III

  If you bring forth what is inside
  you, what you bring forth will
  save you.
    THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS

When Job discovers his voice after the long silence, he doesn’t curse God explicitly, as the Accuser said he would. But he comes as close as possible. He curses his own life, and in doing so curses all of life — an ultimate blasphemy for those who believe that life is an ultimate good. (We may recall another great sufferer, Oedipus at Colonus, whose chorus offers something very similar to Job’s death-wish as its wisdom: It is best never to have been born; next best is to leave the womb and die immediately.) In his curse, Job allies himself with the primal forces of darkness and chaos, and with the archetypal symbol of evil, the Serpent Leviathan, whom we will meet again at the poem’s conclusion. It is a ferocious hymn of de-creation. He must hurtle to the bottom of his despair before he can begin to stand up for himself.

At the end of the prologue, when they are introduced to us, the three friends who come to comfort Job are entirely correct in their behavior. How much delicacy and compassion we can feel in the author’s brief account: “Then they sat with him for seven days and seven nights. And no one said a word, for they saw how great his suffering was.” But they can’t remain silent once Job becomes active in his anguish. Theirs is the harshest of comforting. They don’t understand that Job’s curses and blasphemies are really cries of pain. They can’t understand, because they won’t risk giving up their moral certainties. Their rigid orthodoxy surrounds an interior of mush, like the exoskeleton of an insect. Unconsciously they know that they have no experience of God. Hence their acute discomfort and rage.

The friends and Job all agree that God is wise and can see into the hearts of men. He is not the kind of character who would allow a good man to be tortured because of a bet; nor is he a well-intentioned bungler. Given this premise, they construct opposite syllogisms. The friends: Suffering comes from God. God is just. Therefore Job is guilty. Job: Suffering comes from God. I am innocent. Therefore God is unjust. A third possibility is not even thinkable: Suffering comes from God. God is just. Job is innocent. (No therefore.)