I'm starting to come to a sort of uncomfortable realization about this book, and the character what gives it its name... I don't know that I even like Job.
The character, that is. The book is actually proving to be quite a bit more interesting than I'd given it credit for. It's also a lot more cerebral and theological than I'd thought as well. Maybe I just hadn't given it enough thought at all.
No matter.
Job.
The man.
He's a bit of a whiner, isn't he?
Now, don't get me wrong, please. I realize that A) his entire life has collapsed around him, and he's lost everything - his wealth, his lands, his livestock, his family and his health; B) I've never lost any of those things, nor have I ever really gone through any major tragedy in my life (so far); and C) that if I did, I have absolutely no assurance to offer that I won't become an interminably snivelling sob-sack if/when such tragedy actually befalls me.
BUT (and I feel this is important enough to justify the suddenly excessive use of formatting), I can't help but notice a few things.
First off, Job was actually not hugely upset (outwardly, anyway) about his crops/lands/livestock/family being wiped out all in a single day. Maybe he was in shock, but he bounces back pretty quick. He offers his lamentaions, but then basically says, "but God's good - He'll look after me, things'll get better."
And then he gets itchy, and suddenly the entire world is little more than a glimpse inside the head of Billie Corgan, circa 1997 - weird, foreign, unfamiliar, stark, cold and distinctly, utterly, irredeemably depressing.
Seriously, his real cursing-the-day-he-was-born-and-spending-the-rest-of-his-life-in-sackcloth-and-ashes phase only gets going once God tells Satan he's free to much around with Job's immune system, as long as he doesn't kill him. That's weird to me, and the 'it was the straw that broke the camel's back' argument only goes so far.
If a camel's back was close enough to breaking that a single straw actually did it, I doubt very much that it was a camel who was just going about his usual business, albeit with a bit more of a gloomy air about it.
Likewise with Job. So there's that.
The other thing that raised my eyebrows was chapter 19, verse 23:
"Oh that my words were written ! Oh that they were inscribed in a book!"
Funny, that. I have no idea what to make of this verse being included in the book of Job. For perhaps the first time in my life, I am genuinely interested in the historical authorship details of a Biblical book... Didn't see that one coming.
I can't quite put my finger on why this phrase bugs me. I suppose one of the problems/benefits of being just generally slightly cynical is that it's not easy to turn it off, but when I read this, I can't help but think of a person who's undergone some modern tragedy who says in just a little louder than a normal voice something about someone calling a newspaper or the local TV station to come and do a story on them...
Maybe it's a legacy thing - after all, he did just lose his whole family, but there's also something inherently selfish about it, particularly in light of his comparatively easy time accepting the loss of said family. He was very, very rich, and now all of that's gone, so is he now grasping at something to set him apart from the common rabble? Some means of attaining personal glory other than in his now-defunct estate? I don't know, but I can't help but think along these lines...
--
Speaking of riches, etc, I'd like to get vaguely political for just a moment. I'm not as far into the "Christians are Biblically called to be inherently socialist/communist" camp as some, but I'm far more into it than many, many others, so maybe that's why 20:21 stood out so hard for me:
"Nothing remains for him to devour, Therefore his prosperity does not endure."
This, to me, is a fairly stark indictment of the kind of rampant capitalism that we see today, all over the world, but particularly in North America.
The sentence is spoken by one of Job's friends as he's attempting to describe the inherently and unavoidably short run of success enjoyed by "the wicked" - I can't quite tell if he's trying to soothe Job or condemn him, but either way, he struck a chord with me with this sentence.
When the only thing that we're using as a benchmark of success is the constant accumulation of new stuff (money, cars, boats, houses, women/men, etc), growth comes to replace stability as the normative mode, and when that happens, it becomes doubly damaging when the stuff runs out. It becomes so consuming, the need to grow the stuff pile, that the stuff itself holds no real value once it becomes yours. Once it's already yours, it no longer contributes to the growth, and therefore is not of any interest, so there's not even the safety net of having a big pile of stuff to console you when you run out of new stuff to get, because it's not even real to you anymore...
Huh...
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