Episode 171: How Do You Solve a Problem Like Theodicy? (The Book of Job)

[00:00:00] Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad and psychologist Dave Pizarro having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics. Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say and knowing my dad some very inappropriate jokes.

[00:00:16] I have a great life but it's not a perfect life but it's good. It's my shit's like an above ground pool. You ever seen one of them? Yeah, it's a pool. I'm a very good man. Just a very bad wizard.

[00:01:19] Welcome to Very Bad Wizards, I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston. Dave, today is my birthday. What did you get me for a present? How did I not know it was your birthday man? Happy birthday. You didn't know? I didn't, I guess I'm not on Facebook.

[00:01:35] It's amazing how outsourcing birthdays to Facebook has just ruined my ability to... So is this the big 5-0? No, no it is not. I am in my 40s. Well I got you something secret that I can't discuss.

[00:01:54] You didn't know it was my birthday but you still got me. Yeah, well I was saving it. Let's just say that it vibrates. It's large. Paul Bloom. No, happy birthday. Let me... Let's have this episode be in the spirit of celebration and a cheerful spirit while

[00:02:15] we discuss the problem of evil and the odyssey. Yeah, so today we're going to celebrate, we're going to talk about the Book of Job in the second segment. And a long-promised episode, one that a lot of listeners have been urging us to get to.

[00:02:31] And then in the first segment it's... I don't know exactly, like it seems like a good coupling with the Book of Job but I don't... I can't articulate why exactly but it is a manifesto of transhumanism by one of the transhumanist, I guess founders. Zoltan Istvan. Zoltan Istvan.

[00:02:59] He was a former presidential candidate in 2016. I voted for him, I remember now. Just kidding, I did not vote. And it's also kind of a screed against environmentalism which I think a lot of people would take more issue with.

[00:03:20] I was more offended by the kind of philosophical naivete that underlies this but... Oh, interesting, not the actual empirical stuff. There's some philosophy here that bothers you. There is and it's something we've seen before, like more sophisticated versions of it than

[00:03:40] this but there is kind of underlying this piece and it's called environmentalists are wrong. Picture isn't sacred and we should replace it and then it just shows this kind of terrifying picture of like a skyline full of buildings with their lights on.

[00:03:58] I know normally it wouldn't be like, it's just like a cityscape but the way that it's like the photo has been edited, it just makes it look like an endless sea of skyscraper windows. The whole thing is very...

[00:04:13] Some sort of combination of anti-natalism which I assume you like about it and Brave New World or some maybe slightly darker vision of utopia. Wait, I don't think it's anti-natalistly. One of the central things that he starts off with is that transhumanists want to live

[00:04:33] forever which is like the opposite as you can get. Well yes but it's anti-natalist in that it thinks life as we currently have it based in biology and biological human nature is full of suffering and evil and Mother Earth is a hostile place. I'm quoting, life is vicious.

[00:05:01] It makes me think of pet dogs and cats and how it's reported that they sometimes start eating their owner after they've died. Can we quickly just get to the... Because it's very early in the piece. Many transhumanists want to change all this.

[00:05:19] They want to rid their worlds of biology. They favor concrete, steel and code where once biological evolution was necessary to create primates and then modern humans, conscious and directed evolution has replaced it. That doesn't need iniquitous natural selection.

[00:05:36] It needs premeditated moral algorithms conceived by logic that do the most good for the largest number of people. This is something that an AI will probably be better at than humans in less than two decades time.

[00:05:49] Okay, when I read that I'm not convinced this isn't just a troll and that he's giving transhumanism a bad name. Well no, Jeffrey Epstein gave transhumanism a bad name. That's actually how it came across your desk.

[00:06:07] I subscribe to this thing called the browser which gives articles and after Jeffrey Epstein was arrested before his quote unquote suicide it came out that he was this transhumanist. He was very inspired by this.

[00:06:23] He wanted to spread his seed and his DNA in some New Mexican compound or something and wanted to get his head frozen and all the things that. But yeah, then this guy is actually was embarrassed by the fact that Jeffrey Epstein we thought it was terrible press.

[00:06:42] It's and it's unclear what what Jeffrey Epstein fucking a lot of women to have his baby is adding to the transhumanist cause. You don't think that's a necessary step to our digital utopia? Is he like genetically combining them with like little robots at least?

[00:07:03] They're just just Jeffrey Epstein kits. So can I just read really quickly the definition because I had to go look up the Wikipedia definition of transhumanism. So transhumanism is an international philosophical movement that advocates for the transformation of the human condition by developing and making

[00:07:18] widely available sophisticated technologies to greatly enhance human intellect and physiology. And this is actually such a long Wikipedia article compared to what I think the actual influence of these people is that you can just tell that it's a bunch of nerds. Yeah.

[00:07:36] But that sentence that advocating for the transformation of the human condition to by developing and making widely available sophisticated technologies to enhance human intellect and physiology. That alone, I don't object to very much. It's the ridiculous things that this guy starts saying that border on eugenics and shit.

[00:07:56] So to be charitable before we start, and I think you're going to be have a higher opinion of this, there is a lot of suffering in the in the earth. There's nothing. And I don't think I think he definitely straw man's environmentalist.

[00:08:11] I don't think they see nature as sacred in the way that he seems to attribute to them, but something that would improve the well-being of sentient creatures would be one that at the very least would be worth taking seriously as absolutely.

[00:08:27] And I will say at least I have come across environmentalists who seem to view it as sacred nature is sacred in in everything but the religious sense and even sort of unable to defend why, say, environments should not be changed, for instance, like or why human beings being

[00:08:51] in the environment and changing it is wrong. So I'll give them that. I think I would give them that. Like it's not done. Yeah, there are extremists of all kinds. And I live in Ithaca, New York, where where I'm probably more likely to encounter people here actually recycle.

[00:09:07] Isn't that crazy? We recycle. That doesn't that doesn't do shit, though. I think that's something that everybody seems to agree upon. Like that recycling is actually kind of a wash in terms of the earth. But yet we still do it anyway.

[00:09:25] That said, the hubris of this is kind of like flabbergasting. It's just astonishing. So there's two questions, right? There's the empirical question of whether this technological new age that is run by these people in the trans he whether they could

[00:09:45] possibly accomplish what this guy seems to think that they could accomplish. That's number one. I would be very skeptical of that, but you know, that I suppose that's open for debate. So it's a ridiculous optimism. You know, not not just whether or not we can accomplish this

[00:10:05] total transformation of humans into code. He says things like, you know, but before the century is out. We can't even fucking get, you know, automated cars, self driving cars to work well, like let alone. Right. And this was published in April.

[00:10:20] So it's not like he doesn't like self driving cars has been something my tech friends have been telling me, you know, for 10 years that is just two years away. Yeah. But then the second thing, the thing that I said was bothering

[00:10:34] me the most is there's this kind of idea that they are value neutral here. Like in that line, planet Earth needs premeditated moral algorithms conceived by logic that do the most good for the largest number of people. The idea that this is that these algorithms are conceived

[00:10:53] by logic and reason is that's the that's the philosophically fucked up part of this. It's one thing to just be a utilitarian and admit it. This is that's what like Mustafa Mond in Brave New World essentially was, but he at least recognized that he was

[00:11:13] embracing a value system and that they were trade offs. There were other values that were going to be lost if you embraced the value of reducing the most amount of suffering, increasing the greatest amount of happiness. But they don't recognize that they're making a value judgment.

