-in-cheek, “poor me,” type of ploy such as is common in a tort case. One can imagine an attorney attempting to manipulate the emotion of the jury at the outset by explaining how badly this plaintiff has been abused by the victimizer, despite all his efforts to befriend the criminal. On the main issue of irrational human suffering in God’s economy, he shifts his focus to the pleadings of despair. One might well use the term, special pleading, in the sense that much of Job’s rhetoric turns into preoccupation with the injustice that this should happen to him specifically, as though he were the only human suffering so severely. The best that Job can achieve, in the silence of God or in the blindness of fate, however, is mythic theological rationalization. “If only the claims of my case regarding God were carved in stone! I know the day will come when God will stand toe to toe with me and I shall see!” (19:23–24, 26–27). There is hope in this for Job. He has now lost all his investment in the orientation mode of the life of order and control, and has been thoroughly disoriented, but now something of a reorientation is developing. Even so, in Job 1–39 there is no consolation. The resolution, of course, in Job’s case, came in the form of a theophany, or we might say a little less magically, a philosophicaltheological breakthrough insight—a personal illumination. Finally God spoke. He described his wisdom and power in creating the massive wild things of the earth and sea. Job was intimidated and became apologetic and passive. He declares, “I had heard of you with the hearing of my ear, but now my eye sees you, wherefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes” (42:5–6). However, apparently, this was not what God intended. God spoke again and this time demanded that Job not cave in so easily, apologize so quickly, and be so easily

100

J. HAROLD ELLENS

intimidated. “Stand up like a Mensch (Geber),” God said. Clearly his first speech about Leviathan and Behemoth, about Moose and Mammoths, was to inform Job that God really likes strong, aggressive, wild things, like Job had been in his stormy phase of making the tort case regarding God and against his four foolish friends. God said, in effect, “Don’t repent, do not apologize, do not cave in under the storms of life, Job, or even the awesomeness of my presence. Rant against the tempest, curse the darkness, thrash around, refuse to accept the irrationality of this torturous ordeal. I like men who can stand up to me and stand up with me in this enterprise, Job.” So at the end of God’s second speech Job retracts his earlier abased silence because he has come to understand that God values this human dialogue partner, especially for his honest, abrasive, unsubdued speech. God had not come to bury Job, but to praise him. Only this divine affirmation of the appropriateness of human refusal to cave in, to become indifferent to and give up on the problem of human suffering is the resolution for Job. It gives some proximate meaning to suffering, but without much consolation.7 Indeed, the enigma of the Book of Job is precisely in the fact that Job appealed to some kind of ultimate transcendent divine providence behind all the travail of human existence, but the book does not really answer the awful question. God avoids it by saying, in effect, be honest about the fact that there is no answer. Carry on anyway. The book leaves us with the only real question of life from the minute we are conceived in the womb: What can I do best with what I have left; and offers no solution to the enigma. What does this say about how righteous persons suffer in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam? The Case of David The biblical psalms of lament do not appeal to an overriding providence guiding the affairs of humankind. Psalm 22:1–3 is a frustrated query about God’s compassion, not his overriding I am indebted for this insight regarding the consummation of The Book of Job to J. Richard Middleton‘s unpublished paper entitled, “Does God Come to Praise Job or to Bury Him? The Function of YHWH’s Second Speech from the Whirlwind (Job 40:6–41:34).” 7

COMPLAINT, IMPRECATION, LAMENT

101

providential order in the universe. Put in the mouth of Jesus as his cry of dereliction from the cross, makes the plea sound infinitely and ultimately desperate. Contrary to Job, such psalms do not assume that the operations of the universe are rational. They do not speculate that there would be meaning in our pain, if only we could discern the rationality in things, or if only God were not silent. Despite Brueggemann’s contention that the biblical perspectives from Abraham to David are royal traditions of orientation and preservation of the status quo, the psalms of lament are existential in outlook and tend to be narcissistically preoccupied with David’s personal suffering. They express desperate disorientation that leaves one only able to irrationally lash out at God for insensitivity or appeal to God to act compassionately, not rationally. They are not appeals for justice; they are cries for mercy and grace sounded from the depths. However, grace and mercy only for David who sees himself as God’s special guy; not grace and mercy for David’s enemies; who he confidently imagines must, of course, be God’s enemies as well. Thomas Merton expressed poignantly the seductivity of these psalms in suggesting that it is their special quality that we find our own identity in them, and our connection with God in the daily travail of life.8 Perhaps also our own narcissism and self pity. The psalms of lament generally begin with a very personal invocation of God’s personal attention to a very specific personal suffering on the part of the person praying the psalm. Usually they begin with an angry complaint. David Cohen observes that a frequent opening, addressed impatiently to God, is “Why?” and “How long?”, and one has the impression that the complainer speaks as though God is a powerful colleague rather than the manager of the universe.9 Psalm 51 is an appeal for mercy and forgiveness; Psalm 17 an appeal for attention to a just cause; and 8

Thomas Merton (1956), The Sign of Jonas, (New York: Image Books,

248). David J. Cohen (2009), “Out of the Depths,” Engaging With Distress Through Praying the Lament Psalms, in J. Harold Ellens, ed., The Healing Power of Religion, How Faith Helps Humans Thrive; vol. 1, Personal Spirituality, (Westport, CT: ABC-CLIO), chapter 5, 9

102

J. HAROLD ELLENS

Psalm 102 an accusation that God is indifferent when he was counted on as a friend. Psalm 88 compels God to listen up; Psalm 140 demands deliverance from enemies; Psalm 38 rebukes God for being trivially ticked off; and Psalm 83 for being silent in the face of a critical season of insupportable suffering and unacceptable anguish. Psalm 22 complains about God abandoning the guy who has always tried to do the right thing. These psalms of complaint typically move to imprecatory expressions of rage against enemies whom God should have good enough sense to exterminate in one fell swoop. Frequently, God’s lack of action or unsatisfactory affliction of the enemies prompts a displacement of the anger upon God, himself. The complaint, driven by anger tends to continue until a certain exhaustion of body, mind, and spirit takes over and reduces the psalm to lament, often whimpering lament. Cohen observes that in the biblical psalms of lament, the invocation is usually honorific, followed quickly by sharply juxtaposed harsh language. “The graphic nature of address is present because of the person’s relationship rather than despite it and appears to be an attempt to move God to compassion, elicit action or, alternatively, to at least form a relational conduit through which emotions can be safely vented”10 by humans to God. Cohen’s point is important because it moves us to the heart of the matter of the biblical psalms of lament. They are not, like Job, expressions which assume a rational universe, an overriding providence in human affairs, or a way of making sense of the injustice and erratic nature of human anguish. Lament psalms are not philosophical exercises, but heart-wrenching flows of emotion. These psalms are not struggles which take place in the head, but in the heart. In contrast to Job and Boethius, David does not ask why the universe does not make sense, or how to make sense of it, with or without understanding God. David only wrestles with his own anguish in this particular case on a given Tuesday morning, so to speak; indeed, it is as though David were saying, “this morning, since I woke up, I’ve had this helluva headache, after a lousy night of restlessness and sleeplessness. God, it started with my toothache in the left upper molar, second from the back, don’t you see?” 10

Cohen, Op. Cit.

COMPLAINT, IMPRECATION, LAMENT

103

That is, in the end the lament is no longer anger or rage, no longer imprecations against the enemy or God, but simply grief over the fact that life is enormously painful and no relief can be seen or anticipated; and it is all far beyond any satisfactory rationale. That is how I feel many mornings, watching my lovely daughter dying of Multiple Sclerosis. I am then where David was. David struggles in the lament psalms with the fact pointed out by John McDargh, “many Christian spiritual writers have been insistent that while God is the ultimate reality, that in which we ‘live and move and have our being,’ the graced awareness of our participation in God is one that does not dissolve the otherness of God or ourselves” [emphasis added].11 There’s the rub, for David—and for me. In most of the biblical lament psalms the suffering person eventually arrives at a kind of affective resolution which is neither consolation by rationality nor mythic rationalization. It is rather an acceptance of one’s limited human self, and of the implied fact that pain is inherent to humanness. Cohen crafts it like this: The goal... of... the lament psalms could be viewed as a kind of “reality check” or even an engagement with the disavowed self. In this view the world of the distressed person is accepted as “usual” and something to be embraced rather than avoided. Therefore, the experience of distress and an engagement with it can be viewed as an opportunity, rather than an obstacle, and a process of learning, rather than a problem to be solved.12

Is this how righteous persons suffer in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam? The Case of Boethius Boethius’s strategy for handling pain is a philosophical matter. He has raised it from the heart to the head, at the behest of Lady Philosophy. It is his expectation that he can achieve consolation by rationality. In the end it feels and sounds more like rationalization. It may have something to do with his age. Job is presented as a John McDargh (1984), The Life of the Self in Christian Spirituality and Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Horizons 11.2: 355–356. 12 Cohen, Op. Cit. 11

104

J. HAROLD ELLENS

man of senior years and saturated seasoning. David came to the kingship as a young warrior after some years of conducting guerilla operations against King Saul and anybody else with whom he could pick a fight. We may assume, therefore, that he was a minimum of 25 or so when he was crowned and he ruled for 40 years. His lament psalms seem to voice the perplexities of his advanced years when his family was falling apart, the enemies were those at his own table, and his sons had attempted a coup de ‘etat against him, raped their sisters, had been killed by his generals, or were generally raising unmitigated hell in Israel. So we may think of his complaints, imprecations, and laments as those of an old man who is losing his phallic prowess, pitying himself enormously, and not looking for God but that hot little women they found for him, to give him consolation. Boethius died young, after some years in prison, at the age of about 44 (480–524 C.E.). He is a mature and wise man for 44, but lacks the seasoning of old age. He has not yet moved past the point when a man no longer thinks he can figure things out. Piaget, Kohlberg, Erikson, and Fowler suggest that this takes place after age 60 or 65. Boethius, at least after he is seduced by Lady Philosophy, still believes he can figure things out. The last of the Romans and the first of the Scholastics, as he has been called, Boethius is sure that there is “an angel of fate that rides in the whirlwind of life and directs the storm.” Whether one holds as a Roman to blind fate, or as a Scholastic to divine providence, it amounts to the same thing for Boethius, because it is not so much a matter of history expressing the merciful heart of God as it is a matter of life’s unfolding taking place in a matrix of ultimate theoretical order, reflecting either the mind of God or the Platonic Ideas. Boethius does not rant or rave in angry complaint, nor does he spend much energy on imprecations against his enemies. He does not so much justify himself as simply describe the uprightness of his cause and the erroneousness of the judgments against him. When his fortunes fail, he is sure that his calamitous fall from the grace of the Emperor Theodoric is the result of his single-minded pursuit of justice; and his opposition to any and all oppressive measures. He was undone by a charge of treason, which may well have been grounded in the fact that he expressed to the Western Roman Emperor, Justin, his concern to preserve the integrity of

COMPLAINT, IMPRECATION, LAMENT

105

the Senate and the liberty of the citizenry. This was apparently turned against him as a betrayal of the Eastern Roman Emperor Theodoric. Theodoric, an Arian, ruled mostly Orthodox citizens. Justin was Orthodox and would have wished Theodoric’s overthrow, counting on the support of many of Theodoric’s subjects. Though he assiduously and unequivocally denied the charge of treason, Boethius got caught in the crossfire. Boethius’ Hellenistic neo-Platonism and Roman stoicism led him to find the resolution of his psychological and theological impasse, like Marcus Aurelius, in the philosophical rubrics of natural theology rather than in a distinctively personal Christian faith or belief system. In the first book of The Consolations of Philosophy he describes how his suffering has aged him. This is a brief lament of grief not a complaint of anger. He is too philosophical to get overly emotional. In his grief Lady Philosophy intrudes and in Socratic mode provokes his insights by raising key questions. She makes him aware of the fact that while he believes God exists and rules the world somehow, he lacks the selfknowledge that would give him the requisite strength to endure. In the second book Lady Fortune is introduced by Lady Philosophy, and she calls to Boethius’ attention the wealth of blessings as well as the unhappy gifts Lady Fortune has brought him throughout his life. Book Three is the key to Boethius’ shift from rationality to rationalization. In Brueggemann’s paradigm, Boethius is from first to last an orientationist. He believes in the inherent orderly structure of how things are and always have been in life and the universe. He refuses to be disoriented by his misfortune, and he does not seriously hope for a reorientation in his fortunes; only in his philosophy. He does not expect to be restored to wealth and power, but only to an understanding of the meaning of his pain. He is enticed by Lady Philosophy to acknowledge that since God rules the world, is omnipotent, and does not wish evil, evil does not objectively exist. Moreover, since God is the highest good and the highest good is true happiness, God is true happiness. Hence, the way things are is the best of all possible worlds. As long as Boethius can keep himself in his head he is going to float above the fact that life is a pain in the ass. However, he is too interested in honesty and justice for his head to get away with that in view of the urges of his heart. He asks

106

J. HAROLD ELLENS

in book four why unjust, irrational, and intolerable pain and suffering happen. Why, in the words of both Job and David, do the wicked flourish and the righteous get cut down? Lady Philosophy asserts that both vice and virtue are their own rewards, thus every fortune is ultimately good fortune. Clearly, by the end of the treatise Lady Philosophy is getting old; her seductive powers are waning. Her final salvo in book five is obviously a cop-out. She declares that things are wired in the universe for maximum human freedom. God’s providence is hinged on his foreknowledge. God is a spectator of everything that transpires, and “the ever-present eternity of his vision agrees with the future quality of our actions, dispensing rewards to the good and punishments to the wicked.”13 Surely we may assume that the dialogue of Boethius with Lady Philosophy is a reflection of his internal ruminations about the problem of pain. As we noted, he is not inclined to raging complaint or vengeful imprecations. He is too dignified and philosophical a gentleman for that. He is inclined to lament his grief until he gets hold of himself and, obviously to avoid the shame of emotionality, he moves into his head and seeks consolation by rationality. Is this how godly persons suffer? In the end, of course, he is forced by the irresolvable irrationality of his fate to adopt one of two options. He must either 1) leave it all up to God, in whom he apparently believes, and thus live out his destiny in the hope of trust in God; or 2) he must create a syllogism of consummate logic that lands him in rationalization. Behind rationalization is always a masked despair, in that rationalization is excuse-making and not meaning making. Both options leave no alternative but the formulation of a myth: a God myth or a rationalization myth. It is interesting that when push comes to shove, Boethius is clearly more Greco-Roman in his myth-making than Christian, more Platonic than biblical, more a believer in a philosophy of fate than in the God of providence. His myth is not the biblical myth but the neo-Platonist myth.

Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus (1956), Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 3, (Chicago: William Benton), pp. 779–80 (quote is 780). 13

COMPLAINT, IMPRECATION, LAMENT

107

The Case of Dante Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) avowedly hoped that the moral and material universes on earth and in heaven would ultimately be restored to redemptive good order. However, the Divine Comedy suggests that he was far from sure that God could manage that. His worldview is a grand dramatic myth, of course, in which he himself feels the need to consign all those to various degrees of damnation, whom he perceives to have been the perpetrators of evil and abusers of human kind. If God cannot institute order, structure, orientation, and justice, Dante will do it. If God could, he should have done so long ago, assuming that God makes any sense at all and has any power at all in human affairs. Dante is the 14th century Son of Man of Second Temple Judaism, the Eschatological Judge. While Dante purports to be a profound believer in a medieval form of Christian theology, and feigns the posture of an orientationist in Brueggemann’s paradigm, he is lost in the calumnies and castigations of complaint. One can feel the lament of his grief, but there is no pleading despair, no rational consolation, not even much of the mythic rationalizations of faith. Dante is intent upon complaint and imprecations; and he intends to make sense out of life by handling that business pretty much on his own, thank you, and as vindictively as possible. This is not how righteous persons handle the irrationality of human pain. The Case of John Gower John Gower stands at the opposite end of the Medieval Period from Boethius. A contemporary and friend of Chaucer, Gower appreciated Chaucer but tended to a less raucous wrestling with the inadvertencies and vicissitudes of the human predicament. He was less objective to, and more invested in, the problem of pain than Chaucer. Gower did not maintain Chaucer’s poetic distance from the subject and so treated it with less humor and more earnestness. He was not a mere Chaucerian observer of the human predicament. He participated in it and thought it imperative to do something about it. That is particularly interesting because, while like Boethius he operated at the privileged levels of society; in contrast to Boethius, his perplexity was not driven so much by personal tragedy as by the travail of the body politic under what he considered to be the

108

J. HAROLD ELLENS

unfortunate meanness of the reign of Richard II. Though he lived his last years in blindness, he nonetheless achieved the advanced age of nearly 70. Moreover, he was well cared for by the new wife of his old age, Agnes Groundolf, and the sisters of the priory of St. Mary Overy, in which he was given residence. His wealth persisted and “A magnificent tomb with a recumbent effigy was erected over his grave in the chapel of St. John the Baptist within the church of the priory, now St. Saviour’s, Southwark.”14 In both of his works cited above, Vox Climantis and Cronica Tripartita, Gower vividly describes the social injustices, political mismanagement, and consequent suffering and disenfranchisement that the actual people on the ground were suffering in Richard’s kingdom. He was particularly moved by the peasants’ insurrection of 1381. He spent a good part of Vox Climantis graphically describing the pain and injustice that caused it, and the suffering and deprivation that was caused by it for specific persons and families. Then he employed it to set out in an aggressive style his comprehensive social criticism of the faults and failures of each class of society. Obviously, he had a heart for humanity, and he felt and lived the problem of unnecessarily inflicted pain, from which it seemed so difficult to deliver humankind. Gower desired to resolve that problem of pain with illumined theology in a warrantable and satisfying worldview. Gower’s contribution to the consolation of humanity is grounded in complaint, though his anger is muted, probably for political safety. He expresses his imprecations against Richard II in a skilled but subtle literary mode and mostly in Cronica Tripartita, after Richard is gone and the world is safer, at least for him, under his candidate, Henry IV. Gower indulges in the lament of his grief over the travail of human existence, but does not remain long with it. In the end, he moves consistently on the philosophical plane. It is his overriding claim that the human suffering that is erroneously induced and could be prevented or removed is sociological. The main solution to unnecessary and unreasonable human suffering is good government. Gower, John (1956), Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. 10, (Chicago: William Benton), pp. 583–84 (quote is 584). 14

COMPLAINT, IMPRECATION, LAMENT

109

This does not mean that Gower is a Brueggmann orientationist, like Boethius or Job. He is more like David, but also more of a gentleman than David. He sees the issues existentially and morally. For Gower, the problem of pain is the present suffering of the penniless widow with three snotty-nosed children, on the street outside his dining room window. It is caused by the exploitation of cheap labor by the upper middle class; by the fiscal manipulation of the upper class; and by the lethargy, irresponsibility, triumphalism, and costly adventurism of the Palace, City Hall, Congress, and Wall Street. He does not propose revolution, though he approves the peasant revolt and insists on the need for regime change. Gower does not expect God to intervene to right the wrongs of society, nor does he find in theology any mechanism for consolation in the face of sociological dysfunction and anguish. Not the goodness of God but the goodness of responsible government will afford relief and deliverance! We do not hear comment about the government from him after Henry of Lancaster’s ascent to the throne. For the decade that he lived after the enthronement of Henry IV, Gower’s writing is mainly the Cronica Tripartita, a negative socio-political analysis of the last years of Richard II. Thus we have no indication whether in the long run Henry really accomplished what Gower had hoped. History tells us that Henry IV had nothing but trouble and can hardly be seen as the savior—certainly not the solution to the problem of socio-political pain and disorder. Gower looks for the consolations of his life in an existential address to the requirements of rationality in the order of human affairs. Like Moses, he insists upon the imposition of moral order and obedience to the necessities of wholesome life. He does not escape into calumny, grief, the special pleading of despair, nor theological myth-making. Whether his hopes are warranted for the new party in office remains to be seen. Gower is sure that the human experiment is chaotic and disordered, and that its consequent human pain can be relieved by human orderliness and decency. This sounds like the empathic way a righteous person might suffer the irrationality of life.

110

J. HAROLD ELLENS

The Case of Fox News That leads us to our final consideration, a twenty first century case. During the McCain-Obama campaign I listened to Fox News rather regularly and largely agreed with their take on things. I am the sort of guy who did not vote for Obama. I voted for Sarah Palin, and I will do it again next time. The Democrats have ruled out religion, the Republicans have joined them in despoiling politics. That leaves only the third primary subject so I have become a Palin Independent. However, I now find it very difficult to listen at any length to Fox News. Their posture has shifted from existential critique, which I believe it was during the campaign, to a dogmatic orientationist posture in which they contend that there is a perfect world out there, theological, moral, sociological, economic, and political. They claim that the present human pain is mainly a result of the fact that the Democrats have moved us away from that ideal world of Reagan, terminated prayer in schools, want evolution taught, and have set aside the Ten Commandments. Not only has Fox News adopted Brueggemann’s orientationist perspective, refusing to be disoriented, though all of the rest of us are disoriented, by the present socio-political and economic realities; but they are instead jamming the communication waves that might have led us to the hopefulness of a reorientation. Lost in the complaint phase, they are spending their energy on rage and imprecation. Humility should at least lead them to join us all in the grieving process, considering what we have all lost and how world wide humanity now suffers from it. Of course, if they should slip into the humility of honest grief, they might find themselves pleading in despair. That suggests to me that they do not see any consolation possible in what may lie beyond the present pain and deprivation. They profess a faith oriented and faith championing worldview, but obviously they have no awareness of our communal capacity of making any future sense out of our present travail, in the providence of God, and by the spirit of God. We must go backward, they seem to think, not fashion a more durable future. What bothers me most about the Fox News perspective on our present unpleasantness, as they are currently poisoning our national culture and mindset, is not its triumphalistic notion that Fox News has all of the right answers and no one else has any; or that it throws religion around too easily and invokes God too

COMPLAINT, IMPRECATION, LAMENT

111

facilely. What deeply offends me about Fox News now is that it generates its own idolatrous mythology about the solution to the present human suffering. It claims that it is a simple matter of “doing it the way we always did it.” That is not rational; it is even worse than mere rationalization. It is dissociative from reality. Usually, in the clinic, we call that psychosis. This is not the righteous person’s way to handle our pain and perplexity.

ON SOLIDARY WITH CREATION: JOB, JONAH, LEVINAS THEODORE A. PERRY UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT

According to an ancient philosophical tradition, there are four levels in the great chain of beings “under the heavens”: humans, animals, plants, and minerals.1 A gentile once asked why Jews always answer a question with a question. The Jew retorted: “Why not?” A Nobel laureate was asked how he reached this honor. He explained that, whenever he got home from school, his mother would always ask him not “what did you learn today?” but rather “what questions did you ask today?” This essay will address the following questions, as presented in the Seminar Proposal: 1) Why do humans suffer? 2) Why do we complain when we suffer? 3) Does Job represent human suffering? 4) Who is to be blamed when the innocent suffer? 5) Why did Job suffer? The most popular book on this vast subject remains Arthur O. Lovejoy’s The Great Chain of Being: A Study in the History of an Idea (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936). The indication “under the heavens” is of course Qohelet’s (3:1, 8; 1:13; 2:3) and refers only to the natural world, excluding God and the angels. 1

113

114

THEODORE A. PERRY

I shall also offer a concluding thought about Job’s personal guilt and innocence.

