Psalms 21-30: Psalt3r

Ten more Psalms! Why, I have been asked, am I going through them ten at a time? Well, one of the project ground rules is that I have to write a post at least every ten chapters. There have been a lot of books where I averaged four or five chapters per post, but the Psalms, by their nature as songs of praise, lack much in the way of a narrative flow. And yet, for reasons I'll explain below, they are not an easy read for me.

Themes Revisited

Glimmers of Afterlife

As we've seen in the two previous sets, there are more Psalms in this group that seem to flirt with the idea of an afterlife. Psalm 21:4 & 6, for instance, would be a perfectly appropriate reading for a Christian funeral:

4 He asked you for life, and you gave it to him—
length of days, for ever and ever.
6 Surely you have granted him eternal blessings
and made him glad with the joy of your presence.

It sounds like an affirmation of the idea of Heaven, right? Except, the first seven verses of Psalm 21 are autobiographical, King David explicitly talking about himself in the first person. He is grateful that God has, at the time of this writing, granted him a long life and many blessings, and he speaks about them with the same giddy hyperbole that informs so much of Psalms.

A few verses later, he reveals what will happen to the "enemies" of God:

9 At the time of your appearing
you will make them like a fiery furnace.
In his wrath the LORD will swallow them up,
and his fire will consume them.

It sounds like hell, right? But it isn't. David (or his ghostwriters, if you're a skeptic on this point) is talking about fiery death for God's foes in this world. The next verse makes it clear:

10 You will destroy their descendants from the earth,
their posterity from mankind.

Also, just as you are starting to wonder whether the Psalms might imply eternal life after all, you occasionally bump into passages that reaffirm the concept I've called "total death." In Psalm 30, David cries out for God's help in a crisis and offers an argument why he should be spared to live another day:

9 "What gain is there in my destruction,
in my going down into the pit?
Will the dust praise you?
Will it proclaim your faithfulness?

Death, here, is firmly conceptualized as the end of the line. David does not expect to go to a close communion with God after death. He thinks the relationship will be ended, because he himself will no longer exist.

Speaking of Phrases that Resonate in Christianity

How does the opening of Psalm 22 strike you: My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? Now, Psalm 22 in its entirety is another one that begins with a lamentation of the distance or absence of God. There's a lot of lamentation -- 18 verses worth -- before the text modulates back into an affirmation of faith. Along the way, the chapter bristles with phrases that resonate in interesting ways with the imagery of Christianity. In addition to the famous question that would be later asked by Christ during his execution, there are lines like you brought me out of the womb (9) and even a band of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my feet. (16) But remember: we're talking about David here. The birth of Christ is still centuries in the future.

Two great details from Psalm 22, by the way. One is just a passage conveying sorrow in an especially lovely way:

14 I am poured out like water,
and all my bones are out of joint.
My heart has turned to wax;
it has melted away within me.

The other is a direction to the music director. Psalm 22, it says, is to be sung to the tune of "The Doe of the Morning." Awesome.

Psalms, Psalms, Psalms!

And so they go. Psalm 23 is a very famous one, the one that starts The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want (actually, in this translation, I shall not be in want). It celebrates God as the provider of first bounty, then peace, than moral law, than might, before concluding:

6 Surely goodness and love will follow me
all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the LORD
forever.

Once again, the Christian ear is tuned to hear a promise of eternal life here, whereas the two halves of the sentence were very likely originally intended to mean the exact same thing.

Psalm 29 is a celebration of the might and power of God, and includes the quirky phrase He makes Lebanon skip like a calf. (6) Psalm 26 is a celebration, by David, of his own allegedly morally upright life: Vindicate me, O LORD, for I have led a blameless life.... (1) (As we saw earlier, the Biblical record of David's life shows it to be chockablock with blame. But I guess if you are the king, you can talk about your blameless life and everyone has to keep a straight face.)

For a lot of the Psalms, though, it is hard to say succinctly what they are "about." Many of them have no particular central focus. The Psalms are not intended to inform, after all, but to celebrate, and so it's not surprising that they consist in large part of loosely connected statements in praise of God. There may well be a deep logic that governs the flow of one statement to the next, but for a first-time reader at this remove of culture, time, and translation, they might as well be random. I suspect that if several Psalms were taken apart verse by verse, shuffled, and reassembled, and put next to the originals, it would take some time to tell which were the real ones.

As an experiment, I picked a Psalm (#25) and made a kind of conceptual map of it, looking at the sentence-level meaning of each line. It is a goofy thing, but working it out made me a little more comfortable in thinking that, for all of their resonance, there is a certain arbitrary feel to the Psalms that makes them a bit hard to penetrate.

