Speciesism and the Use of the Imagery of Butchery in the Book of Job.
Job often feels himself to be butchered by Deity,
but avoids looking at his laughter and butchery of other creatures.
God gives me up to the ungodly, and casts me into the hands of the wicked. I was at ease and he broke me asunder; he seized me by the neck and dashed me to pieces; he set me up as his target; his archers surround me. He slashes open my kidneys...he pours out my gall on the ground. He breaks me with breach upon breach... 11-14
"He has torn me in his wrath, and hated me; he has gnashed his teeth at me; my adversary sharpens his eyes against me. Men have gaped at me with their mouth...16: 9
...then let my shoulder blade fall from my shoulder, and let my arm be broken from its socket, for I was in terror of calamity from God, and I could not have faced his majesty. 31: 22-23We know that the vegetarian Sabeans, like the original Jews commanded to eat plants in the first chapter of Genesis, were creation-oriented, rather than human-oriented as orthodox Judaism came to be. Their Deity Shiva, like Krishna, was known as Pasupati, Lord of Creatures, and that both of these Deities had the title of Protector of Cattle. Let us see how this speciesism plays itself out in Chapter 31.
The Reference to the Hindu Institutes of Vishnu
"A covenant with my eyes"--
Positively, this shows Job being faithful to his wife;
Negatively this suggests that Job will not look beyond his orthodoxy.
Chapter 31 also is a classic example of Job's speciesism. The initial verse of Chapter 31 is "I have made a covenant with my eyes." Job is overtly stating that he has not lusted after other woman, and has remained faithful to his wife. After acknowledging God's omniscience and God's justice--"Does not calamity befall the unrighteous, and disaster the workers of iniquity?" (31: 3)--and after asserting his marital fidelity--Job enumerates the ways in which he has helped other humans. However, he has forgotten that his life, like the lives of other creatures, is not exempt from God's justice.
But the initial verse is also intended to suggests the limitation of Job's focus. In this chapter as in others, Job's morality will look no further than humans. He has made a covenant with his eyes. Not only will he not lust after other woman, but he will not look at what orthodoxy says he should not look at. For Job, like the orthodox Jew, Christian and Muslim, feels he has complete license to do what he wills towards other creatures.
He even descends from his elitism towards humans, so evident in Chapter 30, at least for a moment. He by implication says he has not "rejected the cause of my manservant or my maidservant," and concludes--very much unlike the Job of Chapter 30-- in a very comprehensive or, let us say, democratic manner,
"Did not he who made me in the womb make him. And did not one fashion us in the womb? " 31: 15Statements such as the above, which one cannot take totally seriously, considering Job's other affirmations of his elitism over those whom he dislikes, that are seen in Chapter 30, nonetheless lend some character to Job's intellect. Still, Job still does not accept his illness as karmic, as deserved. And Job is impatient, not patient, as his defenders say, and, as any close reader of the Book knows, Job numerous times curses or complains against the God who makes him suffer.
BUTCHERY IN THE BOOK OF JOB
Butchery and Irony in the Book of Job:
Ignoring his animal sacrifices and his butchery,
Job nevertheless refers to the practice of butchery.
The way Job feels he is being treated by God
is in fact the way Job treats the other creatures.
In chapter 16 Job persistently uses the imagery of being
treated as an animal prey
by God, and Job even uses the word adversary, meaning the Enemy,
or Satan himself, to describe his enemies.
Job does not see himself as an Enemy of the Animals whose Lives
he Sacrifices.
"He has torn me in his wrath, and hated me; he has gnashed his teeth at me; my adversary sharpens his eyes against me. Men have gaped at me with their mouth...16: 9
The last clause suggests the basic reaction of the salivary glands
of a carnivore looking at a piece of slaughtered flesh.
Butchering the Carcass
Job as a Sacrifice in God's Slaughterhouse
The Persecuted and Dismembered Spirit of Job
God gives me up to the ungodly, and casts me into the hands of the wicked. I was at ease and he broke me asunder; he seized me by the neck and dashed me to pieces; he set me up as his target; his archers surround me. He slashes open my kidneys...he pours out my gall on the ground. He breaks me with breach upon breach... 11-14
Job as a Piece of Packaged Meat
Looking backwards to earlier verses for a moment to the image of Job's shriveled body--"he has shriveled me up....and my leanness has risen against me (16: 8)--we see an ironic portrait of Job as a piece of sacrificed, i.e. slaughtered flesh. This in turn reinforces the imagery of Job as packaged meat in 16: 15. "I have sewed sackcloth upon my skin."Let us look at how Job scrupulously avoids examining his slaughter and butchery of creatures, and how the writer of the Book uses these facts in creating an ongoing atmosphere of irony.
According to Job, he has helped poor humans, shared his food with them, guided the wayward, given clothes to those in need. And the material of the clothing was sometimes from "the fleece of my sheep." Yet, in ironic lines that the close reader of the Book knows are typical of the Book, Job says that if he did not help others,
...then let my shoulder blade fall from my shoulder, and let my arm be broken from its socket, for I was in terror of calamity from God, and I could not have faced his majesty. 31: 22-23Job certainly did not help the animals whom he slaughtered and butchered, dismembering their corpses in order to eat their flesh.
