An Atheist Explores the Bible Part 95: “I’m Big, You’re Small.” (Job 36-42)

Job 36-42
“I’m Big, You’re Small.”

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 36

“He withdraweth not his eyes from the righteous: but with kings are they on the throne; yea, he doth establish them for ever, and they are exalted.”

Elihu continues with his defence of God, and the gist of his argument is that God brings down the wicked and “giveth right to the poor”, and also that if people (in Elihu’s example, kings) stray from the path of righteousness that God will “sheweth them their work, and their transgressions that they have exceeded”, in other words, act as a kind of conscience. He continues as well in the vein that God is so far above man’s comprehension that man has no right to judge God. As proof of this, Elihu discusses the formation of clouds and rain. Which we now do understand according to scientific principles. There’ll always be a space for a God of this kind, a means to explain the unexplainable in a quick and easy fashion, but also a space that is always being moved according to the sum of human knowledge.

Unfortunately, also, we the reader know that Elihu is wrong in his first assumption, at least in Job’s case. Which rather undermines his argument. Maybe the parable would work better if Job had done wrong in some small way.

Job 37

“For he saith to the snow, Be thou on the earth; likewise to the small rain, and to the great rain of his strength.”

Elihu expands upon his theme at the end of the last chapter, saying that God brings weather of all kinds, from rain and snow, to winds to warmth. He also likens God’s voice to thunder, or perhaps outright states that thunder is God’s voice. It’s all a nice metaphor, but weather is caused by atmospheric conditions, not as a moral punishment. Now, as with that previous chapter, a theist could argue that obviously God gave the Earth its axial tilt so that different degrees of warming at pole and equator would set up convection currents, or step back and say that God sent the body that collided with the Earth to give it axial tilt, and so on, which is why in my discussion of last chapter I intimated that if someone wants to see God as a prime mover of events they always can regardless of how much scientific theory fills in the gaps of our understanding.

Job 38

“Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.”

A wild God appears! Yes, suddenly God appears in a whirlwind and joins in the argument, although His line of reasoning is basically “I’m bigger than you so shut up, that’s why.” He gives a whole load of cosmic and weather events (again with the weather) that Job has no knowledge of, therefore implying that Job has no right questioning Him (although in this chapter God doesn’t add this, merely lists His achievements). I’m being flippant here, but there’s some good writing. The names of the stars and constellations mentioned here are interesting, as the Pleiades and Orion are Greek conventions, presumably added in later translations; they wouldn’t have been named this (and perhaps were not even the same constellations) in the original Hebrew version; makes me wonder what they were.

Also “Canst thou send lightnings, that they may go, and say unto thee, Here we are?”. Well, I can send a text with my mobile phone that employs electromagnetic principles. Also “Who hath put wisdom in the inward parts? or who hath given understanding to the heart?”. At the time that the KJV was being put together, William Harvey was working on De Motu Cordis, his study of the heart and circulation. To be fair, and to continue the theme of my commentary of the past few chapters, Harvey writes that at times he found it so hard to figure out the workings of the heart that he thought only God could comprehend it. Hooray, then, for X-rays, and ultrasound, and MRI.

Job 39

“Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow? or will he harrow the valleys after thee?”

More things that God can do that Job can’t, in this case it is the understanding of animal behaviour, with a few other underlying elements; that animal behaviour and physiology is what it is because God made it that way, and some of that (particularly God singles out a mother ostrich’s apparent disregard for her eggs) as being because God has not granted animals the same wisdom that He has to mankind.

Again I would say that simple empirical observation is all that is needed for most of these points, for example the gestation period of a wild goat – yes God, 3 seconds with Google returns a time of 150 days, next question. Also there’s a lengthy section on warhorses; “Hast thou given the horse strength? hast thou clothed his neck with thunder?” – okay, so mankind may have found horses in a natural state which could, if you were that way inclined, be attributed to a deliberate creation by God, but to get them to this state “He mocketh at fear, and is not affrighted; neither turneth he back from the sword” requires plenty of deliberate training by humans, it’s a not a natural, God-given if you like, feature of horse behaviour.

Finally, let’s have a quick look at the mention of unicorns. The most simplistic reading of this is to assume that this is “proof” of the existence of unicorns. The more sensible assumption is that this is some odd KJV translation of an old Hebrew word. And again a few seconds with Googe puts me in touch with the accumulated wisdom of many years of bible scholars – the original word seems to be re’em, which possibly refers to the aurochs. So something that no longer lives and is semi-legendary, but not a completely mythical beast. Another interpretation is a description of the rhinocerous, which would also be difficult to harness to a plough.

Job 40

“Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as an ox.”

God’s arguments here remind me of Matilda’s father “Listen, you little wiseacre: I'm smart, you're dumb; I'm big, you're little; I'm right, you're wrong, and there's nothing you can do about it.” We do, however, get the reference to behemoth, another fantastic beast that vexes people. An elephant, perhaps? Seems like the kind of creature that can “drinketh up a river and hasteth not”.

Job 41

“Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook? or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down?”

From a giant land beast of behemoth, to the giant sea beast of leviathan. Most commonly assumed to be a whale, although scales are mentioned (but whales are called “fish” in Moby-Dick even). There seems to be a fire-breathing aspect, making leviathan sound more like some kind of dragon, but a whale exhaling from its blowhole would give this impression: “Out of his nostrils goeth smoke, as out of a seething pot or caldron.”

Job 42

“And it was so, that after the LORD had spoken these words unto Job, the LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite, My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath.”

Job tells God that he’s sorry, and they all live happily ever after. More or less. God is angry at Eliphaz and the other two (the writer can’t be bothered to mention them by name, and I can’t be bothered to check). I’m not sure why. As I recall they counseled Job that he must have sinned and should thus repent; it was Job, whom God forgives, who was the one complaining about unfair treatment. And Elihu has vanished as mysteriously as he appeared – maybe he was God in disguise? Everything is restored to Job, and the implication is that it is because he asks forgiveness for his three friends as much as anything else.

Well, I’m not sure what to make of that. Some great poetry in that book, but it kind of lost its way with the arguments, and I don’t think it really succeeded in putting any of the options across particularly cogently. The argument that, despite what you might see, the wicked are always punished and the innocent prosper, even if only in the next life, is kind of undone by the whole set-up where an innocent Job is punished because Satan goads God into doing so. (Oh, and what happened to Satan? He’d vanished along with Elihu by the end of the book. Hmm…).

Possibly the argument that the book was aiming for was “I’m God, I made everything, trust me, I know what I’m doing” but it ends up feeling, at least to me, as “I’m God, I can do what I like, shut up.” I think it would have been a more satisfying examination of the nature of misfortune under a benevolent god if all the arguments were left hanging and the reader could choose and discuss them. But who’d want uncertainty and discussion points in a religious text? (On re-reading this before publication, I realise that, in fact, I *am* left with a sense of confusion about the message, so perhaps ignore that last sentence!)