1 Affirmation of devotion to God
2 Affirmation of trust in God
Request of favor from God
3 Prediction of reward for believers
Prediction of punishment for the evil
4 Request to God for guidance
5 Request to God for guidance
Affirmation of devotion to God
Affirmation of trust in God
6 Request for God to recall and continue his past kindnesses
7 Request for God to disregard personal sins
Request for God’s favor
Affirmation of God’s goodness
8 Assertion of God’s goodness
Conclusion that God’s goodness is instructional to sinners
9 Assertion that God is a teacher
10 Assertion: God cares for those who obey his laws
11 Request for God to disregard personal sins
12 Rhetorical question
Assertion that God is a teacher to his followers
13 Assertion that God’s followers and their will be prosperous
14 Assertion that God communicates with his followers
15 Affirmation of devotion to God
Acknowledgement of God’s unique power
16 Request for God’s favor
Complaint of personal unhappiness
17 Complaint of personal unhappiness
Request for God’s help
18 Request for God’s help
19 Complaint of numerous, aggressive enemies
20 Request for God’s protection
Request for God’s protection
Affirmation of trust in God
21 Wish that God behavior will be beneficial
Affirmation of trust in God
22 Request of God’s favor for all of Israel

Sometimes I wonder if the Psalms are too rich to read ten at time, and ought to be savored one by one. Sometimes, I admit, I wonder if they are just a collection of sanctimonious old sound bites, made to seem significant only through their use and repetition. They are, so far, difficult going. And there are 13 more sets! Heavens.

NEXT: Ten more Psalms!

Psalms 11-20: "Psalms II: Davidic Bugaloo"

Overall, Psalms 11-20 are not radically different from Psalms 1-10. Instead of looking at overall themes this time around, I'll break 'em down for a closer look.

Psalms 11-12

These two really drive home a world view in which there are two kinds of people: good people that God likes, and bad people that he doesn't. In 15 verses, there are four references to "the wicked" against two to "the righteous" and one apiece to "the upright in heart," "upright men," and "the faithful." We learn some of the characteristics of the bad folks: they "love violence," lie to their neighbors, flatter, speak with decision, boast, oppress the weak, honor what is vile, and make the needy groan. God is against these things, but rather loves justice.

These kind of Psalms trouble me for two reasons. One is that they don't jibe with my (admittedly limited) experience of human nature. In my daily rounds, I seem to see a lot of goodish people and a few baddish people and, as far as I can tell, plenty of in-between people. More importantly, the message of these prayers can be condensed to "it's a mean old world, but God is a just sheriff." The obvious question -- I'm hardly the first to pose it -- is: If God's role is to be the sheriff, than why is it still a mean old world?

Psalm 13

Six verses long, #13 has three complementary section. The first two verses cry out at the perceived absence of God: How long will you hide your face from me? (1) The second two verses make the claim that, if God persists in absence, the speaker will die. The final two verses are a happy ending to this short crisis of faith, and consist of a profession of belief, celebration, and praise.

Psalm 14

Seven verses long, #14 begins by ripping into people for falling into corruption and not believing in God. ...there is no one who does good, the text complains, not even one. (3) From this emotional low point, the song builds back up to a triumphal pitch about how the poor and the righteous will triumph over the wicked and the "evildoers." It is a good poetic structure -- the negative state of things is laid out, and then the impending triumph of good explained -- but the sudden reappearance of righteous people is a little confusing, since we were just told that there wasn't even one.

Psalm 15

Psalm 15 is a list of good behaviors: speaking truth, doing what is righteous, avoiding slander, keeping oaths, eschewing bribes, and refusing to charge interest on a loan. People who do all of these things will, we are told, be rewarded. And here, again, we can see right away why the rhetoric of these pre-Christian writings can be so persuasive to Christians. The Psalm begins:

Lord, who may dwell in your sanctuary?
Who may live on your holy hill? (1)

I would wager that nine out of ten Christians asked in the street what these questions meant would reply that of course they refer to Heaven. Good people go to Heaven. But from what we've seen previously, that's very unlikely. If #15 is, as it is labelled, "a Psalm of David," the most logical interpretation is that it is defining appropriate behavior for people who live on the literal holy hill: Jerusalem.

Psalm 16

Here again, David uses language that seems puzzlingly Christian if you, like my, come at it with a Christian background.

...you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay.

