Job and Her

It is said that Job lost everything, but she has lost more. All her possessions—the money, the house, the clothes—they still exist, but she no longer regards them as hers. Nothing belongs to her anymore. Her children remain alive, but for her, it is as if they never existed, for she does not know their number or names or where they live. No sores afflict her flesh. But she cannot walk or eat or empty her bladder or bowels without help. Instead of sitting among ashes scraping herself, she sits in a wheelchair in diapers. In these losses, she is Job’s equal.

But she has lost more. Job retained the ability to protest. In fact, he complained so loudly he was heard in heaven. She, however, cannot even gripe. Sounds escape her. She groans in pleasure when a spoonful of ice cream enters her lips or yells in fear if she is moved too quickly. But intelligible words are rare. Her mouth moves and sounds emerge that have the cadence of speech but no meaning. We ask, “Do you want more to drink?” “Do you like the cake?” “Are you cold?” Sometimes she responds with a “No” or “Yes” or a shaking of the head. Often, she doesn’t seem to hear. Her attention is drawn elsewhere—to a bird on a tree, a word in a newspaper headline, or something else we cannot see or hear. 

Completely absent are Job’s grievances. No complaints that her circumstances are not what she had hoped for or expected. No wish that she were dead or had never been born. Her eyes watch; her head moves; her expression does not change. She sits like a sphinx, standing guard at the entrance to a world we cannot enter.

Just as Job’s friends came to visit him, we come to comfort her. Mostly, we are family. Only rarely does a friend visit, let alone three or four. Most of her friends have already passed away. Those who haven’t are too infirm to visit or too afraid to want to visit. They wish to remember her as she was before and worry about how they would react to her now. Their worries are not unfounded. Even those of us who visit regularly and have become accustomed to her new ways sometimes want, like Job’s comforters, to raise our voices and weep, to rend our clothes, and to sprinkle dust upon our heads.

Job’s condition of affliction moved his comforters. When Job’s comforters arrive, they sit “with him on the ground seven days and seven nights,” and no one speaks. The narrator states the reason: “They saw that his suffering was very great.” They are in awe of Job’s plight, just as one might find oneself speechless before a friend who bears the scars of a terrible burn or whose legs have been amputated. But the suffering itself cannot actually be seen. It is an internal experience to which a comforter cannot have access. Job’s comforters are shocked into silence because of what they think it must be like for Job. 

Job’s comforters could see that he was sitting in ashes with sores from head to foot. They had also heard that Sabeans and Chaldeans had taken his livestock and killed his servants and a wind had blown down a house, killing his seven sons and three daughters. But understanding Job’s suffering requires his friends to imagine how they would have felt had these events happened to them. Perhaps they had experienced the loss of wealth, a child, or good health. As a result, they might have some understanding of what it was like for Job to lose these things, but because they probably had not lost all these things at the same time nor to the same extent as Job, their understanding of the depth of his suffering must have been limited. 

When Job opened his mouth, the comforters understood more. “Let the day perish wherein I was born,” he begins. With these words, the depth of Job’s despair and suffering becomes more accessible. His life has become so abhorrent that he wishes the doors of his mother’s womb had been shut, and he questions why he continues to live: “Why is light given to him that is in misery and life to the bitter in soul, who long for death?” Again, to understand these sentiments, the comforters do not need to have suffered in the same ways or as much as Job, but they must have known something of anguish and despair, something of what it is like not to want to continue living, if only in a passing period of frustration or unhappiness. They come closer to understanding, but Job’s suffering remains something only he experiences.

With her, the obstacles to a comforter’s understanding are much greater. Her apparent confusion and lack of memory strain the limits of our ability to imagine what she is experiencing. Perhaps from times when we were sick or hospitalized, we can remember what it was like to be dependent on others for walking and eating. Maybe we even have some faint recollection of what it feels like to wear a diaper. We may be able to imagine her immediate sensations. But her conscious experience—that is, what it is like to be her—is beyond our reach. Most of us have never not known where we are or how we got there. Most of us do not know what it is like to be around people who love us yet seem like complete strangers, or who carry with them a sense of familiarity that never matures into recognition. We do not know what it means to sit for hours yet have no sense that measured time has passed—to know only that we endure.

