Narrative Lectionary Summer Series – Job, Week 2
Job 3:1-10; 4:1-9; 7:11-21
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Furthering the Power of God’s Story – Narrative Lectionary Commentary
by Rev. Dr. Clint Schnekloth
Props to Job for a twenty-one verse poem wishing the complete death of the day on which he was born. It’s not, to be really clear, a poem about wishing you hadn’t been born. In that sense, the title of this post is clickbait.
No, instead this is a poem wishing for the death of the day on which the author would have been born. “Let the day perish.” “Let that day be darkness!” Even the night of that day, let it not rejoice among the days of the year. Let it be barren (can days have children?) Let it hope for light but have none.
All because “it did not shut the doors of my mother’s womb.”
Got it?
I mean that’s some fine poetry. It’s a remarkable opening salvo from Job, who has been sitting for seven days and seven nights in silence, surrounded by his three friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite.
Enough time to compose not only an ode to his desire for death on the day of his birth (the latter verses of chapter 3 are devoted to this theme) but also a pox on the day itself.
Then in chapter 4, we get Eliphaz, who appears to be lacking in emotional intelligence. Even if he’s right theologically. Even if his theology matches the theology Job has previously articulated in some instances. Nevertheless, is this the right time for these two moves?
Don’t be so impatient with God.
You must have done something wrong.
Overall it seems Job’s existential anguish leaves him unworried about offering a direct reply to Eliphaz’s insensitivities. Instead, the final portion of Job for this day is that famous line of Job, where Job extrapolates his own personal experience out to the common experience of humanity: “What are human beings, that you make so much of them, that you set your mind on them?”
This is indeed the question to ask, because it is, in a sense, the answer God gives very late in the book of Job, when God asks, “Who are you anyway, can you do any of these things I do to leviathan with my little finger?”
So Job sticks to his form of supplication, the prayer of the tragic sufferer: “Will you not look away from me for a while, let me alone until I swallow my spittle?”
It’s a prayer children sometimes pray, when they’re deeply distraught? “Can you just leave me alone?”
Oddly, that’s a comforting and model kind of prayer.
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“In time you will know what it’s like to lose. To feel so desperately that you are right, yet to fail all the same.”
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Avengers: Infinity War
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Again, without giving away the plot, there is so much here about wishing certain days didn’t exist, or not wanting to revisit certain days, or wishing and not wishing to die.
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Free Dramatic Reading For This Text (NRSV)
Readers: Narrator, Job, Eliphaz
Narrator: After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. Job said:
Job: “Let the day perish in which I was born, and the night that said, ‘A man-child is conceived.’ Let that day be darkness! May God above not seek it, or light shine on it. Let gloom and deep darkness claim it. Let clouds settle upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it. That night—let thick darkness seize it! let it not rejoice among the days of the year; let it not come into the number of the months. Yes, let that night be barren; let no joyful cry be heard in it. Let those curse it who curse the Sea, those who are skilled to rouse up Leviathan. Let the stars of its dawn be dark; let it hope for light, but have none; may it not see the eyelids of the morning— because it did not shut the doors of my mother’s womb, and hide trouble from my eyes.”
Narrator: Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered:
Eliphaz: “If one ventures a word with you, will you be offended? But who can keep from speaking? See, you have instructed many; you have strengthened the weak hands. Your words have supported those who were stumbling, and you have made firm the feeble knees. But now it has come to you, and you are impatient; it touches you, and you are dismayed. Is not your fear of God your confidence, and the integrity of your ways your hope? Think now, who that was innocent ever perished? Or where were the upright cut off? As I have seen, those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same. By the breath of God they perish, and by the blast of his anger they are consumed.”
[Narrator: Then Job said:]
Job: “Therefore I will not restrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul. Am I the Sea, or the Dragon, that you set a guard over me? When I say, ‘My bed will comfort me, my couch will ease my complaint,’ then you scare me with dreams and terrify me with visions, so that I would choose strangling and death rather than this body. I loathe my life; I would not live forever. Let me alone, for my days are a breath. What are human beings, that you make so much of them, that you set your mind on them, visit them every morning, test them every moment? Will you not look away from me for a while, let me alone until I swallow my spittle? If I sin, what do I do to you, you watcher of humanity? Why have you made me your target? Why have I become a burden to you? Why do you not pardon my transgression and take away my iniquity? For now I shall lie in the earth; you will seek me, but I shall not be.”