Introduction to THE BOOK OF JOB
“Man is most comforted by paradoxes.”
by G.K. Chesterton
THE Book of Job is among the other Old Testament Books both a philosophical riddle and a historical riddle. It is the philosophical riddle that concerns us in such an introduction as this; so we may dismiss first the few words of general explanation or warning which should be said about the historical aspect. Controversy has long raged about which parts of this epic belong to its original scheme and which are interpolations of considerably later date. The doctors disagree, as it is the business of doctors to do; but upon the whole the trend of investigation has always been in the direction of maintaining that the parts interpolated, if any, were the prose prologue and epilogue and possibly the speech of the young man who comes in with an apology at the end. I do not profess to be competent to decide such questions. But whatever decision the reader may come to concerning them, there is a general truth to be remembered in this connection. When you deal with any ancient artistic creation do not suppose that it is anything against it that it grew gradually. The Book of Job may have grown gradually just as Westminster Abbey grew gradually. But the people who made the old folk poetry, like the people who made Westminster Abbey, did not attach that importance to the actual date and the actual author, that importance which is entirely the creation of the almost insane individualism of modern times. We may put aside the case of Job, as one complicated with religious difficulties, and take any other, say the case of the Iliad. Many people have maintained the characteristic formula of modern scepticism, that Homer was not written by Homer, but by another person of the same name. Just in the same way many have maintained that Moses was not Moses but another person called Moses. But the thing really to be remembered in the matter of the Iliad is that if other people did interpolate the passages, the thing did not create the same sense of shock as would be created by such proceedings in these individualistic times. The creation of the tribal epic was to some extent regarded as a tribal work, like the building of the tribal temple. Believe then, if you will, that the prologue of Job and the epilogue and the speech of Elihu are things inserted after the original work was composed. But do not suppose that such insertions have that obvious and spurious character which would belong to any insertions in a modern individualistic book. Do not regard the insertions as you would regard a chapter in George Meredith which you afterwards found had not been written by George Meredith, or half a scene in Ibsen which you found had been cunningly sneaked in by Mr. William Archer. Remember that this old world which made these old poems like the Iliad and Job, always kept the tradition of what it was making. A man could almost leave a poem to his son to be finished as he would have finished it, just as a man could leave a field to his son, to be reaped as he would have reaped it. What is called Homeric unity may be a fact or not. The Iliad may have been written by one man. It may have been written by a hundred men. But let us remember that there was more unity in those times in a hundred men than there is unity now in one man. Then a city was like one man. Now one man is like a city in civil war.
Without going, therefore, into questions of unity as understood by the scholars, we may say of the scholarly riddle that the book has unity in the sense that all great traditional creations have unity; in the sense that Canterbury Cathedral has unity. And the same is broadly true of what I have called the philosophical riddle. There is a real sense in which the Book of Job stands apart from most of the books included in the canon of the Old Testament. But here again those are wrong who insist on the entire absence of unity.
Those are wrong who maintain that the Old Testament is a mere loose library; that it has no consistency or aim. Whether the result was achieved by some supernal spiritual truth, or by a steady national tradition, or merely by an ingenious selection in after times, the books of the Old Testament have a quite perceptible unity. To attempt to understand the Old Testament without realizing this main idea is as absurd as it would be to study one of Shakespeare’s plays without realizing that the author of them had any philosophical object at all. It is as if a man were to read the history of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, thinking all the time that he was reading what really purported to be the history of an old Danish pirate prince. Such a reader would not realize at all that Hamlet’s procrastination was on the part of the poet intentional. He would merely say, “How long Shakespeare’s hero does take to kill his enemy.” So speak the Bible smashers, who are unfortunately always at bottom Bible worshippers. They do not understand the special tone and intention of the Old Testament; they do not understand its main idea, which is the idea of all men being merely the instruments of a higher power.
Those, for instance, who complain of the atrocities and treacheries of the judges and prophets of Israel have really got a notion in their head that has nothing to do with the subject. They are too Christian. They are reading back into the pre-Christian scriptures a purely Christian idea the idea of saints, the idea that the chief instruments of God are very particularly good men. This is a deeper, a more daring, and a more interesting idea than the old Jewish one. It is the idea that innocence has about it something terrible which in the long run makes and re-makes empires and the world. But the Old Testament idea was much more what may be called the common-sense idea, that strength is strength, that cunning is cunning, that worldly success is worldly success, and that Jehovah uses these things for His own ultimate purpose, just as He uses natural forces or physical elements. He uses the strength of a hero as He uses that of a Mammoth without any particular respect for the Mammoth. I cannot comprehend how it is that so many simple-minded sceptics have read such stories as the fraud of Jacob and supposed that the man who wrote it (whoever he was) did not know that Jacob was a sneak just as well as we do. The primeval human sense of honour does not change so much as that. But these simple-minded sceptics are, like the majority of modern sceptics, Christians. They fancy that the patriarchs must be meant for patterns; they fancy that Jacob was being set up as some kind of saint; and in that case I do not wonder that they are a little startled. That is not the atmosphere of the Old Testament at all. The heroes of the Old Testament are not the sons of God, but the slaves of God, gigantic and terrible slaves, like the genii, who were the slaves of Aladdin.
The central idea of the great part of the Old Testament may be called the idea of the loneliness of God. God is not the only chief character of the Old Testament; God is properly the only character in the Old Testament. Compared with His clearness of purpose all the other wills are heavy and automatic, like those of animals; compared with His actuality all the sons of flesh are shadows. Again and again the note is struck, “With whom hath he taken counsel?” “I have trodden the wine press alone, and of the peoples there was no man with me.” All the patriarchs and prophets are merely His tools or weapons; for the Lord is a man of war. He uses Joshua like an axe or Moses like a measuring-rod. For Him Samson is only a sword and Isaiah a trumpet. The saints of Christianity are supposed to be like God, to be, as it were, little statuettes of Him. The Old Testament hero is no more supposed to be of the same nature as God than a saw or a hammer is supposed to be of the same shape as the carpenter.
This is the main key and characteristic of the Hebrew scriptures as a whole. There are, indeed, in those scriptures innumerable instances of the sort of rugged humour, keen emotion, and powerful individuality which is never wanting in great primitive prose and poetry. Nevertheless the main characteristic remains; the sense not merely that God is stronger than man, not merely that God is more secret than man, but that He means more, that He knows better what He is doing, that compared with Him we have something of the vagueness, the unreason, and the vagrancy of the beasts that perish. “It is he that sitteth above the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers.” We might almost put it thus. The book is so intent upon asserting the personality of God that it almost asserts the impersonality of man. Unless this gigantic cosmic brain has conceived a thing, that thing is insecure and void; man has not enough tenacity to ensure its continuance. “Except the Lord build the house their labour is but lost that build it. Except the Lord keep the city the watchman watcheth but in vain.”
Everywhere else, then, the Old Testament positively rejoices in the obliteration of man in comparison with the divine purpose. The Book of Job stands definitely alone because the Book of Job definitely asks, “But what is the purpose of God? Is it worth the sacrifice even of our miserable humanity? Of course it is easy enough to wipe out our own paltry wills for the sake of a will that is grander and kinder? But is it grander and kinder? Let God use His tools; let God break His tools. But what is He doing and what are they being broken for?” It is because of this question that we have to attack as a philosophical riddle the riddle of the Book of Job.
