A BABYLONIAN JOB

Translation of a Poem Relating to the Afflictions of a Good Man. Comparison with the Book of Job. A Fragment of Another Similar Poem.

1. Babylonian Poem Relating to Affliction.

The following Babylonian poem treats of a mysterious affliction which overtook a righteous man of Babylonia, and has been compared with the book of Job.[558]

1. I advanced in life, I attained to the allotted span;
Wherever I turned there was evil, evil—
Oppression is increased, uprightness I see not.
I cried unto god, but he showed not his face.
5. I prayed to my goddess, but she raised not her head.
The seer by his oracle did not discern the future;
Nor did the enchanter with a libation illuminate my case;
I consulted the necromancer, but he opened not my understanding.
The conjurer with his charms did not remove my ban.
10. How deeds are reversed in the world!
I look behind, oppression encloses me
Like one who the sacrifice to god did not bring,
And at meal-time did not invoke the goddess,
Did not bow down his face, his offering was not seen;
15. (Like one) in whose mouth prayers and supplications were locked,
(For whom) god’s day had ceased, a feast day become rare,
(One who) has thrown down his fire-pan, gone away from their images,
God’s fear and veneration has not taught his people,
Who invoked not his god, when he ate god’s food;
20. (Who) abandoned his goddess, and brought not what is prescribed,
(Who) oppresses the weak, forgets his god,
Who takes in vain the mighty name of his god; he says, I am like him.
But I myself thought of prayers and supplications;
Prayer was my wisdom, sacrifice, my dignity;
25. The day of honoring the gods was the joy of my heart,
The day of following the goddess was my acquisition of wealth;
The prayer of the king,—that was my delight,
And his music,—for my pleasure was its sound.
I gave directions to my land to revere the names of god,
30. To honor the name of the goddess I taught my people.
Reverence for the king I greatly exalted,
And respect for the palace I taught the people;
For I knew that with god these things are in favor.
What is innocent of itself, to god is evil!
35. What in one’s heart is contemptible, to one’s god is good!
Who can understand the thoughts of the gods in heaven?
The counsel of god is full of destruction; who can understand?
Where may human beings learn the ways of god?
He who lives at evening is dead in the morning;
40. Quickly he is troubled; all at once he is oppressed;
At one moment he sings and plays;
In the twinkling of an eye he howls like a funeral-mourner.
Like sunshine and cloud[559] their thoughts change;
They are hungry and like a corpse;
45. They are filled and rival their god!
In prosperity they speak of climbing to Heaven;
Trouble overtakes them and they speak of going down to Sheol.

(At this point the tablet is broken. We do not know how many lines are wanting before the narrative is resumed on the back of the tablet.)

Reverse

Into my prison my house is turned.
Into the bonds of my flesh are my hands thrown;
Into the fetters of myself my feet have stumbled.
....................................
5. With a whip he has beaten me; there is no protection;
With a staff he has transfixed me; the stench was terrible!
All day long the pursuer pursues me,
In the night watches he lets me breathe not a moment;
Through torture my joints are torn asunder;
10. My limbs are destroyed, loathing covers me;
On my couch I welter like an ox,
I am covered, like a sheep, with my excrement.
My sickness baffled the conjurers,
And the seer left dark my omens.
15. The diviner has not improved the condition of my sickness;
The duration of my illness the seer could not state;
The god helped me not, my hand he took not;
The goddess pitied me not, she came not to my side;
The coffin yawned; they [the heirs] took my possessions;
20. While I was not yet dead, the death wail was ready.
My whole land cried out: “How is he destroyed!”
My enemy heard; his face gladdened;
They brought as good news the glad tidings, his heart rejoiced.
But I knew the time of all my family,
25. When among the protecting spirits their divinity is exalted.

The above is from a tablet called the “Second” of the series Ludlul bÊl nimeqi, i. e., “I will serve the lord of wisdom.” The “Third” tablet of the series has been published by R. Campbell Thompson in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical ArchÆology, XXXII, p. 18, f. It is considerably broken, but the parts which are legible are as follows:

............................................
............................................
Let thy hand grasp the javelin
Tabu-utul-BÊl, who lives at Nippur,
5. Has sent me to consult thee,
Has laid his .......... upon me.
In life .......... has cast, he has found. [He says]:
“[I lay down] and a dream I beheld;
This is the dream which I saw by night:—
10. [He who made woman] and created man,
Marduk, has ordained (?) that he be encompassed with sickness (?).”
15. And .......... in whatever ..........
He said: “How long will he be in such great affliction and distress?
What is it that he saw in his vision of the night?”
“In the dream Ur-Bau ap[peared],
A mighty hero wearing his crown,
20. A conjurer, too, clad in strength,
Marduk indeed sent me;
Unto Shubshi-meshri-Nergal he brought abu[ndance];
In his pure hands he brought abu[ndance].
By my guardian-spirit (?) he st[opped] (?),”
25. [By] the seer he sent a message:
“A favorable omen I show to my people.”
..........................................
...... he quickly finished; the ...... was broken
........ of my lord, his heart [was satisfied];
30. .......... his spirit was appeased
............ my lamentation .................
................ good .... ..........