[00:11:30] They think that this is something that's just conceived by logic and reason. And that's just it's just false. It's not dishonest because I don't I think they might even believe it, but it's just it's just wrong. Yeah. And I wouldn't malign Sam Harris by putting him in the

[00:11:47] same category as this. But but the view among many people that some form of utilitarianism is correct and and therefore now we can start working on ways to maximize it. I think it is sort of it. This guy sounds from that little community of of

[00:12:05] futurists from Silicon Valley who have accepted that as so incontrovertibly true that the only question is now how do we go about doing it? And and I think that there would be room to just argue that this is a value judgment and and say, look, there's

[00:12:25] a lot of things about being a human that that comes in conflict with something like a straight up utilitarian ethic. And we're willing to sacrifice that because when we all become robots or or algorithms in the cloud, then we won't need things like loyalty or or trust or

[00:12:44] whatever because we will be immortal and incapable of being harmed. And therefore we can just change right like we can make our value system more. And then you could respect it like I would still, you know, strongly disagree with them. But I could respect the view. Right.

[00:13:04] But yeah, it's that it's a view that it's so obvious. Dude, like come on. That this is just you're being irrational. You're being just like you're believing in fairy tales. If you don't subscribe to this view, whereas we are being hardcore logicians, that's the thing that that

[00:13:22] I find. And and you know, again, the brave new world version of this must off Amon's like, yes, we have to give up Shakespeare. We have to give up tragedies because they don't make sense and we have to give up freedom and we

[00:13:33] have but we're willing to do it because of the amount of suffering we can prevent and the amount of happiness that we can create. But like they don't accept that there is even a trade off here, except in superficially utilitarian

[00:13:48] terms where you know, some people like sunsets and you know, beautiful mountainscapes and biodiversity or whatever. And so they're going to be sad. Which yeah, yeah. And we can talk about that, that whether or not nature is something to be valued like the

[00:14:10] thought of being purely digital creatures with like no bio matter on this planet at all, just a bunch of rocks. Like it seems ugly aesthetically, but I'm willing to suspend my you know, my judgment about whether that would be terrible because I know

[00:14:27] that my intuitions about liking nature or something that I, you know, if I were a computer, I might not have anymore. It's hard to shake that. But I want to just nail home this point that you're making though about like this.

[00:14:39] You know, we've been doing this for seven years, right? And over and over again, when we talk about utilitarianism, we often get people telling us that we did a badge that we straw man, that we were unfair to utilitarian claims or that we were not seeing the reason

[00:14:57] behind it with utilitarians who have friends like this. Like you don't need they don't need enemies because there is a lot about utilitarianism that I am super sympathetic to. And in fact, I'm kind of undecided about the ethical truth and and good utilitarians

[00:15:16] wouldn't be as irresponsible as this. I don't think. No, I mean, right. And like you said, it's a spectrum. There is the sort of Sam Harris view, which is way more sophisticated than this. But I think ultimately we think is guilty

[00:15:32] of a far less easy to spot sort of error. I think Peter Singer is guilty of this sort of error once he he abandoned the kind of humane foundation of his utilitarianism for a rationalist one like Derek Parfit. So I mean, there are way better versions

[00:15:54] of making this mistake, thinking that you're not making a value commitment. But yeah, this is the worst. This is like the worst kind of example. But like you said, we will get emails. We will get people on Reddit. We will get expressions of this.

[00:16:10] And I just I want people to at least understand that this is something that they need to justify. You can't just say that something is conceived by logic. That doesn't make it conceived by logic. You can't just say that people who disagree with you are irrational.

[00:16:30] That doesn't make you rational. Like you have to at least explain how that would work. And that's what I think Sam Harris and Josh Green and Peter Singer at least try to do. Absolutely. Like that's, you know, the entire Josh

[00:16:45] Green and Sam Harris's books are our attempts at this. And we obviously have disagreements that we've on record for it. But that's yeah. And maybe I'm being unfair, but like by lumping people together, but this sense of that I have that there is this community of

[00:17:06] logical Silicon Valley futuristic people worried about about AI being an existential crisis. Like that in some in some ways seems to me like the kind of argument that they're making is something like, well, computers are like run by logic.

[00:17:26] So like if we can just get computers to do morals, then obviously that's the best solution. But there's no there's no unpacking of a claim like that. They just like, well, obviously, like algorithms can solve so many problems.

[00:17:37] Why don't we just toss that problem to like at morality and see. See how toss that framework, that method at morality. And but yeah, it doesn't work that way because something has to feed the algorithm. The algorithm has to know what it's trying to aim for.

[00:17:56] It's not that complicated. That's no, right? Really is not like a subtle philosophical, you know, insight. But let me ask you this. Is there part what like one of the things that I was worried that you would be strongly objecting to that I have no strong objection to

[00:18:15] and kind of embrace is the the embracing of technology to solve a lot of the suffering and that that actually might mean trade offs with with nature. So like actually using gene editing to make the world a better place.

[00:18:34] Like a lot of people have knee jerk reactions to that. To me, I'm like, well, let's toss technology to solve all. Like there's a lot. There are a lot of problems that really could be solved by fixing nature. Like I'm excited about it, actually.

[00:18:49] It sounds like you have some your transhumanism curious. Well, I don't want to die. Yeah. I don't know. Right. I don't think I can get uploaded. I don't I believe that that's bullshit. Right. Everybody knows that I feel that way about transporters.

[00:19:03] But but I do believe that that there might be real possibilities that within our lifetimes we can live a lot longer than anybody has ever lived, except for Joe, obviously, who lived 140 years after after getting God, you know, the gene editing stuff.

[00:19:24] I get a little I'm wary of it, but I don't have a well worked out. Like I would I'm concerned about it, but I have no in principle objection to it, I guess. I wouldn't want to do it. I wouldn't want my kid to do it

[00:19:42] unless they said your kid is going to be, you know, born with taste acts and we can stop. Right. They are from having taste acts. Then well, or given your given your general views, like if they were going to be born with brown eyes, right?

[00:19:59] Yeah, no, I want the blue eye blonde beast. I mean, I like dark now. So, you know, I really look forward to the the like pull down menus for what your baby is going to be. Like a little. I mean, look, medicine has made a lot of advances.

[00:20:18] Medicine is something that is on balance, clearly a positive. And that is fucking that's that's not letting nature take its course. And, you know, but then we get the little mind babies every once in a while. Like, yeah, I'm all for the the actual

[00:20:37] like safeguards that we don't fuck things up too badly, because we could. But good, I'm just OK. I'm just glad that in principle, you're not. I don't think so. We could do an episode on that. Certainly, that's something that we've been urged to do.

[00:20:50] I just don't know enough about it. And I really tend to not like the bioethics literature, at least the literature I've come across. But but I'd be open to. But this is it's funny, because when I sent it to you, I was like, this is some scary dystopian.

[00:21:09] Like if these people, you know, and you know that there's a there's a bunch of them in Silicon Valley and they're just so frustrated with how irrational everyone's being preventing, you know, self-driving cars and by how people don't understand probability.

[00:21:26] And one person gets killed with a self-driving car and that sets back the cause for 10 years. But I think that there is like there's something that they're missing about why humans, ordinary humans, not Silicon Valley humans are wary of this and resistant to it.

[00:21:47] And it isn't just being irrationally in love with nature and this its holiness. It is a worry about what happens when we entrust things that we at least feel we have some control over and have some control over to these people and their algorithms.

