The Great Shift
Page 34
In short, rather than our considering the absence of self-reflection per se, it may be more promising to examine a shift from its absence to its presence—among prophets, for example. It would not be unfair to say that Israel’s ninth- and eighth-century prophets do not dwell much on their inner selves.20 Elijah and Elisha perform miracles, but we are told nothing about their inner thoughts at such moments—what they were thinking or what it took for them to do what they did.21 The same could be said of the great eighth-century prophets: What do we know about the inner life of Amos or Isaiah? God tells Hosea to “get a wife of whoredom” (Hos 1:2), in other words, “Go marry a prostitute”—certainly an odd demand—but what Hosea himself thought about this is never related. What was said about Abraham earlier might indeed describe all these prophets. They are not “fraught with background” at all; rather, they are presented to us as ciphers, faceless communicators of the divine word.
But then there come the exceptions. As we have seen, the sixth-century prophet Jeremiah does not hesitate to tell us what is going on inside him, especially in his well-known “laments”:
Is there anyone whom I can talk to—to warn them, so that they’ll heed?
But everyone’s ears are stopped up, they’re unable to take in my words.
The word of the LORD has become . . . an embarrassment, which they don’t need.
But I’m full of the wrath of the LORD; I can’t hold it inside any more. (Jer 6:10–11)
His doubts, his disappointments, are displayed for all to see:
When Your words first came I devoured them: Your words were a joy, a delight to my heart;
Your name was joined to mine, “the LORD God of Hosts.”
I avoided the revelers’ parties; my joy was Your hand placed upon me.
So I sat by myself, all alone, brimming with Your righteous anger.
Then why is it now I have unending pain, a wound that will never be healed?
Will it turn out You’ve been for me . . . a fountain whose waters gave out? (Jer 15:16–18)
Perhaps a generation later, we encounter the anonymous prophet who authored chapters 40–66 of the book of Isaiah. He too reflects on his life. In fact, he sometimes sounds a bit like Jeremiah:22
My Lord GOD taught me to speak, with an eloquent word for the weary,
Rousing my ear every morning to utter an eloquent line;
Yes, my Lord GOD opened my ear, and I did not object or retreat.
I surrendered my back to the floggers, gave my cheeks for my beard to be plucked.
I did not protect my own face from their insults, their spit and abuse.
My Lord GOD gives me His help. That’s why I won’t be ashamed—
Why I harden my face like flint, since I know that I won’t be disgraced.
Who dare try to take me on now? My Defense stands right at my side. (Isa 50:4–8)
It would be nice to see in such passages the emergence of a new sense of self reflected in, among other things, the way these two prophets speak of themselves and their role.23 But the prophets who followed them—Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi—are as faceless as Jeremiah’s predecessors, and the same is certainly true of the apocalyptists who came still later, submerging their own identities in the pseudepigraphic personae that they adopted. In short, Jeremiah and Second Isaiah may attest to a new sort of self-reflection, but, as the saying has it, one swallow (or even two) does not a summer make. They may just have been exceptional.
Job and Ecclesiastes
There are, however, two strikingly new selves in the Hebrew Bible that bear special mention here. The books of Job and Ecclesiastes (Hebrew Koheleth) are often grouped together, since the author of each expresses, in his own way, dissatisfaction with the overall ideology of “wisdom” (discussed above in chapter 2). Both books take issue with the notion that God’s supreme control of reality guarantees that life is basically fair, that righteousness is rewarded and evildoing punished—and in so doing their authors disagree with the message repeatedly articulated in the story of Joseph in Genesis, as well as throughout the biblical book of Proverbs and later in the book of Ben Sira (Sirach), and, for that matter, in traditional wisdom collections from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia dating back to the third millennium BCE.24 Perhaps it is this oppositional stance that led the authors of Job and Koheleth to reflect on their own lives (at only a slight remove) as proof that wisdom’s ideology is false. In any case, their lives and their thoughts are front and center in these books, and this sets them apart from traditional wisdom collections, whose speakers—wise sages who have mastered wisdom’s truths—speak ex cathedra, faceless embodiments of an altogether predictable set of eternal verities.25
Job’s biography is well known. He was originally a champion of traditional wisdom, respected by his fellow sages as one who not only espouses wisdom’s teachings but exemplifies them in his daily life. Then catastrophe strikes. A wicked angel (called here a satan*) challenges God to allow him to put the righteous Job to the test: “Make him truly suffer and see if he remains faithful to You.” God accepts the challenge and allows this heavenly challenger to do his worst; first the satan destroys Job’s wealth, suddenly causing his flocks and herds to be seized by raiders, then kills Job’s servants and all of his ten children, and finally afflicts Job’s own body with terrible sores. At first Job bears his downfall bravely, as a traditional wisdom sage ought: “Should we accept only good from God,” he asks his skeptical wife, “and not accept evil as well?” (Job 2:10).
