Once More Around the Circle

“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?   Tell me, if you understand.  Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!  Who stretched a measuring line across it?”  Job 38:4-5  NIV

Surely you know! – That’s the rub, isn’t it?  Here we are recognizing in good pagan fashion the endless repetition of the universe.  Once more we arrived at the beginning.  Did anything really change in this last circumnavigation of the sun?  We still have wars, poverty, pestilence, sorrow, pain.  Oh, yes, along the way we had some joy, some pleasure, some success—but a few more times around and all that will evaporate, swallowed up in the interminable circle.  By now we probably know that it took the Hebrews to break this ceaseless cycle of meaninglessness.  They invented history.  Or perhaps better, God invented history and told them about it.  So, we’re going someplace—not just the same place around and around.  But that “someplace” seems as far off as tomorrow—inevitably before us, never arriving.  We have loads of theology, plenty of science, volumes of exegesis, and yet, in the end, a few Hebrew words leave us speechless.

מִי־שָׂ֣ם מְ֖מַדֶּיהָ כִּ֣י תֵדָ֑ע א֚וֹ מִֽי־נָטָ֖ה עָלֶ֣יהָ קָּֽו

kî tēdā’   “surely you know.”   Perfect divine sarcasm.  Putting us in our place.  Creaturely.  Ignorant.  Small.  Perhaps even arrogant.  Look around you!  Do you have the answers you need?  Does anyone?  kî tēdā’  

Back to the beginning.  How very little distance we’ve come!  Pursuit of the truth—yes, for sure.  But finding it?  Well, maybe not so clear.  More questions than answers.  We need to remember that a question is never wrong.  We have lots of them.  The more we look, the more we find more places to look.  Around again.

Is this interminable searching just divine sarcasm?  Should I succumb to my frustration and “only believe”?  No, I’m not ready for that—yet.  But I am getting weary.  Not from the joy and excitement of discovery.  Oh, my, that’s so thrilling!  One new thing about the grammar.  One more insight into the author.  The depth of it all!  So appealing.  So challenging.  No, that bit will probably never stop.  But what’s missing, what wears me down, is study without ecstasy.  A touch of the divine—that’s what’s missing.  A sense of purposefulness, of destiny, of—can I say this?—acceptance in all my struggles.  kî tēdā’ is cognitive comeuppance.  Something I need to remember.  My quest isn’t to know.  It’s to love.  And I’m afraid words won’t get me there.

kî tēdā’  What is it, really, that I know?  Well, I know how I feel.  All the rest is justification or explanation.  Maybe the next time around I should start there.

Topical Index: kî tēdā’, surely you know, Job 38:4-5