Episode 62 – God’s Favorite Fiddler on the Roof

Episode 62 Show Notes

Source: Abrahamic Mythology

This week on MYTH, Satan is going to get very hands-on. You’ll see that giant monsters are very intimidating, that being God’s favorite can be a bad thing, and that tornadoes might kill your family or they might just yell at you. Then, in Gods and Monsters, we’ll meet the scaly monster used to scare a Pharaoh. This is the Myths Your Teacher Hated podcast, where I tell the stories of cultures from around the world in all of their original, bloody, uncensored glory. Modern tellings of these stories have become dry and dusty, but I’ll be trying to breathe new life into them. This is Episode 62, “God’s Favorite Fiddler on the Roof”. As always, this episode is not safe for work.
Before we get started this week, I just wanted to share an exciting piece of personal news – I’ve been published! My short story, “A Hunting We Will Go”, has been published in Descent into Darkness #7. It’s the first piece I’ve ever had published, so I’m very excited. It’s available from Rainfall Publishing Company. Details will be available on Facebook and our website. And now, on with the show.
This week, we’re going to be diving headfirst into one of the most famous stories of the Abrahamic tradition, appearing in the Hebrew Ketuvim, the Christian Bible, and the Islamic Quran in very similar forms – the story of Job. It’s a story of deep importance to the Western literary world, with adaptations including such famous works as Joseph Stein’s Fiddler on the Roof, Neil Simon’s God’s Favorite, Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, Franz Kafka’s The Trial, the Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man, and many, many others. As you can probably guess from all of the literary genius that derives from it, the Book of Job is a strange, wild, and incredible tale.
The book is usually divided into a prose prologue, a poetic section of disputations , and a prose epilogue. The two prose sections date to sometime before the 6th Century BC, while the poetic section dates to between the 4th and 6th Century BC. The story is likely a retelling of an ancient oral tradition tale originating from outside of Israel, although the author of the version that has survived through the centuries was almost certainly an Isrealite based on the language used in the tale. The version I’ll be using comes from a translation of the Book of Iyov (Job) from the Ketuvim as it is the oldest available version.
There once lived a man in the land of Uz named Job. He was a good and righteous man, pious and devout, and everyone agreed that he was a very fine and upstanding person. Job was extremely rich, possibly the richest man in the entire country, possessing many thousands of sheep, camels, oxen, and she asses (why only female donkeys, I’m not really sure, but the tale is quite specific that he preferred the female asses). He also had a large family, with seven sons and three daughters, who he loved dearly and spent a good deal of time being a doting father to. They feasted and celebrated their good fortune every day, though Job was always careful to rise early and offer burnt sacrifices for his children, in case they had sinned and not asked forgiveness of Yaweh.
One day, high up in the lofty heavens, the sons of God (usually considered to be the offspring of Seth, the younger brother of Cain and Abel, though some interpretations consider them to be a specific hierarchical group of angels), came to visit with Yaweh. One of them held the title of Satan, which literally translates to “accuser”. In the Hebrew tradition, the Satan was one of the sons of God and therefore a righteous son of Seth whose job was to be the prosecutor of the Nation of Israel in the courts of Heaven and to test the loyalty of Yaweh’s followers, which is very much in line with his position in the Book of Job. In the modern Christian tradition, the Satan is better known as the Devil, a fallen angel from the Book of Revelations who is pretty much the Satan you probably already know and love to hate. In the Islamic tradition, Satan is usually considered to be an Iblis, one of the races of djinn, who was made from living fire and cast out of Heaven for refusing to accept subservience to the newly-created Adam. Any version can work here, so if you prefer to picture Yaweh talking to a red-skinned, goat-legged demon with a pitchfork or a much more powerful version of genie-Jafar from Aladdin, be my guest.
Yaweh and Satan get to shooting the shit about current events, like you do when you meet a work friend at an office party, and Yaweh brings up his golden boy Job. “Hey, Satan, have you seen this awesome Job guy? There’s nobody else like him on the earth – he’s a righteous dude, perfect and upright.” Satan shrugged dismissively. “I mean yeah, he’s pretty devout, but who wouldn’t be in his situation? The guy’s got a seriously easy life – a hot wife, good kids, a fat bank account. You take all of that away though, strip him of all of his fancy shit, and I bet he’ll curse your name quickly enough.” Yaweh smiled. “I’ll take that bet, Satan. You have complete power over every last piece of Job’s life. The only thing you can’t do is touch Job himself. Do your worst.” It was Satan’s turn to smile. His worst, eh? He could work with that.
