Answer to Job

(From Vol. 11 of the Collected Works of C. G. Jung)

C. G. Jung, R. F.C. Hull

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781400839131
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychoanalysis
• Index: Psychology

Considered one of Jung's most controversial works, Answer to Job also stands as Jung's most extensive commentary on a biblical text. Here, he confronts the story of the man who challenged God, the man who experienced hell on earth and still did not reject his faith. Job's journey parallels Jung's own experience--as reported in The Red Book: Liber Novus --of descending into the depths of his own unconscious, confronting and reconciling the rejected aspects of his soul.
This paperback edition of Jung's classic work includes a new foreword by Sonu Shamdasani, Philemon Professor of Jung History at University College London. Described by Shamdasani as "the theology behind The Red Book, " Answer to Job examines the symbolic role that theological concepts play in an individual's psychic life.

ANSWER TO JOB

560

The Book of Job is a landmark in the long historical development of a divine drama. At the time the book was written, there were already many testimonies which had given a contradictory picture of Yahweh—the picture of a God who knew no moderation in his emotions and suffered precisely from this lack of moderation. He himself admitted that he was eaten up with rage and jealousy and that this knowledge was painful to him. Insight existed along with obtuseness, loving-kindness along with cruelty, creative power along with destructiveness. Everything was there, and none of these qualities was an obstacle to the other. Such a condition is only conceivable either when no reflecting consciousness is present at all, or when the capacity for reflection is very feeble and a more or less adventitious phenomenon. A condition of this sort can only be described as amoral.

561

How the people of the Old Testament felt about their God we know from the testimony of the Bible. That is not what I am concerned with here, but rather with the way in which a modern man with a Christian education and background comes to terms with the divine darkness which is unveiled in the Book of Job, and what effect it has on him. I shall not give a cool and carefully considered exegesis that tries to be fair to every detail, but a purely subjective reaction. In this way I hope to act as a voice for many who feel the same way as I do, and to give expression to the shattering emotion which the unvarnished spectacle of divine savagery and ruthlessness produces in us. Even if we know by hearsay about the suffering and discord in the Deity, they are so unconscious, and hence so ineffectual morally, that they arouse no human sympathy or understanding. Instead, they give rise to an equally ill-considered outburst of affect, and a smouldering resentment that may be compared to a slowly healing wound. And just as there is a secret tie between the wound and the weapon, so the affect corresponds to the violence of the deed that caused it.

562

The Book of Job serves as a paradigm for a certain experience of God which has a special significance for us today. These experiences come upon man from inside as well as from outside, and it is useless to interpret them rationalistically and thus weaken them by apotropaic means. It is far better to admit the affect and submit to its violence than to try to escape it by all sorts of intellectual tricks or by emotional value-judgments. Although, by giving way to the affect, one imitates all the bad qualities of the outrageous act that provoked it and thus makes oneself guilty of the same fault, that is precisely the point of the whole proceeding: the violence is meant to penetrate to a man’s vitals, and he to succumb to its action. He must be affected by it, otherwise its full effect will not reach him. But he should know, or learn to know, what has affected him, for in this way he transforms the blindness of the violence on the one hand and of the affect on the other into knowledge.

563

For this reason I shall express my affect fearlessly and ruthlessly in what follows, and I shall answer injustice with injustice, that I may learn to know why and to what purpose Job was wounded, and what consequences have grown out of this for Yahweh as well as for man.

I

564

Job answers Yahweh thus:

Behold, I am of small account; what shall I answer thee?

I lay my hand on my mouth.

I have spoken once, and I will not answer;

twice, but I will proceed no further.¹

565

And indeed, in the immediate presence of the infinite power of creation, this is the only possible answer for a witness who is still trembling in every limb with the terror of almost total annihilation. What else could a half-crushed human worm, grovelling in the dust, reasonably answer in the circumstances? In spite of his pitiable littleness and feebleness, this man knows that he is confronted with a superhuman being who is personally most easily provoked. He also knows that it is far better to withhold all moral reflections, to say nothing of certain moral requirements which might be expected to apply to a god.

