If you are a Christian there is a good chance that you have never read the “Bible”. There is also a good chance that you do not know what all exactly is in the “Bible”[1], except for some dubious interpretation of some selected sentences of the “Bible” taken completely out of context that you have heard from someone else who convinced you that he knows what they mean.
So today we will look at the famous “Book of Job”.
Originally titled אִיּוֹב (’Īyyōb), it is found in the כְּתוּבִים (Kətūbīm) ‘Writings’ section of the Hebrew תַּנַ״ךְ (Tanak) and as the first of the “Poetic Books” in the “Old Testament” of the Christian “Bible”. Although it is often assumed that it takes place in the days of the Hebrew patriarchs, it is in fact a rather late work, written between the 7th and the 3rd centuries BCE, during the Babylonian exile or in post-exilic times, which can be concluded from the presence of one of the main protagonists of the story.
There are two main reasons to read this book.
The first is the personality and character of the Judeo-Christian deity. The book begins with הַשָּׂטָן (haśśāṭān) making a bet with God that this allegedly God-fearing man Job
1:1 There was a man in the land of ‘Ūṣ, whose name [was] ’Īyyōb and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared ’Ǝelohīm and eschewed evil.[2]
is pious only because of his own well-being, endowed with a comfortable life and a large family
1:2 And there were born unto him seven sons and three daughters.
and lots of cattle.
1:3 His substance also was seven thousand sheep, and three thousand camels, and five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she asses, and a very great household; so that this man was the greatest of all the men of the east.[3]
This initial part of the story depicts the Judeo-Christian deity as Satan’s partner in crime (or vice-versa, does not matter, what matters is that they are accomplices), not so much different from the mighty Ormag from Vladimir Colin’s «Legendele țării lui Vam: O mitologie a omului» (“Legends from Vam’s Land: A Mythology of the Man”) or any other awful, despiteful, invidious, maleficent, malevolent, malicious, mean, mean-spirited, ornery, rancorous, sardonic, vicious, viperous deity of the past and present. And that bet between him and Satan is not far from the 1$ one between Randolph and Mortimer Duke in John Landis’s 1983 comedy “Trading Places”. In both cases powerful creatures destroy an individual’s life just for their own amusement and satisfaction. The Biblical deity is not portrayed as a good one, but as thoroughly evil.
And yes, Satan is the character in the story that betrays its late origin. As a Judaic cultural appropriation of the Zoroastrian Angra Manyu, the destructive or evil spirit, the direct adversary of Zoroastrianism’s highest deity Ahura Mazda, it could not have appeared before the Persian influence on Judaism during the Babylonian exile.
The second reason to read this book is the treatment of an individual’s possessions.
So when God gave carte blanche to Satan (so they are not partners, but God is Satan’s employer) to do whatever he wants with Job bar killing him, he first took away all of his oxen
1:14 And there came a messenger unto ’Īyyōb and said, The oxen were ploughing, and the asses feeding beside them:
1:15 And Šəbā’ fell [upon them], and took them away; yea, they have slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.
continued with Job’s sheep
1:16 While he [was] yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The fire of ’Ǝelohīm is fallen from heaven, and hath burned up the sheep, and the servants, and consumed them; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.
moved over to Job’s camels
1:17 While he [was] yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The Kašdīm made out three bands, and fell upon the camels, and have carried them away, yea, and slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.
to give the final touch to his job with Job’s progeny
1:13 And there was a day when his sons and his daughters [were] eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house:
…
1:18 While he [was] yet speaking, there came also another, and said, Thy sons and thy daughters [were] eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house:
1:19 And, behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, and they are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.
and as a cherry on top he provided Job with some skin disease.
2:7 So went Śāṭān forth from the presence of YHWH and smote ’Īyyōb with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown.
The only thing Satan did not take away from Job seems to be Job’s nagging wife
2:9 Then said his wife unto him, Dost thou still retain thine integrity? curse ’Ǝelohīm, and die.
Apparently not even Satan wanted to deal with that!
(What follows is “a series of speeches by Job and answers by his friends (plus a final answer by God) that hold the meat of the book. In these speeches Job is anything but patient and uncomplaining, and seriously questions the justice of God. Nevertheless, this has not, for some reason, altered the common conception of Job as a patient, uncomplaining man.”[4])
So what happens at the end? God concludes (God knows why?) that Job is a pious and righteous man and restores him to his former wealth and well-being.
42:10 And YHWH turned the captivity of ’Īyyōb when he prayed for his friends: also YHWH gave ´Iyyôv twice as much as he had before.[5]
…
42:12 So YHWH blessed the latter end of ’Īyyōb more than his beginning: for he had fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she asses.
42:13 He had also seven sons and three daughters.
42:14 And he called the name of the first, Yəmīmāh[6] and the name of the second, Qəṣī‘āh[7] and the name of the third, Qæræn Happūk[8].
Do you notice a peculiarity here? That he had seven thousand sheep before and fourteen thousand after, that he had three thousand camels before and six thousand after, that he had five hundred yoke of oxen before and a thousand after, that he had five hundred she asses before and a thousand after? No, not that, the mathematics is quite correct. (God seems to have figured out how to do multiplications, even when he fails in areas of just a tiny bit higher mathematics, like π for instance!)
The idiosyncrasy of this epilogue lies in the fact the God has restored all of Job’s property. Which includes, house, land, cattle… and children[9]. He got new children to compensate those murdered in chapter one. OK, but what with those other children? They remained dead, did they not? They were not brought back to life. No, they were simply replaced by some new ones. So everything is alright, even if the number of children was the only one not to be doubled. (Which by itself tells a lot about the value of children vs. the value of cattle!) Children died. New children were born. New children replaced the dead children. Dead children do not count.
Children are (just like cattle and, as assumed in other books of the “Bible”, wives) merely another disposable property. Even more disposable than cattle, because they are cheap (practically free of charge!) and easy to make. Moreover, making them provides some satisfaction as well. You lost a child, or two, or ten? No problem, let you make some new ones from scratch!
You may dismiss this as a mentality of distant past and primitive times. And such a dismissal is a most dangerous one. This mentality still lives (and kills children) to the present day. And knowing that children in the West are regarded in a completely different way, as a precious treasure to be cherished and protected at all costs, the owners of that iron-age mentality abuse the sentimental stupidity of the West by serving it as many of their own dead children as possible. The stupid Westerners look at this as a great tragedy, totally ignoring the fact that the more children they have had killed, the more their parents-killers’ agenda advance.
A Job well done!
[1] For instance Ezekiel 23:19–20
19 Yet she multiplied her whoredoms, in calling to remembrance the days of her youth, wherein she had played the harlot in the land of Miṣrayīm
20 For she doted upon their paramours, whose flesh [is as] the flesh of asses, and whose issue [is like] the issue of horses.
[2] All translations were taken from the site “ Hebrew OT – Transliteration – Holy Name KJV ” http://www.qbible.com/hebrew-old-testament/job/. Names were transliterated.
[3] Notice the “also” part!
[4] Isaac Asimov: Asimov’s Guide to the Bible. Two volumes in one. The Old And New Testaments. Wings Books, New York ‒ Avenel ‒ New Jersey, 1977. p. 474
[5] Here lies an insignificant difference between God and the Duke brothers: they had no intention to rehabilitate the vilified Winthrope and had all intentions to throw Valentine back to the gutter. Unfortunately God was not punished for his turpitude.
[6] Dove.
[7] Cinnamon.
[8] Horn for the Eye-Makeup.
[9] Did he also replace that old nagging wench with some young, subservient beauty? The “Bible” remains cryptically silent about that.
Linguist's eye on things 