CHAPTER XIV

THE DISASSOCIATION OF KNOWLEDGE IN THE WISDOM

LITERATURE

Jeremiah tells us that the law comes from the priest, the word from the prophet, and counsel from the wise. The emphasis on righteousness rather than on ritual in the eighth century prophets contained implicitly the recognition of the individual as a moral agent, but this view was not explicitly stated until the period of Jeremiah and Ezekiel. The Wisdom Literature, most of which is post-exilic, seems to have in mind primarily the experience of the individual; it is cosmopolitan, humanistic; it appeals to the facts of universal experience. The priest with his ritual dealt with the people as a whole; the prophet through his oracular word preached to his ideal community; the wise took counsel with individuals (Jeremiah 18:18). We shall see that the loss of the state was to Jeremiah the occasion of discovering the morality of the inner life, but the Wisdom writings constitute the field of Old Testament literature in which this inner world of reflective experience receives its clearest expression.

The problem of the book of Job was the result of a conflict between the new consciousness of individual responsibility set forth in Deuteronomy, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and the old ethnic conception of responsi

bility. The drama of Job is a portrayal of the conflict which arose in the Hebrew mind when the doctrine of Ezekiel that Yahweh treated each individual as a distinct moral agent came into opposition to the ethnic tradition which regarded every individual as organically related to the family, the community, and the nation. Under the old régime of "status" in which the individual was undifferentiated from his family and nation, suffering furnished no special problem. It was universally accepted as right that one individual or one generation should suffer for the deeds of another. In pre-exilic Hebrew morality the nation was the moral unit and the idea that suffering was the result of sin furnished no particular problem. But the new emphasis on the heart brought about a change in the notion of responsibility. Job approached the problem of suffering from the point of view of Ezekiel who taught that each individual was held accountable only for his own deeds, good or evil. The traditional view is excellently expressed in the Ninety-first Psalm. Thousands shall fall but no harm shall come to the righteous. Now it was possible to maintain this doctrine as long as the nation was the moral unit. But when the individual conscience was differentiated from the national conscience, when it was held that each individual was responsible only for his own deeds, the notion that suffering was always the result of one's own wrongdoing was evidently absurd. The individ ualism of Ezekiel led necessarily to the hopeless moral confusion of the book of Job.

Job has kept all the requirements of the law and the prophets yet he is literally consumed with suffer

ing. Ezekiel's doctrine is declared to be untrue, the wicked prosper (21:7-15) while others never eat their bread with pleasure (21:25). Can a righteous Yahweh destroy a righteous man like Job (10:8)? The problem might receive a solution if the individual lived again, "but man wasteth away and dieth and where is he?" (14:7, 10). Against the traditional notion Job raises his moral protest. He is not daunted by tradition (by "great multitudes"); neither does the contempt of those who hold the old notion of the solidarity of the patriarchal family terrify him (31: 34). Job appeals from the accepted traditions of society to an absolute judge (31:35). If only he knew where he might find such a judge (23:3, 4)! Indeed Job thinks there must be in heaven such a witness for the righteous man (16:19). He dares to believe that he shall be preserved from sheol long enough to see this absolute judge and be justified (19:27). He yields to none of the miserable counsellors of tradition; he will himself know, he will understand precisely wherein he is wrong in his search for absolute justice (6:24).

One of the boldest utterances of all literature is to be found in the drama of Job (13:15). Job not only appeals to an absolute justice against the traditional notion of justice, to an ideal judge against the ethics of custom; he presupposes in Yahweh himself a standard of justice which is above the traditional view: "Though he slay me yet will I trust him; but I will maintain mine own ways before him!" Here is a mountain peak in the moral progress of the race; its atmosphere can be breathed only by those of Job's type

of mind. Job is intellectually confused; he finds no solution of his fundamental problem. Nevertheless he will continue to think, to act, to live, in the high hope of a loftier righteousness, even if it involve death itself. This is the atmosphere of the Socratic Apology and of Golgotha. In this magnificent utterance the author of Job proves himself to be a Hebrew of the Hebrews. There is in this Promethean utterance the ring of an unconquerable will to righteous living. This moral will in the book of Job is too dynamic with creative energy to be paralyzed by any form of intellectual confusion. Job frankly confesses that he does not know where he might find his ideal judge; nevertheless this ideal judge knows Job even if Job does not know him (23:8-10). Knowledge according to Job is to be tested by the moral will; the moral will is not to be inhibited by the absence of perfect knowledge. The real test of knowledge is goodness, righteousness; the fear of Yahweh is wisdom and to depart from evil is understanding (28:28). It is not Job's will to live which is paralyzed; the difficulty is in the confusion of his moral insight. And the cause of the confusion is the hard and fast moral individualism of Ezekiel. Job's moral perspective has been disturbed by the overwhelming consciousness of a new truth, the truth of Jeremiah and Ezekiel that the individual has a will and a conscience of his own. But a new truth usually comes in the form of an obsession; it blots out for a time other equally important truths. Job, like Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, helped to bring to light the inner life, the individual conscience, but the problems of justice, of suffering, of righteousness, will always remain in

just the confusion in which they are left in the book of Job wherever the individual is abstracted from those living, organic social relationships that make him a part of the world of institutions. Nevertheless the intensifying and deepening of the individual life symbolized in the drama of Job will in the future mean a deeper and a richer conception both of the individual and of society. And with this larger view of life the problem of human suffering will not seem so confused as it seems in the book of Job.

Ecclesiastes is the most individualistic book in the Old Testament. It was written in a time of confusion and turmoil. The author, perchance a half-hellenized Jew of Alexandria, was practically overwhelmed by Greek scepticism. There is no vision of a righteous kingdom; there is no enthusiastic loyalty to the temple and the law. The Greek influence in the book and the absence of any antagonism to Greek thought make it probable that it belongs in the Greek period somewhere before 168 when the Jews attempted to free themselves from Greek oppression. The book shows what might have become of Hebrew thought had there been no Priestly Law and no prophetic ideal. Having lost the old sense of national solidarity and not having acquired the hope of a righteous kingdom to come the Preacher's chief interest centers around the individual and his concerns. But justice on an individualistic basis breaks down in Ecclesiastes as it did in Job. The righteous man perishes and the wicked man prolongs his life (7:15). "All things come alike to all: there is one event to the righteous and to the wicked" (9:2, 11, 12). II,