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Chapter 2: God’s Spies
- University of Notre Dame Press
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25 C h a p t e r 2 God’s Spies And take upon us the mystery of things, As if we were God’s spies. v Lear is Job and the Christ in whom, in the new testament, the character of Job finds its figural fulfillment.the Book of Job is, among all the books of the hebrew Bible—what Christians call the old testament— that which has most scandalized the Western mind.there is nothing as extreme in Greek tragedy, with the exception, perhaps, of Sophocles’ Philoctetes and euripides’ Bacchae. nothing questions divine wisdom and justice as does this part of Wisdom literature, in which God, for no apparent reason other than a bet with Satan, allows the adversary to take away from his faithful servant—the pious and upright Job, who has committed no sin or transgression—everything but his life: material goods, family, health. one does not find, elsewhere in Scripture or anywhere in classical culture, an equally radical exploration of the total gratuitousness of human suffering or of the existence of evil in the world.the four friends who come to console Job try in vain to offer an explanation, but none is sufficient for human reason and feeling.there is no sin, no justice, no providence that can justify this misery. 26 The Gospel according to Shakespeare and neither does God, whose tremendous Voice in the final chapters thunders from the whirlwind against the accusations of his servant, respond to the questioning in a comprehensible manner. For Yahweh answers Job, who calls him to trial, on a different plane, pointing to another mystery. Job was asking: Why me, why are the good stricken and the wicked exalted, why does a human being suffer and die? Why, in other words, does a sparrow fall? the Lord replies: “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 ” (Job 38:2–4). to the tragedy of evil and suffering, here, now, and always, God answers with the mystery of Creation, with the unfathomable enigma at the origin of being and of existence, with the life of the universe—beautiful and horrendous, good and bad, stars and Leviathan . When Yahweh stops thundering, Job retracts and repents “in dust and ashes,” recognizing that God can do everything and that nothing for him is unrealizable: “i have uttered what i did not understand, things too wonderful for me....i had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you” (Job 42:3–5). after this, the Lord restores twofold all of Job’s material goods, renders him happy with children and grandchildren unto the fourth generation, and blesses his new life, until Job dies “old and full of days” (Job 42:10–17). Lear’s tragedy is less radical but, paradoxically, more extreme. Less radical, because Lear is clearly guilty, at the very least, of carelessness and thoughtlessness: of having wanted to divide his kingdom, and especially of not having been able to recognize Goneril’s and regan’s flattery , Cordelia’s true love, and kent’s loyalty. More extreme, because it is only for a brief moment that Lear is offered restoration: no human or divine blessing saves him from the death of the newly found Cordelia and of Gloucester, or in the end from his own. Lear is the tragedy of an old king who on his own initiative divests himself of his kingdom, so as to be able to “unburdened crawl toward death.” tricked by his own narcissism, by the mendacious words of the two wicked daughters, Goneril and regan, and by the silence of the good daughter, Cordelia, Lear divides the kingdom between the first two and banishes the third (and the loyal kent, who tries to stop him). [54.166.170.195] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 11:32 GMT) God's Spies 27 in due course, however, Lear is made to reconsider. Goneril and regan deprive him of his retinue and finally force him to wander as an increasingly crazed beggar, accompanied only by his Fool and by the disguised kent, on the storm-tormented heath; while it will be Cordelia, given in marriage to the king of France, who will try to save her father. this main story is intertwined, in...