In my last post about the Book of Job I confronted a popular misconception: that God allowed the Devil to torture an innocent man just to win a bet. This reading of the text collapses on a close examination of Job 1:6-12; not only is a bet never made in this passage, it could never have been made. Setting aside the broader world of Christian theology, the possibility of a bet is precluded by the Book of Job's own understanding of divine omniscience. God knows that Job is a righteous man, and He knows all He needs to about the strength of Job's faith.

Like I discussed, what tends to bother us in reading the book is the picture we have of God, watching impassively from the sky as the Devil marauds about the land of Uz, destroying Job's life. But as soon as we start to entertain the possibility of a divine reality behind this story (even if we don't believe it), we have to remove this picture far from our consideration. All of a sudden, the language of Job 1 and 2 becomes symbolic of something we can hardly imagine, something to which our imagination can never do justice.

For most people, however, that doesn't really solve the underlying problem of why. It's all well and good to say that God wasn't making a wager with the Devil, but in that case, what was He doing? This post isn't going to answer that question. In some sense, it's an impossible question to answer (though I think we can catch glimpses of an answer, and I will explore this in the next few weeks). In this post, I want to take a look into the dark valley into which Job initially descends- and it is very dark indeed.

The reign of the reaper

With the Devil having taken away his children, his possessions, and his health, Job sits in silence for seven days. At the end of this, he utters a lament, cursing the day he was born and longing for his own death:

13 - For then I would have lain down and been quiet; I would have slept; then I would have been at rest,
14 - with kings and counselors of the earth who rebuilt ruins for themselves,
15 - or with princes who had gold, who filled their houses with silver.
Job 3:13-15

The import of this language is lost on most readers. It is an allusion to something very important within the Jewish tradition. The rebuilding of ruins is a reference to a prophecy of Isaiah:

And your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in.
Isaiah 58:12

This is meant to be one of those great passages of hope. It speaks of deliverance, and of return from exile, and of restoration to glory. It glows in the distance like a sunrise. It is a promise which would have sustained many a suffering Israelite through their toil: someday, the Lord will deliver us, and we will come home, and everything will be right again. Our torment will end; my children will live in peace, in a land which is their own.

Job's allusion here is a dark one. Yes, he says, they rebuilt the ancient ruins- good for them. Death still got them in the end. Their gold and silver was nice while they had it, but what good is it now? Who cares what they rebuilt? Peace, war, comfort, torment, it doesn't matter. It all amounts to nothing. For the author of Job to reference this prophecy in this light is significant. It asks a question which is meant to make the reader uneasy. What's the use of prophetic hope if, ultimately, it all leads to the same place?

19 - For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity.
20 - All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return.
Ecclesiastes 3:19-20

But this isn't all of it. There is another, more troubling allusion, a few verses on:

20 - Why is light given to him who is in misery, and life to the bitter in soul,
21 - who long for death, but it comes not, and dig for it more than for hidden treasures,
22 - who rejoice exceedingly and are glad when they find the grave?
Job 3:20-22

The reference to "hidden treasures" in verse 21 is meant to point us to the opening chapters of Proverbs:

1 - My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you,
2 - making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding;
3 - yes, if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding,
4 - if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures,
5 - then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God.
Proverbs 2:1-5

The Book of Proverbs gives us a vision of a universe which is governed by an underlying system of order, which it calls chokmah, or "wisdom". To pursue the wisdom of God is the essence of the good life. It is the source of stability, prosperity, and morality. All that is right in the world is right because of wisdom. As the evangelical minister David Pawson says in his overview of the book, "Proverbs is affirming the truth that God is 'the All-Wise God', the source of all wisdom, and that it is his wisdom that created the whole universe, with all its complexity."¹

With that in mind, it should do more than raise the reader's eyebrow when Job takes the language which Proverbs applies to God's wisdom and uses it instead to speak of death. I don't think this is accidental. The author of Job knew his Scripture, and I think he's making a point. The suffering of Job calls into question everything we think we know about the wisdom of God. Is it true? All that talk about pursuing wisdom- is it just banality? Are the heavens and the earth governed by a divine order, or, if you dig down deep enough, is it all just chaos?

Job, the existentialist

This isn't to be taken lightly. Don't think of this as some far-off, abstract consideration by a long-dead midrashic scholar. This is relevant to you, reader, this very moment, as you read this page. It's posing a question about what you believe, and inviting you to consider that maybe it's all wrong. Maybe the good guys don't win in the end. Maybe all the motivational speeches and the self-help literature and the daily practice of mindfulness are all just a paper-thin veneer over something meaningless and horrifying; and in the corner of our eye, we glimpse an hourglass and a scythe.

