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"Do you really want to read the entire book of Job?" my pastor asked me, horrified. I'd asked him to help me read this ancient Biblical book, to understand why it spoke to people who suffer greatly. I'd endured well over five years of living with a "mild" traumatic brain injury, a concussion somehow invisible to many. I needed to find succor. I needed to find meaning. I’d heard this book of innumerable miserable chapters provided that.
But I had a problem. A big one. I struggled to read. I needed someone to keep me reading and help me remember and understand it. I'd read it before my brain injury; that did give me a bit of a leg up, for as I read, the words called out to hidden memories of decades-old mental imagery. They rose like wispy fragments. Some complete; some so ragged, they vanished like ghosts the moment I saw them.
My pastor heard my cry and blessed me with his time. He didn't do the minimal. He put effort into helping me understand, in sharing his knowledge, in responding to my ideas. He lead me to what prominent theologians had written about Job and engaged me with interest and respect when I heartily disagreed with them.
When we hear the name, “Job,” we think suffering. Job is the man who endured suffering without complaint.
Well, actually he complained.
He wished he’d never been born. He wished his friends would shut up. He wished God would answer him. He complained for page after page after page. My eyes widened at the length of his woe. Suddenly, I didn’t feel so bad for complaining about my brain injury, about wishing God would answer me already with healing.
It’s strange to me that so many good Christians say that one must not complain. That God won’t hear you when you complain. That to “move forward,” to have God answer you, you must greet everything with a smile. Job puts paid to that monstrous dismissal of intense suffering. His words, like torrents of pain that send you running away from him, put paid to the idea that complaining has no use. But this lesson is not the significant one, even though it releases the straps of judgment and drops from you the adage of never complain.
We have no concept of the timeline. Chapter of no change follows relentlessly another chapter of no change. Job sits festooned in itchy, mind-cracking boils for a long time.
Brain injury also keeps us locked in suffering for a long time. Year follows year and grinds your spirit into smithereens. You seek comfort from your friends, as Job did. Friends castigate you for complaining, for not getting on with your life, for blaming others when you should look inward for responsibility. Job cries out, “My brethren have dealt deceitfully as a brook, and as the stream of brooks they pass away (Job 6:15, King James Version)."
As I read his blunt assessment of his friends, knowing from the first chapters that Job held zero responsibility for his ailments — just as I as a passenger in a car had no hand in my concussion — I felt solidarity. My friends wronged me as Job’s friends wronged him. This ancient book of poetry lifted another burden from my sagging shoulders. But this, too, is not the significant lesson of Job.
You search for meaning, as Job searched for answers. His complaints began to lead him into areas of understanding. Eventually God answered him. Every commentator I’ve read, every theologian and pastor I’ve seen over the years, has agreed that God pretty much puts Job in his place, and that was the big lesson of the book. It is a lesson, it’s true. But the original language is not as clear as English and contains several meanings, which I discuss in my ebook The Job Sessions: Why Do The Innocent Suffer? And so this lesson, too, is not the significant one.
God characterized Job as “a perfect and an upright man” in verse 8 of chapter 1 when he made a bet with Satan. We read every word Job utters through the lens of God’s beaming perception of Job. (It is a bit strange, then, that commentators read God’s answer as an indictment of Job rather than God engaging Job at a higher level of consciousness.)
This perfect and upright man had seven sons and three daughters (Job 1:2). In those days, women were property, to be treated as less than men. They inherited nothing; they were given away. Daughters, wives, mothers had no say in the things of men. Job thought so little of them that when he prayed for his children's sins to be forgiven, he thought only of his sons. Job “offered burnt offerings according to the number of them all: for Job said, It may be that my sons have sinned.” (Job 1:5)
After hours of reading bleak poetry that feels like bleak years of brain injury, we arrive at last at God’s words to Job’s friends: “My wrath is kindled against [Eliphaz the Temanite], and against thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath.” (Job 42:7)
And then a few lines down we read the significant lesson. “He had also seven sons and three daughters. And he called the name of the first, Jemima; and the name of the second, Kezia; and the name of the third, Kerenhappuch. And in all the land were no women found so fair as the daughters of Job: and their father gave them inheritance among their brethren.” (Job 42:13-15)
A perfect and upright man had to suffer to see the suffering of women and to release them from it. Why are we still waiting for other men to learn what God taught Job?
Copyright ©2020 Shireen Anne Jeejeebhoy. May not be reprinted or reposted without permission.