Reverse

..........................................
..........................................
................ like ................
He approached (?) and the spell which he had pronounced (?),
5. He sent a storm wind to the horizon;
To the breast of the earth it bore [a blast],
Into the depth of his ocean the disembodied spirit vanished (?);
Unnumbered spirits he sent back to the under-world.
The ...... of the hag-demons he sent straight to the mountain.
10. The sea-flood he spread with ice;
The roots of the disease he tore out like a plant.
The horrible slumber that settled on my rest
Like smoke filled the sky ..........
With the woe he had brought, unrepulsed and bitter, he filled the earth like a storm.
15. The unrelieved headache which had overwhelmed the heavens
He took away and sent down on me the evening dew.
My eyelids, which he had veiled with the veil of night.
He blew upon with a rushing wind and made clear their sight.
My ears, which were stopped, were deaf as a deaf man’s—
20. He removed their deafness and restored their hearing.
My nose, whose nostril had been stopped from my mother’s womb—
He eased its deformity so that I could breathe.
My lips, which were closed—he had taken their strength—
He removed their trembling and loosed their bond.
25. My mouth, which was closed so that I could not be understood—
He cleansed it like a dish, he healed its disease.
My eyes, which had been attacked so that they rolled together—
He loosed their bond and their balls were set right.
The tongue, which had stiffened so that it could not be raised—
30. [He relieved] its thickness, so its words could be understood.
The gullet which was compressed, stopped as with a plug—
He healed its contraction, it worked like a flute.
My spittle which was stopped so that it was not secreted—
He removed its fetter, he opened its lock.
............................................
............................................

2. Comparison with the Book of Job.

A commentary on this text, which has been preserved on a tablet, informs us that Tabu-utul-BÊl was an official of Nippur in Babylonia.[560] This story has some striking similarities to the book of Job. It presents also some striking dissimilarities.

Tabu-utul-BÊl, like Job, had been a just man. He had been also a religious man. (See lines 23, ff., p. 392.) The virtues which he claims are similar to those of Job (see Job 29 and 31); there is, however, this difference: Job’s virtues are social; those of Tabu-utul-BÊl consist of acts of worship and loyalty. Tabu-utul-BÊl is smitten, like Job, with a sore disease. To him, as to Job, the providence is inexplicable. He, like Job, charges his god with inscrutable injustice. The chasm which often yawns between experience and moral deserts was as keenly felt by the Babylonian as by the Hebrew.

Here the parallelism with the book of Job ends. The two works belong to widely different religious worlds. Job gains relief by a vision of God—an experience which made him able to believe that, though he could not understand the reason for the pain of life or its contradictions and tragedy, God could, and Job now knew God. (See Job 42:4-6.) Tabu-utul-BÊl, on the other hand, is said to have gained his relief through a magician. We are apparently told by the fragmentary text that at last he found a conjurer who brought a messenger from the god Marduk, who drove away the evil spirits which caused the disease, and so Tabu-utul-BÊl was relieved. This difference sets vividly before us the greater religious value and inspiration of the book of Job. It treats the same problem that the Babylonian poet took for his theme, but between the outlook of the poet who composed Job and that of the Babylonian poet there is all the difference between a real experience of God and faith in the black art.

3. Another Similar Lament.

Another fragment of a lament of a somewhat similar character, written in the Sumerian language, comes to us on a tablet from Nippur, the very city with which Tabu-utul-BÊl is said to have been connected. It reads as follows:[561]

Column I

1. ..............................
2. ..................................
3. .................... he carried away,
4. .................... he destroyed,
5. .................. spoke to ..........
6. .................. was destroyed,
7. .......... completely from on high was destroyed.
8. I, even I, am a man of destruction.
9. With might from below he destroyed,
10. I, even I, am a man of destruction.
11. Nippur (?)—its temple verily is destroyed,
12. My city verily is destroyed.
13. O Enlil, from the height descend,
14. May Ububul destroy them!

Column II

1. ..............................
2. ..............................
3. .............. my food (?) is not,
4. The ground grain is removed, with the hand he seized it;
5. My eyes fail.
6. The shrine of the mother which the silver-smith cast,
7. To earth he has ground,
8. Its contents on the earth verily he flung—
9. I am a man of destruction!—
10. Its contents on the earth verily he destroyed;
11. I am a man of destruction!
12. The man from above is wise;
13. On earth he dwells.
14. The man who went before,
15. Hides in the rear.
16. Namtar my maiden (he snatched away);
17. Who shall bring the maiden back?

Column III

1. Namtar verily is smitten, yea verily,
2. Who shall bring back strength?
3. The smiter has smitten,
4. Who shall strike him down?
5. The hero bearing the dagger
6. He has cast down,
7. Who shall drag him off?
8. At the gate of my palace no protector stands,
9. A man of desolation am I!
10. The land is completely overthrown, I have no defender,
11. A man of desolation am I!
12. The flood fills not the marsh land;
13. My eye thereon I lift not.
14. To man’s plantations water reaches not,
15. My hand stretches not out to it.
16. To the marsh land which the flood filled
17. Truly the foot walks upon it!

From this point on the tablet is too broken for connected translation. Dr. Langdon calls this the lament of a Sumerian Job, but his woes, in so far as this fragment recounts them, are due to the conquest of his land by an enemy, and to famine due to a failure of the rivers to overflow. The parallelism to Tabu-utul-BÊl and to Job might be closer, if we had the whole tablet. As this tablet is in the script of the first dynasty of Babylon, it is evident that this kind of lamentation was as early as 2000 B. C.