The present importance of the Book of Job cannot be expressed adequately even by saying that it is the most interesting of ancient books. We may almost say of the Book of Job that it is the most interesting of modern books. In truth, of course, neither of the two phrases covers the matter, because fundamental human religion and fundamental human irreligion are both at once old and new; philosophy is either eternal or it is not philosophy. The modern habit of saying, “This is my opinion, but I may be wrong,” is entirely irrational. If I say that it may be wrong I say that is not my opinion. The modern habit of saying “Every man has a different philosophy; this is my philosophy and its suits me”; the habit of saying this is mere weak-mindedness. A cosmic philosophy is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic philosophy is constructed to fit a cosmos. A man can no more possess a private religion than he can possess a private sun and moon. The first of the intellectual beauties of the Book of Job is that it is all concerned with this desire to know the actuality; the desire toknow what is, and not merely what seems. If moderns were writing the book we should probably find that Job and his comforters got on quite well together by the simple operation of referring their differences to what is called the temperament, saying that the comforters were by nature “optimists” and Job by nature a “pessimist.” And they would be quite comfortable, as people can often be, for some time at least, by agreeing to say what is obviously untrue. For if the word “pessimist” means anything at all, then emphatically Job is not a pessimist. His case alone is sufficient to refute the modern absurdity of referring everything to physical temperament. Job does not in any sense look at life in a gloomy way. If wishing to be happy and being quite ready to be happy constitute an optimist, Job is an optimist. He is a perplexed optimist; he is an exasperated optimist; he is an outraged and insulted optimist. He wishes the universe to justify itself, not because he wishes it to be caught out, but because he really wishes it to be justified. He demands an explanation from God, but he does not do it at all in the spirit in which Hampden might demand an explanation from Charles I. He does it in the spirit in which a wife might demand an explanation from her husband whom she really respected. He remonstrates with his Maker because he is proud of his Maker. He even speaks of the Almighty as his enemy, but he never doubts, at the back of his mind, that his enemy has some kind of a case which he does not understand. In a fine and famous blasphemy he says, “Oh, that mine adversary had written a book!” It never really occurs to him that it could possibly be a bad book. He is anxious to be convinced, that is, he thinks that God could convince him. In short, we may say again that if the word optimist means any thing (which I doubt) Job is an optimist. He shakes the pillars of the world and strikes insanely at the heavens; he lashes the stars, but it is not to silence them; it is to make them speak. In the same way we may speak of the official optimists, the Comforters of Job. Again, if the word pessimist means anything (which I doubt) the comforters of Job may be called pessimists rather than optimists. All that they really believe is not that God is good but that God is so strong that it is much more judicious to call Him good. It would be the exaggeration of censure to call them evolutionists; but they have something of the vital error of the evolutionary optimist. They will keep on saying that everything in the universe fits into everything else: as if there were anything comforting about a number of nasty things all fitting into each other. We shall see later how God in the great climax of the poem turns this particular argument altogether upside down.
When, at the end of the poem, God enters (somewhat abruptly), is struck the sudden and splendid note which makes the thing as great as it is. All the human beings through the story, and Job especially, have been asking questions of God. A more trivial poet would have made God enter in some sense or other in order to answer the questions. By a touch truly to be called inspired, when God enters, it is to ask a number more questions on His own account. In this drama of scepticism God Himself takes up the role of sceptic. He does what all the great voices defending religion have always done. He does, for instance, what Socrates did. He turns rationalism against itself. He seems to say that if it comes to asking questions, He can ask some questions which will fling down and flatten out all conceivable human questioners. The poet by an exquisite intuition has made God ironically accept a kind of controversial equality with His accusers. He is willing to regard it as if it were a fair intellectual duel: “Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me.” The everlasting adopts an enormous and sardonic humility. He is quite willing to be prosecuted. He only asks for the right which every prosecuted person possesses; He asks to be allowed to cross-examine the witness for the prosecution. And He carries yet further the correctness of the legal parallel. For the first question, essentially speaking, which He asks of Job is the question that any criminal accused by Job would be most entitled to ask. He asks Job who he is. And Job, being a man of candid intellect, takes a little time to consider, and comes to the conclusion that he does not know.
This is the first great fact to notice about the speech of God, which is the culmination of the inquiry. It represents all human sceptics routed by a higher scepticism. It is this method, used sometimes by supreme and sometimes by mediocre minds, that has ever since been the logical weapon of the true mystic. Socrates, as I have said, used it when he showed that if you only allowed him enough sophistry he could destroy all the sophists. Jesus Christ used it when He reminded the Sadducees, who could not imagine the nature of marriage in heaven, that if it came to that they had not really imagined the nature of marriage at all. In the break up of Christian theology in the eighteenth century, Butler used it, when he pointed out that rationalistic arguments could be used as much against vague religion as against doctrinal religion, as much against rationalist ethics as against Christian ethics. It is the root and reason of the fact that men who have religious faith have also philosophic doubt, like Cardinal Newman, Mr. Balfour, or Mr. Mallock. These are the small streams of the delta; the Book of Job is the first great cataract that creates the river. In dealing with the arrogant asserter of doubt, it is not the right method to tell him to stop doubting. It is rather the right method to tell him to go on doubting, to doubt a little more, to doubt every day newer and wilder things in the universe, until at last, by some strange enlightenment, he may begin to doubt himself. This, I say, is the first fact touching the speech; the fine inspiration by which God comes in at the end, not to answer riddles, but to propound them. The other great fact which, taken together with this one, makes the whole work religious instead of merely philosophical, is that other great surprise which makes Job suddenly satisfied with the mere presentation of something impenetrable. Verbally speaking the enigmas of Jehovah seem darker and more desolate than the enigmas of Job; yet Job was comfortless before the speech of Jehovah and is comforted after it. He has been told nothing, but he feels the terrible and tingling atmosphere of something which is too good to be told. The refusal of God to explain His design is itself a burning hint of His design. The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man. Thirdly, of course, it is one of the splendid strokes that God rebukes alike the man who accused, and the men who defended Him; that He knocks down pessimists and optimists with the same hammer. And it is in connection with the mechanical and supercilious comforters of Job that there occurs the still deeper and finer inversion of which I have spoken. The mechanical optimist endeavours to justify the universe avowedly upon the ground that it is a rational and consecutive pattern. He points out that the fine thing about the world is that it can all be explained. That is the one point, if I may put it so, on which God in return, is explicit to the point of violence. God says, in effect, that if there is one fine thing about the world, as far as men are concerned, it is that it cannot be explained. He insists on the inexplicableness of everything; “Hath the rain a father? … Out of whose womb came the ice?” He goes farther, and insists on the positive and palpable unreason of things; “Hast thou sent the rain upon the desert where no man is, and upon the wilderness wherein there is no man?” God will make man see things, if it is only against the black background of nonentity. God will make Job see a startling universe if He can only do it by making Job see an idiotic universe. To startle man God becomes for an instant a blasphemer; one might almost say that God becomes for an instant an atheist. He unrolls before Job a long panorama of created things, the horse, the eagle, the raven, the wild ass, the peacock, the ostrich, the crocodile. He so describes each of them that it sounds like a monster walking in the sun. The whole is a sort of psalm or rhapsody of the sense of wonder. The maker of all things is astonished at the things He has Himself made. This we may call the third point. Job puts forward a note of interrogation; God answers with a note of exclamation. Instead of proving to Job that it is an explicable world, He insists that it is a much stranger world than Job ever thought it was. Lastly, the poet has achieved in this speech, with that unconscious artistic accuracy found in so many of the simpler epics, another and much more delicate thing. Without once relaxing the rigid impenetrability of Jehovah in His deliberate declaration, he has contrived to let fall here and therein the metaphors, in the parenthetical imagery, sudden and splendid suggestions that the secret of God is a bright and not a sad one semi-accidental suggestions, like light seen for an instant through the cracks of a closed door. It would be difficult to praise too highly, in a purely poetical sense, the instinctive exactitude and ease with which these more optimistic insinuations are let fall in other connections, as if the Almighty Himself were scarcely aware that He was letting them out. For instance, there is that famous passage where Jehovah with devastating sarcasm, asks Job where he was when the foundations of the world were laid, and then (as if merely fixing a date) mentions the time when the sons of God shouted for joy. One cannot help feeling, even upon this meagre information, that they must have had something to shout about. Or again, when God is speaking of snow and hail in the mere catalogue of the physical cosmos, He speaks of them as a treasury that He has laid up against the day of battle—a hint of some huge Armageddon in which evil shall be at last overthrown.