Not long after that, there came a day when all of Job’s children had gathered together to feast and drink in the home of the eldest brother. Job’s livestock was out in the fields thinking complacent animal thoughts, and Job was sitting at home, probably basking in how good he had it. A knock on the door interrupted whatever he was doing. Job opened it to see one of his servants standing there, terrified and bloodied. “They’re dead, Job. They’re all dead! The Sabeans (an ancient people of southern Arabia) killed everybody! They took all of your oxen and asses and drove them away, and they killed all of us for being out there. Everybody I worked with, every last soul, is feeding the flies now. I alone managed to escape.”
Before Job could digest this awful news enough to respond, another servant charged up to the house, this one with red, teary eyes and reeking of smoke. He had the distant look of someone who’s survived something horrible, but knows they’ll have nightmares about it for the rest of their days. “I’ve never seen anything like it, Job. There was no warning. A pillar of fire roared down suddenly out of a clear blue sky and incinerated all of your sheep and all of the servants tending to them. I was the only one far enough away from the fireball to make it out alive. Most of them didn’t even have time to scream. Most of them…”
Job reeled from the blow of this double tragedy, but the fun wasn’t over yet. A third servant staggered in, bloodied and terrified. The Chaldeans, a great empire neighboring on Assyria, had fallen on Job’s camel drivers in three columns, taken all of his livestock, and murdered all of the servants except for the sole survivor telling the tale. Job was weeping openly now, but he at least had hope that this was as bad as it got. These things always come in threes, right?
A fourth servant appeared at Job’s door, full of misery, before the third had even finished speaking. “Job, your…your children are dead. All of them. They were having dinner together, and a huge tornado sprang up from nowhere and demolished your eldest son’s house. Everyone inside was crushed. I was lucky enough to be outside when the whirlwind struck, so I alone survived to tell you the awful news.”
Job’s heart broke at this news. He had loved his children, and had never expected to outlive them all like this. He tore his clothes (a Jewish mourning tradition known as kriah) and shaved his head (another ancient mourning tradition), then collapsed to the earth to weep. Now, in this situation, many people would be justifiably angry and distraught and maybe even a little unhinged, so it would be perfectly understandable for him to be a little bit angry at his god that so many wildly unlikely and devastatingly horrible events would all descend on his family and estate in a single day. In a lot of stories, this would be a pretty clear indication that some deity was pissed at you personally and taking divine vengeance. Job, however, raised his voice to the heavens and called out “naked i came out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return; the Lord has given and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord,” which is not at all the reaction that Satan had been hoping for.
No sooner had all of this destruction rained down on Job’s unsuspecting head than the sons of God came to visit the heavens again, and once again, Satan came along for the visit (looking a little nonplussed at how this bet was turning out so far). “So what do you think of my servant Job now, hmm? Even though you’ve destroyed everything he held dear with absolutely no reason whatsoever, he’s still a good, pious man.” Satan shook his head. “Sure, he’s still pious now, but it’s not like anything truly terrible has happened. Yeah, he lost his fortune and his family, but he can always make more of both, right? He’s still safe and healthy, but I bet if you let me change that, he’d curse your name super quickly.” Yaweh considered. “Alright, fine. You can do whatever you like to Job except kill him. Do your worst.”
Satan went immediately back to earth, where Job and his wife (who hasn’t been mentioned yet, but was apparently safe and sound with him in his house and just hasn’t made an appearance yet) were mourning their dead children. They had gone to survey the damage, and were overlooking the ashes that had once been living people and a thriving business. Job convulsed in agony as his skin erupted in fiery pain. Suddenly and all at once, engorged, throbbing, excruciating boils appeared on every square inch of his skin from the top of his head to the soles of his feet, and yes, I do mean everywhere. With one trembling hand, Job picked up a broken shard of pottery from the wreckage and began to scrape the bloody, pus-filled sores off his skin, seating himself in the ashes of his life.
