Not standin' in the need of prayer - or anything else

 Not standin’ in the need of anything 

He kneels on the earth in Blake's engraving. It's an empty place except for his friends hexing him with varying degrees of concern and satisfaction. We love to give good advice to those that need it.

     Later we say: “I really didn’t want to interfere, but he had wandered so far off the mark, someone had to say something.” “Yes, whether he listened or not. That was his decision, wasn’t it? Ultimately! You can only say what you know to be true.” “Say what you know to be true? – what everyone knows to be true. But he’s the one that has to do something about it.”

     It’s an intervention for Job’s own good. Oh, admittedly, as much for the good of the interveners (Eliphaz and Bildad* and Zophar), who do wish their friend would straighten up and fly right – and especially exercise a modicum of modesty – but who also want to get on the record. Then, they can go home and tell their wives with a shrug, “Well, we did what we could.”

Job’s own wife is behind him, not hexing but pleading: “Think of me,” gently. She may well be thinking herself, “The man is a jackass”; but he’s long been her jackass. And she doesn’t yet know that she’s going to die because of this particular piece of jackassery.

Finally, there is Job. Kneeling. Proudly. Hands open at his sides. Naked from the waist up, gazing into the distance though away from the hills from hence his help might come. Proud, sad, and, especially, knowing. Proud. Thinking, “פוק you guys.

     “פוק you all.” It’s the refrain of the self-righteous in every age. And Job is – don’t believe anything else you may have read or will read – Job is the epitome – he is the definition - of self-righteousness. His friends are wrong; his wife is misguided; God, if He is God of the Righteous, is on the wrong path entirely. But not Job; he is right. Job Job’s-self can confidently say, “פוק you guys. פוק everyone and Everyone of you. פוק you very much.”

And they are – all but God** – they are פוקך – wife, children, friends and foes alike, not to mention every sheep, goat, bird, and bush from one side of the Ponderosa to the other. All will פוקין die and rot into the ground. Every buzzard will die, every hyena – there will be nothing to poke at the bones.

     But not Job. He will live, and he’ll get everything back seventy-times-seven-fold. And he’ll die not of wind, fire, sword, or plague; he’ll die in his bed as self-righteous as the day Blake got out his Brownie and snapped his picture.

04.11.17

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 * Answer to that greatest of all Bible trivial questions, “Whose the shortest man in Scripture?” [Bildad the Shuhite]

** The doctrine of aseity. God cannot be פוקך.