THE SEDUCTION OF JOB: Twenty Years Later
A Dramatic Poem
CHAPTER ONE
Job meets Elihu, now the king's new chief counsel. Job accuses Elihu of compromise.
ELIHU:
My dear
Job, the land of Uz salutes you.
Far is
the extent of your known wisdom,
For
everyone seeks your wise counsel,
And
wide are the four corners of your prosperity,
As your
sheep graze and cattle multiply peacefully;
Priests
and townspeople admire your possessions,
And
heaven and earth smile on your fortune.
JOB:
My dear
Elihu, my applause echoes back to you,
Now
that you are the king's chief counsel.
Tell
me, how did you achieve such a feat?
ELIHU:
No
secret I can tell you, my Job.
Time
and waiting, hard work and patience,
God's
providence granted and man's opportunity grabbed,
What
other secret is there in my success?
Unlike
yours, Job, of celestial blessings,
Mine is
just a story of humble earthly reward.
JOB:
How
does a man rise to the top in the world
Without
bowing to the corruption of its demand?
Why
does an exalted title come to a man
Without
a glad bending of his integrity and honesty?
ELIHU:
Do not
hasten your judgment on me, O Job.
You are
beyond reproach, of men and angels,
And
your wealth is the special gift of God.
The
weak fear your power, the guilty your condemnation.
But be
merciful toward us, lowly mortals,
Less
righteous than saints and humbler than the wise.
Are we
all oppressed by your standards of virtue,
All
burdened to touch God or fall to hell?
JOB:
My dear
Elihu, have I seen God for nothing?
Between
birth and death, life passes just once.
Wealthy
and poor, powerful and powerless, saints and sinners,
All
with one life that God gives and takes away.
What is
righteousness if corruption is the answer;
What is
salvation if temptation holds sway?
High
and low, the land
of Uz is full of sin.
ELIHU:
Withhold
your contempt, I beg of you, O Job!
We are
ordinary people of the earth,
Gifted
with neither your wisdom nor your strength,
Neither
your straightness nor your righteousness.
We bow
and we bend to the Devil,
We cry
and we repent to our forgiving God.
Yes, I
bowed to the Devil and bent to ambition.
God
gave you your reward, and the king mine,
God for
your strength, the king for my weakness.
You
walk before God and I before man.
Surely
heaven has mercy on earthy men like me?
JOB:
High‑spirited
words from a low‑minded man,
Invoking
of the sacred by a profane soul,
And a
noble pleading from an ignoble heart.
God
gave you a high spirit but you lowered it,
And
granted you a noble life but you lost it.
The
angels sang when you were born
But you
live ignobly and will die in corruption:
The new
chief counsel is but an old repeat.
ELIHU:
O Job,
a wise man whose wisdom is colder than ice,
Whose
righteousness knows no mercy for the weak,
Who
walks straight, turning neither left nor right.
But who
gained deep wisdom and true righteousness
Just by
walking a straight line?
JOB:
Has
anyone gained wisdom without God's grace?
Have I
gained His grace without suffering?
Is any
moral triumph possible without strength?
I have
seen God only from the depth of my pain;
I stand
where I stand only in His redemption;
For God
lifted me up with His great mercy.
Say
what you like, Elihu, but you have fallen,
Without
God's grace, without your own strength.
May God
have mercy on a soul like yours.
ELIHU:
May you
never fall, Job, the righteous.
May you
never stumble, Job, the elect.
How
quickly he has forgotten those days
When he
at the bread of his own tears
And
drank the water of his own weeping,
When
his cries to heaven went unanswered
And
God's justice stayed far away from him.
As he
is without guilt or shame, still,
His
righteousness is justified by his innocence.
But
what is his innocence if it burdens us,
And
oppresses us with guilt and shame?
Job is
a lion, strong and fearless,
Among
the race of mice, weak and afraid.
We
tremble before men more powerful than we,
And he
walks before God, full of grace.
He
roars with righteousness and certainty
And we
scatter like feathers in the wind.
In his
strength he rebukes our weakness,
And in
grace of God he scolds our fear;
In
integrity he casts a giant shadow over us,
And in
anger he upbraids our compromising souls.
So Job
stands straight and we prostrate.
O Job,
your high wisdom and mighty piety:
Noble
in words and heroic in deeds,
Pure in
thought and unblemished in action!
You
are a thorn in our sides and a reminder
Of our
frailties and our own demons.
Your
strength makes us ever smaller;
Your
grace is millstone that drowns us.
When
you laugh in righteousness we resent
And
when you walk with certainty we seethe.
--William Blake
Job (Iyyov in Hebrew), one of the seven Gentile prophets, was from the land of Uz. In “Genesis” Uz was recognized as the son of Aram, the son of Noah’s son Shem, though other Biblical passages disagree (in 1 Chronicles he was listed as a descendant of Shem, along with Uz, Hul, Gether, and Mash [Meshech] without saying that Aram was the father of the other four). In “The War Scroll,” one of the Dead Sea documents, mentions “the rest of the sons of Aramea: Uz, Hul, Togar, and Mesha, who are beyond the Euphrates." Uz is sometimes identified as the kingdom of Edom (southwestern Jordan and southern Israel) but has also been placed in Dhofar, the original home of the Arabs; Bashan in southern Syria/western Jordan; Arabia east of Petra, Jordan; and even Uzbekistan. Some rabbinical sources placed him among the Sabbeans of modern Yemen, the Chaldean (Neo-Babylonian) (626-539 BCE), or at the time of “Ahasuerus” (probably either Xerxes I or one of the three Persian kings named Artaxerxes I). The Septuagint (a 3rd-century BCE Koine Greek translation of some Hebrew texts which were later included in the canonical Hebrew Bible and other related texts which were not) added a section to “The Book of Job” that claimed he, as the grandson of Esav (Esau), was a ruler of Edom. In the 2nd century Yose ben Halafta wrote that he was born when Ya’akov (Isaac) and his sons entered Egypt and died when the Jews left, 210 years later. In the 2nd or 3rd century Shimon Bar Kappara placed him in the time of Esau’s father Yitschak, while Abba ben Kahana claimed he married Dinah, the daughter of Yitschak’s son Ya’akov. Some early rabbis claimed that he was the only servant of the pharaoh who feared the word of God, though the Tractate Sotah claimed that, just before the Exodus, another adviser, Balaam, suggested that all the Jews’ newborn males be killed, while Jethro, the father of Moshe (Moses) insisted that no action at all be taken; Job kept quiet, and for this he was punished by God. A similar account is found in the “Sefer ha Yashar,” in which at first Job was in favor of the executions and later only answered evasively. Raba placed him a bit later, at the time when Moshe sent spies into Canaan. Some Muslim writers claimed he was the ancestor of the Romans.
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