Job’s nameless wife stared horrified at this new affliction, now absolutely certain that their god had a personal and grievous grudge against Job specifically. This was all too much. They didn’t deserve this punishment; they’d been good people, damnit! She looked at the bloody wreck of her husband in the burned out husk of their life. “Holy shit, Job. Are you still trying to be pious after all of this? Give it up, Job. Tell Yaweh to go fuck himself and then crawl away and die.” Job looked at his wife with pity in his eyes (and pain; lots and lots of pain). “Don’t be a fool, wife. Did you really expect to only ever get good things from the hand of the Lord and never difficult things?”
I’m guessing they each needed some alone time after an exchange like that, and Job was left alone with his grief. It didn’t take long for word of Job’s unbelievable misfortune to reach town. When it did, three of Job’s friends talked it over and headed out to his estate to comfort him: Eliphaz the Temanite (probably an Edomite, or member of the Palestenian people descended from Esau, the twin brother of Jacob from the Book of Genesis), Bildad the Shuhite (a descendent of Shuah, the son of Abraham from the Book of Genesis), and Zophar the Naamathite (from the city of Naamah, probably somewhere in Arabia).
All three offered condolences, and wept bitter tears, and tore their clothes in shared mourning, then sprinkled the dust of the earth on their heads in an ancient tradition. Job simply stared into the distance, throat locked with a pain too powerful for him to express. They sat with him in silence for seven days and seven nights; they could see that his grief was too big for words, so they let him have his silence and told him by their presence alone that he was cared for (which initially makes them pretty awesome friends).
On the seventh day, Job spoke. “I wish that I had never been born. Let the day that I was born perish, and let the night in which I was conceived fall into darkness. Let Yaweh not regard it from the heavens and let no light shine upon it. Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it, let a cloud obliterate it, let the blackness of that day terrify it. And that night? Let it not be part of the rest of the year, and let it be severed from all of the months. No, let that night be isolated and alone, and let no joyful voice be heard in the awful blackness. Let all those who are ready to raise their voices to mourn curse the night as they curse the day. Let the stars of twilight burn out and die, let them look for the light and find none and never see the dawning of the sun since I was unlucky enough not to die in the womb that day. Why didn’t I die before I was born, or at least draw my last breath on the day I drew my first? I could be dead now and at peace, resting with the kings in their palatial sepulchres.” He goes on like this for quite a while longer, but you get the gist – in very poetic verse, Job is being utterly nihilistic and crying out that it would have been better to have never existed than to have lived to suffer this incredible pain.
His three friends listen to his beautiful rant about death respectfully until Job finally tires himself out. Eliphaz the Temanite was the first to break the awkward silence following Job’s monologue. “Hey bud, is it gonna be cool with you if we talk to you a bit? You’re obviously very upset right now, and who could blame you, but think about it, man. Whenever something bad happened to anyone else in town, you were always the first one to show up and offer your comfort and your strength. Your kind and eloquent words have helped many who were weak and grieving, but now that you’re on the other side of this, and you crumble like dry clay. I know this is going to be hard to hear, but with all the friendship between us, I ask you to consider this – isn’t it probable that all of this suffering is your fault? I mean, I’ve seen it over and over – those who plow injustice and sow wickedness reap the same in kind. Even the bravest, most lion-hearted of men are broken and scattered by the breath of the Lord if they deserve to be. The good men, the poor men, the pious men – these he saves from the sword during war and from starvation during famine, and they need fear no destruction. There’s no way that this incredible, impossible series of misfortunes could possibly have befallen you all in the same day if you hadn’t done something really bad to deserve it, so my advice is to repent and beg Yaweh for forgiveness as soon as possible.”
Eliphaz goes on about how this must definitely be Job’s fault in excruciating (though very poetic) length, and all of his arguments basically boil down to ‘it wouldn’t be right for bad things to happen to good people, so this bad thing that happened must be your fault.’ It’s hardly the most compassionate thing to say to a grieving friend who literally lost all of their children that fucking day, and gone bankrupt on the same day just to make it extra suffer-ific.