Even these are only guesses of what her experience is like. Perhaps it is nothing like this. Maybe she retains all these experiences within a central core of knowledge, and this deeper part of herself knows where she is and how she got there; it knows those around her and can measure the passage of time. Yet all this knowledge remains covered in a cloud of confusion that an occasional flash of understanding illuminates before vanishing in the next moment. Her inability to communicate only darkens our understanding. The result is that her experience is so foreign as to be almost inaccessible.

Her experience is so different from our own that we cannot even be sure that she suffers. It was said of the Israelites in Egypt that, before Moses, they were so oppressed that they did not even know they were oppressed. Likewise, she is so confused, it seems likely she does not even know that she is confused. In the beginning stages, this was not the case. She knew things were slipping from her memory, and she was angry and frustrated. Her home, her husband of more than sixty-five years, her children, so much that had been central to her life, were not as she had remembered them, and she was afraid. Her condition is different now. The sense of loss seems to be gone and, with it, her anger and fear. But this is just a guess. We stand at a distance. This inaccessibility—not her suffering—provokes our shock and silence.

Bringing comfort is no easy task. Comforters are often too busy trying to comfort themselves to bring comfort to others. This was the case for Job’s comforters. And it is no doubt the case for those who come to comfort her. 

It’s fair to say Job’s comforters do not bring much comfort. No grief counselor would recommend them as models to emulate. Throughout the three cycles of speeches from Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar and the final remarks of Elihu, the message is clear: Job must have done something to deserve the calamity that has befallen him. Not surprisingly, this sentiment brings no relief to Job. On the contrary, it compounds his confusion and anger, for he does not believe he is guilty of any misdeed. From the comforters’ perspective, this response only condemns Job, for “what is man, that he can be clean?” Even “the heavens are not clean” in God’s sight. At first, the comforters communicate these messages delicately and with respect. But as the speeches proceed, they become more assertive, angry, and accusatory. 

The ineptitude of the comforters in the art of comforting casts doubt about their sincerity. But if their purpose was not to comfort him, then what was it? It is possible that they came in simple observance of the tradition that one should visit the sick. This tradition has long and deep roots. Even if this tradition brought them to Job’s side in the first place, however, it does not explain why they stayed for their long debate with him. Nor does it explain the energy and anger of their comments. Something more than duty was at stake.

As is so often the case in what we say to those in affliction, the comforters’ accusations reveal more about their own concerns than Job’s. Their comments suggest at least a touch of envy. Job had possessed much and was regarded as “the greatest of all the people of the east.” When the comforters begin to propose the sins that may have earned Job his calamity, they target his wealth. At first, they speak in generalities about the “the wicked man” who “has crushed and abandoned the poor” and “seized a house which he did not build”; his “greed knew no rest.” Eventually, they end the pretense that they are merely speaking of the wicked generally and accuse Job directly. “There is no end to [Job’s] iniquities,” they claim. They go on to provide a list of particulars: “You have exacted pledges of your brothers for nothing,” “stripped the naked of their clothing,” “given no water to the weary to drink,” and “withheld bread from the hungry.” The comforters chafe at the disparity between Job’s former wealth and theirs. Why should he have had so much when they do not?

Perhaps even greater than their desire for Job’s wealth is their desire to live in a world that seems manageable. This explains their insistence that Job’s misfortunes are the predictable result of his misdeeds. It is true that God tells us that sinners will be punished and the good rewarded. But this expectation is not straightforward. Israel repeatedly fails to uphold God’s laws and yet is forgiven; and those who do wrong still prosper, at least long enough to cast doubt on any simple relationship between doing evil and being punished. To confuse matters further, it’s not always obvious whether what befalls a person amounts to a reward or a punishment. 