566

Yahweh’s “justice” is praised, so presumably Job could bring his complaint and the protestation of his innocence before him as the just judge. But he doubts this possibility. “How can a man be just before God?”² “If I summoned him and he answered me, I would not believe that he was listening to my voice.”³ “If it is a matter of justice, who can summon him?”⁴ He “multiplies my wounds without cause.”⁵ “He destroys both the blameless and the wicked.”⁶ “If the scourge slay suddenly, he will laugh at the trial of the innocent.”⁷ “I know,” Job says to Yahweh, “thou wilt not hold me innocent. I shall be condemned.”⁸ “If I wash myself . . . never so clean, yet shalt thou plunge me in the ditch.“⁹ “For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, and we should come together in judgment.”¹⁰ Job wants to explain his point of view to Yahweh, to state his complaint, and tells him: “Thou knowest that I am not guilty, and there is none to deliver out of thy hand.”¹¹ “I desire to argue my case with God.”¹² “I will defend my ways to his face,”¹³ “I know that I shall be vindicated.”¹⁴ Yahweh should summon him and render him an account or at least allow him to plead his cause. Properly estimating the disproportion between man and God, he asks: “Wilt thou break a leaf driven to and fro? and wilt thou pursue the dry stubble?”¹⁵ God has put him in the wrong, but there is no justice.¹⁶ He has “taken away my right.”¹⁷ “Till I die I will not put away my integrity from me. I hold fast to my righteousness, and will not let it go.”¹⁸ His friend Elihu the Buzite does not believe the injustice of Yahweh: “Of a truth, God will not do wickedly, and the Almighty will not pervert justice.”¹⁹ Illogically enough, he bases his opinion on God’s power: “Is it fit to say to a king, Thou art wicked? and to princes, Ye are ungodly?”²⁰ One must “respect the persons of princes and esteem the high more than the low.”²¹ But Job is not shaken in his faith, and had already uttered an important truth when he said: “Behold, my witness is in heaven, and he that vouches for me is on high . . . my eye pours out tears to God, that he would maintain the right of a man with God, like that of a man with his neighbour.”²² And later: “For I know that my Vindicator lives, and at last he will stand upon the earth.”²³

567

These words clearly show that Job, in spite of his doubt as to whether man can be just before God, still finds it difficult to relinquish the idea of meeting God on the basis of justice and therefore of morality. Because, in spite of everything, he cannot give up his faith in divine justice, it is not easy for him to accept the knowledge that divine arbitrariness breaks the law. On the other hand, he has to admit that no one except Yahweh himself is doing him injustice and violence. He cannot deny that he is up against a God who does not care a rap for any moral opinion and does not recognize any form of ethics as binding. This is perhaps the greatest thing about Job, that, faced with this difficulty, he does not doubt the unity of God. He clearly sees that God is at odds with himself—so totally at odds that he, Job, is quite certain of finding in God a helper and an “advocate” against God. As certain as he is of the evil in Yahweh, he is equally certain of the good. In a human being who renders us evil we cannot expect at the same time to find a helper. But Yahweh is not a human being: he is both a persecutor and a helper in one, and the one aspect is as real as the other. Yahweh is not split but is an antinomy—a totality of inner opposites—and this is the indispensable condition for his tremendous dynamism, his omniscience and omnipotence. Because of this knowledge Job holds on to his intention of “defending his ways to his face,” i.e., of making his point of view clear to him, since notwithstanding his wrath, Yahweh is also man’s advocate against himself when man puts forth his complaint.

568

One would be even more astonished at Job’s knowledge of God if this were the first time one were hearing of Yahweh’s amorality. His incalculable moods and devastating attacks of wrath had, however, been known from time immemorial. He had proved himself to be a jealous defender of morality and was specially sensitive in regard to justice. Hence he had always to be praised as “just,” which, it seemed, was very important to him. Thanks to this circumstance or peculiarity of his, he had a distinct personality, which differed from that of a more or less archaic king only in scope. His jealous and irritable nature, prying mistrustfully into the faithless hearts of men and exploring their secret thoughts, compelled a personal relationship between himself and man, who could not help but feel personally called by him. That was the essential difference between Yahweh and the all-ruling Father Zeus, who in a benevolent and somewhat detached manner allowed the economy of the universe to roll along on its accustomed courses and punished only those who were disorderly. He did not moralize but ruled purely instinctively. He did not demand anything more from human beings than the sacrifices due to him; he did not want to do anything with human beings because he had no plans for them. Father Zeus is certainly a figure but not a personality. Yahweh, on the other hand, was interested in man. Human beings were a matter of first-rate importance to him. He needed them as they needed him, urgently and personally. Zeus too could throw thunderbolts about, but only at hopelessly disorderly individuals. Against mankind as a whole he had no objections—but then they did not interest him all that much. Yahweh, however, could get inordinately excited about man as a species and men as individuals if they did not behave as he desired or expected, without ever considering that in his omnipotence he could easily have created something better than these “bad earthenware pots.”

569

In view of this intense personal relatedness to his chosen people, it was only to be expected that a regular covenant would develop which also extended to certain individuals, for instance to David. As we learn from the Eighty-ninth Psalm, Yahweh told him:

My steadfast love I will keep for him for ever,

and my covenant will stand firm for him.

I will not violate my covenant,

or alter the word that went forth from my lips.

Once for all I have sworn by my holiness;

I will not lie to David.²⁴

570

And yet it happened that he, who watched so jealously over the fulfilment of laws and contracts, broke his own oath. Modern man, with his sensitive conscience, would have felt the black abyss opening and the ground giving way under his feet, for the least he expects of his God is that he should be superior to mortal man in the sense of being better, higher, nobler—but not his superior in the kind of moral flexibility and unreliability that do not jib even at perjury.

571

Of course one must not tax an archaic god with the requirements of modern ethics. For the people of early antiquity things were rather different. In their gods there was absolutely everything: they teemed with virtues and vices. Hence they could be punished, put in chains, deceived, stirred up against one another without losing face, or at least not for long. The man of that epoch was so inured ...