Making Life out of Nothing at All
Job 26:7
When was the last time you stopped yourself in your tracks before insulting or hurting someone, including yourself? Whether this is about personal choice about impulse management by each of us or the bitter ones made by nations and world leaders -the willpower to pause and interrupt our reactive responses is alluded to in this chapter as a possible key to what’s at the core of existence, crucial for the constant building of a better world.
A single word with multiple meanings shows up in this confusing chapter and points at the void in the middle of the world, the black hole of our unknowing and with it this option of curbing our enthusiasm as a way to help us not destroy the world.
This confusion fits the patterns of chapters 24-27 that seem scattered and odd, with unclear attribution to who’s saying what, as if to showcase Job’s internal mindset, or even that of all us who are dealing with stress, wrestle with our urges, and are on the search for meaning in a cruel and maybe random world.
In The Book of Job: A Contest of Moral Imaginations, biblical scholar Carol A. Newsom suggests that the confusing language of these chapters in intentional, and echoes the brokenness of Job’s soul:
“One of the frequent consequences of traumatic experience is an initial loss of language.. Followed by a more permanent estrangement from language.”
It isn’t quite clear who’s speaking in this chapter - is it Job who suddenly praises God with grand gestures - or are these the words of Bildad somehow attributed to Job? There are different opinions. Either way - the phrases used here point at the peril of absolute knowledge and the possibility of nothing sensible or solid at all. God is described here as the supreme being that nevertheless is hanging by a thread:
נֹטֶה צָפוֹן עַל־תֹּהוּ תֹּלֶה אֶרֶץ עַל־בְּלִי־מָה׃
God stretches out the north over chaos, and hangs the earth upon the void.
Job 26:7
The word ‘void’ is the cryptic Hebrew ‘Bli-Ma’, translated elsewhere as ‘nothing’ or ‘emptiness’ -a concept that has captivated philosophical and mystical thought for centuries.
It could literally mean ‘no- thing’ which is where the radical idea of the original vast void in the center of creation comes from. Mystics like Chaim Vital made this void the central feature of their complex theology:
“God’s contraction (tzimtzum) created a void within the infinite light—a place where creation could emerge. This void was not empty, but concealed within it was the potential for all existence.”
There are links between these mystical views and modern Chaos Theory.
But this concept of Bli-Ma can also mean something very different that suggests an act of pushing hard on the brakes - an act of suspension as in the willpower to stop oneself before committing an act. Read as a single word ‘Blima’ means to suspend action.
A radical rabbinic Midrash suggests:
“The world only exists because of those who learn to stop themselves mid-fighting, as it is written in Job “hangs the earth upon bli-ma - the power of suspension.”
What’s the meaning of a world built upon the eternal suspense and tension that waits to see whether urges can be curbed, and if opposing forces will fight or will hold themselves back towards some sort of workable resolution that favors more peace over violence?
Job’s void is not merely emptiness but a profound metaphor for the fertile and paradoxical space where divine creativity and human vulnerability coexist. Today, we are hoping that world leaders and nations keep doing the right thing and choose peace over war, healing over hurting, and avoid the void of violence in the center of our chaotic reality. Suspended in mid-air, we live our lives, making love out of nothing at all.
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What gorgeous hashtags, both #Makingloveoutofnothingatall and #MakingLifeoutofNothingatAll - I'm adopting them as mottos for living in these times of big uncertainty & not-knowing.
And how interesting to consider the links between this mystical perspective - “God’s contraction (tzimtzum) created a void within the infinite light—a place where creation could emerge. This void was not empty, but concealed within it was the potential for all existence.” - and modern physics.
Synchronistically, yesterday I heard a podcast conversation between two physicists, and they described just this phenomenon of Something from Nothing (and the vital nature of Story!), on a vast scale:
Anthony Aguirre, PhD: “…You take this amount of dark energy and you let it expand, which it wants to do, and in doing so, it makes more of itself…And maybe we should get to talking a little bit about the early universe, because this is one of the coolest stories ever, I think, is how all of this stuff that we see can, in principle, without violating anything, come from almost nothing…where you can start with just a tiny little bit of this vacuum energy, and that vacuum energy wants to make more of itself…When you say we're so sure that nothing can come out of nothing, or that you can't have a whole bunch of stuff coming out of nothing, and yet physics just tells you exactly how you can do exactly that, that's a great thing to learn.”
https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2019/06/17/episode-51-anthony-aguirre-on-cosmology-zen-entropy-and-information/