As Above So Below?

Job 11:7-9

"See-saw, see-saw
Down and up, up and down
What is above? What is below?
Just me, me and you”

Chaim Nachman Bialik

With a child’s rhythm and a philosopher’s wit, Bialik, known as the “Hebrew National Poet” captures the paradox of human striving.

What lies above or below, before or after?

On this first day of a new year, time and space, up and down, above and below, before and after, join us on the see-saw of curiosity - what of this time and space continuum really exists and impacts our lives?

Why would any of this spatial symbolism matter as suffering persists in our bones?

These questions, endlessly pondered and debated, rise up in today’s chapter, as the third of Job’s peers, Zophar, begins to speak and wrestles with this same tension, though in a very different key.

In response to Job’s rage at an indifferent deity, Zophar speaks of a God so vast, so utterly beyond comprehension, that human understanding falters at the very attempt:

הַחֵקֶר אֱלוֹהַּ תִּמְצָא אִם עַד־תַּכְלִית שַׁדַּי תִּמְצָא׃ גׇּבְהֵי שָׁמַיִם מַה־תִּפְעָל עֲמֻקָּה מִשְּׁאוֹל מַה־תֵּדָע׃ אֲרֻכָּה מֵאֶרֶץ מִדָּהּ וּרְחָבָה מִנִּי־יָם׃

Would you discover the mystery of God?

Would you discover the limit of the Almighty?

Higher than heaven—what can you do?

Deeper than Sheol—what can you know?

Its measure is longer than the earth

And broader than the sea.

Job 11:7-9

Zophar uses spatial metaphors—height, depth, length, and breadth—to emphasize the inscrutability of the divine.

Zophar’s metaphors use spatial terms to express the abstract notion of divine presence and absence. This type of thinking feels familiar - we tend to describe abstract concepts within a framework of tangible experiences - describing something as taking a ‘long’ time, containing a ‘deep’ idea, or producing an emotional ‘high’.

These expressions are useful, with just enough familiar context while “at the same time” (here it is again..) winking at the limitations of our language to grasp existence. When the mystics claim that reality ‘as above, so below’ is a mirror of the divine mystery perhaps that it the paradox that they are pointing it.

As for Zophar - like his two peers - the imagery is grand and poetic, evoking awe but offering little comfort.

For Job, mired in suffering, Zophar’s appeal to mystery feels more like evasion than solace. What use is an unreachable God to a man drowning in despair? All he does is define the limits of inquiry - closing off the options of exploring the root of purpose and pain, perhaps for the fear of finding -- nothing?

The rabbis of the Talmud similarly caution against venturing too far into the unknowable. In the Babylonian Talmud’s Tractate Hagigah (2:1), they famously warn against pondering what lies "above, below, before, and after."

The boundaries of human inquiry, they, like Zophar, imply, are not merely limits but safeguards, preserving the mystery of existence. Yet this restraint can feel like a denial, especially when the questions burn as fiercely as Job’s.

Bialik’s playful poem reminds us that while the heavens and depths may elude us, no matter how far reaching our telescopes and microscopes go, meaning is often found in what we feel - not in what we know. The seesaw’s rhythm—up and down, back and forth—is a dance of balance, not resolution.

On the first day of the new year, and as the nights of Hanukkah come to a close — this tension between the infinite and the immediate feels particularly poignant. Our calendars mark the passage of time, offering moments to reflect, to hope, to dream.

Yet, like Zophar’s metaphors, these markers are human constructs, faint sketches against the boundless canvas of divine reality.

So, what do we do with our questions? With our yearning to know what lies above, below, or beyond? Perhaps we don’t need the answers to make the new year sacred. Perhaps it’s enough to embrace the seesaw’s motion—to hold the ups and downs, the joys and sorrows, the certainties and mysteries—and to find our footing in the shared rhythm of child play, and the dialogue of me and you.

Maybe poetry can be more helpful at time than philosophy?

In response to the deep sorrows of the world, beyond the search for the big answers, maybe there’s just the humble humility of keeping as balanced as possible step by step, day by day.

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