Job isn’t exactly thrilled at his friend’s quote unquote ‘compassion’ and goes on at length about how he really, really wishes that Eliphaz would either show some pity or shut the fuck up. He guesses (probably with some accuracy) that they are terrified at seeing someone rich and powerful and, to all appearances, a very good person suffering in such an extreme and unprecedented way. They want it to be Job’s fault because then they can reassure themselves that the universe is fair and that if they are good enough, the same kinds of awful things won’t happen to them. It’s easier to believe that Job is secretly a bad man than to believe that bad things can happen to good people for no reason whatsoever.
He asks them to explain what, exactly, they think he might have done to deserve to suffer such tremendous grief, and promises to shut the hell up if they can. “Are you really attacking someone who has already lost everything? My flesh is rotting on my body, and my children lie rotting in the rubble of the homes I built for them. My days are short and utterly without hope. My children are dead! And no one who goes down into the grave ever comes back. So how dare you get on to me for screaming out in pain? How dare you heap more abuse on my head? If I were to lay down to try to find some peace in sleep, would you curse me with nightmares until my very soul tries to strangle itself to be done with this wretched life?”
You’d think that having your friend tell you that blaming him for random acts of destruction isn’t helping as much as you think would be enough to get you to reconsider some life choices, but apparently not in Job’s friend set. Bildad the Shuhite gave Job an incredulous look following his speech. “Are you still going on about this? Your words are just wind, dude. Come on, do you really think that Yaweh is ever unjust? I mean, that’s impossible, right? Look at all the bad shit that happened to you today – it has to be your fault (or maybe your kids were the wicked ones, and they deserved to all be killed by a freak storm, but then it’s still at least a little bit your fault since you didn’t raise them properly). If you were smart, you’d throw yourself down into the dust now and beg forgiveness. Yaweh doesn’t destroy a good man and he doesn’t help a wicked one. Based on today, which one do you think you are?”
Job gave Bildad an ‘are you shitting me’ look in return. “How exactly do you think a human can be just or unjust with a deity? I mean, we’re talking about the almighty being that created literally everything. If he wants to take something from you, do you think you can stop him? If the universe were fair, I’d be able to take my complaints to a judge rather than to Yaweh himself. Even if I were to call out and he were to answer me, I wouldn’t really believe he’d heard my words. Seriously, who could set a day and time for me to plead my case? If I were to try and justify that myself, try to say that I am a good enough person that nothing bad should ever happen to me, I’d prove myself a liar just for saying that. It doesn’t matter how good or wicked I am – bad things happen to everyone, and both the innocent and the evil are slaughtered by indifferent cruelty. The earth belongs to the wicked, and all of the mortal judges are biased as hell. Even if I were to say that I would forget all that had happened to me today and move on and try to be happy, to not be angry and hurt at losing my family and my livelihood in one fell swoop, you still wouldn’t think I was innocent. If I’m such a dick, then why am I laboring in vain? If I were to scour myself clean in the purest snowmelt, you would still dip me in the blackest, stickiest pitch and call me wicked.
“I’d love to tell Yaweh to show me what I did wrong rather than condemning me to punishment. Are you enjoying seeing me suffer? You know me, and you know that I am not an evil man – hell, you’re the one that made me out of clay, to live as an imperfect human being. I am so very confused right now. If Yaweh was just going to punish me for being the imperfect thing that he made me, why give me life at all? Just let me die already.”
You can probably guess that Zophar the Naamathite isn’t going to be nicer to Job than his two buddies have been. Here, the rule of threes is in full effect. Having seen how upset his two friends’ piss-poor attempts at comfort had gone over, he decided to go all-in blaming all of Job’s tragedies on Job himself. “Come on, buddy, you can’t possibly think that we’re going to let you say all of that shit and not come back at you, can you? You can’t spout that kind of bullshit and expect us to sit silently by, man! I can’t believe you have the balls to say ‘I’m a pure, virtuous man’ with a straight face. You’re such an ass, Job. I really wish God would give it to you good. Killing your children and burning your fortune is a good start, and the boils were a nice touch, but you deserve to be punished so much worse than you have been so far. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll go to the temple and start groveling toot sweet! God doesn’t punish innocence, so if you’re suffering, it’s because you deserve it, asshat. Ipso facto.”
