The Lost Art of Lamenting: Job & Sex and the City

Lament, by David Sweeney, 2006

Recently, while looking for some non-academic bedtime reading that wouldn’t keep me up all night, I dug out my Bible.  I decided to begin reading from wherever I opened. This happened to be in the middle of the Book of Job (which happens to be about a man named Job).  I skimmed a bit, then went to the beginning of the book and read until I came to Job’s Lament. Other thoughts in my head aside (God allowed Satan to ‘incite’ him?), the lament caught my attention.

The title of this post includes “Sex and the City” so you may be wondering when I’ll get to that part — stick with me! To set the scene, let me summarize the story:  Job is an ethical, morally upright man who is very wealthy. He has seven sons and three daughters. His sons like to throw parties and invite their sisters and friends. Job has raised his kids well, but he still sacrifices some animals every time a son throws a party just in case anything shady happened. One day, the angels and Satan assemble before God. A somewhat bizarre conversation ensues between God and Satan wherein God gives Satan permission to destroy Job’s family and wealth.  This, in order to prove that Job is so holy that he will not curse his God.

Satan then orchestrates the events that lead to the death and destruction of Job’s livestock, servants, sons, and daughters. Job is devastated but does not curse God. The angels and Satan re-assemble before God. God points out that he won his last bet with Satan. Satan suggests that if Job lost his good health he would surely curse God. God, for unknown reasons, decides to engage Satan further and grants him permission to assail Job again. Satan proceeds to afflict Job with some nasty and painful physical ailments.

Enter Job’s friends. The sight of their friend renders them speechless for seven days. When the seven days pass, Job finally speaks and utters his lament in Job chapter three:

³ “May the day of my birth perish,
and the night it was said, ‘A boy is born!’
⁴ That day—may it turn to darkness;
may God above not care about it;
may no light shine upon it.
⁵ May darkness and deep shadow claim it once more;
may a cloud settle over it;
may blackness overwhelm its light.
⁶ That night—may thick darkness seize it;
may it not be included among the days of the year
nor be entered in any of the months.
…. (read more here )

When was the last time you came across anyone who put such words to their grief and despair? You could argue that today we grieve silently.  When we write about grief, we write how it affects us and those around us. We wallow in it — feeling it, but expressing it peripherally.  It seems we’ve lost the ability to give degrees of depth to our anguish.

Here is where I tie in Sex and the City. In the first movie, Charlotte is so aggrieved that Mr. Big left Carrie at the alter that she spends months — months, trying to come up with the perfect way to express her anger and distress to him should she ever see him again.

She eventually settles on:

I curse the day you were born!

Many of us laughed at this line. But after reading Job’s lament, I really appreciated it. Notice the similarities: Job cursed the day of his birth.  Had Charlotte simply said “you’re a jerk,” it would not have conveyed the appropriate impact of Big’s action. This is a man who had left Carrie multiple times because he couldn’t commit to her, who married another woman and had an affair with Carrie, who proposed, and then couldn’t get out of his limo because he couldn’t see her face. What do you say to a man who leaves a woman waiting before hundreds of guests and press because he feels insecure? What do you say to a man who, after all of this, cannot even express his alleged love in his own words and resorts to sending love letters written by other men?  I think Charlotte had the right idea. The grief she felt for her friend was too great for a simple invective.

I am not proposing that we all start cursing the day someone was born if he/she hurts us. Nor am I saying that while grieving, we should curse the day we were born. I think learning to express our grief in different ways will help us with perspective.  Heck, just reading a lament is enough to give perspective. Job used the words he chose because he lost everything. He lost his sons and daughters, his livelihood, and his home. Even if Job knew that God enabled Satan to torment him, cursing God would have been too easy. If Charlotte had simply cursed Big, that too, would have been too easy. To curse the day of a person began to exist outside the womb is to render the person worthless and devoid of meaning or status.  It is to say that not only the person, but anything having to do with that person, is cursed. Job essentially felt worthless, and Charlotte felt Big was a worthless person.

I could continue, but I’ll leave off here and ask — what do you think about laments and their place in our lives?