I) A GOD OF QUESTIONS From the ending verse of the Book of Jonah we learn a surprising aspect of God, a God who has all the answers and authority and power, and yet asks, in conclusion, a question: You [Jonah] cared about the kikayon plant, which you did not work for and which you did not grow.... And should I not care about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons that cannot discern their right hand from their left hand, and many animals as well? (Jonah 4:10–11)2

Is this not a narrative provocation of the first order: a canonical book that ends with a question and the questioner is God?! The answer may seem obvious to God, but not, as I have argued elsewhere, to Jonah, who leaves the question unanswered.3

All translations are mine unless otherwise noted. For my readings of Jonah as they pertain to this essay, see T. A. Perry, The Honeymoon Is Over: Jonah’s Arguments with God, (Peabody Mass.: Hendrickson, 2006); also “Jonah’s Theology,” in Know Your Neighbor: Universalism and Particularism at Sodom and Gomorrah. Essays in Memory of Ron Pirson, ed. Diana Lipton; SBL Publications (forthcoming). 3 The remarkable openness of the final act of the book has been related to God’s limitations (or, in another mode, to His weakness): “The game being wide open, God ‘alone’ can do nothing. He can do everything and he is not all-powerful: human action carries the game further. And even if God again intervenes and ‘does it all,’ there still remains some play for human action, etc. There is never a last word or blow. Therefore, God doesn’t have the last word either, because there is none.” Daniel Sibony, Lectures bibliques (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2006), p. 282. Such limitation can be seen as actually intrinsic to the openness of the divine Being, since one might say, stressing the future tense of the divine self-definition of Exod. 3:14 (“I will be who I will be”), that Being is the future of Being. In Sibony’s psychiatric practice, this principle becomes a basic element of psychotherapy. 2

ON SOLIDARY WITH CREATION: JOB, JONAH, LEVINAS 115 The revelation of a God who, rather than dictate, questions and solicits response, is instanced in two other remarkable passages in Hebrew Scripture. The first is iconic, being the very first of many times that God speaks with (and not to) humans. Picture the deity “walking in the garden in the breeze of the day”:4 And the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where art thou?” (Gen. 3:9)

Another of God’s questions is the topic of this paper. Like the question in the Garden of Eden, it too addresses whereabouts. Speaking to a suffering Job, God wonders: Where were you when I founded the earth? (Job 38:4)

Questions like these have convinced many that God is merely being patient and polite, or, in Job’s case, probably blowing his stack at his obtuseness and chutzpah to challenge the deity. In other words, the questions are merely rhetorical: just as God knows what Jonah’s answer should be, so too does he know where Adam and Eve are hiding; and just as surely does he know that at the earth’s foundation Job wasn’t even born yet. These impressions sponsor well established interpretations of an all powerful and knowing God who requires obedience or else, but who is also willing to speak the language of humans and, to a certain degree, observe the niceties of their discourse. Emmanuel Levinas’ commentary on Job 38:4 suggests deeper reasons to God’s questions as they relate to the nature of human responsibility and suffering: Gen. 3:8, “in the breeze (ruakh) of the day (yom).” These two words are tied to the idea of creation from the very beginning. Ruakh in Gen. 1:2 is God’s first-named attribute, and yom, the basic time unit of all of creation, reveals its creative energy in such a phrase as Prov. 27:1: “you cannot know what a day may bring forth.” Moreover, the double name of God, here and from Gen. 2:4 onward, refers to God’s partnership with humans (see T. A. Perry, God’s Twilight Zone: Wisdom in the Hebrew Bible [Peabody Mass: Hendrickson, 2008], pp. 32–38). As in Job 38:4 about to be discussed, God is laying the foundations of the world and is looking for humans to help out and join in. 4

116

THEODORE A. PERRY Can we not hear in the “where were you” a report of shirking one’s responsibility, one that can make sense only if the human being is in fraternal solidarity with creation, that is to say, responsible for what has been neither his own self nor his work; and only if this solidarity and this responsibility for everything and for all—which is impossible without pain—is the very spirit itself.5

It is this spirit of responsibility that we wish to investigate.

II) THE IDEA OF THE INFINITE Philosophy begins in wonder.6 I finally cleaned out the attic last week and turned up an autobiography I wrote in High School. I noted the year of my first memories as follows: I am conscious of living from the year 19xx, my earlier earthly life being as oblivious to my memory as the life of my former spirit. It delights me to know definitely where in the universe I am, though I grieve not of my former existence, it leaving me with no known afflictions.

Such intimations of a deep or pre-past have been formulated in concepts such as reincarnation or Platonic anamnesis.7 Levinas, following Descartes (a philosopher rather than a theologian), spoke of the idea of the infinite implanted in me.8 We typically think of the infinite as a one-way street into the future, perhaps inspired by our Angst for an afterlife. In fact, however, the infinite refers to endless time into the past as well.

Levinas, De Dieu qui vient à l’idée, (Paris: Vrin, 1998), p. 205. Further meditations on the question can be found in the following pages of this remarkable work: 46, 52, 122, 126, 129f, 165. 6 Aristotle, Metaphysics 983a 13. 7 Or the Jewish legend according to which a newborn is slapped on the mouth by an angel, causing it to lose its knowledge of the entire Torah. See the interesting discussion by David Flatto, “The Angel’s Oath.” Text and Texture (Online Journal). December 21, 2009. 8 Levinas, Dieu, la mort et le temps, (Paris: Grasset, 1993), pp. 164–65. In a theological or exegetical mode, Levinas might also have cited Qohelet 3:11: “He [God] has also placed [the idea of] eternity in their hearts.” 5

ON SOLIDARY WITH CREATION: JOB, JONAH, LEVINAS 117 Vladimir Jankélévitch has put us in touch with nostalgia, with infinite longings stretching back far beyond Proust’s involuntary memory of past scenes and events, to a pre-past that is in both senses a re-past, a distant nurturing garden from which we have awakened and which can in some creative way be accessed, as when something or someone asks: “Where are you?”9 Levinas has also suggested that the power of transcendence (in all directions) resides in the very use of questions: Through this [idea of the infinite] and since Descartes a relation with the more, with the non-containable, becomes thinkable, and this is nothing less than the investiture of thought itself: a patience with the question is thus finally rehabilitated. Of the question which is a relation with that which is too large for a response. [Traditional] philosophy tends to see in it the privation of a response, of possession and enjoyment, whereas it signifies the infinite.10

If even human questions can think beyond totalities under the heavens, how much more so when God is the one who asks, for then questions become meta-questions, ones which ask about and model transcendence itself.11 I would like to suggest that God’s question to Job in 38:4 is such a meta-question. Consider that, if God’s questions lend themselves so readily to midrashic interpretation, might one reason be that they so easily exceed their immediate context (while of course including it)? Thus, God’s ayeka to Adam, in its pshat or immediate context, asks: “Where are you hiding, Mister Adam?” In the wider context of the entire Bible,12 however, whose dominant concern is our See the moving pages on melancholy and nostalgia in Vladimir Jankélévitch, assisted by Béatrice Berlowitz, Quelque part dans l’inachevé, (Paris: Gallimard, 1978), pp. 54–58. 10 Emmanuel Levinas, Dieu, la mort et le temps, p. 165. 11 Levinas would call this the pre-original question; see ibid, pp. 201– 05. 12 In a midrashic mode ”the Hebrew Bible allows many different readings, and it is when the entirety of the Bible becomes the context of the verse that the verse resonates with its full sense.” Emmanuel Levinas, De Dieu qui vient â l’idée, 145. Levinas goes on to relate a moving instance of interfaith exegesis on this 9

118

THEODORE A. PERRY

responsibilities to the orphan, widow and stranger, God is easily seen as addressing the first human and progenitor of the entire race, you and me, in fact all humans and at all times: where WERE you when I laid out the plans of creation, where ARE you now? It is the fundamental ethical question that informs the entire Bible.

III. JOB, JONAH, AND THE COVENANT WITH CREATION13 To complete the picture we must further reflect on the (largely overlooked) parallels between Job and Jonah. To return to Levinas’ formulation, like Jonah Job is brought to admire something both outside himself and that he did not create or care for. Jonah’s delight in the kikayon plant is described as a great joy (4:6), but Job’s acceptance of God’s speech is positive as well, for is the Leviathan less wondrous than the kikayon (e. g., 40:25, 15)? Indeed, Job’s and Jonah’s admiration for what they did not create, for what came to them gratuitously, signifies a step beyond the merit system, so dear to Job’s three friends, and an acknowledgement of the mercy of the world’s Creator. Stated differently, their acquiescence indicates their solidarity with the project of creation in accordance with its own terms. The burden of the Book of Jonah is to universalize the Torah, and that is why it is read on Yom Kippur, at the holiest moment of the Jewish liturgical year. Thus, whereas Hebrew prophets typically preach to Jews and in the Land of Israel, God’s concern is extended to gentiles and foreign nations. But God’s outreach intends yet further levels, ones that are often neglected by penitents and critics alike but that are worthy of the Book of Jonah’s prophetic mediation. I refer to the fact that God saves both the Ninevites and their animals.14 There may indeed, as many think, be a comic aspect to the animal’s teshuvah or repentance, that they too fast and don topic: ”A Dominican Father for whom I have much admiration and who has an admirable command of Hebrew, once said to me: ‘What one takes for an infinite interpretation is simply a reading which takes as the context of the verse the entire Book. Not at all the two or three verses that precede or follow the verse to be commented on’” (ibid., p. 144). 13 For Jonah see above, n. 2. 14 Ps. 36:7: “Lord, You save the human and the beast.”

ON SOLIDARY WITH CREATION: JOB, JONAH, LEVINAS 119 sackcloth along with their owners. But God’s very final words, slipped into the contract as a trailer clause or appendix, are decisive: even animals are included in the covenant of creation. But even that is not enough, since chapter four, the kikayon episode, adds yet a further element, for the kikayon is not a human or even an animal but a plant—another humorous touch, perhaps: Jonah’s kikayon as an earlier version of Jack’s prodigious beanstalk! Thus, the plant kingdom, too, as per Jonah’s own spontaneous and ecstatic joy, is to be included in the covenant of creation.15 We now return to the Book of Job, where the two remaining elements of creation are added: stones and the infinite past. Where were you when I laid the world’s foundations?

I would like to propose a different answer. In some overarching sense God is re-minding Job (putting him back into his real mind as a human being), calling Job to remember, perhaps in the sense of the command to always be “remembering” the original infinite sabbath in order to be able to again sanctify it in the present: Job both WAS there at the beginning and is still there now, at the very moment when God addresses him: “Where on earth ARE you as I go about every day laying the foundations of this earth, this world?” This would be, in Bergson’s word, the true sense of time as durée: past events retain their diachrony while also being experienced as synchronic. This would parallel Levinas’ ambivalence of the infinite, playing on the two senses of the prefix: in- meaning “being a part of,” and in- as a negative. Thus, the infinite is both not finite and also in the finite, a single duration of time. There is, finally, the element of the covenant’s completion. Eliphaz comforts Job by reminding him of his future status as he becomes reconciled with God:

Montaigne sees this as a matter of human responsibility: “There is a certain respect, and a general duty of humanity, that attaches us not only to animals, who have life and feeling, but even to trees and plants” Essays II:11, trans. Donald Frame, (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1965), p. 318. 15

120

THEODORE A. PERRY You will laugh at famine and destruction, and you will not fear the beasts of the earth. Indeed you will have a covenant with the stones of the earth... (Job 5:22–23)

The Torah is a universal document, preaching not only reward and punishment (implanted in nature and underwritten by the God of Justice), but also a universal pact with creation itself, to all descendants of Adam and Eve. Only to Jews? No, to Nineveh and to their animals, and to the plant kingdom as well. And, Eliphaz adds, referring to the ancient four levels of beings: also to the stones of the field. The author of the Book of Job stunningly extends and completes the covenant, one so comprehensive that it even includes inanimate being.

IV. CONCLUSIONS We return to the questions that framed this meeting, and now with proposed answers: 1) Why do humans suffer? Because we are human and alive. Daniel Sibony succinctly captures the existential situation of both Job and Jonah, in their death-wish, their blaming God for their abandonment, and their ability to finally face up to their sufferings and continue on: There was no choice, the rupture has occurred; one must now spell it out, advance in the dark, being able to say to one’s self: “This too is life,” one of life’s paths. At such moments one is subject to a paradoxical constraint, to make life live, without any orientation, simply because that is what life is and we are in it. And this is possible, once we have exhausted the morbid joys of complaining, the vertigos of “I just want to die.”16

2) Why do we complain when we suffer? Answering a question with a question...: Why not? As Montaigne said, reacting to the pride of the Stoics: what does it hurt to yell a bit?17 Both Jonah and Job have ample textual leeway to give Daniel Sibony, Lectures bibliques, p. 306. Montaigne, Essays II:37, 577: “What does it matter if we twist our arms, provided we do not twist our thoughts?” 16 17

ON SOLIDARY WITH CREATION: JOB, JONAH, LEVINAS 121 voice to their pain and, whereas Job is given the Stoical lesson (“Buck up and face it!” Job 38:3), Jonah is even cajoled: “Are you really so upset, Jonah?” (4:4, 9).18 And, as we have just seen in Sibony’s psychiatric model, complaint is a way of getting through (and not around) one’s depression and therefore through with it. 3) Does Job represent human suffering? Yes, in its entirety. The most righteous and innocent person is chosen as an a fortiori example. No one, not even Job, is exempt from pain, and none of the good things of life—wealth, children, wisdom, good deeds, prominence—are guarantees of happiness or of God’s favor. Perhaps it is even suggested that suffering is in direct proportion to innocence.19 Here we step beyond the merit system represented by the three friends. 4) Who is to be blamed when the innocent suffer? Why God of course! Not the God of Justice, however, since Job’s pain is not about guilt but, again, about being alive and especially about responsibility for others. The blame is squarely on God the Creator, and on our inability to penetrate the ultimate outcome “from start to finish,” as Qohelet puts it (3:9). 5) Why did Job suffer? Well, because he had heavy personal losses and then boils. More deeply, because he could not understand God’s injustice and needed to have a talk with the Holy One. After the talk he is pacified, “dust and ashes” (42:6), because he now understands the covenant with creation. His physical and emotional and even theological suffering is now transmuted into the suffering of Sibony reads Ps. 2:4 as follows: “He who sits in heaven plays, laughs, has a good time” and comments: “In a sense the divine is laughter itself, insofar as laughter shakes up identity, decomposes and recomposes it.” Could this provocation to Jonah to lighten up not be God’s pedagogical purpose? “To laugh is to become an other and to find one’s self again—in the same pulsation.” Lectures bibliques, p. 272 and n. 72. 19 Job also pursues the policy of vicarious atonement, what Levinas calls substitution. Thus, he will bring sacrifices “just in case” the children have sinned; “perhaps” they did (1:5). 18

122

THEODORE A. PERRY

responsibility and solidarity for all of creation, ongoing and past and future. And, recalling Levinas’ words, the covenant with creation “is impossible without pain.”

V. JOB THE SURVIVOR AND HIS SILENCE ABOUT THE SUFFERING OF OTHERS One can be struck as to why Job rattles on endlessly and exclusively about his own misfortunes, provoking Levinas to wonder whether Job ever raises the question of the suffering of the Other. Now that we have Levinas’ hypothesis, I would like to add my own, a psychological one. The opening scene describes Job’s anxiety over his good fortune and his perceived need to appease God by bringing sacrifices. When disaster does strike, he claims that both good and bad fortune must be received, curiously admitting the difficulty of receiving BOTH. What then is wrong about receiving good fortune, why does it too attach suspicions of guilt for which one must atone? Job’s opening speech following the disaster expresses his desire for death. It is generally assumed (along with the satan), that Job’s motivation is to avoid further pain, and perhaps too the accusations of his sinfulness. In both cases the desired death would be a purely personal affair. But while both causes (the physical malady and the sinfulness asserted by the three friends) may be present, they are hardly sufficient, for Job has literally undergone a personal holocaust: the total annihilation of his future in the deaths of his ten children. Would his total silence here, his refusal to be explicit in the real cause of his death-wish, not indeed be the best proof of his guilt: not the guilt of either a happy or a suffering person, not the culpability of a real sinner, but rather the guilt of a survivor? Now if Epicurus was right and one cannot suffer one’s own death as an experience, it is Levinas who noted that it is not my own death but rather the death of the other that is primal and that teaches us, if only second hand, all that we can know and

ON SOLIDARY WITH CREATION: JOB, JONAH, LEVINAS 123 experience about death.20 It is also the other’s mortality that teaches my responsibility.21 When Job then (unconvincingly) throws in the towel, concluding that he is only dust and ashes, this can only mean that Job has joined his children and symbolically undergone death. For, indeed, can either guilt or responsibility be ascribed to dust and ashes? The surprising answer seems to be in the affirmative! In terms of the ecumenism to which we strive, we should note that it is especially Job’s closing declaration to be “dust and ashes” that puts him in the tradition of our common father: Abraham.22 Levinas relates this directly to human responsibility before the Infinite: Our relation with the Infinite is the responsibility of one mortal for another. As in the biblical passage (Gen 18:23ff) where Abraham intercedes for Sodom. Abraham is horrified by the death of others and takes upon himself the responsibility to intercede. And that is when he says: “I too am dust and ashes.”23

These are Job’s final words but not his final act, for he too goes on to stand in the breach between life and death, to intercede even for those who argued and justified his downfall. Here, too, stood Jonah, preaching repentance and life to the evil Ninevites. We can now see a further extension, another a fortiori comparison: if even the very lowliest rank of creation—dust and ashes and stones—have standing in the divine garden of creation, how much “La mort de l’autre, c’est là la mort première” Dieu, la mort et le temps, 53. Epicurus famously said that “If you are here death is not; if death is here, you are not,” quoted in ibid, 28. 21 “C’est de la mort de l’autre que je suis responsable” ibid. Levinas makes the connection between human responsibility and guilt: “That is what it is, my attachment to the death of another, my relation with his death. It is … already a guilt, a survivor’s guilt.” (ibid, 21). 22 Human questions can be as enigmatic as God’s own. When the Psalmist asks “does dust know You, can it declare the truth about You?” (30:10), the Book of Job offers the paradox: Of course! In fact, it is only “dust and ashes” who can! 23 Dieu, la mort et le temps, p. 133. It should be carefully noted that this is the only other occurrence of this phrase in the Hebrew Bible. 20

124

THEODORE A. PERRY

more so the very foundation, that infinite covenant with all of creation, one that calls forth all the patience of a Job to maintain and that he models for us.24 Job and Jonah remain speechless because God’s infinite question so far exceeds any answer, because, by His risky decision to wager on the disinterested goodness of humans, God has shown that, in Montaigne’s words as a father, he would rather be loved than feared.25

BIBLIOGRAPHY Flatto, David. “The Angel’s Oath.” Text and Texture (Online Journal). December 21, 2009. LaCocque, André. “Justice for the Innocent Jonah!” Biblical Interpretation 19 (2011): 19–32 Levinas, Emmanuel. De Dieu qui vient à l’idée. Paris: Vrin, 1998. ———. Dieu, la mort et le temps. Paris: Grasset, 1993. Lovejoy, Arthur O. The Great Chain of Being: A Study in the History of an Idea. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936.

Further exegetical research should explore the connection between Job’s proverbial patience and the extraordinary importance of patience in Levinas’ writings. 25 Montaigne, undoubtedly reacting to Machiavelli’s princely preference for fear. As I was completing this essay a parallel analysis appeared, André LaCocque’s remarkable “Justice for the Innocent Jonah!” Biblical Interpretation 19 (2011): 19–32. In connection with LaCocque’s correct insistence that the focus of the Book is one of disinterested love, one should not misinterpret the language of fear, as in “Job was a Godfearer” (1:8, 2:3). Curiously, here the fear of God means precisely disinterested love of Him, as Satan also confirms (1:9). For identical stress on disinterested love as the foundation of ethics, see also the conclusion to Qohelet, as well as Genesis 22:12, and the rabbinic Ethics of the Fathers, Abot 5:19: “Any love which depends on a thing, when that thing is removed the love ceases as well. But a love which does not depend on any thing will never cease. What kind of love does depend on a thing? The love of Amnon and Tamar. And one which does not depend on any thing? The love of David and Jonathan.” For further commentary see T. A. Perry, Jonah’s Argument with God, and my forthcoming Joyous Qohelet. 24

ON SOLIDARY WITH CREATION: JOB, JONAH, LEVINAS 125 Montaigne, Michel de. Essays. Trans. Donald Frame. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1965. Perry, T. A. The Honeymoon Is Over: Jonah’s Arguments with God. Peabody Mass.: Hendrickson, 2006. ———. God’s Twilight Zone: Wisdom in the Hebrew Bible. Peabody Mass: Hendrickson, 2008. ———. “Jonah’s Theology.” In Know Your Neighbor: Universalism and Particularism at Sodom and Gomorrah. Essays in Memory of Ron Pirson. Ed. Diana Lipton. SBL Publications (forthcoming). Sibony, Daniel. Lectures bibliques. Paris: Odile Jacob, 2006.

RELIGIOUS AND RHETORICAL DRAMA: JOB IN THE COMPANY OF PLATO, ARISTOPHANES AND OTHER RELATED LITERATURE. BERIT MEETS RHETORIC: JOB IN THE WORLD OF LATE CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY JOHN T. GREENE MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY

“... one of the grandest things ever written with pen,... A noble book, all men's book. It is our first and oldest statement of the never-ending problem of man's destiny and God's ways with him here on earth.” —Thomas Carlisle

PROLEGOMENON/FOREWORD Job-the-Just. Is it just some catchy phrase that brings alliterative, theological joy to some so inclined, or is there something biblicallybased to Job having been (and still remaining to be) considered a just man, or other than being concerned for his own particular situation, in a general way? A reading of the Job-of-the-Prologue does not reveal this Job who is concerned with justice. This is a Job who is prosperous, thoughtful, charitable, and pious; he is described as tam ve yashar, just and upright. Justice, and therefore concerns about being just and/or justified, is another issue. At the heart of justice is the 127

128

JOHN T. GREENE

understanding of the existence of a covenant,1 a legally-binding agreement of understanding between a minimum of two parties. In the Book of Job it is understood that this binding agreement is between Job and his rekush, his personal estate, on the one hand, and between Job and his God, on the other. The Job of the Prologue is a stunned person, not knowing why his situation has changed so drastically for the worse; the Job of the Colloquy defends himself opposite his understanding of what his covenant responsibilities were and the justice due him. Thus, the issues of justice and righteousness are discernible in important portions of the book. Not only is it there, it is severely taken to task. As examples, we cite the following. Dissatisfied with the traditional view that the misdeeds of the father can be passed on to the descendants who will have to pay the debt, Job protests: You say, ‘God stores up their iniquity for their sons.’ Let him recompense it to themselves, that they may know it. Let their own eyes see their destruction, and let them drink the wrath of the Almighty. (Job 21:19–20)

Eliphaz the Temanite asks Job concerning righteousness: Is it any pleasure to the Almighty if you are righteous, or is it gain to him if you make your ways blameless? Is it for your fear of him that he reproves you, and enters into judgment with you? Is not your wickedness great? (Job 22:3–4) 1 Oddly the term, berit, covenant, occurs only twice in the entire Book of Job, at Job 31:1 and at 41:4. Yet, the book screams silently this concern throughout. Covenant is mentioned in Job 31: where the statement is made:

I have made a covenant with my eyes; how then could I look upon a virgin?

And the covenant with God is implied by the rhetorical question of Job 41:4. God inquires concerning the power of Leviathan: Will he make a covenant with yourselves to take him for your servant forever? (Presumably as he has already taken Job)

RELIGIOUS AND RHETORICAL DRAMA

129

In Chapter 29, Job holds: I put on righteousness, and it clothed me; my justice was like a robe and a turban.

And according to Elihu (Job 36:17) to Job in his situation: You are full of the judgment on the wicked; judgment and justice seize you.

In the four excerpts above we see the concern for a covenantal understanding of what has happened to Job; these are not references to chance or happenstance or even the fates. They reflect an understanding (not agreement, however) in just how the mechanics of justice function. Justice is a by product of righteousness. In Job a larger and more complex question is posed: “How does the idea of problem-solving using rhetoric become useful for Jews who subscribe also to the idea of problem-solving of right and wrong issues being attributed to a covenant understanding?” Justice before a court of understanding vs. Justice before the God of the Covenant. This challenge was raised due to a radical change in the thinking of certain intellectuals in ancient Israel who had encountered and been thoroughly influenced by the phenomenon of Hellenism. The present Book of Job is their thinking out loud on the issue of what it means to be just/ified.