Nothing could be better, artistically speaking, than this optimism breaking through agnosticism like fiery gold round the edges of a black cloud. Those who look superficially at the barbaric origin of the epic may think it fanciful to read so much artistic significance into its casual similes or accidental phrases. But no one who is well acquainted with great examples of semi-barbaric poetry, as in the Song of Roland or the old ballads, will fall into this mistake. No one who knows what primitive poetry is, can fail to realize that while its conscious form is simple some of its finer effects are subtle. The Iliad contrives to express the idea that Hector and Sarpedon have a certain tone or tint of sad and chivalrous resignation, not bitter enough to be called pessimism and not jovial enough to be called optimism; Homer could never have said this in elaborate words. But somehow he contrives to say it in simple words. The Song of Roland contrives to express the idea that Christianity imposes upon its heroes a paradox: a paradox of great humility in the matter of their sins combined with great ferocity in the matter of their ideas. Of course the Song of Roland could not say this; but it conveys this. In the same way the Book of Job must be credited with many subtle effects which were in the author’s soul without being, perhaps, in the author’s mind. And of these by far the most important remains even yet to be stated. I do not know, and I doubt whether even scholars know, if the Book of Job had a great effect or had any effect upon the after development of Jewish thought. But if it did have any effect it may have saved them from an enormous collapse and decay. Here in this Book the question is really asked whether God invariably punishes vice with terrestrial punishment and rewards virtue with terrestrial prosperity. If the Jews had answered that question wrongly they might have lost all their after influence in human history. They might have sunk even down to the level of modern well educated society. For when once people have begun to believe that prosperity is the reward of virtue their next calamity is obvious. If prosperity is regarded as the reward of virtue it will be regarded as the symptom of virtue. Men will leave off the heavy task of making good men successful. They will adopt the easier task of making out successful men good. This, which has happened throughout modern commerce and journalism, is the ultimate Nemesis of the wicked optimism of the comforters of Job. If the Jews could be saved from it, the Book of Job saved them. The Book of Job is chiefly remarkable, as I have insisted throughout, for the fact that it does not end in a way that is conventionally satisfactory. Job is not told that his misfortunes were due to his sins or a part of any plan for his improvement.
But in the prologue we see Job tormented not because he was the worst of men, but because he was the best. It is the lesson of the whole work that man is most comforted by paradoxes. Here is the very darkest and strangest of the paradoxes; and it is by all human testimony the most reassuring. I need not suggest what a high and strange history awaited this paradox of the best man in the worst fortune. I need not say that in the freest and most philosophical sense there is one Old Testament figure who is truly a type; or say what is prefigured in the wounds of Job.
Introduction to THE BOOK OF JOB
“Man is most comforted by paradoxes.”
by G.K. Chesterton
THE Book of Job is among the other Old Testament Books both a philosophical riddle and a historical riddle. It is the philosophical riddle that concerns us in such an introduction as this; so we may dismiss first the few words of general explanation or warning which should be said about the historical aspect. Controversy has long raged about which parts of this epic belong to its original scheme and which are interpolations of considerably later date. The doctors disagree, as it is the business of doctors to do; but upon the whole the trend of investigation has always been in the direction of maintaining that the parts interpolated, if any, were the prose prologue and epilogue and possibly the speech of the young man who comes in with an apology at the end. I do not profess to be competent to decide such questions. But whatever decision the reader may come to concerning them, there is a general truth to be remembered in this connection. When you deal with any ancient artistic creation do not suppose that it is anything against it that it grew gradually. The Book of Job may have grown gradually just as Westminster Abbey grew gradually. But the people who made the old folk poetry, like the people who made Westminster Abbey, did not attach that importance to the actual date and the actual author, that importance which is entirely the creation of the almost insane individualism of modern times. We may put aside the case of Job, as one complicated with religious difficulties, and take any other, say the case of the Iliad. Many people have maintained the characteristic formula of modern scepticism, that Homer was not written by Homer, but by another person of the same name. Just in the same way many have maintained that Moses was not Moses but another person called Moses. But the thing really to be remembered in the matter of the Iliad is that if other people did interpolate the passages, the thing did not create the same sense of shock as would be created by such proceedings in these individualistic times. The creation of the tribal epic was to some extent regarded as a tribal work, like the building of the tribal temple. Believe then, if you will, that the prologue of Job and the epilogue and the speech of Elihu are things inserted after the original work was composed. But do not suppose that such insertions have that obvious and spurious character which would belong to any insertions in a modern individualistic book. Do not regard the insertions as you would regard a chapter in George Meredith which you afterwards found had not been written by George Meredith, or half a scene in Ibsen which you found had been cunningly sneaked in by Mr. William Archer. Remember that this old world which made these old poems like the Iliad and Job, always kept the tradition of what it was making. A man could almost leave a poem to his son to be finished as he would have finished it, just as a man could leave a field to his son, to be reaped as he would have reaped it. What is called Homeric unity may be a fact or not. The Iliad may have been written by one man. It may have been written by a hundred men. But let us remember that there was more unity in those times in a hundred men than there is unity now in one man. Then a city was like one man. Now one man is like a city in civil war.
Without going, therefore, into questions of unity as understood by the scholars, we may say of the scholarly riddle that the book has unity in the sense that all great traditional creations have unity; in the sense that Canterbury Cathedral has unity. And the same is broadly true of what I have called the philosophical riddle. There is a real sense in which the Book of Job stands apart from most of the books included in the canon of the Old Testament. But here again those are wrong who insist on the entire absence of unity.
Those are wrong who maintain that the Old Testament is a mere loose library; that it has no consistency or aim. Whether the result was achieved by some supernal spiritual truth, or by a steady national tradition, or merely by an ingenious selection in after times, the books of the Old Testament have a quite perceptible unity. To attempt to understand the Old Testament without realizing this main idea is as absurd as it would be to study one of Shakespeare’s plays without realizing that the author of them had any philosophical object at all. It is as if a man were to read the history of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, thinking all the time that he was reading what really purported to be the history of an old Danish pirate prince. Such a reader would not realize at all that Hamlet’s procrastination was on the part of the poet intentional. He would merely say, “How long Shakespeare’s hero does take to kill his enemy.” So speak the Bible smashers, who are unfortunately always at bottom Bible worshippers. They do not understand the special tone and intention of the Old Testament; they do not understand its main idea, which is the idea of all men being merely the instruments of a higher power.
Those, for instance, who complain of the atrocities and treacheries of the judges and prophets of Israel have really got a notion in their head that has nothing to do with the subject. They are too Christian. They are reading back into the pre-Christian scriptures a purely Christian idea the idea of saints, the idea that the chief instruments of God are very particularly good men. This is a deeper, a more daring, and a more interesting idea than the old Jewish one. It is the idea that innocence has about it something terrible which in the long run makes and re-makes empires and the world. But the Old Testament idea was much more what may be called the common-sense idea, that strength is strength, that cunning is cunning, that worldly success is worldly success, and that Jehovah uses these things for His own ultimate purpose, just as He uses natural forces or physical elements. He uses the strength of a hero as He uses that of a Mammoth without any particular respect for the Mammoth. I cannot comprehend how it is that so many simple-minded sceptics have read such stories as the fraud of Jacob and supposed that the man who wrote it (whoever he was) did not know that Jacob was a sneak just as well as we do. The primeval human sense of honour does not change so much as that. But these simple-minded sceptics are, like the majority of modern sceptics, Christians. They fancy that the patriarchs must be meant for patterns; they fancy that Jacob was being set up as some kind of saint; and in that case I do not wonder that they are a little startled. That is not the atmosphere of the Old Testament at all. The heroes of the Old Testament are not the sons of God, but the slaves of God, gigantic and terrible slaves, like the genii, who were the slaves of Aladdin.