The comforters, however, are not interested in these complexities, for they make the world unpredictable. A world in which a righteous man can lose his possessions, his children, and his health for no apparent reason is frightening. It is a world in which we are subject to powers we can neither foresee nor control. If, on the other hand, Job’s calamity is the result of his sins, the world becomes more comprehensible. Job’s comforters want to believe they can avoid his fate. They can treat others fairly in the marketplace. They can give bread to the hungry, clothes to the naked, and water to the weary; in return, they expect to prosper. 

It is not clear that we who visit her bring any more comfort than those who visited Job. It’s not because we don’t want to. We just don’t know what will comfort her. We talk; we smile; we pretend to understand when she tries to talk; we hold her hand, touch her shoulders, and offer her food to eat. We watch her reactions for clues about whether we are helping. But we just don’t know.

Like Job’s comforters, a sense of duty motivates us. We come because we feel we should. We recognize an obligation. It’s more than a general duty to visit the sick. We do not visit every sick person. The obligation arises from our relationship with her. This obligation persists even though the contours of that relationship have changed radically. She can no longer participate as she once did. The relationship is almost entirely one-sided. We listen and talk and bring gifts; she can do none of these things. Yet still we visit. Sometimes we cling to the belief that, despite all appearances, she knows it is we who come and care. At other times, it seems our care is a tribute we pay to who she was, not who she is now. Maybe we believe our actions will win us praise in the eyes of others, or of God. Maybe we hope to atone for failing to express our appreciation for her more forthrightly when she was still aware enough to understand such things. Maybe we are mourning her death even before it occurs. We would like to believe we come simply because we love her.

Whatever our reasons for visiting, we feel the fear of Job’s comforters. If this could happen to her, it could happen to us. In a few years, we could be sitting in a wheelchair, dependent on others and unable to recognize our visitors. We find ourselves searching for reasons for her fate that were within her control—and could be within ours. We turn to today’s conventional explanations: She probably ate the wrong foods, we think, or did not exercise enough or failed to get enough sleep each night. Too much stress and anxiety permeated her life. She did not tax her mind enough by doing mental puzzles or learning a foreign language. Or she merely had the misfortune to be born too early, before scientists could uncover the causes of the disease and provide an effective treatment. In short, like Job’s comforters, we try to assure ourselves that, if we are vigilant and do the right things, her fate will not be ours.

Job’s tale refutes our efforts to make the world subject to our management and control. Job is not to blame for his calamity. At the very outset, the narrator states that Job was “blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.” The Lord himself confirms this description in the book’s prologue. And the Lord’s wrath against the comforters at the end suggests they were wrong to attribute his misfortunes to his deeds. If they were wrong, are we any less wrong to see her misfortunes as caused by whatever preoccupies us today? Should we even try to avoid her fate? Or is it possible that we would miss something important if we did?

The turning point in the Book of Job is what Kierkegaard calls “the thunderstorm.” The story takes the form of an ordeal—a trial, a test. The thunderstorm marks the end of the test. Before the thunderstorm, Job suffers his great losses. When the comforters visit, he must endure their accusations. The combination of his losses and those accusations creates the conditions for Job’s test. On the one hand, his losses are terrible. On the other hand, he is certain of his innocence. In fact, he’s so certain he does not deserve the losses he has suffered that he demands God appear and attempt to prove his guilt, for he is sure he will be acquitted. But if he is innocent, why has he suffered so terribly? Since God made him, why should God “turn [him] to dust again”? And what good does it do him to serve the Almighty if these terrible losses are the result?  

It is only after all this—the terrible losses, the accusations of the comforters, and Job’s existential questioning—that the thunderstorm erupts. It does not explain why Job lost so much. Nor does it answer Job’s questions. Instead, the Lord, addressing Job “out of the whirlwind,” presents a vision of the world he created. “Were you there when I laid the foundation of the earth?” it famously begins.

Tell me, if you have understanding.
Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone,
when the morning stars sang together, 
and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

As it continues, God’s challenge pulses with life: lions crouching in their dens; mountain goats bringing forth their offspring; asses that range the mountains in search of every green thing; ostriches who laugh at the horse and his rider; eagles that mount up and make their homes in the rocky crags; and lastly two monsters, the Behemoth and the Leviathan. This is not a quiet pastoral view. We are “laid low even at the sight of” the Leviathan. With its broad scope and grandeur, its violence and chaos, this vision evokes terror and awe, yet it remains somehow beautiful. 