These three have got to be the worst grief counselors ever. Job clearly feels the same way. “You three clearly believe yourselves to be the smartest men ever, and think that wisdom dies the day that you do, but I’m not stupid guys. I’m not your inferior. How can you all sit there and tell me without a trace of irony that you know for sure exactly how the world works and why these evils have befallen me. You are all liars and the worst grief counselors I’ve ever met! Now shut up, all of you, and let me rant. My children died this morning, you insensitive jerks!” Job then goes on at great length to complain about his god while still professing to be a faithful believer. He rhetorically begs for a chance to plead his case in some kind of Heaven Court (which would make a great daytime tv show). In an extremely unusual turn for the hero of a story like this, Job berates Yaweh for his underserved and disproportionate wrath against a pitiful, impotent human. Job accuses him of being intrusive and suffocating, unforgiving, obsessed with vengeance against a mere mortal, ridiculously angry, unbearably fixated on punishment, hostile, and destructive.
Then, Job moves on from complaining about his own poor treatment to critiquing the way that the universe is run, just kind of in general. He bemoans the fact that the wicked have triumphed over good men and nothing bad seems to happen to them. He doesn’t see any justice in the world.
After this long, long tirade, Job waxes poetic on the nature of wisdom itself (a passage known, appropriately enough, as the Hymn to Wisdom). The basic gist is that no one really knows what wisdom is, which must mean that it’s been hidden from mankind. It cannot be bought, it cannot be tracked down, for it does not exist in the land of the living. Job then outlines exactly why this treatment of him is wildly unfair, contrasting how good his life used to be with how shitty it is now. He asks his friends (or maybe Yaweh himself – Job is just angry enough to demand that a god explain himself at this point) to tell him exactly what he’s done to deserve this kind of punishment. He lays out all of the good things he’s done and, while he admits that he’s made mistakes, he quite reasonably asks that they be balanced against the rest of his life rather than held in total isolation.
His three so-called friends had no answer to this, though from the text, it sounds like it was more because they gave him up as a lost cause than because they were swayed by his words. They clearly thought that Job was a self-righteous prick and he deserved to have everyone around him be slaughtered, to be made penniless, and to suffer an incredibly painful and debilitating ailment.
Job’s speech did have an impact on one man, however – Elihu of Barachel the Buzite (who might also be a descendant of Abraham). Don’t worry, you’re not going crazy or getting lost in all of these complicated names – Elihu hasn’t been mentioned before; he just appears abruptly to yell at Job and his friends and then vanishes again just as abruptly. Many scholars think that, although the story of Job appears to be the work of a single author, this passage is likely a later addition to the tale as commentary. Some even go so far as to contend that Elihu is an early example of self-insertion fiction, with Elihu himself being the nameless original poet behind Job.
Elihu was basically mad at everyone we’ve heard from so far, but hadn’t said anything before now because he was younger than all of them and trying to be respectful to his elders. Now, though, he just can’t help but ‘okay, Boomer’ them all a little. He’s pissed at Job for trying to justify his own worthiness and he’s pissed at the three ‘friendly accusers’ for being shitty friends and condemning Job for no reason whatsoever.
“Listen up, old timers, cause I’m about to drop some knowledge on your asses. I’ve held my tongue up til now because you are all, like, super old, but now it’s clear that just being an old fart doesn’t mean you know shit. The solution to this bullshit argument you’re all having is simple, and I can’t believe that four supposedly wise men can’t figure it out. Obviously, wisdom comes to us from Yaweh, Job. You don’t expect to be able to go buy him in a shop or find him hiding under a rock somewhere, but you don’t doubt that he’s still the very real cause of your suffering, right? Why should wisdom be any different?”
Then, Elihu whirled to face the three friends, who were probably enjoying watching this young kid lay into Job but were going to enjoy him laying into them a whole lot less. “And you three assholes – listen to me if you’re not too stupid to know when to shut the hell up. It certainly feels good in a schadenfreude kind of way when total dicks get their comeuppance, but bad things can happen to good people too. And yeah, wicked men seem to get ahead in life a lot more often than we would like, but there are good men who are successful too, so it’s not like you have to be an asshole to be a winner. You want to know why bad things happen to good people? To remind you that bad things can still happen, to make sure you don’t get too big for your britches. If you could do good things and avoid ever having to go through a hard time in life, you’d forget what it was like to suffer and worse, you’d start to believe that the good things you had were because of your own goodness, and then Yaweh would have to strike you down anyway for hubris. It’s all about staying humble!”