You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand. (11)

This passage really does seem to flirt with a promise of a blissful afterlife. But as a sort of thought experiment, I tried to read it as if I didn't already "know" about Heaven. And, when looked at this way, the passage remains coherent. In fact, it is consistent to the language all over the Psalms describing God as a protector against earthly enemies. God will not, in this reading, let David die or decay at present, before his time. David expects to be filled with joy in God's presence in this life, with eternal pleasures -- ie., pleasures until he dies -- at God's right hand.

To look at the passage in this way requires a certain leap of imagination for me. Yet it is the only way of reading it that does not contradict David's blunt denial of the possibility of life after death only a few chapters earlier.

Psalm 17

Another two part Psalm, labelled "A prayer of David." In the first five verses, David vigorously asserts his own righteousness and adherence to God's will. In the final ten, he then calls out to God for protection from his enemies. Verses 8 through 13 form a splendid rhetorical crescendo, with each verse ratcheting up the level of crisis and conflict:

8 Keep me as the apple of your eye;
hide me in the shadow of your wings
9 from the wicked who assail me,
from my mortal enemies who surround me.
10 They close up their callous hearts,
and their mouths speak with arrogance.
11 They have tracked me down, they now surround me,
with eyes alert, to throw me to the ground.
12 They are like a lion hungry for prey,
like a great lion crouching in cover.
13 Rise up, O LORD, confront them, bring them down;
rescue me from the wicked by your sword.

Psalm 18

An extremely long chapter at 50 verses, the bulk of this Psalm is devoted to praise OF God (He trains my hands for battle (34)) and praise TO God (You give me your shield of battle (35)), intermixed together and put forth with a wide variety of military, natural, and legal imagery.

Near the beginning of the chapter is a narrative passage that is a kind of short story of God's personal intervention in David's affairs. Read literally, it recounts a vague but powerfully-rendered physical manifestation of God to get David out of a jam.

4 The cords of death entangled me;
the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me.
5 The cords of the grave [b] coiled around me;
the snares of death confronted me.
6 In my distress I called to the LORD;
I cried to my God for help.
From his temple he heard my voice;
my cry came before him, into his ears.
7 The earth trembled and quaked,
and the foundations of the mountains shook;
they trembled because he was angry.
8 Smoke rose from his nostrils;
consuming fire came from his mouth,
burning coals blazed out of it.
9 He parted the heavens and came down;
dark clouds were under his feet.
10 He mounted the cherubim and flew;
he soared on the wings of the wind.
11 He made darkness his covering, his canopy around him—
the dark rain clouds of the sky.
12 Out of the brightness of his presence clouds advanced,
with hailstones and bolts of lightning.
13 The LORD thundered from heaven;
the voice of the Most High resounded. [c]
14 He shot his arrows and scattered the enemies ,
great bolts of lightning and routed them.
15 The valleys of the sea were exposed
and the foundations of the earth laid bare
at your rebuke, O LORD,
at the blast of breath from your nostrils.
16 He reached down from on high and took hold of me;
he drew me out of deep waters.
17 He rescued me from my powerful enemy,
from my foes, who were too strong for me.
18 They confronted me in the day of my disaster,
but the LORD was my support.
19 He brought me out into a spacious place;
he rescued me because he delighted in me.

These verses seem completely contrary to the common modern notion that God is everywhere and nowhere; certainly, it is surprising to see God depicted as literally riding a cherub into battle. The language reminds me of the great Rennaisance religious paintings, where God is portrayed as a massive man, huge, muscular, and radiant but unmistakably human in form.

Psalm 19

If the Trancendentalists had a favorite passage in Psalms, it might well be the first six verses of #19. The heavens declare the glory of God; it begins, the skies proclaim the work of his hands. (1) It continues in this vein, advancing the general idea that you can tell that God is great just by looking at how terrific the natural world is. The second half of the chapter changes course, and speaks to the greatness of God's law (The ordinances of the LORD are sure and altogether righteous. (9)).

Psalm 20

The twentieth Psalm reads as a sort of greeting card, a well-wishing from one person to another. May the LORD answer you when you are in distress, it begins, and continues on to predict future victory and celebration for the person addressed.

Are We Going to Go Through Every Single Psalm Like This?

No.


Next Time: Ten More Psalms!

Psalms 1-10: Setting Sail on the Sea of Psalms

The Psalms are, as far as I can tell, the hymnbook of Second Temple Judaism. That's probably a brutal oversimplification, but I gather that they are a set of lyrics that developed over several centuries between, say, 800 and 200 BC. At least some of them, maybe all of them, are ascribed to King David. They are written in poetic form, although in English translation -- or at least in THIS translation -- they have no apparent rhyme or meter. (There may have been some attempt at alliteration, but I can't tell for sure.)

