Here's a funny little quandry. When I started writing about Job on Substack, I let these fall by the side. And so I cut myself off from my best material. Granted, I'm not always saying much on these posts beyond some kind of raw emotional response.
Still, I need to write these because writing the Substack weekly article is hard enough without these first drafts. In fact, my last Substack directly took from the Tumblr with that anecdote about my feet and the bogus faith healing from that Lutheran church.
Something I'm also noticing when it comes to these chapters. Job won't stop talking about sea monsters. And in the case of Bildad, he keeps mentioning the Rahab when it comes to Bildad. He does this on Substack this week and he's doing it on Tumblr.
Only some Bible translations are going with pride.
But what makes this one different than Job 9 was that in that one Job seems to be agreeing with Bildad when he starts out talking about the majesty and the greatness of G-d. In this case, Job is going "are you fucking stupid? Do you really think that G-d is some vulgar pagan god that is always at your beck and call"
Something that is churning in my brain when talking about these chapters is how much monotheism looked like atheism throughout ancient times. Only there's a difficult paradox in this monotheism/atheism. We still want G-d to give a shit about us. When we talk about G-d, one G-d, only one G-d and not all these other gods walking around getting all those sacrifices and incense offerings, we are talking about a G-d that may be way too busy making a star blow up to care about who wins the Superbowl.
So here's the chapter 26 in a nutshell
You would actually speak with any authority on something you don't know anything about???
G-d is a great and terrible G-d and here's a lot of monsters and symbols that he fucked with because G-d is not some pagan bullshit god that is going to get killed by the serpent that circles the world and creates earthquakes. G-d is going to fuck up that serpent.
G-d also stretches out Zaphon, makes the shades tremble, exposes Sheol and Abbadon, darkens the throne and makes all the pillars of heaven tremble. He struck down Rahab and these are just glimpses of his rule.
I have no fucking idea who any of these creatures are. I imagine if I was a lifelong subscriber to Biblical Archaeology and an authority on every crazy Mesopotamian deity and monster, I would still be a little confused.
Damn Bronze Age collapse.
But yeah, Job is just warming up. He goes on. There are 42 chapters in this book and there are only three speakers left - Job, Elihu and G-d. So much for the narrator switch between chapters, with the sometimes doubling of chapters.
