Job Chapter 15
Eliphaz could learn a lot from Jello Biafra
We are all afraid. We want to simplify complicated issues. No one wants to sit with their feelings or listen to pain. Defensive posturing is our default. Personally, I've been angry since October 7. Thank you Jello Biafra for reminding me that not every non-Jew sees Israel in absolute dehumanizing terms. His 2011 article about visiting Israel and meeting Israelis and Palestinians including musicians, peace activists and Jerusalem vendors selling Zionist and anti-Zionist t-shirts is beautiful. Most people want peace and mean well. The Nazis and the zealots have just been screaming. I love his article because I don't agree with everything he says, but he has empathy.
We all need more empathy.
Eliphaz is not Jello Biafra. He's smug. He's insulting. He's spouting bullshit. That doesn't make him a monster, just human. He can't deal with Job's pain, so he dismisses Job. He spends half the chapter insulting Job and the second half spinning a fantasy about how the world is fair and the wicked do suffer; spending their lives miserable and afraid of bandits.
Like Bildad, Eliphaz loves the tl;dr move. He accuses Job of belching out nonsense. “Your words condemn you,” he says as if he was actually listening. Job is expressing pain and railing against G-d, openly wondering at the point. Eliphaz doesn't care. Eliphaz doesn't show empathy. He actually thinks that he's being sympathetic. “Are G-d's consolations not enough for you,” he says “words spoken gently to you?”
Eliphaz is stupid enough to think that he's being kind.
Honest emotions are scary. It's easier to mock. Every wannabe internet comedian shits on Taylor Swift for writing about ex-boyfriends. When Morrissey sang “I'm only human and I need to be loved,” teenagers sneered. Easier to pound one's chest and fake power. Eliphaz invokes Andrew Tate, acting like the world is a prison and vulnerability gets you killed. Eliphaz wants to believe that Job is guilty, that Job deserves to suffer homeless and diseased. As long as Job deserves his fate, Eliphaz can rationalize. If Eliphaz were to stop and consider Job's words for even a second, he'd be overwhelmed.
Eliphaz introduces the second part with old school racism. Eliphaz doesn't just invoke the ancestors to support him; he's talking about the ancestors of the land before the foreigners showed up. Remember that Eliphaz is Edomite so as far as he's concerned, the Israelites are foreigners. Note also that his word for foreigner is not ger, as in “do not oppress the ger, for you were gerim in Egypt” but zar as in strangers, strange gods, etc.
Eliphaz is implying that Job has been tainted by the ancient equivalent of globalists or radical Islam or Mexicans – whichever strangers they hated in ancient Edom. History is a battlefield, because the worst people invoke history to make their point. Birth of a Nation is the way the KKK views Reconstruction. Leftwing Nazis call Jesus a Palestinian. Eliphaz is an Edomite selling historical purity before all these strangers came and tainted everything.
Sometimes the Bible is too contemporary.
The rest of the chapter is the standard “what comes around goes around” fantasy. The wicked suffer. The wicked are miserable. They will lose everything and end up like Miss Havisham in dilapidated ruins. Every evil fuck is full of terror marked for the sword with vultures circling.
Yet, who cares?
Trump is a deeply unhappy man. Hitler lived his life in a rage. That didn't stop them from spreading misery. Neither Sinwar or Assad are shaking their fists at G-d. They believe that G-d is at their side. The wicked conceive trouble and give birth to evil. True. Yet, whose stopping them? Putin will most likely remain in power for years. Tucker Carlson is spreading his lies online now. TJ Miller keeps getting comedy club gigs. Ilhan Omar's father carried out genocide on behalf of Siad Barre. He died in Minnesota surrounded by loving family. Maybe his covid death was painful, but how does that help his victims?
Eliphaz wants to believe. He wants to believe that Job deserves pain and that everything will work out. He doesn't want to think about the wicked ones who die happy and content. Job scares him. Better to dismiss Job and pretend that the world is really fair.
Eliphaz is an asshole, because empathy is too hard to bear. Poor bastard.
My friend Nathan (and one of the best pop culture writers working today) needs dental implants. Please help out.
For more Bible themed stuff, buy the most recent Dybbuk Press anthology King David and the Spiders from Mars