Another thing about the Psalms: there are 150 of them. That's a lot! Psalms is easily the longest book in the Bible, whupping Isaiah in number of chapters (150 vs. 66) and Genesis in number of verses (2461 v. 1533). That means I'll be living with Psalms for at least the next ten posts. I've got plenty to talk about today; hopefully the next nine posts won't just say "more of the same."

God as Shield

One theme that jumps out from these first ten Psalms is their conception of God as a protector and ally in conflict. "Enemies" or "foes" are mentioned or at least implied in almost all of them. Indeed, a quick survey could make David sound a little paranoid:

O LORD, how many are my foes!
How many rise up against me! (3,1)

Lead me, O LORD, in your righteousness
because of my enemies.... (5,8)

My eyes grow weak with sorrow;
they fail because of all my foes. (6,7)

O LORD, see how my enemies persecute me! (9,13)

Well, David had a lot of enemies. In addition to the usual allotment due him as a head of state, he would have to add wronged husbands, victims of his career as a bandit warlord, and almost anybody involved in the debacle of Absalom's rebellion. Yet David is nothing if not pious, and he trusts in God's protection against his many opponents. Indeed, many lines from his Psalms seem to be a kind of calling in of a metaphysical air strike:

Deliver me, O my God!
Strike all my enemies on the jaw;
break the teeth of the wicked. (3,7)

Arise, O LORD, in your anger;
rise up against the rage of my enemies. (7,6)

Break the arm of the wicked and evil man;
call him to account for his wickedness.... (10,15)

Elsewhere, he confidently states the way of things:

My shield is God Most High,
who saves the upright in heart. (7,10)

My enemies turn back;
they stumble and perish before you.
For you have upheld my right and my cause;
you have sat on your throne, judging righteously.
You have rebuked the nations and destroyed the wicked;
you have blotted out their name for ever and ever.
Endless ruin has overtaken the enemy,
you have uprooted their cities;
even the memory of them has perished. (9,3-6)

Clearly, the Psalms are about a God who takes an active hand in the earthly struggles of his chosen people.

Suffering and Divine Judgment

To place these ten Psalms against the blur of ideas that was argued over in the Book of Job, they assume that God is rewarding obedience and punishing evil here, in this world. David alternatively celebrates that this is so (You destroy all those who tell lies (5,6); God is a righteous judge, a God who expresses his wrath every day. (7,11)) and acts as God's cheering section in the rewarding and especially the punishing process (Declare them guilty, O God! Let their intrigues be their downfall. Banish them for their many sins, for they have rebelled against you. (5,10)).

Interestingly, David does not ever seem to stop and wonder if his own sufferings might be punishment for his own misbehavior. When he destroys his enemies, it is because they are being punished for their wickedness. When his enemies afflict him, though, it is because they are wicked. It is an immaculate theory of how the world works, in that it covers all possible exigencies. The only problem is its utterly inconsistent and arbitrary nature.

One thing is for sure, though -- David doesn't expect to be rewarded for virtue after his death in this world:

Turn, O LORD, and deliver me;
save me because of your unfailing love.
No one remembers you when he is dead.
Who praises you from the grave? (6:4-5)

The lack of any concept of an afterlife has been a conspicuous absence in the first third of the Bible, but here we have an explicit statement denying the possibility of life after death. “You need to help me now,” David tells God, “in order to maximize my grateful worship while I’m still alive and able to worship you.” Death terminates the relationship with God, which can only mean that it is what you might call “real death” or “total death” – no afterlife allowed.

Psalms for Christians

The Book of Psalms, along with the Book of Proverbs, is probably the most popular part of the Old Testament for Christians. Indeed, there are many cheap Bibles that are really just the New Testament plus those two books. Psalms are all over the place, read at almost any service, wedding, or funeral that you might show up for in the, uh, Christian community. This raises an interesting question: Why are Christians so gung-ho for a Jewish hymnal that predates all of the central events of their religion?

Well, part of the answer is probably just the comfort afforded by talking in first person to a God who is going to protect you and smite your oppressors. I mean, come on:

...you are a shield around me, O LORD;
you bestow glory on me and lift up my head.
To the LORD I cry aloud,
and he answers me from his holy hill.
I lie down and sleep;
I wake again, because the LORD sustains me.
I will not fear the tens of thousands
drawn up against me on every side. (3,3-6)

When you read that out loud, you don't think of it as a prayer attributed to David, king of the ancient Hebrews. You think of it as a personal affirmation and, whether you strictly believe it or not, it is still a soothing sort of thing to profess.

