Unit 8: The Book of Job: The Problem of Evil... Part Two

II. Job and the aesthetics of the sublime.

A. The ancient Greek writer Longinus defined "the sublime" (Greek, huspos) as that which, rhetorically, overpowers us, revealing "in a flash... the full power of the speaker. "That power may be compared to the power of an aggressor. The taste for the sublime is the taste for submission. And this is indeed what Job does at the end of the book of Job; he submits.

B. Robert Lowth, in his Oxford lectures On the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews (1753), addresses Job as a sublime book. Lowth says of Yahweh's speech to Job, "it is adapted in every aspect to the insightment of terror and is univer­sally animated with the true spirit of sublimity.”

C. Edmund Burke's famous essay “Philosophical Enquiry” concerning the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) elaborates on the sublime of terror in Job. Burke writes,

"Power derives all its sublimity from the terror with which it is generally accompanied.  Let us look at a strong animal in the two distinct lights in which we can consider him. The horse can be considered as a useful beast, fit for the plow, the road, etc. But in every social useful light the horse says nothing of the sublime. But in this pas­sage from Job, the useful character of the horse entirely disappears and the ter­rible and the sublime blaze out together."

And Burke then quotes the speech from God in Job 39:19-24. (excerpts)

"Hast thou given the horse strength? hast thou clothed his neck with thunder? . . . the glory of his nostrils is terrible. . . He swalloweth the ground with fierceness

And rage; neiteher believeth he that it is the sound of the trumpet."

Burke goes on to the description of Leviathan. He then concludes that the sublime

"comes upon us in the gloomy forest, in the howling wilder­ness, In the form of tile lion, the tiger, the panther, or rhinoceros.  Whenever strength is only useful and employed for our benefit or pleasure then it is never sublime. For only that which thwarts our will can be the cause of a grand and commanding conception."

William Blake

D. Is William Blake's "The Tyger" a response to the Book of Job?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy heart began to beat,

What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? what dread grasp

Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,

And water'd heaven with their tears,

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

In the forests of the night.

What immortal hand or eye

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

  Robert Frost

ROBERT FROST'S PLAY:            The Masque of Reason

Robert Frost (1874-1963) is per­haps America's most widely read and most frequently quoted poet. Frost, a poetic (and political) con­servative, pointedly eschewed the verse forms adopted by many of his contemporaries, memorably com­paring the use of free verse to "playing tennis without the net." This cost him the approval of some critics, but his place in the first rank of American letters is secure.  Frost was a self-described "Old

Testament Christian," but in The Masque of Reason he comes very close to process theology-the school of thought that holds that God, like the Universe itself, changes and evolves over time. Structured as a one act play in verse (though it is very rarely performed), Masque is a conversation between God, Job, and Job's wife, long after the events described in the Biblical text. God explains to Job that "There's no con­nection man can reason out / Between his just deserts and what he gets” (lines 50-51). In the end, however, He admits that "I was just showing off to the Devil, Job" (line 327). Frost's last line, of course, is tongue in cheek.  Frost was not the only modern author to retell the story of Job­; others include Archibald MacLiesh, Neil Simon, Flannery O'Connor, and H.G. Wells.

LEVIATHAN AND BEHEMOTH

Leviathan, meaning "coiled one," is the name of an ancient sea creature subdued by God. It is mentioned in the Old Testament books of Isaiah, Psalms and Job. The creature had a serpentine or dragon-like form-as we see in the illustra­tion, above, by William Blake. Apocalyptic literature shows Leviathan as throwing off his fetters at the end of the present age and being defeated in a final conflict with the divine. Leviathan was seen in ancient legend as a sea monster that engaged in warfare with the gods, or as a remnant of pri­mordial chaos that needed sub­duing. Behemoth is a large ani­mal God created and is known for its enormous strength and toughness. It is thought to be somewhat like a hippopotamus. Behemoth is described in Job 40:15-24.

THE NAME OF GOD

Names are often considered symbolic of a person's essential identity, and this holds true for the name of God. God's personal name is Yahweh, which is related to the Hebrew verb ''to be" and may mean "I am," designating God as the source of all being. God himself revealed his name to Moses in a phrase that the KJV translates with "I am that I am" (Exod. 3:14); this act of self-disclo­sure reveals the intimate nature of God's relationship to his chosen people. The name is written in Hebrew with four letters transliter­ated YHWH (called the Tetragrammaton), formerly angli­cized as "Jehovah," although now most scholars use "Yahweh." Jews hold the name sacred and never

pronounce it, substituting the title"Adonai" (lord) when they read scripture aloud. The Bible speaks of God under a number of titles, including EI (god), Elohim (a plural, "divine powers"), EI Shaddai (god of the mountain), Yahweh Sabaoth ("Lord of the hosts" in the KJV), and EI Elyon (god most high). The Bible also depicts God as king, mil­itary leader, shepherd, judge, pot­ter, husband, father, and even mother. All of these roles are metaphors that can only hint at the identity of God, a being who both reveals and conceals himself from human understanding.

EDMUND BURKE

Irishman Edmund Burke (1729-1797) was a British statesman, Whig parliamentary orator and political thinker who played a major part in signifi­cant political issues for about thirty years after 1765. He was an important figure in the histo­ry of political theory and a main character in the imperial controversies under George III. Burke protested George's attempt to gain more power for the crown, Prime Minister Lord North's coercion of the American colonies, and, late in his career, Warren Hastings' questionable governorship of British India. Burke's first liter­ary works--Vindication of Natural Society, and Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful-were published in 1756. His master­piece Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), repudiates the political thought of the French revolutionaries, arguing that the old regime should have been reformed, not destroyed.

Summary:

Although Job clearly poses the theological problem of evil-why do natural and moral evils afflict good people?-God's response to Job does not answer his question but rather overwhelms him with a sense of his own human weakness and insignificance. God's overpowering speech in Job was adduced by later Biblical and literary critics as a prime example of the literary sublime, an aesthetic category that seeks to account for the pleasure we take in representations of things that cause or threaten to cause human

suf­fering. The Book of Job, then, deflects or transforms the problem of pain and evil into a different category, the pleasure we can take in verbal images of things that can cause pain and evil.

For Greater Understanding

Suggested Reading

Blake, William. The Tyger. The Longman Anthology of British Literature,  Vol. 2, pg. 129-130.

Burke, Edmund. Phiiosophical Enquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the            Sublime and Beautiful. And Other Prerevolutionary Writings. David Womersley (ed.) New York: Penguin USA, 1999.

Burke, Edmund. Philosophical Enquiry Into the Oriain of Our Ideas of the             Sublime and Beautiful. The Longman Anthology of British Literature,     Vol. 2, pg. 499-504.

Frost, Robert. The Complete Poems. Edward Lathem (ed.) New York: Owl Books, 2nd rev. ed., 2002.

Other Books of Interest

Hone, Ralph E., ed. The Voice Out of the Whirlwind: The Book of Job. San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Company, 1960. (Selected essays on Job.)

Lowth, Robert. Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews. Richard Gregory (trans.) (originally published in Latin, 1753).2 vols. London: J. Johnson, 1787.

JOURNAL QUESTION:

PLEASE COMMENT ON THE FOLLOWING QUESTION IN THE COMMENT SECTION BELOW (YOU WILL NEED ABOUT 100-200 WORDS TO DO THIS QUESTION JUSTICE)


The Book of Job shows a good man who is basically punished at the whim of God and the bequest of Satan.  What message does The Book of Job have for any human being who reads his story?  When you face personal challenges, what do you rely on for solace?