But the problem of the evil of the mourner includes another element for which God’s answer might have some intrinsic meaning. Extreme pain ordinarily leads us to focus on our own suffering and closes our capacity of attentiveness.
The victim might tend to self-centeredness in his suffering. In one of his pro-tests, Job cries, “O that my vexation were weighed, and all my calamity laid in the balances! For then it would be heavier than the sand of the sea; therefore my words have been rash” (Job 6:1–3). From the perspective of the victim his suffering and pain outweigh that of the whole world. Evil has not only a numb-ing effect but also a closnumb-ing effect, in which the self is fully consumed by pain and need. The suffering and the consciousness of evil fill our inner screen and shrink our horizons.
Such deep tendency to self-centeredness manifests itself in Job’s ongoing complaint that he has been treated unfairly, which implies that everything that occurs in the world happens either to his favor or to his disadvantage. When during a heavy storm his house collapses and his loved ones die, Job protests by asking: what did I do that this storm was sent to me? Maimonides has
inter-Job, the Mourner 45 preted God’s answer to Job as being an attempt to break this anthropocentric attitude. The shift away from anthropocentrism emerges in how God describes the immense cosmos and creation, a description rendered in different terms than in the creation narrative inGenesis. InGenesisthe world is created as a house for humans, who are considered the crown of creation. This cosmologi-cal conception invites the locating of the human at the center of the cosmos.
Following such an anthropocentric account, rain or drought in biblical litera-ture is an unmistakable example of reward or punishment: rain falls in favor of and for the benefit of humans; if there is no rain, it is to make humans suffer. In contrast with this the Book of Job describes creation in quite different terms. Here, the crown of creation is the terrifying leviathan, not human be-ings.
The leviathan is described in God’s speech to Job as follows: “On earth it has no equal, a creature without fear. It surveys everything that is lofty; it is king over all that are proud” (Job 41:33–34). God’s speech also stresses that rain also falls on uninhabited places, implying that the blissful phenomenon of rain is not oriented solely to the needs humans: “Who has cut a channel for the torrents of rain, and a way for the thunderbolt, to bring rain on a land where no one lives, on the desert, which is empty of human life” (Job 38:25–
26).6God says to Job: not everything in creation happens because of you – I have other, very different matters to be concerned with. God’s answer, as many readers have noted, does not address directly the problem of evil; yet, in its denial of humanity’s central place in the universe this answer is helpful in at least one respect, in that it challenges the anthropocentric assumption which tends to reinforce the self-centeredness of pain.
Job’s overcoming of the shuttering condition of mourning and suffering emerges only towards the end of the book when he becomes able to perceive the needs of others. “And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job when he had prayed for his friends; and the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before”
(Job 42:10). In praying for his friends, in caring for them and their plight, Job breaks free from the prison of evil and ruptures the isolating self-centeredness of the victim. Such a caring gesture does not in any way imply resolution of the problem of evil in the way it was conceived as a problem of theodicy. Rather, it is a moment of reconciling with the world, which stands in a stark opposition to the starting point of Job’s bitter journey – his death wish. The trajectory of
6On the change in the conception of creation from Genesis to Job, see JisraelKnohl,Mijir’a le-ahava – hassagat ha-emet ha-datit be-seferIyovu-betorat ha-kehoena[“From fear to love – the religious perception of truth in the Book of Job and in the priestly codex”], in:Iyov, ba-Mikra ba-hagutba-ommanoet, Lea Mazor, ed., Magnes, Jerusalem 5655 (1995), 89–103.
Job’s spiritual and existential path as a mourner is the move from the isolated seclusion of the mourner and its disinterest in the world, to the caring concern and attentiveness to the needs and pains of others.
The rejection of the theological version of the problem of evil and the project of theodicy implies that the question of evil should not be resolved.
There lurks a certain evil in the human attempt to resolve the problem of evil.
Evil must be combated, reduced, weakened. The problem of evil begins at the place where evil weakens our capacity to fight it. Evil as a problem of the mourner transforms us into isolated, enclosed beings; it numbs our capacity to moraloutrage. It prisons us and locks us into the narcissism of victimhood and pain. Can we – with the aid of our friends and family – mobilize the neces-sary means to conquer this problem of evil? This is the difficult question of the Book of Job. It is also the true problem of evil in our society.
Bibliography
Babylonian Talmud. Treatise Baba Kama.
Babylonian Talmud. Berakhot.
Jerusalem Talmud. Nedarim.
Jisrael Knohl,Mijir’a le-ahava – hassagat ha-emet ha-datit be-seferIyovu-betorat ha-kehoena (“From fear to love – the religious perception of truth in the Book of Job and in the priestly codex”).Iyov, ba-Mikra ba-hagutba-ommanoet.Ed. Lea Mazor. Jerusalem:
Magnes Press, 1995.
Shklar, Judith.The Faces of Injustice. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990.