We celebrate, of course, the spring rains, especially when softly falling, slight breeze. We share into a deepened sort of joy, the kind taken down to sense life force even alike the newly opened daffodils bowing, bent into the crossed, lifeless stalks. Also, while reluctant to cut, some cheer comes through the movement inside.
We might note some parallel here with Samuel Terrien’s Job: Poet of Existence. His introduction cleanly asserts the direction of the book.
“The poet of Job did not attempt to solve the problem of evil nor did he propose a vindication of God’s justice. . . he not only takes his place among all those who suffer, fighting with the incomprehensible forces of evil in the noce oscura, but he also can speak to all sufferers an authentic word of comfort, begetting in them the virtue of serenity over woe. . .
And we who read Job may likewise find a gain in the loss of self-sufficiency. ‘As pain that cannot forget,’ wrote Aeschylus, ‘falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our despite, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.’” (p. 21-2).
Terrien proceeds to take us through the entire text of Job, just enough commentary along with amplifications from scripture as well as contemporary literature, so that the Deus Absconditus, the ineffable, the mystery surpassing human grasp, eases somewhat through the mist, unsurprisingly by the grace of love. Thus, the touch of comfort, the enlightening of peace. The gift of this text can be sampled in a passage taken near the conclusion as Job, after so much talk and rebuttal, finally goes almost mute in response to the Voice proceeding from the whirlwind.
In the presence of the holy, Job could not speak. ‘To make the relation to God into a feeling is to relativize and psychologize it. True relation is a coincidentia oppositorum, an absolute which gathers up the poles of feeling into itself’ [Terrien, p. 242; quoting Maurice S. Friedman, Martin Buber, The Life of Dialogue].