Introduzione al LIBRO DI GIOBBE
«L’uomo trae il maggior conforto dai paradossi.»
di G.K. Chesterton
IL Libro di Giobbe è, fra gli altri Libri dell’Antico Testamento, tanto un enigma filosofico quanto un enigma storico. È l’enigma filosofico che ci interessa in un’introduzione come questa; possiamo perciò sbrigare dapprima le poche parole di spiegazione generale o di avvertimento che vanno dette a proposito dell’aspetto storico. A lungo si è accesa la controversia su quali parti di questa epopea appartengano al suo disegno originario e quali siano interpolazioni di data assai più tarda. I dotti dissentono, come è compito dei dotti fare; ma nel complesso l’orientamento della ricerca è sempre stato nel senso di sostenere che le parti interpolate, se ve ne sono, fossero il prologo e l’epilogo in prosa e forse il discorso del giovane che compare con una difesa alla fine. Non pretendo di essere competente a decidere simili questioni. Ma qualunque decisione il lettore possa prendere al riguardo, c’è una verità generale da ricordare a questo proposito. Quando si ha a che fare con una qualsiasi antica creazione artistica, non si supponga che sia un difetto il fatto che essa sia cresciuta a poco a poco. Il Libro di Giobbe può essere cresciuto gradualmente proprio come gradualmente crebbe l’Abbazia di Westminster. Ma coloro che crearono l’antica poesia popolare, come coloro che edificarono l’Abbazia di Westminster, non attribuivano alla data effettiva e all’autore effettivo quell’importanza che è interamente creazione dell’individualismo quasi folle dei tempi moderni. Possiamo mettere da parte il caso di Giobbe, in quanto complicato da difficoltà religiose, e prenderne un altro qualsiasi, poniamo il caso dell’Iliade. Molti hanno sostenuto la formula caratteristica dello scetticismo moderno, che Omero non fu scritto da Omero, ma da un’altra persona dello stesso nome. Proprio allo stesso modo molti hanno sostenuto che Mosè non fu Mosè, ma un’altra persona di nome Mosè. Ma ciò che davvero va ricordato riguardo all’Iliade è che, se altri interpolarono davvero i passi, la cosa non suscitava quel medesimo senso di scandalo che simili procedimenti susciterebbero in questi tempi individualistici. La creazione dell’epopea tribale era in certa misura considerata un’opera tribale, come la costruzione del tempio tribale. Credete pure, se volete, che il prologo di Giobbe e l’epilogo e il discorso di Elihu siano cose inserite dopo che l’opera originaria fu composta. Ma non supponete che tali inserzioni abbiano quel carattere evidente e spurio che apparterrebbe a qualsiasi inserzione in un moderno libro individualistico. Non considerate le inserzioni come considerereste un capitolo di George Meredith che poi scopriste non essere stato scritto da George Meredith, o metà di una scena di Ibsen che scopriste esservi stata astutamente intrufolata dal signor William Archer. Ricordate che questo vecchio mondo, che creò questi antichi poemi come l’Iliade e Giobbe, conservò sempre la tradizione di ciò che stava creando. Un uomo poteva quasi lasciare un poema al proprio figlio perché lo terminasse come egli l’avrebbe terminato, proprio come un uomo poteva lasciare un campo al proprio figlio perché lo mietesse come egli l’avrebbe mietuto. Quella che si chiama unità omerica può essere un fatto oppure no. L’Iliade può essere stata scritta da un solo uomo. Può essere stata scritta da cento uomini. Ma ricordiamo che in quei tempi c’era più unità in cento uomini di quanta unità ve ne sia oggi in un uomo solo. Allora una città era come un solo uomo. Oggi un solo uomo è come una città in guerra civile.
Senza addentrarci, dunque, nelle questioni di unità così come le intendono gli studiosi, possiamo dire dell’enigma erudito che il libro possiede unità nel senso in cui tutte le grandi creazioni tradizionali possiedono unità; nel senso in cui la Cattedrale di Canterbury possiede unità. E lo stesso vale in generale per ciò che ho chiamato l’enigma filosofico. C’è un senso reale in cui il Libro di Giobbe si distingue dalla maggior parte dei libri compresi nel canone dell’Antico Testamento. Ma anche qui hanno torto coloro che insistono sulla totale assenza di unità.
Hanno torto coloro che sostengono che l’Antico Testamento sia una mera biblioteca sconnessa; che non abbia coerenza né scopo. Sia che il risultato sia stato raggiunto per qualche superna verità spirituale, o per una salda tradizione nazionale, o semplicemente per un’ingegnosa selezione in tempi posteriori, i libri dell’Antico Testamento possiedono un’unità del tutto percepibile. Tentare di comprendere l’Antico Testamento senza rendersi conto di questa idea centrale è assurdo quanto lo sarebbe studiare uno dei drammi di Shakespeare senza rendersi conto che il loro autore avesse un qualsivoglia intento filosofico. È come se un uomo leggesse la storia di Amleto, Principe di Danimarca, credendo per tutto il tempo di leggere ciò che davvero pretendeva di essere la storia di un vecchio principe pirata danese. Un tale lettore non si accorgerebbe affatto che la procrastinazione di Amleto era, da parte del poeta, intenzionale. Direbbe soltanto: «Quanto ci mette l’eroe di Shakespeare a uccidere il suo nemico». Così parlano i demolitori della Bibbia, che purtroppo sono sempre, in fondo, adoratori della Bibbia. Non comprendono il tono e l’intenzione particolari dell’Antico Testamento; non ne comprendono l’idea centrale, che è l’idea che tutti gli uomini siano meri strumenti di una potenza superiore.
Coloro, per esempio, che si lagnano delle atrocità e dei tradimenti dei giudici e dei profeti d’Israele hanno in realtà in testa un’idea che nulla ha a che fare con l’argomento. Sono troppo cristiani. Rileggono nelle scritture precristiane un’idea puramente cristiana, l’idea dei santi, l’idea che i principali strumenti di Dio siano uomini particolarmente buoni. Questa è un’idea più profonda, più ardita e più interessante di quella antica ebraica. È l’idea che l’innocenza abbia in sé qualcosa di terribile che alla lunga fa e rifà gli imperi e il mondo. Ma l’idea dell’Antico Testamento era molto più quella che si può chiamare l’idea del buon senso: che la forza è forza, che l’astuzia è astuzia, che il successo mondano è successo mondano, e che Jehovah si serve di queste cose per il proprio fine ultimo, proprio come si serve delle forze naturali o degli elementi fisici. Egli si serve della forza di un eroe come si serve di quella di un Mammut, senza alcun particolare riguardo per il Mammut. Non riesco a comprendere come tanti scettici dalla mente semplice abbiano letto storie come la frode di Giacobbe e supposto che colui che la scrisse (chiunque egli fosse) non sapesse che Giacobbe era un furfante proprio così bene come lo sappiamo noi. Il primordiale senso umano dell’onore non cambia poi tanto. Ma questi scettici dalla mente semplice sono, come la maggioranza degli scettici moderni, cristiani. Immaginano che i patriarchi debbano essere intesi come modelli; immaginano che Giacobbe fosse presentato come una sorta di santo; e in tal caso non mi meraviglio che siano un po’ sconcertati. Non è affatto quella l’atmosfera dell’Antico Testamento. Gli eroi dell’Antico Testamento non sono i figli di Dio, ma gli schiavi di Dio, schiavi giganteschi e terribili, come i geni, che erano gli schiavi di Aladino.
The central idea of the great part of the Old Testament may be called the idea of the loneliness of God. God is not the only chief character of the Old Testament; God is properly the only character in the Old Testament. Compared with His clearness of purpose all the other wills are heavy and automatic, like those of animals; compared with His actuality all the sons of flesh are shadows. Again and again the note is struck, “With whom hath he taken counsel?” “I have trodden the wine press alone, and of the peoples there was no man with me.” All the patriarchs and prophets are merely His tools or weapons; for the Lord is a man of war. He uses Joshua like an axe or Moses like a measuring-rod. For Him Samson is only a sword and Isaiah a trumpet. The saints of Christianity are supposed to be like God, to be, as it were, little statuettes of Him. The Old Testament hero is no more supposed to be of the same nature as God than a saw or a hammer is supposed to be of the same shape as the carpenter.