But then Job’s “comforters” arrive. The term “comforter” itself is somewhat misleading. It was traditional for someone who had suffered a personal loss to enter a ritual of mourning, tearing his own clothes (very costly) and/or covering his skin with sackcloth (very uncomfortable), putting ashes on his head and lamenting his fate. (This is, for example, precisely what Jacob does in reaction to the news that his son had been killed, Gen 37:34.) The job of comforters was not so much to make the mourner feel better as to enact a set ritual, one that, like all rituals, created a kind of familiar territory for people in moments of transition or stress.26 As part of this ritual, the mourner at first had to “refuse to be comforted” (Gen 37:35), loudly lamenting or not speaking at all, while the comforters uttered the usual truths about disaster or death—that, however difficult this might seem, what had happened was part of the divine plan and therefore had to be accepted. (This is what was called, in later times, tzidduk ha-din, “justifying the decree.”) When at last the mourner ritually surrendered and “accepted consolation” (kibbel tanḥumin), the comforters’ job was done and they returned home.
That is what should have happened with Job, but his loss was so great that he just wasn’t buying what his comforters said. Nothing like this can be accepted, he tells them: God has obviously set out to destroy me. It would have been better if I had never existed.
“Let the day I was born not have been! Nor the night when they wished for a boy!
Let that day be so covered in darkness, so black that no deity sees it; let no ray of light ever find it.
With dark clouds hovering above it, let drear and gloom repossess it, their blackness covering all.” (Job 3:3–5)
The comforters of course say what they have been trained to say: “Job! Get a hold of yourself! You’ve been a comforter yourself so many times. There must be a logic to what has happened to you. And if not—well, take your case straight to God. True, He sometimes punishes us—but He also binds up our wounds. Just accept it and move on” (chapters 5 and 6).
This may all seem like merely ritual behavior, and “Job” is in any case a fictional character. But no reader of the book can escape the feeling that behind this book stands a real (and rather modern) self, someone who is accustomed to thinking about his own life, indeed, watching it on the big screen, while God, for all His being God, is no longer the overwhelming Master to whom all must simply submit:
“But I’m innocent—shouldn’t I know? That’s why I’m sick o
f my life.
It’s all the same, as I said: He kills both the good and the bad.
If disaster should suddenly strike, He laughs as the innocents fall.
A villain grabs somebody’s land? He covers the magistrates’ eyes.
(If that’s not Him, then where is He?)
So my days run faster and faster, soon they’re gone! But they gave me no pleasure.
Now they’re off like a swift-running boat, like an eagle after its prey.
If I say I’ll forget my complaining, give up my heart’s lamentation,
I still dread the suffering that’s left, since I know I won’t get off easy.
I’m ‘in the wrong,’ that’s all; why waste the last of my strength?” (Job 9:21–29)
Modern readers sometimes mistake Job’s theological skepticism. He has no doubt about God’s existence; in fact passages like the above (and there are many) only stress how much he feels God’s heavy presence breathing down on him. But it is the notion that God is fair that he can no longer abide:
“Why do the wicked live on? Growing older, they only get richer.
They reproduce, smile on descendants, while they themselves live securely—no rod of God’s ever strikes them.
The bulls in their fields rut on demand, and their cows give birth without fail.
Their infants gambol like sheep; their children dance in a round,
playing on harp and on timbrel, singing to the sound of the pipe.
They spend out their days in comfort, then peacefully head to Sheol.
To God they say, ‘Let me be. I have no need of religion.
Who’s “Almighty,” that we should revere Him? What good does it do to pray?’
Yet all that they have didn’t come from themselves—the fate of the wicked is too much for me!
How often is their light snuffed out, as their downfall at last overtakes them?
Let God in His anger rebuke them. Make them like a straw in the wind, like chaff that the storm carries off.
‘God saves His wrath for their children’? Let Him punish the source—so he’ll know!
Let his own eyes witness his downfall, let him taste the Almighty’s displeasure!
If not, why should he care if those who come after die young?
Should he be allowed to teach God or act like some heavenly judge?” (Job 21:7–22)
Lest all this get a little abstract, Job keeps reminding us of his very real, physical condition:
“But now, my soul is exhausted; my suffering tightens its grip.
Nighttime snatches my strength, and my sweats refuse to let go.
With great effort I loosen my clothes or tug at the neck of my gown.
I’ve been thrown down to the mud—yes indeed, ‘I am dirt and ashes.’*
If I bow to You, You don’t answer; if I stand, You pay me no mind.**
You’ve become a bringer of torment, You hound me with all of Your force.
You whisk me up with the wind, until my senses all fail me.
