The Book of Job as a Greek Tragedy Restored

THE BOOK OF JOB AS A GREEK TRAGEDY RESTORED

with AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY

THE ORIGINAL FORM AND PHILOSOPHIC AS MEANING OF JOB

BY HORACE MEYER KALLEN

AND AN INTRODUCTION BY PROFESSOR GEORGE FOOT MOORE of Harvard University

NEW YORK MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY

1918

The movement of the dialogue is significant; its climax, from the standpoint of the orthodox Jew of the period, terrible. Job makes the opening speech. His suffering, he declares, has brought him to the breaking-point; he can endure no more and. begs for death. Eliphaz, the oldest of the three friends who have come to comfort him, tries to console him by advising him patience. Suffering, he asserts, Polonius-like, is the inevitable lot of man. The just and omnipotent God who sent the ill, will send good also, a thousandfold. But Job can find no comfort in this advice. He has asked his friends for nothing and sees no relief in the patience they advise. Life, he feels, grows only more and more unendurable; all he begs is the mere relief of death. Such a prayer, the pompous Bildad finds, is sin, for it accuses God of injustice. But God forever sends harm to the wicked only. Let Job but wait, and his lost prosperity shall return to him. Job acknowledges “that it is so.’ But God is too mighty and elusive to be stayed for by mere man. As man he is compelled to say “He destroyeth the perfect with wicked.” He wants no more than a little peace before death. This makes Zophar, who appears to be a dogmatic, impatient man of middle age, very angry. How dare Job call himself “ perfect!” In fact, omnipotence is punishing him for sin, and less than he deserves. If only Job would be humble and acknowledge his sinfulness, his prosperity would return. To which Job retorts that he knows as much about God as his friends know, and declares flatly that God is unjust and hurts the righteous man without cause.

In the second round of the dialogue Eliphaz declares that misfortune comes to the wicked only, and just implies that Job might be of their class. Job appeals from him and the other two to God, who is torturing him without reason, hinting that they and not he deserve the torture; whereto Bildad retorts that Job is actually undergoing punishment for his crimes, and provokes Job to the declaration that God had wronged him, and that these, his would-be comforters, are wronging him, but that his “ avenger liveth and shall stand up at the last upon earth.” To this Zophar replies that from “ of old time ” only the wicked have suffered and perished. Whereupon Job demonstrates that, on the contrary, the wicked are prospered and die in peace.

Eliphaz begins the third phase of the dialogue by pointing out that man alone can gain anything by righteousness and that Job, being in disaster, has been guilty of such and such crimes. He begs Job to turn to God and be saved. But though Job would gladly turn to God, Job cannot find him. He knows himself to be faultless and would prove it so to the Almighty who alone tortures him and makes him afraid. Bildad thereupon suggests that God is too infinite to be known; what we know is a “ small whisper; and the thunder of his power, who can understand?” But of what use is an unreachable God to a despairing man, cries Job. In the name of that same God he holds fast his righteousness “and will not let it go. My heart shall not reproach me so long as I live.” Whereto Zophar re- torts sharply that none the less, Job’s condition shows that he is unrighteous. In final refutation Job con- trasts what he was with what he is, giving an account of his whole life and then challenging God’s wrath if there be any blemish in it —“ Lo here is my signature — let God reply!”

The situation at the end of this agon must have been, from the point of view of orthodox Jewry, intolerable. The mood of Job has changed in the course of the dialogue from unhappy complaint to heroic defiance. The argument has moved from the position that (1) God sends undeserved misfortune on the righteous, through the demonstration that (2) he deals prosperity to the wicked, to the final position that (3) an omnipotent and unattainable God is of no use to the just man who suffers, and who demands that God shall justify himself. The friends have grown weaker as Job has grown stronger. From argument they have passed to iteration. The intellectual and emotional situation at the end is the reverse of the situation at the beginning.