INTRODUCTION One concept that links all thirty-nine books of the Hebrew Bible, and then flows over into the New Testament writings as well, is covenant, berit. Sometimes berit is treated openly, glaringly, bluntly, obviously, as in the cases of Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David. In other cases, it is such a subtle treatment, as in the book of Ruth, the critiques of all of the kings of Israel and Judah in the Books of Kings, the episodes of Elijah and Elisha, in the “Oracles to the Nations” of the Prophet Amos, and in the totally obvious world view of the “Deuteronomist.” In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul’s obsession with “grace” marks this same concern within a Hellenistic-Roman culture-dominated world. Even the purpose of the “Pauline Christ” and his salvific activity must be read against the backdrop of the covenant/berit idea. While many readers are aware of theodicy as a leitmotif in the Book of Job, many more are

130

JOHN T. GREENE

totally unaware that the justice sought is the justice entitled by the berit. Job is therefore an ideal example to be mined for the encounter between berit and rhetoric.2 One of the important aspects of the berit is that both parties, Israel and Yahweh, have the right to protest the infidelity of the other. While Israel reflects complaints against her deity by worshiping others—especially those of their conquerors—thus abrogating her responsibility to the covenant, Yahweh’s method of protest is far more dramatic; it takes the form of a “covenant lawsuit.” Yahweh thinks and acts legally vis-a-vis the covenant. It is the great, individual prophets who serve as prosecutors of Israel on behalf of Yahweh; their “lawsuits” are heralded by the opening formula of accusation: “Koh ‘amar YHWH,” “Thus says the Lord.” (Greene 1989, 303–309) The hallmark of the berit was that each party had the right to have their grievances addressed; each had the right to an accounting, a public accounting. Read, therefore, against the backdrop of this right to an accounting, one of the abiding themes of the HS/OT, the Book of Job must also be seen as expressing a lawsuit, but not by YHWH through one of the prophets, but by Job-the-lone-plaintiff against God; prophets are therefore absent. Nevertheless, witnesses do testify. The biblical Book of Job is pure drama. Although not usually considered as such, so are the Dialogues of Plato. In Part A. of what follows below, I want to draw attention to certain similarities between the Book of Job, Plato’s The Symposium, Socrates’ Apology, and The Clouds of Aristophanes, allied literature from the period of late Classical Antiquity, in an effort to assess some of the possible influence of Hellenistic-Roman culture on one writer in the Bible. Simultaneously, I want to suggest that this information is useful in revisiting other examples of biblical literature belonging to this period as well. As with the term covenant, the term implying rhetoric appears only twice in the Book of Job. The formal term yachach, to argue, appears only at Job 6:25, while the noun tokachath, derived from the same root, appears at Job 23:4. In both instances the reference is to the process of reasoning, i.e., thinking systematically, thus engaging in rhetoric. 2

RELIGIOUS AND RHETORICAL DRAMA

131

According to Aristotle, Greek tragedies had certain recognizable sections (Poetics, Cha. 12): a Prologue (which introduced the play’s setting and major action); a Parodos (through which chorus and the orchestra combine to respond to the characters); a Body (that contains the alternations between episodes); and an Exodos (which concludes the play). He added that Rhesis (persuasive speech) and Agon (formal debate) were also present. Job as a work—in its present form—has long been recognized by some as mirroring many of the techniques used to present Greek tragedies. (Kallen 1959)3 These were generally presented in tripartite form: Prologue, Body, and Epilogue. (Kallen) Literary critics divide Job into a tripartite work as well. As a result, scholars have long since spoken of three Jobs, a “Job” corresponding to each of the three partitions/sections: an initial “Job” who is afflicted without knowing why, and who loses all; a “Job” who is a rhetor-with-issues, prepared to defend and argue logically his position on righteousness before all opposing rhetors/”comforters”; and a “Job”who is restored to his former, privileged position and status although his rhetorical arguments did not prove convincing. (Ticciat 2005) One who has studied ancient Middle Eastern literature assiduously is well aware of what is termed the “wisdom tradition,” and its popularity.4 It is a practice that is well-documented in the literature of the A.N.E. In ancient Israel, King Solomon is associated with this tradition in that he is said to have authored the Proverbs, and the Song of Songs; the latter as a younger man and the former as an older, more contemplative man. Moreover, we In addition to the opinions expressed by Kallen, and not classified as a drama, Plato’s Republic is also divisible into a Prologue, Body, and Epilogue: (http://www.malahanas.de/Greeks/LX/PlatoRepublic.html). 4 See Walther Baumgartner, “Die israelitische Weisheitsliteratur,” Theologische Rundschau 5 (1933): 259–88; H. Gese, Lehre und Wirklichkeit in der alten Weisheit, (Tuebingen, 1958); Martin Hengel, Judentum und Hellenismus, 2d ed. (Tuebingen, 1973); R. N. Whybray, The Intellectual Tradition in the Old Testament, BZAW 135 (Berlin, 1974); S. Schoer, Wisdom Has Built Her House: Studies on the Figure of Sophia in the Bible, L. M. Mahoney and W. M. Donough, trans., (Collegeville, MN: InterVarsity Press, 2000). 3

132

JOHN T. GREENE

understand that the tradition was A.N.E.-wide in that we find examples acknowledged from Mesopotamia, as well as from Egypt. These normally consisted of lists that either identified things or compared and/or contrasted things, or works that gave advice on how to deport oneself, especially before kings and potentates.5 But in addition to lists, there exist sustained poetic narratives that express the A.N.E.r’s concern for seemingly unexplained adversity when one believes that he or she has hewed to the line of righteousness—regardless of how their society understood this principle.6 What we can say is that “wisdom” represented any

Cf. T. Ayuso, “Los elementos extrabiblicos de los sapienciales,” EstBib 6 (1947): 187–223; M. Noth and T. D. Winton, eds., Wisdom in Israel and in the Ancient Near East, Fs. H. H. Rowley VTS 3, (Leiden: Brill, 1955). 6 There is a Babylonian—and an even earlier Sumerian poem, although highly fragmentary—poem that tells of a good man and his vicissitudes. His name was Tubu-utul-Bel, and he was an official. Because its contents remind the modern reader of the situation in which the biblical figure Job found himself, it is understandably referred to as the “Babylonian Job.” Both renderings are available at http://dqhall59/Archaeology_and_the_Bible/pt2_Chapter_22.pdf. This man, considered upright and god(s) reverent, is smitten with a mysterious affliction. The poet explores his condition, seeking an answer or explanation as to why. Written on a clay-baked tablet in cuneiform, there is text on both the obverse and reverse sides. At the bottom of the obverse side there is a lot of damage to the tablet making it impossible to tell how much text has been destroyed and, thus, missing before it continues on the reverse side of the tablet. This poet opined that all those, above and below who were credited with knowledge of why things happened had not been helpful in explaining to him his predicament, and both family and enemies prepared for his demise. This tablet's contents are known as “I will serve the lord of wisdom.” We want here only to acknowledge what is termed the “Jobian condition.” Job and Tubu-utulBel's parallelisms end at the two men being virtuous, sharing a debilitating disease, and why providence and circumstance have not protected them and prevented such adversity. The resolutions are quite different, however: through a vision of God, Job comes to learn that one may experience Him without having exhaustive knowledge of Him. Tubu-utul5

RELIGIOUS AND RHETORICAL DRAMA

133

efflorescence of learned concerns for education, mirrored in literature produced in learned circles: it was not literature that initially addressed the grass roots citizens of these cultures. The biblical Books of Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes are termed the “hardcore, wisdom trilogy.” And while Proverbs 8 provides a vivid image of “Ms. Wisdom” and her role in ancient Israelite intellectual thought, the Book of Job was understood to be the “flag ship” of the genre. Moreover, even the lengthy “Joseph Narrative” is also counted by Wisdom scholars as a product of this genre as well. The ultimate goal of Wisdom Literature was to promote (and almost ensure) success in life. Biblical literature adds to this knowledge of God and how to deport oneself before him. Returning to “Job,” the protagonist is generally praised for raising the issue of theodicy, the justice of God, God being a just God, and not just showing his awesome power arbitrarily. For those who believe in the traditional God of the Judeo-Christian tradition(s), this is a serious question and concern. Be reminded, however, that “Job” is not credited as being among the first biblical characters to raise this issue to fever pitch. An episode in the Book of Genesis illustrates this. The patriarch, Abraham, “bargained” in true Middle Eastern marketing fashion with the Deity after the latter shared with him his intentions for the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Influencing the Deity to spare the cities if a certain number of righteous persons could be found there (without success); apparently, only his nephew, Lot, and his family were found righteous. During Abraham’s bargaining with the Deity, he asked him “Must not the judge of all the earth himself do right?”(Gen. 18:25) And the reader is also reminded of the tiff between the Prophet Jonah and his Deity over his prophetic duties at Nineveh. The reader is reminded, however, only Abraham, in his more brief example, gets his “answer” and it is kept within the family. What “Job” got by way of an “answer” is still a matter of debate. (Wilson 2006) Still one must ponder the question: If Abraham stated the issue of theodicy so succinctly and successfully in Genesis 18:25,

Bel turned to a magician who brought a messenger from the god Marduk who drove away his evil spirits.

134

JOHN T. GREENE

why does it take the Book of Job so long to become inclusive on this issue?7 Text historians, working intertextually, maintain that a great editing process on the Hebrew Scriptures took place during the Hellenistic period. When history of the Hebrew Language techniques are applied, Wisdom literature is shown to reflect the linguistic influence of Eastern Mediterranean languages, especially Greek, during this period. We learn, then, that a much older and Middle East common intellectual tradition, was eventually wedded to and influenced by later Jewish intellectual traditions that borrowed heavily from Hellenistic traditions of Wisdom/Sophia.8 And recently it has been argued that perhaps Job is one of the best examples of something necessary in human problem-solving approaches, but often avoided because of traditional attitudes toward it: anger. (Basset 2007) It is within this development that we approach the Book of Job. Having stated this, however, we herein make no claim that there is proof available of a direct line of influence of any of the following works on the author(s) of the Book of Job. Herein we point chiefly to the influence of an ambiance and an abiding popularity of the themes of these works during the period of Jewish Hellenism. These works were in circulation in learned circles during the Hellenistic Period and many of their characteristics appear, albeit in a different context sometimes, in the literary fabric of what eventuated as the Book of Job.

Nevertheless, we should distinguish, for analytical purposes, between the issues of theodicy and the theme of unjust suffering. Part of the historical and theological problem(s) has/have been to lump the two together as if there was only one issue. The Book of Job is far more complex than one imagines. While it deals with both issues, the allied Greek texts with which it has been compared reflect no concern, or even knowledge of the covenant idea as understood in ancient Israel. 8 Nevertheless, the reader must be cautious of this term. As an example, for Martin Buber, hokhmah, instead of being rendered wisdom, as is implied by the Greek word sophia, means a unity of teaching and life, not a teaching about life. Jesus, Buddha, and Lao Tzu were such examples he maintained. Nota bene! 7

RELIGIOUS AND RHETORICAL DRAMA

135

A. JOB AND SOME LITERATURE OF CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY 1. Job and The Symposium: Comparisons and Contrast Points Statues of Plato are viewable at: www.bing.com/search?q= Statues+of+Plato&go=&qs=bs&form=QBRE.

General Characteristics To what may one compare, as well as contrast the major characteristics contained in the Book of Job? Reading Job recalls many similarities to other famous literatures. Here, we want to address first those similarities (and allude to contrasts) between the Book of Job and Plato’s The Symposium. This is done with the belief that both pieces of literature share a cultural Zeitgenossenschaft or contemporaneity. It does not suggest that the Book of Job is a philosophical tract or that the Symposium is concerned with the justice of God. We find the following points helpful. Job is a framed story within a framed story that is contained within a framed story. This recalls a storytelling method employed by Theodor Storm in his work, Der Schimmelreiter. So does Plato’s Symposium (ca. 385 B.C.E.) Plato uses this architecture to craft his philosophy of knowledge. That is, here Plato is concerned with and addresses the persistent problem of all thoughtful people: epistemology. Symposia were attended by men only; so was Job’s gathering; his wife had voiced her two-cent’s worth long before the “guests” arrived at “Casa Job”. Of the three categories into which Plato’s dialogues are divided, the Symposium is found in the “Transitional and Middle Dialogues.”

Specific Characteristics • • • •

Job deals with theodicy: with the justice of God and with the issue of undeserved suffering, the so-called “Jobian Situation”. The Symposium deals with the nature of love: eros (especially among males). Plato recounts a drinking party following an evening meal. The ambience is festive, although the conversation is serious. Job describes a defeated man, ruined and asking why he has come to his present situation. “Comforters” come to him to discuss where he went wrong; the ambience is dour.

136 •

JOHN T. GREENE

The Symposium’s guests include Aristophanes the poet, an inebriated Alcibiades, and the ever-wise Socrates. The host is Agathon, a tragedian by profession. Also present were Phaedrus, Pausanias, and Eryximachus. • Those who are assembled around Job include Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar, and Elihu. Before any of these, however, his wife weighs in on the subject: she, too, has a point of view. “Host” would certainly be inappropriate for Job, who was, nevertheless, a tragedy by circumstance. • The Symposium’s guests in turn give their views on love and desire. This is accomplished within the framework of Platonic philosophy (concerns for philosophy and poetry, the concept of the good, and the concept of beauty). • Job’s four “comforters” discuss various aspects of sin and guilt with him in order to suggest why he is being punished so severely by his Deity. • Alcibiades is the last to join the Symposium; Elihu is the last “comforter” to share his views with Job. • Both Job and the Symposium as literature belong to the disputation genre, and both employ techniques of the rhetorical argument. Rhetoric in the service of what subject, however, is where the similarity ends. But it is this “going separate ways” that makes the comparison and contrast useful, especially in terms of understanding aspects of the Book of Job and its structure. In what follows, J represents information pertinent to issues of the Book of Job, while P refers to issues contained in Plato’s Symposium and related literature. The image that may be viewed at www.gay-art-history.org/ gay-history/gay-art/greek-love-homosexualart/gay-greek-symposiu m-kottabos-lovers.html shows a fresco scene taken from the north wall of the Tomb of the Diver, and is from Paestum, Italy ca. 475 B.C.E. J. We could flippantly explain the problem of theodicy as it appears in the Book of Job as rhetoric gone in service of the Hebrew covenantal mind and Weltanschauung. Instead, we shall marvel at the fact that after such a long period of other practice, i.e., constant attempts to propitiate a powerful deity whatever his/her attitude toward those who venerate them, a reasoned series of arguments

RELIGIOUS AND RHETORICAL DRAMA

137

are offered as to why the human situation could develop to a situation like that of Job. (Burrell 2008) While the reader is vouchsafed episodes large and small of covenants having been concluded in the Hebrew Bible, the greatest and most poignant example is the covenant concluded at Sina/Horeb. That covenant stipulated certain requirements placed on both covenant members/parties, i.e., Israel and her Deity. Biblical literature following this account in Exodus reflects that (or some version of it) covenantal understanding. This is certainly the case in the prophetic literature. And it is therein that we become aware of a “third party” to the covenant arrangement understood to be in force. This third party is not a salient being, however, but like the covenant itself, it is a concept. While there are two extreme views of how the covenant works to the advantage of Israel (Clarify in a note), the idea of hesed or covenant love is an integral part of either understanding. Hesed is a sort of option that God the covenant partner can exercise should he so choose. The basic covenant formula held that each party had responsibilities to the other for their mutual benefit. To these they had agreed. Essentially, Israel agreed to be the people of God. By remaining faithful to him, they would prosper. Should they fail in their fidelity to him, they would suffer punishment of various types and degrees. What is rarely mentioned is the other side of this covenantal understanding: should the Deity fail in his fidelity and responsibilities, he ran the risk of “being let go,” being considered redundant, a non-helpful Deity. Because of the mightiness of Deity, however, this option was rarely exercised, although it did occur from time to time. At such times, either Canaanite Ba’al, Aramean Hadad, the “Queen of Heaven” or one of the old Mesopotamian gods looked pretty good to them. This understanding was expressed by the simple formula: You will be my people and I will be your God. (Exod. 6:7) As one followed the successes and failures of Israel’s sojourn through history, this covenant arrangement with Deity often experienced daunting challenges, at least according to several prophets who, in the name of Deity, inveighed heavily against her for being “wayward.” Oddly, however, some noticed that following Israel’s “waywardness” no disaster befell her. An explanation for this seeming streak of (undeserved) luck was necessary. This is how the idea of hesed came into being: it is the result of observing Israel

138

JOHN T. GREENE

survive despite the “injured” covenant partner, God. However, hesed is neither to be expected nor solicited; this is the option solely of the Deity, it is external to the covenant. A mature form of this hesed concept is operable as Job’s “comforters” rhetorize. J. The reader encounters a defeated Job, a Job smitten from the soles of his foot to his crown with sore boils, sitting scraping himself with a potsherd among ashes. (Job 2: 7–8) It is a pitiful picture. Almost immediately after he was smitten, Mrs. Job came to him and expressed an opinion. (Job 2: 9–10) What is often overlooked here is that it is possibly the shortest rhetorical disputation in biblical Wisdom literature. In essence, it is a succinct argument that holds that if you’ve been defeated by a deity, just give up, deity is too powerful, you’ll never win, so damn the deity on your way out. It is true fatalism, but with an effort to have the last word. Job eschews this option, however. For him, although it comes from a source assumed closest to him, he finds it unacceptable to explain his situation. He opts, like Abraham, to sue for justice, and to hew this line. Beginning with verse 11 of Chapter 2, Job’s “friends”, apparently also “sons of the East”, rather than being invited to give their input on the Jobian situation, come of their own accord “to mourn with him and to comfort him.” Here an intersection with the Symposium has been attained: “comfort” is something common to both reasons for the assemblies: Agathon-the-host desires to make his guests comfortable; Job’s guests attempt to make him comfortable. Initially, however, they were shocked to see his “condition” and for the first seven days and nights merely sat with him but said not a word out of shock and respect. The mood of the symposium was, of course, quite festive, although the discussion was conducted with thoughtful seriousness. And whereas Agathon’s invited guests probably reclined on couches or great, comfortable pillows while imbibing flavorful wine, Job’s “uninvited guests” sat with him on the ground. Guests at the symposium were most anxious to speak; Job’s “commiserators” spoke not for seven full days and nights. J. Mrs. Job’s job is to express the “philosophy of defeatism.” She counsels simply “You are a loser; defame the source of your defeat and exit from among the living. It is the best thing you can do.” Her comment is brief and she then exits from the picture, but not before Job reproves her argument. He appears to have accepted his fate, but is

RELIGIOUS AND RHETORICAL DRAMA

139

not prepared to die as a result of it. Before this segment of Chapter 2 ends, Job, in Kahlil Gibran-like fashion, assaults the “Western illusion” that one can have good without bad, light without darkness, health without illness, riches without poverty, order without chaos. What follows immediately upon this counsel is a sort of soliloquy/psalm in which Job bemoans his life, such as it is. Chapter 3 serves as a literary bridge, made up of formerly independent pieces of literature that have been masterfully woven together, which separates the Prologue from the first discourse by one of the “friends.” J. The Body of this tripartite Wisdom tract begins with Chapter 4; it is there that the discourse section commences. P. As one would expect, Socrates’ rhetoric concludes that the highest purpose of Love is to become a Philosopher, a Lover of Wisdom. Job’s rhetoric concludes that trust, not knowledge of God’s ways, is the highest purpose in life; it appears to be an antiWisdom tract. Like Job, Agathon is also a “speaker.” Alcibiades “confirms” Socrates’ conclusion (which itself is a confirmation of information vouchsafed the latter by the seer, Diotima. While there is a “voice out of a whirlwind—a kind of deus ex machina—, one has to be particularly attentive to grasp the “rhetorical lesson” God delivers. Agathon hosted his symposium to celebrate having won a dramatic competition. Job “hosted” his “symposium-withoutpotent-potables” unwillingly: he had lost everything, but once engaged, he responded. Agathon-the-poet’s views were “chided” by Socrates; Job’s views were “chided” by his guests.

2. THE APOLOGY (OF SOCRATES) AND THE BOOK OF JOB: COMPARISONS AND CONTRASTS Plato’s Apology of Socrates also has much in common with, and therefore recalls the Book of Job and Hellenistic influences upon it. One man, “Socrates,” must defend himself against accusations of what amount to all of his activities and teachings during his responsible adult life. And one man, “Job,” must defend himself against what he feels is undeserved adversity and suffering, both before his God and before accusers disguised as friends.

140

JOHN T. GREENE

Against what and whom must “Socrates” defend himself? He sums up the specific allegations against him in an affidavit which alleges: Socrates is an evil-doer, and a curious person, who searches into things under earth and in heaven, and he makes the worse appear the better cause; and he teaches the aforesaid doctrines to others. (Jowett 1892)

Unlike “Socrates,” however “Job” is clueless as to why he had become a devastated man, formerly of means, now sitting in sackcloth and ashes, and scraping himself with pottery shards, people come to him with explanations as to why; these, he felt, were tantamount to undeserved accusations. These words, ascribed by Plato to “Socrates” in the Apology, could just as well have been uttered by the stricken “Job”: How you, O Athens, have been affected by my accusers, I cannot tell; but I know that they almost made me forget who I was, so persuasively did they speak; and yet they have hardly uttered a word of truth. (Jowett 1892)

S. Athens has been affected by allegations of Socrates’ accusers. J. Although presented as friends and commiserators, Job’s “guests” accuse him of apparent guilts resulting in his situation. “Socrates” continued: I have to reply to the older charges and to my first accusers and then I will go on to the later ones... For of old I have had many accusers who have accused me falsely to you during many years;... therefore I must simply fight with shadows in my own defense, and argue when there is no one who answers. (Jowett)

J. “Job” found it necessary to defend himself not only before the insinuations/accusations of his “friends”, but before his deity as well. S. “Socrates” felt the need to defend himself before accusers who accused him of speculating about the heaven above and inquiring about the earth below. He was bothered by this fact for: “the disseminators of this tale are the accusers whom I dread; for their hearers are apt to fancy that such inquirers do not believe in the existence of the gods.” Both “Job” and “Socrates” embrace the concept of law in their respective defenses: the former within the framework of a

RELIGIOUS AND RHETORICAL DRAMA

141

covenant, the latter : “leaving the event with God, in obedience to the law I will now make my defense.” • •

“Socrates” addresses his remarks to “Athens.” “Job” addresses his “to whom it may concern,” to his “comforters,” and to God.

3. THE CLOUDS OF ARISTOPHANES: COMPARISONS AND CONTRASTS WITH THE BOOK OF JOB Strepsiades, like Job, is wealthy, but (unlike Job) he is saddled with crushing debt; he is willing to do whatever to escape having to pay his creditors, including having his son trained at the Thoughtery of “Socrates” to learn the art of sophistry. “... and to converse with the clouds, our genii.” (“Socrates” in The Clouds) “Clouds are those behind which Job’s Deity conceals himself and blasts Job.” (John T. Greene)

The Clouds (Nephelai) lampooned intellectual fashions in Athens— the City of Dionysia—ca. 423–419 B.C.E. where it placed third in a comedy-writing contest held there. Of the ten dramatis personae of this 3rd century B.C.E. comedy, one of The Clouds’ main characters is named “Socrates.” He is the neighbor of one Strepsiades who, though well-off, is drowning in debt; today we would say of him that he is living on his credit cards and paying only minimum interest on them. Strepsiades is, thus, “strapped” for cash. He sees the cause of his indebtedness, and thus his misery, as the effortless spending of his wife, as well as his spending lavishly on his son, an equestrian and charioteer, named Phidippides. The humble hut-of-a-house next door belongs to “Socrates”; it is referred to as the Thoughtery or Thinkery. Strepsiades wants to send his son to this house to study at the “School of Socrates” located there. At this point of the play, however, the reader/hearer intuits the lack of sympathy for “Socrates” and the teachings of the Thoughtery/Thinkery, for the lad’s father states: “There they prove that we are coals enclosed on all sides under a vast sniffer, which is the sky. If well paid, these men also teach one how to gain lawsuites, whether they be just or not.” (Aristophanes www) In other

142

JOHN T. GREENE

words, the major subjects of rhetoric and astronomy were reported as being taught at the Thinkery/Thoughtery. We should understand that the real Socrates was not a teacher of rhetoric, nor was he a teacher of astronomy, nor anything designed to bring material success through being able to orate skillfully. He was also a pious venerator of the traditional gods, and was therefore not an atheist as was the “Socrates” depicted in The Clouds. In Plato’s The Apology, “Socrates” states, after delivering his affidavit: Such is the nature of the accusation: it is just as you yourselves have seen in the comedy of Aristophanes, who has introduced a man whom he calls Socrates going about and saying that he walks in air and talking a great deal of nonsense concerning matters of which I do not pretend to know either much or little, not that I mean to speak disparagingly of anyone who is a student of natural philosophy. (Apology www; Jowett 1892)

The “Socrates” who is featured in The Clouds, and based on the public view of who Socrates was, is also a man accused; accused of being a charlatan and mountebank: a comic but nevertheless dangerous figure. He shares several characteristics with “Job” of the HS/OT and with Plato’s “Socrates,” but there is no perfect fit. Strepsiades wants his son to learn the “art” of bringing frivolous lawsuits against people so that he may escape his creditors. His son refuses to approach the Thoughtery for lessons and is booted out of the family house. His father resolves to go instead of the recalcitrant son, and after words with the doorkeeper, gains entry. During their encounter, “Socrates” is depicted by Aristophanes as similar to a human version of a “deus ex machina,” although there has been no surd drama having to that point occurred when he appears in a swing/basket on the stage onto which he alights. That “Socrates” is in the air when introduced can mean that it is simply the comedy device for a contemporaneous character who flies or even needs to be in the air. However, in our study of similarities and influences, we understand this as a deliberate ploy on the playwright’s part to spoof “Socrates’” character. He had been engaged in “traversing the air and contemplating the sun.” Strepsiades refers to him disrespectfully and constantly as “little Socrates.” Yet, he is willing to pay to learn how not to have to pay (his debts). Debt settlement

RELIGIOUS AND RHETORICAL DRAMA

143

company or malpractice attorney are modern images conjured by this opinion of what the Thoughtery taught as far as Strepsiades was concerned. He would have fit well into our modern, litigious society. According to Aristophanes, “Socrates’” teachings offered Strepsiades nothing more than becoming “a thorough rattle-pate, a hardened old stager, the fine flour of the talkers...” And according to “Socrates,” the Clouds of heaven were nothing more than “virgin women, great goddesses for the lazy; to them we owe all, thoughts, speeches, trickery, roguery, boastings, lies, sagacity.” In addition to being a work concerning a man being faced by adversity and public censure, Job and The Clouds share in common the “Whirlwind”, as well. In clarifying to Strepsiades the function of the clouds and why rain and thunder are not to be attributed to Zeus, “Socrates” says of them: Being full of water, and forced to move along, they are of necessity precipitated in rain, being fully distended with moisture from the regions where they have been floating; hence they bump each other heavily and burst with great noise.

