Comments on the Book of Job, Part 1

The Book of Job is perfect for preparing us for Lent. The issues that it raises are perennial and still unsolved. Job bears thinking about. What does it say to you? Here's a poem I wrote about it some years ago:

JOB

The messengers have told me of the natural
Disasters and incredible fatalities

Which fell upon my properties and oh my dear propinquities

My grown-up sons and daughters and their
Children in their infancies

All taken from me now when I had shored up liabilities
And thought myself the happiest man alive.

I cannot stand more messages nor dreary fearful presages
Though nothing’s left to lift from me except disease’s ravages
And this thin thread of life.

My wife, that shrieking woman,
What a person she has been for me

As if her curses meant for me
Could find their way to God.

My friends, they sit away from me
They cannot stand the stench of me

I see what horror looks like in their eyes.

As long as they sit silently
My spirit bides their sympathy

Especially when surprisingly
Their tears splash all too copiously
Down upon their beards.

But now the waiting gets to them
The terror is too much for them

They’re thrown upon
The doctrine of their youth.

And so they take their turns to speak
And ask me now to face myself

And find within this rottenness
The sin which is the source of it

So they might have the pleasure
Of knowing all along.

Do they think I’ve been oblivious
To every single silliness
And all the indiscretions of my youth?

I have counted and berated
And retold and still negated

Petty jealousies and rivalries
And all the sins of flesh;

Or weighing in my memory
Each babe my wife presented me
To see if I’ve preferred one child too much

But my children, they are gone from me
And who has wrecked this wrong on me?

And what the scales which weigh to me
Such punishment as this?

But when my friends are silent
And I sift through all this misery
As if it holds the very sands of life,

I discover deep inside of me
Through torture and calamity

A deep abiding presence which
I do not understand.

And all the words which come at me
And all the speeches made, you see,

And all the stuff that’s written to explain
This morbid life

Evaporate so rapidly
In the furnace of infinity

For that’s what’s here inside of me
And has been, in my agony;

I see it now, the rest is not
For me to understand.

The message then is not
That God delights in senseless suffering,

But through it all and in it all,
He’s here.

Comments on the Book of Esther

Comments on Esther 1:1-2:18; 3:1-15; 4:1-17; 7:1-10

Biblical Literacy, pages 118-125

It’s hard to believe, isn’t it, that there’s a book in the Bible that doesn’t mention God? The original Hebrew text has no mention of the deity. The translators into the Greek version called the Septuagint, however, added some six passages that do reference God. But the New Revised Standard Version translated from the ancient Hebrew Masoretic text. And so, in our Bibles, there is no reference to God in the Book of Esther.

Purim this year will be celebrated from the evening of March 7 until the evening of March 8. There are several interesting and wonderful Jewish practices surrounding this feast, including fasting from a hour before sunrise until sunset on the day before. Observant Jews will listen to two live readings of the Esther story—one the night of March 7 and one on the day itself. There is the custom of donating to two needy people, and of bringing two dishes of food to a friend (preferably delivered by a third party).

In Jewish schools, the children will dress up, perhaps to commemorate the fact that Esther did not reveal that she was Jewish until the very end. The kids will bring their noisemakers, or gragers, and they will boo and stamp their feet every time the wicked Haman’s name is mentioned in the story. They will eat pastries named after him and have a great time. Their elders will be sure to serve alcohol on Purim and there is an old tale that the ancient rabbis gave everyone permission to drink to excess on Purim.

There are so many fascinating aspects of this story. Why do you think it ended up in the Bible? What parts of the story enthrall you? Is it the ethno-national part—the amazing relationship between the Jews and the Persians—Jews obeying the intransigent Persian law but still keeping a strong sense of their own identities? Is it the transformation of Esther from a young girl who obeys her father into someone willing to marry a gentile, sleep with the king, risk her life for the sake of her people (“if I perish, then I perish”), and finally ends up giving orders to both the King and to her father, Mordecai?

There is a lot going on in this story—not all of it explicit. Only some research will tell you that Haman’s being an Agagite means that he was related to King Agag, leader of the Amalekites, who were longtime enemies of the Israelites. He and Mordecai, leader of the Jews, were set up for conflict by their very ancestry. Both would try to exterminate each other, although the wording of Haman’s edict sounds like genocide, and perhaps the retaliation of Mordecai only sought victory over enemies, not annihilation. Still, in chapter nine, which probably is not read to children, Queen Esther demands her husband hang the ten sons of Haman so their bodies would be subject to public disgrace. These were not pleasant times.

We do much in life with no reference to God. We shop, travel, deal with children, work at our jobs, clean the house, take the car in for maintenance, eat meals, watch TV. Some of us save “God-stuff” for Sundays or funerals. But many commentators through the ages look back on the story of Esther and see God’s hand at work, even if only in the heroics of this beautiful woman. And many of us, looking back on the mundane details of our daily living, can catch a glimpse of a golden thread or of some leather strap to hold onto as life speeds up and lurches around corners. As the wise man puts it: “God comes disguised as our life!”