One way to describe the book of Job is as an extended argument between the book of Proverbs and the book of Ecclesiastes. Proverbs generalizes about the way the world works: fools are like this, wise people are like this, you do this and you’ll get blessed; you do that and you’ll get in big trouble. Ecclesiastes says that the world doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes you do what’s right, and you still get in trouble. Sometimes that other fellow does what is wrong, and he keeps getting blessed anyway. That’s in a nutshell a small version of those books, and much of the arguments in Job are concerned with these seemingly contradictory visions of life.

The three friends of Job seem to be reading their cues with mathematical precision from the book of Proverbs. They have logical proofs and diagrams, and their conclusions are something reminiscent of the disciples’ question to Jesus. “So who sinned, this man or his parents?” In this tidy-minded world there are only two options, and we might as well get down to brass tacks. However, Job sees through the veneer of piety in the so-called friends, sees their evil intentions, how they twist the principles of Scripture to their purposes, and at the same time he insists that the world is more complicated and challenging than they are willing to admit. In one sense, we can see Job as Proverbs and Ecclesiastes arrayed for battle…

…in the end we must insist that Proverbs and Ecclesiastes are actually very good friends. These books complement and explain each other. If Proverbs generally explores wisdom as a skill, Ecclesiastes explores wisdom as a very unique sort of skill. Wisdom is a skill, but it is both like and unlike many other skills… If the skills needed to live and build in God’s world are crucially centered on people, an entirely different sort of skill is needed than a simple, straightforward following of directions. People are messy, complicated, confusing, and frustrating. They have cultural differences, personality quirks, gifts, weaknesses, health problems, sin, and they frequently fail and let us down… In many ways it’s far easier to build a house out of bricks, wood, or stone, than to build a house out of people.

Available here.

In Deep Comedy, Peter Leithart compares the Bible’s essentially comic and hopeful view of history with the Greco-Roman view, which is essentially and irredeemably tragic.

In Paul’s estimation, anyone who thought that the new life through Jesus pertained to some realm outside this history was simply an unbeliever. For the gospel says otherwise.

Certainly, discerning this new life at work in the world is an act of faith, but faith is not irrational or a leap into the dark against evidence. If the gospel is true, if new life was unleashed in the world on Easter morning, then we would expect there to be some signs that this is the case. And, as the church fathers were at pains to point out, we do.

Athanasius noted all the pagans turning from their idols, all the warring tribes become brothers, all the swords being beaten to plowshares, and used these things to expound the effects of the Incarnation. Paul, however, means exactly what he says, the coming of Jesus, and particularly the resurrection of Jesus, means that death and sin are themselves doomed, and life is already on the march to conquer death. Darkness is being dispelled because Light has come and the darkness could neither comprehend nor overcome it (John 1:5).

This account of the comic shape of biblical history and the gospel narrative has been challenged by a number of theologians and biblical scholars in recent years. Biblical scholars have attempted to show that the Bible’s stories fit into the generic categories of ancient drama or poetry, and have tried to show in particular that certain biblical narratives can be classified as tragedy. In my view, these are not successful efforts either in general or in detailed treatment of texts. In her Tragedy and Biblical Narrative, for instance, Cheryl Exum emphasizes the struggle against fate/gods/God as a key element of tragedy:

Tragic heroes have the hubris—sometimes in authentic greatness, sometimes in delusion—to defy the universe, not in a stoic defiance but in an insistence on their moral integrity (justified or not). Because they refuse, they will be broken … It is not that there is “no way out whatsoever,” as Jasper asserts, but that there is no way out without denying oneself. Saul refuses to acquiesce, he will hold on to the kingship at whatever the cost, rejecting the easy way out. There is a “way out” and Saul’s son Jonathan, by yielding his right to the throne to David, shows what it is, but at the cost of his identity, which as we shall see, becomes submerged into David’s.

It is true that Saul is tragic in the sense that Exum uses the term, but it is also clear that his tragedy is the result of his own intransigence. The story clearly endorses precisely the “easy way out”—the way of Jonathan, the way of self-denial—which is, of course, the very difficult way out, since it means effacing (but also eventually finding) one’s own identity before Yahweh and before the “rival,” David. Jonathan, characterized by self-denial and even “discipleship,” is manifestly the hero of the story.  One can say that the Bible presents Saul as “tragic,” but only if we are willing to give up calling him, in any sense, a “hero.” Again, as in Jeremiah and the gospels, Saul’s story leaves one with an intense sense of loss precisely because there was a way out, precisely because life was a real option.