[00:22:09] But, you know, for the rest of this article that we're talking about that we'll link to in the show notes, it's crazy. And this guy seems to verge on on a street corner like raven. Yeah, as someone who traffics in the hyperbolic sometimes

[00:22:29] this is like I can't compete with with this. There are some great quotes in this. Well, he sounds like eager to damage the planet. Like not just indifferent to it. He's like it's burn it down already. Like he yeah, no, he hates nature.

[00:22:44] This guy and you know, he lives in this beautiful area too. Like he could just go like he's 40 minutes from like some of the most beautiful hikes up with the redwoods and like. Well, OK, here's what I don't believe in evil per se.

[00:22:57] But if there was such a thing, it would be nature, a monster of arbitrary living entities consuming and devouring each other simply to survive. Environmentalists want you to believe that nature is sacred and a perfect balance of living things thriving off one another.

[00:23:12] Nonsense, it's a world war of all life fighting agony and loss of fight or flight of death today or death tomorrow for you and your offspring. I mean, it's not exactly wrong. He's just an asshole. He's just an asshole. All right, when we come back,

[00:23:34] we will talk about the Book of Job and God's bet with Satan. Let's take a moment to thank our sponsor for this episode, Simple Habit, a five minute vacation for your mind. Simple Habit is a meditation app for people with busy lives. Hey, Liza, what?

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[00:29:17] It's a real honor to have gone on for this long and to still have so many people sticking with us when there's so many other podcasts out there. And speaking of other podcasts out there are faux rivals. The guys from Partial Examined Life, or at least one guy

[00:29:36] from Partial Examined Life has a new has a new podcast called Pretty Much Pop, a Culture Podcast. And the reason I'm bringing it up is because he just jotted us a note to let us know that that P.L. was in their attempt to imitate very bad wizards

[00:29:51] and talk about more pop culture stuff. I think that's what the email directly said. Pretty much, yeah. We're really jealous of your big Lebansky pulp fiction. That's right. You guys get to talk about such cool stuff. He started he started a podcast of Mark Linsen, mayor.

[00:30:09] It's we'll put a link to it. Check it out because it is if you're interested in philosophers talking about pop culture, obviously, this right up your alley. And hopefully I get to go on soon and talk about Watchmen, like the big nerd that I am.

[00:30:22] And speaking of big nerds, I think we should do a Patreon bonus episode on dark, the Netflix. Oh, yeah, I'm totally up for that. I have to finish it. You finished it already. I did. I've been just things. I don't just stop for no reason.

[00:30:39] You know, I like to edge myself. All right, let's talk about the book of Job, as you said. We've gotten requests to talk about this. And honestly, I've been wanting to talk about it for a while.

[00:30:50] And I think that just because it's a little bit longer than, say, Ecclesiastes, maybe we avoided it. I don't know. But it is up there with one of my favorite books of the Bible and just a great piece of literature.

[00:31:04] It kind of blows my mind that thousands of years ago, somebody sat and thought about the problem of evil in the same way. And like this is something that I don't know about you, but I relate to it's very clear. It's a very lucid description.

[00:31:22] I've always loved it because of that, the problem of evil, theodicy. That's probably what made me lose my religion. But I also just love the poetry and I love how fundamentally dissatisfying. Yeah, it is. It's something just leaves you hanging.

[00:31:42] That's the thing that I love about it the most in the same way that Ecclesiastes. And it's one of those, the three wisdom books, Braverbs and Ecclesiastes and Book of Job. And even though this one has a plot and it's a fairly easy to follow plot

[00:32:01] and Ecclesiastes doesn't really have a plot, it leaves you with the same kind of questions. Both do we accept whatever moral there is and what is the moral and is there even a moral and why, like how can you reconcile

[00:32:21] certain aspects of it with other aspects of it? It doesn't fit together. And in that way, provokes so many questions in anybody who reads it. It's interesting that you said it's a really great expression of the problem of evil. I don't know if it is or not exactly.

[00:32:49] It definitely offers a solution to the problem of evil. But the problem itself isn't as fleshed out. So I wonder why you say that. Yeah, so the problem, like maybe I specifically mean the problem of evil as framed in this particular way,

[00:33:10] which is believing that a just God exists. Why does evil happen to a good person? And the reason I think it's a very good way to describe that problem is that it gives us a little prologue that makes it very, very clear, right?

[00:33:31] Where Satan, the adversary goes to God and God tells him about Job and he is described by God himself as being blameless and upright. And yet all this shit happens to him. This guy is blameless and upright, even God admits it. And then bad shit happens to him.

[00:33:47] Well, bad shit doesn't happen to him, right? This is why I don't. It's it's God essentially giving Satan a license to do bad shit to Job, just to prove to Satan that this is a guy who's who's pure and his righteousness

[00:34:08] is not just based in all the bounty that he has. Three thousand camels, five hundred Yoko Vox and five hundred donkeys and a large number of servants. Should we just go through the plot first? Just it's not a big it's not a complicated plot.

[00:34:24] But so. So God is having this little dispute with Satan. It's interesting that there's just Satan. I don't associate Satan so much with the Hebrew Bible, but apparently he comes up a couple of times. This is probably the most prominent one.

[00:34:43] Yeah. And it's not and it's not like at all a fleshed out theology of a devil. So Satan here really isn't the devil for the for the author. It's the word means adversary. But because they say the adversary, usually that word would get translated as just adversary.

[00:35:00] But because they put the article of the adversary, it gets translated as Satan. And it seems as if what that person is is just somebody who's working for God. And his job is to like be a prosecuting attorney. Right? Like it's not so it's clearly not the devil.

[00:35:19] And they're just it seems like they are just talking. There's no like there's nothing at stake here. And but like, yeah, he's he's being prosecuted. And look, look at my servant Job. No one on earth like him. He is blameless and upright.

[00:35:36] A man who fears God and and and shuns evil and saying, well, yeah, because you're God and you bestow all this great stuff on him. And he says, all right, take it all away, but don't hurt Job, but you can do essentially whatever you want besides that.

[00:35:51] And so he wipes out all his property and kills all his sons and daughters. And still Job says, naked I came from my mother's womb and naked I will depart the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. May the name of the Lord be praised.

[00:36:07] Already my hackles are raised by this like Job is saying, yeah, well, I didn't get born with all these children and now I'm not going to die. So like everything's OK, you know, and he's not charging God.

[00:36:24] So then Satan says, well, yeah, but he still has his health. Yeah, he's like, you haven't touched him. Satan says skin for skin. A man will give all he has for his own life. But stretch out your hand and strike his flesh and bones

[00:36:36] and he will surely curse you to your face. And that's when when the Lord says, all right, fine. He's in your hands, but you must spare his life. You can do anything you want, except kill him. And it's like the opposite of the giving tree, essentially.

[00:36:51] It's like the taking the taking tree. So then he's now just covered in sores and an outcast and a object of ridicule and contempt in his. He's scratching himself with a broken piece of pottery. Yeah, you know, his head. He's cutting him. He's in ashes.

[00:37:12] He's cutting himself and his wife is super supportive. I love to show his wife says, are you still holding on to your integrity, curse God and die? I think she's more. I like to interpret that as like this is fucked up. Like this is a fucked up situation.

[00:37:30] Just admit it, you know, just curse God because he has screwed us over. She's an interesting character because she gets to live. She's the only one that gets to live throughout all of this. But she doesn't have, but she doesn't play much of a role.

