update from sparkleup

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

@@ -48,7 +48,32 @@ Weinberger continues to be relevant: ``{[}\ldots{]} translation is more than a l
 
 This is where we leave off, and then this youngster, this whippersnapper, this upstart Elihu picks up.
 
-``I am young in years, and you are aged. Therefore I was awed and feared to speak my mind with you,'' (Job 32:6, Alter) he begins, and we are off to the races, or at least some brash exhortations to wisdom. Jobs friends may have left off on their attempts to convince him of some perhaps-guilt, but Elihu does not: ``And I attended to you, and, look, Job has no refuter, none to answer his talk among you.'' (Job 32:12, Alter) Were it not for the (admittedly quite beautiful) poetic form of Elihu's speeches, he would be beyond tiresome. He goes on for more than a chapter simply talking about how he is going to answer Job before he actually does so. He is going to talk. He is going to get there eventually. He will speak.\footnote{The NRSV has the unique wording ``See, I open my mouth; the tongue in my mouth speaks.'' (Job 33:2, NRSV) In a Post \emph{Alien} world, this brings to mind some smaller mouth\footnotemark rebuking him.}\footnotetext{Or, to look at it more seriously, some shallower voice. Perhaps that internal Elihu we all have within us, doing its best to convince us that we have, at some point, lacked the wisdom required to have kept us from our current predicament.} Verse after verse of promises.
+``I am young in years, and you are aged. Therefore I was awed and feared to speak my mind with you,'' (Job 32:6, Alter) he begins, and we are off to the races, or at least some brash exhortations to wisdom. Jobs friends may have left off on their attempts to convince him of some perhaps-guilt, but Elihu does not: ``And I attended to you, and, look, Job has no refuter, none to answer his talk among you.'' (Job 32:12, Alter) Were it not for the (admittedly quite beautiful) poetic form of Elihu's speeches, he would be beyond tiresome. He goes on for more than a chapter simply talking about how he is going to answer Job before he actually does so. He is going to talk. He is going to get there eventually. He will speak.\footnote{The NRSV has the unique wording ``See, I open my mouth; the tongue in my mouth speaks.'' (Job 33:2, NRSV) In a post-\emph{Alien} world, this brings to mind some smaller mouth\footnotemark rebuking him.}\footnotetext{Or, to look at it more seriously, some shallower voice. Perhaps that internal Elihu we all have within us, doing its best to convince us that we have, at some point, lacked the wisdom required to have kept us from our current predicament.} Verse after verse of promises.
+
+Tiresome as he is, and despite the non-sequitur nature of his speeches, his language remains beautiful, and he does at points reinforce the point mentioned in the epigraph: Job questions God as to why it is that his world has become so miserable, and God cannot but reply with an exclamation that this world is far stranger, far worse and far better, than any man, no matter how righteous could hope to understand.
+
+\begin{verse}
+Why do you contend with Him, \\
+\vin if He answers not all of man's words? \\
+For God speaks in one way \\
+\vin or in two, and no one perceives Him: 
+In a dream, a night's vision, \\
+\vin when slumber falls upon men, \\
+\vin \vin in sleep upon their couch \\
+Then He lays bare the ear of men, \\
+\vin and terrifies them with reproof, \\
+to make humankind swerve from its acts
+
+(Job 33:13--17, Alter)
+\end{verse}
+
+This unspoken and unspeakable, unknown and unknowable language is the only way we can possibly move within the world under the guidance of God.
+
+Here, however, he falls back into the common theme of Job's reprovers, that he surely must have done something wrong that he feels the need to call for an advocate before God.\footnote{An ally and not an adversary, perhaps.} ``For a man's acts He pays him back, and by a person's path He provides him,'' Elihu reasons.
+
+Strangely, Elihu, for all his talk on wisdom, seems to lack the wisdom required to understand the first part of his proposition, that the workings of God are so far beyond human understanding that we cannot know them well enough to call Him to account for his actions. He immediately falls back on the comforting assertion that cause must precede effect. Of \emph{course} Job is experiencing such hardships! If he is experiencing such effects, then there must be a cause, and that cause must be the most rational one: an offense against God.
+
+\emph{We} know that it's much more complex. 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))