Further, Exum emphasizes that the tragic hero struggles particularly to understand the fate that brings tragic consequences. Oedipus is a titanic figure because he relentlessly pursues the truth of his situation. Again, the Bible has a “tragic dimension” in the sense that it irecognizes the reality of this kind of struggle, yet the Bible does not reckon this as a heroic struggle—a struggle to be commended and supported. The titanic desire and need to know is the desire to be as God, to know as God, the lust to have the complete and finished story as God does.

Put differently, it is a refusal of faith, a refusal to trust that God, however random and wild He may appear and be, will do right. It is a refusal to learn the wisdom of Ecclesiastes. From a biblical perspective, the tragic hero is simply a character who refuses to trust that God knows what He’s on about with His universe, and will accept his “fate” only if he can see all its causes and ramifications. The tragic protagonist longs to live by sight. Job, faced with “tragic” suffering, demands to know the cause. Yahweh appears and answers no questions; the revelation of Yahweh in a whirlwind is sufficient to stop Job’s mouth. The tragic pursuit of knowledge is a refusal of Solomonic wisdom as expressed in Ecclesiastes, the wisdom that rejoices in limitation, rejoices precisely because this vaporous world is not under our control.

Peter J. Leithart, Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, & Hope In Western Literature, pp. 26-28.

Credo ut intelligam.

“Screw the truth into men’s minds.” – Richard Baxter

Doug Wilson, (in an interview a while back concerning Collision, I think), spoke about “copiousness.” It is the Christian’s practice of picking up striking thoughts and illustrations from reading, and from life, for future use. He advocates keeping a Commonplace book to jot things down.

“Keep a commonplace book. Write down any notable phrases that occur to you, or that you have come across. If it is one that you have found in another writer, and it is striking, then quote it, as the fellow said, or modify it to make it yours. If Chandler said that a guy had a cleft chin you could hide a marble in, that should come in useful sometime. If Wodehouse said somebody had an accent you could turn handsprings on, then he might have been talking about Jennifer Nettles of Sugarland. Tinker with stuff. Get your fingerprints on it.” [1]

He describes an incident that makes this book (or blog or mental practice) sound more like keeping caches of ammunition near at hand.

“When you collect phrases, points, metaphors, and whatnot in this way, you are, as Cicero used to put it, loaded for bear. By linking “loaded for bear” up with Cicero, incidentally, I am providing another example of the previous point. But this last point is an important part of what the ancient rhetoricians called copiousness.

One time G.K. Chesterton, the rolypologist, was patted on the stomach by his adversary, George Bernard Shaw, a beanpole of an infidel, and was asked what they were going to name the baby. Chesterton replied immediately that if it was a boy, John, if a girl, then Mary. But if it turned out to only be gas, they were going to name it George Bernard Shaw. Now we hear that story and marvel at his amazing quickness. And it may well have been such, a prodigy of the moment. But I also wouldn’t be a bit surprised to find out that Chesterton had that particular pistol loaded beforehand, and concealed on his person. When copiousness is active, you not only know how to respond in the moment, but you can also see the moment coming, and prepare for it beforehand.

Your commonplace book is just a staging area. You are collecting things in order use them, to get them into your mind and heart, and thence into your writing.” [2]

The writer’s life is a scavenger’s life. This should go also for pastors, teachers, dads and mums, and in fact any Christian: all our ministry is didactic and apologetic, discipleship and witness.

But then, isn’t this how God has always worked? What amazes me is our failure to recognize this practice in the wisdom literature and the prophets. The guns were loaded, the pumps were primed, well before they fired and gushed. All the writers had been young Timothys waiting for Paul to join the dots with the bloody stylus of the Spirit.

Jordan says Ecclesiastes is a meditation on the Feast of Tabernacles, ruminating on texts from Deuteronomy. [3] We won’t believe that without a footnote. How obtuse.

What about Isaiah’s reference to the wolf and lamb lying down together? The Restoration Covenant was a new ark, and the Gentiles submitted to Mordecai. [4] Peter’s trance predicted exactly the same thing: a peaceful, floating Covenant zoo resting on the mountain of God. And the exiles crossing the river dryshod? It was also a new conquest of the Land, as we see in Esther. That’s all Isaiah means, and the structure of the passage proves it.

Or Hebrews’ reference to Jeremiah’s New Covenant with Israel and Judah? Fulfilled in the Restoration. [5] It is simply a literary allusion to a similar process in rejoining the two sticks of Jew and Gentile through another fiery furnace.