[00:37:46] Maybe I was part of the punishment. So then he has three friends that come and at first they seem supportive. They sleep with him and stay with him for seven days and seven nights. But then when Joe starts complaining about his fate and challenging God,

[00:38:07] they launch into there's there's three of them and all but one of them does three speeches. There no, all three of them do. So there's a cycle. There's Job, one friend, Job, other friend, Job, third friend, and they do that three times. But I don't think they do.

[00:38:26] I think the last one who is so far. Oh yeah. Yeah. He never gets a fine. He never gets his final speech because Job has finally just convinced him that no, it's true. Like I'm blame. Yeah. And the speeches are interesting because sometimes they're mean.

[00:38:45] Sometimes it's like Job and the characters and his friends are talking they're talking past each other. There's brilliant sarcasm. I mean, it's a it's beautiful. A lot of it is beautiful. And then a lot of it is just like digs. They're just digging at each other.

[00:39:02] This is the first one. Eliphaz, the Temonite. Consider now who being innocent has ever perished. Where were the upright ever destroyed? This is, you know, in just posing that question to him without having any evidence that his kids had had sinned.

[00:39:23] It seems like a direct challenge to the virtue of his children where Eliphaz has no real reason to think that they were non-virtuous, certainly not sufficiently to deserve what happened to them. Yeah. And I mean, they're not for some reason here.

[00:39:46] It feels more like Job's kids dying are is just one of the ways in which he was punished. Like there's not much discussion about whether. Yeah, exactly. There's you have like slaves, you have oxen, you have kids.

[00:39:58] That's the different levels of how they're going to fuck with Job. And then finally him, his body. And so I don't think they give too much because the attitude of the book at the end is that they just replace his kids. And everything's fine. Everything's cool.

[00:40:16] I think that's right. And you can't take maybe so you could be offended by that or you could just not take it that literally as the kids themselves seem like property. Right. Exactly. And he if you, you know, you lose a thousand oxen, you get two thousand

[00:40:34] oxen, you get the same number of kids, but the daughters are even more beautiful. So yeah. Everything's fine. Everything's cool. So I don't want to go through all the speeches and too much detail, but. What suffices to say is that it suffices to say that Job is getting

[00:40:51] sort of increasingly defensive and his friends seem to be increasingly you even get the sense that first time that they can't believe that Job is saying this stuff about God. And Job is getting more and more, I think, bold in saying like, no,

[00:41:09] like at least God could at least talk to me that way. I could defend myself like even if he told me that anything like I would at least have an answer from God and I could die and that that would be fine.

[00:41:23] If you're not going to do that, God just kill me, right? Like because this life is not a life worth living. And and a lot of the language I was reading is is sort of legal where where Job feels unfairly judged and he wants a fair trial. Exactly.

[00:41:40] That's let me go before I want to present my evidence and I want you to give me exhibit A, B and C of where I've sinned. And I don't believe you can do it. I don't think you have the evidence.

[00:41:52] I think this is I am being framed essentially, right? By God, I'm being framed by God and you're railroading me. But a couple of things sort of stuck out in all the speeches. The first is that they don't seem to be on the same page,

[00:42:10] not just in terms of God's justice, but even in the ways that they're responding to each other. They take digs at each other. But when one of them is talking about how God must have punished Job because he he did.

[00:42:26] He wasn't good enough to the poor or he turned people away. He were needy. Job will launch into how the wicked people flourish. And then only in a later response will he respond to the accusation that he must have done something wrong.

[00:42:44] But yeah, they're certainly not understanding each other. It seems as if there's no growth in the argument. I don't know how to say it, but the argument doesn't proceed as if point has been made, point has been refuted.

[00:43:00] But it's like one of our worst episodes or one of our normal episodes where you and I exactly were one of us is saying something that's that's disconnected. It's on the same broad topic, but disconnected from what the other person has. Right. But.

[00:43:14] And a charitable way to look at this is that the friends are all ignoring Job's pleas, because they can't believe that Job isn't just admitting that he's probably did some bad shit. And it doesn't matter what Job says. It's all it's there like almost just independent.

[00:43:33] They've prepared they've prepared their arguments. And their arguments are subtly different. One of them is nailing continuously saying, Job, you must have done something bad. Another one is saying, who are you to even question? Like, you don't know what God knows, right? Like, so they're different.

[00:43:49] And then and then they also it's they tell them not to worry. Don't worry, wicked. The wicked will be punished. Like things will turn out OK for you. It's like, well, I have sores all over my body and all my kids are dead

[00:44:00] and all my oxen are gone. But and he keeps Job keeps imploring them like, look, I'm not lying to you. Why would I lie to you? Why would I lie to God? And stop. It's it's it's sort of like a bad dream almost.

[00:44:15] They keep making these long speeches to him and not really listening to what he's saying. In response to it, this is like one of the most torturous aspects of the text is just him being like, are you kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me with all this? Exactly.

[00:44:35] I just forgot. You know, I haven't read this in a long time. I just forgot this frustration that Job has with his friends where he's directly saying so, by the way, we're we read the new international version.

[00:44:47] If anybody's curious, one of my favorites, Job opens up a chapter 26. He says how you have helped the powerless, how you have saved the arm that is feeble. What advice you have offered to one without wisdom and what great insight

[00:45:01] you have displayed and it's just dripping with sarcasm. And I don't think I'd ever read something like that in the Bible. Yeah. And then God is going to be even more sarcastic when he comes back into the picture with.

[00:45:15] And that's the speech, I think where Job's his his responses have been getting progressively longer and the friends of speeches have been getting progressively shorter. And this is his longest speech by far, Job's.

[00:45:30] I think it goes on for like seven or eight chapters and it shuts them up. Like it's the last speech. Yeah, that's right. Starting at chapter 26, they're all like, OK, we're out of arguments here. You know, yeah.

[00:45:43] And I don't know if they're giving up or if you get the sense that they're giving up that they've kind of like, yeah, I mean, I don't know what to say. I like that, Job. This is the sort of heroic aspect of Job where he is he's like,

[00:45:58] I'm not giving up. I'm not pretending that I sinned. I refuse to do that. I'm maintaining my integrity and you can say what you want, but I'm not going to give in. I'm not going to at least for now.

[00:46:13] This is one of the reasons it's so important to buy the very beginning part where God himself admits that Job was blameless because or else I would be like, well, come on, you must have done something. Right. Haven't you read the research on. Pogba biases. Exactly.

[00:46:34] How we rationalize our own behavior. And then this other guy, this other kid comes in just shows up. He's very mad at the three three friends for not continuing to pontificate against Job and then launches into a speech of his own.

[00:46:52] This is a very strange part of it because he spends like two chapters just saying that he is about to give a speech. Yeah, and that he's younger than them. And like, I'm just a caveman. He's like, yeah, I mean, he's definitely virtue signalling. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:47:15] He thinks Job's friends have actually done a bad job with their arguments. Right. He's like, they got it wrong. Like and they quit too early. And then he goes on and gives pretty much the same arguments that they did

[00:47:31] except that he also says, and you've rebelled against God. And that's a sin. But well, and there is a subtlety that I that that there's a subtlety to what Ella, he was saying, which is up until now, the question really has been

[00:47:48] well, we're all assuming that God is just. We're all assuming that he would punish bad people and not punish good people or reward good people. And so Job's suffering must be a result of the sin because or else it would violate our assumption that God is just.

[00:48:10] Ella, he was saying maybe your suffering is actually doing your suffering is for a reason. And that reason is to change you to actually like there is some point to your suffering. Your suffering might actually cleanse you. It might actually make you a better person.

