Jon Meacham (whose former Newsweek colleague Evan Thomas last year gave us the description of Obama as “sort of God”) has an essay in today’s New York Times Book Review entitled “Obama and the Book of Job,” a review of Robert Alter’s new translation of one of the most remarkable books of the Bible. This time, Meacham portrays Obama not as sort of God but sort of Job:
[Obama] might find Alter’s new book congenial. John Boehner is not exactly a case of boils, but the president may feel differently at the moment, and thus the story of Job could be of some use to him. Like Obama, Job was once the highly favored one. …
When God speaks from the whirlwind at the end of the Book of Job, it reminds Meacham “how Dick Cheney’s vision of unfettered executive power might sound if rendered in ancient Hebrew verse.”
Those interested in a more compelling reflection on the political meaning of the Book of Job might consider reading one of William Safire’s most brilliant books, The First Dissident: The Book of Job in Today’s Politics, published in 1993 and still relevant today (summarized slightly here and reviewed in the pages of COMMENTARY here).
As for Obama’s current problems, they do not seem biblical in proportion but rather simply those associated with the job he volunteered for and assured us he would solve (while bringing the sea level down). His situation seems less the work of a Cheney-like God than an illustration of the biblical admonition of what cometh before a fall.
