When Socrates Heard the Story of Job

 

In the long room hard by a street of marble cutters

they take turns submerged in a large pithos

of greasy water, naked and gritty along the benches.

Voices rise and fall between the excitement of dice.

Just beyond the offing dark and moonlit

the holy sails glide home from Delos.

So much for his defense when they return.

He has seen the cistern in a further room

full of terracotta shards wet with hemlock,

and more than once tried overhearing from his bed

the sound made from having sipped one’s death.

He’s ashamed to have listened with so much attention,

and sorry, too, for the sense of comfort he’s found

in the relative quiet, the almost casual talk

that follows the breaking of the clay cup.

Did he not tell Phaedo death was nothing,

hence no more reason to fear than praise it?

Or else it must be enjoyable as a good night’s sleep.

He knew the arguments like he knew love,

and that to be in love was the greatest happiness.

Yet there it was like a thing misplaced,

a sense of compensation, an accounting,

the tallies against him grossly unjust.

His wife and sons taken from him

by the sleeved hands of Meletus.

His friends made to look uncharitable,

pooling minae to bribe the courts as though

he were a criminal, or worse, a sophist.

He desired, in spite of wisdom, for reckoning,

cursed the name Athens under his breath.

“I’m not angry with my accusers,”

he reminds himself, repeating it like a prayer.

“They’ve done me no harm.”

Yet something inside him is always quick to add

“Nor have they done me any good.”

 

Today he meets the likes of a new prisoner,

an Arab money-changer from Yathrib

who’s operated in the arcades without a license

and awaits his brother from Tyre to pay his fine.

The man is tall and equine and old as sand.

He speaks a practiced, unadorned Greek

he found in the merchant-ports of Chios and Samos.

Bar-Rabbouni the Israelites call him.

They promenade the long room end to end,

taking wine in the walled courtyard

among music of splitters and chisels.

They’re both wise, their souls slip easily from prison

and regard Nature and Man from great heights.

They barter stories and haggle over their worth.

The Arab mentions the story of Job,

the man who brought a lawsuit against God,

and the Greek is curious to hear it.

 

“The man from Uz,” says the Arab,

“was blameless and upright, and feared Elah.

His house was the greatest in the kingdom of Edom

and he was beloved by all the peoples of the east.

The number of his servants was great.

He had ten sons and five daughters,

ten thousand sheep and three thousand camels.

One day Elah was admiring the burnt offerings of Job,

and thought to Himself, ‘I will test Job’s love for Me,

and put forth Mine hand and touch all that he hath,

and I will see if he curses Me.’ And Elah did so.

The fire of Shaddai fell from heaven, consuming

all the camels and sheep of Job. The Chaldeans

and tribes of Sheba slaughtered his servants.

The great haboob carried away his children’s roofs

and the walls fell upon them and they died.

Nor was the bone and flesh of Job untouched,

for Shaddai caused a pestilence of loathsome sores

everywhere upon Job’s skin, and made him to itch

and scrape away the rotting with a potsherd.

Among the ruins of his house Job wept

tore his clothes, and tore the hairs from his head.”

 

“Yet Job’s wife escapes unharmed,” Socrates observes,

to which the Arab replies with expert timing,

“This, too, Elah does to test Job.”

Socrates says, “Our gods are also full of mischief.

But your one God seems as jealous as a newlywed,

wanting to possess Man completely, body and soul.

I wonder if this is because there’s only one of Him.”

The Arab continues,  “So Job cursed his day.

Why did he not die in his mother’s womb

and his mother give pains to birth a ghost?

Why is life given at all to him born of woman,

if he must suffer the days of his life and long for death?

Now Job’s friends visited and told him to repent,

for they thought Elah must be punishing Job.

Why else would misfortunes beset a good man?”

At this the Greek is delivered, the hard brow

furrowed, the dogfish eyes made uncertain,

considering himself and his own troubles

as one often does with stories that must make sense

which are most of all the ones about ourselves.

“How does Job answer?” Socrates asks.

The Arab raises a finger to the ceiling.

“‘What’re these, my friends?’ Job complains.

‘Surely now Elah has worn me out.’

But Job is in possession of his heart.

He knows how he is blameless and upright.

‘Behold, He takes away, who can hinder Him?

Who will say unto Him, “What are You doing?”