And that power which causes the clouds to move is the aerial Dinos, “Whirlwind.” Thus, Strepsiades counters chidingly, and as if he has understood “Socrates” correctly, that Zeus did not exist and that the Whirlwind reigned in his stead. Therefore, whereas “Socrates” is aware of the role(s) and machinations of the Clouds, “Job” is totally unaware of what machinations have been at work above the clouds, in the Heavens, against him. Thus, in both works the Whirlwind functions as the proxy of deity. It should be stated here also that by “Whirlwind”, which can also be rendered as “ethereal vortex” or “Convection Principle,” Dinos—or “rotation”, we mean that which has replaced Zeus as the moved and moving mover. In the Book of Job, this device of a Dinos substituting for the usual Semitic epiphany is used handily. (Job 38ff.) (Hone 1960) Clouds (as the Chorus) are chosen because of their connection with meteorological phenomena such as rain, thunder, and lightning. The Clouds also provide moral critique in this dramatic comedy and disagree with “Socrates’” description of them (Lines 331–334). As a result, Strepsiades is quite able to say directly to his son: “The Whirlwind has driven out Zeus and is now King.”

144

JOHN T. GREENE

A notable discussion or debate in The Clouds takes place between anthropomorphized Just Argument and Unjust Argument (or Discourse). While we should understand this as taking place within the thought of “Socarates”, again, comparisons with Job insinuate themselves: •

•

•

The middle section of Job is a thorough fleshing out of the issue of whose rhetorical argument has veracity. In Job this is accomplished by six speakers (including Job) opining concerning his predicament, and the justness or unjustness of it. There are six speakers participating in the debate in The Clouds also: Philosophy, Sophistry, Strepsiades, Pheidippides, Socrates, and the Chorus. (889–1114) These recall the various discourses supplied by Job’s “comforters.” The deified Whirlwind (since it replaces Zeus) in The Clouds suggests a deity speaking out of a whirlwind/cloud in Job.

One of the major differences, however, is that in The Clouds Just Discourse (JD) and Unjust Discourse (UD) debate rhetorically, but have The Chorus Leader as a moderator. There could be an argument that in Job Elihu’s comments may serve as a moderating influence in the biblical discussion. Thus, in Clouds the debate is between stronger and weaker reasoning with stronger reasoning claiming to be superior by stating what is true, but it is truth focused on justice. Again, we have discovered another touchstone with Job. Unjust Discourse maintains that there is no justice, “How then, if justice exists, was Zeus not put to death for having put his father in chains?” he queries. (Lines 1150–60) Whereas Job’s friends/ comforters are circumspect and courteous even when they think Job is culpable for all that has befallen him, they, at least, do not rudely insult him to his face. However, JD and UD exchange outright insults that may make some readers (or attendees of the play) blush and squirm. How best to educate Pheidippides is the reason for the debate, and all this is occasioned by his father, Strepsiades sending him to the Thinkery/Thoughtery to learn how to avoid his creditors by clever and flowery speech. Just Discourse is asked to present his case first; he defends and commends to the young man the old/traditional ways of

RELIGIOUS AND RHETORICAL DRAMA

145

educating the student. Contrary to this, when it is his turn Worse Discourse argues for warm baths, “hanging out at/attending the agora, eloquence for eloquence sake, lack of self-restraint= brashness, making money being better than being honorable, being licentious and lecherous. Nevertheless, the Better Argument concedes, however, on the point that the leading citizens, though he considers the conditions of their arses repugnant, characteristic of the end result and goal of the educational process of his opponent’s argument. In other words, JD argued that UD’s educational goal and process produced “assholes”, UD then retorted that he had presented the better argument, for most of the leaders of the country were, indeed, assholes. Just Discourse had to agree to this fact; defeated, he retired to the interior of the Thinkery/Thoughtery. Strepsiades, looking on, asks Worse Argument to tutor his son in his techniques (Line 1430) Worse Discourse comes closest in The Clouds to reminding the reader/ viewer of the figure of the Satan in the Prologue to the Book of Job. We remind, however, that their functions are quite different. The Satan, as challenger, challenges only God; Worse Argument merely challenges his equal, and is shown to have defeated him. There is what I term a mini-debate also contained in The Clouds. It is between Strepsiades and two of his creditors, Pasias and Amynias. Using a sort of sophistry of his own, Strepsiades “defeats” (read, frustrates) them, and they disappear. Before this happens, however, Pheidippides has “graduated” from the Thinkery, and now has the gift of sophistry taught by “Socrates”: he can argue either side of a given case. This has pleased his father who feels that sophistry is superior to honesty, fact, and simple justice. He cannot wait to “sick” his son on his debtors in court so that he need not repay his huge debts. A row develops, however, between father and son at what may be seen as a celebration dinner at home. Strepsiades is seen running from his house holding his head. What occasioned the row was a poem by Euripides recited by his son that concerned itself with the praise of sexual intercourse between a brother and his sister (Line 1750). The father had pestered his son to entertain him with either music or poetry during the repast. The son, feeling put upon to perform, chose this poem; it outraged his father. When he protested at its contents, the son set upon him, and began to beat him until he fled outside. This led to the third debate contained in

146

JOHN T. GREENE

The Clouds: the debate between father and son over the issue of whether it was just to beat one’s father and mother, as well. Pheidippides defeats his father’s arguments and then exits the stage. Angered by this defeat, and realizing that he has been victimized by his own machinations, and what he believes are the Clouds’ participation in the conspiracy to have his arguments defeated, Strepsiades resolves to destroy “Socrates” (the chief sophist) and his Thoughtery by demolishing its roof and torching the structure. The play ends with “Socrates” and his assistant in flight from the stage amid swirls of smoke. Summary Either directly or (and this is the greater probability) indirectly, it appears that the Book of Job participates in “dramaness”: a term I coin here for discussion sake. Its present structure was certainly influenced by Aristotle’s rules of drama. Moreover, numerous points of similarity exist between Job and the three pieces discussed above. Is Job the tragic hero? As Aristotle would have put it, Job acts nobly. He is the opposite of the comic character or good-fornothing, as we saw in Aristophanes’ Strepsiades. Even Arthur Miller was of the opinion that the common man was a potential subject for tragedy. Thus, “ish hayyah be eretz uz...”(Job 1:1) “There once was a man from Utopia...”

B. JOB AND LITERATURE OF THE LATE HELLENISTIC— EARLY ROMAN PERIOD: HAGIOGRAPHIC MIDRASH By any stretch of the imagination, what we presented above merely teases concerning a Greco-Hellenistic influence on the person(s) who crafted the Book of Job, as we now have it. It teases also concerning the theme (justice), the structure (drama, rhetorical debate, role of the gods or Providence), and, of course, human relations and relations between humans and deities, as reflected in both literatures. We shall return to these comparisons, for they suggested to us issues we should not abandon lightly. A more concrete example may be provided by a piece of “Jobian” literature that is a true “child” of the Hellenistic era, yet bears all of the marks of a truly, Jewish piece of writing. It is titled The Testament of Job. Far from participating in the characteristics of

RELIGIOUS AND RHETORICAL DRAMA

147

what a Christian may expect from a testament, the word testament here refers to a genre characterized by a patriarch or leader of ancient Israel gathering his progeny to his deathbedside to present them with his last will and “testament.” Such literature is prodigious.9 While not considered a patriarch (nor a distinguished monarch in biblical literature), Job in Jewish tradition is one of those distinguished individuals who stood before the God of Israel, underwent trial for reasons he knew not, and was vindicated and restored. It was reasoned that such a man deserved a testament, for Job was everyperson (Miller’s ‘common man’). Other than to certify that Hellenistic influence abounds in this work, a product of the era, we need only comment on the question of whether it is to be a considered a Christian or a Jewish work. Our comments will be brief, for these issues need not detain us here. The strong Hasidaean sentiment reflected in this work suggests that its earliest strata were Hellenistic Jewish. Since the earliest Church was also Hellenistic Jewish, it is not impossible for a Christian sentiment to also be accorded this work. I shall leave it to those who insist on an either/or stance to sort this out further. It is characteristic of the human condition that when providing information data to be highly parsimonious; we edit and edit, and try not to give the recipient an advantage while feigning a desire to communicate and inform. Yet, when humans are receiving data, they desire it to be most complete. When we place this template over literature, it suggests that the later Jews found the details they desired quite lacking in much of the traditional literature; they were irritated by the gaps they found in it. Much, therefore, of what constitutes the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha reflects this irritation with the parsimonious method of the storytelling of ancient Israel prior to the Hellenistic Period, or so it seems. It is as if torsos of literature were provided by the ancients,

A most helpful summary of this genre is read in Michael Stone, ed., Jewish Writings During the Second Temple Period, Vol. 2, (Philadelphia: Augsburg Press, 1984), and in David Flusser, The Jewish Sages and Their Literature, Vol. 2, Judaism of the Second Temple Period, (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2009). 9

148

JOHN T. GREENE

and the Hellenists felt compelled to add limbs and a head. (Klauck 2012) Unlike their predecessors, Israelite and/or classical, Hellenists and their immediate descendants broke out of this tripartite stricture; there is a lessening of structural rigidity observable during Hellenism’s high point. Nevertheless, as with the testament genre, there is a highly recognizable structure. In order to add limbs and head, the crafter of the Testament of Job produced a six-part work: •

•

•

Wealthy and Charitable Job: Whereas biblical Job was merely an ish (paradigmatic everyman) who happened to be wealthy, testamental Job is a wealthy monarch who rules the Kingdom of Uz (Ausitis). Moreover, he engages in philanthropy on a great scale. There is righteousness, and then there is King Job’s righteousness. Satan the Mischievous: Rather than the Satan (the Adversary, an important figure in ancient Near Eastern court settings and procedures with characteristics shared by a prosecuting attorney and a one-person grand jury), a mischievous Satan (without the definite article) systematically dismantles Job’s life and wealth, and reduces him to sitting on a dung hill for seven+ years. Thus reduced, his wife, (Queen) Sitis, performed menial work in order for her husband to have bread. Disguised as a bread seller, Satan convinces her that she should sell her hair to him in order to get more bread. She agrees, and he reveals himself. Now knowing that she has been deceived, she considers Job’s situation hopeless, and she urges him to curse his God and die. Job remains steadfast in his faith despite these vicissitudes; this bowls over Satan to such an extent that he concedes defeat to Job; his stature suffers greatly and he withdraws depressed. The Three Comforting Friends: One may say that with the appearance of the Three Friends there is a synergy with the biblical work. Yet, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar here are, like Job here, monarchs also. In a capella fashion, they offer a lament to Job that smacks of Hasidean sentiment, a sentiment that the Jewish Encyclopedia (2, 173) compares with the Penitential Prayer of Asenath, another

RELIGIOUS AND RHETORICAL DRAMA

•

•

•

149

Hellenistic Jewish work. Herein, the three rhetorical presentations of biblical Job are absent. The Righteous Dead Shall Live and be Exalted: It is not until the fourth section of the testament that the rhetoric begins. Job, having rebutted the “Friends’” argument that he was somehow culpable for his reduced situation, spurs on Bildad to test the mental capacity of Job to engage in correct reasoning. In other words, he subjects him to therapy. Job sidesteps this ploy, prevails in his rhetoric, yet fails to betray his knowledge of certain mysteries of Heaven; he remains faithful and confident. Zophar offers to have his physicians (each monarch had brought a sizable retinue with him) cure Job; he refuses and maintains that his cure would come from God who creates even physicians. While Mrs. Job makes only a cameo appearance in the biblical text, (Queen) Sitis appears once again, asks the kings, for the sake of their former relationship with her family, to recover the bodies of her children for proper burial, only to be overruled by her husband. He maintains that their children (innocent and the victims of a heinous plot) had been resurrected, taken to Heaven, and were sitting with crowned heads near the throne of God; the three colleagues were powerless to assist them, and therefore useless! After this, Sitis, who had urged her husband to die, retired to one of Job’s mangers and died. She was mourned by the city. Elihu, the Wild Beast: It is at this point that Elihu appears. The three monarchs, having learned that Job was righteous and imbued with the mysteries of Heaven, ask Job to offer sacrifices (which they provide) on their behalf against sinning. Elihu, who has just joined the group, begins to inveigh negatively against Job. Actually, he is the chaffing Satan (now equated with the Serpent) in disguise; he wants revenge for having been defeated by Job’s fidelity and dignity in the face of overwhelming adversity. He fails in his attempt and is consigned to Sheol. Job’s Three Daughters: Upon being restored, (King) Job, father of seven sons and three daughters, prepares

150

JOHN T. GREENE for death. His daughters, by donning magic girdles, cure Job of his leprosy, and prepare him for prophesying the future destiny of his people. The daughters were presented with musical gifts by their father with which they serenaded the holy angels who came to collect Job’s spirit in order to convey it to God’s Throne in the East on a holy chariot. His body, after his death was appropriately mourned, was buried.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY Aristophanes. The Clouds. http://classics.mit.edu/Aristophanes/ clouds.html. Basset, Lytta. Holy Anger: Jacob, Job, Jesus. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2007. This/A magnificent image of Plato’s Symposium graces the cover of Seth Benardete’s book Plato’s Symposium: A Translation by Seth Benardete with Commentaries by Allan Bloom and Seth Benardete, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001) at: www.amazon.com/Platos-Symposium-Translation-BenardeteCommentaries/dp/0226042758. Burrell, David B. Deconstructing Theodicy: Why Job Has Nothing to Say to the Puzzle of Suffering. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2008. Collins, John J. Between Athens and Jerusalem: Jewish Identity in the Hellenistic Diaspora. The Biblical Resource Series. 2d Ed. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1999, c. 1984. Dell, Katharine Julia. The Book of Job as Sceptical Literature. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift fuer die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 197. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1991. Egger-Wenzel, Renate and Friedrich V. Reiterer. Eds. “Alle Weisheit stammt vom Herrn...”: Gesammelte Studien zu Ben Sira. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 375. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2007. Flusser, David. The Jewish Sages and Their Literature. Vol. 2. Judaism of the Second Temple Period. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2009. Greene, John T. The Role of the Messenger and Message in the Ancient Near East. Brown Judaic Studies 169. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989.

RELIGIOUS AND RHETORICAL DRAMA

151

Hadas, Moses. Hellenistic Culture, Fusion and Diffusion. New York: Columbia University Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1959. Hengel, Martin. Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in Their Encounter in Palestine During the Early Hellenistic Period. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2003. Hone, Ralph E. Ed. The Voice Out of the Whirlwind: The Book of Job, Materials For Analysis. San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Company, Inc., 1960. Johnson, Timothy Jay. Now My Eye Sees You: Unveiling an Apocalyptic Job. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2009. Jowett, Benjamin. Trans. Apology from the Dialogues of Plato. Vol. 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1892. Kallen, Horace M. The Book of Job as a Greek Tragedy. New York: Hill and Wang, 1959. Klauck, Hans-Josef. The Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2011–12. Lo, Alison. Job 28 as Rhetoric: An Analysis of Job 28 in the Context of Job 22–31. VTS Supplement. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2003. Perdue, Leo G. The Sword and the Stylus: An Introduction to Wisdom in the Age of Empires. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2008. Perry, T.A. God’s Twilight Zone: Wisdom in the Hebrew Bible. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2008. Plato. The Apology. http://www.law.imkc.edu/faculty/projects/ trials/socrates/aspology.html. Pope, Marvin H. Job. The Anchor Bible. Garden City, NJ: Doubleday Anchor, 1965. Shields, Martin A. The End of Wisdom: A Reappraisal of the Historical and Canonical Function of Ecclesiastes. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006. Stone, Michael E. Ed. Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period. Vol. 2. Philadelphia: Augsburg Press, 1984. Tcherikover, Victor. Hellenistic Civilization and the Jews. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America; Jerusalem: The Hebrew University, 1959. Ticciat, Susannah. Job and the Disruption of Identity: Reading Beyond Barth. London: T. & T. Clark, 2005. Van der Lugt, Pieter. Rhetorical Criticism and the Poetry of the Book of Job. OTS 32. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995.

152

JOHN T. GREENE

Whybray, Norman. Job. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2008. Wills, Lawrence M. Not God’s People: Insiders and Outsiders in the Biblical World. Lanham, MD: Rowan and Littlefield, 2008. Wilson, Leslie S. The Book of Job: Judaism in the Second Century B.C.E.: An Intertextual Reading. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2006.

JOB IN ENGLISH, WELSH AND IRISH LITERATURE ANTHONY SWINDELL HEYTHROP COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON

There are many ways of considering the literary afterlife of a biblical story. It can be viewed, for example, through the prism of feminist concerns; in relation to the rise of capitalism; or in terms of Jewish-Christian relations. In this essay we will be concerned with the afterlife of the Job story in English, Welsh and Irish literature in relation to what may be termed ontological optimism or pessimism. Although this theme could be developed in relation to the much-debated question of whether the Jobian pretext is to be read finally as a comedy or a tragedy, I shall seek to argue that Job in the literary tradition before us has two noticeable features: when treated as an inhabitable imaginative space, it tends to be a trope of consolation; whereas, when the focus is on teleological movement towards the pretextual happy ending, it tends (paradoxically perhaps) to become a trope of protest. Obviously the topic is a large one and we shall focus on landmarks in the literary rewriting, offering a straightforward sequential traversal of the material. Although there is a tendency amongst critics to dichotomize the biblical story and its folktale analogue, we shall find that there are many shades of grey in this landscape and that the pretext has the capacity to engender rewritings which cast a strong light on the circumstances in which they are written. From this point of view, the rewritten Job’s relationship to the pretext’s folktale content can be taken as a measure of any given period’s cultural optimism or pessimism about the human condition. 153

154

ANTHONY SWINDELL

We shall also find that there is a tendency to various sorts of abstraction which take other forms than reversion to the putative original folktale of the pretext. In some cases rewriting invokes folk motifs unknown to the pretext. In this essay we shall treat each successive reworking of the Job pretext as a tableau, reflecting its own particular light on the original. Before embarking on the literary reception-history of the Book of Job in English and Irish literature, we must record that part of what was ‘received’ at the outset clearly included the 1st century B.C.E. Jewish apocryphon which we know as the Testament of Job. This may have formed a sort of subterranean influence on the sense of Job as a culturally optimistic work, one which linked the enjoining of patience with a happy material outcome. In Christian exegesis, ‘hypostatization’ began with the designation of Job as the model of patience in the Epistle of James (James 5:11) and in Gregory the Great’s Moralia. Transmitted through Aelfric’s Homily on the Book of Job, this summary (together with the influence of the Testamentum) lies at the fountain-head of the whole European afterlife of Job as a proverb or paradigm for patience, which is amply present in English and Irish literature. Yet, from Chaucer onwards we find both comic renderings of the text and a tendency to contrast the patient Job with Job the rebel.1 There is also the phenomenon of the use of Job as a forename in Britain.

THE MEDIEVAL JOB Amongst the most condensed literary pictures of Job are the medieval sermons which treat Job in a fairly cardboard way as a typical English franklin or as a model parent, but the English ballad Just Man Jobe is more interesting. Here Job becomes a model of stoical submission. Job as a character becomes the emblem of the See the ‘Clerk’s Tale’ 4.932–34 and the ‘Wife of Bath’s Tale’ 3.433– 36 in Canterbury Tales. Besserman, (1979), pp. 111–133 notes the innovative approach of Chaucer in presenting Griselda in the ‘Clerk’s Tale’ as a ‘better Job’ and in allowing the Wife of Bath to mock her husband as a latter-day Job. 1

JOB IN ENGLISH, WELSH AND IRISH LITERATURE

155

natural processes of rise and decline in human life: Job as Everyman. This is the stoical soliloquy of Job the man who has just lost everything, his health, his family and his prosperity: Should I for them my god blaspheme and his good giftes despise? That will I not, but take my lot, giving his name the praise. They were not mine but for a time I know well it is soe; God gave them me, why should not he again take them me froe?”2

There is just a passing reference by the narrator in the last stanza to Job’s restoration. This gloomily submissive work owes its inspiration to the influence of Sackville’s Mirror for Magistrates (1559), the model for numerous contemporary musings on the changing fortunes of mankind. It provides a very clear example of the complete assimilation of a biblical story to a Renaissance humanist idea. We may class it as a full-blown expression of Job as a figure of pessimism. The more workaday representation of Job as a lesson about the rise and fall in the fortunes of humankind is evident in the ballad which begins, “Come all you worthy Christians…” This is almost certainly one of those ballads which was written after the Reformation to re-inject biblical topics into popular song. The ballad’s optimism is based on the prospect of the soul’s encounter with a just God in the hereafter. In the Johnson version collected in 1812, the Job story becomes a memento mori for Everyman (”Remember you are but men/ Be watchful of your latter end”). Significantly, this ballad , which is emphatically addressed to ‘worthy Christians’ produces the story of Dives and Lazarus as an intertext for Job, relying on the assumption that its hearers belong to Lazarus’ socio-economic group rather than that of Dives, in a

Hyder Rollins: Old English Ballads 1553–1625, (Cambridge, 1920), pp. 209–212. See Lily Campbell 108–110. 2

156

ANTHONY SWINDELL

redirecting of the Job story’s focus on the plight of an initially wealthy man. We all must give a strict account, the great as well as small So recollect my people, God will judge us all.

Although this simple ballad serves mainly to illustrate the persistence of the Job-meme in English popular culture, the occasion of its collecting in its 1904 form is associated with the partnership of Vaughan Williams and Cecil Sharpe. We will return to Vaughan Williams’ pursuit of the topic of Job later. But for the moment we resume the literary reception-history. The ballad collected by Baring-Gould and Cecil Sharp in 1904, is a version of the Johnson broadside ballad, diluting the sense of Job as Everyman and accentuating the Puritanical emphasis on Judgment.3

THE ENGLISH METRICAL LIFE OF JOB There are no surviving English mystery plays about Job, but this deficiency is partly made up by the existence of the English Metrical Life of Job (surviving copy ca. 1473), a work which (like a French play of the period) borrows extensively from the Testamentum. There is the possibility that it had a dramatic context as the poem to accompany a mumming play. Here Job scornfully turns down the offer of physicians, echoing the skeptical medieval attitude to the medical profession, whilst his wife has been assimilated to the cantankerous, shrewish character associated with Noah’s wife. The dialogues about good and evil are more or less excised. A particular feature of this poem is that Job is portrayed as a patron of music. In lines 120–133, minstrels play before him as he sits on his dunghill. Notably there are three musicians, perhaps echoing the music-making of Job’s three daughters after his restoration in the Testamentum. Unable to pay them, Job rewards the musicians with scabs from his body, which immediately turn to gold. As they The manuscripts of these ballads held in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, can be viewed online at http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/ballads/ ballads.htm. 3

JOB IN ENGLISH, WELSH AND IRISH LITERATURE

157

depart, they show their gold to Job’s wife who angrily berates her husband for dissimulating poverty. Now Job receives his wife’s rebuke silently, displaying ‘pacience.’ The motif of mortification of the flesh by shaving off scabs and ulcers is a particular feature of Irish hagiography and the whole episode of the gold and the scabs recurs significantly in an Irish folktale collected in the mid–20th century. (See below.) The anonymous author of the Metrical Life actually tantalizingly refers to an unspecified source for the episode of scabs and the gold: “as sayth the story.” The story is present already in the Black Book of Carmarthen, which may be evidence of early transmission by monastic scribes.4 If we are interested in the dialectic between the patient Job and Job the rebel, we should note that, although patience emerges as the central currency of this version, with Satan attempting to tear Job away from his ‘pacience’ (line 79) and Job clinging tenaciously to his patience, despite his wife’s scorn for it (95), he does have a lapse at one moment cursing his wife (presumably a contamination from her urging of him to ”curse God and die” in the biblical pretext.) for which God rebukes him in line 115. Overall, though, the text offers an optimistic sapiential lesson in the rewards of patience.