[00:48:30] And he's the only one to really give that that kind of defense of suffering. So where do you see this? Let me let me find it. I like it because I get a lot of so in 34. He repays a man for what he has done.

[00:48:47] He brings upon him what his conduct deserves. It is unthinkable that God would do wrong, that the Almighty would preserve justice. This is just echoing what the three friends in some form. So he say in I think that it was in

[00:49:05] verse 15, chapter 36, but those who suffer, he delivers in their suffering. He speaks to them in their affliction. So he's trying to say that God is is communicating through the suffering. Where is this chapter 30? Oh, yeah, verse 15. The God no, but the godless in heart,

[00:49:24] harbor resentment, even when he fetters them, they do not cry for help. They die in their youth. Yes. So he's saying the godless die, but the people who suffer like your suffering, he is afflicting you in order to change you. But I guess, but it's change for what?

[00:49:43] Like he didn't need to be changed. Did he? Yeah, I don't like I don't think it's a good argument. It's suddenly different, but you're right. It's it's suddenly different. And and then he goes, he also gives an element that ties together all of these

[00:49:59] speeches, including God's, which is to come that where he says, how great is God beyond our understanding? The number of his years has passed, finding out who can understand how he spreads out the clouds, how he thunders. It's like this is just beyond our comprehension.

[00:50:17] We have to assume that he is just because he couldn't govern the earth if he wasn't just like you almost have to take that as an axiom. Is right, is what he's saying. Yeah, that's right, which is kind of one of the, you know,

[00:50:32] like the youth of our dilemma. It's like, no, if God is doing it, it is just by definition. Right. And there is a lot of there is a lot of the including in God's speech that like, you don't know, you know, you don't know me.

[00:50:50] But that's what's fascinating is that in this case, the reader does kind of know. You know, a lot of these arguments are speaking to we have no idea what God's ultimate plan is. But in this case, the reader does even if the characters don't.

[00:51:09] And it just doesn't seem like one of this, oh, it all fits together in this beautiful best of all possible worlds thing. It's kind of like he proved a point to Satan that he didn't need to prove because Satan's not that big a deal in the Old Testament.

[00:51:24] And right. Yeah, no, I'm in fact, it's probably like written or told as one of God's angels who is in charge of like sort of pointing out interesting things on earth. Right. And and not only that, he didn't prove the point

[00:51:38] because God because Job did start to complain once he had the boils. So he didn't curse. He didn't curse God and die though. He didn't curse God. And I think he's he's hanging on that. He's just right on that edge.

[00:51:52] He's like, you know, I got to know, man, like, because I don't think a good God would do this. So like, tell me like who's going to tell me what's going on here. I think this is why it's just, you know, for some people,

[00:52:05] borders on blasphemy because he's continuously pushing like to ask what God is doing. And in a way that like even I and my religious upbringing, there's a point where you are just told. Don't worry, God knows like in God's wisdom, he knows, you know,

[00:52:25] yesterday I saw a very sad tweet. I don't know, you know, somebody tweeted out that they they had gone to their doctor with their pregnant spouse and that there was no heartbeat. And he said in that tweet, pray for me and my wife.

[00:52:44] And in in my timeline, somehow a whole lot has got retweeted and there were a whole lot of responses. And, you know, all very it was one of those cases of a very nice, you know, the good part of Twitter coming out to support him.

[00:52:58] But the amount of people who just who who said because this was a largely religious group of responders, the amount of people who just said, well, you know, we don't know why God does this, but we have to trust he is good. He we know he's good.

[00:53:12] We already know he's good. So like this must somehow fit in. We just don't know like we humans can't can't fathom what his plan is. Yeah, which is one of the most popular responses to the problem of evil

[00:53:28] that if you had independent reason to believe in the goodness of God would be plausible because the, you know, like we don't know. We have a very limited perspective are in our, you know, little pea-brained human size understanding of the whole universe.

[00:53:48] And God and God will pound this into Job. Yeah, but you know, the thing is too that there is an underlying assumption throughout the whole thing that that at least God is doing it to Job. Like nobody's really questioning that like they are everybody understands

[00:54:08] that God is doing it. And even if it's allowing, it's allowing in a very active way. And what you don't see is an answer like, well, God, you know, God set the world in motion like he doesn't really care because

[00:54:23] he is described as a personal God who is caring about Job. He's talking about Job up in heaven, right? So so he could change things. Yeah, no. And in fact, another thing you don't see, which is another popular answer

[00:54:36] to the problem of evil is a kind of free will defense, which is God had to give humans free will. And once you give humans free will, like a lot of bad shit can happen. And if you shouldn't have given those Caldeans free will, if God, yeah, exactly.

[00:54:52] If God but but on balance, it's better to have free will and have bad stuff happen than to not have free will. There's none of that. There's not even a none of that. That's right. Hint of that in here. This is clearly God doing it.

[00:55:06] And there's no there's no sense in which he could have not done it or he could have prevented it, but chose not to to preserve free will. There's none of that here. Right. And at the heart of it is that all Job's decisions have presumably

[00:55:21] been of the sort that would never lead to these consequences. Yeah, right? Like although those Caldeans God just used them in there. And you know, this is a this is a big debate and with like Pharaoh's heart and heart that we've talked about.

[00:55:40] And but here it really is that the whole free will issue is just not an issue in in the book of Job, at least as far as I can tell. So before we get to God, so it goes from El Elihu to God breaking in.

[00:55:56] What is strange about this El Lihu sweet? He comes out of nowhere. He's younger. He gives us long preamble as to why he's going to talk. He maybe adds some element to the argument. I don't it doesn't seem that profound.

[00:56:15] And then he God kind of interrupts him and he's never heard from again. It's like he wasn't in the text. He because the other friends are part of the plot for the rest of it, but he's just gone. It just kind of came in and came out.

[00:56:30] Yeah, you know, there are some like when I was reading about the authorship, they're I think that people tend to believe that the El Lihu speech was added by other people because if you just leave it where Job sheds everybody up,

[00:56:47] it really does seem like he won the argument. And and the thought is that that maybe the El Lihu part was added after this to make it slightly less, you know, anti God. As you say, it's completely out of the blue.

[00:57:02] You know, there's another thing that's out of the blue when you were talking about Job's super long speech. Yeah. In the middle of that chapter 28, there is that that chapter is just sort of a little speech about wisdom that doesn't seem to be coming from Job.

[00:57:22] It seems to be coming from the author. And people think that that might have been added sort of in the middle. Yeah. Where can wisdom be found? Where does understanding dwell? Man does not comprehend its worth. It cannot be found in the land of living.

[00:57:36] And then chapter 29 says Job continued his discourse. And so so it seems as if this has been this book has been kind of put together with a few different. And what's interesting about that insertion, if it is an insertion, there are other places throughout the text.

[00:57:56] This was something that stood out to me where Job was clearly saying that once you're dead, you're dead. There's no real suggestion of an afterlife. Absolutely. And there is the word. I don't know how to pronounce it, she'll show, which is the Hebrew for for just like

[00:58:17] where the dead go, you know, like a place of non-existence. Yeah. And there is no right, because that would be another solution to the problem of evil that, well, you will get your reward in heaven and that it will be punished.

[00:58:29] And this seems to be before that view was adopted. So we have actually a very old. So it's an old worldview that has its before there is a devil, like an evil adversary of God, like before that's flesh out.

[00:58:45] And it is before anybody really, you know, in the Near East or whatever was believing in an afterlife or in a God that rewarded it. So there's nothing. So like, he's like, I know when I die, I'm going into the ground.