There is also some more specific language in these Psalms, though, that might carry special resonance for Christians. Check out this passage:

[The Lord] rebukes them in his anger
and terrifies them in his wrath, saying,
"I have installed my King
on Zion, my holy hill."
I will proclaim the decree of the LORD:
He said to me, "You are my Son;
today I have become your Father." (2,5-7)

In Christianity, the language of Father and Son is intimately tied to the relationship between God and Christ, so this passage lends itself very easily to being misinterpreted, or at least interpreted out of context. David is referring himself literally as the King of Zion and figuratively as a person enjoying a close relationship with God. A Christian listener, steeped in the rhetoric of the New Testament, would have a hard time reading this passage without thinking of Christ declaring himself the figurative King of Zion and the literal son of God.

A third and more subtle way that the Psalms appeal to Christianity involves the logical problem with David's theory of divine judgment. To help me make this point, let's look Psalm 1 in its entirety.

1 Blessed is the man
who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
or stand in the way of sinners
or sit in the seat of mockers.
2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night.
3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither.
Whatever he does prospers.
4 Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff
that the wind blows away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
6 For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.

Now, since there's no evidence that David believes in life after death, he means all of this to apply quite literally to this world. Good people will prosper in this life; the wicked will be punished in this life. The problem with this way of thinking, though, is that it is radically repudiated by reality. No one with a glancing knowledge of history or current events could believe it in anything other than a highly abstracted sort of way.

Add a belief in the afterlife, though – stipulate, as Christians do, a heaven and a hell – and the passage becomes entirely plausible. Everything that David asserts becomes possible when the rewards and the punishments happen offstage, someplace where we can't see them. It becomes irrelevant that war criminals die in old age, wealthy and comfortable, or that children are killed by diphtheria and malnutrition; their punishments and rewards will come afterwards, in the great hereafter. To read Psalms this way is a taking out of context, a radically alternative reading inconsistent with the original meaning of the text. But it is rereading that is both resonant and consistent within the context of Christian belief.

Detail of the Week

From the footnotes: "Psalms 9 and 10 may have been originally a single acrostic poem, the stanzas of which begin with the successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet." How cool is that?

Job 38-43: The Problem of Suffering, and Other Problems

So the Book of Job has been this long, long theological discussion about whether suffering is necessarily divine punishment, or if it might be either divine punishment or divine warning, or if it might just be something that happens randomly. Job and four of his friends have hashed this question out at great length without really getting anywhere, and when we left off last time I was excited to see that we would now get God's own words on this important question.

God on the Problem of Suffering

God's response, however, is not one either to satisfy those who would seek a relationship of dialogue with the Divine, nor even one that casts any light on the issue. Essentially, it's four chapters of sarcastic questions belittling Job for having thought to speculate on the nature of God.

Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.
Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! (38:4-5)

It goes on in this vein for four chapters. God describes the various things that he can do and Job can't, and points out that Job is nowhere NEAR as powerful and well-informed as he is. So, God's message on the question of suffering seems to be: "Shut up and stop asking questions."

The Narrative Conclusion

In Job 42, the storyline picks up where it left off in Job 2. Job apologizes all over himself for his presumption. Then, god tells Job's buddies that they have spoken of him incorrectly, and gives them instructions for making a sacrifice of atonement. To this extent, God seems to indirectly refute the notion that all suffering is divine retribution for sin.

Except, Job said that too at one point (although, see below), and God doesn't assign him any sacrifices. Indeed, God seems to be pouring on the rewards. Job is healed, his family comes around to visit, and in short order he has twice as much livestock as he did before. In the fullness of time, he has another seven sons and another three daughters, and -- this is stressed -- his second set of daughters is even prettier than the first ones were! So, Job's a lucky guy! I guess! And he lives to be really old.

Further Study

So I looked up Job in Peloubet's Bible Dictionary, copyright 1925, which Mrs.5000 purchased for me last weekend at an estate sale. (Mrs.5000 is freaking awesome.) According to PBD, Job "stands as the greatest poem in the world's great literatures." Hmm. Also, that "it is almost universally agreed that the basis of the Book of Job was an historical fact; that Job was a real man who underwent such severe trials and disasters that they made a lasting impression upon his age...." Hmm. "Every good man's life in the end is a success. With God's children there are no life-tragedies. There are dramas and lyric songs and epics, but no tragedies." Hmm.