He whirled back on Job. “Are you honestly arrogant enough to think you’re better than Yaweh? Dude, seriously? For a supposedly pious man, you’re really rocking the boat here. Rain is pretty awesome, and we all know that snow is rad. If you’re feeling a little shitty, go take a walk in nature and remember how bitching it all is.” He goes on in this vein, criticizing Job for complaining and pointing out that nature is pretty fucking sweet, so that makes life great even when it sucks. Truth be told, he doesn’t really add anything new to the discussion, or say anything that someone else doesn’t say better and more succinctly somewhere else in the story, so I tend to lean towards this being a little bit of self-insertion fanfiction (which anyone who’s read Dante’s Divine Comedy knows is a time-honored tradition). Fortunately, once he finishes yelling at Job, he abruptly disappears, and is never seen, heard from, or mentioned again.
While everyone was digesting this unexpected speech from a young upstart that none of them had realized had been rudely eavesdropping on their conversation (or more likely, not reacting at all because he’s basically pasted into the action like the world’s worst Photoshop fail), a whirlwind descends suddenly from a clear blue sky. Given that, just this morning, the same thing had happened and had killed all of his children in one fell swoop, I have to imagine that Job believed that Yaweh had finally answered his repeated and pointed demands to be allowed to die already. I can totally imagine Job standing there, eyes closed and arms spread wide eagerly waiting for death while his three so-called friends try to scramble away from sudden, certain doom. Fortunately or unfortunately, he’s only half right. Yaweh’s definitely been following their conversation, but he’s not about to let some puny mortal tell him what to do.
“Who has the audacity to demand answers from me without knowing a me-damned thing? Well, it’s time to nut up or shut up, because I’m here in answer to all your moaning. Were you there when I laid the foundations of the motherfucking universe? Speak up if you were. No? Did you hang the stars in the sky? Have you walked the sunless depths of the ocean floor? Have you seen beyond the doors of death? Until you can loosen Orion’s belt, or lead the turning of the constellations from season to season, or get an actual, honest-to-me unicorn to serve as your steed (and no, I’m not making that up – the original story directly references unicorns) sit down, shut up, and stop being a little bitch. You demanded a chance to speak to me, so step up or step off.”
Understandably, Job hadn’t exactly prepared himself to have Yaweh himself come down from the heavens to directly confront him and call him a weak-ass little mortal. Who would? After he got over his shock, Job answered “Honestly, Lord, I’m a vile piece of shit. I really didn’t expect you to call me to the carpet like this, so I’ll just shut up now.” The talking whirlwind didn’t much care for that answer. “Reach down and grab your balls like you’ve got a pair and be a man. I demand satisfaction! Are you ready to condemn me so that you can be righteous? Do you have sweet guns like a god? Do you have a thunderous Morgan Freeman voice like a god? Step up, little man, if you can. Bring justice to the wicked, bring low the proud, and really grind their faces into the dust? What’s that? You can’t? I thought not.
“Look out and see Behemoth, the monster I made just for you.” No one agrees on what exactly Behemoth is, with guesses ranging from rhino to elephant to even a dinosaur. Pick your favorite. “He eats grass like an ox, but he’s got just the most powerful dick you’ve ever seen (I mean, the original translation is loins, but that’s just a polite way to say dick and balls, right?). He towers like a massive cedar, with rocks for muscles and iron and brass for bones. He can drink down the entire River Jordan with ease, and only a god could hope to kill him. Do you have the stones to hook Leviathan and draw him from the sea?” Leviathan was a massive sea serpent that appears in Psalms, Isaiah, and Amos as well. It parallels the older Canaanite monster Lotan, and it’s almost impossible not to see the similarities to Tiamat (Episode 25) or Jormungandr (Episodes 4 and 51).
“Will Leviathan beg you to yield, will he try to bargain with you? Can you bind him as your servant? His scales are thick and hard, and cannot be pierced by puny human weapons. His eyes shine like the morning, and fire rages from his throat.” Basically, he’s Trogdor the Burninator from Homestar Runner’s Strong Bad. “Do you dare to take arms against this monster after chickening out against Behemoth?”
