Job Chapter 2
Hi Satan. Bye Satan.
When I was planning to write about this chapter, I wanted to talk about Job's friends. I wanted to talk about how they acted with empathy in this chapter and this chapter alone. I wanted to devote this entire chapter to mourning rituals and the topic of how to talk to people at funerals. Only the supposedly hidden pagan origins of Judaism suddenly showed up in the very odd phrase “bnei elohim”.
Elohim is already a weird name for God. In the Bible, it can mean God but it can also be plural. Some Christians have pounced on that bit as proof of their trinity. Another explanation suggests that the journey from polytheism to monotheism went through a pantheism phase where all the gods were eventually viewed as parts of one big God. Please don't ask me to talk about Plato and Aristotle here.
Either way, the first phrase in this chapter states that the bnei elohim (sons of God) presented themselves before YHWH (also God. We don't know the vowels). Translations of bnei elohim range from “divine beings” to “angels” to “sons of God.” This phrase is mostly a poetic trope for the Psalms; there's also that bit in Genesis where these bnei elohim come along, mate with humans and create the Nephilim. Who are the nephilim? Giants? Heroes? A post-Bronze Age version of Ancient Aliens to explain all the megalithic structures? There's a Wikipedia page. It's fascinating.
Either way, Satan is one of the bnei elohim. That's fun. Also we get that quote about roaming all over the earth and up and down in it. The material is mostly repetition of the first chapter. Only at this point, we don't need to know about Job's life, just God is still noticing him. Of course, Satan is Satan and suggests that Job is still faithful because of health. This is apparently enough to convince God to let Satan give Job a skin condition – boils, rashes, whatever – that covers Job all over and makes him scratch himself with a potsherd.
Exit Satan. Exit God for most of the book. The previous chapter already said most of what had to be said about the paradox of monotheism, the weird theodicy of “you suffered because God liked you so he decided to bet on you with Satan.” The phrase bnei elohim does lend some support to my Greek Tragedy influence theory.
I feel like I should say something about Job's wife, but she's such a nothing character. All she says is “Curse God and die!” which could be sympathetic or sarcastic. It seems like she's telling him to kill himself. The words are literally “bless God and die” but most just assume that's a euphemism for cursing. Either way, Job tells her off and that's that. I really don't know what else to say about this woman, beyond annoyance that the one woman in the entire book gets one line. Thanks patriarchy! To make matters worse, Job gets praised by the author for calling her shameless. Sure he also says something about how we should accept the evil with the good and that's cool, but the exchange still feels like the one woman in the whole book says something weird. Job tells her to shut up. Job gets praise. Go Job!
Are all my favorite books problematic? Probably.
So finally we get to Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar and Naamathite. Their names are ridiculous, but Temanite and Shuhite and Naamathite probably meant something to the people reading the book 2400 years ago. Either way, their names sound pretentious. More on all that later, but for the prologue, they are actually sympathetic.
Not sure what this says about them later on but at this point in the book, they rush to his house, weep openly for him and then sit with him in silence for seven days and seven nights. None spoke a word because he was suffering to much to say anything.
This scene is similar to almost every Sondheim song – sweet on its own, sinister in context. Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar are very eager to comfort their friend. They put their lives on hold for him. They sit with him for seven days. They understand what he needs.
Sadly, it doesn't last.
Next week: Job starts talking.