So, I turned to the more modern Oxford Companion to the Bible. Here, we learn that Job "is not only a work of intellectual vigor; it is also a literary masterpiece that belongs with the classics of world literature." More usefully, the OCB summarizes some critical scholarship on Job. I am, apparently, not the first to notice that much of what Job says is actually an argument against what otherwise seems to be his main point. Most Job scholars apparently feel that the Book only makes sense with the speeches shuffled somewhat, so that chunks of Job's speeches are reassigned to various of his three buddies. I hope I am not too curmudgeonly to feel that a record of a discussion in which there is literally no way to keep the various lines of argument distinct from each other has some fundamental problems with its cred as a "work of intellectual vigor."

It is frankly silly to call it a "literary masterpiece." Although, who knows, it might sound amazing in Hebrew. In English translation, though, it is opaque, repetitive, confused, and dull. It is extremely interesting as a record of the thought of people who lived long ago, and no doubt that interest only increases for someone with real specialist expertise in Biblical scholarship. To the extent that the intent of the poem was "literary" as we understand the word, however -- something that seems awfully unlikely -- the most that can be said is that it is really, really, really old.

I am not just blandly naysaying the OCB here. Really, I think that it is important to call out anyone who declares a text this unapproachable and turgid to be overbrimming with literary merit. For when someone is told this, and then runs up against the brick wall of a text manifestly lacking in any kind of literary value as the term is commonly understood, their inclination may well be to dismiss the text -- the Bible, in this case -- as something unapproachable by any means. Or, they may just assume that they are not smart enough to appreciate great literary works, and as a result reject the possibilities of literature in general. In this way are lives made less rich.

If you approach the Book of Job expecting a literary masterpiece, I absolutely, positively guarantee you that you will be utterly disappointed. If you approach it expecting a real muddle of a theological discussion, you will probably be able to glean some ideas from among its chaos. I hope, having had this warning, you fare better than me. Please report back!

Job 32 - 37: Elihu Puts His Two Shekels In

Job and his three pals have been arguing for 30 chapters, and after last week's reading they were pretty much argued out. Nobody has convinced anybody, so there's an awkward pause in the conversation. This gives a young guy who has been sitting nearby a chance to speak.

His name is Elihu, and he's been keeping quiet out of deference to his elders. Now it all comes spilling out, five chapters worth, although the first chapter is really just a long apology for jumping into the conversation. He is frustrated that Job's three friends haven't been able to refute his arguments, and hopes he can do better than them.

He starts off in Job 33 with a new line of argument. Job has complained throughout the book that God is remote and uncommunicative, but Elihu argues that God is speaking all the time, just not directly.

For God does speak -- now one way, now another
though man may not perceive it.
In a dream, in a vision of the night,
when deep sleep falls on men as they slumber in their beds,
he may speak in their ears
and terrify them with warning,
and keep him from pride,
to preserve his soul from the pit,
his life from perishing by the sword.
Or a man may be chastened on a bed of pain
with constant distress in his bones,
so that his very being finds food repulsive
and his soul loathes the choicest meal. (33:15-20)

What this boils down to, as far as I can see -- and again, in the twisty poetry of Job, I often can't see much -- is first, that God speaks to us in dreams and visions. Personally, I find this unlikely, since my dreams are usually pretty dull affairs on the order of "I was in this house where I used to live, but people I didn't know at the time were there too!" But whatever. And after that, we're right back into the argument of "God gives people worldly blessings and punishments according to their behavior, which is the same idea that the three pals have been beating to death all through the chapter and which Job, except for a brief bit in Chapter 21, hasn't done a very good job of arguing against.

Towards the end of his speech, Elihu makes the further argument that the very natural order is in a sense the voice of God. Well, maybe not the natural order so much as weather: lightning, storms, thunder, clouds, winds, Elihu says, all speak for the power and majesty of God. Wanting to speak to such a power, as Job does, he thinks foolish:

37:19 "Tell us what we should say to him;
we cannot draw up our case because of our darkness.
20 Should he be told that I want to speak?
Would any man ask to be swallowed up?
21 Now no one can look at the sun,
bright as it is in the skies
after the wind has swept them clean.
22 Out of the north he comes in golden splendor;
God comes in awesome majesty.
23 The Almighty is beyond our reach and exalted in power;
in his justice and great righteousness, he does not oppress.

