Journal Entry #9, June 26, 2020

First, a warning, traditional in Jewish mysticism, but less common in Christianity.

“Four men entered the pardes [Garden] — Ben Azzai, Ben Zoma, Acher, and Rabbi Akiva. Ben Azzai looked and died; Ben Zoma looked and went mad; Acher destroyed the plants; Akiva entered in peace and departed in peace.”

This isn’t a work of mysticism, but if you have a traditional Christian view of the Bible and humanity’s relationship with God, you may not like parts of this essay. You may “look and go mad.”

Now that I’ve slipped the cherubim’s flaming sword into its asbestos lined sheath, we can safely approach the topic.

Today’s reading from the Hebrew Scriptures (in the Roman Catholic Church’s sequence of readings) recounts a tragic event in the history of the Jewish people: The Captivity in Babylon.

2 Kings 24:8–17

“Jehoiachin was eighteen years old when he began to reign, and he reigned three months in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Nehushta, daughter of Elnathan of Jerusalem. He did evil in the sight of the LORD, just as his forebears had done.

“At that time the officials of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon,
attacked Jerusalem, and the city came under siege. Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, himself arrived at the city while his servants were besieging it.
Then Jehoiachin, king of Judah, together with his mother, his ministers, officers, and functionaries, surrendered to the king of Babylon, who, in the eighth year of his reign, took him captive. And he carried off all the treasures of the temple of the LORD and those of the palace, and broke up all the gold utensils that Solomon, king of Israel, had provided in the temple of the LORD, as the LORD had foretold. He deported all Jerusalem …”

Some scholars posit 597 BCE as the date King Jehoiachin was deposed and sent into exile. Other scholars believe the exile followed the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadrezzar II in 586 BCE.

There is a tradition, found in Jeremiah 29:10, that the exile lasted 70 years.

“This is what the Lord says: “When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.”

I’ve always found this passage strange and even cringe inducing. God, who either gave over the Jewish people to the Babylonians (“I have banished you” … “I carried you into exile …”) or was powerless to stop them, is suddenly solicitous, ingratiating, almost begging, for Israel’s attention.

“Oh, it’s all a misunderstanding my dears,” God seems to be saying, reaching out to absent-mindedly pat Hebrew heads. “Come back and I’ll make amends.” He bustles into the kitchen to prepare tea for a multitude. The tap runs and there is the thump of water into a hollow aluminum kettle. A clicking sound as the stove is lit, then a rattle of cutlery and the dull clang of ceramic mugs.

The Hebrews sit on the divan and silently bind their wounds.

This sounds like the abusive God that Job confronts, although Job isn’t silent.

Regardless of the dates or reasons why, the Captivity was devasting for the Jewish people. They faced strong cultural pressures to adapt to the practices of a foreign land. They called themselves the Gola, (Exiles) or the Bene Gola (the Children of the Exiles). And despite the hopeful promise in Jeremiah (which reflected a renewed Jewish interest in Moses as a liberator), the Exile was unexplainable in terms of the traditional Jewish understanding of Yahweh as the God who pledged to protect them. I can imagine them nervously reciting the rather thin slice of solace found in Ecclesiastes 3.

“There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:

a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.”

For the Gola, it was a time of catastrophe and lament, of old men dying in a strange land, of young men without an inheritance, of women lost in grief.

Some of the Hebrews adopted the local Chaldean religion — there is evidence of Jewish children named in honor of Chaldean gods. Most of the exiles, however, recognized that if they lived in a time when the stones were scattered, they also lived in “a time to gather them.” They ensured the survival of their ethnic and religious identities by developing new practices.

The Torah was most likely finalized during this period or shortly thereafter. This also may have been the time when synagogues were first established to maintain traditions. Even in Exile, the Jewish people observed the Sabbath and religious holidays, and practiced circumcision. They substituted prayers for ritual Temple sacrifices. Jewish leaders began to speak more of salvation than judgement, a change that is reflected in Ezekiel and Isaiah. For example, in the midst of a long diatribe about the sins of Israel, Isaiah has God promise:

“Come now, let us settle the matter,”
says the Lord.
“Though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red as crimson,
they shall be like wool.
19 If you are willing and obedient,
you will eat the good things of the land ….”