Biblical copiousness is one thing we love about Spurgeon. The Bible was his muse. The biblical texts are high walls but they are not lonely, cold, disjointed bricks. Spurgeon preached from the fiery turrets of inspired literature with apparent ease. Yet uninspired, banal-retentive modern boffins do dog paddle in a moat of footnotes and call it scholarship. They classify everything with abstract nouns, squabble and nitpick over their own definitions and disappear in an inky cloud of superior irrelevance. To these illiterati, the “apostolic hermeneutic” is a marvel and a mystery, an impenetrable keep, when it is simply biblical copiousness. Is it any wonder they can make no sense of the details of the Revelation? Its cinematic Covenantal ironies are lost on them. Jesus and His prophets are far cleverer — and funnier — than Chesterton and Wodehouse. But we don’t get the jokes. [6]

Jesus created a world where everything is related Covenantally; every physical object is also mirror and metaphor and lyric and rant; every Covenant-historical event is a self-referential innovation. He is the Master of Allusion, and we, as we read the Bible, are to be His commonplace books.

“…always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear.”
(1 Peter 3:15)

_____________________________________
[1] Doug Wilson, Seven Basic & Brief Pointers for Writers.
[2] Doug Wilson, Uncommon Commonplaces.
[3] See How To Read The Bible.
[4] See The Wolf and the Lamb.
[5] See Jeremiah Was A Bullfrog.
[6] See Hermeneutics of Humour and Menu for the Dirty Birds.

James Jordan was asked whereabouts in the Bible is the best place to start reading it:

We should start in Genesis. What we should really do is pass a law that for five years you may only read Genesis through Joshua over and over again. So you get the foundation… When the Psalms and Ecclesiastes were written, they were written for people who were steeped in the earlier Scriptures. Ecclesiastes is not some mysterious book of philosophy. Ecclesiastes is all about the Feast of Tabernacles. The Feast of Tabernacles is literally the Feast of “Clouds.” That’s what sukkoth means. You get branches down out of a tree to make a little lean-to. Those branches up on that tree are a cloud. When you make a tree-house down here out of those branches, you’ve got your own little cloud. After a week it disintegrates. But God in His cloud, in His Tabernacle, goes on and on.

Solomon doesn’t say “vanity of vanities.” He says, “Mist, mist, all is mist.” We’re talking about clouds. All the things you make, they disintegrate. At the end of Ecclesiastes, your body is a cloud and it disintegrates. Who can shepherd the wind when everything is mist? God can shepherd the wind. He says, even though everything is disintegrating all the time, there is one thing that God has given you as a gift, and that is to eat, drink and be merry. That’s a quotation from Deuteronomy 14 describing the Feast of Tabernacles. You bring wine and strong drink and make merry before the Lord. The whole book of Ecclesiastes is written to people who do the Feast of Tabernacles. It reflects on it. But people forget that, so they read Ecclesiastes as if it were some piece of philosophy. It’s not. It’s about worship and life.

So, as you read the Bible, it’s helpful to remember where you are on the map. If you read Samuel or Kings, you must remember they were written to people who had Genesis to Joshua. That’s what’s in their brain.

Adapted from Reading the Bible (Again) For The First Time, Lecture 6, “The Three Falls of Mankind.”
On the significance of the Feast of Tabernacles, see A Place Called Clouds. For Paul’s overlooked allusion to it in Romans 11, see Seven Thousand Who Have Not Bowed to Baal – 2.

“I began writing this book some ten years ago, although my interest in Hebrew literary structure goes back a decade before that. My fascination with the subject was kindled when I began teaching Old Testament courses in seminary. At that time I was struck by the apparent lack of order within many of the biblical books. Jeremiah seemed hopelessly confused in its organisation; so did Isaiah and Hosea and most of the prophets. Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes appeared to be in almost complete disarray, and even the more orderly historical books, such as Joshua and Kings, showed signs of strangely careless organisation. Why did the biblical authors write like this? I would never write a book, an article, or even a private letter with such carelessness of arrangement.

I was intrigued by the possibility that the Hebrew authors might have organised their compositions according to literary conventions that were different from ours. I began to discover, over a period of years, that several structuring patterns rarely used by us were remarkably common in the books of the Hebrew Bible, particularly chiasmus (symmetry), parallelism, and sevenfold patterns. I was increasingly struck by how often these patterns had been utilised to arrange biblical books…

It was my mother who gave me a love for literature. She read to my brother Stephen and me regularly, from as early as I can remember. I still have many fond memories of those wondrous bedtime stories, whose structures — like the Bible — were designed for the ear, not the eye.”

David A. Dorsey, The Literary Structure of the Old Testament, p.9-10 (Preface).