Page 14 - GALIET KAFKABEL JOB, KANT AND MILTON: Omnipotence, Impotence and Rebellion IV+

Galiet & Galiet
demanding justice and vindication for their undeserved miseries and anguish.13 They believe their jurisprudence to be orderly and just, yet their arbitrary Judges, High Courts and all proceedings14 are inaccessible. Job loses his family, household and his health, and Josef K, his life. Their tragedies and adversities crisscross in this telling passage in the Book of Job,
“know then that God has subverted my cause and surrounded me with His siege works. Behold, I cry “Violence!” but I am not answered; I call out, but there is no justice.
He has fenced in my way so that I cannot pass, He has set darkness upon my paths.
My glory He has stripped from me,
and removed the crown of my head.
He has broken me down on every side, and I perish; my hope He has uprooted like a tree.
He has kindled His wrath against me,
and treats me as His foe.”
(Job 19:6-11)
In the hours of exile, destitution, of the cruel trying and uprooting of the soul, terrified and hounded, sieged and alienated,
“His troops come forth all together; they have paved their road against me And have encamped around my tent, My brethren are distant from me, And my friends are wholly estranged... All my intimate friends abhor me, and those I loved have turned against me. My bones cling to my skin and my flesh,
and I have escaped only with the skin of my teeth.” (Job 19:12-13, 19:20)
In a stupor, Job wills death and to rouse up Leviathan to end the world (3:1-26), and K wills life to struggle with Leviathan to defend himself and the unjustly accused (T74-5). In terror, Yahweh affronts Job in the speeches of the Whirlwind to wow him and to restore him. In defiance, the Judge does not affront K. Instead, the priest-prison- chaplain condemns him, and K is mercilessly murdered. Neither Job nor K is genuinely vindicated on Justice’s grounds. Job hears Yahweh’s discourse of power (37-41), and Josef K hears the wardens’ and the priest-prison-
process, and that this is made more intolerable by the fact that he has no idea of what the charge against him can be and is thus unable to defend himself. The first evidence for this appears in 16:9: ‘He has torn me in his wrath, and hated me; he has gnashed his teeth at me; my adversary sharpens his eyes against me.’” See also Terrien, S. Job, Poet of Existence. Indianapolis, 1957. 261ff. In Cox, Dermot. The Triumph of Impotence. Job and the Tradition of the Absurd. Analecta Gregoriana. Roma: Universita Gregoriana Editrice, 1978. 75. In addition, Job’s trial of the divine, this putting to the proof, aims to test God. Similarly, a trial to test believers is defined to be “sometimes an enticement to evil, but for the most part, it aims at showing the benefit of exposing faith and unbelief, loyalty and disloyalty, falsity and truth of believers.” In this case, a Yahweh-authorized Satan afflicts Job (1:6-22; 2:1-7) to test whether his piety is sincere. However, readers ignore the reasons for K’s trial. Josef K shall become slowly aware, however, of the trial’s dangers (T125). Indeed, he is told many times over not to attract attention to himself because his case can be damaged (T126). Ironically, it is precisely the attention that God places on Job at the Celestial Court that gives rise to Satan’s insidious doubt (1:6-12). The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. An Illustrated Encyclopaedia. “Tempt.” Ed. Arthur Buttrick and Emory Stevens Bucke. Volume III. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1962. 568
13 T186; Job 31
14 In Kafkabel and Jobel, all proceedings, court records, and the writ of indictment are confidential, and hence, inaccessible to defendants, the public, and to defence lawyers. Consequently, when the accused are interrogated, it is difficult to know what documents are involved (T115).
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