Today's Meditation
Read Job 41:1-11
“Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook, or press down its tongue with a cord? 2Can you put a rope in its nose, or pierce its jaw with a hook? 3Will it make many supplications to you? Will it speak soft words to you? 4Will it make a covenant with you to be taken as your servant forever? 5Will you play with it as with a bird, or will you put it on leash for your girls? 6Will traders bargain over it? Will they divide it up among the merchants? 7Can you fill its skin with harpoons, or its head with fishing spears? 8Lay hands on it; think of the battle; you will not do it again! 9Any hope of capturing it will be disappointed; were not even the gods overwhelmed at the sight of it? 10No one is so fierce as to dare to stir it up. Who can stand before it?
11Who can confront it and be safe? —under the whole heaven, who?
This passage always makes me think of Moby Dick by Herman Melville. The following summary and plot of Moby Dick is taken from the online resource of the Encyclopedia Brittanica:
Moby Dick famously begins with the narratorial invocation “Call me Ishmael.” The narrator, like his biblical counterpart, is an outcast. Ishmael, who turns to the sea for meaning, relays to the audience the final voyage of the Pequod, a whaling vessel. Amid a story of tribulation, beauty, and madness, the reader is introduced to a number of characters, many of whom have names with religious resonance. The ship’s captain is Ahab, who Ishmael and his friend Queequeg soon learn is losing his mind. Starbuck, Ahab’s first-mate, recognizes this problem too, and is the only one throughout the novel to voice his disapproval of Ahab’s increasingly obsessive behavior. This nature of Ahab’s obsession is first revealed to Ishmael and Queequeg after the Pequod’s owners, Peleg and Bildad, explain to them that Ahab is still recovering from an encounter with a large whale that resulted in the loss of his leg. That whale’s name is Moby Dick. The Pequod sets sail, and the crew is soon informed that this journey will be unlike their other whaling missions: this time, despite the reluctance of Starbuck, Ahab intends to hunt and kill the beastly Moby Dick no matter the cost.
Ahab and the crew continue their eventful journey and encounter a number of obstacles along the way. Queequeg falls ill, which prompts a coffin to be built in anticipation of the worst. After he recovers, the coffin becomes a replacement lifeboat that eventually saves Ishmael’s life. Ahab receives a prophecy from a crew member informing him of his future death, which he ignores. Moby Dick is spotted and, over the course of three days, engages violently with Ahab and the Pequod until the whale destroys the ship, killing everyone except Ishmael. Ishmael survives by floating on Queequeg’s coffin until he is picked up by another ship, the Rachel.
In our reading from Job, God is asking him if he can tame the Leviathan, if it will speak soft words to him, if Job can make a covenant with it and play with it like a bird. God asks this of Job because God knows that Job cannot, but God can. Even the Leviathan (or in the case of the story that it reminds me of - a giant Sperm Whale) can speak soft words to its Creator. Even the Leviathan knows it has a covenant with God. Even the Leviathan is a play toy, like a tiny bird, to God.
Ahab set out on a fool's errand; to tame, capture, and kill the ocean's beast - Moby Dick. God is asking Job, are you a fool? Do you believe that you have the power of God? Can you do such things with the creation? Earlier God asked Job if he was there when God set the foundations of the earth, when God placed the Sun and Stars in the sky, when God made the waters separate from the land and created its creatures. Does Job know them by name? Does Job know the life span and living of each sparrow that falls to the ground? God does.
We are foolish in our arrogance, if we think we know better than God. There's a scene in the movie, Latter Days, where a woman is crying outside the hospital because her boyfriend has just died. A mormon missionary, one of the lead characters in the film, comes upon her and tries to console her. He asks her if she has ever read the comics in the newspaper. She is confused by the question. He says that when he was little he used to hold the comics up very closely and when you do that all you can see are dots. But when you hold it far enough away the dots become smaller and create a picture that we can see. Life for us is sometimes just a series of dots. God knows, sees, and understands the big picture.
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