THE SEDUCTION OF JOB: Twenty Years Later
A Dramatic Poem
CHAPTER
SIX
Devastated, Job searches his soul.
JOB TO SELF:
O Lord my God, what have I done?
The sweetness of her breath have I turned
Into the hellishness of an avenging
terror,
Just as swiftly as clouds turning to rain,
Just as oddly as winds changing
directions,
Yet
so powerful and terrible as God's revenge.
O Lord my God, what have I done?
For my weak flesh and gullible head
Have I called upon the curse of the ages,
To wound her and to haunt me,
Repeating the folly one more time,
Consoling the woman with sorry tears
And the man with belated knowledge
Of short pleasures and long pains,
Inevitable as it is perplexing
And astounding as it is plain!
O Lord my God, what have I done?
Providence brought the innocent woman to
my care,
Her heart beating with enthusiasm,
unbound,
Her mind open to knowledge and wisdom,
unabsorbed,
Her spirit soaring with goodness and
desire, unresolved,
Now gone from me in anger and bitterness,
Her heart drenched in rage and fury,
Her mind bent on a scheme of vengeance,
Her spirit deformed with powerful
longings,
Her curse still cleaving to my ears.
O Lord my God, what have I done?
Of all the hypocrites that crawl on earth
I tower above them all:
I preach faith but practice infidelity;
I counsel prudence but play reckless;
I cry for piety but embrace wickedness.
Should God's punishment not find me?
Of all the cowards who breathe the air
I am the weakest of them all:
I succumbed to the flesh but not the
consequences;
I delighted in sweet words but not in
reason;
I disdained sin in thought but not in
action.
Should the angels not mock me in derision?
But the Almighty is a merciful God,
And He knows a repentant soul in distress.
O how I detest my hypocrisy and cowardice‑‑
Let all things of the past fade into
insignificance
In my strong impulse to denounce the old
Job
And to seek and welcome the new soul in
me,
So long a captive of false honor and
reputation,
Preserved under the cloak of piety and
prayer,
Hidden inside the fancy garment of wealth
and power,
And applauded and admired as a man of
wisdom.
No more of this hypocrisy and cowardice,
And God is kind toward a sorrowful heart.
The Almighty is my witness on this pledge:
I shall not deviate from my wife, Zorah,
As long as breath remains in my body;
Let my wealth be the relief to the needy
In bread and garments as well as in
thought;
Let my servants and maids share in my
bounties
And let them hear kind words and eat in peace,
For they labor and toil to make me rich;
Let my haughty spirit take a tumble
In the penance of humility and submission,
No more proud public speeches and words,
And the quick acknowledgement of my own
wisdom:
Let God be the source of all my judgment
At the temple as well as in my solitary
heart,
In the crowd but more in my secret soul,
Not only in the throng of the sun's
daylight
But also in the desolation of the moon's
silence.
O Lord my God, how great is His mercy,
And how sweet is a man's soul reborn,
How sure is his peace of mind in
lowliness,
How wondrous are all of God's mercies!
Freed from the torment of haughtiness,
No longer enslaved in the mire of pride,
My hope rises to a new mountain peak
And my peace settles to a valley of
contentment.
Who but the Almighty of grace and charity
Can renew a sinner's life for the second
time?
Praise be to the Lord, for He remade me
anew.
From sunrise to sunset blissful is the
day,
From sundown to sunup exalted is the
night.
With the light of rebirth and the shadow
of comfort
Days are too short for my shouts of joy
And nights too long for the dawn's bliss.
I am dazed with euphoria, unexplained,
And overwhelmed by freedom, newly found,
Feeling suddenly strong in my well‑being
And seized by the energy to move the
mountains.
Inward peace is now my reward,
No longer beholden to fear and anxiety,
But cleansed by the tears of humility.
How insignificant is my wisdom,
And how insufficient is my knowledge
As true wisdom is found in penance
And real knowledge in lowliness:
In penance and lowliness is my
understanding,
And in humility and submission I know
myself.
Worldly gains shall no longer be my
purpose,
Nor will I disdain honest labor as beneath
me.
My life shall be simple and unadorned
As pure must be my thought and action
henceforth.
God's love unbound is my guide by day,
And I am comforted by His mercy after
dark.
In God's tenderness all things exalt,
And in my goodwill toward all men
Shall my blessed days join fearless
nights.
Thou Has Fulfilled the Judgement of the Wicked [detail] -- William Blake
In the Bible, Job’s wife was unnamed. Her sole appearance was a brief one, in which she told her ailing husband, “Baruch Elokhim, ve mos,” which has most often been translated as “Curse God and die.” Thus she has gained an unsavory reputation, perhaps undeservedly. In rare cases (as in 1 Kings 21:10-13, and twice in the “Book of Job” [1:11, 2:5, when the term is used by ha’satan, “the accuser”], “barak” did indeed mean “curse,” but in almost every case it meant “bless.” So it is most likely that, given the context, in which she praised Job’s steadfastness, she actually told him, sympathetically, to “Bless God and die.” In the “Testament of Job the Blameless, the Conqueror in Many Contests, the Sainted” (also called “The Book of Job Called Jobab, and His Life, and the Transcript of His Testament”), a Jewish work from the turn of the first millennium which was condemned as apocryphal by Gelasius I (ca. 496) but preserved by the Copts (its earliest extant version is in Coptic from the 5th century) provides additional details. The manuscript may have been composed by the Theraputae, an ascetic, monastic Jewish sect in the Alexandria area which the contemporary philosopher Philon commented upon extensively. According to that work, Jobab was a descendant of Esau who ruled in Egypt who was renamed Job by God after his tribulations. He converted from idolatry and angered Satan by trying to destroy heathen sites. Disguised as a beggar, Satan tried to get him in his power. Failing to do so, he gained God’s permission to take away all of Jobab’s possessions and destroyed his livestock by fire and theft; then, disguised as the king of Persia, he besieged Jobab’s city, plundered it, and killed Jobab’s children. Finally, in the form of a hurricane, Satan smote him with leprosy. For the next 7 years (or 48, depending on the version) Jobab lived on a dunghill, fed by his first wife Sitis (Sitidos), who earned her living as a water-carrier despite her royal birth; after she was forbidden to take him any more food, Satan (disguised as a bread seller) gained possession over her by getting her to exchange some of her hair for 3 loaves of bread; under his spell, and with Satan hiding behind her, she upbraided her husband and called upon him to curse God and die. Jobab responded by challenging Satan to “come forth and wage war with me!” causing the accuser to weep, saying “I yield to thee who art the great wrestler.” (Philo referred to Job in similar terms). Spurned by her husband, Sitis (whose name may be related to “sotah” [unfaithful wife] or even to Satan) went among the cattle and died. Then Job married Dina, daughter of Jacob and his first wife Leah, who bore him a new family to replace the one he lost. (Her name (“judged; vindicated") arose from the murderous vengeance that her brothers Simeon and Levi took against Shechem and his father Hamor for Shechem’s seduction of her. When their action was criticized by Jacob, his sons replied, “'Should he treat our sister as a harlot?”) Jon gives the name Zorah to Job’s wife, named after the birthplace and burial site of Samson; it is also the name of an Egyptian solar deity; the Hebrew word translates as “hornet” (or “leprosy”) and may be contrasted with Bashana, cognate with the Arabic “bathneh” (soft, fertile land).
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