Canter Bridge

When the biblical book of Job storms to its table-turning conclusion, it has no remaining curiosity for the battered psyche of its central figure. All that we know is that things are now better than they were even in the almost paradisical state in which we met Job.

And the LORD restored the fortunes of Job when he had prayed for his friends; and the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before. Then there came to him all his brothers and sisters and all who had known him before, and they ate bread with him in his house; they showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the LORD had brought upon him; and each of them gave him a piece of money and a gold ring. The LORD blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning; and he had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand donkeys. He also had seven sons and three daughters. He named the first Jemimah, the second Keziah, and the third Keren-happuch. In all the land there were no women so beautiful as Job’s daughters; and their father gave them an inheritance along with their brothers. After this Job lived one hundred and forty years, and saw his children, and his children’s children, four generations.

Even if the book does not wonder, we may. How did Job look back upon his ordeal? What regrets dogged him, what fears of a reprise? How stable did his restored world appear to him to be? Whom to trust, this beleaguered man who had been both abandoned and pursued by those who ought to have sat with him and wept? What longings for his first wife might have stalked his sleepless nights? What aching after an argument with this or that daughter might have wandered in the direction of the lost daughters and sons or of a favorite among them?

We do not know. The book does not interest itself in such psychological drama once its denouement has had its moment. YHWH has been proved strong, if not quite sympathetic. Lifted from the rubble of condemning words, Job has prayed for his friends who—as YHWH articulates things—’did not speak rightly about me as my servant Job has done’.

His boils cured, his ability to procreate and so assure a future for his name restored to its erstwhile vigor, his table once again groaning under the elbows of happy guests, Job is a new man. Better even than the old.

Perhaps the story’s ending implies that Job has had his explanation of things. Perhaps the heavenly challenge that the accuser brought before YHWH has opened its script to the man who would suffer for it. Probably, in the end, things are part and parcel as contented as they appear.

Still, one wonders. Job’s memories—swept from the agenda by a happy ending—retain their awful appeal. Could the unthinkable recur?

The book’s answer to such unauthorized curiosity is not sympathetic, indeed it comprises as sure a seal as can be applied within its frame of reference to anyone’s life: Job died old, full of days. Perhaps there were no scars. Or, if such gave itching testimony to the boils that had covered this man’s skin and soul, perhaps YHWH had dealt with those too.

We cannot know.