This class is hard, but importantly so. It may seem that my senioritis is taking over completely and my blogs are nothing but notes, but in actuality I believe I’ve already taken more from this class than I expected. Although Dr. Sexson always challenges me to read some excessively long book and somehow I do – first Don Quixote, then His Dark Materials, then Shadow Country, now the bible, and two dense Frye books along with the novels – this semester has been different, for me at least. Regrettably, I knew at the beginning of the semester I wasn’t going to be able to read the entire bible. Still, I started off with high hopes, which didn’t last much past Genesis.
So I focused on Frye for a while, and have read the first three chapters of The Great Code, am panning on reading the forth tonight or tomorrow morning, and then tackling the prestigious fifth chapter. Though I wallow extremely slowly through Frye – mainly because I underline every other sentence and jot down every other page number, which probably doesn’t help my over all comprehension – I am oddly entranced by his writing, language, and superior criticism. In literary criticism we blogged about “light bulb” passages, or places where Frye made sense to us and inspired further discussion; I plan on taking this approach to Frye again soon, perhaps on a larger – florescent bulb – scale.
But I wanted this entry to be about Job, since that is where the class discussion is currently spinning around. The Book of Job: To be honest I’m at a bit of a loss as to what I think about Job. If he could complain that much, twenty or thirty chapters much, was he really that sick and afflicted? I think he was fakin’ it – douche.
I was interested to learn in the intro material that “The name Job, which could be translated ‘enemy,’ corresponds to Akkadian names with such translations as ‘Where is the divine father? And “Inveterate Foe/Hated One.” Hmm, Job was predisposed to be some sort of adversary with God. But who is the bad guy, the enemy? God or Job, or both? If I had to answer I might say both, but more so Job is the enemy, of God and himself.
Though we called Job’s friends ‘frenemies’ in class, I think they got a bad rap for the wrong reasons. For starters, are they not at least halfway decent friends for merely visiting Job, considering the disgusting and horrible condition he’s in? “They met together to console and comfort him” (2.11). Indeed their intentions were benevolent; but Job’s pessimistic attitude and remorse seems to rub off on his friends, causing what appear to be unsympathetic remarks from them.
What’s up with all these men “tearing their robes, weeping, and throwing dust in the air,” too? Job even, “shaves his head” immediately upon hearing his horrible news. The image of these grown men shredding their robes, pulling their hair, and pawing and throwing the earth into the air is tragic and comic, a tragicomedy scene of sorts, over emphasis for sure, but to the extent it seems absurd. He already lost everything, why does Job rip up his only garment and shave his hair off? Of course he’s going to get sick, he’s running around screaming and wailing, without a shirt, hat or hair! Any mother knows that’s the perfect recipe to catch a cold, or the plague for that matter.
I do want to point out that as soon as Job “curses the day he was born,” he wails, “Why did I not die at birth, …; then I would be at rest / with kings and counselors of the earth / who rebuild ruins for themselves, / or with princes who have gold, / who fill their houses with silver.” (3.11-16). Comparing himself to Kings with houses full of silver, princes with gold, sounds pretty greedy to me.
Job’s friend do supply snippets of good insight, maybe almost wisdom. Eliphaz remarks that “human beings are born to trouble / just as sparks fly upward.” Bildad reminds us that “we are but of yesterday, and we know nothing, / for our days on earth are but a shadow.” And it is Zophar who helps us remember that, “Wisdom is many-sided.” All the while Job impatiently wails for God to justify his condition, or to kill him – which would be assisted suicide in a way, a Godly way I guess, but still a tangent form of suicide.
In chapter 16, when Job says, “I have heard many such things; / miserable comforters are you all.” Damn, is that any way to talk to your friends, friends who have traveled to see you, ripped up their robes, already been silent and solemn for seven days, and are now merely trying to distract their suffering friend from his affliction through “friendly” dialogue? What a Jerk, that Job; have a little respect for your buddies.
Interestingly, at the end, around chapter 30, the archetypal conflict between age and youth comes to the forefront. Job bashes the youth, who mock him, spit at him, and increase his undue suffering. Then it is a youth, Elihu, who speaks out next, insightfully and, for the most part respectfully. Elihu’s passage on how “God speaks in one way, and in two, though people do not perceive it;” was quite interesting; the language of dreams, visions, pain, aging.
However I was struck at how Elihu’s hubris, especially of his own reckoning of his supposedly vast wisdom, overshadowed his actual advice, at least for me. As an arrogant little kid, he seems a bit out of place – and definitely seemed to come out of nowhere – among these old friends. Yet he does have some insightful remarks; “Your wickedness affects others like you, / and your righteousness, other human beings.” And that “God thunders wondrously with his voice; / he does great things that we cannot comprehend.” This ‘young buck,’ though he thinks he knows it all, he certainly doesn’t, but he does know a little, and of that he seems to keep things simple; that sometimes it’s impossible to understand, interpret, or justify what God does, and our time can be better spent.
I’ll be honest I was quite perplexed by the Book Of Job. At the end, the whiner gets everything back, twice; as if he was that annoying toddler, begging and wailing and screaming for a soda or some candy; and the only way to get him to stop is give in! I did enjoy the Lords questions at the end though, their sublime open-endedness, and roundabout way of justifying the irrelevance of justification.
Enough for tonight. I’m headed home to read more of The Slave. At about halfway through the book, it’s really heating up, the fugitives are on the run, and I believe there’s another woman on the horizon to complicate things a bit more. Should be good….