This is the main key and characteristic of the Hebrew scriptures as a whole. There are, indeed, in those scriptures innumerable instances of the sort of rugged humour, keen emotion, and powerful individuality which is never wanting in great primitive prose and poetry. Nevertheless the main characteristic remains; the sense not merely that God is stronger than man, not merely that God is more secret than man, but that He means more, that He knows better what He is doing, that compared with Him we have something of the vagueness, the unreason, and the vagrancy of the beasts that perish. “It is he that sitteth above the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers.” We might almost put it thus. The book is so intent upon asserting the personality of God that it almost asserts the impersonality of man. Unless this gigantic cosmic brain has conceived a thing, that thing is insecure and void; man has not enough tenacity to ensure its continuance. “Except the Lord build the house their labour is but lost that build it. Except the Lord keep the city the watchman watcheth but in vain.”
Everywhere else, then, the Old Testament positively rejoices in the obliteration of man in comparison with the divine purpose. The Book of Job stands definitely alone because the Book of Job definitely asks, “But what is the purpose of God? Is it worth the sacrifice even of our miserable humanity? Of course it is easy enough to wipe out our own paltry wills for the sake of a will that is grander and kinder? But is it grander and kinder? Let God use His tools; let God break His tools. But what is He doing and what are they being broken for?” It is because of this question that we have to attack as a philosophical riddle the riddle of the Book of Job.
The present importance of the Book of Job cannot be expressed adequately even by saying that it is the most interesting of ancient books. We may almost say of the Book of Job that it is the most interesting of modern books. In truth, of course, neither of the two phrases covers the matter, because fundamental human religion and fundamental human irreligion are both at once old and new; philosophy is either eternal or it is not philosophy. The modern habit of saying, “This is my opinion, but I may be wrong,” is entirely irrational. If I say that it may be wrong I say that is not my opinion. The modern habit of saying “Every man has a different philosophy; this is my philosophy and its suits me”; the habit of saying this is mere weak-mindedness. A cosmic philosophy is not constructed to fit a man; a cosmic philosophy is constructed to fit a cosmos. A man can no more possess a private religion than he can possess a private sun and moon. The first of the intellectual beauties of the Book of Job is that it is all concerned with this desire to know the actuality; the desire toknow what is, and not merely what seems. If moderns were writing the book we should probably find that Job and his comforters got on quite well together by the simple operation of referring their differences to what is called the temperament, saying that the comforters were by nature “optimists” and Job by nature a “pessimist.” And they would be quite comfortable, as people can often be, for some time at least, by agreeing to say what is obviously untrue. For if the word “pessimist” means anything at all, then emphatically Job is not a pessimist. His case alone is sufficient to refute the modern absurdity of referring everything to physical temperament. Job does not in any sense look at life in a gloomy way. If wishing to be happy and being quite ready to be happy constitute an optimist, Job is an optimist. He is a perplexed optimist; he is an exasperated optimist; he is an outraged and insulted optimist. He wishes the universe to justify itself, not because he wishes it to be caught out, but because he really wishes it to be justified. He demands an explanation from God, but he does not do it at all in the spirit in which Hampden might demand an explanation from Charles I. He does it in the spirit in which a wife might demand an explanation from her husband whom she really respected. He remonstrates with his Maker because he is proud of his Maker. He even speaks of the Almighty as his enemy, but he never doubts, at the back of his mind, that his enemy has some kind of a case which he does not understand. In a fine and famous blasphemy he says, “Oh, that mine adversary had written a book!” It never really occurs to him that it could possibly be a bad book. He is anxious to be convinced, that is, he thinks that God could convince him. In short, we may say again that if the word optimist means any thing (which I doubt) Job is an optimist. He shakes the pillars of the world and strikes insanely at the heavens; he lashes the stars, but it is not to silence them; it is to make them speak. In the same way we may speak of the official optimists, the Comforters of Job. Again, if the word pessimist means anything (which I doubt) the comforters of Job may be called pessimists rather than optimists. All that they really believe is not that God is good but that God is so strong that it is much more judicious to call Him good. It would be the exaggeration of censure to call them evolutionists; but they have something of the vital error of the evolutionary optimist. They will keep on saying that everything in the universe fits into everything else: as if there were anything comforting about a number of nasty things all fitting into each other. We shall see later how God in the great climax of the poem turns this particular argument altogether upside down.
L’idea centrale di gran parte dell’Antico Testamento può dirsi l’idea della solitudine di Dio. Dio non è il solo personaggio principale dell’Antico Testamento; Dio è propriamente l’unico personaggio dell’Antico Testamento. In confronto alla chiarezza del suo disegno tutte le altre volontà sono greve e automatiche, come quelle degli animali; in confronto alla sua realtà tutti i figli della carne sono ombre. Ancora e ancora risuona la nota: «Con chi si è egli consigliato?». «Ho pigiato il tino da solo, e dei popoli non v’era uomo con me». Tutti i patriarchi e i profeti sono soltanto suoi strumenti o armi; poiché il Signore è un uomo di guerra. Egli usa Giosuè come una scure o Mosè come un’asta di misura. Per lui Sansone non è che una spada e Isaia una tromba. Si suppone che i santi del Cristianesimo siano simili a Dio, che siano, per così dire, piccole statuette di lui. Non si suppone che l’eroe dell’Antico Testamento sia della stessa natura di Dio, più di quanto si supponga che una sega o un martello siano della stessa forma del falegname.
Questa è la chiave e la caratteristica principale delle scritture ebraiche nel loro insieme. Vi sono, in verità, in quelle scritture innumerevoli esempi di quella sorta di aspro umorismo, di viva emozione e di potente individualità che non manca mai nella grande prosa e poesia primitiva. Nondimeno la caratteristica principale rimane; il senso non solo che Dio è più forte dell’uomo, non solo che Dio è più segreto dell’uomo, ma che egli significa di più, che sa meglio ciò che fa, che in confronto a lui noi abbiamo qualcosa della vaghezza, dell’irragionevolezza e del vagabondaggio delle bestie che periscono. «È lui che siede sopra la terra, e i suoi abitanti sono come cavallette». Potremmo quasi dirla così. Il libro è talmente intento ad affermare la personalità di Dio che quasi afferma l’impersonalità dell’uomo. Se questo gigantesco cervello cosmico non ha concepito una cosa, quella cosa è precaria e vana; l’uomo non ha tenacia sufficiente a garantirne la durata. «Se il Signore non costruisce la casa, invano faticano quelli che la costruiscono. Se il Signore non custodisce la città, invano veglia la sentinella».
Ovunque altrove, dunque, l’Antico Testamento addirittura si rallegra dell’annullamento dell’uomo in confronto al disegno divino. Il Libro di Giobbe se ne sta decisamente solo, perché il Libro di Giobbe chiede decisamente: «Ma qual è il disegno di Dio? Vale forse il sacrificio anche della nostra misera umanità? Certo è abbastanza facile cancellare le nostre meschine volontà in nome di una volontà più grande e più benigna? Ma è davvero più grande e più benigna? Che Dio usi i suoi strumenti; che Dio spezzi i suoi strumenti. Ma che cosa sta facendo, e per che cosa vengono spezzati?». È a causa di questa domanda che dobbiamo affrontare come un enigma filosofico l’enigma del Libro di Giobbe.
