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We have seen how Job turns upside down one of the Psalmist's concepts for his own purposes. He interprets the Psalmist's "Thou does beset me behind and before (139:5)," which in the context of the Psalm connotes God's loving encircling of the faithful, in terms of God's oppressive and hostile presence in besieging him. Another concept from Psalm 139 that provides interpretive gristle for Job's intellectual mill is darkness and light.

The Psalmist's ebullient and serene confidence in God's omniscience and constant presence reaches its apex when he ruminates on whether he can ever be outside of God's loving care. God is always there, chasing away the darkness. "If I say, 'Let...the light about me be night, even the darkness is not dark to thee, the night is bright as the day; for darkness is as light with thee (Ps. 139:11-12)." The sentiment is echoed early in Haydn's "Die Schopfung" (The Creation), where the baritone sings, "Nun schwanden vor dem heiligen Strahle/ Des schwarzen Dunkels graulichen Schatten ["Now before the sacred ray the dismal shadows of black darkness vanish"]."

But rather than darkness providing the context for further illumination of God's presence, as it does for the Psalmist, darkness for Job is the condition to which he wants to return because he is sure that darkness is the realm of the divine absence.

Darkness and light are on Job's mind from nearly the first words of his first soliloquoy (Job 3). "Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night which said, 'A man-child is conceived' (3:3)." After this declaration of desire, Job plunges into terminology of darkness. "Let that day be darkness (v.4)." "Let gloom and deep darkness claim it. Let clouds dwell upon it; let the blackness of the day ["eclipse"--Clines and NJB] terrify it (v. 5)." "That night--let thick darkness seize it (v. 6)!" And, "Let the stars of its dawn be dark (v. 9)." The word pounds away at us with the incessant throbbing of a jackhammer. Every time he says the word "dark" or "darkness" it is as if Job is being pummelled, pulverized, pressured more into that condition of nonexistence for which he so eagerly longs.

If Job had never been born, if he had been aborted in his mother's womb, he would never have seen the light of the day. He would have "lain down and been quiet" (v. 14) in the shadowy realm of Sheol where God is not present. Then finally he would have been at rest. The presence of the darkness means the absence of God. Darkness means peace and tranquility for Job. Again, he turns Ps 139 upside down.

This is even more clear in Job's other invocation of darkness. In his third soliloquoy (9-10), Job first deploys legal terminology and legal process as a strategy to defend himself against God and, in fact, to strike back against God. But, at the end of Job 10, the immensity of the task overwhelms Job. In a thought rarely expressed in Scripture, Job wants God to leave him alone. "Let me alone, that I may find a little comfort (10:20)..." At this point the language of darkness reappears with a vengeance. Job wants to go "to the land of gloom and deep darkness, the land of gloom and chaos ["darkness and shadow dark as death"--NJB] where light is as darkness (21-22)."

Note the precise phrasing of the last words. 'Let me go to the land of deep darkness,' Job says, 'where light is as darkness.' Compare this to the confident words of the Psalm: "for darkness is as light with thee (Ps. 139:12)." What has Job done? He has completely reversed the thought of the Psalm. Light chases away the darkness for the Psalmist; light turns into darkness for Job. Another little victory for despair.

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