update from sparkleup

writing/3/unknown-things/iyov/3-interpolations.tex

@@ -76,7 +76,18 @@ Strangely, Elihu, for all his talk on wisdom, seems to lack the wisdom required
 \emph{We} know that it's much more complex.\footnote{As it always is.\footnotemark}\footnotetext{Say, for instance, that you create an avatar for yourself falling outside traditional gender roles. Context being what it is, your own Elihu might assume, ``Ah, this is a kink thing! This is sexualization of identity!''
 
 But there you are in the background, trying to come to terms with your gender and its misalignment with your body. You have this context right here! You have this way to explore what it might be to interact with the world in some form other than your own. You have your complex reasons for constructing for yourself a new front-stage persona, and all your back-stage reasons are inaccessible to your Elihu.} We have the benefit of the framing device to keep in mind. Elihu speaks of wisdom yet lacks the knowledge. He can claim to have one and yet still not know that he lacks the other.
-((On Elihu))
 
+More, however, Elihu seems quite upset with the ways in which he perceives Job questioning authority. This comes up several times during his speeches:
 
-All stories are perforce interpolations within real events, this essay began, and that holds true here.
+\begin{itemize}
+\item For Job has said, ``I'm in the right, and God has diverted my case. He lies about my case, I'm sore-wounded from His shaft for no crime.'' (Job 34:5-6, Alter)
+\item Should He by your dictates mete out justice, for it is you who reject or choose, not I? And what do you know? --- speak. (Job 34:33, Alter)
+\item Is this what you count as justice, you say ``I am more right than God''? (Job 35:2, Alter)
+\item Who has assigned Him His way, and who has said, ``You have done wrong''?
+\end{itemize}
+
+And on and on.
+
+That transcendental estimation of God peeks through here and there (``Why, exalted is God, and we know not, the humber of His years is unfathomed,'' Elihu admits. (Job 36:26, Alter)), but he's constantly interrupting himself with exhortations to Job that, because he cannot possibly understand God, he should stop trying.
+
+Elihu's speech ends quite abruptly, but such is the nature of interpolations. We are left discomfited by the disjoint narrative, gritting our teeth and tensing before our books as Elihu leaves off only for God to speak. If we are to take the NOAB editor's suggestion and move Elihu back to before the hymn to wisdom, to make that hymn his rather than Job's, then this greatly smooths things out, but again, as they say, this is the book we are left with now, and that discomfort, that tension is now part of the canon. Without it, this book would not be Job. All stories are perforce interpolations within real events, this essay began, and we cannot change the canon of Job any more easily than we can change the canon of our lives.