I’m going to wax, momentarily, philosophical. The Book of Job is what’s called a theodicy. The basic premise of a theodicy is that all the power and goodness in the universe is vested in God. And so, as seems to pop up in youtube and tiktok videos and more, the question gets asked, “If God is benevolent and all powerful, how does he allow evil to exist in the world?” The response is usually a defense, which gets tied into all sorts of things like free will, motives, circumstances, temptations, etc., etc. A theodicy on the other hand, in simplest terms, abides in the premise that God simply knows that he, and goodness, will, in the end, win out over the lesser powers of darkness. Any deviations from that path are temporary, and will, some day, be resolved. And all you have to do is have faith in him. It is, to be sure, a very “the ends justify the means” approach to theology.
- This is an opening scene worthy of Hollywood. Job is a faithful man. He has a big family, he has a huge ranch, and he has lots of money. His kids love to celebrate their privileged lives, balanced with appropriate acts of contrition and sacrifice. God and “The Adversary” (the term “HaSatan”, was used throughout the Hebrew bible, it wasn’t until the Christian bible that it became a name, Satan) are chatting, and the latter proposes that this most upright of men, Job, would curse God and stray from his faith, if he lost everything. God says, “go for it”. And he does – all his cows, sheep, and camels are carried off by raiders, who also kill all the boys tending them, and the home where his ten children are collapses, killing all of them. Job’s response is “God gives, God takes”, and he blesses God for the things and people he had had.
- Not having been successful at getting Job to turn against God by taking his possessions and family, Satan asks God if he can go further. God says, sure, go for it. Satan causes Job’s entire body to break out in an inflammation. Job maintains his faith, scratches himself, and, well, sits around, until a few of his friends come by who spend a week with him, lamenting his misfortune.
- Having lamented away with his friends for a week, Job launches into a poetic diatribe against his very birth, wishing that he’d been stillborn and never experienced all the joys of life, only to now find himself in the position and condition that he’s arrived at. He still doesn’t curse God for it.
- One of Job’s friends, Eliphaz, who has spent the week commiserating with him decides that seven days is enough wallowing in sorrow for, well, having lost everything and being afflicted by a full body itchy rash, and tells him, ‘hey, enough is enough. You’ve always been the bedrock of piety, don’t be losing faith now.’ Easy enough for someone who didn’t lose everything to say….
- Eliphaz continues his moralizing, providing example after example of how life will spiral downhill if you lose faith. It’s clear he’s coming from a worldview of piety and moral high ground. While after a week of commiseration, he’s clearly aware of how much Job has lost, I have to think that maybe pushing for this stance after only a week might be a touch “too soon”. Then again, he’s trying to rescue Job from going down a dark spiral of losing his faith.
- Job responds to Eliphaz, apologizing for having declared his desire to never having been born. He was speaking out of grief, but, he notes, at no time did he waiver in his faith in God, nor an intent to abandon his faith, but was simply lamenting what had happened to him and wishing, fervently, that it never had.
- Job turns his lament towards God, asking for answers. What, he asks, did he ever do to merit what has befallen him? Given how short life is, how meaningless any one individual must be in God’s eyes, why subject one person to so much loss and grief, when it’s all going to be over in a blink of one of those eyes?
- Another of Job’s friends, Bildad, jumps into the conversation, pointing out that the reason God destroyed those various people and things in Job’s life was, well, maybe, just maybe, they deserved it. And if Job maintains his faith, he won’t deserve the same, and God will take care of him. It was them, not you, doesn’t necessarily emanate a lot of warmth in the midst of grieving, but perhaps it’s what Job needs to keep the faith. Though it kind of reeks of the modern evangelical “bad things happen because people are sinning” mindset.
- Job responds with, basically, “I get it, yeah, God has a plan, but, again, why me? What did I do? As far as I know, I’m innocent of doing anything wrong, and certainly not against him. And the kicker is, I don’t even get a hearing, I’m not important enough. I don’t get to present my case to him, and even if I did, would he listen to anything I have to say?”
- Job demands to face his accuser, God. He laments that he is cloaked in shame and grief for whatever trespasses he has committed against God, and deserves to know why before he dies.
- Friend number three, Zophar, pipes up. “All you do is prattle on about how you don’t know why this is happening to you. Maybe instead of complaining about God, and demanding he talk to you, it’s time to take a good hard look in the mirror and figure out where you went astray rather than moaning and carrying on expecting God to hand you all the answers.”
- Job responds to his three friends sarcastically, noting that they claim to be voices of wisdom, trying different tacks to have him just accept conventional wisdom, the old “God has a plan even if we can’t see it” mindset. Instead, he suggests, that perhaps God is, more or less, toying with us. He creates in order to then destroy, bit by bit, and expects to be worshipped for it.
