HCE, Job and the Guilt of Everyman, Part 6 (sixth part of seven), by Ann Cavanaugh

 Part VI Margarete Susman in her insightful essay on Job, God the Creator, in Glatzer’s book, speaks to a larger sense of justice or one which is a more historical justice; one which is about humanity as a whole or nations rather than justice on an individual level. When justice is defined by contract and Law it is an easier task to point to a description but as with everything in life this simply avoids the complexities. Job gives us very little with which to formulate any coherent idea of justice. The final phase in the biblical story has God restoring all that Job had lost though his trial period. I found this anti-climatic. One wonders if God would have restored all that had been lost to Job if Job had not come to a deeper understanding of his ignorance. This seems a valid question given the backstory as about Job being tested at Satan’s request. Would Satan, having triumphed with Job’s failure for instance, come to restore his losses? Or would Job simply become the unfortunate collateral damage of the playing out of the universal power forces? Well there’s a notion hearkening back to pagan roots! This restoring of material goods and bodily integrity lends itself to such inconsequential what ifs. 

What makes more sense to me is seeing the restoration of Job’s former life as symbolic of his having come through a journey of self discovery and that it is his essential self that is either restored or has been discovered through this trial. The stories of the journey “home” with its many “trials” has been with us from time immemorial. Sometimes the home is a re-membering, sometimes there is a terrestrial or an extraterrestrial home etc. I would posit that for Job it is the discovery of a faith he had no previous notion about; an expansion of his sense of awe and humility in light of his blessings arising in a universe that is truly not controllable or predictable. Could one then perhaps speak of gratitude as opposed to faith? There now exists the opportunity for his living as a good man not for gain but for the sake of the good in and of itself. One could then also, as easily perhaps, call his good life Kismet, Luck, Fortune. All concepts that were part of earlier systems about the forces at work in the universe which had now become part of the dominion of a monotheistic God and which is now called faith. For Job it is no longer a transactional relationship he has to his God but one based on something deeper and more mysterious. Joyce likewise gives us a beautiful communication about the importance of the journey and home. He lays his storytelling on the template of the classic Odyssey (I would suggest that both Ulysses and the Wake are informed by this archetypal drama to a greater or lesser degree) and for him the journey towards home in the Wake is rendered in an astonishingly moving and transcendent vision as the Great Mother/Sophia/ Life Force ALP gives her self over to the longing and dissolving movement of and to the sea - Original Home.