Monday, September 18, 2017

Jon Huer writes



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.


ELIHU TO SELF: 
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

1 comment:

  1. 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.

    ReplyDelete

Join the conversation! What is your reaction to the post?