NOTES for Job 30:1-31

Job’s recollections give way to an account of his present condition. He begins his lament by observing: now they mock me. Job then describes his sufferings in detail, but what matters most to him is that he has been humiliated; and the most unbearable thing for Job is that the ill-wishers who have gained the opportunity to humiliate him are themselves unworthy people. This should not really surprise us, however: some people take all the greater delight in another person’s fall the lower they themselves lie.

When begins the history of monotheism? One could indicate facts testifying of the ancient monotheism, but this monotheism went out again in the prehistory time; and what then after? The spiritual desert of the paganism with the tiny island of the monotheism in Palestine, in Israel, in Judea? Of course not. The Unique was known in Egypt and in Babylon, in Greece and in India. Only here is, the Unique, that knew the philosophers and the scientific priests, was silent. And His silence lasted millenniums, until He begun speaking with Abraham.

So began the history of the people of God. People, with whom God spoke, spoke through the chiefs, the prophets, the charismatic leaders. And here is - fifteen hundred years have passed again since Abraham (the Book of Job, according to the opinion common today among the biblical scholars, was written in V or IV s B.C.). And Job stands again before a silent God. The hero of the book lived in the heyday of Judaism, he is surrounded with people profoundly religious, as were, for example, the friends of Job: they have answers to all questions, answers sometimes not at all random, answers, for which can be seen deep theological tradition, and sometimes even personal spiritual experience. But religion is religion: no matter how much remarkable it may be, the religion remains all the same an affair of human’s hands and spirits.

That is why it cannot give an answer to this main question, which torments Job: what is the sense of the evil committed in the world? Indeed, religion does not go out of the frame of the not transformed world, and in the not transformed world there is no answer to the question about the sense of evil, at least because there is no sense in evil at all. The question should have been asked differently: what to do with the evil, in which, according to the word of the Gospel, lays the world? But this question is not for people, but for God, Who is silent.

Killing spiritually Job with His silence. God's silence destroys all the religion, all the theology, all the conception of the world of the hero. But that could not probably be otherwise: because sometimes one can hear God only in an absolute silence, in such a silence which is possible only in the desert. But the religious man is not alone even in the desert: he has with him his religion, of which it is necessary to get rid so that he could finally hear God, and not the tumult of his own religious soul. But man himself must want it. Meanwhile God is silent. And waits, when man will be ready to hear him. Waits, when he will stop screaming, will keep silent and will start listening.

When begins the history of monotheism? One could indicate facts testifying of the ancient monotheism, but this monotheism went out again in the prehistory time; and what then after? The spiritual desert of the paganism with the tiny island of the monotheism in Palestine, in Israel, in Judea? Of course not. The Unique was known in Egypt and in Babylon, in Greece and in India. Only here is, the Unique, that knew the philosophers and the scientific priests, was silent. And His silence lasted millenniums, until He begun speaking with Abraham.

So began the history of the people of God. People, with whom God spoke, spoke through the chiefs, the prophets, the charismatic leaders. And here is - fifteen hundred years have passed again since Abraham (the Book of Job, according to the opinion common today among the biblical scholars, was written in V or IV s B.C.). And Job stands again before a silent God. The hero of the book lived in the heyday of Judaism, he is surrounded with people profoundly religious, as were, for example, the friends of Job: they have answers to all questions, answers sometimes not at all random, answers, for which can be seen deep theological tradition, and sometimes even personal spiritual experience. But religion is religion: no matter how much remarkable it may be, the religion remains all the same an affair of human’s hands and spirits.

That is why it cannot give an answer to this main question, which torments Job: what is the sense of the evil committed in the world? Indeed, religion does not go out of the frame of the not transformed world, and in the not transformed world there is no answer to the question about the sense of evil, at least because there is no sense in evil at all. The question should have been asked differently: what to do with the evil, in which, according to the word of the Gospel, lays the world? But this question is not for people, but for God, Who is silent.

Killing spiritually Job with His silence. God's silence destroys all the religion, all the theology, all the conception of the world of the hero. But that could not probably be otherwise: because sometimes one can hear God only in an absolute silence, in such a silence which is possible only in the desert. But the religious man is not alone even in the desert: he has with him his religion, of which it is necessary to get rid so that he could finally hear God, and not the tumult of his own religious soul. But man himself must want it. Meanwhile God is silent. And waits, when man will be ready to hear him. Waits, when he will stop screaming, will keep silent and will start listening.