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justice and to protect citizens, their heinous crimes imitate and crisscross Yahweh’s despotism against Job. Yahweh engraves His mnemonic of pain93 and redemption into guilty and innocent alike, as Nietzsche argues, in order to tame the indomitable human spirit to submit.94 Job suffers in his flesh, yet the knowledge his Redeemer lives is “deep in his [my] skin...marked, and his [my] flesh does he [do I] see God” (19:25-26). Rutherford’s interpretation of Milton claims, God does not ground tyranny;95 however, many of Job’s speeches affirm, “God is one who perverts justice and rules the world immorally.”96 Yahweh indubitably oppresses Job when he authorizes Satan to do everything that is in his power to test Job, except doing away with his life (Job 2:6). Once Satan has incited Yahweh against a righteous and innocent Job, Yahweh wills “to destroy him without a cause” (Job 2:3), causing the irreparable death of Job’s offspring, which Yahweh never restores. Similarly, King Charles I’s Magistrates
93 Nietzsche. The Genealogy of Morals. Trans. Douglas Smith. USA: Oxford University Press, 1996.
94 Nietzsche. Twilight of the Idols and the Anti-Christ. “The Improvers of Mankind.” See Aphorism 2. Trans. by R.J. Hollingdale. USA: Penguin Books, 1990. 66-71. See also Nietzsche. Beyond Good and Evil. Aphorisms 259 and 260. Trans. by Marion Faber. USA: Oxford University Press, 1998.
95 Rutherford in Lex, Rex, bases his interpretation on Deut. 17:14 which stipulates that the Rule of Kings is according to God’s Law: “When though art come into the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, and shall say, I will set a king over me, like as all the nations about me.” Rutherford argues that King’s authority is a power to rule according to God’s law, given that it is an official power given by the King of Kings to all Kings under him. However, it is not a power to do ill and to tyrannize, for God does not ground tyranny. Milton’s libertarian treatises and Paradise Regained favour the merciful God of the New Covenant who redeemed mankind from original sin and guilt through Christ’s sacrifice. Hence, Yahweh’s image is also renewed into the loving God of Christianity. It is the God of Christianity who does not ground tyranny. Milton. Complete Poems and Major Prose. Ed. by Merritt Y. Hughes. The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1957. 757
96 See Job 16:22, 17:16, and in particular, Job 19:23, which is part of a longer speech, that affirms that God perverts Justice. See also Fohrer, G. Das Buch Hiob. 257. Cox, Dermot. The Triumph ofImpotence. Job and the Tradition ofthe Absurd. Analecta Gregoriana. Roma: Universita Gregoriana Editrice, 1978. 35
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