The bulwark against this view of things was, for many centuries, the notion that there was more to the universe than what we could see or touch; that at some higher level there was structure and sense-making and purpose. The late, great Tim Keller puts it this way:²

In ancient times it was understood that there was a transcendent moral order outside the self, built into the fabric of the universe. If you violated that metaphysical order there were consequences just as severe as if you violated physical reality by placing your hand in a fire. The path of wisdom was to learn to live in conformity with this unyielding reality. That wisdom rested largely in developing qualities of character, such as humility, compassion, courage, discretion, and loyalty.

But, inheritors as we are of the nihilistic existentialism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, we have lost access to this. In the absence of a robust philosophy of order and chaos, such as the ancients had, all we seem to have is a trite and watery optimism. To illustrate: whoever ran things at my old secondary school had a habit of sticking laminated sheets of A4 on the wall with upbeat quotations on them. I recall one which had Ed Sheeran's face on it, and which read "Everything will be okay in the end; if it's not okay, it's not the end." I don't mean to pick on Ed Sheeran (though if I never have to hear "Galway Girl" again, it will be too soon); he may have been drawing from a deep well of personal experience when he said that. But that isn't how it comes across. Taken at face value, the statement is bland and baseless. We have no reason to think that everything will be okay in the end. Quite the contrary; in the end, we rot, and we will not be around to be aware of it. It would seem appropriate here to substitute "dust" in place of "okay".

The author of Job does not shy away from the bleakness of this worldview. If the order behind the universe turns out to be an illusion, and we have lost hope of any greater meaning in the cosmos, then what is there left for us to do but wait on the reaper? There is neither up, nor down, neither good, nor evil; there is no point in doing, seeking, or loving anything; there is just chaos, chance, and confusion, and then we die. In a way, the absurdism of Camus and the mad philosophical Darwinism of Nietzsche are just following in the author of Job's footsteps. They have not discovered anything or hit upon some novel insight; they were beaten to the punch more than two thousand years ago.

Fording the river

I like the Bible, if you hadn't already noticed. There are many reasons for that; one of the most compelling is its willingness to run full-tilt at difficult questions. Nowhere is this more apparent than the Book of Job. It takes a long, hard look at the claim of order in the heavens, and poses the question: in the face of a righteous man's suffering, is there any point in discussing such a thing? Job's lament strikes at the heart of Old Testament hope. It leads us to wonder if perhaps all that talk of goodness is really just that- all talk. Perhaps if we dig down far enough, right to the fundamentals of reality, what awaits us is not good and orderly at all, but simply random and senseless. We cannot take refuge in the wisdom of God because it is illusory; it will vanish like mist as soon as we reach for it. We cannot hold on to the hope of deliverance either, because that, too, will be swallowed up into nothingness. Vanity of vanities- all is vanity. And if that is the case, where are we to go? Consider this haunting passage from C. S. Lewis's book Perelandra:³

As long as what you are afraid of is something evil, you may still hope that the good may come to your rescue. But suppose you struggle through to the good and find that is also dreadful? How if food itself turns out to be the very thing you can't eat, and home the very place you can't live, and your very comforter the person who makes you uncomfortable? Then, indeed, there is no rescue possible: the last card has been played.

I find that when confronted with the horror of existentialism, some people react with a shrug and say "well, I don't see it that way; it's not that bad for me." That suggests to me that they haven't really understood what's being discussed. Others, partly apprehending the problem, try to wriggle out of it by saying that we can decide for ourselves what is meaningful. To explore the folly of this in detail would take another post; suffice it to say for now that the people who believe this aren't really reckoning with a meaningless reality at all, but only a reality which dispenses meaning on a subjective basis. They still think that meaning is a thing sui generis, and not a cruel trick being played on them by their brains. I think it is better to grapple with this problem while the sun is shining and life is going reasonably well; if nihilism hits with its full weight in the midst of real suffering, such as the loss of a loved one or the death of a dream, it can kill.

In case it needs to be said, I don't believe this state of affairs to be true. I don't think the author of Job did, either; but I do think it's worth taking all this very seriously. I hear people talking all too casually about the subjectivity of truth and meaning, as though we are somehow able to impose these things on a cosmos which possesses neither. I feel that the Book of Job speaks to these people from down the ages: don't speak so lightly about these things. When the storms of life come upon you, where will you go for shelter?

Job's lament is meant to lead us to a cliff-edge, and show us the depths to which despair can take us. The book is not telling us that we should despair; but it is a very long way from naive, idealistic optimism, too. I think it holds its own among the heavyweights of existentialism, and treats its subject matter with the utmost gravity. The book will ultimately go on to point us towards an answer, and give us an idea of what the author really thinks about these matters; but for now, I think that we would all benefit from reflecting on what it would mean if Job was right.

For further consideration

A good introduction to the Biblical understanding of wisdom: YouTube | The Book of Proverbs • What It Teaches About Being Good at Life
Camus' absurdism: Wikipedia | Absurdism
The Nietzschean will to power: Wikipedia | Will to power

All Bible citations are from the English Standard Version unless specified otherwise.

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