Other Hebrew literature, during and after the Captivity, becomes a literature of despair. Lamentation is a poetic lament on the destruction of Jerusalem. Interestingly, the name is derived from its incipit (the first word of the text), Êykhôhor, which means “how.” The Hebrews in Exile were no doubt asking how. How had this catastrophe occurred? How? How? How? The series of five poems begins:

“How deserted lies the city,
once so full of people!
How like a widow is she,
who once was great among the nations!
She who was queen among the provinces
has now become a slave.

“2 Bitterly she weeps at night,
tears are on her cheeks.
Among all her lovers
there is no one to comfort her.
All her friends have betrayed her;
they have become her enemies.”

Lamentation, Job (which was written after the exile), as well as many other Psalms, depict a bewildered and suffering people.

Job is especially challenging, but it’s one of my favorite episodes in the Bible. It represents part of a valuable Jewish tradition of talking back to God when God is wrong (even if it gets you nowhere). Job is an upright man undeserving of suffering, but he is nonetheless made to suffer a series of inexplicable calamities. He rejects the idea, offered by a friend, that he is to blame.

“Have I ever said, ‘Give something on my behalf, pay a ransom for me from your wealth, deliver me from the hand of the enemy, rescue me from the clutches of the ruthless’? Teach me, and I will be quiet; show me where I have been wrong. How painful are honest words! But what do your arguments prove?”

After a series of accusations of sin by his friends, all of which he rejects, Job despairs of justice. Then God finally speaks to him.

“Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind:
‘Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
Gird up your loins like a man,
I will question you, and you shall declare to me.

‘Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.
Who determined its measurements — surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
On what were its bases sunk,
or who laid its cornerstone
when the morning stars sang together
and all the heavenly beings* shouted for joy?”

God continues for several more defensive stanzas, but his answer is clear: Humans are not to question the will of God. Given the lopsided power differential, Job submits (and his wealth is restored), but one has the feeling that he’s not quite satisfied, and neither am I.

The real moral of the story is that evil exists, and we don’t know why. God may cause it, at least some of the time, and he certainly allows it. Job’s grimly existential situation not only expresses his own needless suffering, but that of people everywhere who suffer.

At a popular level, the Jewish idea of challenging God can be found in the musical, The Fiddler on The Roof, when Tevye says to God:

“You made many, many poor people. I realize of course it’s no shame to be poor, but it’s no great honor either. Now what would be so terrible if I had a small fortune?”

***

Christianity doesn’t have a tradition of talking back to God, of complaining. Rather, Christians are expected to silently use suffering for spiritual growth. But there are millions of people suffering in the world, and surely spiritual growth can be nurtured without the brutalizing starving children. Unlike Job’s, today’s suffering is not inexplicable — its name is Capitalism — but it is wrong and unjustified. And while humans may be the proximate cause, for this level of global suffering God surely bears some responsibility. If you’re a believer, you must talk back to God. He is wrong.

Israelis also should remember the Babylonian Exile and Job in their treatment of modern Palestinians.

***

For me, the depth of the Gola’s despair is expressed in a hauntingly beautiful poem that ends in anger and shocking violence, Psalm 137:

“By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
when we remembered Zion.
There on the poplars
we hung our harps,
for there our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

How can we sing the songs of the Lord
while in a foreign land?
If I forget you, Jerusalem,
may my right hand forget its skill.
May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth
if I do not remember you,
if I do not consider Jerusalem
my highest joy.

Remember, Lord, what the Edomites did
on the day Jerusalem fell.
“Tear it down,” they cried,
“tear it down to its foundations!”
Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is the one who repays you
according to what you have done to us.
Happy is the one who seizes your infants
and dashes them against the rocks.”

After the fall of Babylon to the Persian king Cyrus the Great in 539 BCE, the exiled Jewish people were permitted to return to Judah. According to the book of Ezra, construction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem began around 537 BCE.

***

And what of our time? Certainly, with a pandemic raging and burning through human lungs and hearts, we live in a time of lamentation. Unlike Job, though, we cannot declare our innocence for the structural racism that still binds People of Color and Native Peoples in servitude, but we must end it. We also must dismantle capitalism before it destroys Maia, on whom we all depend.

We must argue with God.

We must not become exiles in our own land.