That last clause is kind of problematic, though, in that it doesn't follow from what came before. "Really powerful" does not mean, or even really imply, "righteous," as anyone living at any period of history would have to know. This may be an example of why I find is so hard to tell what is going on in the arguments of Job -- they don't seem to be conducting their discussion within the same general framework of logic that a modern dude like me is used to. It's a poem, too, so who knows how important the theological discussion is supposed to be relative to it creating a pleasant effect in the original. Sometimes I have wondered if the whole chapter is not just so much ancient hot air, but then I know that many books have been written about the theology of Job, so there must be SOMETHING in here that is eluding me.

Just to check if there was something obvious I was missing, I checked with the Wiki, which is never wrong. Elihu, it says:

contradicts the fundamental opinions expressed by the 'friendly accusers' in the central body of the text, that it is impossible that the righteous should suffer, all pain being a punishment for some sin. Elihu states that suffering may be decreed for the righteous as a protection against greater sin, for moral betterment and warning, and to elicit greater trust and dependence on a merciful, compassionate God in the midst of adversity.

...and yeah, that sounds about right.

After Elihu's speech, who should enter the conversation but God himself, with a speech that takes up most of the rest of the Book. That seems like it will be worth treating on its own, so we'll break here for now.


Next: "We'll hear it straight from the horse's mouth" sounds pretty sacriligious, but I'm having a hard time coming up with any other way of saying it.

Job 22-31: They Keep Arguing

So when we lost saw Job, he had just made a rather powerful observation. His friends, you'll remember, have been giving him what-for because his misfortunes are, to their eyes, clear evidence that he is being punished by God for something. They want him to 'fess up, so that he can be forgiven by God and put an end to his run of bad luck.

After asserting his innocence all this time, Job argued in Chapter 21 that this whole theory of divine retribution is undermined by an obvious observation: a lot of time, the wicked do really well in this life. If God was really handing out rewards for good and bad behavior, you would expect to see fewer happy evildoers.

I was curious to see how this would affect the subsequent argument, and am disappointed to find that.... it doesn't. They just continue as before. Eliphaz makes responds by directly accusing Job of some hidden wickedness -- he must have done something wrong to merit his punishment, after all -- with no response to what the man has just said.

As for Job, he just continues to complain that he has no way of making his case directly to God. His problem is not the loss of his family, fortune, and health, he claims; it is the remoteness of God from his creation. You can imagine many of his statements having been underlined in the Bibles of many an Existentialist in the 1950s and 1960s:

...if I go to the east, he is not there;
if I go to the west, I do not find him.
When he is at work in the north, I do not see him;
when he turns to the south, I catch no glimpse of him. (23:8-9)

...how faint the whisper we hear of him!
Who then can understand the thunder of his power? (26:14)

In Chapter 24, he seems to brush again on the problem of unpunished evil in a long passage about pain and suffering in the world, which starts with something like a procedural complaint:

Why does the Almighty not set times for judgment?
Why must those who know him look in vain for such days? (24:1)

But then, in the second half of Job 27, he seems to be making exactly the same arguments his friends have been making against him. He describes at some length how the evil will be punished by God -- in this life! This baffles me. If this was just a record of a long, rambling conversation, we wouldn't necessarily expect the participants to cling to a consistent point of view all the way through. But this is the Bible, and presumably there is supposed to be some kind of theological lesson at the heart of this conversation. Up until now, I thought the point was that divine reward and punishment should not be expected to happen in our reality, or in "real time" as it were. But now Job has argued both sides of the issue, and I'm confused.

Could it be that the book of Job just isn't intellectually consistent? And if so, is that an intentional ambiguity that's supposed to mean something, or is it just, perhaps, a flawed or confused piece of writing? The later seems unlikely, as you'd expect someone to have noticed incoherence sometime in the Bible-assembling process. Maybe all will become clear later.

As an aside, Job's friend Eliphaz asks a very interesting set of questions at the outset of today's reading, questions that cut to the heart of the relationship between God and humanity.

Can a man be of benefit to God?
Can even a wise man benefit him?
What pleasure would it give the Almighty if you were righteous?
What would he gain if your ways were blameless? (22: 2-3)

Here, again, is the prevailing theme of Job: that God is so remote, so different, so unlike us that any attempt at understanding him -- or perhaps even of pleasing him through rightous and obedient behavior -- is doomed to futility. Interesting and provocative, but Eliphaz does not seem to grasp the implications of what he has said, and the idea is not developed any further.


Next: I continue to wade through Job.

Job 12-21: With Friends Like Jobs'....

So last time, we got the basic story of Job in one and a half chapters, and then saw Job argue about his situation with three of his friends for the next nine and a half chapters. The next ten chapters continue this conversation, as Job's buddies -- Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar -- continue to hector him, and he continues to rail back at them. It's all dialog, this "interior poem" of the Book of Job, and I imagine most of it being shouted accusingly between our hero and his erstwhile pals.

