An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 93: Fat-Based Household Cleaning, and the Veil of Ignorance (Job 26-30)

Job 26-30
Fat-Based Household Cleaning, and the Veil of Ignorance.

Welcome to another instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Bible version).

In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the King James Bible, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.
For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/2F8f9JT
For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP

And now:

Job 26

“He hath compassed the waters with bounds, until the day and night come to an end.”

And so the book of Job continues, and we return in this batch to a short chapter in which Job replies to Bildad. Bildad last chapter stated that God is as far above mankind as mankind is above worms, and thinks of them as much. Job’s reply seems to agree, even though it feels like a rebuttal. He mentions all the ways in which God keeps the vast machinery of the universe working that mankind knows nothing of apart from a few effects. He even prefaces this with words that seem to basically say “You’re not telling me anything new”. So once again I’m confused about who is trying to make what point, but this is evidently not all Job has to say.

Job 27

“For what is the hope of the hypocrite, though he hath gained, when God taketh away his soul?”

Job continues to protest his innocence and that he maintains faith with God regardless of his current situation. He expounds on the fate awaiting hypocrites and the greedy, that although they may amass treasures these will be useless to them after death, and they will be despised (whether in life or the afterlife, or both, is not clear).

Job 28
“But where shall wisdom be found? and where is the place of understanding?”

Job sets wisdom against riches in this chapter, He lists various places that wealth can be found, in veins of silver, iron ore and so on, and all the mysterious places on earth, but wisdom cannot be found so conventionally as these things. Also, it is worth more, in Job’s opinions, than a great list of treasures that he gives. I think that the implications of Job’s last few verses in this chapter are that mankind can only find wisdom via the help of God. There’s something of the nature of Socrates in this investigation, except that a Socratic dialogue would end with no-one being entirely sure how to define, let alone find, wisdom, whereas here, being a religious text, Job is sure that it is a facet of God.

Job 29

“When I washed my steps with butter, and the rock poured me out rivers of oil;”

Job talks of the time when he was still successful, using some kind of fat-based household cleaning regime, it would seem from the above quote. A lot of this is a rebuttal of an accusation that his friends made earlier, that he must be suffering because he has been uncharitable. Job lists all the times that he has, in fact, given charity to the widow, to the lame, to the poor, and also how he would punch wicked people in the mouth (possibly metaphorically). Now, it has to be said, a case could be made here for Job’s sin being pride. He certainly does go on about how good he was and how everyone respected him.

Job 30

“But now they that are younger than I have me in derision, whose fathers I would have disdained to have set with the dogs of my flock.”

This sounds a bit like a “the youth of today…” kind of rant, as Job bemoans the fact that he is despised and tormented by the younger folk, even those whom he helped when they were poor enough to eat roots. He has become a creature of the night, “brother to dragons and companion to owls”, because of his skin disease. Now, I have to say, if you’ve enshrined in sacred law that anyone with skin diseases is unclean and to be set apart, you’ve got to expect this kind of thing to happen. I’m sure Job was all very happy to obey these rules when it wasn’t him with the problem. Now that it is, suddenly he sees the treatment as a problem. Which is the fundamental argument for equality in society – this is like the thought experiment where nobody knows from day to day what gender, skin colour, religion, physical ability and so on that they will wake up with. If that was the case, what kind of society would you want to build?

Sadly, I don’t think that the book is going to head that way, not least because it hasn’t shown Job to be a prejudiced man before his misfortune – actually, if the last chapter is anything to go by it was the opposite, which makes his misfortune even more unfair.