Oh I know the end that awaits me; there’s one place for all who have lived.
But must He attack a ruin? Must I cry out in pain to perish?
And have I not wept at my hardship, vexing my soul at my downfall?
I begged for the good but got evil; though I yearned for the light, all was black.
Now my insides are never at peace, days of pain are all that is left.” (Job 30:16–27)
The end of the book is altogether predictable. God always has the last word, so how dare a mere mortal call His justice into question?
“Who is this who demeans understanding with words that lack any insight?
Stand on your feet like a man! Now I’ll ask, and you give the answers:
Were you there when I set earth’s foundations? Tell me, if you’re truly clever.
Who fixed its size—you must know!—or measured it out with a rule?
Into what were its bases inserted, and who put its cornerstone down,
as the morning stars droned in chorus, and the sons of God all gave song?” (Job 38:2–7)
As suggested above, it is revealing to think about the man behind the man, the one who enjoys contemplating what it means to be a suffering human being in a world still controlled by God, but in which God’s spokesmen can only answer in familiar clichés, while the author’s own spokesman is vivid and strikingly big, a hero observed in detailed close-ups on the big screen. What ultimately makes the most sense to him in this world is not arriving at a conclusion, but playing both sides of the Ping-Pong table and then declaring the match a draw.
To one familiar with biblical Hebrew, Job is masterwork. His speech is full of vivid images enlisted in the service of densely argued speeches, for the most part in classical biblical Hebrew (bearing some similarity to the language of Isaiah and Jeremiah) but peppered with numerous learned borrowings from Aramaic and Akkadian. (These were apparently intended to support Job’s identity as someone from “the land of Uz” [Job 1:1], one of those places to the south and east of biblical Israel where wisdom was proverbially said to flourish [1 Kgs 5:10; some Bibles 4:30].)
The figure of Koheleth (in modern transcription: Qohelet) is altogether different: his speech is often colloquial and not particularly elegant. In fact, scholars are not quite sure what to make of his language; it seems to belong to a slightly different dialect from standard Hebrew, with some possible connections to what we know of Phoenician. As to its author, the first verse asserts that these are “the sayings of Koheleth, son of David, king in Jerusalem.” The only son of David who was king in Jerusalem was Solomon, so this verse, along with Ecclesiastes 1:12, which mentions Koheleth being “king in Jerusalem over Israel,” was always taken as an indication that “Koheleth” was just some sort of nickname of Solomon’s, who had a reputation for wisdom (1 Kgs 5:9–14; some Bibles 4:29–34). As for the name “Koheleth,” it seems to be derived from the Hebrew root meaning “assemble, collect.” If this was Solomon, perhaps it was a reference to his assembling the various tribes and subtribes that his father David had ruled and gathering them into a truly unified state. He may thus have been nicknamed the “man of the assembly,” the koheleth, a word that was ultimately translated into Greek as ekklēsiastēs, which is why his book is called Ecclesiastes in English and other languages.
But the attribution to King Solomon is generally rejected today by modern scholars. To begin with, it makes little sense for someone born in the royal court to have expressed himself in a non-Jerusalemite Hebrew, in fact, in a kind of otherwise unknown barbaric yawp.27 Moreover, there are two loanwords in the book derived from ancient Persian, pardes (an enclosed garden or orchard) and pitgam (a royal decree). Even if Solomon himself was a master of foreign languages, what would he gain by slipping in these words if none of his readers could know what they meant? To say that Solomon wrote these words in his book would be the equivalent of a Shakespearean scholar claiming that a poem containing such words as “shampoo” or “juggernaut” or “pundit” had been penned by the Bard; any linguist could figure out that these are loanwords borrowed from Hindi as a result of Great Britain’s prolonged colonization of India, long after Shakespeare’s death. It is the same with pardes and pitgam. The period of prolonged contact between Judea and the Persian Empire was from the end of the sixth to the end of the fourth centuries BCE, when Judea was part of the empire, so this would seem to be the period in which the book was written.28 Moreover, words designating a royal decree and a fancy sort of orchard are just the kind of things picked up by a native population from their distant foreign emperor or his minions. As for the name Koheleth, scholars now suggest that it reflects another Semitic root, rare in Hebrew but present in the Bible (Num 16:23, 20:2, Neh 5:7) as well as in Syriac, and meaning “to argue” or “reprove.”29 Putting all this together, it seems reasonable to assume that Koheleth was the real name, or nickname, of some sort of Persian-appointed Jewish official, the “Arguer,” who ruled over “Israel” (that is, the Jews)
in Jerusalem and environs, perhaps indeed someone who was a “son (that is, a descendant) of David,” and therefore a likely candidate to be appointed by the Persians as a governor (peḥa), if not quite a “king” in the usual sense, over his countrymen.