THE MORALITY PLAYS Although there is no surviving English mystery play about Job, the morality plays The Castle of Perseverance and Mankind have numerous citations of the Vulgate text of Job and mimic the structure of the pretext in their story of the Everyman figure abandoned by his friends and beset by all manner of temptations to defy God. Mankind (ca. 1470) in particular has its main protagonist turn himself into a placard for the Jobian theme of Memento Mori before he is assailed by his three ‘comforters,’ Nought, New Gyse and Nowadays. The character Mischief even parodies Job’s lament (lines 412–414): “Alas, alas! That ever I was wrought...!” Lawrence This tale, The Old Woman as Troublemaker, 1353 type, must be a descendant of the legend Andrew Breeze discusses in Notes and Queries, (September 1990): 275–278. 4

158

ANTHONY SWINDELL

Besserman observes that the author presents a monochrome Job, the paragon of patience (lines 281–292), his main modification being to emphasize to the audience that Job was “of yowr nature and of yowr fragylte.”

KING LEAR With Shakespeare’s King Lear (1606–1623) the treatment of the Job theme enters a much more complicated and sophisticated phase. Although the play contains only two or three words phrases directly attributable to the Book of Job5, some scholars (notably John Holloway and Stephen Marx) have insisted that it depends on the Job story. In particular Marx (2000) has demonstrated, the play not only handles the central themes of the Job pretext but parallels it in numerous other ways. Both pretext and hypertext slot into a position after the histories in their respective canons (the Bible and Shakespeare’s oeuvre); both locate themselves in a misty pre-history; both survive with textual variants capable of supporting contradictory interpretations; both can be read as finally ambiguous in relation to theodicy. As if to mimic its own doubling of the biblical pretext, King Lear even contains its own doublet, in the shape of story of Gloucester and his son Edmund. Marx makes the case, therefore, for seeing Lear as a countericon to Job, which in Shakespeare’s anthropocentric vision constitutes a ‘reversal.’6 There is evidence that Shakespeare began with idea of Lear as a comedy and only developed it as tragedy as he began Acts 2 and 3. Yet, whilst Marx may be right possibly in seeing Lear as a deliberate reversal of the Job pretext, it might be more fruitful to see it as existing in a sort of counterpoint to the biblical text, a set of variations on Job, shorn of the supernatural framework of the prologue and epilogue. Seen this way, King Lear is certainly a protest-response to the happy ending of the Jobian pretext. Holloway (1961) views the play more darkly as a journey into unremitting horror, in which Job’s patience is justified only by 5 Shaheen 1999 identifies “Thou’llt come no more” in Lear 5.3.308 as an echo of Job 7: 9–10 and “which made me think a man a worm” in Lear 4.1.33 as an amalgamation of Job 17:14, Job 25:6 and possibly Ps. 22:6. 6

See Marx (2000), p.75.

JOB IN ENGLISH, WELSH AND IRISH LITERATURE

159

the prospect that the pattern of natural human obligations must eventually reassert itself. Lear himself is sacrificed to this principle.7 These two critics therefore offer the polarized view of Job/Lear as a dynamic overturning of the pretextual happy ending or as a static trope of desolation. If there is ‘consolation’ here, it is of a purgative kind.

PARADISE REGAINED Within about fifty years of the completion of Lear, we come to a work which pushes the Christian typological treatment of Job to the limit. In Milton’s Paradise Regained (1671) we find the culmination of the typological treatment of Job. Milton’s Job is the Job of classical Christian exegesis: the wrestler, the sinless, perfect hero, overcoming all temptation. In fact, we find here a sort of reverse typology, with Christ modeled on Job, rather than the other way round. The Jobian model is apparent from the outset. Just as in Job 1 the Satan opens the action by his arrival at the divine assembly, so in Paradise Regained he appears at another “assembly,” Christ’s baptism. As in the Book of Job, so here God provokes (the) Satan’s bid to tempt the hero and ratifies Satan’s plan made by the latter in his own council in mid-air. Christ’s temptations in the wilderness are assimilated to Job’s deprivation of worldly goods and comfort, even food. Similarly, there is a second council in heaven to devise further testing of the hero. Satan’s subtle arguments to Christ take the place of Job’s comforters. Satan’s final tactic is to persuade Christ (who is repeatedly given the Jobian epithets “patient,” “calm,” and “unshaken”) that he is no more than an exemplary man like Job. But he has failed to notice or to admit that Christ has already outrun Job, both in not giving vent to any of Job’s despairing outbursts and in declaring his unique, divine mission to defeat satanic violence and death. The fall and destruction of Satan at the end of this “brief epic,” as Milton called it, gives a narrative answer to the ultimate question of the difference between Christ and Job. The enigma of the Satan’s fate in the biblical story of Job is harnessed to lend 7

See Holloway (1961), pp. 85–98.

160

ANTHONY SWINDELL

magnitude to the achievement of the Second Job. Or, we could say, that just as Shakespeare plays off the Jobian pretext to produce the tragedy of Lear, so Milton makes the Job story the vehicle of Christocentric optimism, in this case polemical optimism in the service of a late flowering of Christian typology.

THE SEASONS Jumping another fifty years we come to the poem ‘Winter’ (1726) in James Thomson’s The Seasons (1726–1730), which may be taken as representative of the early 18th century vogue for treating the Book of Job as a platform for the poetry of the Sublime. Here the raw power of Nature, though awesome, is less indifferent to humanity than the natural forces inscribed in Job 38: 12–38. Yet, the biblical pretext supplies the frame of reference. At the poem’s conclusion, the ‘vainly wise’ and ‘blind presumptuous’ are censured for questioning Nature’s Wisdom. Although “the good man’s share/In life was gall and bitterness of soul” (lines 1044–1045), nevertheless “The storms of wintry time will quickly pass, / And one unbounded Spring encircle all.” (Lines 1068–1069)8 As James May remarks: “Of all the Old Testament books, Job had a special appeal to an age that looked askance at the Mosaic Law and the Old Covenant yet still believed the oldest works partook of the excellence of primitive man.”9 We could describe Thomson’s treatment of our theme therefore as ‘natural cycle’ optimism.

THE EPISTLE TO BATHURST Pope’s Epistle to Bathurst (1733) is a parody on Job, whom the Devil tests with riches instead of poverty. This Job however is named ‘Sir Balaam,’ the change in the name of the main protagonist signaling an ‘unfaithful’ hypertext, in Genette’s terminology. Although the pretext is explicitly referred to (the Devil “longed to tempt him like good Job of old”), it is distanced both by Job’s name-change and by the statement that Satan has learnt from his previous encounter with Job: 8 9

Oxford edition, p. 225. James May (1988), p. 152.

JOB IN ENGLISH, WELSH AND IRISH LITERATURE

161

But Satan now is wiser than of yore, And tempts by making rich, not poor.

The work is, of course, primarily a satire on the financial world of Pope’s time, on insider trading and the South Sea Bubble. Yet, confining our purview to its status as a reworking of the biblical pretext, we find that name-changing is about more than distancing the rewriting from the pretext, since for Pope’s world it also signified a change in status. The upwardly mobile Sir Balaam, one of the nations’s false prophets, improves his status by being dubbed ‘Director,’ though this is just another instance of the Devil seizing his soul in this conflation of a contorted Job story with that of Faust. The juxtaposition of Job and Balaam as Job and anti-Job had a strong antecedent history in commentaries, as Wasserman outlines10 Pope develops the inversion by having Satan use a whirlwind not to destroy Sir Balaam’s material prosperity but to increase it, since the whirlwind kills Balaam’s father, leaving him as heir, and also by having Sir Balaam follow his wife’s evil advice, which is here transmuted from “curse God and die” to “live like yourself,” meaning surrender to material craving. Pope at the same time unveils the Jupiter of the Jupiter-Danaë myth as the Prince of the Air, Satan. Sir Balaam, alias Sir John Blunt, despite his earlier assiduity in church-attending, falls victim to his own avarice and is too busy in the counting-house to attend worship, sending instead his wife and family. When his wife catches cold and dies after the Christmas service, he marries a nymph who makes him a cuckold. Next, his son dissipates his life in drinking, whoring and fighting, dying in a duel, and Sir Balaam himself ends by being hanged after being impeached in Parliament for taking a bribe from France. Just as the Satan of the Metrical Life converted Job’s scabs into gold, so this debased Job operates in the shadowy world in which the newly-introduced paper money represents gold which may or may not be present in the nation’s coffers. Pope is alert to the nuances of the term ‘worth’ in relation to the moral and financial standing of an individual and it, of course, with death that the true 10

Wasserman, 1960, pp. 45–50.

162

ANTHONY SWINDELL

‘worth’ of any individual is fully displayed. It was common at the time, according to James Engell, for the Opposition to refer to Walpole as “the great Satan or tempter.”11 However, it was Walpole who was the severest critic of the Bill to allow the South Sea Company to purchase the national debt. Pope’s work is profoundly scathing about the proto-capitalism of the poet’s day and, in that sense, culturally pessimistic. But, by constructing Sir Balaam as an anti-Job, it also implies that a more hopeful ontology is possible. Our next example is intensely hopeful, at least outwardly.

THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD Oliver Goldsmith’s novel The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) is an extended burlesque on the Job pretext, playing on the themes of the Wheel of Fortune and of comfort. Here Job is the narrator himself, the eponymous Vicar of Wakefield, a feckless but generous Anglican clergyman, given to pontificating on virtuous behavior. The fortunes of his family nosedive when it is discovered that his investments have been rifled by the merchant with whom they were entrusted, who has now fled. Because he had covenanted the income from the living of the fictive village of Wakefield to the poor, he is now compelled to take another parish, a much poorer one and to become a tenant farmer. As the family’s social aspirations greatly exceed their financial means, they are soon led astray by the Squire Thornhill, who has designs on the two daughters. The ensuing misfortunes suffered by the Vicar’s family include the seduction of the first daughter Olivia, being duped out of the proceeds of the sale of two horses, the family home being burnt to the ground, the imprisonment of the Vicar himself and of his son, and the abduction of the second daughter and apparent death in destitution of the first. However, the comedic structure asserts itself and Fortune’s Wheel turns in the closing chapters. The Vicar recovers most of his lost investments, Olivia turns out to be still alive, Sophia is married to her greatest love, Burchell (in reality the virtuous Sir William 11

James Engell (1988), p. 437.

JOB IN ENGLISH, WELSH AND IRISH LITERATURE

163

Thornhill.) and Olivia’s marriage to Squire Thornhill turns out not to be the sham he had planned. Amongst the instabilities of the text are the question of the reliability of the first-person narrator and the fact that he is only ‘Vicar of Wakefield’ for the short first part of the narrative. On the first page the narrator professes “the veracity of the historian” in asserting the quality of the family’s gooseberry wine in a play upon the fictive/fictional nature of the Job tale. (9) The presence of the pretext is regularly signaled, the first occasion being when it is given by the narrator to his eldest son, as part of his meager patrimony, for reading material on his journey to seek employment in London: “it will be your comfort on the way....” (16) There is a steady escalation in the misfortunes of the Vicar’s family, starting off with such a trivial ‘mortification’ as the failure of the straps on the wife’s pillion. For those disturbed by the pretext’s apparently nonchalant supply of a second wife for Job, the Job of the novel, now named as ‘Dr Primrose,’ is a strict proponent of the principle of monogamy, which he interprets as marriage to only one partner for ever. He has written treatises on the subject, condemning ‘deuterogamy.’ By contrast, Dr Primrose’s antagonist, Squire Thornhill, is the reverse of a monogamist. If the biblical Job is concerned with the relationship of righteousness to suffering, the novel seems pre-occupied with the battle between prudence and passion. (e.g., 75c) Whilst the biblical Job awaits vindication or rescue by the deity, Dr. Primrose, despite his piety, looks forward to the turn of Fortune’s wheel (92). Yet, in casuistry he is an absolutist, believing that even a promise made under extreme duress should be honored. (110) Although Primrose does eventually exclaim against his situation (though not against God)12, he seems for much of the novel to share the complacency of the biblical Elihu), as when he takes ”every opportunity...to observe how much kinder nature was to us, than we to each other....” (111) More concerned with the rectitude of human behavior than divine action, his guiding principle is that “the kindness of heaven is promised to the penitent.” (114) Even when facing complete humiliation by the 142. The curses he invokes are against the man he takes to be the murderer of his children. 12

164

ANTHONY SWINDELL

Squire, Primrose looks to his own heart to vindicate its dignity. (121) Satan makes a late appearance in the narrative when Primrose, in prison for his debts, preaches to his fellow inmates on not “seeking comfort from the one who has already betrayed you.” (129) Here, once again, the word ‘comfort’ makes its appearance. The narrator’s sapiential message eventually extends to a diatribe on the advantages of the ‘wretched’ over the rich, since, when they enjoy “endless felicity in the hereafter” (146), they will enjoy the special consolation of having known such adversity in this world. The ultimate comfort for the virtuous will come with the eternal ‘bliss’ of heaven. (147) Yet, for the narrator and his family it is the restoration of their earthly fortunes which brings palpable comfort. The comedic ending therefore seems to contradict Primrose’s expatiations on other-worldly consolation, as does his remark to his son towards the end of the text (151) to the effect that, whilst (according to Seneca) the greatest thing in the world is a good man struggling with adversity, there is a still greater one: “the good man that comes to relieve it.” The latter observation seems to subjugate this rewritten-Job story to that of the Good Samaritan, here Mr. Burchell. The novel’s final sentence seems to reinforce the this-worldly message, as well as the sense that the whole narrative has been the subjective account of the first-person narrator: “It now only remained that my gratitude in good fortune should exceed my former submission in adversity.” This rumbustious, first-person view of the narrative is therefore allowed the last word, in a novel which outwardly belongs to the broader, bourgeois world of optimism associated with the rise of the novel in England. Yet Goldsmith, as chronicler of the arrival of the new bourgeois values, also looked back to the world before economic individualism. Watt, in The Rise of the Novel, takes Goldsmith as an example of rearguard resistance to the new order, in which the horizons of the human subject are constrained by “the bonds of wealth and law, which ‘force unwilling awe.”13 One could 13

Goldsmith: The Traveller, ll. 351–352, quoted in Watt (1963), p. 67.

JOB IN ENGLISH, WELSH AND IRISH LITERATURE

165

see The Vicar of Wakefield, therefore, as inheriting the mantle of The Epistle to Bathhurst. For the purposes of this essay, I should like to argue that the significance of The Vicar of Wakefield in reception-history lies in the three-way dialogue it offers between Goldsmith’s representation of the new bourgeois economic values, Goldsmith’s own defense of natural human familial values and the pretext-as-received. It also throws the theological concerns of the pretext into sharp relief against the sapiential wisdom of a sophisticated 18th century writer and his world. We turn now to another form of revolt, this time the Romantic revolt against the whole Judaeo-Christian narrative, in the writings of Percy Bysshe Shelley, who had abundant recourse to the ‘Job-meme.’14

SHELLEY AND JOB The Job theme crops up in various parts of Shelley’s poetry, but probably most significant is Prometheus Unbound (1820) Here the plot is reconfigured so that Prometheus curses the malignity of Jupiter at an early stage (in words ascribed to the Phantasm) and withdraws his curse (in what Carl Jung would call an ‘adjusted reaction’) already a few lines later: ‘‘It doth repent me: words are quick in vain.’ (Nonesuch edition, 447) But, sticking to his guns in defying the omnipotent Jupiter, Prometheus is rescued by the love of Asia, whose mental and spiritual journey towards reunion with Prometheus takes up the bulk of this ‘psychodrama.’ It is “love’s patient power” (Nonesuch edition, 517) in a this-worldly act of salvation which triumphs over the blind necessity driven by the Demogorgon. Commentators have drawn attention to the Cuverian concept of the catastrophic history of the planet and of the human race as a background to Shelley’s vision. Shelley departs from contemporary Romantic notions of human progress as a long and gradual journey by adopting what M. H. Abrams describes as

14

A term I borrow from Professor Hugh Pyper’s essay on Job.

166

ANTHONY SWINDELL

“a reversion to the Biblical design of history as a sudden, right-angled breakthrough from misery to felicity.”15

BLAKE’S JOB If Milton’s Paradise Regained represented the tradition taken to typological extremes, then Blake’s approach to the Job story was a deliberate confrontation with tradition. Blake’s Illustrations to the Book of Job was published in 1826, though the first sketches date back over more than forty years earlier. Despite the title, the work is less a series of illustrations than (as Northrop Frye observed) an independent art-form. Comment is made most overtly by quotation, but also, of course, by the selection of scenes for illustration. Basic to Blake’s conception of Job is his belief in the imagination as the key to human liberation and his idea that all the things of this world, including moral good as much as moral evil, are the domain of Satan. Blake’s Job is not perfect and upright, as in the biblical pretext, but blind enough to think himself so and Blake’s work is the presentation of a psychomachia in which Job discovers spiritual reality. (Vaughan Williams in his 1930 ballet was to add the dimensions of music and dance to this psychomachia, again reviving the English association of Job with music.) In the opening scene he appears prosperous and contented, surrounded by his family at prayer. But the reader can see that much is amiss. The sun is setting behind a gothic cathedral. Musical instruments hang unused. The signs of the Zodiac are in the wrong order. In the second illustration, God (created in Job’s image) wearily addresses a youthful, vigorous Satan, “Hast thou considered my servant Job?” Below, Job sits with his family, but he looks away from them and it can be seen that they are already estranged by “the letter that killeth.” In the third scene Satan smites Job’s sons, and in the fourth we see Job’s reaction to the news of this tragedy, brought by a messenger. Job has altered his posture to cope with the horrors that have come upon him. But he has not yet been forced into radical self-examination. 15

M. H. Abrams (1973), p. 300.

JOB IN ENGLISH, WELSH AND IRISH LITERATURE

167

The fifth illustration indicates the nature of Job’s spiritual sickness. It is headed by the quotation from Job 30:25: “Did I not weep for him who was in trouble? Was not my soul afflicted for the poor?” Satan is seen making his second sortie from heaven even as Job gives alms to the poor, but with his left hand. It is clear that Job’s charity is of a mechanical, Pharisaic kind. This is the reason for his ordeal. So the trials continue. Satan smites Job with boils (6) and the comforters arrive to express their moral judgment on Job and to “correct” his theology (7–10.) But then (11) we find in the grip of a horrific nightmare; he perceives that the God he has created in his own image is actually Satan, who is now about to bind him with the chain of the moral law, whilst the comforters are revealed in their true light as demons. Job is still far from knowing the true God, but his words, written in the lower border, show that his faith remains intact:”I know that my redeemer liveth.” The remaining illustrations represent the new and true vision of reality to which Job is brought by his experience. The creation is depicted (14) with God at the centre, flanked by Apollo (the sun) and Diana (the moon), the heavenly sources of light. Angels occupy the upper part of the picture, whilst below God we see Job, his wife and the three friends kneeling in prayer. Job is now humbled and set in a right perspective to the grandeur of creation, just as in the next illustration (15) Behemoth and Leviathan are set clearly within the control of God’s providence. In illustration 16 we see the fall of Satan, for which Blake finds warrant in the words of Elihu in Job 36:17 (“Thou has fulfilled the judgement of the wicked.”), though it seems that the underlying influence is Milton’s very different work. Next comes the Vision of God granted to Job and his wife (17), in which Job gains inner vision. Then, Job makes his acceptable sacrifice (18), with his arms in a cruciform position, suggesting his willingness to sacrifice himself even for the friends who have proved to be his enemies. Next, (19) Job is seen accepting charity in an attitude of humility. Then, in the penultimate scene, Job tells his three daughters the story of his life (20), sitting in front of a set of panels depicting his very story: Job can now see his own experience objectively. Finally, Blake depicts Job’s restoration (21) in a scene which is the direct counterpart of the first illustration. But important differences emphasize the fact that this is not a return to the

168

ANTHONY SWINDELL

beginning. Now, instead of praying pietistically, Job and his family are making music, using their creative imaginations. Now the rising sun behind Job and the setting moon behind his wife symbolize the recreation of human relationships. Now the sheep and dog at their feet are awake instead of asleep, whilst the lamb and bullock of the lower border illustration have exchanged positions and the altar of sacrifice bears a new inscription, “In burnt offering thou hast no pleasure.” The gothic cathedral has disappeared along with the external piety of the first scene. Job has discovered the inner light of imaginative truth. Blake’s work constitutes an upheaval in the reception-history of the Job story, both in its refusal of conventionally edifying readings and in its use of a hybrid art-form to reframe the extracted text. By transferring the drama from the heavenly courts to the inner reaches of Job’s soul, Blake speaks to an age on the verge of both a breakdown in the sense of God as an objective force in the universe and at the same time increasingly alert to the depths and complexities of the human mind. Measured in terms of our terms of cultural optimism and pessimism, Blake’s Illustrations mark a turn towards a sort of optimism based on subjectivity. The drama here is static in the sense that it is a drama of inner turmoil. The great symbolic shift is from the depiction of Job and his family with the discarded musical instruments of Illustration I to Illustration XXI, where Job and his restored family are at last playing the instruments.

BLEAK HOUSE Dickens’s Bleak House (1853) continued the Victorian absorption with the Book of Job, but refracting its dialogue between the romance of the folk-tale framework and the elegiac complaints against suffering in a complex way, which Janet Larson convincingly plots. Larson also notes the interweaving of the Job and Esther narratives in this novel, but without relating this to the antecedent literary and exegetical linking of these two biblical texts (see Meyer.) Although inheriting some of the sanguine characteristics of the English novel-tradition, Bleak House also portrays a darker world in which happy endings are less a source of moral encouragement than a sort of ironic counterpoint to the deeper lessons about the human journey through suffering (and the dispelling of illusions) which the narrative embodies.

JOB IN ENGLISH, WELSH AND IRISH LITERATURE

169

The entire narrative about the legal case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce draws on the sense of the Book of Job as a paradigm of prolonged suffering, with no end in sight. As Esther’s guardian remarks: It is a terrible misfortune, little woman, to be ever drawn within the influences of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. I know none greater.16

Yet, it is John Jarndyce himself who, in the novel’s frame-plot, plays the role of deus ex machina to succour Richard and Ada, to take in Esther as an orphan, and finally to help Ada when the feckless Richard dies and to provide a house for Esther and Dr. Woodcourt. Esther’s particular journey is one from a birth blighted by illegitimacy through various forms of purgation and forms of (sometimes self-indulgent) despair towards the point where she reaches a mature recognition of her own community with the rest of suffering humanity. Esther’s malevolent godmother, Miss Barbary, tries to imbue her with a sense of her own worthlessness as a child born out of wedlock, in a narratological expansion of the texts in which Job is moved to curse his own birth (Job 3:3, 5:7) and, indeed, Esther does finally identify fully with the text at the point where she discovers the truth that Lady Dedlock is her mother. But in the end her psychological maturation develops in resistance to the selfabnegation which such identification with Job carries. Or, as Janet Larson puts it, Esther “forces closure on Job.” There are numerous Joban allusions in the novel’s various sub-plots, from characters who exhibit the qualities of patient sufferer or rebellious victim to those who bring false comfort to others (like the devious lawyer who advises Richard). There is also the character Jobling, a sort of diminished Job. At one point even the detective, Mr. Bucket, seems to parody the happy outcome of the biblical pretext:

16

Bleak House, p. 560 (Penguin edition.)