L’importanza attuale del Libro di Giobbe non può essere espressa adeguatamente nemmeno dicendo che è il più interessante dei libri antichi. Del Libro di Giobbe possiamo quasi dire che è il più interessante dei libri moderni. In verità, naturalmente, nessuna delle due frasi coglie la questione, perché la religione umana fondamentale e l’irreligione umana fondamentale sono a un tempo antiche e nuove; la filosofia o è eterna o non è filosofia. L’abitudine moderna di dire «Questa è la mia opinione, ma potrei sbagliarmi» è del tutto irrazionale. Se dico che potrebbe essere sbagliata, dico che non è la mia opinione. L’abitudine moderna di dire «Ogni uomo ha una filosofia diversa; questa è la mia filosofia e mi si addice»; l’abitudine di dire questo è pura debolezza mentale. Una filosofia cosmica non è costruita per adattarsi a un uomo; una filosofia cosmica è costruita per adattarsi a un cosmo. Un uomo non può possedere una religione privata più di quanto possa possedere un sole e una luna privati. La prima delle bellezze intellettuali del Libro di Giobbe è che è tutto incentrato su questo desiderio di conoscere la realtà; il desiderio di conoscere ciò che è, e non semplicemente ciò che appare. Se il libro lo scrivessero i moderni, probabilmente scopriremmo che Giobbe e i suoi consolatori andavano d’accordo assai bene tramite la semplice operazione di ricondurre le loro divergenze a ciò che si chiama temperamento, dicendo che i consolatori erano per natura «ottimisti» e Giobbe per natura un «pessimista». E si troverebbero abbastanza a proprio agio, come spesso capita alla gente, almeno per un certo tempo, mettendosi d’accordo nel dire ciò che è palesemente falso. Poiché, se la parola «pessimista» significa qualcosa, allora Giobbe non è affatto un pessimista. Il suo caso da solo basta a confutare l’assurdità moderna di ricondurre ogni cosa al temperamento fisico. Giobbe non guarda in alcun modo alla vita con occhio cupo. Se desiderare di essere felici ed essere del tutto pronti a esserlo fanno un ottimista, Giobbe è un ottimista. È un ottimista perplesso; è un ottimista esasperato; è un ottimista oltraggiato e insultato. Desidera che l’universo si giustifichi, non perché desideri coglierlo in fallo, ma perché desidera davvero che sia giustificato. Esige una spiegazione da Dio, ma non lo fa affatto nello spirito in cui Hampden avrebbe potuto esigere una spiegazione da Carlo I. Lo fa nello spirito in cui una moglie potrebbe esigere una spiegazione dal marito che davvero rispetta. Rimostra col suo Creatore perché è fiero del suo Creatore. Parla persino dell’Onnipotente come del suo nemico, ma non dubita mai, in fondo alla mente, che il suo nemico abbia qualche ragione che egli non comprende. In una bella e celebre bestemmia egli dice: «Oh, se il mio avversario avesse scritto un libro!». Non gli viene mai davvero in mente che possa trattarsi di un cattivo libro. È ansioso di essere convinto, ossia pensa che Dio potrebbe convincerlo. In breve, possiamo dire di nuovo che, se la parola ottimista significa qualcosa (di cui dubito), Giobbe è un ottimista. Egli scuote i pilastri del mondo e colpisce follemente i cieli; sferza le stelle, ma non per farle tacere; è per farle parlare. Allo stesso modo possiamo parlare degli ottimisti ufficiali, i Consolatori di Giobbe. Di nuovo, se la parola pessimista significa qualcosa (di cui dubito), i consolatori di Giobbe possono dirsi pessimisti anziché ottimisti. Tutto ciò che davvero credono non è che Dio sia buono, ma che Dio sia così forte che è assai più prudente chiamarlo buono. Sarebbe un’esagerazione biasimarli chiamandoli evoluzionisti; ma hanno qualcosa dell’errore vitale dell’ottimista evoluzionista. Continuano a dire che ogni cosa nell’universo s’incastra con ogni altra: come se ci fosse qualcosa di consolante nel fatto che una quantità di cose sgradevoli s’incastrino tutte l’una nell’altra. Vedremo più avanti come Dio, nel grande culmine del poema, capovolga del tutto questo particolare argomento.
When, at the end of the poem, God enters (somewhat abruptly), is struck the sudden and splendid note which makes the thing as great as it is. All the human beings through the story, and Job especially, have been asking questions of God. A more trivial poet would have made God enter in some sense or other in order to answer the questions. By a touch truly to be called inspired, when God enters, it is to ask a number more questions on His own account. In this drama of scepticism God Himself takes up the role of sceptic. He does what all the great voices defending religion have always done. He does, for instance, what Socrates did. He turns rationalism against itself. He seems to say that if it comes to asking questions, He can ask some questions which will fling down and flatten out all conceivable human questioners. The poet by an exquisite intuition has made God ironically accept a kind of controversial equality with His accusers. He is willing to regard it as if it were a fair intellectual duel: “Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me.” The everlasting adopts an enormous and sardonic humility. He is quite willing to be prosecuted. He only asks for the right which every prosecuted person possesses; He asks to be allowed to cross-examine the witness for the prosecution. And He carries yet further the correctness of the legal parallel. For the first question, essentially speaking, which He asks of Job is the question that any criminal accused by Job would be most entitled to ask. He asks Job who he is. And Job, being a man of candid intellect, takes a little time to consider, and comes to the conclusion that he does not know.
This is the first great fact to notice about the speech of God, which is the culmination of the inquiry. It represents all human sceptics routed by a higher scepticism. It is this method, used sometimes by supreme and sometimes by mediocre minds, that has ever since been the logical weapon of the true mystic. Socrates, as I have said, used it when he showed that if you only allowed him enough sophistry he could destroy all the sophists. Jesus Christ used it when He reminded the Sadducees, who could not imagine the nature of marriage in heaven, that if it came to that they had not really imagined the nature of marriage at all. In the break up of Christian theology in the eighteenth century, Butler used it, when he pointed out that rationalistic arguments could be used as much against vague religion as against doctrinal religion, as much against rationalist ethics as against Christian ethics. It is the root and reason of the fact that men who have religious faith have also philosophic doubt, like Cardinal Newman, Mr. Balfour, or Mr. Mallock. These are the small streams of the delta; the Book of Job is the first great cataract that creates the river. In dealing with the arrogant asserter of doubt, it is not the right method to tell him to stop doubting. It is rather the right method to tell him to go on doubting, to doubt a little more, to doubt every day newer and wilder things in the universe, until at last, by some strange enlightenment, he may begin to doubt himself. This, I say, is the first fact touching the speech; the fine inspiration by which God comes in at the end, not to answer riddles, but to propound them. The other great fact which, taken together with this one, makes the whole work religious instead of merely philosophical, is that other great surprise which makes Job suddenly satisfied with the mere presentation of something impenetrable. Verbally speaking the enigmas of Jehovah seem darker and more desolate than the enigmas of Job; yet Job was comfortless before the speech of Jehovah and is comforted after it. He has been told nothing, but he feels the terrible and tingling atmosphere of something which is too good to be told. The refusal of God to explain His design is itself a burning hint of His design. The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man. Thirdly, of course, it is one of the splendid strokes that God rebukes alike the man who accused, and the men who defended Him; that He knocks down pessimists and optimists with the same hammer. And it is in connection with the mechanical and supercilious comforters of Job that there occurs the still deeper and finer inversion of which I have spoken. The mechanical optimist endeavours to justify the universe avowedly upon the ground that it is a rational and consecutive pattern. He points out that the fine thing about the world is that it can all be explained. That is the one point, if I may put it so, on which God in return, is explicit to the point of violence. God says, in effect, that if there is one fine thing about the world, as far as men are concerned, it is that it cannot be explained. He insists on the inexplicableness of everything; “Hath the rain a father? … Out of whose womb came the ice?” He goes farther, and insists on the positive and palpable unreason of things; “Hast thou sent the rain upon the desert where no man is, and upon the wilderness wherein there is no man?” God will make man see things, if it is only against the black background of nonentity. God will make Job see a startling universe if He can only do it by making Job see an idiotic universe. To startle man God becomes for an instant a blasphemer; one might almost say that God becomes for an instant an atheist. He unrolls before Job a long panorama of created things, the horse, the eagle, the raven, the wild ass, the peacock, the ostrich, the crocodile. He so describes each of them that it sounds like a monster walking in the sun. The whole is a sort of psalm or rhapsody of the sense of wonder. The maker of all things is astonished at the things He has Himself made. This we may call the third point. Job puts forward a note of interrogation; God answers with a note of exclamation. Instead of proving to Job that it is an explicable world, He insists that it is a much stranger world than Job ever thought it was. Lastly, the poet has achieved in this speech, with that unconscious artistic accuracy found in so many of the simpler epics, another and much more delicate thing. Without once relaxing the rigid impenetrability of Jehovah in His deliberate declaration, he has contrived to let fall here and therein the metaphors, in the parenthetical imagery, sudden and splendid suggestions that the secret of God is a bright and not a sad one semi-accidental suggestions, like light seen for an instant through the cracks of a closed door. It would be difficult to praise too highly, in a purely poetical sense, the instinctive exactitude and ease with which these more optimistic insinuations are let fall in other connections, as if the Almighty Himself were scarcely aware that He was letting them out. For instance, there is that famous passage where Jehovah with devastating sarcasm, asks Job where he was when the foundations of the world were laid, and then (as if merely fixing a date) mentions the time when the sons of God shouted for joy. One cannot help feeling, even upon this meagre information, that they must have had something to shout about. Or again, when God is speaking of snow and hail in the mere catalogue of the physical cosmos, He speaks of them as a treasury that He has laid up against the day of battle—a hint of some huge Armageddon in which evil shall be at last overthrown.
