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Pete Jones
Site Admin
In: Virginia
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | I am completely at sea and I don't think it's my fault. Improving tales are meant to be crystal clear to even the dumbest of sinners (or non-believers). |
I think the sense is clearer in the New International Version (very modern, very cosmopolitan). To me, the story is perfectly straightforward, but it might be that I had it with mother's milk in Texas:
Chapter 1: Mo Money, Mo Problems
God: You look suspicious, what have been up to?
Satan: Pacing back and forth. Aren't you omniscient?
God: What do you think about this guy Job? He’s a real mensch.
Satan: Why are you interested in my opinion?
God: No reason.
Satan: Job is rich and happy. Easy to be a mensch in those circumstances.
God: Good point. Please fuck with him however you want. Just make sure you keep him alive.
Exit Satan. God remains omnipresent.
Offstage, the noise of everything Job owns and loves being destroyed.
Job: Praise God! This sure sucks. But still, praise God.
Chapter 2: Different Day, Same ol’ Shit
God: You again?
Satan: Me again. Still bored.
God: What are we going to do about that?
Satan: If it's actually up to me - and I'm dubious - then I want another go at Job.
God: Go on.
Satan: He’s pretty stoic when he’s just watching others die, but we haven’t gotten down to actual torture yet.
God: Great point. But still don’t kill him.
Satan: You’re the boss.
God: And don’t forget it.
Offstage, Job is tortured dermatologically.
Mrs. Job: Curse God and die!
Job: Dingbat! When God gives you lemons.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Then said his wife unto him, Dost thou still retain thine integrity? curse God, and die.
After being critical, I kind of like this as a tactic. Satan has taken everthing from Job, including his sons, daughters and camels, but he has cleverly left him his wife just so she may torment him about his bad fortune. |
Except the question mark is in the wrong place. Technically, she is advising him to curse God and die.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| 11. Now when Job's three friends |
Run that past me again.
| heard of all this evil that was come upon him, they came every one from his own place; Eliphaz the Temanite, and Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite: |
What happened to Bleddyn the Anthracite?
| for they had made an appointment together to come to mourn with him and to comfort him. |
I'd prefer friends who dropped everything without having to ring round and then turning up like a delegation from Help the Aged. I'd quite like three friends.
| 12. And when they lifted up their eyes afar off, and knew him not, they lifted up their voice, and wept; and they rent every one his mantle, and sprinkled dust upon their heads toward heaven. |
Friends like that.
| 13. So they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him: for they saw that his grief was very great. |
But not like that.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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This is pretty much confirmation that we are working to a seven and three model.
The numerology can't be a coincidence. (for Wiley, not for the rest of the world)
The question is functionality.
I am sticking to a 7 day (sons) 3 watch (dtrs, friends) model.
Job is clock, watchmaker repairer etc.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Who was it that referred to God as the Eternal Watchmaker?
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Brought to mind Franks Casket panel.
Here Hos sits on the sorrow-mound;
She suffers distress as Ertae had imposed it upon her,
a wretched den (?wood) of sorrows and of torments of mind.
rushes / wood / biter
Hmmm....the three figures to the right are the three friends.
Does this actually depict sufferings/torments of Job.
I will stick it into the mix.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Hos is assumed to mean horse but maybe it is House?
House of Job?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Chapter Three
| 1. After this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day. |
Does anyone know whether this kind of extreme syntax is the work of the King James team (plus Coverdale and Tyndale--and someone should look into that coincidence too) or is it present in the original?
| 2. And Job spake, and said, |
And the chapter and verse scheme is a bit previous as well.
| 3. Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man child conceived. |
If he's worried about his scansion there can't be that much wrong.
| 4. Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it. 5. Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it; let a cloud dwell upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it. |
Enough already.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I seem to have got my copying and pasting in a twist. The actual text bears out Wiley's musings that it's all about diurnal progression
4. Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it. 5. Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it; let a cloud dwell upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it. 6. As for that night, let darkness seize upon it;
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and calendrical figuring
let it not be joined unto the days of the year, let it not come into the number of the months.
