“And then Job replied to the Holy One.
I know you’re able to do anything
your purpose can’t be contravened.
‘Who is this who perverts counsel without knowledge?’
I have spoken of things too wondrous for me, of which I am ignorant.
‘Hear me. You will teach me
I will listen and you will speak.’
By ear I had heard of you,
but now my eyes have seen.
And so, I stand corrected,
content being merely ashes and dust” (Job 42:1-6).
Wisdom, it is said, begins when you admit what you don’t know. It seems almost paradoxical, doesn’t it, that despite years of living and all the books we might have read that the only way to move closer to wisdom is to confess that you have no idea what you’re talking about.
Job is the first of the four Wisdom books, along with the Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. They’re strange voices standing between the historical books and those of the prophets. Their voices sometimes contradict what is said elsewhere.
And they are mysterious. Take Job, for example. We have no idea who wrote this book or when they wrote it. The language in it tells us the poem was written after the return from exile in Babylon. But the prose around that poem seems earlier, almost as though it were part of a much older story that was brought here to give some means of understanding the pain and anguish that follows.
Which is why, for this summer, we’re going to act as though it isn’t there.
The framing—the scene in the Divine Court at the beginning and the restoration at the end—give us a context to make sense of what happens within it. We’re assured who is right and who is wrong before Job speaks his first words. And we’re comforted that everything, despite what has happened, turns out okay in the end.
But what if we didn’t know this? What if, opening this book, there is no explanation of what has happened or why it is happening, but there is only Job crying out in anguish for a loss he is, perhaps, incapable of articulating. What if we don’t know that he is blameless, as he maintains? What if the three friends are correct that there is some unconfessed, unacknowledged wrong he’s committed?
What if, in other words, it were more like real life and there are questions, prejudices, and even a bit of cynicism that were in play? Wouldn’t we have to admit that there are things we just don’t know?
It’s scary. Forgoing the explanation the prose gives us makes this already unsettling book even more troubling. We are thrown into a scene where don’t understand what is happening, we have no idea who is right and who is wrong. And, in the end, we are left without answers. In other words, it’s a lot like the life we live.
Without the prose to guide us, we are ignorant, groping, and confused. I can tell you that it will be uncomfortable. It may even feel less like a story and more like living in the world that surrounds us where tragedy and sorrow can surprise us with a change in the weather or a chime of the clock. We may even come away feeling like we understand even less than we did before.
But that, I’m told, is how wisdom begins.
Ambiguity is not my strong suit, Beloved One. I like it, prefer it when things make sense. Like Job, I just wish things made sense. In the questions and confusion, help me as I seek to understand not to forget that You are near. Even when it seems that You must be far away.