Quando, alla fine del poema, Dio entra (in modo alquanto brusco), risuona la nota improvvisa e splendida che rende l’opera grande quanto essa è. Tutti gli esseri umani lungo il racconto, e Giobbe in particolare, hanno rivolto domande a Dio. Un poeta più banale avrebbe fatto entrare Dio in un modo o nell’altro per rispondere alle domande. Con un tocco che merita davvero il nome di ispirato, quando Dio entra, è per porre a sua volta un buon numero di altre domande. In questo dramma dello scetticismo Dio stesso assume il ruolo dello scettico. Fa ciò che tutte le grandi voci in difesa della religione hanno sempre fatto. Fa, per esempio, ciò che fece Socrate. Rivolge il razionalismo contro se stesso. Sembra dire che, se si tratta di porre domande, Egli può porne alcune capaci di abbattere e schiacciare qualsiasi umano interrogante concepibile. Il poeta, con un’intuizione squisita, ha fatto sì che Dio accettasse ironicamente una sorta di parità polemica con i suoi accusatori. Egli è disposto a considerarla come se fosse un leale duello intellettuale: «Cingi ora i tuoi lombi come un uomo; poiché io ti interrogherò, e tu rispondimi». L’eterno adotta un’enorme e sardonica umiltà. È del tutto disposto a essere messo sotto accusa. Chiede soltanto il diritto che ogni imputato possiede; chiede che gli sia consentito di controinterrogare il testimone dell’accusa. E spinge ancora più oltre l’esattezza del parallelo giuridico. Poiché la prima domanda, essenzialmente parlando, che Egli pone a Giobbe è la domanda che qualsiasi criminale accusato da Giobbe avrebbe pieno diritto di porre. Chiede a Giobbe chi egli sia. E Giobbe, essendo uomo di candido intelletto, si prende un po’ di tempo per riflettere, e giunge alla conclusione di non saperlo.
Questo è il primo grande fatto da notare a proposito del discorso di Dio, che è il culmine dell’indagine. Esso rappresenta tutti gli scettici umani messi in rotta da uno scetticismo più alto. È questo il metodo che, usato ora da menti sommie ora da menti mediocri, è stato da allora l’arma logica del vero mistico. Socrate, come ho detto, lo usò quando dimostrò che, purché gli si concedesse abbastanza sofistica, egli avrebbe potuto distruggere tutti i sofisti. Gesù Cristo lo usò quando ricordò ai Sadducei, che non riuscivano a immaginare la natura del matrimonio in cielo, che, a ben vedere, essi non avevano affatto immaginato la natura del matrimonio. Nella disgregazione della teologia cristiana nel Settecento, Butler lo usò, quando fece notare che gli argomenti razionalistici potevano essere impiegati tanto contro la religione vaga quanto contro la religione dottrinale, tanto contro l’etica razionalista quanto contro l’etica cristiana. È la radice e la ragione del fatto che uomini dotati di fede religiosa nutrono anche il dubbio filosofico, come il cardinale Newman, il signor Balfour o il signor Mallock. Questi sono i piccoli rami del delta; il Libro di Giobbe è la prima grande cateratta che dà origine al fiume. Nel trattare con l’arrogante assertore del dubbio, non è il metodo giusto dirgli di smettere di dubitare. È piuttosto il metodo giusto dirgli di continuare a dubitare, di dubitare un poco di più, di dubitare ogni giorno di cose sempre più nuove e sfrenate nell’universo, finché, alla fine, per qualche strana illuminazione, egli non cominci a dubitare di se stesso. Questo, dico, è il primo fatto riguardo al discorso; la bella ispirazione per cui Dio entra alla fine, non per risolvere enigmi, ma per proporli. L’altro grande fatto che, unito a questo, rende l’intera opera religiosa anziché meramente filosofica, è quell’altra grande sorpresa che rende Giobbe improvvisamente appagato dalla semplice presenza di qualcosa d’impenetrabile. Verbalmente parlando, gli enigmi di Jahvè sembrano più oscuri e desolati di quelli di Giobbe; eppure Giobbe era senza conforto prima del discorso di Jahvè ed è consolato dopo di esso. Non gli è stato detto nulla, ma egli avverte l’atmosfera terribile e fremente di qualcosa di troppo bello per essere detto. Il rifiuto di Dio di spiegare il proprio disegno è esso stesso un ardente indizio del suo disegno. Gli enigmi di Dio appagano più delle soluzioni dell’uomo. In terzo luogo, naturalmente, è uno dei colpi splendidi che Dio rimproveri allo stesso modo l’uomo che l’accusava e gli uomini che lo difendevano; che egli abbatta pessimisti e ottimisti con lo stesso martello. Ed è a proposito dei meccanici e altezzosi consolatori di Giobbe che si verifica l’inversione ancora più profonda e sottile di cui ho parlato. L’ottimista meccanico si sforza di giustificare l’universo dichiaratamente sulla base del fatto che esso è un disegno razionale e coerente. Fa notare che il bello del mondo è che tutto vi si può spiegare. Questo è l’unico punto, se posso dire così, su cui Dio, di rimando, è esplicito fino alla violenza. Dio dice, in sostanza, che se c’è una bella cosa nel mondo, per quanto riguarda gli uomini, è che esso non si può spiegare. Egli insiste sull’inspiegabilità di ogni cosa; «Ha forse la pioggia un padre?… Da quale grembo è uscito il ghiaccio?». Va oltre, e insiste sull’assurdità positiva e palpabile delle cose; «Hai forse mandato la pioggia sul deserto dove non v’è uomo, e sulla landa in cui non abita alcun uomo?». Dio farà vedere all’uomo le cose, foss’anche solo contro il nero sfondo del nulla. Dio farà vedere a Giobbe un universo sorprendente, quand’anche potesse farlo solo mostrandogli un universo idiota. Per sbalordire l’uomo Dio diventa per un istante un bestemmiatore; si potrebbe quasi dire che Dio diventa per un istante un ateo. Egli srotola davanti a Giobbe un lungo panorama di cose create, il cavallo, l’aquila, il corvo, l’asino selvatico, il pavone, lo struzzo, il coccodrillo. Descrive ciascuna di esse in modo tale che sembra un mostro che cammina al sole. Il tutto è una sorta di salmo o rapsodia del senso della meraviglia. Il creatore di tutte le cose è stupito delle cose che egli stesso ha fatto. Questo possiamo chiamarlo il terzo punto. Giobbe avanza un punto interrogativo; Dio risponde con un punto esclamativo. Invece di dimostrare a Giobbe che il mondo è spiegabile, egli insiste che è un mondo assai più strano di quanto Giobbe avesse mai pensato. Infine, in questo discorso il poeta ha realizzato, con quella inconscia precisione artistica che si trova in tante epopee più semplici, un’altra cosa assai più delicata. Senza mai allentare la rigida impenetrabilità di Jahvè nella sua deliberata dichiarazione, egli è riuscito a lasciar cadere qua e là, nelle metafore, nelle immagini parentetiche, improvvise e splendide suggestioni che il segreto di Dio sia luminoso e non triste, suggestioni quasi accidentali, come luce intravista per un istante attraverso le fessure di una porta chiusa. Sarebbe difficile lodare mai abbastanza, in senso puramente poetico, l’istintiva esattezza e disinvoltura con cui queste insinuazioni più ottimistiche vengono lasciate cadere in altri contesti, come se l’Onnipotente stesso fosse appena consapevole di lasciarle sfuggire. Per esempio, c’è quel celebre passo in cui Jahvè, con devastante sarcasmo, chiede a Giobbe dove fosse quando furono poste le fondamenta del mondo, e poi (come fissando semplicemente una data) menziona il tempo in cui i figli di Dio gridavano di gioia. Non si può fare a meno di sentire, anche da questa scarna informazione, che dovevano avere ben qualcosa per cui gridare. Oppure, ancora, quando Dio parla della neve e della grandine nel semplice catalogo del cosmo fisico, ne parla come di un tesoro che egli ha accumulato in vista del giorno della battaglia, un accenno a qualche immane Armageddon in cui il male sarà finalmente rovesciato.