The buddies continue to reiterate, and re-reiterate, and re-re-reiterate, their basic argument: that God punishes the unjust and evil, and therefore Job's punishment must be based on some wrongdoing. They want him to come clean, make atonement, and humble himself before God; if he honestly does this, they think, his punishment will be lifted.

For most of this section, Job continues to counter is the same way he did in the earlier chapters. He protests his innocence, and argues that the actions and motivations of God are inscrutable. In so doing, he gets in some good digs at his friends (and perhaps at all of us):

Men at ease have contempt for misfortune
as the fate of those whose feet are slipping. (12:5)

Despite his insistence of the unknowableness of God's motives, however, Job is persistent in asserting that God is unfair in not communicating with him. I desire to speak to the Almighty and to argue my case with God, he asserts (13:3), frequently crying out for the same. Indeed, he seems less bothered by his misfortune -- his loss of property and standing, the death of his family, his personal afflictions -- than by God's refusal to explain any of this to him.

Only grant me these two things, O God,
and then I will not hide from you:
Withdraw your hand far from me,
and stop frightening me with your terrors.
Then Summon me and I will answer,
or let me speak, and you reply.
How many wrongs and sins have I committed?
Show me my offense and my sin.
Why do you hide you face and consider me your enemy?
Will you torment a windblown leaf? (13:20-25)

It's interesting that, despite an almost total submission to the acts of God, that Job is all but scolding God for not communicating and explaining his actions.

Though I cry, "I've been wronged!" I get no response; though I call for help, there is no justice. (19:7)

But Who's Right?

This is not easy reading -- I continue to wrestle with it -- but its existence as an open discussion about the nature of God and God's role in the world is highly interesting. We haven't really seen anything like this before in the Bible. The closest we've been was in the books of Moses, when God was laying out the long list of laws to govern human behavior, but this is a very different sort of discussion. For one thing, it is highly ambiguous. It seems like we are supposed to think that Job is right, or at least righter than his three friends, but this is never really spelled out.

And, from everything stated in the Bible up to this point, it is hard to fault the friends. Throughout the histories, God is forever rewarding or punishing people (or whole nations) by making good things or bad things happen to them here on Earth. Writers of all the previous books of the Bible have had no problem with ascribing people's fortunes and misfortunes, even their deeds and misdeeds, to God's rendering judgment on their behaviors. By that reasonable standard, the friends are right.

Except, we know from the way the story is set up that Job is an innocent. We know that God has allowed his tremendous misfortune not as a punishment, but merely as an experiment. This certainly gives weight to Job's assertion that the ways of God are inscrutable. Whether Job is in the right in his demands for an explanation for his sufferings is an open question. I can't tell whether this is considered unseemly arrogance, or whether he is perfectly free to demand all he wants, secure in the knowledge that God has not the slightest obligation to pay his demands any attention.

Job 21: Let's Look at the Evidence

Finally, Job gets empirical with his friends. He points out something that, as much back in the day as now, must have been pretty obvious: the theory of divine retribution from evil is all fine and good, but anybody who has been around the block a few times knows it doesn't work. If things work the way you say, he points out:

7 Why do the wicked live on,
growing old and increasing in power?
8 They see their children established around them,
their offspring before their eyes.
9 Their homes are safe and free from fear;
the rod of God is not upon them.
10 Their bulls never fail to breed;
their cows calve and do not miscarry.
11 They send forth their children as a flock;
their little ones dance about.
12 They sing to the music of tambourine and harp;
they make merry to the sound of the flute.
13 They spend their years in prosperity
and go down to the grave in peace.

A little later, he implies his friends are being naive yokels for thinking like they do:

28 You say, 'Where now is the great man's house,
the tents where wicked men lived?'
29 Have you never questioned those who travel?
Have you paid no regard to their accounts-
30 that the evil man is spared from the day of calamity,
that he is delivered from the day of wrath?

Now I don't know about you, but this seems like a slam dunk of an argument to me. We'll find out what Eliphaz and his posse have to say in response next time on Michael Reads the Bible!


Next Time: What Eliphaz and his posse have to say in response!


p.s. Ever wondered about the phrase "by the skin of my teeth"? Well! In Job 19:20, Job notes that he has escaped with only the skin of my teeth, and a footnote indicates that this means his gums. In other words, he has survived, but with all of his teeth having been knocked out or having fallen out of his head.