I Have Become the Hell of History

Job 17:6

Like many other victims of violence throughout the ages, despite their pain and not because of their choice - Job is famous.

When his name comes up these days it is as a symbolic shortcut that references the suffering of innocents and the injustice of the world.

This biblical notoriety is already foreshadowed in today’s chapter, in which Job himself refers to himself as a parable.

Whoever wrote this text already imagines that this story will become symbolic of human horror. But there’s also another reference in the same verse for a human horror that keeps repeating itself, despite consistent rebukes and attempts at improving how we humans live in this world and how we reduce the wrongful death of innocents - especially children.

Job continues his response to the latest lofty speech of his friends - after tiring of too many words he uses more of his own to illustrate just how exhausted he is - and how death seems to be the only way out of his predicament.

His searing indictment of his friends cuts to the heart of their failure: they have turned his suffering into a theological cliché.

Job accuses Eliphaz of molding his agony to fit a prepackaged narrative, reducing a righteous man’s torment to a simple mashal, a Hebrew word that means ‘parable’ or ‘allegory’ - a byword for divine retribution. His life of integrity is now overshadowed by a grotesque caricature—a warning to others about the wages of sin, eclipsing his true legacy of innocence and devotion. He also introduces another problematic concept in this verse - often not even translated for its horrific complexity:

וְהִצִּיגַנִי לִמְשֹׁל עַמִּים וְתֹפֶת לְפָנִים אֶהְיֶה׃

God made me a byword among people;

I have become like Topheth of old.

Job 17:6 (JPS 2023)

What is a Tophet of old? It could be a few different things.

Some translations suggest “I shall be a horror to every face”,

“ I have become like Tophet in the face” or “ a man in whose face people spit”

The deeper weight of Job’s complaint lies in the chilling use of “Tophet.” Traditionally, Tophet refers to the site in Jerusalem’s Valley of Ben Hinnom where children were sacrificed to the flames of Deities, condemned as an abhorrent practice by many of the prophets. In other words - Job likens his experience to hell on earth, the Tophet used as a symbolic trope of Job’s internal torment, his anger burning as fiercely as those ancient flames.

After the tragic death of his ten children, this imagery is deeply personal—Job’s anguish is inseparable from the thought of burning, lost children.

The translations that use ‘spat upon in the face’ or ‘fire of old’ try to render the word ‘Tophet L’panim’ in ways that avoid or ignore this horrific history of child sacrifice to the gods.

But it feels like the exact meaning of his word and this metaphor reverberates today as we witness children’s lives consumed in the fires of war.

From the burning homes of southern Israel to the rubble and ruins of Gaza, young lives are caught in the machinery of adult conflict, sacrificed on the altars of ideology, vengeance, and politics. All around the world, again and again, it’s children who pay the price for the fury and folly of those who are supposed to take care of them.

Job’s mashal, his warning, becomes disturbingly prophetic. Whether these losses are justified by claims of self-defense or framed as collateral damage, they echo the moral horrors of Tophet, where children died for purposes beyond their comprehension or control.

Irving Greenberg’s post-Holocaust admonition rings loud here:

“No statement, theological or otherwise, should be made that would not be credible in the presence of burning children.”

Job’s rebuke, both to his friends and to God, reminds us that no ideology—be it theological, political, or moral—can justify the suffering of innocents.

Job’s suffering confronts us with the same question Eliphaz avoided: what happens when the cost of proving a point is paid in children’s lives?

Job’s defiance insists we strive for more: a world where the cries of burning children are not drowned out by hollow words.

Beyond hollow words and theological tropes that recycle retribution - what can be our way to respond not just to Job but to every grieving parent and human in the face of burning buildings that consume lives and destroy the dreams of a just and kind existence?

What are the words, expressions and gestures, followed by deeds, that can be credible, that may truly respond to the cruel horror of this time and be tools of urgent care, healing, hope, and repair?

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