Nothing could be better, artistically speaking, than this optimism breaking through agnosticism like fiery gold round the edges of a black cloud. Those who look superficially at the barbaric origin of the epic may think it fanciful to read so much artistic significance into its casual similes or accidental phrases. But no one who is well acquainted with great examples of semi-barbaric poetry, as in the Song of Roland or the old ballads, will fall into this mistake. No one who knows what primitive poetry is, can fail to realize that while its conscious form is simple some of its finer effects are subtle. The Iliad contrives to express the idea that Hector and Sarpedon have a certain tone or tint of sad and chivalrous resignation, not bitter enough to be called pessimism and not jovial enough to be called optimism; Homer could never have said this in elaborate words. But somehow he contrives to say it in simple words. The Song of Roland contrives to express the idea that Christianity imposes upon its heroes a paradox: a paradox of great humility in the matter of their sins combined with great ferocity in the matter of their ideas. Of course the Song of Roland could not say this; but it conveys this. In the same way the Book of Job must be credited with many subtle effects which were in the author’s soul without being, perhaps, in the author’s mind. And of these by far the most important remains even yet to be stated. I do not know, and I doubt whether even scholars know, if the Book of Job had a great effect or had any effect upon the after development of Jewish thought. But if it did have any effect it may have saved them from an enormous collapse and decay. Here in this Book the question is really asked whether God invariably punishes vice with terrestrial punishment and rewards virtue with terrestrial prosperity. If the Jews had answered that question wrongly they might have lost all their after influence in human history. They might have sunk even down to the level of modern well educated society. For when once people have begun to believe that prosperity is the reward of virtue their next calamity is obvious. If prosperity is regarded as the reward of virtue it will be regarded as the symptom of virtue. Men will leave off the heavy task of making good men successful. They will adopt the easier task of making out successful men good. This, which has happened throughout modern commerce and journalism, is the ultimate Nemesis of the wicked optimism of the comforters of Job. If the Jews could be saved from it, the Book of Job saved them. The Book of Job is chiefly remarkable, as I have insisted throughout, for the fact that it does not end in a way that is conventionally satisfactory. Job is not told that his misfortunes were due to his sins or a part of any plan for his improvement.
But in the prologue we see Job tormented not because he was the worst of men, but because he was the best. It is the lesson of the whole work that man is most comforted by paradoxes. Here is the very darkest and strangest of the paradoxes; and it is by all human testimony the most reassuring. I need not suggest what a high and strange history awaited this paradox of the best man in the worst fortune. I need not say that in the freest and most philosophical sense there is one Old Testament figure who is truly a type; or say what is prefigured in the wounds of Job.
Nulla potrebbe essere migliore, artisticamente parlando, di questo ottimismo che irrompe attraverso l’agnosticismo come oro fiammeggiante lungo i bordi di una nuvola nera. Chi guarda superficialmente all’origine barbarica dell’epopea potrà giudicare fantasioso leggere tanto significato artistico nelle sue similitudini occasionali o nelle sue frasi accidentali. Ma nessuno che conosca bene i grandi esempi della poesia semibarbara, come nella Canzone di Rolando o nelle antiche ballate, cadrà in questo errore. Nessuno che sappia che cosa sia la poesia primitiva può non rendersi conto che, mentre la sua forma cosciente è semplice, alcuni dei suoi effetti più fini sono sottili. L’Iliade riesce a esprimere l’idea che Ettore e Sarpedonte abbiano un certo tono o una certa tinta di triste e cavalleresca rassegnazione, non abbastanza amara da chiamarsi pessimismo né abbastanza gioviale da chiamarsi ottimismo; Omero non avrebbe mai potuto dire questo con parole elaborate. Ma in qualche modo riesce a dirlo con parole semplici. La Canzone di Rolando riesce a esprimere l’idea che il Cristianesimo imponga ai suoi eroi un paradosso: un paradosso di grande umiltà nella materia dei loro peccati unito a grande ferocia nella materia delle loro idee. Certo la Canzone di Rolando non potrebbe dire questo; ma lo trasmette. Allo stesso modo il Libro di Giobbe va accreditato di molti sottili effetti che erano nell’anima dell’autore senza essere, forse, nella sua mente. E di questi il più importante di gran lunga rimane ancora da enunciare. Non so, e dubito che perfino gli studiosi lo sappiano, se il Libro di Giobbe abbia avuto un grande effetto, o alcun effetto, sull’ulteriore sviluppo del pensiero ebraico. Ma se pure ebbe qualche effetto, può averli salvati da un enorme crollo e da una decadenza. Qui in questo Libro la domanda è davvero posta: se Dio punisca invariabilmente il vizio con castighi terreni e ricompensi la virtù con la prosperità terrena. Se gli Ebrei avessero risposto a quella domanda in modo errato, avrebbero potuto perdere tutta la loro successiva influenza nella storia umana. Avrebbero potuto sprofondare persino al livello della moderna società ben educata. Poiché, una volta che la gente ha cominciato a credere che la prosperità sia la ricompensa della virtù, la calamità successiva è ovvia. Se la prosperità è considerata la ricompensa della virtù, sarà considerata il sintomo della virtù. Gli uomini abbandoneranno il gravoso compito di rendere prosperi gli uomini buoni. Adotteranno il compito più agevole di far passare per buoni gli uomini prosperi. Questo, che è accaduto in tutto il commercio e il giornalismo moderni, è l’ultima Nemesi del malvagio ottimismo dei consolatori di Giobbe. Se gli Ebrei poterono esserne salvati, li salvò il Libro di Giobbe. Il Libro di Giobbe è soprattutto notevole, come ho insistito da capo a fondo, per il fatto che non si conclude in un modo convenzionalmente soddisfacente. A Giobbe non viene detto che le sue sventure furono dovute ai suoi peccati o parte di un qualche piano per il suo miglioramento.
Ma nel prologo vediamo Giobbe tormentato non perché fosse il peggiore degli uomini, ma perché era il migliore. È la lezione di tutta l’opera che l’uomo è massimamente consolato dai paradossi. Ecco il più oscuro e il più strano dei paradossi; ed è, per ogni umana testimonianza, il più rassicurante. Non ho bisogno di suggerire quale alta e strana storia attendesse questo paradosso dell’uomo migliore nella peggiore sorte. Non ho bisogno di dire che, nel senso più libero e più filosofico, vi è una figura dell’Antico Testamento che è veramente un tipo; né di dire ciò che è prefigurato nelle piaghe di Giobbe.