The thunderstorm is clearly meant to rebuke Job, but it offers more than that. It brings insight. Job does not respond with the same defiance he mustered to defend himself from his friends. Instead, he seems to forget his pain and declares, “I am of small account; what shall I answer thee? I lay my hand on my mouth. . . . I will proceed no further.” He concedes, “I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.” He “despises” himself and repents “in dust and ashes” and becomes silent. Shortly thereafter, the Lord restores Job’s fortunes—his health and prosperity—and gives him twice as much as he had before. Job returns to the world of eating and drinking, marriage and children. Life goes on.

The thunderstorm is incomprehensible yet undeniably real, Kierkegaard asserts. It comes, he maintains, “when everything is lost.” “When everything has stalled, when thought is immobilized, when language is silent, when explanation returns home in despair—then there has to be a thunderstorm.” No one can understand it, and yet, Kierkegaard observes, “Who can think of anything else?”

Has she experienced the thunderstorm already? Could it be that the Lord has already rebuked her? Could her silence be, like Job’s, not the result of loss but of gain—perhaps insight that is denied to the rest of us? Such possibilities strike us as absurd. We like the Promethean Job before the thunderstorm occurs, when he wants to call the Lord to account. We prize speech, not silence; agency, not passivity; autonomy, not dependence. The silent, humble Job we see after the thunderstorm has little appeal. But it is the reticent and repentant Job who has learned whatever the Lord has to teach. Has she, too, learned this?

In one of his “godly discourses,” or sermons, Kierkegaard hints at the lesson Job, and perhaps she, has learned. The sermon takes as its text the portion of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount that offers a view of nature much more welcoming than the one the Lord showed Job: “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” Like the other vision, this one is intended to teach. But unlike the creatures described to Job, the lilies do not frighten. Instead, they attract. And what do we learn? “In nature,” Kierkegaard observes, “everything is obedience . . . unconditional obedience.” The lilies offer their testimony: 

In their unconditional obedience, they are so simple or so lofty that they believe that everything that happens is unconditionally God’s will . . . they have absolutely nothing to do in the world other than either to carry out God’s will in unconditional obedience or to submit to God’s will in unconditional obedience.

We are encouraged to emulate their obedience that we might share in their beauty. 

Kierkegaard observes that this obedience would continue even if the lily endured in a place that was “as unfortunate as possible”—even if this unfortunate place were as bad as the “dunghill” where Job sat scraping his sores after everything was taken from him. There the lily would serve no purpose. Not a single person would notice it or find joy in its beauty. The place would not just be ignored; it would be avoided. Surely something as lovely as a lily would find it unbearable to grow and bloom in such degradation. And why would the lily’s creator cause it to grow in such terrible surroundings? Yet even under these grim circumstances, Kierkegaard imagines the lily would think: “Of course, I myself cannot determine my location and circumstances. This is not my affair in the least way; that I stand where I stand is God’s will.” A lily in such a place would not just be lovely, Kierkegaard maintains. It would be even more beautiful than other lilies because it would be lovely in such unfortunate circumstances.

She, too, is obedient—obedient to the imperative to live. Her obedience to this imperative is so natural that it is easy to overlook. But if you had asked her twenty years ago, she would have told you that she would not want to live in the “unfortunate” circumstances she now confronts. Her view on the matter was so fixed that she even subscribed to publications from organizations that advocated the “right to die.” Now, however, the possibility of not continuing to live does not occur to her. She does not deliberate about this; she has no need for reasons. She simply acts, sometimes in reaction to people and things around her and at other times in response to things we can neither hear nor see. Nothing within rebels. She wakes, eats, and observes. Life goes on. 

On some visits, it is even possible to see her obedience not as a duty she must endure, but as an affirmation of an unspoken truth. In her simple acceptance of each moment, it is as if she is saying to us, “Yes, I can no longer speak; yes, I cannot walk and am becoming weaker; yes, I am moving toward the end of my life. And all this is as it should be.”

