Thursday, January 20, 2011

Job

Job certainly has a right to complain.  He shows that you can be a righteous complainer - a quintessential Jewish quality.  Eliphaz, his erstwhile friend, tries to shut him up.  It doesn't make their God look very good that a supposedly righteous person has been so shit upon by Fate.  Eliphaz tries to suggest that Job must have sinned, must have done something wrong to deserve his ill-fortune.  Job is just beside himself with grief and pain and just wants to die.  He does state that those who die do not come back.  They disappear and are never seen again.  This is apparently not at odds with Jewish belief of the time.  Job even states that because life is ephemeral and the dead do not return, this is precisely why he has a right to complain (Job7:9-11).

There is a lot of indignation and a great sense of the futility of life, which is understandable given Job's appalling losses and pain.  The shocking thing is that this story starts with Yahweh allowing Job to be set upon by Satan ("the Adversary") so as to prove that Job is loyal to Yahweh.  Job doesn't deny Yahweh's power (how could he?) but he has to be doubting his beneficence, especially when his friends suggest that he must have deserved it.  Otherwise how could a beneficent God have allowed it to happen to a righteous man?

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