And if Elah does not withdraw his power,

how the proud helpers do stoop under him.

If Elah would draw back His hand, and let not His fear terrify me,

then I would speak, for I know I’m not what I am thought to be.’

Job desires to argue his case with Elah.

He says Shaddai has put him in the wrong.

He tallies the marks against himself, saying:

‘Elah hath destroyed me on every side, and I am gone.

He hath removed my hope like a tree from the earth.

He hath put my family far from me,

and they whom I loved are turned against me.

I cry out of wrong, but am heard not.

I cry aloud, and there is no justice.’”

“Is there?” Socrates asks. “Does your one God

answer the suits men bring against Him?”

“Well,” the Arab shrugs, “there’s always exceptions.

In this case, Elah did shew himself to Job.

From the awesome and splendor of a whirlwind

Elah reproved Job, began taunting him

the way boys taunt one another at the gym.

‘Gird up thy loins like a man,’ said Elah,

and asked Job many unknowable questions.

Who gave birth to the rain, and who begat the dew?

Where comes the path of light, and so too darkness?

What makes horses mighty, and locusts leap,

and how many clouds are in the sky, and what

causes the bud of the tender herb to spring forth?

What need of Elah to justify Himself to Man

who knows so little, who knows nothing.

Man’s very speech is darkness, it darkens counsel.

So Job sues for justice. What is justice to Elah?

There’s no such thing to Him, certainly not

until Job, too, can shut up the doors of the sea,

can put a fishhook in the nose of leviathan,

not until Job can teach the hawk to fly,

not until he, too, can yoke a unicorn.

‘Wilt thou condemn Me?’ Elah demanded,

‘that thou mayest be righteous?’”

Now the Greek is bewildered as Job, wondering

what at all could be done against such adversity?

What argument would protect from outrageous

injury, or grant a drop of justice for Man,

a salve for the wounds of feckless power?

Hadn’t all the argument he’d known brought him here?

“And how does Job answer his God?”

Socrates inquires, full of the same fear.

“Job,” says the Arab, “was not buying any of it.

‘What wonderful deeds I knew not!’ Job said.

‘For I’d heard Thee by the ear, but now I see Thee.

If truly Man cannot be just before Elah,

I retract my lawsuit against Him. What use is there?

So I must look elsewhere for justice

among the ashes and dust of His creation.’”

 

At this the Greek leans back to consider.

concluding that Job has lost his case.

The Arab mulls it over, and reconsiders.

“Let’s say they settled out of court.

Elah, after all, restored all that Job had lost,

giving him twice as much as he had before.”

The Greek indulges in the thought

like savoring a meal after it’s been eaten.

A blue predawn has lifted over them.

Crowns of plane trees over the courtyard walls

are black and still as sleeping Argus.

They’ve talked through the night

and drained the wineskin between them.

Embracing and sharing in a prayer

they retire to their separate beds,

and there is little difference between

their last waking thoughts and the dreams

that overtake, so that when the guard

opens the door for Crito, and Socrates

is stirred awake, he has no idea for how long

he’s been sleeping, and asks his friend the time.

“Dawn has broken,” Crito replies.

“And are you only just come?” asks Socrates.

“No,” says Crito. “I sat here awhile

wondering at your peaceful slumbers

because I wanted you to be out of pain.

I confess I’ve always thought you happy

because of the calmness you show in life,

yet I’ve never seen the likes of the easy

cheerful way you bear this calamity.

You lie as easy as a babe in swaddling

while I’m sleepless and full of sorrow.”

Socrates sits up and pinches his snub-nose,

hearing a thought almost too familiar.

“When a man has reached my age,

he ought not to be crowing at death,”

he says with a smile, and Crito replies

“Yet plenty of old men find themselves

in similar misfortunes, and age

does not prevent them from crowing.”

“Have you come this early, Crito,

to tell me the ship has pulled into port,

on the arrival of which I am to die?”

The friend wrings his hands, is drawn

into the troubles of his mind.

He says they’ve seen the ship from Sounio,

and so tomorrow Socrates will die.

“If it pleases the gods,” he muses, “so be it.”

Once more Crito entreats him to escape,

to flee the city and be spared his fate.

But let him speak some darkness yet

and let him make a case for how

the bud of a tender herb springs forth.

---

R. Charboneau