On other visits—on most visits—talk of obedience seems a silly distraction from the reality that sits before us. On these visits, the thunderstorm has not yet come. She is just a very sick woman whose body and mind are slowly deteriorating. Her silence guards no wisdom; she simply cannot talk. Her unintelligible utterances are not messages from a mysterious world we cannot understand; they are the unfortunate efforts of a woman too confused to put intelligible sentences together. She is not obedient; obedience implies choice, and she can make no choice. She cannot act otherwise, because her capacities are so limited by disease and old age. 

But just because the thunderstorm has not come does not mean it will not come. Tolstoy offers a different model for the timing of the thunderstorm in his novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich. In this story, a lawyer undergoes many weeks of physical deterioration and suffering that culminate in three days of ceaseless howling and thrashing just before his death. Those who witness Ilyich’s death throes see nothing revelatory. He is a sick man experiencing a painful weakening of his body unto death. But just before he dies, Ilyich experiences something like the thunderstorm: “What was tormenting him and would not be resolved was suddenly all resolved at once.” Ilyich proclaims aloud, “So that’s it! . . . What joy!” and dies two hours later. 

The possibility that a gravely ill patient might attain sudden insight just before death is not solely the product of Tolstoy’s imagination. Anecdotal evidence of incidents of this kind has existed since antiquity, but the stories received little notice during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the last twenty-five years, however, they have attracted the attention of academics who have named the phenomenon “terminal lucidity” or “paradoxical lucidity.” These scholars study not only those who have these experiences near death, but also those who experience them at other times, even though their brains are terribly damaged by disease. A division of the National Institutes of Health has funded a study of lucidity in late-stage dementia. In these incidents, patients exhibit a level of awareness and intelligence that is incompatible with the extent of the damage their brains have suffered. Many express feelings of contentment, make amends for past wrongs, offer thanks, and have a vision of a new world they will soon visit.

One of the reasons neuroscientists find terminal lucidity so interesting is that it seems to challenge a purely materialistic understanding of consciousness. As one neuroscientist put it, late-stage Alzheimer’s is thought to be like a pothole-ridden highway system on the verge of collapse, a condition of dilapidation over which the biological traffic of mind and memory can no longer flow. If this were the condition of an actual highway, we would not expect the ride suddenly to become very smooth just before the highway collapses. Rather, we would expect the ride to become worse and worse, until the road crumbles, and we can no longer go forward. In this respect, terminal lucidity contradicts the mainstream scientific belief that consciousness originates from biophysical processes in the brain. If consciousness is the product of these processes, a patient with late-stage dementia whose brain has been deteriorating for years should not be able to have these experiences. Something else—something less materialistic and more mysterious—must be going on. Could it be a thunderstorm?

The thunderstorm does not just mark the end of an ordeal; it reveals the ordeal’s existence. Without the thunderstorm, there would be no trial. The difficulties that preceded it would be just difficulties, nothing more. Their purpose becomes known only through the thunderstorm, which shows that the difficulties have made the thunderstorm possible.  

In the case of Job, the accusations of the comforters prepared him for the thunderstorm. According to Kierkegaard, Job’s conflict with his comforters constituted a kind of purgatory. Their questions purified Job’s belief that he was in the right. Without them, Job could not have questioned whether he was truly righteous in an honest way. If guilt and blame secretly dwelt in his innermost being, he might lack the power, ingenuity, and imagination to examine himself. The comforters helped him. “Their obvious insinuations” and “their offensive charges” acted like a “divining rod . . . to call forth what lay in deepest concealment.” By undergoing their questioning, Job wrestled with the doubts and accusations they voiced and still concluded that his calamity was not the result of sin. That period of anguish was necessary, Kierkegaard implies, not only to summon God, but to prepare Job for the encounter. Only after this purification could the thunderstorm come.

