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PDF FormatBut what, exactly is this light? What is the nature of this ideal and eternal existence? With these questions, we reach the heart of our ancient wisdom text, for the biblical concept of light, particularly in the Book of Job, proves to be the physical incarnation of Wisdom—what Wisdom is made of, and how knowledge is seen. The creation of light and the erection of Heaven imposed order on the primeval, dark chaos; light, as an element, is therefore perceived as the very substance of form, design, and consciousness. It established the luminous rule of Wisdom over God’s created world.
We first learn this gnosis, or insight, through the book’s identification of Wisdom and Heaven. In the pivotal Wisdom Poem in chapter 28, Job moves decisively from the sphere of morality and justice to that of metaphysics and cosmic learning. It is here that Job asks: “Where is Wisdom found?” and then rules out, methodically and twice in a row, any alternative place for its dwelling other than Heaven—crossing out, one by one, both the earthen domain and the underworld.101 Indeed, in its final verse, Job’s Wisdom Poem artfully re-invents our hero through the doctrine of Wisdom as Job deliberately flips the negative attributes that defined him initially, namely fearing the Lord and avoiding evil, into their positive counterparts: “Fear of the Lord is a wisdom!” he now asserts, “and avoiding evil is an understanding!”102 Soon thereafter Job’s faculty of tam is also transformed by a literary nuance as he becomes: “Perfect (tamim) in knowledge with thee.”103 (Emphases mine.)
God, in chapter 38, echoes Job’s question, “Where is Wisdom found?” when he asks: “Where is the way to the dwelling of light?”104 In this manner he again identifies Wisdom with light. God then repeats the message that Wisdom is embossed in Heaven, when he asks rhetorically: “Who jeweled the sky with Wisdom and lay the orchestra of Heaven?”105
Many readers, scholarly and casual alike, often ask how God’s final “nature poems” relate to Job’s moral query. They assert that: “The Lord refers to absolutely nothing about himself except his power…. Might makes right, he thunders to Job.”106 Such interpretations are deaf to the transcendent poetry of God’s words. The content of the first revelation does not reflect upon God’s omnipotence, but rather upon the mechanics of Wisdom at work in God’s creation. The prophecy of chapter 38 is prefaced by an explanation of Heaven’s dominion over nature: “Do you know the ordinances of the Heavens? Can you establish their rule on the Earth?… Who placed Wisdom in the kidneys (i.e., instincts), or gave perception to the mind?”107 The rest of the poem is no less than a lesson in the effluence of cognition.
From Job 38:39 onward God urges Job to consider the cunning hunting skills of lions and ravens; the maternal sense of mountain goats; the instinctive learning methods of baby animals; and how a wild ass knows how to find food in barren salt deserts.108 Similarly, God expounds on the wise design of domestic animals, such as the tamed ox that works the field, as well as the birds that provide man with eggs, and the useful valor of the cavalry steed upon which man rides.109 God concludes his first nature poem by marveling at the wisdom embedded in birds of prey, especially their acute cognitive perception:
Is it by your Wisdom that the hawk soars and spreads his wings toward the south?… On the rock he dwells and makes his home in the fastness of the rocky crag. Thence he spies out the prey; his eyes behold it afar off….110
Obviously, the repeated talk of Wisdom throughout the entire revelation is deliberate and decisive, as God speaks of Wisdom as a character, a created power that is immured in nature’s very fiber. This is what it meant for God to have created light.111 In his own nature poem about the vocation of Wisdom, King Solomon writes: “The Lord made me as the beginning of his way…. When there was no Abyss, I was brought forth…. Before the mountains were settled….When he established Heaven, then I was there!”112 If we take Solomon’s lesson to heart we can appreciate how God’s first question to Job: “Where were you when I founded the Earth?”113 was not, in fact, rhetorical. What is the essential you that he is referring to however, that is the challenge that he poses to Job.114
Now we can return and understand the nature of the eternal existence of the righteous. Man’s “lamp” is of the substance of Wisdom; all that is cognizant in man, all that he learns and grasps, is a manifestation of that which is heavenly about him—his share of light. Indeed, just as angels are seen by Job as brightly lit stars, it is easy to imagine human souls in the same form.115 Thus, Elifaz—Job’s first (albeit inadequate) teacher—equates the extinguishing of a sinner’s lamp with ignorance: “Their inner excellence goes away; they die without Wisdom.”116 The same Wisdom that sinners reject in life, as they “rebel against the light,”117 is the very flame that is denied to them eternally: “they shall die without knowledge.”118 Since man’s Wisdom in itself—his ideal being in knowledge—is the only thing that can exist forever as a self-aware entity, there can be no worse fate. By understanding the nature of Wisdom in the cosmic order Job gains this very Wisdom, qualifying him as a sage, or hacham.119
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God’s address to Job not only opens him up to the majesty of Wisdom, but also marks his final and most significant transformation, as he becomes a prophet. Indeed, Jewish sources highlight Job’s prophetic status. One midrash places Job together with Abraham, Ezekiel, and the coming Messiah as the four men who reached Godon their own, through reasoning and contemplation. Another midrash counts seven gentile prophets, five of whom appear in the Book of Job.120 Even Job’s extreme suffering puts him in line with all the biblical prophets, practically marking him as one of them.121 Tellingly, the editors of the Hebrew Bible placed the Book of Job in the order of the canon so that its heroes are the last to be addressed by God. The grand finale of prophecy is thus a teaching about prophecy. And it is not a coincidence that the only time Maimonides ever claims to be conveying a prophetic vision of his own, it is in regard to his analysis of Job.122 This claim, in itself, is his deepest hint at the essence of this biblical work. At its heart, the Book of Job is nothing less than a “how to” manual for attaining such prophecy.
Job’s existential and spiritual achievement of revelation transforms him from a man who sees a chasm between himself and God into a man who experiences the divine firsthand. This ultimate accomplishment is intertwined with his becoming moral and wise. In fact, just as deep morality relates to Wisdom, true Wisdom is the vehicle of a mind-expanding revelation; as Maimonides puts it, one who is “perfect as human intellect can be… will undoubtedly perceive nothing but things very extraordinary and divine, and see nothing but God and his angels.”123
Fitting for a work whose purpose is to describe the attainment of prophecy, revelations are woven like a golden thread throughout the book, leading to the multiple accounts of divination by Job and Elifaz at its conclusion. Already in the first appeal to Job by anyone, Elifaz describes a vision:
In thoughts midst the visions of the night
When deep sleep falls on men,
Fear came upon me, and trembling…
Then I heard a voice….124
Elifaz conveys yet another vision later on. Zofar too wishes prophecy on Job,125 and Elihu reiterates how night visions are a normative way in which God answers man:
For God speaks in one way, and in another man does not perceive it.
In a dream, in a vision of the night,
When deep sleep falls upon men while they slumber on their beds,
Then he opens the ears of men and brands them with warnings.126
Remarkably, these nighttime revelations, described by Elihu, have always been imploring Job’s notice. At the very beginning of his first reply to Eliphaz, Job says: “The arrows of the Almighty are within me… the nightmares of God array themselves against me.”127 Semantically, these nightmares (biutim) are visionary dreams, as Job himself demonstrates: “You scared me with dreams and nightmared me with visions.”128 By his own account, we learn that prophecy was constantly knocking on Job’s door. There is further proof of this: Even before the term “storm” (se’ara) dramatizes God’s grand revelations at the end of the book, this singular word appears when Job first complains about his visionary nightmares: “[God] crushes me with a storm” [Emphasis mine].129 The potential for prophecy, then, was always there; Job was simply unable to accept it.