Job was smart enough not to rise to the bait. “Of course not, Lord. I know that you can do everything, and I can do practically nothing. I was angry and said some stupid things, but I was talking right out of my ass about things I knew nothing about. I grovel in the dust and ashes that used to be my children and repent.”
Yaweh was apparently satisfied with this apology, because he turned his wrath on Eliphaz the Temanite, who had probably expected to be addressed by his god even less than Job had. “Eliphaz, I’m pretty pissed off at you and your two friends. Job may have said some stupid things in his anger, but he didn’t say anything that was flat out wrong, just misguided. You three ass clowns, on the other hand, have royally screwed the pooch. You better make up for it with a burnt offering of seven bulls and seven rams. Your hands are not worthy to light the flame though, so have Job do it instead. He’s a better servant of mine than any of you three (Elihu, the mysterious fourth person, is not mentioned, probably because he didn’t exist in the story at this point).”
Everyone went out and did as they were told, and Yaweh ended Satan’s campaign against Job. In recompense for losing his fortune and, you know, all seven of his fucking children, Job is given twice as much as he had before. All of his siblings and all of his friends and acquaintances came to his new house for a housewarming party to bitch and moan with Job about just how unfairly he had been treated by the Lord before (now that he was rich again, and therefore a good person again), and each of them brought him a gold piece as a gift. He went on to have seven more sons and three more daughters (I guess to replace the human fucking beings who were dead now as part of some cosmic dick measuring contest), and he lived 140 more years, long enough to see his great-great-grandchildren before he died.
Job is a very strange story, and one of the few I can think of where the hero spends most of the story bitching at his deity about his legitimately unfair treatment. Even stranger, he doesn’t end up twice as fucked for stepping up to divine power (as would definitely have been the case if he’d been complaining about Zeus) – he’s actually rewarded for being mad without actually giving up his religion. The poetry of the story is undeniable though, and one of the major reasons it has been so influential in pop culture. And with Satan annoyed at losing his bet, it’s time for Gods and Monsters. This is a segment where I get into a little more detail about the personalities and history of one of the gods or monsters from this week’s pantheon that was not discussed in the main story. This week’s monster is Tannin.
Tannin was a sea monster in the Canaanite, Phoenician, and Hebrew mythologies, often used as a symbol for chaos and evil. Unlike Behemoth and Leviathan, Tannin is never explicitly described in the original texts, and the word is used to describe a broad range of reptilian creatures. Some scholars believe that the word refers to a dragon, in exactly the stereotypical way that you’re imagining, but many others believe it to be something more akin to a crocodile. It’s mentioned in the Book of Job, but only in passing and without any explanation except that it is powerful enough to use as a guard. In Isaiah, Tannin is too powerful for a mortal to handle, and has to be killed by Yaweh himself.
The word is even used in Isaiah to describe Leviathan from Job, leading to some of the confusion. In Deuteronomy, Moses equates Tannin with a cobra. In the famous story where Moses and his brother Aaron confront Pharaoh, Aaron throws his staff down on the floor, where it transforms into a tannin, though this is usually depicted as a cobra instead. In most of the stories though, they’re big, they’re powerful, they’re venomous, and they’re deadly. He’s one of the servants of Yam, a sea god whose name literally means ‘sea’, in Canaanite mythology, and is defeated by the storm god Ba’al in epic battle.
That’s it for this episode of Myths Your Teacher Hated. Keep up with new episodes on our Facebook page, on iTunes, on Stitcher, on TuneIn, and on Spotify, or you can follow us on Twitter as @HardcoreMyth and on Instagram as Myths Your Teacher Hated Pod. You can also find news and episodes on our website at myths your teacher hated dot com. If you have any questions, any gods or monsters you’d want to learn about, or any ideas for future stories that you’d like to hear, feel free to drop me a line. I’m trying to pull as much material from as many different cultures as possible, but there are all sorts of stories I’ve never heard, so suggestions are appreciated. The theme music is by Tiny Cheese Puff, whom you can find on fiverr.com.
Next time, we’ll shoot for the stars for some lunar isolation fun. You’ll see that even gods get lonely, that no one like to see their parents having sex, and that the best gardens are on the moon. Then, in Gods and Monsters, we’ll meet the space shark that’s also the daddy of a monster we’ve already met. That’s all for now. Thanks for listening.