Tolstoy proposed a similar process for Ilyich. Ilyich’s experience is described from his own perspective, not just from that of his comforters. They do not want to be with him and see him suffer. His suffering is a terrible embarrassment and inconvenience. From their perspective, the suffering is pointless. They just wish it would end, even if this means his death. But Ilyich’s experience is different. It is physically painful, yes, but his deepest anguish arises because his condition isolates him and forces him to review his life and confront the question of whether it was “right.” In other words, did the positions, the money, and the relationships that had absorbed his attention make for a good life? In the end, Ilyich reaches the painful, but hopeful, conclusion that “his life had not been what it ought, but that it could still be rectified.” This occurs shortly before his experience of joy and death. The painful review of his life prepared him for the thunderstorm. 

Maybe there is no thunderstorm for her. It has not come. And perhaps it will never come, not even after her death. The thunderstorm will come only if her situation is an ordeal, only if her losses serve a purpose, only if her fortunes are someday restored, like Job’s. But this might not be the case. She could be the jilted bride waiting at the altar for the groom who never comes.

Certainly, we can be mistaken about whether the thunderstorm will come. Kierkegaard warned of those who like to have the concept of an ordeal “handy for every occasion,” even if it is just when “the oatmeal burns.” Not every event that does not go the way we wish is an ordeal. Only a thunderstorm can reveal it to be so, and until the thunderstorm comes, the event is just hardship. But the thunderstorm is “altogether transcendent” for everyone except him to whom it occurs. For this reason, we cannot use the concept of the ordeal to understand the suffering of others. As soon as we do—as soon as we conceive of another’s situation as an ordeal—it becomes something else.

For Kierkegaard, Job was special because he allowed “the disputes at the boundaries of faith” to be fought out within himself. He steadfastly avoided “all cunning ethical evasions and wily devices.” He refused any easy categorization of his situation as an ordeal or anything else, in stark contrast to the comforters, who so confidently asserted that his calamity was a punishment for his sins. It was only because Job was so steadfast in his refusal that the thunderstorm came for him. 

Everyone who reads the Book of Job does so as a comforter. As readers, we are not Job. We lose nothing by reading. We may have endured losses in our lives, but those were our losses, not his. Only Job can know his own losses. Only for Job has everything stalled, every thought been immobilized, and all language silenced. Every reader stands at an immeasurable distance from that loss. For a comforter to claim to understand it would be misappropriation. 

Because we know nothing of Job’s losses, we can know nothing of the thunderstorm. In its transcendence, it eludes us. In this sense, Job’s story must be overcome. It propagates one more pattern—the ordeal—to impose meaning on what transcends understanding. Just as the comforters did not speak of what is right when they confronted Job’s suffering, the Book of Job does not speak of what is right. It should be read not for what it says, but for what it cannot say.

* * *

How beautiful upon the mountains
are the feet of him who brings good tidings,
who publishes peace, who brings good tidings of good,
who publishes salvation,
who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”

For the critic Harold Fisch, these verses from Isaiah constituted “the clearest of all definitions” in the Bible of what is beautiful. He was not alone. Many others have praised the passage as a “high-water mark in the biblical perception of the beautiful.” Yet the image it describes does not conform to traditional ideas of beauty. It does not appeal to any sense of harmony. Its focus is on feet, which are not usually considered a particularly beautiful part of the human body. Nonetheless, these feet are thought beautiful because of what they are doing. They are running swiftly to bring the news of salvation. What matters is the message the messenger will deliver when his feet eventually stop moving. Until then, it is the undelivered message that makes beautiful his moving feet. As Fisch points out, if this scene were rendered in a painting, the messenger would be striving for something outside of the painting, some message yet undisclosed.

So, too, she is beautiful. She does not display the physical beauty of her youth, nor are her movements graceful. Her speech is indecipherable and her thoughts inaccessible. Yet she is beautiful. Her ongoing life points to something beyond our perception. Something is at work in and through her. She is coming from some place we cannot see and moving toward an end we cannot understand, and all along the way, she has been unknowingly obedient to a call and a purpose. We comforters can only stand in awe.

After the thunderstorm, the Lord does not forget the comforters. It is only because of Job’s prayers that the Lord does not deal with them “according to their folly.” May we, too, receive his mercy.