Now it is in this situation that Elihu appears. Critics have called his speeches interpolations by a later and inferior writer. But why should they appear just where they do appear? It was not, to use Dr. Schmidt’s phrase, more “ natural ” to put them there, than to put them after chapter 30. Their “ lateness ” is based partly on the textual observation that Aramaic and Greek terms appear in them; and Siegfried has shown that also many of the descriptions of God in the text of the dialogue have their parallel in psalms of the Maccabean era, and that the text itself contains late Hebrew words, Aramaisms and Arabisms. It does not, however, follow from this that the speech is entirely an interpolation by a different hand. It may be only a modification and prolongation by a different hand, or a rewriting by a different hand. Its appearing where it does has a dramatic propriety which of itself indicates some familiarity with the Greek drama. That it partly recapitulates the argument is no reason for considering it an inferior interpolation. It adds something also. And it has precedent in many of the messenger’s speeches in Greek plays, which tell the audience what they already know. Moreover the recapitulation is not the essential burden of Elihu’s speech. Its burden is that the defense of God by the friends has failed. And this is bad news. Its burden is the registry of that fact and the warning to Job against his pride of opinion. Its burden is more particularly to announce what has happened and what is to come. Most notably the speeches of Elihu lead up to and pre- pare for the speeches of Yahweh. Elihu’s rdle, in a word, is that of a messenger. He appears, an ardent youth, compelled to speak by inward stress, for God, who reveals himself in visions, through suffering, who is overwhelmingly just and will manifest himself in answer to Job’s challenge when he is ready; who al- ways delivers those who submit to his just, merciful and inscrutable will; whose majesty is revealing itself in the storm that is arising, in the golden splendor out of the north; “who cometh with a terrible majesty upon him.”

And God comes as announced, a whirlwind and a voice. The Hebrew convention about images made it impossible that God should assume any form. His presence could be nothing else than a voice, out of the burning bush in Ezekiel’s “ Exodus,” out of the whirlwind, in the dialogue of Job. There is no less reason for regarding this speech as interpolation than for regarding Elihu’s speech as such. Neither does it, according to the more radical critics, add anything to the dialogue, which has “ ended with the words of Job.” But it is not necessary that it should add anything to the dialogue. Job has been demanding that God should confront him, has been complaining of his elusiveness. At the very time when Job seems absolute victor over his friends God appears, accepting Job’s challenge and ready to enter into judgment with Job if the latter will. God’s speech is either irrelevant iteration or profound subtlety: but what justifies the opinion that it is iteration? Nothing that I can see but the failure to think God’s speech in terms of the dramatic development of the theme and its function as Epiphany. Closer scrutiny of its content than the learned seem to have made will show that God gives a very different account of himself than do his defenders in the dialogue. They emphasize his power, particularly in punishing wickedness, Job his indifference in prospering wicked- ness: he emphasizes his providence, particularly in maintaining the reasonless and helpless forms of life. Crea- tor who has set bounds to the sea, made the world habitable, ordained the life-giving waters, controlled the stars, directed the lightning, he supplies the lion’s whelp with food, superintends the travail of the hind of the wild goat, protects the wild ass and the wild ox, gives the war-horse strength, ordains the safe hatching of the ostrich egg, and maintains the hawk and the eagle in their ways. Such is God. If thou, Job, art like him, “array thyself with excellency and dignity.” Abase the proud and punish the wicked and I will acknowledge that thine own hand can save thee. What can Job answer? He has demanded that God in kindness confront him in judgment. God appears, not, however without his terrors. Job issatisfied, Behold, I am of small account, what can I answer thee? I lay my hand upon my mouth:

Once I have spoken — I will not speak again;

Yea twice: I will proceed no further:

And again:

I know that thou canst do all things

And that no purpose of thine can be restrained.

I have spoken, but without understanding, Things too wonderful, which I did not know. Only by hearsay had I known thee,

But now mine eye seeth thee,

And I recant my words, am comforted

Amid dust and ashes.

Thus God accomplishes what Eliphaz and Zophar and Bildad could not accomplish. Job is comforted by the knowledge of an everlasting and impartial provi- dence in nature in which man has only a negligible part, but a part. The Epiphany, as in the Euripidean drama, saves an intolerable situation, so far as in the course of nature it can be saved at all.

Then follows the epilogue in prose; perhaps, but by no means certainly, the conclusion of the old prose legend, and kept prose for the same reasons as the prologue. Note how generally close in content it is to the epilogue of the Euripidean tragedy — the ordainment of a ritual, the account of the future of the chief protagonist. The drama closes in as Kuripidean a manner as it begins.

