Jon Huer writes

THE SEDUCTION OF JOB: Twenty Years Later   

A Dramatic Poem

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Zorah expresses her feelings toward God, Bashana, and Job.

ZORAH TO SELF: 

O God Who is almighty and merciful, 

Why has He chosen my husband for His sacrifice, 

Of all the prayerful souls to suit His purpose? 

Why is He forsaking me, His poor handmaid, 

By taking my husband away from me? 

Am I selfish to put the thought of myself first, 

Above God Almighty and His heavenly design? 

Why must I wallow in a widow's mourning

When the angels welcome a sinner to their fold?     

O Lord, explain to me, this humble woman, 

The vast difference since the beginning of time

Between men's celestial conceptions of salvation 

And women's earth‑bound thoughts of happiness, 

Between their enthusiasm to grasp the universe whole 

And our desire for heaven in the this‑worldly mates, 

Between men's search for penance in the highest order 

And women's easy satisfaction with the here and now!   

O Almighty, make the signs clear to me; 

Then I shall understand and cease to mourn: 

Why Job's sin is washed with the tears of my sorrow 

And his soul regained with the treasures of my comfort; 

Why you pluck him from the multitude of sinners 

So that his wife must live a widow's death; 

And why Your will and his glad acquiescence 

Only cause grief in me, not heavenly rejoicing! 

In my simple and humble mind, I am vexed 

Why Job cannot do an ordinary man's penance 

For his average man's sin and violation 

Without reaching for greatness even in repenting, 

Or imitating angels and saints to become one!     

O Bashana, my sister in anger and sorrow 

And my adversary for the man we both love, 

Now that Job pledges to become a man of prayer 

And a pilgrim in penance we must look to God 

To sort out our tangled souls and confounded spirits, 

For we were privileged to have walked in his shadow 

And cursed to have shared his bosom and wisdom!   

O Bashana, you came into my life unannounced 

And, turning my sweetly uneventful world up side down, 

Vanished, leaving questions unanswered, sorrows unresolved,  

To your heart's content and soul's fulfillment! 

With your youth and beauty that I no longer possess 

You conquered my husband in his moments of weakness 

And ruined his life and wrecked my faith

 So that you laugh a triumphant laugh by day 

And by night you dance a victor's joyous dance, 

Celebrating what your vaunted powers have wrought!   

Or, Bashana, my sister in our common sufferance, 

Are you also lost in the company of your loneliness 

And grieving in the chorus of your own sighs, 

Wondering about the wreckage of your powers, 

And the ruined lives, including your own, 

That lie on the trail of sorrow and vexation 

As a reminder of our follies and indulgences

O Bashana, a new victim, another number added 

To the countless tales of women betrayed in love 

By their men's passions and their own errors, 

To the endless replays of youth and affection, 

Of beauty's power and reason's powerlessness, 

Of seductions tempestuous and aftermaths lamentable   

Both for the woman who departs and fades 

And for the woman who stays and mourns, 

With the memory stubborn, the deed unforgiven!   

O Job, you aspiring martyr and saint, 

You selfish husband and uncaring father, 

In your urgency to purify your scarlet soul 

And to cleanse your tarnished heart once good 

Of all the sins of men and of this world, 

You are ready to commit another sin, bigger still, 

Of abandoning those of your flesh and blood! 

O Job, in your zeal to touch God and angels 

You abdicate your earthly duties and callings 

And forsake those who love and depend on you! 

Now your salvation and redemption claim another victim 

Whose heart must break so that you are saved, 

And whose cries go unheard as a saint is born! 

Who can say that your paradise is not my inferno?   

O Job, God's servant in fervent waiting, 

To shed his blood so that his sin is forgiven 

And inflict pain on his flesh so that he lives! 

He sinned in the small yardstick of foolish men 

But he repents in the fathoms of God's standard, 

Measuring the Almighty's thundering Commandments 

Against the whimpering of a grasshopper who broke them!   

O Job, why must you soar like an angel 

When your home is here on earth with us, 

Where your sin is forgiven, its price paid, 

In your true prayer and your daily penance, 

Where your renewed happiness is to be found 

In me and in our love, simple and sweet, 

Without the dead weight of martyrdom and sainthood?   

O Job, perhaps I do not comprehend 

The mysteries of God speaking to His chosen ones 

And how He favors them with the furnace of affliction. 

You have been selected to do heaven's work for Him 

As He has seen me fit to do my own part 

In a humble way but to make the whole possible 

So that all things, great and small, serve Him.   

O Job, in love I will hold my peace, 

For nothing of this world shall equal my passion, 

But God's command is greater still. 

In tears and sighs I will forever call to you, 

But in prayer and penance shall I rejoice 

As you are within sight of the heavenly exaltation 

On the wings of my weeping and hope!
 

-- William Blake