[00:58:58] But then in twenty eight, doesn't it what you read? Where? But where can wisdom be found? Where does understanding dwell? Man does not comprehend its worth. It cannot be found in the land of the living. I think that's just saying that, like,

[00:59:16] that it can't be found on like amongst humans. But OK, yeah, that's probably right. You know, one of the things I was thinking, we can talk about this when we just sort of sum up. But this reminds me more of the kind of Homeric gods,

[00:59:34] you know, a God that gets challenged, a God that can be kind of petty and sarcastic and and wants to prove a point to another God or a lesser being. This has the, you know, if you're talking about Zeus,

[00:59:51] you know, Satan being one of the lesser gods, Hermes or whatever. Like a Demi God or something. Yeah, is this has more of that feel where the God is a character and it's not totally clear that he's just. And I think this text, it doesn't surprise me

[01:00:14] that you say that people thought it was blasphemous because there's no tidy resolution that comes to this. There's there's not at all. And it makes me just sort of puzzled as to how it got in.

[01:00:26] But but what is clear, though, is the way they speak of God is that he is he is for them the ultimate God. Right? He is he is the creator of everything. He is the he says the Almighty is beyond our reach and exalted in power

[01:00:41] and his justice and great righteousness. He does not oppress. So they're assuming that there is this, you know, single just omnipotent God. No, that's right. I don't mean to suggest that it's like a polytheistic text,

[01:00:57] but more that it reminds me more of a kind of a God who can not just challenged by a human, but that the reader is supposed to wonder, well, what the hell is going on here? Why is God acting this way?

[01:01:15] Should we trust that that God is just what reason should do we have for doing that? And it's almost intentionally prompting us to raise those questions in the way that I feel like the Homeric texts do and that maybe the New

[01:01:33] Testament from what I've read of it definitely does. Yeah, yeah, I agree with you. And I think that there is. In the beginning in the preamble where it's like, you know, just God almost having like a friendly bet with another with another angel. It seems capricious.

[01:01:53] It seems like the way gods would play with humans. And and yeah. So even though Job and his friends view God as this omnipotent awesome singular, you know, guy in the sky, he's not acting that way.

[01:02:11] And he to see I'm not deceiving Joe, but like actively not telling him anything about the first part when he comes to answer him. Right? Yeah. So let's talk about his answer. So he comes in. The last thing. How do you pronounce it? Elihu. Elihu.

[01:02:29] Elihu. He says the Almighty is beyond our reach and exalted in power and is justice and great righteousness. He does not oppress. Therefore men revere him for does he not have regard for all the wise in heart? And then it really is like this speech never happened.

[01:02:47] Then the Lord answered Job out of the story. Right. Like it's like Job hasn't been talking for five chapters. So how it's like a quiz. You asked these when they had something at the end. It's like. Yeah. And then I don't know. You want to describe his speech?

[01:03:03] It's yeah. I like I want to just just say that like the first time I remember being a kid and reading Job and getting to this part. So you're like, OK, all of this like it's gone on for too long.

[01:03:17] It's it's I think we haven't talked about the language. I think the language is beautiful, but it's gone on for these three cycles of repeating the same thing. And and you're you're ready for an answer. You're like, oh, sweet. Like I remember actually thinking sweet.

[01:03:33] God's going to actually explain it. Yeah. And then the Lord answers Job out of the storm or in some translations, the whirlwind and you know, God's answer is he just changes the subject. God changes the subject and never answers. Right.

[01:03:49] He says the first part is just saying like, you don't you don't know where were you when I laid the foundation? Tell me, do you understand who marked off its dimension? Surely, you know. He's being sarcastic prick. He's like, who? Oh, you must know.

[01:04:05] No, tell me I'm I'm fascinated. I want to hear you describe creating the earth. Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb? Have you ever given orders to the morning or shown the dawn its place? Like, oh, God, do you do that?

[01:04:18] Like, sorry, Job, I didn't know. I want to hear about this. And he says, surely, you know, you for you were already born. You've lived so many years. And then Job says, I haven't lived that many years and don't call me surely.

[01:04:40] You know, it's actually not that example, but there is there is a lot of language here that you realize. Oh, that it must look that came from Job, like the book of Joe. Totally. Stuff we say all the time. Yeah.

[01:04:51] And it's like a rap battle almost how he's talking about how powerful he is and how powerless Job is. You're right. It's like a big willy ism. It's like it's just big willy rap. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know what that is, but I.

[01:05:06] Is just, yeah, it's just pregadotious. Like, I have a bigger dick than you. Yeah, exactly. It's like it's it's kind of magnificent as an example of that. I don't want to understate that it has some real power. What God is saying in the poetry

[01:05:23] and in all the ways that it's describing the things that God has done and continues to do for the universe and the world. But what he's talking a lot about animals, like how he's like, you know, and then he goes on to talk more about animals.

[01:05:42] One of the things that I came across was that, well, maybe what God is doing here is saying there is so much more in the world and in the universe than just you, Job. Like I'm I'm, you know, worried about the seas

[01:05:57] and like the creatures of land and like I have to tame the ox and I have to show the lions, you know, how to feed their kids. So it's you could read it as as don't don't think that you're the focus of all of my activities.

[01:06:13] But it's certainly not explicit and it doesn't feel satisfying. But also that's not true because he was the focus of this activity. Like he specifically did this to Job to prove a point to Satan. So he can say, I have all this other stuff to attend to.

[01:06:31] I can't like worry about like what Job is feeling. But like no, he could. He took the time to allow Satan to do all this stuff to Joe. Yeah. No, absolutely. Like he is he is a God who is is you could sort of pretend to ignore that

[01:06:51] first part. I mean, the first part has to be said because of the righteousness of Job is sort of has to be firmly planted. But really the rest of the story is is not at all. It's not connected to that initial thing at all.

[01:07:05] Like it's just like why do you say even God forgets? Oh, like even God forgets that. No, actually he did do this to Joe. Yeah. Oh, shit. That's right. The Satan I had told him.

[01:07:21] Oh, no, you're I mean, there's a way of reading the ending where he does kind of come to that realization. But I guess we'll get to that. So but there's a couple of things where he says like, brace yourself like a man.

[01:07:35] I will question you and you shall answer me. Would you discredit my justice? Would you condemn me to justify yourself? Yeah, exactly. Where in this case, he would have a right to by God's own admission in those first two prose things.

[01:07:51] Then he goes back to can you pull in the Leviathan with a fish hook or tie down his tongue with a rope? Can you pull a cord through his nose or pierce his jaw with a hook?

[01:08:03] Can you make a pet of him like a bird or put him on a leash for your girls? Yeah. And then the behemoth it's it's interesting that he's talking about these creatures. So some like the behemoth, some people think it's just a hippopotamus

[01:08:18] and the Leviathan is like an alligator. But so so Job like like he makes Job answer him and Job's like, no, I'm sorry. Yeah, right. I shouldn't have spoke. And then he makes him answer again after telling Job how much how powerful he is.

[01:08:36] Yeah, his first I mean, his very first answer is super short, right? Uncharacteristic of Job. He says, I am unworthy. How can I reply to you? I put my hand over my mouth. I spoke once, but I have no answer twice.

