Job Chapter 24 - 26

Lawyers, Neil Gaiman and RetCons

Currently working on Job Chapter 38, which is going to be a fun one since FINALLY G-d gets to talk. Not only does G-d get all the best lines, but this is probably the most beautiful poem in the entire Bible (and classic literature). However, I’m also working on the next book for Dybbuk Press, a horror novel by Romie Stott about a hateful house and a deteriorating marriage, so that’s taking up a lot of my time. I’m also still out of work and I don’t know why that’s so damn distracting, but it is. ADHD is partially to blame but there’s also a great deal of anxiety, and time spent looking for work. I went to a job interview, not knowing the job and was disappointed when I wasn’t hired - to stand outside asking people to sign up for Spectrum cable.

So here are some of the better Job articles, or the more successful Job articles. At this point in the book, Job’s friends are winding down. Eliphaz just blew his load with his final “you’re a dirty sinner” speech. Job is talking. Job is very much talking. Job is talking so much, I find flaws in his logic. For the most part, he’s talking about how the world is unfair and G-d seems absent.

In chapter 24, Job asks why people steal border stones and let the needy down. Only, I had to ask why Job thinks that this is G-d’s job. We are humans. We are letting people steal sheep and land. We are responsible for these problems. We can ask G-d for help, but ultimately, it’s our legal system, our society, our poor people. We need to help the poor and create a (mostly) fair legal framework where everyone can get justice. Of course, we have too many idealists who think that they can create the 100% perfect system. History should have taught us that we should avoid those cunts with their gulags, concentration camps and great leaps forward. But that’s another discussion.

This chapter is followed by my most popular substack article (besides that Witching Snakes chapter that got 104 likes for reasons I still don’t understand), which was when I used Job Chapter 25 to talk shit about Neil Gaiman, not just the rapist stuff (the big article hadn’t come out yet) but the way that his career trajectory flopped after American Gods and he has spent the past few decades as an internet celebrity who wrote repetitive bullshit.

Speaking of which, I am putting my reprint short stories on Kindle. I will put them up individually but also in package deals. I am thinking of collecting the more “problematic” ones (the ones with suicide, puppies eating corpses, and snuff films) with the title I Was Going to Call This One Trigger Warning but Neil Gaiman Took that Title and He’s a Rapist. What do you think? Too long? Probably too long.

Finally, we have a discussion of retcons, which probably went by a different name before we had all these television shows like Adventure Time that were constantly messing with their characters’ histories throughout the run. By contrast, the Bible is a monotheistic text written in the context of a pagan society and pagan mythology. This leads to strange lines like Job talking about G-d shattering Rahab and piercing the flying serpent. Why would G-d have to shatter Rahab or pierce big-ass serpents if G-d is a unity and the creator of all Heaven and Earth?

I answer by talking about other ancient mythologies and how they have echoes n the Bible. The Book of Job loves to sneak these references in. I’m very much looking forward to the Leviathan chapter even as G-d brags about trapping the Leviathan but also creating the Leviathan. Either way, when G-d talks about the Leviathan, he sounds like an 9-year old kid who just saw Godzilla for the first time and wants to tell everyone about the big sharp teeth and the atomic breath. This is also one of my quibbles with Robert Alter translating Leviathan as “whale”. I know that modern Hebrew also calls a whale a leviathan and there’s a Moby Dick precedent, but Leviathan is a way cooler sea monster than a big swimming mammal that we need to save (have we saved the whales now? That was a big deal back in the day).

Upcoming articles include Job 38 and John Cheever’s “The Lowboy”. If you want to support me, please either get a paid subscription or donate to my gofundme or even better, hire me to edit your manuscript or write your term paper or polish your resume or whatever other jobs you think an editor could do. According to Maimonides, the greatest tzeddaka is giving someone a job, so if you want to hire me, my email address is omanlieder@yahoo.com or you could

Speaking of Romie Stott, she has stories in She Nailed a Stake Through His Head, King David & The Spiders from Mars, and The Deadlands.

I wouldn’t be writing and talking about the Bible without Robert Alter, so check out his Goodreads page.

If you’re Jewish, you know about two Israelis murdered by a piece of shit leftist Nazi outside of a Jewish Museum event dedicated to bringing food to Gaza. If you’re not, you probably forgot about it. Either way, please donate to the Jewish Museum in Washington DC so it isn’t just known for inspiring the worst people.