Suffering and The Book of Job

A REFLECTION:

I should like to meet the person who originally suggested that the Book of Job is good reading for those who suffer.

I should like to tie a rock around his neck and drop him in the nearest pond and then fish him out so I can dance on his grave.

When you read the Book of Job, you are reading an impenetrable philosophical mess that concludes, in essence, "Don't ask about your suffering: you haven't the standing."  It variously suggests that

• God is responsible for suffering (Job 1:12)
• Satan is responsible for suffering (Job 1:12)
• Suffering is the result of God's capriciousness (Job 1:9-12)
• Suffering is the result of Satan's cunning (Job 1:9-12)
• It is wrong to think God could ever be wrong (Job 34:10-15)
• The right response to suffering is not to ask questions (Job 1:22)
• That the right response is to interrogate God (Job 13:1-28)
• It is good to be convinced of your own righteousness (Job 32:1-3) [Note: I think this is the real point of the book.)
• It is not good to interrogate God or be convinced of your own righteousness (Job 38:1-3)
• That the right response is not to interrogate God (Job 40:1-5)

Job is, as I have written elsewhere in the blog, a book of stern and glittering insights into something besides the meaning of suffering. 

I think it's an insight into the psychology of righteousness: the central pressure in the book is between Job's belief in his own righteousness, unshaken by his sufferings, and his interlocutors who accuse him of sin and defend God on the grounds that God would not put an innocent man on the boil like He has done to Job.  

As art or philosophy, Job fails on the grounds of having too many layers, recursions, and self-contradictions.  (I blame what I take to be redaction in the prologue and epilogue: somebody has tried so hard to protect God there that the themes of the poetic dialogues are garbled.)  People talk about the patience of Job, but if you read his dialogues with his friends, he isn't patient at all.  He's just persuaded he hasn't done anything to deserve what he gets.

And of course he hasn't.

The value of the book is in its disturbing lack of answers: we know we don't deserve this, and we know there are no answers to the question "Why?" Out of the storm of questions comes a voice that says, "Shut up.  You haven't the standing to even ask."

Whatever else you can say about Job, it's not falsely sentimental that way.