[01:08:49] I will. But I will say no more. And so he's just basically just been shut up. And I don't know when reading it, whether this indicates that Job was satisfied with what God was saying. You know, at parts earlier on,

[01:09:03] Job is saying like, all I want is for God to come and talk to me. Like, I just want that audience with God. And maybe he didn't care what he said. He just wanted God to like show up and actually have have the guts to

[01:09:16] show his face. Yeah. And you know, he wanted to testify. You wanted his day in court, as you said. But then so chapter 42, this is very puzzling to me. So Job replies to the Lord like, I know that you can do all things.

[01:09:32] No plan of yours can be thwarted. You asked, who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge? Surely I spoke of things I did not understand. Things too wonderful for me to know. You said, listen now and I will speak.

[01:09:44] I will question you and you shall answer me. My ears have heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes. He is contrite, as you said. And he has.

[01:09:58] And the Lord has shown himself to Job, which is what he wanted. But then here's the part that I find very puzzling. After the Lord had said these things to Job, he said to Ellie Fawze, the Temonite, I am angry with you and your two friends

[01:10:15] because you have not spoken of me what is right as my servant Job has. Why is he angry with the three friends? Like, what did they say that was wrong given what the Lord now is saying?

[01:10:32] I do. I mean, the only thing that that I can think of is that the friends were accusing Job of having acted in some evil way and he didn't. And so he's it's weird because he's telling off Job sort of by like,

[01:10:52] you know, who are you to question me? But then he's coming to his defense and saying, like, you guys were talking shit about my boy Job. Like, so I'm mad at you. But also that Job has spoken right.

[01:11:05] He says, you have not spoken of me what is right as my servant Job has. Is like, wait a minute. This Tamler is why I think this was this is a sneaky. The answer to the theodicy is God isn't just. Right.

[01:11:21] I think that's the sneaky part of this book where where God is saying Job was right. He didn't do shit. And guess what? What that means, what is entailed by Job being right is that God must not be just. And so that's I mean, that's interesting.

[01:11:44] I like that if if he's admitting that he's not just although he's still angry, furious that Job would question his justice and now wants the friends to to sacrifice and Job to pray for them. I mean, it's very paradoxical.

[01:12:06] Yeah, if he's telling the friends that he's not just, then why was he so mad that Job was questioning his justice? I suppose it's not technically inconsistent, but it does kind of. It it. What with the way that I read it is that God is is simply

[01:12:26] is his his annoyance at Job is to have the hubris to try to understand God's ways. And so he says like, well, you're not even close to really understanding what I do. But it's true that I did fuck with you. And for no good reason. Yeah.

[01:12:46] Yeah, I don't think that I do not think that Job, the book of Job offers anything by way of a satisfactory answer to the problem of evil. And and I found I found I'll put a link to this paper,

[01:13:00] a very, very good paper called God's Answer to Job, where he the author goes through the various defenses of of God that people have given trying to somehow reconcile God's justice with what's happening in Job. And he concludes that there is no satisfactory answer.

[01:13:21] He says, I conclude then that when God answers Job, I'm quoting here, he should not be understood as saying, trust me, Job, I have a good reason for reflecting you. If you just hold on to your faith, everything will come right for you in the end.

[01:13:31] The God who answers Job out of the whirlwind does not offer that kind of reassurance. This God promises nothing either in this world or the next. Yeah. And and I think that's right. I think and I think that this is a deeply wise book

[01:13:44] because the only real answer to the problem of evil is that we were wrong to expect anything else. Yes. So and and, you know, you could certainly read I think Ecclesiastes is almost especially is especially amenable to that kind of reading too.

[01:14:04] However, doesn't it sort of undercut it that you have this tidy little and Job was rewarded with double the property in the same and prettier daughters and yeah, 140 more years. And so at least it offers the possibility of Job had to tough this out. And right.

[01:14:28] And it doesn't it seem like a little pastiche to you? Like I'm going to continue reading the next paragraph of this paper that I was quoting. It says, it is true, of course, that Job is rewarded handsomely in the epilogue, receiving double his original wealth,

[01:14:44] twice the normal lifespan and an equal number of replacement children. But it does not help us with the interpretation. No, that's it. We are I always want to, yeah, to have a real conversation about the view that. Yeah. But he says it does not help us

[01:15:01] with the interpretation of God's answer and Job's response. Job was already fully satisfied by the theophany, the appearance of God, which contained not a hint of the coming restoration of his fortunes. So and in any case, Job's restoration looks more like compensation

[01:15:15] for pointless suffering than like a good God, then like a good that God wanted to achieve through Job's misfortune. It seems as if he won damages like they settled and he won damages. I guess if he won damages and God admitted that he was wrong,

[01:15:35] then what was he so furious about when he was? Is it sort of like if you start yelling at your kid for questioning you and then you realize that, well, technically the kid is right. Your child is right in this instance.

[01:15:53] But there's no way for your child to have known that and it's still disrespectful to even question it. But, you know, a little guilty. You feel a little guilty and so you. I guess I could see that it certainly as

[01:16:09] plausible a way of trying to bring the text together, like trying to get sense of it, coherent sense of it. I also think you could also read it as not even intending to have a coherent message. Yeah. Well, I think the discomfort that this

[01:16:29] that God's response gives is a good. I like that feeling you're left with a feeling of questioning more. You're not left like if it had been wrapped up neatly, I don't think it would be considered one of the great books. No, right.

[01:16:45] And and there is this, you know, as you say, like God, God's. Speech is isn't isn't it is even admitting that he's wrong. He's not admitting at all that he's not just at all. Yeah. And I think that

[01:17:04] you couldn't you couldn't write that book where God comes in and says, you're right, I suck. I don't think you can write that. And they couldn't write it. It wouldn't be. I think you have to just say, like, don't question me.

[01:17:17] But I think it's a wink, wink, nudge, nudge that like Job was right to question. So this is your Straussian reading. No, it's so amenable to that an esoteric reading. Like Ecclesiastes almost flat out just favors that reading.

[01:17:37] Yeah. Here it does seem like it's a little more concealed. If that's what it's saying, it's like, yeah, you have a right to question. I'm not saying you should do it in every instance and you may get shouted down if you do, but you have a point

[01:17:54] and, you know, all and the best you can hope for is a settlement, you know. Yeah. And, you know, Ecclesiastes has the advantage of not having to deal with with God. Right. It doesn't really deal with God.

[01:18:09] It's just wisdom about this earth and it's in its sort of saying, we, you know, we don't know this life is a lot of pain and suffering and existential uncertainty. And this is actually bringing God into it is like, well, now you

[01:18:21] now you have to give God has to say something. He's a character in your book. What does he say? And I'm just a human being writing this this story. And it feels right. It feels as if there is some deep wisdom there where the human writing

[01:18:38] the story had to make God just show up in a storm, talk about how amazing he is and leave Job and this way I haven't talked about. I think that Job is somehow psychologically comforted by God's response in a way that I don't know that I would be.

[01:18:58] But but there is something in Job's attitude that seems to say like, OK, like I'm at peace with what's happened. Well, it's sort of like if you, I don't know, if you email a guy

[01:19:11] repeatedly trying to get a response to something that you are angry at them for. And then they finally after years respond to you and they completely deny your complaint or deny that they were wrong or whatever. It still feels good that they took the time to respond.

[01:19:34] You know, at least he did get to have his appeal heard. Yeah, I agree that he seems psychologically comforted. I was interested in a lot of people looking at this from Job's perspective. People are angry at Job for just giving in the way he does.

[01:19:54] Huh, I don't blame Job really if you know, if you see a whirlwind and then God and I. But but so I was reading this piece in The New Yorker by Joan Akchela. I don't know if I hope I'm pronouncing that right.

