Daydreaming and Creativity in Job 3:13-19

I am returning to Job 3 this month, after a hiatus of several years, to memorize it as part of my seven-language poetry memorization task for 2012. Today I will focus on just a few verses of the chapter, verses which help us think about the relationship of daydreaming and creativity. Specifically, I will look at the structure and content Job 3:13-19 and argue that Job's magnificent creativity in (re) conceptualizing the idea of Sheol in 3:17-19 flows directly from his ability to abstract himself from his reality and enter into a world of reverie and daydream. Before making this case, a word on the working of the human mind..

Pay Attention!

From early days I was nurtured on the idea of the importance of continuous and focused attention on tasks. I was to study at my desk without getting up until I was either finished my homework or had reason to leave that position. The idea was that daydreaming, which kids were prone to doing, was counterproductive and harmful for our quest to learn and, ultimately, to accomplish something valuable in life. This approach to learning and life informed my legal practice, where I was taught to bill my time in six-minute intervals. The assumption was that my time was equally valuable (each minute was filled with the same intensity); this assumption could only flow from the notion that the mind worked on a fairly steady pattern of activity that could be equally billed. But this reality was belied by experience and just a little thought. I discovered, as time went by, that my "brilliant" insights usually came in a sort of flash, and that it then took a lot of time to sort them out; I referred to these legal insights as my "$10,000 lunch." The insights may have come in a flash, but the "flash," as it were, gave me about 50% of them, with the rest coming through thinking or writing about the insight. The process of differentiating the importance of moments of thought provided the key to my understanding of creativity. Creativity would flow from insight derived in a variety of ways, but mostly from having rich content of sacred or tightly-packed language in my mind. This language, then, would "play" with me as I faced various experiences of life, read other texts, or just let my mind wander in the shower or at the gym. The wandering mind, indeed, has grown in importance for me, as it becomes the way by which the mind can range over vast territories, clambering over them as it were, on the firm steps of the textual mastery that has taken me years of time. What I have learned from Job 3 is that Job's ability to think new thoughts about an important concept (Sheol) flowed also from the freedom he gave himself to imagine and daydream.

Back to Job 3:13-19

Job 3 is one of the most perfectly formed curse/lament texts in the Scriptures. Its great irony is that the literary form is highly controlled (the text neatly breaks down into 3:1-10, 11-19 and 20-26) supposedly at a time when Job is most out of control emotionally. These are the first words uttered after his unbearable loss. The first part explores curse, while in the second, 11-19, lament is front and center. After wondering aloud why he didn't die at his birth (11-12), he then proceeds in a manner that at first seems to show some faulty arrangement. He talks about the joys of rest (13), then about thosewho would be with him in his Sheol-like rest (14-15), then returning to the question of 11-12 (16), before returning to futher thought on the notion of rest (17-19). Many scholars have supposed that there is some kind of textual misplacement here and have suggested ways to "remedy" it.

But, in my judgment, the order of 3:13-19 makes perfect sense. We might see it as follows:

3:13--Job's general longing, with four beautiful verbs, for rest.
3:14-15--a kind of reverie or daydream, about who would accompany him in that rested condition.
3:16--a return to the questions of 3:11-12, as if trying to "refresh" the concept by repeating, in large measure, the thrust of the questions in 3:11-12.
3:17-19--a much richer and deeper reflection on Sheol, its activities and inhabitants.

The reverie or daydream of 3:14-15 is key to developing the entire passage. After wondering why he was not delivered as a stillborn, he then launches into a mental retreat, a daydream, regarding the building of ruins or the amassing of weath in Sheol. But this daydream, as it were, fuels a return to the first question, much like a fugue returns to its original theme, though with variation, and, after that is done in v. 16, Job then pens his most dramatic verses of the whole (17-19) where a fully new and richly developed concept of Sheol is presented. The major characteritic of this new concept of Sheol is that it will not be a dark or shapeless place, but one in which the oppression we face in this life will cease. The wicked cease from their depredations and the weary, who probably got that way because of the oppression by the wicked (that is David Clines' helpful reading of the text) find rest, the kind of rest that is the same as Job's rest in v. 13 (the same verb, yanuhu/yanuha is used). The overriding reality of this "new Sheol" is that finally, in the "new Sheol," there is freedom of pain and freedom from oppression. The poor, prisoners or small do not have to hear the voices of their oppressors anymore; that shrill intonation is now replaced by freedom from the demands of one's former superiors.

Conclusion

Before his reverie in vv. 14-15, all Job could think about was the possible rest that he might experience in Sheol. But after he lets his mind daydream for a while, luxuriating in the image of princes building or amassing, he returns to the thought of rest, but now we have a much more mature conception. What has been personal in v. 13 is now communal in vv. 17-19. What only is framed in terms of rest in v. 13 now is seen in terms of freedom from oppression and not having to heed voices. Sheol, in fact, has taken on a very attractive and rather robust characterization. One might even suggest that some of the later Biblical view of heaven which, it must be confessed, shows little dependence on Job, might well have paid attention to Job 3:17-19.

Thus, there you have it. Freedom to let the mind wander, to daydream, to engage in reverie, allowed the mind the mental space to spin out a fuller conception of Sheol, to broaden Job's interest in his own pain, and to capture in stunning images the shadowy place that would not receive a fuller characterization for hundreds of years. All because he let his mind wander...

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