170

ANTHONY SWINDELL It may be a long job,’ he observed; ‘but so that it ends well, never mind, miss.17

In sum, the biblical Book of Job provides a comedic plot for the novel’s external narrative and a diction of graveur for the inner narrative of Esther Summerson, as well as a variety of other textual allusions, some of them mediated through or mixed with other literary references, as when lines from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (“She sat like patience on a monument/Smiling at grief”) are invoked near the end18 to describe the outcome of the case in Chancery.

THE IRISH FOLKTALE The Irish Job-folktale has already been mentioned in connection with its bearing on the English Metrical Life. But it may be useful to position it at this point in our sequential narrative, since it was actually collected in its recorded form around 1950.19 A poor man loses by death all his children and his body is afflicted by sores. (N. 252.) One day, while his wife is out in search of milk, the Devil calls, in the guise of a beggar-man (G. 303.3.1). On being told that there is nothing in the house to give him, the beggar-man (K. 1817.1) asks for some of the sores, and his request is granted. He leaves the house and the sores change to gold (D. 1454.6) which he shows to the wife. Angry with her husband, she spills the milk into a river and scolds her husband for deceiving her. He tells her what has happened, sends her back to the river, and there she finds the milk still floating on top of the water. From that day forth, she obtains milk from the river.

O’ Héalaí places this tale within the context of stories about the devil disrupting marital harmony. As it stands, it seems to take the biblical story for granted, adding an elliptical continuation which adds nothing to the sense of the pretext but rather uses it to bolster an extraneous yarn. However, one could say that the Bleak House, p. 868. Bleak House, p. 975. 19 See O’Suillebeathain 1952, pp. 315–316. 17 18

JOB IN ENGLISH, WELSH AND IRISH LITERATURE

171

primary narrative is a general warning about being aware of the devil, of which the Job story becomes an illustration. This folktale seems to be an attenuated version of the episode in the English Metrical Life of Job and in a French mystery play (see Meyer) in which the Devil converts Job’s scabs into gold, though the milk in the river must be an invasion from an independent folkloric motif. (The early version in the Black Book of Carmarthen is more benign and presents God as the agent who turned the scabs into gold to support Job in his attempt to pay his debt to the musicians. The miracle in this instance seems to be pre-echo of the miracle of Job’s final restoration.20) The interest of the collected Irish tale is twofold. Firstly, as evidence of the ‘lost’ tale mentioned in the English Metrical Life. Secondly, as a subjugation of the Job story to the terms of a folkloric lesson about domestic strife.

THE UNDYING FIRE H. G. Wells’ Undying Fire (1912) is one of two major ‘modern dress’ retellings of the 20th century. Although a generally neglected part of his output, it was esteemed quite highly by its author. I have discussed this novel in detail elsewhere21, so I will not go over the same ground now, except to say that, considering the writer’s later outlook, this is an optimistic, even pro-theological reworking which reinforces the happy-ending of the pretext’s epilogue and plays ironically on the medical overtones of ‘Job the patient.’ Written before the horrors of WWI, it could be described as the final fling of Victorian trust in progress.

DUBLINERS Two of Ireland’s greatest writers of the 20th century, James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, seem to have been greatly pre-occupied with the Job story. Joyce even took to signing himself ‘James Job’ in his correspondence22 and reworked the pretext most obviously in the See Andrew... Notes & Queries... See Swindell 2009, pp. 25–29, 122, 261. 22 See Peterson and Cohn, pp. 436–439. 20 21

172

ANTHONY SWINDELL

short story ‘Grace’ in Dubliners (1914). (The parallels between ‘Grace’ and the biblical pretext have been mapped out in an article by Robert Gates.23) Here the character Kernan is the victim of a plot by his so-called friends, Power, Cunningham and M’Coy, which is intended to deliver him, a determined Protestant, into the clutches of the urbane Jesuit spiritual adviser of businessmen, Fr. Purdy. The means is a fall engineered in his local pub, after Kernan has been on one of his periodic binges. ‘God’ here is a distant figure, hidden behind the recesses of popular Catholicism, which has become a rather muddled topic in the conversation of the three friends and the final ‘comforter,’ Mr. Fogarty. Mrs. Kernan is an archetypal, scalding Job’s wife, who seems to be party to the plot. The theology of Messrs. Cunningham and M’Coy revolves around a garbled history of the Papacy, culminating in a comic account of the promulgation of papal infallibility under Pope Pius IX at the First Vatican Council in 1870. Although part of the comforter’s conversation is that “all’s well that ends well” (158), the restitution of Kernan’s fortunes seems to be far-off. Perhaps, with his showy but battered silk hat, this teasalesman had never been particularly prosperous. As it is, the story ends with Fr. Purdon’s stock sermon for businessmen which may be thought to parody the misfit between Job’s complaint and the divine speeches of the pretext. The lesson offered by the preacher is that Jesus Christ “was not a hard taskmaster” (on the basis of the text, Luke 16:8–9) and that it behooves Kernan and his like to put their accounts straight whilst they are alive. Like Joyce’s other main characters, Kernan is an anti-hero in a world of dismantled grandeur(s). His identity blurred in the anonymity of Dublin city life, he and those around him cling to the trappings of religious certainties which stem from another age. What was once a wager between God and Satan has descended into a prank contrived by business associates and Job’s noble challenge to theodicy has been reduced to Tom Kernan’s shrugging off of his fall down the pub steps: (‘“Sha’s nothing,” said the injured man.’24) 23 24

Robert A. Gates: “Tom Kernan and Job,” 1982. Page 150 and again page 151.

JOB IN ENGLISH, WELSH AND IRISH LITERATURE

173

MURPHY Samuel Beckett was said by the dramatist Ionesco to be in himself a Job figure.25 Beckett referred to texts from the biblical Book of Job throughout his writings, but Murphy (1938) is probably the most complete assault on the pretext. Here the central conceit is that Murphy is on a quest to find ‘a job,’ after being pressurized out of his life of indolence and apathy by his girlfriend, Celia. If Joyce’s Kernan lived in a world of debased ontologies, Murphy is born into a world from which all the metaphysical signposts have long since been removed and the Cartesian dualism of body and mind is the main target of mockery. Despite this, biblical allusions (especially to the Joban pretext) are quite plentiful. Taking its cue from Blake’s illustrations, the novel presents the main protagonist’s friends as aspects of his own persona. With Murphy ‘on the jobpath,’26 it is rumored among members of ‘the Blake league’ that Bildad the Shuhite is roaming London in a green suit: “But what is Bildad but a fragment of Job, as Zophar and the others are fragments of Job.” He climbs a steep hill to sit on a clod of English earth, like Job mounting his dunghill.27 The pathetic apotheosis of his life comes when he reaches a pub in West Brompton which “had no need of sun, neither of moon, to shine upon it.”28 There is a conversation with Celia in which Murphy claims that the finding of a job will be the end of him, as he ascribes to Celia the view that “there will be more joy in heaven over Murphy finding a job than over a million leather-bums that never had anything else.”29 In an inversion of the pretext, Murphy does not live a long life but dies in a fire which consumes him as he rocks in his favorite rocking chair in his garret. The coroner’s ‘unromantic’ verdict is death by misadventure and, when Celia identifies the body, Murphy’s birthmark becomes his ‘death mark.’ The final part of the novel includes a description of the cremation of Murphy’s body Ackerley and Gontarski 2004, p. 283. Murphy, p. 46. 27 Murphy, p. 51. 28 Murphy, p. 76. 29 Murphy, p. 87. 25 26

174

ANTHONY SWINDELL

and the disposal of his ashes in a sort of caricature of Job’s response to God in Job 42 (“I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees thee; therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.”).30 In accordance with Murphy’s will, the ashes are taken to the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, though not (as the will specifies) flushed down the lavatory, but rather they are distributed across the floor of the saloon bar, “to be swept away with the sand, the beer, the butts, the glass, the matches, the spits, the vomit,” in what may be a Beckettian nod to the fall of Joyce’s Kernan. Whereas the pretext ends with Job’s death after living another one hundred and forty years, “an old man, full of years,” the novel moves on from Murphy’s sordid demise to Celia wheeling old Kelly out to fly his kite. (Ackerley has shown that references to Job are scattered throughout Beckett’s oeuvre.31) We turn now to an author just as exercised by the story of Job, but more sympathetic than Beckett to orthodox theism.

THE COMFORTERS Muriel Spark’s interest in Job occupied much of her writing career. She was at work on a book on Job in 1953, which never came to fruition. Her novel, The Comforters 1957 became the vehicle for the resolution of her own subsequent psychological breakdown, with its inbuilt equivocation over whether the main protagonist, Caroline, was the narrator or whether the narrator was another person, even possibly God. Spark also wrote an article about Jung’s Answer to Job at about this time, in which she challenged Jung’s anthropomorphic approach to God as part of the subconscious. Her view was that the biblical text defied such anthropomorphism, insisting on the mystery of the godhead. She interpreted the happy ending of the pretext as something taken ironically by Job himself Job 42:5–6. Ackerley 1999, pp. 56 (All That Fall), 64, 69 (Dream), 72, 73 (Echo’s Bones), 78 (The Expelled), 79 (Fizzles), 83, 84, 85 (How It Is), 85, 86 (Ill Seen Ill Said), 87 (Lessness), 88 (The Lost Ones), 90 (Malone Dies), 96, 97 (Molloy), 99, 100 **, 102** (Murphy), 106 (Text), 108, 109, 110–114 (The Unnamable), 116 (Waiting for Godot), 119 (Watt), 123 (What a Misfortune). 30 31

JOB IN ENGLISH, WELSH AND IRISH LITERATURE

175

in his new wisdom. It was precisely the epilogue which Jung had ignored in his interpretation, thereby missing out on the “anagogical humour which transcends irony, and which is infinitely mysterious.”32 Spark, writing to her publisher in 1955, identified closely with the sufferings of Job, who (like her) fought a successful battle against mental and spiritual breakdown. The biblical story informed her short story, ‘The Portobello Road,’ and the novels Robinson and In the Driver’s Seat and Reality and Dreams, as well as The Comforters and The Only Problem, but, taking Genette’s prescription for a formal reworking, that it names the pretext in its title, we will regard these last-named two novels as Spark’s most significant treatments of the biblical story. In The Comforters, the chief borrowings from the pretext are the eponymous comforters and the plot-structure. In the novel the sufferings are those of Caroline and the comforters take the shape of Laurence, the Baron and Georgina Hogg, who are all preoccupied with their own private obsessions: L with the superficial smuggling plot; the Baron with his ideas about black magic/Satanism; and Georgina with her crude notions of guidance by the Virgin Mary. The lesson of this subversive novel is finally delivered by the plot-structure, which ironically suggests that it is surrender to the apparently pre-determined course of events (represented by the phantom typewriter) which brings about liberation. Caroline has to discover that (as Ruth Whittaker puts it) “her faith does not nullify the fact of evil.” (Whittaker 1982, 92) The Comforters is ontologically optimistic in the sense that it insists ultimately on the Providential ordering of reality. But at the same time, as a novel radically subversive of literary conventions, it defies the folktale ending of the pretext.

THE ONLY PROBLEM By the time Muriel Spark wrote her novel The Only Problem (1984), the surface-world at least had moved on. Now terrorism was a feature of the European mainland and at the same time sophisticated Europeans lived both with a sense of ironic 32

Muriel Spark, CEN, 15th April 1955.

176

ANTHONY SWINDELL

detachment from the stories of the Bible and with a sort of aesthetic faith in art. Spark brought these things together in her novel about the rich dilettante Harvey Gotham, who is conducting researches into the meaning of the painting of “Job and His Wife” by Georges de La Tour, a painting which is itself at an aesthetic distance from its subject-matter. Harvey Gotham gradually becomes Job; definitively so when, after a terrorist incident in the local town, he discovers that his wife Effie is not only the person in the police morgue but has been a member of the terrorist-group. The novelist herself was much exercised by the question of the “happy ending” to the biblical pretext and this is transmitted in the novel by the ambiguity of the ending, with the millionaire married now to Effie’s difficult sister, Ruth, and with no mention of restoration for the anonymous widow of the unfortunate policeman shot in the terrorist-raid. The Only Problem treats the biblical story both as an aesthetic object (in the form of the de la Tour painting) and as a dynamic destination. Rather, as in The Comforters, the story allows itself to be commodified, yet nevertheless operates as a transcendent force.

JOB DAVIES R. S. Thomas’s poem ‘Lore’ is a reminder of the use of Job as a forename. Here, the subject is Job Davies, an eighty-five year old farmer, whose resemblance to his biblical namesake lies in his refusal to be thwarted by adversity. He laughs in the face of the ferocious assault of wind and rain, asking “What’s living but courage?” Eschewing the use of machinery, Job’s advice, finally, is “Live large, man, and dream small.” The poem is a vignette of Job as an emblem of stoical fortitude, but also a representation of “the whole life lived” as an alternative to and as a resistance to abstraction. (In Tares, 1961)33 If we had included American literature in our survey, we might have found in R.S. Thomas’ poem an echo of the hard-bitten existentialist minimalism of Archibald MacLeish’s play J. B. But confining ourselves to the British and Irish tradition, we could say 33

Reprinted in R. S. Thomas 1993, p. 114.

JOB IN ENGLISH, WELSH AND IRISH LITERATURE

177

that the surface-stoicism of this poem is overridden by a vision of man as organically part of the natural world in which he works, reminding us of the Thomson poem. The laconic figure of Job Davies shrugs off his harsh environment, knowing that life itself is the basic task. It is dreams which hinder life.

FAMINE AND GOOD TO BE GOD Serious literature of the years since ‘Lore’ has produced some very troubled versions of Job. If the entire output of the Irish playwright Tom Murphy is a response to that author’s reading of the Book of Job, then the result is a desperately bleak dramatic world in which the main characters are set in an antagonistic relationship to the drift of the biblical pretext. To take one example, in Famine (1968), John Connor ends up calling to his family and friends, in spite of the fact that they have nearly all died or emigrated, in a reversal of Job’s restoration. This Job is patient beyond all sense. Waiting for an improvement which never comes, he ends by killing his own starving wife and son to put them out of their misery.34 Here stubbornness has replaced patience. With Tibor Fischer’s novel, Good to be God (2008), there is a sort of descent into mockery in which the main protagonist is a man, “down on his luck,” who decides to exploit the idea that “religion never has to deliver.” The central plot concerns the efforts of Tyndale Corbett to ingratiate himself with the leadership of “The Church of the Heavily Armed Christ” in the fiercely competitive world of Miami churches, his aim being to become God. The nearest he approaches “omniscience” is when he tries to record the telephone conversations of the church’s ex-marine Hierophant. A later strand of the narrative has Tyndale trying to convince the press that he has been resurrected after faking his own death with the help of a funeral director, but this is another of his failures. The final happy Near the end the character Dan, whose own wife has died of starvation, concludes: “As Jesus was noble and denied has long since been repaying the doors closed to him in Bethlehem!” (88–89) This passage may echo the strong Irish folkloric interest in the question of the denial of hospitality to the infant Christ and the Virgin Mary. 34

178

ANTHONY SWINDELL

outcome occurs thanks to the incursion of unexpected good luck. His girlfriend is left a ranch in the estate of a cripple whom she has nursed. Good luck is the key to human fulfillment.35 A riposte to this cynical view of life might draw attention to the artificiality of the novel’s own particular happy ending and at least one critic has accused Fischer of failing “to deliver.”36 However, flawed as it may be, Good to be God does illustrate the structural compulsions of the narrative happy ending in the story of (in this case) a rather unattractive character, down on his luck. As a comedy, this novel is optimistic about the opportunities for ‘luck,’ though, as a starkly antitheistic work, it portrays the vacuum left by its own worldview. Without subscribing to the once-popular ‘barometer’ theological view of literature, we may conclude that the afterlife of the Job story in English and Irish literature does demonstrate the adaptability of the pretext as a foil for both optimistic and pessimistic depictions of the human situation, from the English Metrical Life to The Vicar of Wakefield and from the early stoical ballad Just Man Jobe to Beckett’s novel Murphy or plays of Tom Murphy. Perhaps the most telling reworkings are those, such as Dickens’s Bleak House which hint at a dialectic between sanguinity and gloom, or the two novels of Muriel Spark, where the biblical story is both reworked and yet remains separate as a transcendent referent, reminding us of Harold Fisch’s insistence that the biblical story, even when reworked, still remains available as itself. On a broader level, the literary reception-history displays a movement from a tendency towards premature hermeneutical closure (Job the model of patience) in the early period to a sense of the text’s indeterminacy in the modern period, a movement from subjection to an overriding master-narrative to the rejection of master-narratives. Yet, it is also true that modern Jobs tend to be ‘...joining the God-squad is about being convincing when you say “it will be all right” in reply to the question, “do you think it will be all right?” Religion never has to deliver, it only has to promise to deliver. (Good to be God, p. 29.) 36 Tom Adair, review in The Scotsman, 8th August 2008. Source: http://news.scotsman.com/reviews?articleid=4364761. 35

JOB IN ENGLISH, WELSH AND IRISH LITERATURE

179

sultry figures, for whom the happy ending of the pretext is at best a far-distant motif. Either the happy ending becomes a trope of protest, satirical or even theological, or it is ignored in favor of a sojourn in the imaginative space of Jobian gloom. Has pessimism triumphed over optimism in the representation of Job as an ontological paradigm in English, Welsh and Irish literature? There is clearly an accidental element to the chronological sequence in which works of literature are published and it would be unfortunate to allow a trivialization of the Job story to have the last word, when (for all we know) more weighty works may appear again any time. Yet, on the evidence we have seen, Job represents in literature nearly always a surge of sobriety, a counterweight to all those tropes which denote the celebration of sensuality. In the modern period the rewriting of Job seems to raise the most troubling questions about the reality of the divine. At the same time, as a challenge to the distractions of consumerist hedonism, the rewriting (when it occurs) is a sort of epiphenomenon suggesting that humanity is unable to jettison the God-question. Whilst it also seems to have a consolatory quality as a literary resource, a source (as Janet Larson says of its presence in Dickens’ Bleak House) of de profundis poetry, the prime attraction of the Job-pretext for writers in the modern period, beginning with Pope, seems to be the trope of cognitive revolt. Walter Kaufmann wrote that “the only theism worthy of our respect believes in God not because of the way the world is made but in spite of that.”37 As a cry in the night, retellings such as those of Beckett and Tom Murphy align the Job story with contemporary human suffering, whilst those of Muriel Spark and R. S. Thomas go further, hinting at the transcendent in spite of everything.

Walter Kaufman: “An Uncanny World,” in Nahum N. Glatzer (ed.), The Dimensions of Job, (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), p. 244. 37

180

ANTHONY SWINDELL

BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Anonymous. ‘Mankind,’ in English Moral Interludes ed. Glynne Wickham, pp. 1–35. London: Dent, 1976. Beckett, Samuel. Murphy. London: Faber and Faber, 2009 [1938]. Charlesworth, James H. The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments. London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1983. Fischer, Tibor. Good to be God. London: Alma Books, 2008. Goldsmith, Oliver. The Vicar of Wakefield. ed. Arthur Friedman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2nd ed., 2006. Joyce, James. Dubliners. ed. Terence Brown. London: Penguin, 2000 [1992]. Milton, John. Poetical Works. ed. Douglas Bush. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966. Murphy, Thomas. Plays, Vols., 1,2,3. London: Methuen, 1993 [1992]. Pope, Alexander. Of the Use of Riches. London: Lawton Gilliver, 1732 [British Library, 2011]. Shelley, P. B. Selected Poetry, Prose and Letters. ed. A. S. B. Glover. London: The Nonesuch Press, 1951. Spark, Muriel. The Comforters. London: Virago, 2009 [1957]. Thomas, R. S. Collected Poems 1945–1990. (London: Phoenix, 2000. Thomson, James. Poetical Works. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1908 [1971]. Secondary Abrams, W. H. Natural Supernaturalism. New York: W. W. Norton, 1973. Ackerley, C. J. and S. E. Gontarski. The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett. New York: Grove Press, 2004/ London: Faber & Faber, 2006. Ackerley, C. J. “Samuel Beckett and the Bible,” Journal of Beckett Studies, Vol. 9.1 (1999): 53–125. Beatty, Bernard. “P. B. Shelley” in Rebecca Lemon et alii. The Bible in English Literature. Oxford: Blackwell, 2009), pp. 454–461. Besserman, L. The Legend of Job in the Middle Ages. Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979.

JOB IN ENGLISH, WELSH AND IRISH LITERATURE

181

Breeze, Andrew. “Job’s Gold in Medieval England, Wales and Navarre,” Notes & Queries. (September 1990): 275–278. Campbell, Lily C. Divine Poetry and Drama in Sixteenth-Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961. Cohn, Alan M. And Richard F. Peterson. “James Job: The Critical Reception of Joyce’s Letters,” James Joyce Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 4, Letters Issue (Summer, 1982): 429–440. Engell, James. “Wealth and Words: Pope’s ‘Epistle to Bathurst”’. Modern Philology Vol. 85, No.4 (May 1988): 433–436. Garmonsway, G. N. “The English Metrical Life of Job” in Arthur Brown and Peter Foote. Eds. Early English and Norse Studies. London: Methuen, 1963, pp. 77–98. Gates, Robert A. “Tom Kernan and Job.” James Joyce Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Spring, 1982): 275–287. Glatzer, Nahum N. Ed. The Dimensions of Job. New York: Schocken Books, 1969. Holloway, John. The Story of the Night: Studies in Shakespeare’s Major Tragedies. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961. Larson, Janet L. Dickens and the Broken Scripture. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1985. ______. “The Battle of Biblical Books in Esther’s Narrative.” Ninteenth-Century Fiction, Vol. 38, No. 2 (September 1983): 131–160. Lehmann, James H. “The Vicar of Wakefield.” Goldsmith’s Sublime, Oriental Job.” ELH, Vol. 46, No. 1 (Spring 1979): 97–212. Lewalski, Barbara. Milton’s Brief Epic. Providence, Rhode Island: Brown University Press, 1966. Marx, Steven. Shakespeare and the Bible. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. May, James E. “Early Eighteenth Paraphrases of the Book of Job.” in Theodore E. D. Braun, Donald C. Mell and Lucia M. Palmer. Eds. Man, God, and Nature in the Enlightenment. East Lansing, MI: Colleagues Press, 1988), pp. 151–162. Meyer, Kathi. “St. Job as a Patron of Music.” Art Bulletin, Vol. 36 (1954): 21–31. Mercier, Vivian. “Noisy Desperation and the Book of Job.” Irish University Review, Vol. 17, No. 1, Thomas Murphy Issue (Spring 1987): 18–23. O’Héalaí, Pádraig. “Moral values in Irish Religious Tales.” Béaliodeas, Iml. 42/44 (1974–1976): 176–212.

182

ANTHONY SWINDELL

Shaheen, Naseeb. Biblical References in Shakespeare’s Plays. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1999. Spark, Muriel. “The Mystery of Job’s Suffering: Jung’s New Interpretation Examined.” Church of England Newspaper. (15th April 1955), p. 7. Wasserman, Earl R. Pope’s Epistle to Bathurst. Baltimore: The John Hopkins Press, 1960. Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel. London: Penguin, 1963 [1957]. Weltzien, O. Alan. “Notes and Lineaments: Vaughan Williams’s “Job: A Masque for Dancing” and Blake’s “Illustrations.” The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 76, No. 3 (Autumn, 1992): 301–336. Whittaker, Ruth. The Faith and Fiction of Muriel Spark. London: Macmillan, 1982. Wright, Andrew. Blake’s Job: A Commentary. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972.

