An Exercise For Reading Difficult Passages
Leviathan and the Hook (Part 5)
Many of the lesser-read passages of the Bible are challenging to understand. By reading writers like G.K. Chesterton, we develop the strength and patience required to go deep with Scripture. Let me show you what I mean by sharing three exercises for reading difficult texts from the next section of Leviathan and the Hook.
1- Begin with the obvious clues in the text. Especially those that are so obvious we read right past them.
a-For example, Paul uses “therefore” twenty-one times in his letter to the Romans. A Bible study leader once told me, “When you see “therefore,” ask what it is there for.”
Oftentimes, Paul uses “therefore” in the final part of his argument. If we’re going to understand what he’s saying, the “therefore” tells us to read the argument before the passage to get a handle on what he is saying.
Look at Romans 6:12 for the “therefore” and then refer back to Romans 6:1-11 to understand the challenging argument that tells us what the “therefore” is there for.
b- Chesterton begins our passage with an obvious clue.
Let it not be supposed that Professor Dillon's work is thus weak…
“Let it not be supposed…” is our clue that an argument has already been made in the previous sections of this essay; enough so that he expects the reader to be thinking that Professor Dillon’s work might not be worth reading at all.
Paul, in Romans 6, begins with a similar clue:
What shall we say then? Shall we go on sinning, so that grace may increase?
He asks this question because if the reader is following the direction of his argument, he expects them to be asking themselves this same question.
Once we grasp these obvious clues, we can make sure we are on track with the author.
2- Be sure you are in alignment with the flow of the argument.
If you aren’t clear on why Paul is asking this question, it is worth going back and re-reading the chapters before. Otherwise, the letter to the Romans will become even more mysterious as you continue to read.
G.K. Chesterton, in his essay, has led us to question the value of Professor Dillon’s commentary on Job through his arguments in the previous sections. He has suggested that people using the Professor’s techniques are “old muddlers” (Post 3), “no more use in the matter than gardening,” (Post 4), able to see what a child can see (Post 4) and produce works that are momentary and will not have the lasting power of Job (Post 2). If we have followed him thus far we are wondering about the value of the work at all. If you have missed any of this, it is worth reviewing what he has said thus far.
But once we are in alignment with Chesterton’s argument, we are ready to take the next steps with him as he develops his argument.
3- Take the next step wiht the author to develop the meaning.
Let it not be supposed that Professor Dillon's work is thus weak;
he makes many wise suggestions and emendations.
But when they are entirely wise they are also literary and entirely undemonstrable.
Chesterton cleverly denies that he is trying to diminish the value of Dillon’s work, while at the same time continuing to argue that Dillon’s method of studying Job misses the most important wisdom of Job. To make his point he offers an example of a valuable contribution from the Professor’s work (a) but in the analysis which follows shows how even with this contribution he misses the important point of the Scripture. (b)
(a)
To take one instance out of many, at the end of that noble Nihilist1 chapter three, in which Job curses his day, which is indeed the sublimest point of suicide, the very crest and imperial crown of cowardice, Job says in the authorized version:
"For my sighing cometh before I eat and my roarings are poured out like the waters."
This is evidently an extremely literary and ingenious rendering by the original translators of a passage of which they could not make head or tail. 2According to the later version the meaning is simpler and stronger and more in the manner of good primitive poetry. In Professor Dillon's book it runs
"For sighing is become my bread, and my crying is unto me as water."
This has all the elemental energy of the primeval phrase; it would be difficult to express with more directness what is the worst part of pain or calamity, the fact of the abnormal thing becoming the normal, disaster becoming a routine. We can all endure catastrophe as long as it is catastrophic; it is maddening the moment it is orderly. In a sense this small matter expresses the whole of Job.
But now he moves to point (b):
(b)
Professor Dillon analyzes very well the main and obvious idea that it is a protest against that paltry optimism which sees in suffering a mark of sin.3 But he does not, I think, quite pierce to the further and ultimate point of "Job," which is that the true secret and hope of human life is something much more dark and beautiful than it would be if suffering were a mark of sin.
A mere scheme of rewards and punishments would be something much meaner and more mechanical than this exasperating and inspiring life of ours.
And now Chesterton drives this next step of his argument home. This is where Chesteron and his more literary approach to Job shine with charcteristic wisdom and application:
An automatic scheme of Karma, or "reaping what we sow," would be just as gross and material as sowing beans or reaping barley. It might satisfy mechanicians4 or modern monists5, or theosophists6, or cautious financiers7, but not brave men.
It is no paradox to say that the one thing which would make suffering intolerable would be the thought that it was systematically inflicted upon sinners. The one thing which would make our agony infamous would be the idea that it was deserved. On the other hand, the doctrine which makes it most endurable is exactly the opposite doctrine, that life is a battle in which the best put their bodies in the front, in which God sends only His holiest into the hail of the arrows of hell. In the book of Job is foreshadowed that better doctrine full of a dark chivalry that he that bore the worst that men can suffer was the best that bore the form of man.
Next week, the conclusion of "Leviathan and the Hook.”
Nihilist: a person who believes that life is meaningless and rejects all religious and moral principles. Using the wordplay known as alliteration, Chesterton adds the “tongue-in-cheek” adjective Noble, which adds power to his attack on suicide as a cowardly act: “which is indeed the sublimest point of suicide, the very crest and imperial crown of cowardice…” which in turn strengthens the final phrase of this section highlighting the opposite principle expressed in Job: “the dark chivalry that he that bore the worst that men can suffer was the best that bore the form of man.”
Job 3:24. Every passage in the Bible is a translation from the original ancient Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek. We are blessed to have so many Bible translations in English. But each of these has a different approach to translation. Chesterton’s point here is that the goal is not only to get the right word for word translation but to also capture the emotion which the original words convey. He is telling us that in this passage the Professor’s translation is better than the King James Version (the authorized translation of his day.)
The story in John 9 is filled with this idea that suffering is the result of sin but Jesus dismisses this type of thinking when it is expressed by the disciples.
Mechanician: a person skilled in the design or construction of machinery.
Monist: someone who denies the distinction between God and the world.
Theosophist: believes that the knowledge of God may be achieved through spiritual ecstasy, direct intuition, or special individual relations. The name comes from a movement founded in 1875 as the Theosophical Society by Helena Blavatsky and Henry Steel Olcott (1832–1907).
Did you catch the humor here? As we learn from Sesame Street “One of these things is not like the other.” Adding an unexpected word at the end of a phrase is called Paraprosdokian.