The Book of Job

The book of Job has been called the greatest poem ever written. It is both central to and transcendent of the biblical tradition, universal in its influence on Western literature and civilization. It is a polyphonic text, featuring a complex of perspectives and genres, probing profound existential issues: the nature of good and evil, humanity and divinity, justice and piety, innocence and suffering. There is hardly a person who has not confronted the questions posed by the text, and countless are the artists and thinkers whose imaginations have been gripped by it.

When pious Job becomes the subject of a wager between God and Satan, he is inflicted with a series of catastrophic pains, losses, and grief. In mourning and utter debasement, he dons an outfit of sackcloth and ashes, by which he symbolically regresses into a state of worthless dust. But his misery is only compounded by his would-be comforters (friends provoking him into theological debate) before God mysteriously confronts Job from out of the whirlwind.

The Book of Job powerfully permeates Moby-Dick: from the first of the "Extracts," to the final "extract" (a solitary quote in the Epilogue), and pages in between, including the decisive image of Ahab chasing "a Job's whale round the world."

The Book of Job:

• NIV
• Librivox
• YouTube 2h 7m

Supplemental:

• Encounters with the Greater Personality lecture by Edward Edinger
• Tree of Life scene
• The Great Whale: Answer to Job from Paul Bishop Psychology and the Cross podcast

Extracts:

• “Leviathan maketh a path to shine after him; One would think the deep to be hoary.” —Job (Moby-Dick, Extracts)
• “Let us fly, let us fly! Old Nick take me if is not Leviathan described by the noble prophet Moses in the life of patient Job.” —Rabelais (Moby-Dick, Extracts)
• "Who wrote the first account of our Leviathan? Who but mighty Job!" (Moby-Dick, 24)
• "What am I that I should essay to hook the nose of this leviathan! The awful tauntings in Job might well appal me." (Moby-Dick, 32)
• "Here, then, was this grey-headed, ungodly old man, chasing with curses a Job’s whale round the world..." (Moby-Dick, 41)
• “And I only am escaped alone to tell thee.” —Job (Moby-Dick, Epilogue)
• "In lifted waste, on ashy ground / Like Job’s pale group, without a sound / They sat." (Clarel, 3.3)
• "But Clarel felt as in affright / Did Eliphaz the Temanite / When passed the vision ere it spake."
• "But see, / Job’s text in wreath, what trust it giveth; / I know that my Redeemer liveth." (Clarel, 1.40)
• "Thought’s last adopted style he showed; Abreast kept with the age, the year, And each bright optimistic mind, Nor lagged with Solomon in rear, And Job, the furthermost behind—"
• "Methinks they show a lingering trace Of some quite unrecorded race Such as the Book of Job implies."
• "In lifted waste, on ashy ground / Like Job’s pale group, without a sound / They sat."
• "Ah, wherefore not at once name Job, / In whom these Hamlets all conglobe." (Clarel, 3.21)
• "With him misloved that fled the bride And Job whose wife but mocked his ban Then rose, or in redemption ran—"
• "Now night enthrones Arcturus and his shining sons; And lo, Job’s chambers of the South:"
• "...Captain Bildad was a well-to-do, retired whaleman."
• "...talk to him for all the world as Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar did to poor old pauper Job. Yes, Job's comforters were Old Plain Talk, and Old Prudence, and Old Conscience..."
• "Soft poet! brushing tears from lilies—this way! and howl in sackcloth and in ashes!" (Mardi, 2.76)
• "...we shall be wedded to the martial sound of Job's trumpeters, Lucy."
• "'Eh!—He's asleep, ain't he?' 'With kings and counselors,' murmured I." ("Bartley the Scrivener")
• "...what is man that he should live out the lifetime of his God?"
• "In thoughts of the visions of the night, I saw long rows of angels in paradise, each with his hands in a jar of spermaceti." (Moby-Dick, 94)
• "Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons? or his head with fish-spears? The sword of him that layeth at him cannot hold, the spear, the dart, nor the habergeon: he esteemeth iron as straw; the arrow cannot make him flee; darts are counted as stubble; he laugheth at the shaking of a spear!" (Moby-Dick, 81)
• "Of Thy ways / No knowledge we desire; new ways / We have found out, and better."
• "Order back your broken battalions! home, and repent in ashes!" (Israel Potter, )
• "...sackcloth and ashes as they are, the isles are not perhaps unmitigated gloom."

This meetup is part of a series on Fig Leaves and Fancy Pants.