Suffering in Israel

Extract

It may fairly be said that in ancient Hebrew poetry suffering holds the place reserved for love in the lyrical compositions of the literature of the West. It is, moreover, under the pressure of tragic events that suffering has become the leitmotiv of the latter part of the Bible in which the book of Job occurs.

It is true that there is very little mention of suffering in the accounts of the Thorah. Not a few massacres are there related– without any pity for the victims. The reason is that at the time of the conquest of Palestine and during the beginnings of the Monarchy the Hebrews were still an insensitive and uncivilised people. They were a young and conquering race. Their will to power was intact. The sages of the court of Solomon or of Jeroboam II were the diplomats or poets of a tiny nation possessed with the certitude that it would endure and conquer.