FUTILITY IN THE SEARCH FOR JOB IN THE NEW TESTAMENT: THE CASE OF PHILLIPPIANS 1:19 FELIX H. CORTEZ UNIVERSIDAD DE MONTEMPRELOS, MEXICO

The suggestion that Job cannot be found in the New Testament seems to be a darkening of the testimony of the New Testament with assertions without knowledge. To begin with, James 5:11 refers to him by name as an example of the patience that God rewards. In fact, the author makes clear that he expected Job’s story to be well known among the audience. Job was considered a model of righteousness and faith by early church fathers as well. Clement of Rome (1 Clem. 17:3—4), Justin Martyr (Dial. 46.3), Clement of Alexandria (Strom. 4.19.2), and Cyprian (De Opere 18), all refer to him as a righteous man and example of Christian faith.1 The truth is, however, that though Job was well known and appreciated by early Christians, to neither him nor to the book were references regularly made. According to the Nestle-Aland 27th edition of the Greek New Testament there are 82 references to the Book of Job but most of these are isolated allusions to the maxims that abound in the work.2 Job is referred to by name only once in the New See Manlio Simonetti and Marco Conti, eds., Job, (ACCS 6; Downers Grove, Ill.: Inter-Varsity, 2006), xvii–xxv. 2 E.g., 1 Cor. 3:19 quoting Job 5:13, Matt 19:26 alluding to Job 42:2 and Luke 1:52 alluding to Job 12:19. 1

183

184

FELIX H. CORTEZ

Testament (James 5:11). Similarly, the interest in Job is sparse among early church writings.3 Job is a complex character and the book that tells his story leaves many questions unanswered. The work finishes with God’s assertion to Eliphaz the Temanite “My wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends, because you have not spoken of Me what is right as My servant Job has.” (42:7, NASB) What exactly did Job say about God that was right? Was he right when he painfully accepted his suffering as part of God’s inscrutable wisdom (Job 1:21; 2:10) or when he painfully protested of God’s inscrutable injustice (e.g., 10:14–17; 21:7–34)? In any case, Job’s three friends who tried to defend God from Job’s painful assertions that God had unjustly treated him are in the end rebuked by God Himself. Meanwhile, the Most High himself commends Job who cursed, lamented, and challenged the moral order of the universe and the God who created it. (42:8–10) After playing with the idea during his speeches (see Job 9–10; 13; 16; 19), Job finally succeeds in bringing God to trial by climaxing his last speech with a legal maneuver to force God to appear in court: “Behold, here is my signature; Let the Almighty Job is referred to rarely in the writings of the Church Fathers in the first centuries. Clement of Rome (1 Clem. 17:3–4), Justin Martyr (Dial. 46.3), Clement of Alexandria (Strom. 4.19.2), and Cyprian (De Opere 18), all refer to him as a righteous man, an example of Christian faith, often together with other OT characters. Origen was the first person to deal more systematically with Job by writing a cycle of twenty-two homilies on the Book of Job, which did not survive. But Origen was left alone in this endeavor for many years. It was until the end of the fourth and the beginning of the 5th century that there was a sudden interest in Job. Ambrose wrote a cycle of Homilies, and Didymus the Blind, John Chrysostom, Polycronius bishop of Apamea, Olympiodorus, Augustine, and the presbyter Philip wrote commentaries on Job around this time as well. It was probably the difficulties, the crises, and the profound religiosity of the time that spurred such interest. A century and half later (c. 579 C.E.), Gregory the Great wrote the most extended and thorough commentary on Job in the patristic age. See Simonetti and Conti, eds., xvii–xxv. 3

FUTILITY IN THE SEARCH FOR JOB

185

answer me!” (Job 31:35)4 And God does appear. It is not completely clear, however, what Job’s day at the heavenly court in the end accomplished for him. The meaning of Job’s first response to God is not altogether clear. He acknowledges that he is of little account before the eyes of God and then places his hand over his mouth symbolizing silence, but what is the meaning of that gesture? Shame, futility, or disapproval?5 In his second answer, and probably the most important assertion of the whole book,6 Job retracts or despises something (42:6) but it is not clear what did he retract or despise: his previous words, his lawsuit against God, dust and ashes, or God Himself?7 It is not surprise, then, that Judaism’s view of Job is diverse. Rabbinical literature devoted considerable attention to the book’s contributions to the problem of suffering, but it also argued whether Job was one of Israel’s revered ancestors whose righteousness rivaled that of Abraham (Pesiq. Rab. 47), a righteous gentile (b. Sanh 106a; b. Sotah 11a; Exod. Rab. 27:3), an imperfect hero or an outright renegade (b. B. Bat 15a—16b). Curiously, even though the book is part of the Jewish Scriptures and the rabbis studied it to a great extent, Job is absent from the synagogue’s liturgy.8 The New Testament, however, does not struggle with Job in this way. Job is considered the model of faithfulness under duress that Christians should imitate and his story evidences that God is irreproachable in his dealings with the righteous. (James 5:11) This David J. A. Clines, Job 21–37, (WBC 18A; Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson, 2006), p. 1034. 5 Samuel E. Balentine, “Book of Job,” The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible 3:332. Some commentaries concede that the gesture may mean less than submission, but not go as far as allowing a sense of defiance or complaint, e.g., Francis I. Andersen, Job: An Introduction and Commentary, (TOTC 14; Downers Grove, Ill.: Inter-Varsity, 1976), p. 307. 6 Robert L. Alden, Job, (NAC 11; Nashville, Tenn.: Broadman & Holman, 1993), pp. 409–10. 7 Balentine, 3:332. See also J. Gerald Janzen, Job, (IBC; Louisville, Ky.: John Knox, 1985), pp. 255–60. 8 Balentine, 3:333. 4

186

FELIX H. CORTEZ

Job, however, is not the Job of the Hebrew Bible. There, he challenges God as he searches for an answer to his suffering and becomes the first dissident if you will, an iconoclast.9 In James we find a different Job, a Christian Job. I shall focus on Paul’s allusion to or echo of LXX Job 13:16 in Phil 1:19. I shall suggest that Paul’s appropriation of Job’s words may be paradigmatic of the way New Testament writers and early Christianity approached the problem of the suffering of the righteous. Paul adopts Job’s words but also transforms him into a different character to the one we find in Hebrew Scriptures.

JOB IN PHILIPPIANS 1:19 In his epoch making book Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul,10 Richard B. Hays suggests that Phil. 1:19 contains an echo of the Old Greek version of Job 13:16.11 In that passage, Paul frames his apologia for his imprisonment as a positive event for the advancement of the gospel and assures his readers: “I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance”. The last phrase—“this will turn out for my deliverance”—reproduces word for word the first half of the ancient Greek translation of Job 13:16. What is the meaning of Paul’s reproduction of Job’s words? Paul’s expression in this passage is perfectly comprehensible even if the hearer does not notice any allusion to Job’s words. Hays suggests, however, that Paul’s appropriation of Job’s language “invites the reader to participate in an imaginative act necessary to comprehend

E.g., William Safire, The First Dissident: The Book of Job in Today's Politics, (New York: Random, 1993). It describes Job as the first example of a person who shatters the status quo to initiate a change in social thought. 10 Christopher D. Stanley, “Paul and Scripture: Charting the Course,” in As It Is Written: Studying Paul’s Use of Scripture, eds. Stanley E. Porter and Christopher D. Stanley; SBLSymS 50, (Atlanta, Ga.: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008), p. 6. 11 Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul, (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989), pp. 20–24. 9

FUTILITY IN THE SEARCH FOR JOB

187

the portrayal of Paul’s condition.”12 Paul wants the reader to understand his situation in the light of Job’s experience. With this indirect analogy, Paul wishes to describe himself, on the one hand, as a righteous sufferer and to affirm, on the other hand, the certainty of the defeat of his opponents. Richard Hays notices several similarities between both passages. Just as in the case of Paul, the passage in Job is thoroughly forensic. Job depicts himself as a prisoner (13:27) who is awaiting trial before God. He trusts that he will be found righteous and will be vindicated (13:18). Richard Hays also suggests that the circumstances of Paul may reflect figuratively those of Job. The Old Testament saint was surrounded by “pious homilizers” who spoke deceit by attributing his sufferings to some secret sin in his life (13:7). Job was confident, however, that they would fall in the heavenly judgment he sought before God. Similarly, Paul is surrounded by preachers motivated by “envy and rivalry.” They are not sincere but think to “afflict” him in his “imprisonment” (Phil. 1:15–17). By taking the mantle of Job, Paul was probably hinting that the judgment of God would expose the falsehood of his opponents. Richard Hays also notices important differences. The most important is that while Job sees God as his adversary, Paul finds in Him a defender and vindicator. There are other important differences as well. Job was puzzled by what was happening to him, but endured his suffering. Paul, however, rejoiced in the midst of adversity and interpreted his suffering as a participation in the sufferings of Christ. Job shows tenacity in affirming his rectitude, but Paul exults in the power and faithfulness of God. Richard Hays’s method and definition of echo has been challenged. Stanley E. Porter, for example, has questioned two foundational aspects of Hays’s method: the locus of the echo and the appropriate tests to identify it. Hays suggests that an echo may be found in one of five loci: (1) Paul’s mind, (2) the original readers of Paul’s letter, (3) the text itself, (4) a temporary act of reading, and (5) an interpretive community. Hays does not choose one of these loci, but claims that his working method is “to hold them together 12

Ibid.

188

FELIX H. CORTEZ

in creative tension” as he works with the text.13 Porter argues, however, that “it is not at all apparent how one can hold all five of these positions together in tension, unless the rules of contradiction and exclusion are suspended.”14 Since we have no access to the author or the readers, options 1 and 2 are out of discussion. Options 4 and 5 are in tension as well with option 3 because they posit not what the text says but what the reader or a community of readers validates as the meaning of the text. Porter also undermines the usefulness of Hays’s seven tests to identify an echo.15 Porter’s argument does not bring into question, however, the phenomenon itself, but how this phenomenon is understood and defined by Hays. He argues that what Hays identifies as an echo is in fact an allusion and that the name “echo” should probably be used for a different phenomenon. An allusion “is concerned to bring an external person, place, or literary work into the contemporary text”16 “as a means of addressing a particular literary problem.”17 Whether an echo, or an allusion, most commentators see in Philippians 1:19 an allusion to LXX Job 3:16.18 I would like to Ibid. Stanley E. Porter, “Allusions and Echoes,” in As It Is Written: Studying Paul’s Use of Scripture, eds. Stanley E. Porter and Christopher D. Stanley; SBLSymS 50, (Atlanta, Ga.: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008), p. 37. 15 The seven tests are (1) availability, (2) volume, (3) recurrence, (4) thematic coherence, (5) historical plausibility, (6) history of interpretation, (7) satisfaction, Hays, 29–32. For a critique of these, see Porter, pp. 38– 39. 16 Ibid., p. 40. 17 Ibid. 18 E.g., F. F. Bruce, Philippians, NIBCNT, (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1989), p. 49; Gordon D. Fee, Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1995), pp. 131–34; G. Walter Hansen, The Letter to the Philippians, Pillar New Testament Commentary, (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2009), pp. 77–78; Peter T O'Brien, The Epistle to the Philippians: A Commentary on the Greek Text,(NIGTC, Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1991), pp. 108–10; Moises Silva, “Philippians,” in Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, eds. Gregory K. 13 14

FUTILITY IN THE SEARCH FOR JOB

189

develop Hays’s insights of the relationship between the two passages a little more, both in terms of similarities and differences.

SIMILARITIES Fred B. Craddock correctly notes that the fact that “a Christian minister, a missionary, a preacher of the gospel [is] arrested, imprisoned, waiting for Roman authorities to decide his fate” is something that requires explanation.19 There was in primitive societies—and to some extent in modern ones as well—the notion that there is a direct correlation between the person you are and the things that happen to you. Thus, the Book of Acts describes Paul’s first action, just three days after arriving at Rome, (28:17–20), as gathering the leading men of the Jews at Rome and explaining his chains. Similarly, the fact that all those calamities had happened to Job required some explanation and Job tries unsuccessfully to convince his “pious homilizers” that he is in fact innocent and, therefore, summons God to come to judgment with him and explain the situation. There are probably further similarities as well between the opponents of Paul and those of Job. The exact identity of those who are preaching Christ from “envy and strife” has long been discussed and many suggestions have been advanced. Many see here some sort of Jewish Christian preachers who oppose Paul’s more liberal views on the relationship of Gentiles to the law and see in Paul’s imprisonment an opportunity to capitalize on his weakness.20 In a very stimulating paper, Robert Jewett has Beale and D. A. Carson, Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2007), p. 70. For a history of interpretation of this passage, see J. Reumann, “The (Greek) Old Testament in Philippians 1:19 as Parade Example—Allusion, Echo, Proverb?,” in History and Exegesis: New Testament Essays in Honor of E. Earl Ellis for His 80th Birthday, ed. S.-W. Son, (London: T. & T. Clark, 2006). Others, however, do not find any allusion or echo; e.g., Gerald F. Hawthorne, revised and expanded by Ralph P. Martin, Philippians, WBC 43, (Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson, 2004), pp. 49–50. 19 Fred B. Craddock, Philippians, IBC, (Louisville, Ky.: John Knox, 1985), p. 24. 20 Markus Bockmuehl, The Epistle to the Philippians, BNTC, (London: T. & T. Clark, 1997), p. 78.

190

FELIX H. CORTEZ

suggested that Paul’s opponents were itinerant Christian missionaries with a divine man theology similar to the one found in 2 Corinthians.21 They held that the apostolic existence exhibited the transcendent power of the exalted Christ. Therefore, they placed a high value in ecstatic visions, miracle working, rhetorical capacity and a domineering demeanor. Paul’s humiliating imprisonment proved, then, in their view the inadequacy of his apostolic claims and by not revealing the power of Christ in his life it hindered the progress of the gospel. “They hoped, therefore, to gall him with their boasts of their continued success and their disparagement of his condition as a humiliated prisoner.”22 At the end of the day, then, whether the opponents belonged to a conservative Jewish Christian sector or to a Corinthian-kind of impatience with his weakness and misfortune, Paul’s sufferings in jail seemed to belie his claims of being an apostle of Christ and the truth of his gospel. In summary, Paul’s incarceration was unbecoming of an apostle of Christ. They did not comprehend his prison to be “in Christ.”23 Paul does call them “brothers” because they preach Christ, but casts aspersions on their tactics and motives. He argues that his prison has in fact served to advance the gospel and that suffering was not only a valid expression of existence “in Christ” but also the epitome of Christian existence.24 Similarly, Job’s suffering contradicts, in the view of his opponents, his claim to innocence. Finally, both Paul and Job set their hope in a heavenly judgment where God himself will testify to the truthfulness of their claims. Paul does not have in mind in Phil. 1:19 a deliverance from prison but final salvation since Paul affirms that this can be achieved whether through execution or through liberation from jail. (v. 20)

Robert Jewett, “Conflicting Movements in the Early Church as Reflected in Philippians,” NovT 12, no. 4 (1970): 368. 22 David E. Garland, “Philippians 1:1–26: The Defense and Confirmation of the Gospel,” RevExp 77, no. 3 (1980): 332. 23 Ibid. 24 O’Brien, pp. 103–105. 21

FUTILITY IN THE SEARCH FOR JOB

191

DIFFERENCES There are important differences as well. While Job alone defends his innocence in the face of public doubts about his innocence, Paul claims that others have recognized that his imprisonments are “in Christ”. (Phil. 1:13) It is not a case that his incarceration “in Christ has become well known” (as the NASB suggests) but that it has been well-known that his chains are “for Christ” (so NIV).25 In this sense, Paul claims that even those who are not Christian recognize that he is in jail for Christ, not because he is a rabble-rouser. Job curses the day he was born and expresses his desire not to live. However, Paul does not wish to die. He is sure that he will be released for the benefit of the Church. N. Clayton Croy has successfully shown, in my opinion, that Paul’s perplexity expressed in Phil. 1:19–26 whether it is better to die or to live is in fact a rhetorical trope known as aporia or diaporesis among ancient rhetoricians (dubitation or addubitatio in Latin). It is a “feigned perplexity.”26 “This technique involves a rhetorical pretense of uncertainty and the posing of a question as a way of strengthening or dramatizing an argument.”27 This leads us to a final and very important difference: On the one hand, Job complains about the injustice of which he is a victim. Paul, on the other hand, rejoices. He literally repeats for emphasis that he rejoices in the fact that his sufferings have brought about the advancement of the gospel.

CONCLUSION In conclusion, we find that there are very important differences between the Paul of Philippians 1:12–26 and the Job to whom he alludes. Paul takes the words of Job, but they sound so different in his mouth. In Job we see a dogged tenacity in claiming his innocence, while in Paul there is joy instead. By quoting verbatim the words of Job, Paul invokes the figure of Job to illuminate his The phrase “in Christ” should not be connected with “chains” but with the infinitive. See Silva, pp. 62–63. 26 N. Clayton Croy, “‘To Die is Gain’ (Phiippians 1:19–26): Does Paul Contemplate Suicide?,” JBL 122 (2003): 525. 27 Ibid. 25

192

FELIX H. CORTEZ

situation but this phenomenon involves a transformation. The Job that Paul invokes is transformed into a different Job, not the one from the Hebrew Scriptures. In my view this phenomenon is paradigmatic of a difference that we find between the suffering of the righteous in the New Testament and the Book of Job and the Hebrew Bible in general. Job struggles with God in the face of misfortune, but he is not the only one who does this. There are other important characters of the Hebrew Bible who struggle with God. There is also Jacob, the only other man beside Job to be called “man of integrity” (Gen. 25:27; Job 1:1), Jonah, Jeremiah, and others. In fact, the defiant Job has become a template for contemporary Jewish fiction. We have such works as Kafka’s The Trial; Joseph Roth’s Job: The Story of a Simple Man, and Elie Wiesel’s The Trial of God.28 This absence of struggle with God in the New Testament in the face of suffering intrigues me. Christians have not rejected Job, though. In fact, Job has been a source of strength for those who faced persecution as it is attested from the 3rd and 4th century frescoes in the Roman catacombs to the 18th century epitaphs.29 Christianity has typically accented Job’s patience (James 5:11) as emphasized in the prologue of the book and glossed over the impatience and anger of the Job that is found in the speeches of the center of the book. So, we find instead in the New Testament the injunction to rejoice in suffering: Only conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or remain absent, I will hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel; in no way alarmed by your opponents—which is a sign of destruction for them, but of salvation for you, and that, too, from God. For to you it has been granted for Christ’s sake, not only to believe in

For the importance of the Book of Job in the interest of literary criticism on the Bible, see Mary Ann Radzinowicz, “How and Why the Literary Establishment Caught Up with the Bible: Instancing the Book of Job,” ChrLit 39, no. 1 (1989): 77–89. 29 Balentine, p. 333. 28

FUTILITY IN THE SEARCH FOR JOB

193

Him, but also to suffer for His sake, experiencing the same conflict which you saw in me, and now hear to be in me. (Phil. 1:27–29, NASB) Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you, which comes upon you for your testing, as though some strange thing were happening to you; but to the degree that you share the sufferings of Christ, keep on rejoicing, so that also at the revelation of His glory you may rejoice with exultation. If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you. (1 Pet. 4:12–14, NASB)

Outside the fictive imagination of ecclesiastical orthodoxy, however, Job’s defiance of conventional religious maxims takes center stage. Thus, we see Robert Frost’s A Masque of Reason, Carl Jung’s Answer to Job, Neil Simmon’s God’s favorite, Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus and William Safire’s The first Dissident: The Book of Job in Today’s Politics.30 This phenomenon is fascinating. The New Testament is a Jewish document that drinks deeply from Hebrew Scriptures and claims to be a continuation of it. The issue is not only this disconnection with Jewish Scriptures on the approach to suffering, but with modern culture as well that prefers a Job who resists and challenges. Thus, I would like to finish with two questions, instead of providing facile answers to this phenomenon. What are the contributing factors or reasons for this change in approximation to the problem of suffering? What are the implications of this change in the New Testament’s relationship with modern culture as it tries to grapple with the problem of suffering?

30

See also, James L. Crenshaw, “Book of Job,” ABD 3:866–67.

A STUDY OF JOB IN MUSIC AND IMAGE MAX STERN ARIEL UNIVERSITY CENTER

JOB And the Lord said unto Satan: ‘Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a whole-hearted and an upright man, one who feareth God and shunneth evil? Then Satan answered God and said: ‘Doth Job fear God for nought? Hast thou not made a hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath, on every side? Thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions are increased in the land. But put forth thy hand now and touch all that he hath, surely he will blaspheme thee to thy face.’ And the Lord said unto Satan: ‘Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thy hand.’ So Satan went forth from the presence of the Lord (Job 1:8–13).

Job denied the resurrection of the dead and judged the prosperity of the wicked and the woes of the pious only by their earthly fortunes.1 Yet, his faith in God is unshakeable. He serves God, neither for reward in the present, nor the hereafter, but, solely and unconditionally for love. Most of this philosophical book struggles to reconcile faith with reason over the question: In a world 1 He that goeth down to Sheol shall come up no more (Job 7:13). “Raba said: This shows that Job denied the resurrection of the dead.” Talmud Baba Bathra 16a Nezikin, Vol. 3, (London: Soncino Press, 1935), p. 80.

195

196

MAX STERN

governed by a just and omnipotent God, why do the righteous suffer? Is affliction simply a punishment for sin or has it dimensions beyond human comprehension?2 The book’s conclusion is that man cannot comprehend Divine wisdom.3 Job is considered among the great works of world literature. One of the wisdom books of the Bible, Job tells the story of the most pious Gentile that ever lived. Its authorship has been attributed to Moses.4 Ralph Vaughan Williams: Job—A Masque for Dancing (1930) Scenario: Geoffrey Keynes and Gwendolyn Raverat Genre: Ballet Medium: Symphony orchestra Style: Modal First performance: July 5, 1931, Cambridge Job is a ballet-pantomime inspired from illustrations by English engraver and mystic, William Blake. It tells Job’s story of suffering in a lush and piquant score, which breathes the air of rural England. The Masque owes its direct existence to Geoffrey Keynes, a Blake scholar and ballet fan who devised the scenario in 1928, during the centenary year of the artists’ death. Keynes’s assistant was his sister-in-law, scenic designer Gwendolyn Taverat, who also The book speaks powerfully and comfortingly to people, who, in their search for meaning, have found orthodox faith difficult, and cannot be reconciled to the clichés and formulas of conventional religion (which frequently equates poverty and suffering with punishment for sin; health and prosperity with reward for righteousness). 3 It is beyond human ken; Next to all the great good that God does, individual suffering is insignificant; Temporary setbacks may occur to the righteous, but ultimately great reward is given. 4 The Talmud Baba Batra 15a argues that Job was a contemporary of Moses and cites through inference from similarity of phrases. The verse: Would that they were inscribed in a book (Job 19:23), implies that it is Moses (who is called inscriber), as it is written, And he choose the first part for himself, for there was the lawgiver’s [literally translated from the Hebrew as inscriber’s] portion reserved (Dt. 33:21). 2

A STUDY OF JOB IN MUSIC AND IMAGE

197

happened to be a cousin of Ralph Vaughan Williams.5 She suggested Vaughn Williams for the project; he completed the score in 1930.