So we have the same situation that exists throughout the Book of Job: Job describes the act of dismemberment and butchery but does not apply the horror of the act to his animal sacrifices, and to the butchering of the corpses. In other words, Job has robbed animal creatures of their lives, and used their parts to feed and clothe humans. Bloodshed and cruelty are justified by Job as they are by most of the scriptures of "Leviticus" and "Exodus," a bloodshed that contradicts the original covenant of vegetarianism in "Genesis."
Characterization: Though Job is an archetype
of the brutal cattleman feeling his karma in this life,
he is not, as it were, a stock character:
Job deliberately taunts and and attempts to frustrate his questioners.
Job is retaliating against them for making him feel guilty,
by pointing to his virtuous actions towards humans
instead of acknowledging his brutal actions towards animals.
The Hindu reference to not looking at the sun
Job is not letting on everything he knows. That is, his focus as usual is mainly concerned with defending his actions, instead of really facing the issues brought up by Bildad, Zophar and Eliphaz. It would be superficial, however, even if one sees Job as wrong, which is the indisputable intent of the original writer, to think that Job is artless or not deliberate in his responses, especially in the latter part of the book. When he is evaluating his actions, he says that he never looked directly at the sun, which disciples of Vishnu are taught not to do in the Institutes of Vishnu, a body of laws also known to the Shaivites, who are identical to the Sabeans who released Job's asses and oxen. Chapter II, #16 in the Institutes contains the command " not to kill (any living being)." The Sabeans did not kill the oxen and asses though they did kill Job's servants who were accomplices in Job's animal sacrifices. This is an important detail showing once again the Hindu Shaivite background which exists throughout the Book.
So, as readers near the end of the Book, they realize that Job has had plenty of time to think about the lessons of Zophar, Bildad and Eliphaz. So, when Job asks what poor man was not "warmed with the fleece of my sheep?" (31: 20) and "Who is there who has not been satisfied with my meat?" (31: 31), he is fully aware that his rhetorical question only frustrates the intent of his friends, who are really trying to counsel Job to repent of the animal sacrifices.
Job's statements only reinforce his choice to be singly focussed on humanity, and not to admit that he is guilty of sin in committing the animal sacrifices. He is implicitly heaping scorn on his friends. He says
Oh, that I had the indictment written by my adversary! Surely I would
carry it on my shoulder; I would bind it on me as a crown... 31: 35-36
A Hint of the Morality of the Vegetarian Rechabites and Nabateans
that is seen in the Institutes of Vishnu:
All creatures are sacred, including insects and the creatures that
creep on the earth.
Not only is Job mocking his critics, but he will play the game of one-upmanship, he will do them one better, and imply that they themselves have been ignoring the lives of the animals of lesser size when he refers to his farmland:
If my land has cried out against me, and its furrows have wept together; if I have eaten its yield without payment, and caused the death of its owners; let thorns grow instead of wheat, and foul weeds instead of barley." The words of Job are ended. 31: 39-40Here we see the expansive compassion of the author of the Book for even the creeping things of the earth, and the insects, the smaller members of the animal kingdom, who are oppressed and killed by the conventional methods of cultivation, by the "harrowing of hell," by the blades of agriculture cutting into the earth and into its insect inhabitants. That the author of the Book of Job should put this recognition in the mouth of Job is his commentary on even the pure vegetarian remnant of Judaism (who do not sacrifice animals) that they should go even further in their compassion and extend it to the smaller creatures of the earth.
The Jewish Rechabites did not cultivate land; neither did the Arab Nabateans (both of which groups are briefly discussed in Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible (1919), and the Rechabites are discussed in some length by Robert Eisenman in his James the Brother of Jesus. These groups like Jain monks and some Buddhist, Vaishnava and Shaivite renunciates, refuse even to dig into the earth, because it is the home of the insects, the creeping things of the earth. In some translations of the Gospel of Barnabas, a work virtually unknown to Christians partially because in it Jesus foretells the coming of Muhammad, says that when the Deliverer comes, he will plead for the lives of even the creeping things of the earth.
The compassion of a Deity of Infinite Love, an all-compassionate Deity, and by humans sincerely attempting to emulate their all-loving Deity, is logically to be shared by, and extended to, all animal creation; therefore it is only logical that the smaller members of the animal kingdom are not be excluded.
The shaman Don Carlos of Mexico used to describe himself as planting corn, by making one small hole in the ground at a time, and putting the kernel or kernels inside. He did not dig up the adjacent earth, which is inevitably the home of insects and small creatures. Small is beautiful. Don Carlos respected the earth and its creatures as sacred. And today, there are pockets of (mainly vegetarian) people who are using top of the ground mulching and planting, so that they thereby do not disturb the life forms living inside the earth, though they do change the lighting and the chemical composition of the earth. If you are to clean up your act with your own species, all members of the species, including the very smallest, must be treated compassionately. This, I believe, has immense implications for the earth's growing vegetarian population.
So we have to conclude that Job refuses to grow spiritually
in that he defends his days of animal sacrifice, even though the act is
brutal to the animals, whose lives are painfully destroyed, and brutal
as well to the eater of the corpses, whose health is lessened, whose life
is shortened, and whose emotions suffer depression. But though Job,
who as an industrialist-cattleman persists in defending evil, he is not
unaware of his evil; he simply refuses to let go of it. He is like millions
of people on the earth today, addicted to corpse-eating and mainly to making
profit by exploiting the earth and its creatures. These are, in the
truest sense of the word, demonic addictions.