- Job continues on, admonishing his friends for spouting platitudes and complacency with the status quo. As a human being, he demands the right to face his accuser, be it God or someone else, that has led to his downfall. If, for nothing else, to understand and correct his ways, but more, to have the opportunity to defend himself before his detractor(s).
- Job notes that plants that are cut down can regrow, but not a man. He begs to be, in modern terms, placed in stasis, so he doesn’t have to feel so crushingly bad. He proposes that God put him in limbo and give him an appointed time to appear before him for a hearing on his case.
- Eliphaz responds, with, basically, “We’re older than you, wiser than you, and we’ve seen where going down the path that you’re starting on will lead to and it ain’t pretty. Life without faith is going to lead you to a very dark place and a bad end.”
- Job fires back, with something to the effect of, “All you three do is spout empty words and criticize me for lamenting my woes. And maybe, if our places were reversed, I’d do the same. Or maybe, I’d be a real friend, rather than join in with my persecutors, God’s henchmen, my enemies, and provide a little comfort. Just sayin’.”
- Job returns to his wish for release and death, and muses on whether, given that he has no idea why all the calamities have befallen him, he is destined for Sheol, the closest Judaism gets to a place like Hell. Really, it’s more like limbo. As I’ve talked about in the past, it’s basically a place to meet yourself, exposed, to examine your life, see where you went wrong, and have the opportunity to demonstrate remorse and make a change. If you do so, you go on to join Heaven, not as an entity, but as part of the universal spirit. It’s all very Star Wars.
- Bildad jumps back into the conversation. First he admonishes Eliphaz and Zophar for pussyfooting about with platitudes and boilerplate language. Then he rounds on Job, basically saying, “look dude, no one would receive punishments like you have from God, without having done something truly wicked. So come to terms with whatever it was, stop pretending you’re the picture of innocence, and make amends for whatever it was.”
- Job responds vehemently, demanding that his so-called friends stop blathering away at him about the error of his ways. He knows he’s innocent, he knows he’s being put through living hell, and he demands to know why, to face his accuser. He also cries out that somewhere out there, is someone who will believe him, help him, and redeem him. This one sentence has been interpreted by Christian scholars as a premonition of the arrival of the Messiah in the form of Jesus.
- Zophar is incensed. Incensed, I tell you. He’s taking Job’s rebuke of his wisdom very badly and very personally. After all, he opines in lengthy poetry, the only type of person that all this calamity would befall is a wicked person, and Job needs to do a bit of soul searching and figure out himself what he did wrong, not sit around whining and demanding that someone show him where he went off the rails. Incense. Definitely incensed!
- Job responds, pointing out that he’s not cursing God, he’s merely demanding a fair hearing. After all, wicked people prosper and thrive, all the time. He just wants to know why he’s been singled out, especially as he doesn’t consider that he’s done anything wrong. Basically, he wants to know what the rules are, since the ones he’s been following all his life don’t seem to have produced the result promised.
- Eliphaz has decided not to pull any punches. He flat-out accuses Job of being a privileged, rich, pie faced crotch pheasant (I saw that as a synonym for douchebag and couldn’t resist using it) who cloaks his improprieties and transgressions in a mask of piety. He points out that God receives no benefit from any of Job’s actions nor prayers, all the benefits in the past were from God, for Job, and if God takes them away, that’s his prerogative.
- Job is looking, as we know by this point, for his habeus corpus rights. He continues to demand the right to face his accuser and to see the evidence against him. After all, he moans, he’s being expected to answer for some nebulous wrong that he hasn’t even been accused of to his face. He wants to know, how, if God is everywhere, he seems to be nowhere in this moment.
- Job laments that it seems that God’s worldview is more concerned with not offending those who sin than it is with alleviating the burden of those who are oppressed. Obviously, he considers himself in the latter category, as he continues to demand that either all that has befallen him be reversed, or some sort of solace offered, and to know what it is that God says he’s done wrong.
- Bildad’s turn. You remember him. Mister “bad things happen because people out there are sinning”. Not having anything else to offer, he falls back on the old chestnut of “God is so amazingly stupendously wondrously awesome that our minds simply can’t understand his magnificence, nor comprehend his motives. So there.” Buckle your seatbelts folks, I know from past readings, that though Bildad only tosses off a few sentences here, Job’s winding up for a six chapter response to this.
- Job castigates his friends for not being supportive, and throws out a sort of “who asked you anyway?” There’s a disconnect at this point in his reply, as he continues appearing to answer statements not in evidence about whether or not he is guilty of something. Numerous scholars posit that as in the earlier part of this tractate, the third friend, Zophar, launched into a speech which has been lost from the written text that we have, and that Job is answering him.
- Job accuses his friends of being blind to the possibility that God could make a mistake. They, he says, have fallen into the trap of believing that God is always omniscient, omnipresent, moral, and virtuous. He harangues them to adopt a wider world view, more in keeping with the Jewish tradition of questioning, not as a pro forma performance, but in reality, asking for evidence, demanding to see… behind the curtain.
