Measure for Measure

So that He sets on high those who are lowly, and those who mourn are lifted to safety.  He frustrates the schemes of the shrewd, so that their hands cannot attain success.  Job 5:11-12  NASB

Safety/ Success – Eliphaz articulates the Hebraic idea of divine justice.  It’s “measure for measure.”  You get what you give.  Centuries later the rabbinic tradition follows the same theme.

“He [God] recompenses man with kindness according to his deed; He places evil on the wicked according to his wickedness.”[1]  Eliphaz is so convinced of this reciprocal justice that he counsels Job to accept all that has happened as a sign of God’s corrective discipline.  “Behold, happy is the person whom God disciplines, so do not reject the discipline of ^[e^]the Almighty” (Job 5:17).  If bad things happen to you, it’s no accident.  God is punishing you according to what you deserve.  Safety for the righteous, lack of success for the wicked.

Ah, if it were only that simple!

The point of Job’s story is that this logical equality doesn’t work.  It’s great theory, but it doesn’t account for the broken world.  The righteous don’t experience safety.  In fact, they are often the victims of horrific brutality.  The wicked don’t experience failure.  Most of the time the opposite seems to be the case.  We could follow the rabbis and simply say that the disjunction between the theory and reality is merely a misunderstanding of divine sovereignty.  What happens is what God wants to happen, so if bad things happen to you unjustly—from your perspective—that only means you’re wrong.  Your view is insufficient and you need to repent of even imagining that your suffering isn’t exactly what is coming to you.  In other words, the theory trumps human experience.  The theory is absolutely correct and experience needs to be hammered into shape in alignment with the theory.

I’m reminded of Abraham Heschel’s brief summary: “History is a nightmare.”  Sometimes theories need to be toppled, but tossing them aside is extremely difficult, especially when they seem so reasonable.  We tend to hang on to our theological theories despite all the evidence to the contrary because tossing out the theology leaves us feeling more fragile than holding onto the ideas that are contrary to basically all human experience.  In this particular case, the idea of reciprocal justice was so powerful that it forced the “invention” of an afterlife to handle the problem of disconfirming human experience.  It’s all a mess now but it will get straightened out in heaven when the theory will finally be verified.

You might find the afterlife solution good enough for now.  Job doesn’t.  At least not at this point.  Capitulation to a theological construct that denies all he experiences just won’t work.  Perhaps you can empathize.  You and I might not be perfectly righteous but we can still feel the pressure on the theological edifice.  Eliphaz had to discount the evidence in order to maintain his view of divine justice.  If “faith” requires denying everything I know, then maybe it’s not worth it.  Or we could join Kierkegaard and simply make a leap as many have.

Topical Index: measure for measure, faith, evidence, history, Job 5:11-12

[1] The Complete ArtScroll Siddur, (Mesorah Publications, Ltd., 1985), Shacharis/Morning Service, p. 17