7. Lo, let that night be solitary, let no joyful voice come therein.
8. Let them curse it that curse the day, who are ready to raise up their mourning.
9. Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark; let it look for light, but have none; neither let it see the dawning of the day: |
But then gets all personal again
10. Because it shut not up the doors of my mother's womb, nor hid sorrow from mine eyes.
11. Why died I not from the womb? why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly?
12. Why did the knees prevent me? or why the breasts that I should suck? |
Before apparently signing off on a note of resignation
| 13. For now should I have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept: then had I been at rest |
Or so you might think...
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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The writer or writers (or Writer) of Job comes over all political at this point.
| 14. With kings and counsellers of the earth, which built desolate places for themselves |
A weird way of putting it. Perhaps they mean castle-like redoubts that were necessary because of popular opposition to the arrangement.
| 15. Or with princes that had gold, who filled their houses with silver |
This is baffling though, when the King James Bible was written, there was a standing controversy about what to do about Spanish-American silver bullion flooding into Europe, causing inflation because, hitherto, it was held to be correct to have a gold-backed currency, said gold to be stored inertly in the royal capital.
| 16. Or as an hidden untimely birth I had not been; as infants which never saw light. |
Infanticide is practised when things get really dire. But now come three verses that might be the New Jerusalem or, read differently, a statement of how desperate was the old one.
17. There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest.
18. There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor.
19. The small and great are there; and the servant is free from his master. | |
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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let it not be joined unto the days of the year, let it not come into the number of the months.
7. Lo, let that night be solitary, let no joyful voice come therein.
8. Let them curse it that curse the day, who are ready to raise up their mourning.
9. Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark; let it look for light, but have none; neither let it see the dawning of the day:
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Something got lost in translation.
| Let them curse it that curse the day, who are ready to raise up their mourning |
You don't raise up mourning......
This appears musing about a personal life cycle, birth, death, rebirth, what happens if the cycle/creation stops, or it had never started?
| 14. With kings and counsellers of the earth, which built desolate places for themselves |
| 15. Or with princes that had gold, who filled their houses with silver |
Everthing is now not in its place ie palaces are now in desolate dark places, princes only collect silver (moon) not gold (daylight).
| But now come three verses that might be the New Jerusalem or, read differently, a statement of how desperate was the old one. |
17. There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest.
18. There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor.
19. The small and great are there; and the servant is free from his master. |
I realy don't think so. This is surely a continuation of 14 and 15 above, ie a further warning of more out of place things that you really don't want to see happen......but might if you fell into a Dark age.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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But either way a number of non-sequiturs are introduced into the proceedings:
| 20. Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul; |
I defy anyone to say what is being offered here.
| 21. Which long for death, but it cometh not; and dig for it more than for hid treasures; |
That is even more opaque.
| 22. Which rejoice exceedingly, and are glad, when they can find the grave? |
Is suicide being offered as a way out? And why the question mark? I don't know but here comes another one
| 23. Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God hath hedged in? |
Where back with hedges anyway. One must be thankful for small mercies when trying to get through this maze.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Afteer a section on birth. We reach a complementary section on burial.
23. Why is light given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God hath hedged in?
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This appears an interesting (to Wiley only) discussion on megalithic burial practices.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I have been disappointed all round so far. We all carry around this (vaguely comforting) idea that while Christianity is a bunch of bollocks, the King James Bible at least is a store of improving fables, cherishable imagery and foursquare phraseology. Not on this evidence, now I've been forced to read it. Ooh, get you, Torquemada!
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Chapter Three ends with these three verses:
| 24. For my sighing cometh before I eat, and my roarings are poured out like the waters. |
This is so weird I suspect one of Wiley's hidden messages must be present.
| 25. For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me. |
This is equally weird but in a different way. Job is saying the same thing twice! Apparently without irony or other literary intent, and reversing the normal progression when wishing to lend emphasis i.e. 'I was afraid' followed by 'I greatly feared'.
| 26. I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet; yet trouble came. |
As a summing up, very flat. Who's going to identify with such a milksop?
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