- Job muses on the idea of wisdom, driven by morality. It’s not clear if he’s claiming that he’s wise and therefore could not be wicked, or is suggesting that his friends, perhaps, are not wise because they are not really righteous. What is clear is that he continues to insist that he could not be culpable of anything that deserves the punishment he has received. Contrast this with past leaders of Jewish thought, stretching back to Moses, who humbly admit that they might be wrong.
- Job laments his loss of prestige and status, the days when he was respected, even revered, and, in some cases, feared. That, to me, opens up an entire new picture of him, as up to now, he has been pictured as, and portrayed himself as, while certainly wealthy and powerful, a humble and righteous man. Perhaps his friends who’ve been urging him to a bit of self-reflection, are on to something here.
- Yeah, Job is not making himself look good right now. He rails against those who are “lesser” than he, be they poorer, younger, less well connected, less pious, just… anything less, who dare to castigate him in his time of strife.
- Job starts enumerating the wicked things he hasn’t done. It’s like one of those lists to give yourself a point for everything you never did. He hasn’t coveted his neighbor’s wife, he hasn’t cheated on his own wife, he hasn’t stolen a kiss with a young girl, he hasn’t avoided his charitable obligations, he hasn’t cheated anyone in business, etc. And, he challenges, as God is apparently omniscient, he knows all that, so, what gives? He reaches the end of his tirade.
- Apparently, this whole time, there was a fourth friend present, Elihu, a much younger man. He’s had enough. He’s listened to the other three friends’ vapid arguments, he’s listened to Job’s self-aggrandizing, and he’s ready to pop-off. So he says all that, and demands his turn to speak.
- Elihu continues without waiting for assent. The speech he gives is basically comes down to, “We were all made by God, he gets to do with us as he wants, and he’s too awesome for us to comprehend, so while you may think that you’ve done nothing wrong, the only reason he would do this to you is to make you a better person, steering you away from some evil path, which you just aren’t wise enough to see.”
- Elihu continues in the same vein, now addressing himself to his three older companions. To sum it up, “How dare Job question God or suggest that God might have made a mistake! Clearly, he’s out of his mind or has gone stupid! God doesn’t make mistakes!” You can almost hear the earnestness in his young voice.
- Elihu’s on a tear… “You think God doesn’t know what’s going on with you? Whatever it was you did to deserve what you got may be important to you and those around you, but he already knows he got it right, and doesn’t need to do some sort of case review. The sooner you accept that you’re being punished for something you did, the sooner you’ll figure out what it was, rather than asking God to give you the answers.”
- Elihu’s not going to stop – he was quiet for too long. You see, he opines, if one was truly wicked, God would simply eliminate you (a statement he provides no evidence for). If, instead, he gives you trials and tribulations, it is because he recognizes that you strayed from the true path but can find your way back. All you have to do is come back to the light side.
- Elihu’s winding up – he admonishes Job to look around him at the marvels of the world, at human civilization, and acknowledge the guiding hand that God has provided. Way to end a verbal beat down on an up note!
- God’s been listening in, and he’s had enough. He suddenly speaks out of a swirling cloud, addressing Job directly – “Just who the hell do you think you are complaining about me? What was your part in creating the universe, in creating life, in creating all the wonders around you? Just exactly what are your qualifications to question me?”
- God continues, enumerating all the things he knows about, all the things he’s created, all the things he’s nurtured. He does take a several stanza pause to diss ostriches. Is this an indirect way of saying he made at least one mistake?
- God, “Who are you to question my judgments?” Job, “I said what I said, shutting up now.” God, “Do you know who I am? I’m… (starts listing his all the things he thinks make him important, ad nauseum)”. We all know that any conversation that starts with “Do you know who I am?” is going to be tedious. We’ve seen it in dozens of movies and tv shows.
- God’s not done with his chest-thumping. He spends the entire chapter describing the Leviathan, that mysterious beast of the deep, and their long-standing fight. Based on this reading, it seems God is admitting that maybe the Leviathan is nearly his equal in battle, and claiming to be the only deity out there who can truly battle such a creature, but neither of them has won this battle, and some biblical historians consider their battle to be one of two deities, with (spoiler alert) God, Yahweh, eventually winning to become the world’s dominant deity.
- After 41 chapters of laments and admonishments, Job looks at God and says, “My bad, shouldn’t have complained, you’re the boss, I trust your judgment.” God looks at Job’s friends and says, “You guys really need to understand what I’m all about, because everything you said is a bunch of bullshit, go and offer me some sacrifices and repent.” They do so. God restores Job’s fortune, doubled, and then gives him new, and bigger, herds of sheep and cattle, and a new family, and Job lives happily ever after for another 140 years. I was kind of hoping for a final conversation between God and Satan over the whole “experiment”. The End.