But where, in all this, is the most prominent mark of Greek tragedy — the chorus? ‘To answer this question we may best, Yankee-wise, ask another one. Suppose that an editor unacquainted with*dramatic form or knowing it to be connected with the worship of a strange God and believing it to be anathema, had a Hebrew play to deal with which he admired and wished to save, what would he do with the choric songs, these being most explicitly ritual in form and intent? What could he do, save incorporate them into the dialogue, at such places where, in his judgment, they fell or fitted? Now the choruses mark the division of Greek tragedies into “acts:”? and there are usually four or five acts separated off from each other by choric songs. We should therefore naturally expect the choruses to come at the completion of each round of the dialogue, which falls clearly into three rounds, or “* acts” and is succeeded by the closing “acts” of the epiphany. Job is a play in four acts. The choruses, if it has any, will be distinguished from the dialogue by a difference in metrical form or in theme, or in both. They should have the character of didactic commentary on the dialogue or the action: they should be in a different dimension without being irrelevant, and they should be three in number.

Now, it happens that Job contains three “ interpolations ” that satisfy these requirements. ‘Two of these occur in the “ third act,”’ the first, in the twenty fourth chapter, is assigned to Job. It consists of a series of descriptions of four typically wicked and criminal classes and their ultimate fate at the hands of God. It is written in tristichs, and tristichs are not stanzaic units of the dialogue. The second occurs in the twenty- eighth chapter. It is written in four strophes of three tetrastichs each, with a refrain of the same distich. Its theme is the elusiveness of wisdom, as creative power, to man and the absolute possession of this creative power by God. The third is the description of Behemoth and Leviathan, the mightiest of God’s creatures, attached to the speech of Yahweh, Chapters XL: 15-XLI: 26. This is written in the metre of the dialogues but is very different in theme and content. The animals it describes are creatures of imagination, not reality, like the Greek Chimera and Dionysian bull. Leviathan “is king over all the sons of pride.” If these are merely interpolations it is a very extraordinary coincidence that they should be three in number, that their themes should fall so pat to the changes of theme in the dialogues, and that two at least should be so different from the dialogue in metre or form. Their nature is generically so like that of many of the Euripidean choruses that it is more plausible than not that they are such. The poem on wisdom belongs clearly at the end of the first “ act * in which Job and his friends have been accusing each other of ignorance concerning God. The natural chorie comment should be what we find it to be, that men cannot attain wisdom, which is an attribute of God alone. The stanzas dealing with the typical evil-doers and their fate come naturally at the end of the second “act.” This act has discussed the fate of the unrighteous, the friends insisting that they perish unhappily and Job that they prosper to the end. The last “ interpolation * seems to me to belong properly before the speech of Elihu. For Job’s orthodox friends, God’s justice is identical with his power. Job’s inflexible self-justification and challenge to God can be met only with an exhibition of that power. The choric descrip- tion of Behemoth and Leviathan are pat to that pur- pose, and have something of the Euripidean irony. For it is to be followed by the duly announced coming of God himself. Job is to have his wish and enter into judgment with the Almighty. It is distinctly a Euripi- dean touch to express in the chorus the impossibility of such a competition by the choric description of the terrible beasts which are the mere creatures of God and beside either of whom Job is a bubble.

With this the restoration of Job is complete. Prologue, agon, messenger, choruses, epiphany, epilogue, they are all evident with just those differences from the Greek that may be expected from the difference in tradition and background between the two authors. – That the thought of Job has Euripidean analogues need not be argued. The injustice of divinity, the unhappiness of mankind, the desirability of death, the rebellion and the ultimate or primal mystical perception which consoles,—these are the commonplaces of Euripides’ thinking. One play of Euripides, indeed, of which unhappily only fragments have survived to us, is in story and expression not unlike Job. It is Bellerophontes, completed in 425. The hero has lost his son at the hands of Ares, his daughter at those of Artemis. He too finds evil-doers to be prosperous, the weak oppressed by the strong. He doubts therefore that the gods exist, he strives to ascend to heaven that his doubts may be set at rest and he is blasted by a thunderbolt. Condemned by God but “ clinging to his integrity,” he wanders, lamed and blinded, over the face of the earth. His mood as far as it may be gathered from a fragment (311) is very like that of Job. I use Mr. Murray’s translation:

“ Reverent wast thou to God, had he but known, Thy door oped to the stranger, and thine help For them that loved thee knew no weariness.”