Page 62 - GALIET KAFKABEL JOB, KANT AND MILTON: Omnipotence, Impotence and Rebellion IV+

Galiet & Galiet
antithesis: life wish. Where Job wills total negation,355 Josef K affirms life. Where Job yearns to return to sleep, darkness, Sheol and to the womb,356 Josef K longs to live (T231). In time, Job scarcely has plenty of strength to wait in hope. His only hope is [was] for God to call him from life (6:8-9) and be hid in Sheol until God’s wrath is [was] past... then he would wait, wait in hope till his release should come (14:13-5). Yet many of Job’s cries show no signs of “real hope.”357 At best, they utter an apparent hope, at worst, an impossible one. Job knows “God is [was] the one who perverts [perverted] justice and rules [ruled] the world immorally”358 and that God’s hiddenness remained despite man’s efforts to find Him (23:3).359 Job’s “real hope” of gaining an audience is at best a “despairing desire,”360 at worst an “unrealizable optative.”361
Job’s unbearable loses and sufferings augment not his hope, but his fatalism. Job wails and wails knowing defiance is futile, knowing his despairing desire cannot be realized. Indeed, Job’s “days had outlasted his [my] hopes” and “cut off the desires of his [my] heart, which could turn night into day and darkness into blessed light” (17:12). When “hope” departs, when the will ceases to desire clarity and light, then night and darkness cast their shadows in Job’s spirit. All of this is really understandable. Job’s losses are too unbearable, too agonizing, and too calamitous for him or anyone to really hope. Job’s trial is that much more harrowing than K’s from the outset. It is beset with far more filial, material and health loses, and naturally he would wish to perish. Yet both heroes are so eager to set the wrong right, to expose injustice and power even if every single effort suffers tragic reversals, “When Job [he] looked for good, evil came; and when he waited for light, darkness came” (30:26). K faces these very ordeals in the cathedral. Josef K relentlessly hopes. If K seeks an audience with the Judge, and finds him nowhere, he persists in real hope: an affirming desire. He hopes until “hope” almost outlasts his last hours. Unlike Job, K of the cathedral never expects condemnation (T213). He still expects to break out of trial, to get around it, and to live outside of it (T214). So extremely optimistic and steadfast is he, that the priest-chaplain warns K he is deceiving himself about the court (T214-5). He even presses him as to why he cannot enter the law if the door to the law is open.
355 The Hebrew term ad-biliti prevails in Job 14. To Koehler, it signifies total negation, and to Fohrer, complete finality. See Koehler & Baumgartner, W. Lexicon in Veteris Testamenti Libros. Leiden, 1953. 131ff. See also Fohrer, G. Das Buch Hiob. 257. Cox, Dermot. The Triumph of Impotence. Job and the Tradition of the Absurd. Analecta Gregoriana. Roma: Universita Gregoriana Editrice, 1978. 35
356 To Semitic writers, these symbolic images signify the release of death. This death wish dominates Job’s first three speeches. Cox, Dermot. The Triumph of Impotence. Job and the Tradition of the Absurd. Analecta Gregoriana. Roma: Universita Gregoriana Editrice, 1978. 35
357 Cox, Dermot. Dermot argues that the recurring term “mi yitten” or “O that you...” in Job (11 out of the 24 recurrences in the OT) signifies either “who will give?” or “would that” in the sense of Ps. 55:7: “Would that I had wings.” To Jouon, “Would that” introduces “a wish one does not expect to see fulfilled.” See Jouon, P. Grammaire de l’Hébreu Biblique. Rome, 1923. 163d. The term “mi yitten” generally also excludes a response. See Jongeling, B. “L’Expression MY YTN dans l’Ancien Testament” 36, 39. Only three instances in the OT may suggest possibility. Driver & Gray, Fohrer and Jongeling hold that 31:35 “Oh, that I had someone to hear me 3⁄4 behold, this is my desire: that the Almighty answer me, and my opponent write out his indictment” express an unrealizable hope or a sense of non-accomplishment. See Driver, S.R. and Gray, G.B. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary... 270. Fohrer, G. Das Buch Hiob 426. However, to Cox these findings are insufficient. To determine if they express real or unreal hope, he relies on contextuality. Cox concludes that it excludes any real expectation. Job’s lack of “real hope” is validated in the immediate context of 14:13; 16:18; 18:23 and 23:3. These verses show that Job does not really hope for divine vindication. “In each case apparent “hope” is preceded or followed by a disclaimer: 14:13 is framed by vs. 7 ff and vs. 8ff; 16:18-19 is counteracted by the rest of this Jobian speech, 16:22-17:16; 19:23 is part of a longer speech in which God is one who perverts justice and rules the world immorally, and 23:3 is the beginning of a speech in which Job shows that God will remain hidden no matter how hard man tries to find him. Terrien calls this a “despairing desire” to gain audience with his judge.” See Terrien, S. Job. 144-145. Cox, Dermot. The Triumph of Impotence. Job and the Tradition of the Absurd. Analecta Gregoriana. Roma: Universita Gregoriana Editrice, 1978. 33-5
358 See Terrien, S. Job. 144-145. Cox, Dermot. The Triumph of Impotence. Job and the Tradition of the Absurd. Analecta Gregoriana. Roma: Universita Gregoriana Editrice, 1978. 35
359 Cox, Dermot. The Triumph of Impotence. Job and the Tradition of the Absurd. Analecta Gregoriana. Roma: Universita Gregoriana Editrice, 1978. 35
360 See Terrien, S. Job. 144-45. Cox, Dermot. The Triumph of Impotence. Job and the Tradition of the Absurd. Analecta Gregoriana. Roma: Universita Gregoriana Editrice, 1978. 35
361 Cox, Dermot. The Triumph of Impotence. Job and the Tradition of the Absurd. Analecta Gregoriana. Roma: Universita Gregoriana Editrice, 1978. 35 —62—