THE BOOK OF JOB part II

AND IT’S A DOOZY

To appreciate what Rambam does in this week’s chapter, we need a slightly more detailed summary of the Book of Job than we had last week. In the first 3 chapters, God and Satan argue about Job, Job loses everything (and is afflicted with boils), and goes to sit on a dungheap. After a week’s silence, he begins bemoaning his fate. Three friends—Elifaz, Bildad, and Zophar-- take turns attempting to refute his claims—he says he’s completely righteous, did not deserve what he has gotten, etc. The friends say that’s not true in various ways. After about 35 chapters of doing this, a new voice, that of Elihu, enters. He tells Job something else, which Job responds to. After all that, God speaks to Job, who then apparently recants his previous claims, and all goes back to being well.

THE PROBLEMS IN INTERPRETING THE BOOK

Aside from the difficulty of the language—no small problem of its own—the book presents more intractable difficulties. First, as Rambam notes, each of the speakers seems to say all the same things. That is, they all agree that God punishes sin, that God rewards us in the future, and so on. It is hard, therefore, to make much headway in understanding what the book intends, since all the conversations seem to revolve around the same point.

Second, it is unclear (for the same reason) how the various points of view differ from each other. If they are all saying the same thing, why have Elifaz, Bildad, and Zofar—how does Elihu differ from them all? And so on.

ESOTERICISM JUSTIFIED

You may remember from other things we’ve said that Rambam in his own writings was of the belief that the way to convey complicated (and esoteric—meaning that not all readers would be ready for the truth that was buried there) messages was to cover them with verbiage, to say things that seemed to point to the truth the reader was ready for, and then occasionally provide hints of the real truth. In the Moreh, this is called the method of contradictions, in that Rambam freely admits that he might say things that seem to contradict other things he’s said, and only the correct reading will show how it all fits together.

In a slightly different way, he suggests the same thing about Job. In Rambam’s picture, each of the speakers in the book has a particular point of view, and all the excess verbiage that we see—where they echo each other’s views—should be ignored. In one sense, this is a brilliant move. It allows Rambam to fasten upon what he sees as the central verses in each person’s perspective and set that up as their central point of view. Without claiming that he’s incorrect, I would just note that this means Rambam has functionally made many of the verses in the book not relevant to its central message.

THE VARIOUS VIEWS—JOB

When it comes to Job, Rambam believes that his original view was the God does not care about human beings—there is no reward or punishment and no concern about what befalls man, because God has no interest in man.

Rambam points out that Hazal say that Job spoke incorrect things, and that dust should cover his mouth, etc., which supports his reading of Job’s idea. Rambam does, however, note that God, at the end of the book when He is reprimanding Job’s friends, says that they have not spoken correctly, as has Job. Hazal say that this only means that Job repented and recanted his wrong ideas, but Rambam believes that Job actually came to a higher realization, as we’ll see in a moment.

THE FRIENDS

Rambam sees each of the friends as representing a view on providence that he’s mentioned before. The first, Elifaz, takes the position of the Law (as Rambam calls it—which I believe means an unsophisticated view of the Torah’s claim on an issue; such views are generally not completely incorrect, but neglect some important piece of information). In this view, Job must certainly have sinned in a way that made him deserve his calamities. The reason he doesn’t think so is that people evaluate their actions much differently than God does, so that a sin that seems unimportant to us seems much more important to God.

As an aside, I’ve always felt that we in our own lives do not give enough credence to this point of view. I know that, rahmana litslan, if something were to happen to me, I would wonder "why me?" when I am eminently aware of my many failings. Instinctively, though, we do not see our failings as deserving of the kinds of punishment Job got.

The next friend, Bildad, takes a position that the Rambam identifies as that of the Mutazila, the school of Arab philosophers Rambam has referred to before. According to them, punishments in this world might be unjust but will be compensated in the next world (the Mutazila apply this even to animals). Bildad is saying, then, that maybe Job didn’t deserve what he got, but God will make it up.

The third view, Zophar, is that of the Ashariya, a school we’ll see again when we get to ta`amei hamitsvot, the reasons for the commandments. According to the Ashariya, God’s Will is completely impenetrable to human understanding, so that there is no reason for what happens in any meaningful sort of way—Job lost his fortune and family and health, that’s the way God wants it. Why? It’s not a legitimate question (according to this view); God’s Will is the absolute answer.

ELIHU

Rambam notes that when Elihu speaks, the text accords him respect. For all that he is younger than they are, he seems to have greater knowledge than they do. Something in his speech, therefore, seems to contain the answer to the puzzle. However, a casual reading of Elihu’s speech does not reveal what that is, other than to say that God has much greater knowledge than we do, so that it is inappropriate to question.

Rambam, being the careful reader that he was, notes two important aspects of Elihu’s speech. First, Elihu refers to angels, which others had not done. According to Elihu, if an angel intercedes on behalf of a person, they may be saved from calamity, regardless of the reason the angel intercedes. Second, Elihu (and God in His speech) refers only to the natural (in Rambam’s view, the sublunar) world, which suggests to Rambam that the message is that we humans cannot even figure out the physical world, how could we expect to understand God fully—so that we need to know that His providence is not ours, His justice doesn’t have the same meaning as ours, etc. Third, Rambam notes that in Job’s talking about his experience, he refers to prophecy; before he had only heard of God, now he actually has experienced Him.

A PUZZLE OF OUR OWN

That’s as far as Rambam goes—he notes what was different in Elihu’s speech, and concludes that it’s stressing how we cannot apply certain words to God as we would to ourselves. Taken at face value, that would simply be a message that say we have to recognize that we cannot understand God.

I believe, however, that Rambam meant to hint something else as well. Rambam’s reference to an angel (which we have seen other times means a physical force in our world, guided perhaps by one of the celestial spheres) suggests to me that he means that physical events that happen to us provide opportunities for knowledge of God. That would explain why, if an angel intercedes (in my reading, meaning that some physical event occurs to a person which could lead them in the direction of God), God will do wonders for that person.

The point about prophecy, I think, is that Rambam believes that these are not issues about which one can intellectualize; they have to be experienced as if by prophecy. You may remember that in a previous chapter Rambam had referred to some insight coming to him as if by prophecy. Here, too, Job only realizes God in a vision of prophecy. Also, Rambam closes this chapter by asking readers to meditate on the topics of the chapter, another word for thinking in a non-intellectual way. All told, that suggests that Rambam believed this world, and the challenges it presents to us (some of which give the appearance of great suffering) all offer opportunities for knowledge of God, although never for a complete knowledge, since God is so different from us. If we meditate on those truths, allow our minds to wander over them in a not directly linear fashion, we may succeed at having some meaningful insight into those circumstances.

JOB AS ARISTOTLE