[01:20:13] And she was talking about Ellie Wazel. Ellie Wazel was very upset by Job's capitulation, especially in the light of the Holocaust, where people were saying about the Jews that they went like lambs to the slaughter. They didn't rebel. They didn't protest. They just did it.

[01:20:33] And she writes that an alter ego in one of his novels never ceased resenting Job and says that the big Biblical rebel should never have given in. And then Ellie Wazel at a certain point just decided that he hadn't given it.

[01:20:50] Wazel says contrary to the usual reading, Job did not submit when God told him that he must. You can tell Wazel says because in the text that we have, he submitted so fast. He was just pretending. The true ending Wazel preferred to believe was lost.

[01:21:09] More recently, he changed his mind and settled on the idea that Job merely chose silence, not submission. Job, he wrote, had learned he lived in a world that was cold and cynical, a world without true friends, but one nevertheless in which God seeks

[01:21:24] to join man in his solitude. That's great. And and I think I think it's wise and I it's consistent with what I was reading and I don't remember where, but there when Job is responding to God and he says,

[01:21:41] therefore in this in this translation, it says, my ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes. That phrase, I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes apparently has three

[01:21:58] or four possible translations that this seems to be the sort of most reverent one. The other ones are more like I will sit here in the dust and ashes and I am nothing. Yeah. And I think that is the experience like God coming through the storm

[01:22:21] and Job seeing him with his own eyes is like, let me just read this because I think it says it nicely. Book of Job moves back and forth between these two poles between the idea

[01:22:33] of a God who cares about the doings of a particular man like Job and the idea of a God who is almost too big, too mysterious, too holy other for anything like that to make sense. In the experience of the whirlwind, Job is confronted with sheer transcendence.

[01:22:49] He is reminded of the chasm that lies between creator and creature and forced to take into account the infinite difference between God's point of view and ours. And maybe that's just like he was either intimidated into silence or he was like, well, fine then, fine.

[01:23:05] At least you showed up. Right. Yeah. And at least if I'm going to be friendless and I'm going to have to suffer for no good reason, at least you're at least you're willing to show your face and justify yourself. Even if I get yelled at.

[01:23:21] When I was reading this. I was scolded. Yeah. When I was reading this, I was thinking that this is this is sort of one of the only instances where you have a restorative justice between God and man. Right.

[01:23:36] Because usually you don't get any of that in the stories of the Bible. It's just God was right. Yeah. I mean, Genesis, I remember Abraham bargaining with God on behalf of the people of Sodom and God being willing to negotiate, but that's not God

[01:23:57] with the person that he's. That's suffering. That's suffering. Right. Or that will suffer or that's been sinful or that hasn't. Yeah. It's funny when people bargain with God. There's an Ezekiel. There's a God tells Ezekiel to bake bread and he gives them a specific

[01:24:14] recipe and that recipe people make. You can still make bread with that recipe, but in the in the original recipe, God says to bake it with by using human shit in the fire. And Ezekiel is like, I can't do that. That's unclean.

[01:24:30] He's like, and then God says, OK, OK, fine. Use cow shit. It's really interesting, the God of the Old Testament. And I don't I wish I knew more about the kind of the Yahweh version versus the right, the Elohim version.

[01:24:48] But it really is a God that is a lot more interactive and that seems to regret certain things, you know, like the flood and, you know, oh, God, I really messed this up. Let me start again. And yeah. And it's just in tribal, like place favorites, you know,

[01:25:08] like he's very tribal. He's like, I kill to destroy all of those people, like all of the men, women and children burn into the ground. Yeah. And just we'll choose to like one brother over another brother for no real reason, yeah, just because.

[01:25:24] So like, I think the job is great because it kind of brings all of that to a head. It sort of implicit in the other books where the reader might question it. But here, Job is just directly questioning it. Himself.

[01:25:40] And what I think that the thing that makes this such a masterpiece of literature and why we're still talking about it is that that opening, as you've said repeatedly, Job's complaint has his real basis in, in the text and the text is explicitly making us understand that

[01:26:03] and never fully responding to it. And that's pretty, you know, like you said, it's almost like God forgot that he did that. Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking as you were talking like that this is a God who is like,

[01:26:20] there is that very involved, very tribal Yahweh of the Old Testament. And then there is this mysterious, ethereal, omnipotent sort of like concerned with the universe God who seems to in the book of Job come down from that, do a little dealing with human beings directly

[01:26:41] and then go back up to that, that whirlwind of the fact maybe that he came down from all that just to talk personally to Job. Even if he forgot, I really do. I think that's the best. It's almost like the flood and like there are two floods.

[01:26:57] We're about to do Genesis again in my great book score. I'll be able to report on this, but report like I'm live live from Babylonia. But but it's almost like he's starting over with jobs like, yeah, sorry about that here.

[01:27:16] Here's your 10 years double the property and we'll start this over. Pretend this never happened kind of thing. Yeah. I wonder what he did with his wife. We never hear from his wife again. Well, but the wife is it's still you get the sense that she's still

[01:27:34] the mother of all these other children. So fertility and and weirdly it says that and Job granted the daughter's inheritance along with her brothers like goes out of its way to say that like, oh, Job also treated his daughters equally

[01:27:51] like like he wasn't going to for the first round. And apparently it's it's one of the only texts where the the daughters are named but not the sons. Yeah, interesting. And one of them is Jemima. Yeah. That's where that comes from. Yeah.

[01:28:09] Is there we didn't talk about the language too much and we didn't quote that much, but I just want to say that that even though it's long and it's beautiful. It's there's a lot of just beautiful language here. Yeah, it's funny.

[01:28:28] Like I felt this more with Ecclesiastes than I did with Job. And I know this is me that's in the wrong because I think like there's something I'm missing in terms of that. I didn't feel that as much as a lot of people do.

[01:28:48] Who I think that may maybe it suffers from repetitiveness. And when you're reading, you know, it's forty two chapters. It's not a this this is very dense book and they sing a lot of the same things. So it's almost just for the sake of the poetic.

[01:29:05] Like they're just repeating repeating a lot. And so it takes way more attention. I still I still think that whoever whoever is interested in reading this should take time out to to appreciate the poetry.

[01:29:21] And I wish I wish I knew how to appreciate poetry even better than I do. Because I don't I'm the same way. Dusty F. Ski was obsessed with this. Yeah, it comes up multiple times and brothers care and lots of it is right.

[01:29:38] Ivan Ivan is like his response to Job is like, well, the fuck that God like that God is clearly unjust. Yeah. And I'm not playing ball. I'm not going to be a part of this anymore. And and you know, that's something that

[01:29:56] Dusty F. Ski, he understood the force of that reply like as well as anybody, but he didn't want to be on board with it. And he tried constantly to give us a satisfying reply to it. I know we have one one day we'll talk about

[01:30:12] Dusty F. Ski or the brothers. Carmes off because I always wonder I always had this sneaking suspicion that that he that Dusty F. Ski was speaking through Ivan and trying really hard to speak through through Aliyah Shepard, but but Ivan wins.

[01:30:26] And and does he knows that I've been with I think, you know, there's a lot to be said for that. I don't know how we would do that. But if we could figure out a way to do the brothers care, Matzav, maybe over three or four episodes,

[01:30:40] that would be very, very fucking cool. Yeah, I want to read that book again. All right. All right. Well, join us next time and you will get the same number of children and double the oxygen.

[01:31:36] And a very good man. Just a very bad wizard.