One might not at first notice any important similarities between the Book of Job and The Odyssey. They were probably written about four centuries apart—Job around the fourth century BC and The Odyssey around the eighth century BC—and the cultural perspectives of each piece is quite different: one comes down to us from a monotheistic tradition that emphasizes personal righteousness and humility before the One God while the other arose in a polytheistic culture that prized glory and honor above individual holiness. Whereas the one is a theodicy exclusively occupied with why the good suffer, the other tells the story of a Greek hero who returns home from the Trojan War by means of his intelligence, rhetorical skill, and the assistance of pagan deities. While we admire Odysseus for his wit and his ability to endure hardship, we pity Job for the sheer unfairness of his lot. The differences between the two works need not be exaggerated.
Yet one important thematic similarity between the two works emerges from a simple summary of the plots of the two books: both are about characters who must endure and overcome immense suffering. While it may not be the most obvious theme of Homer’s epic, The Odyssey grapples with the very same question that Job asks: why do people suffer when they do not deserve it? The first major example comes when Poseidon punishes Odysseus for blinding his son, Polyphemos. While certainly any parent will understand Poseidon’s rage at Odysseus for driving a sharpened pole into his son’s only eye, no one can deny that the Kyklops himself deserves the wound that Odysseus deals him. He has violated one of the most important moral obligations in The Odyssey: the obligation of a host to show good xenia to his guests. Not only does Polyphemos deny basic hospitality to Odysseus and his men; he violates nearly every imaginable moral obligation by eating several of Odysseus’s men. More importantly, Odysseus has little choice in the matter: he must either force the Kyklops to let him and his men go or be eaten.
Some may rightly argue that Odysseus’s pride complicates the matter of his culpability. When he sails out of Polyphemos’s reach, he shouts his name so that all will know who blinded the Kyklops. If he had remained anonymous, he would not have earned the wrath of Poseidon. But surely Poseidon’s punishment goes far beyond justice. Even if we do not forgive Odysseus his pride in taunting Polyphemos with his name, and even if we grant that Poseidon’s wrath is understandable, the justice of his actions towards Odysseus is dubious at best.
An even more striking example of the innocent suffering an unearned punishment comes in Book XIII, where Zeus allows Poseidon to punish the Phaiaikeans for showering Odysseus with gifts and giving him safe passage home. The parallels between this passage of the epic and the frame narrative of Job are quite striking. In both the Greek and the Biblical poems, we find people who are entirely blameless before men and God. The Phaiaikeans of The Odyssey practice impeccable xenia, which is one of the most important virtues and perhaps the only real moral absolute in the poem. Job, too, is virtuous and innocent of any wrongdoing. God Himself says of Job that “there is none like him on earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil” (1:8). Yet both the Phaiaikeans and Job are subjected to punishment in spite of their innocence. In the pagan story, Poseidon grudges the Phaiaikeans the assistance they provide Odysseus; in the biblical story, Satan begrudges God the righteousness of Job: “Put forth thy hand now, and touch all he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face” (1:11). Both Poseidon and Satan approach the supreme power—Zeus and God, respectively—and ask permission to inflict punishment on the righteous. Poseidon fulfills a prophesy given by Alkinoos’s father, saying that if the Phaiaikeans continue to offer xenia to every traveler who visits them, one of their mightiest ships will be turned into stone and their island will be surrounded with a mountain ring. Satan kills Job’s servants, livestock, and his children, and after that does not shake Job’s righteousness, he inflicts him “with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown” (2:7).
In both poems, the writer presents readers with people who suffer greatly for their devotion to righteousness. The fate of the Phaiaikeans (which at best means the loss of a ship and its crew) is a direct result of their devotion to perhaps the most important virtue in their ethical system: xenia. Similarly, Job’s fate results precisely from his righteousness. God allows Satan to torment and punish Job because he is blameless.
Both Homer and the author of Job acknowledge the bewildering fact that suffering often afflicts the innocent, but where the two works part ways is in the way each deals with that fact. Suffering provides the backdrop to The Odyssey, but that poem attempts no serious justification of the gods’ behavior towards men. Indeed, Homer entirely forgets the fate of the Phaiaikeans after Poseidon exacts his revenge, while the bulk of Job primarily concerns the way in which its protagonist grapples with the fate he suffers. He wishes that the day of his birth had been a day of darkness, that he might have been “as an hidden untimely birth” (3:16). He curses God as a divine trickster who “increaseth nations, and destroyeth them; he enlargeth the nations, and straiteneth them again” (12:23) or as an impersonal and destructive natural force: “The waters wear the stones: thou washest away the things which grow out of the dust of the earth; and thou destroyest the hope of man” (14:19). Whereas the gods of Greek myth are ultimately little more than selfish and conniving humans invested with immense power, the God of Job proves entirely inscrutable. His own sovereignty and transcendence is the only answer Job will receive for his complaints: “Gird up thy loins now like a man: I will demand of thee, and answer thou me. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it?” (38:4-5).
Ultimately, the author of Job seems to take the humbler (and therefore more realistic) approach to suffering than Homer. Humans cannot know God in the way the Greeks thought they knew their pantheon. God is transcendent and not answerable to man—not because he lacks morality and justice (as the Greek gods seem to), but because his justice transcends merely human notions of it.
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