Biographic Context Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) is perhaps the most important English composer of the 20th century. His father, a clergyman, died when the future composer was still a boy. An aunt taught him piano and theory at home. At primary school Ralph learned the violin. Studies at Trinity College and the Royal College of Music under Parry, Stanford, and Wood were later supplemented under Max Bruch in Berlin (1897), and with Maurice Ravel in Paris (1908). English folk song and church music, along with the sophisticated English madrigal of the Tudor period (16th and 17th centuries), shaped and influenced his musical style. Much of Vaughan Williams’ connection to the Bible derives from his editorship of The English Hymnal, a collection of 800 country tunes and sacred vocal works from the 16th to the early 20th century, which he gathered together and published in 1906.6

Text, Context, and Subtext According to the midrash, Job was a wealthy landowner, merchant, and the king of Edom. His book portrays him as a charitable, upright, and God fearing man—whose life was struck by tragedy. His oxen and asses were stolen. A fire burned his sheep. Bandits fell on his camels. His servants were killed. A tornado smashed the house where his children were eating and drinking, and killed them. His body was stricken with disease (1:13–19). Yet, for all this, Job refuses to neither acknowledge personal guilt for his suffering nor curse his maker. And he said: Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and The work was offered to the Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev (1872–1929), who turned it down. 6 Besides composing and lecturing in Europe and the United States, Vaughan Williams served as professor of composition at the Royal College of Music (1919–1939), and for nearly half a century, he was conductor of the Leigh Hill Festival (1905–1953). 5

198

MAX STERN

naked I shall return thither; The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away; Blessed be the name of the Lord (1:21). Four relatives came to comfort Job during the week of his mourning (Shiva);7 each, in turn, attempts to rationalize Job’s tragic misfortune. His uncle, Eliphaz the Temanite said: Shall mortal man be just before God (4:17)? Job replies: Is there injustice on my tongue (6:30)? A distant cousin, Bildad the Shuhite remarked: Doth God pervert judgment (8:3)? Job retorted: I am innocent (9:21). Then, Zophar the Naamathite added, accusingly: If iniquity be in thy hand, put it far away (11:14). Job again, protested: Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him (13:15). And finally, a younger cousin, Elihu the son of Barachel the Buzite, perked up: God will not do wickedly; the Almighty will not pervert justice (34:12). It was enough; rationality had reached its limits. It was time for God to intervene. The Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind (37:1) In Job’s defense, God appeared to Eliphaz: ‘My wrath is kindled against thee and against thy two friends; for ye have not spoken of Me the thing that is right, as My servant Job hath’ (42:7). This revelation is puzzling; for, while suffering is no sure proof of sin, ultimate purpose and meaning is beyond human comprehension. The consolation of the righteous is to be found, then, only in the knowledge that they are never completely cut off from the fellowship of God. So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning (42:12)8

Literary and Visual Sources The ballet Job—a Masque for Dancing owes its existence to a single literary and visual source: William Blake’s Illustrations of the Book of Job (1825).9 Blake’s interest in the Book of Job dates from early in his The Shiva is an ancient seven day mourning period in the house of a mourner. According to tradition, Job was the grandson of Esau. His four friends (Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar and Elihu) are all relatives. Their fathers Shuah, Namat, and Barachel were brothers, and grandsons of Abraham’s brother Nahor. Job’s first wife died during the seven-year period of his tribulation. His second marriage was to Jacob’s daughter, Dinah. 8 Ginzberg, Legends of the Bible (1956), pp. 266 ff. 9 William Blake (1757–1827) was a pre-20th century engraver and mystic multi-media artist who developed a technique for engraving metal 7

A STUDY OF JOB IN MUSIC AND IMAGE

199

career. He illustrated it according to his own religious lights, drawing upon Judeo-Christian tradition and a uniquely personal spiritual understanding. These illustrations consist in 21 lithograph plates, with accompanying commentary, taken mostly from the Book of Job, but explained and amplified in verses drawn from the Old and New Testaments, including the Apocrypha.10 Blake’s images do not entirely follow the sequence of events as narrated in the Bible, and scenes are added which do not always tally with the text. The scenario of the ballet, Job, on the other hand, follows the sequence of the story as it appears in the Bible. The essential action is divided into nine scenes, which summarize six chapters of Job: 1, 2, 3, 32, 38, and 42. Most of the teleological arguments of the book have been excluded from the ballet. The Masque In the late Middle Ages, the Masque was a form of festive and courtly entertainment involving music, dancing, singing, acting, and elaborate stage design. England court masques were often performed at wedding feasts in the 16th century. For subject matter, a masque might combine mythology and fable with timely political, social, and ethical allegory. Ralph Vaughn Williams’ Job is closer to a ballet than an authentic court masque, since the designation ‘masque’ serves to indicate that its dance movements derive, rather, from Renaissance dances, than from abstract modern dance.

plates with both text and illustrations, which he then lithographed and colored by hand. He envisioned a parallel between the man of his time, whom he saw as a cog in an increasingly materialistic industrial revolution, and the biblical Job, caught in a web of laws and rationality. In Blake’s vision, imagination and forgiveness were religious virtues—Man and Job could become free through belief in the spiritual and artistic nature of salvation. Although Blake’s eccentric work was little understood by his contemporaries, he is recognized today as one of the giants of the Romantic Movement, both as artist and poet, and seems to embody all that we now think of as poor but misunderstood genius. 10 These are: Genesis, Deuteronomy, 1 Samuel, Psalms, Isaiah, and Daniel; as well as Matthew, Luke, Corinthians 1 & 2 John, and Revelation.

200

MAX STERN

Music and Musical Exegesis Ralph Vaughan Williams’ score, while written in a sophisticated 20th century musical idiom, draws upon English folk music and the madrigal of the Elizabethan period for its substance. Embracing the idyllic spirit of rural England, he evokes the gentle everyday feelings of the common people by means of this countryside music, and, largely ignores the proud, pompous confidence of the ruling gentry—the music of 18th century England, personified in the works of Handel. It is Vaughan Williams’ metaphor for righteousness. SCENARIO Job, a Masque for Dancing SCENE I Job and His Family. Thus Did Job Continually (Blake: PLATE 1) Introduction, part 1: The blessed Job—There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and the man was whole hearted and upright, and one that feared God and shunned evil. And there were born unto him seven sons and three daughters (Job 1:1–2). DETAIL Scene I Introduction. Pastoral Dance. Satan’s appeal to God. Saraband of the Sons of God.

Scene 1 is like the exposition of a symphony. A gently flowing string theme represents Job, seated with his wife; while his daughters dance to a solo flute. A woodwind figure sounds the bleeps of far-off flocks. The blessings of Job and the choir of angels are presented in rich modal polyphony. Satan’s entrance is marked by truncated thrusts and sinister minor chord gestures in the brass. God is revealed in majestic euphony. A stately Saraband (in three-quarter time) symbolizes the adoration of the sons of God. Satan before the Throne of God (Blake: PLATE 2) Part 2: The Dialogue: Satan enters. The heavens open. God in His majesty—Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a whole hearted and upright man that feareth God, and shunneth evil (Job 1:3)? Satan—But put forth Thy hand now and touch

A STUDY OF JOB IN MUSIC AND IMAGE

201

his bone and his flesh, surely he will blaspheme Thee to Thy face (Job 2:5). And the Lord said unto Satan: ‘Behold he is in thy hand; only spare his life’ (Job 2:6).

Vaughan Williams approaches the dialogue between Satan and God, as a musical duel for the soul of Job. Vaughan Williams tells the story of suffering and anguish, forces of love at war with forces of hate, through the transformation of tender, human folk themes. He depicts this duality melodically, harmonically, and rhythmically. Consonance opposes dissonance, diatonicism challenges chromaticism, symmetry versus asymmetry, flowing meter confronts spastic gesture. Lyricism, major chords, and rich polyphony serve as tonal metaphors for Job, God, and the Angels, while the Devil is portrayed in harsh sonorities and angular rhythms. Within this basic dichotomy, themes interact and metamorphose. It is, as if to say: ‘the devil is not inhuman, only a distortion of human feelings’. This technique, while primarily illustrative and narrative, takes on symphonic dimensions through motivic juxtapositions and contrasts, repetition, variation, and development. SCENARIO Job, a Masque for Dancing SCENE II Satan Going Forth from the Presence of God (Blake: PLATE 5) Satan’s Dance of Triumph—So Satan went forth from the presence of the Lord (Job 1:12). DETAIL Scene II God’s throne is empty. Satan in wild triumph seats himself upon it.

Satan’s satanic glee and triumph is depicted in a wild distortion of Scene 1. Vaughan Williams introduces a grotesque variation of the Saraband of the Sons of God in the guise of a scherzo.11 It It is based on Beethoven’s String Quartet, Op. 135. Vaughan Williams notes in his chapter “A Musical Autobiography,” I cribbed Satan’s 11

202

MAX STERN

symbolizes the mock adoration of the Almighty by Satan; a distortion of the plainsong Gloria in excelsis is sounded in the brass. Eventually, Satan assembles the host of Hell and seats himself on the Divine throne. It is a perverse variation on God’s majestic theme and purpose. SCENE III Job’s Sons and Daughters Overwhelmed by Satan (Blake: PLATE 3) Minuet of the sons of Job and their wives: tranquility is visited by disaster. Satan converts the scene from contentment to lament: Then came a great wind and smote the four corners of the house and it fell upon the young men and they are dead (Job 1:18). SCENE IV Job’s Evil Dreams (Blake: PLATE 11) Job’s Dream—Then thou scarest me with dreams, and terrifiest me through visions; so that my soul chooseth strangling, and death (Job 7:14). SCENE V The Messengers Tell Job of His Misfortunes (Blake: PLATE 4) Dance of the Three Messengers—And there came a Messenger unto Job and said: ‘The oxen were plowing and the Sabeans came down and they have slain the young men with the sword’ (Job 1:14–15). While he was yet speaking there came another and said: ‘The fire of God is fallen from heaven and hath burned up the flocks and the young men and consumed them and I only am escaped alone to tell thee’ (Job 1:16). Satan Smiting Job with Boils (Blake: PLATE 6) Naked I came out of my mother’s womb, and naked I return thither; The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord (Job 1:20).

dance from Job deliberately from the Scherzo of Beethoven’s last quartet. See Ralph Vaughan Williams, National Music and Other Essays (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), p. 190.

A STUDY OF JOB IN MUSIC AND IMAGE

203

SCENE VI Job’s Comforters (Blake: PLATE 7) Dance of Job’s Comforters—What, ‘Shall we receive good at the hand of God and shall we not also receive evil’ (Job 2:10)? And when they lifted up their eyes afar off, and knew him not, they lifted up their voice and wept; and they rent every man his mantle, and sprinkled dust upon their heads towards heaven (Job 2:12). Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower, and withereth; he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not. And dost Thou open Thine eyes upon such a one, and bringest me into judgment with thee (Job 14:1–3)? DETAIL Scene VI Dance of Job’s comforters. Job’s Curse. A vision of Satan.

Job’s dialogue with his friends is described by an alto saxophone solo. Initially it feigns concern, then rises to anger and reproach in an accusing staccato. Pushed beyond endurance, a parody of Heaven’s noble theme bursts forth suddenly in the orchestra. Job cowers in fearsome terror. Satan stands triumphant. Job’s Despair (Blake: PLATE 8) Job’s Curse—Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night wherein it was said: ‘A man-child is brought forth’ (Job 3:3). Satan’s Celebration. SCENE VII The Wrath of Elihu (Blake: PLATE 12) Part 1—Elihu’s Dance of Youth and Beauty—I am young, and ye are very old; wherefore I held back, and durst not declare you mine opinion. Lo, all these doth God work, twice, yea thrice, with a man, to bring back his soul from the pit, that he may be enlightened with the light of the living (Job 32:6–7; 33:29–30). DETAIL Scene VII (There is no break between VI and VII) Elihu’s dance of youth and beauty. Pavane of the Heavenly Host.

Elihu’s rebuke is depicted by a solo violin; it is a pentatonic theme embellished with chromatic alterations. Thus, Vaughan Williams

204

MAX STERN

portrays ambivalence; human nature, partaking both of (a diatonic) heaven and (a chromatic) hell. The Lord Answering Job out of a Whirlwind (Blake: PLATE 13) Part 2—Pavan of the Sons of the Morning—Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said: Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge (Job 38:1–2)? Who maketh the clouds his chariot and walketh on the wings of the wind (Psalm 104:3)?

In contrast, resplendent triads symbolize the Lord’s answer to Job. The Pavane of the Sons of God opens up into an outpouring of Divine grace, majesty and grandeur. It is cosmic emanation played-out within the frame of a Renaissance dance. SCENE VIII The Fall of Satan (Blake: PLATE 16) Part 1—Satan enters and is dismissed—Hell is naked before Him, and destruction hast no covering (Job 26:6). When the Morning Stars Sang Together (Blake: PLATE 14) Part 2—Galliard of the Sons of the Morning—Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth; when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? Canst thou bind the chains of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion (Job 38:4, 7, 31)? Job’s Sacrifice (Blake: PLATE 18) Part 3—Altar Dance—Now therefore, take unto you seven bullocks and seven rams, and go to My servant Job, and offer up yourselves a burnt-offering; and my servant Job shall pray for you (Job 42:8). SCENE IX Job and His Family Restored to Prosperity (Blake: PLATE 21) Epilogue—So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning; so Job died, being old and full of days (Job 42:12, 17).

CONCLUSION Vaughan Williams was a gruff, down-to-earth man who loathed pretentiousness, and shared much in common with Blake’s iconoclastic brand of Protestantism. Throughout his career,

A STUDY OF JOB IN MUSIC AND IMAGE

205

Vaughan Williams pursued the democratic, egalitarian ideals he believed in. Born into the privileged intellectual middle class, he rejected an officer’s commission and enlisted as a common British soldier in the First World War. Later in life, he refused knighthood. His personal beliefs were humanistic and agnostic. When he set sacred texts, it was to express a sense of communion with people, rather than affirm religious faith. Vaughan Williams’ composition is a metaphor, asserting the healthiness of folk music and the deeply human values of rural England. Stylistically, these attitudes translate into a rejection of many of 20th century’s musical axioms: Popular music—because of its vulgarity and commercialism; Impressionism—because of its sophisticated ‘art for art’s sake’ aloofness; and atonal twelve-tone dodecaphony—because of its convoluted and abstract intellectualism. Vaughan Williams’ artistic voice is his personal way of standing up for something fundamental and true, negating, in tonal terms, as did Job in his protests, the smug notion that God rewards the righteous while punishing the wicked. Related Directions Among the saintly patrons of music, Saint Job appeared suddenly, during the 14th–18th centuries in France, Germany, England, and especially in Holland and Belgium. This tradition is thought to derive from an interpretation of Job’s complaint: Therefore is my harp (kinnor) turned to mourning, and my pipe (uggav) into the voice of them that weep (Job 30:31). Another possible source lies in the Job mystery plays, which were based largely on the apocryphal Testament of Job. All these traditions are reflected in the many paintings and illustrations which show Job being consoled (and, sometimes, also mocked—cf. Job 30:1, 7, 9, 14) by musicians (mostly windinstrument players). Motet collections of the first half of the 16th century include a number of settings from the Book of Job (by Claudin de Sermisy, Pierre de La Rue, L. Senfl, L. Morales, T. Crecquillon, and J. Clemens non Papa), mainly of the sadder verses (a symptom of the early Baroque period’s emphasis on demonstrative repentance scenes). These treatments culminate in Orlando di Lasso’s two extended settings for four voices: Sacrae lections novem ex propheta Hiob (1565) and Lectiones sacrae ex libris Hiob excerptae musics numeris (1582). The first setting is extremely pathetic, the second, more

206

MAX STERN

restrained. Further settings of the period were those by Jacobus (Handl) Gallus and Joachim á Burck (1610). From about the turn of the 17th century, Protestant composers increasingly favoured the half-verse: I know that my Redeemer liveth (Job 19:25), of which there are two settings by Heinrich Schutz. The rise of the oratorio form had, meanwhile, produced several works on the subject by G. Carissimi, P. d’Albergatti, and Bach’s Cantata no. 160, Ich weiss dass mein Erloeser lebt. The most famous setting of this text is the contralto aria from G. F. Handel’s Messiah (1742), I know that my redeemer liveth, engraved on the scroll held by Roubillac’s statue of Handel on the composer’s grave in Westminster Abbey. There are few oratorios on the theme in the 19th century. Frederick Shepherd Converse’s Job (performed in Hamburg, 1908), was one of the first works by an American composer to be represented in Europe. Besides Vaughn Williams’ Job suite for orchestra, he also wrote The Voice out of the Whirlwind, for choir and organ. Jacques Maritain adapted the biblical text for Nicolas Nabokov’s oratorio Job (1932). Other modern works include György Kósa’s Hiob (cantata, 1933); Hugo Chaim Adler’s Hiob (oratorio, 1933); Lehman Engel’s Four Excerpts from Job (for voice and piano, 1932); and Luigi Dallapiccola’s Giobbe (oratorio, 1949). Petr Eben’s Job for organ and narrator (1987) (58’) is an eightmovement meditation on destiny, faith, and the mystery of creation. An episodic, densely textured work, its often obtuse and massive exterior is made comprehensible through Scriptural citations narrated between sections. A completely different approach is found in Max Stern’s Song of the Morning Stars (1979) (8’). This orchestral prelude depicts the stars glistening at the dawn of creation in mixed meters and bright tonalities. Its extended binary structure parallels the verse: When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy. (Job 38:7)

LIST OF MUSICAL WORKS ON JOB Adler, Hugo Chaim (1894–1955). Hiob, cantata. Albergati, Pirro (1663–1735 Bologne). Giobbe, oratorio. Andriessen, Hendrik F. (1892–1981 Netherlands). Job (Job 37:1–3), bass, choir and organ, cantata. Anfossi, Pasquale (1727–1797 Rome). Giobbe (N. Angeletti), oratorio.

A STUDY OF JOB IN MUSIC AND IMAGE

207

Bach, Johann Christian (1735 Leipzig–1782 London). Parce mihi, Domine (Job 7:16), soprano and orchestra. _____. Taedet animam meam (Job 10:1), soprano and orchestra. _____. Manus tuae (Job 10:8), soprano and orchestra. Bach, Johann Michael (1648–1694 Germany) Ich weiss dass mein Erloeser lebt (Job 19:25–27), SATBB. Baird, Tadeusz (1928–1981 Poland). Egzorta, narrator, choir and orchestra. Barber, Samuel (1910–1981 USA). Motetto on Words from the Book of Job (1930), double chorus. Barker, Ken (20th C. USA) Where Were You? (1981), (Job 38:4–7), SATB, piano. Ben-Haim, Paul (1897 Munich–1981 Tel-Aviv). Wenn man doch meinen Kummer, (Job 6, 2), sop, alto, tenor, 2 basses. _____. Der Mensch vom Weibe geboren (Job 14:19), s, a, 2t, 2b. Berger, Jean (1909 Germany–2002 USA). Man Born of Woman (Job 14: 1–2), SATB Bergsma, William (1921–1994 USA). Confrontation from the Book of Job (1963), SATB, 2 fl, cl, bcl, sax, 2 hn, 2 trp, 2 tbn, tba, timp, 4 perc, pf, vc, db. Bitgood, Roberta (1908 New London, Connecticut–2007). Job, cantata for choir, Boyce, William (1710–1779 England). O Where Shall Wisdom Be Found? (Job 28:12–13, 15, 23–28), SATB, organ. Brahms, Johannes (1833–1897 Vienna). Warum ist das Licht (Job 3:20–23), choir and instruments. Byrd, William (1543–1623 England). Cunctis diebus (Job 10:20–22), 6 voices and choir. Carissimi, Giacomo (1605–1674 Rome). Job, oratorio. Converse, Frederick Shepherd (1871–1940 Newton, Mass.). Job, oratorio. Dallapiccola, Luigi (1904–1975 Florence). Job, oratorio. Desderi, Ettore (1892 Italy–1974). Job, cantata. Dittersdorf, Karl Ditters von (1739 Vienna–1799 Bohemia). Giobbe (I. Pintus), oratorio. Eben, Petr (1929–2007 Czech Republic). Job for organ and narrator. Ehrlich, Abel (1915—2003 Israel). Job’s Last Answer (1976) for mixed choir.

208

MAX STERN

Ehrlich, Abel. Job (1990) Oratorio for tenor, baritone, mixed choir, children’s choir, and orchestra. Eisenmann, Will (1906 Stuttgart–1992). Die Klage Hiobs, symphonic cantata for bass, choir and orchestra. Engel, A. Lehman (1910 Jackson, Mississippi–1982 New York). Job, voice and pianoforte. Epstein, David (1930–2002 USA) The Lament of Job (1980), 3 sopranos, 3altos, tenor, SATB, 3 speakers, 2 percussion, pf, 2 vc. Guerrini, Guido (ca.1890–1965 Rome). Il lamento di Job, bass, pianoforte, gong and strings. Guy, Noa (b. 1949 Israel). And Everyone an Earring of Gold (1984), for women’s or children’s choir (SSA). Haas, Joseph (1879–1960 Munich). Die Hochzeit des Jobs (L. Andersen), opera. Haines, Edmund (20th C. UK). Dialogues from the Book of Job (1965), (Job 21:22–23, 25–26, 28–29), S, A, SSAA, piano. Haller, Hermann (1914 Switzerland –2002). Erbarmt euch mein, alto, choir and organ, cantata. Handel, G. F. (1685–1759 London). The ways of Zion do mourn (Job 29:11–12, 14), funeral anthem. Hensel, Fanny Cecilia (1805 Hamburg–1847 Berlin). Hiob, alto, choir and orchestra, cantata. Herder, Ronald (20th C. USA). The Job Elegies (1966), (Job 3:3, 13, 18–21a), alto, SATB. Huber, Klaus (1924 Bern). Hiob (P. de Chardin), baritone, organ and tape. Jacobi, Frederick (1891 –1952 New York). Hagiographa: Job, str qt and pf. Jergenson, Dale (20th C. USA). The Lament of Job (1975), SATB Josquin, Depres (ca.1440–1521 Belgium). Responde mihi (Job 13:22– 28), 4 vv, motet. Kapp, Artur Josepowitsh (1878–1952 Estonia). Iow (J. Kalijuvee), oratorio. Kelterborn, Louis (1891–1933 Switzerland). Hiob, oratorio. Klein, Bernhard (1793–1832 Koln). Job, oratorio. Klenau, Paul (1883–1946 Copenhagen). Hiob, choir. Kosa, Gyorgy (1897–1984 Budapest). Hiob, cantata, baritone and instruments.

A STUDY OF JOB IN MUSIC AND IMAGE

209

Kunc, Bozidar (1903 Zaghreb–1964 USA). Two chapters from the Book of Job, cantata. Lasso, Orlando di (1532–1594 Munich). Sacrae lectiones ex Propheta Job, 4 vv, motet. Le Flem, Paul (1881–1984 France). Job (L. Bertus), radiophonic oratorio. Leeuw, Ton de (1926 Rotterdam–1996 Paris). Job (L. Bertus), radiophonic oratorio. Loewe, Karl (1796–1869 Germany). Hiob, cantata. Manneke, Daan (1939- Netherlands). Job, men’s choir and instruments. Mechem, Kirche (b.1925 USA). The Protest of Job (1970), (Job 3:3, 23–26; 14:7, 9, 11–12), SATB. Milhaud, Darius (1892–1974 France). Job (Job 37:1–13), cantata, bass, choir and organ. Morley, Thomas (c.1557–1602 England). I Know That My Redeemer Liveth (Job 19:25–27), SATB. Nabokov, Nikolai (1903 Belarus–1978 New York). Job (J. Maritain), oratorio. Newbury, Kent (20th c. USA). Wisdom and Understanding (Job 28:20– 21, 23–28), SATB. Oertzen, Rudolf von (1910–1990 Belgium). Hiob, choral symphony. Otto, Julius (1804–1877 Dresden). Hiob (J. Mosen), oratorio. Parry, Hubert (1848–1918 England). Job, oratorio, soloist, voices, choir and orchestra. Perroni, Giovanni (1688 Italy–1748 Vienna). Giobbe, oratorio. Peters, Flor (1903–1986 Belgium) I Know That My Redeemer Liveth (Job 19:25), SATB, organ. Prohaska, Karl (1869–1927 Vienna). Aus dem Buch Hiob, 8 voices and organ. Purcell, Henry (1659–1695 London). Let the night perish (Job 3), solo song, bc. _____. Man that is born of woman (Job 14:1–2), choir and bc. Queralt, Francisco (1740–1825 Barcelona). El santo Job, cantata. Rabaud, Henri (1873–1949 Paris). Job (Ch. Raffalli & H. de Grosse), oratorio. _____. Deuxieme poeme lyrique sur le livre de Job (tr. E. Renan), Bar, orchestra. Reger, Max (1873–1916 Leipzig). Mein Odem ist schwach (Job 17), 5 voices, choir and organ, motet.

210

MAX STERN

Russell, William (1777–1813 London). Job, oratorio. Schreck, Gustav Ernst (1849–1918 Leipzig). Woher kommt denn die Weisheit (Job 28:20–28), choir. Schutz, Heinrich (1585–1672 Germany). I Know That My Redeemer Liveth (Job:25–27), SSAATBB. Schulz, Svend Simon (1913 Denmark). Job, oratorio. Schwab, Felician (1611–1661 Germany). Cithara patientis Jobi, motet. Senfl, Ludwig (1486 Basel–1555 Munich). Cum aegrotasset Job, 5 voices. Stern, Max (1947 USA/Israel). Song of the Morning Stars (1979) (Job 38:7), prelude for orchestra. Studer, Hans (1911 Bern–1984 ). Die Leiden Hiobs, oratorio. Vaughan Williams, Ralph (1872–1958 London). Job (K. Keynes), A Masque for Dancing, ballet-orchestral suite. _____. The Voice of the Whirlwind (Job 38:1–11, 16–17, 40:7–10, 14), SATB, organ Vellones, Pierre (1889–1939 Paris). Job, oratorio. Veretti, Antonio (1900 Verona–1978 Rome). Job, oratorio. Wesley, Samuel S. (1766–1837 England). Man That is Born of a Woman (Job 14:1–2). Wilbye, John (1575–1638 England). Homo natus de muliere (Job 14:1– 2), SSAATB Ziani, Marc-Antonio (1653 Venice–1715 Vienna). Il mistico Giobbe, oratorio.