Rebels Vs. Light: Job, Trump & MLK Jr. Meet Moral Chaos

Job 24:13

To be human is to be able to hold multitude perspectives, light and dark and in between, to participate in the paradoxes and ironies that life presents to us.

Today - as the news from Israel and Gaza give us a glimmer of hope for healing and peace, our eyes are on Washington DC where a complicated presidential inauguration is planned on the day honoring the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

So what does Job have to do with all of these narratives?

His voice calls to us with haunting relevance.

Chapter 24 is the first of several chapters that are confusing and seemingly all over the place. It presents itself as a continuation of Job’s remarks in the previous chapter but seems different from anything Job has been saying to this point. The first half of the chapter is the continued condemnation of the wicked ways of humans and of God’s seeming indifference to it - evil people get away with it. Job lists disturbing examples that are familiar from our daily headlines - steal, insult, cheat, rape and abuse the poor. The second part of the chapter becomes so odd and has confounded readers for ages, so that even the editors of the JPS translation add a footnote: “From here to the end of the chapter, the translation is highly conjectural.”

Job’s profound agony regarding the world’s injustice is familiar by now and still painful and enigmatic:

מֵעִיר מְתִים  יִנְאָקוּ וְנֶפֶשׁ־חֲלָלִים תְּשַׁוֵּעַ וֶאֱלוֹהַּ לֹא־יָשִׂים תִּפְלָה׃

הֵמָּה  הָיוּ בְּמֹרְדֵי־אוֹר לֹא־הִכִּירוּ דְרָכָיו וְלֹא יָשְׁבוּ בִּנְתִיבֹתָיו׃

Mortals groan in the city;

The souls of the dying cry out;

Yet God does not regard it as a reproach.

They are rebels against the light;

They are strangers to its ways,

And do not stay in its path.

Job 24:12-13

What does it mean to rebel against the light? This verse, steeped in paradox, challenges us to examine the tension between divine justice and human agency in times of deep moral crisis.

Job rails against the apparent absence of divine accountability. He describes a world where the wicked prosper and justice seems delayed or denied. The “rebels against the light” emerge as emblematic of this moral chaos—those who exploit the vulnerable and thrive in secrecy, or even in public, seemingly untouched by the divine order Job yearns to trust.

The Babylonian Talmud in Tractate Bava Batra 16 suggests that “rebelling against the light” reflects those who thrive in darkness, avoiding accountability while perpetuating harm .

It resonates in a world where injustice often seems to go unchecked, where those entrusted with power sometimes use it to obscure rather than illuminate.

Yet the verse also holds space for resistance, for questioning the very systems that claim to bear the light but instead cast shadows of oppression.

Dr. Ilana Pardes, a biblical scholar, offers a feminist lens, reminding us that the "light" can feel oppressive for those marginalized by simplistic narratives of justice. To rebel against the light, in this sense, might be an act of courage—a refusal to accept a clarity that erases complexity or denies lived truths.

Bishop Desmond Tutu also wrote about this verse, adding another layer: systems of oppression thrive in darkness, but bringing them into the light demands both accountability and a deep commitment to redemption.

On this day honoring the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we stand at a crossroads. The inauguration of a president steeped in controversy reminds us that rebellion can mean resisting forces that seek to distort the light of justice. True agency lies not in blind defiance but in the creative, redemptive act of resisting false clarity and imagining a better world.

As we reflect on Job’s frustration with a seemingly hidden God and a world full of injustice, can we find strength in these paradoxical modes of resistance—rebels with hope, keepers of light?

Today’s inauguration will feature one important item - a copy of the Bible that will be used for the swearing-in ceremony. Back in 2017 Mr. Trump used two volumes - a copy of the Bible he’s had since childhood and the one once owned by President Lincoln. It’s not yet known which version of the holy book he’ll be using this time, although a new edition of the God Bless America Bible was just issued for the occasion.

The ironies of history bring us this national ceremony on the day on which the nation honors Dr. King’s legacy and the vastly different ideologies and faiths that these two leaders represent stand at the crossroads of our conflicts, challenges and complex realities.

J.J. Kimche, a contemporary Jewish scholar, wrote this reflection on today’s chapter in Job, bringing the bible into focus in a way that feels timely important to include in today’s post:

“The impact of the Bible upon world civilizations is remarkable precisely because it has been pressed into the service of every ideology, every political movement, every strain of religious or philosophical ideas. The cacophony of voices in the Bible, along with its wide array of genres and polemical temperaments, may be marshalled and dispatched into battle on behalf of every imaginable cause. That the Bible has been utilized to support warmongering and pacifism, monarchism and republicanism, socialism and capitalism, is a testament to both its multi-layered texture and its indissoluble internal tensions.

No issue demonstrates this better than the history of slavery. On the one hand, the Bible was frequently invoked as a justification and license for the practice of slavery. Such advocates would point out that the laws of Moses presuppose a slave-owning society, and that numerous laws in the Pentateuch were geared towards governing this practice. It was further pointed out that many Biblical heroes were portrayed as owning slaves, while still other verses – such as those that outlined the ‘Curse of Ham’ (Genesis 9) – appeared to promote essentialist, racialized conceptions that underpinned modern slavery.

Conversely, of course, the bible has served as a principal liberation document for oppressed peoples throughout history. The West’s greatest and most successful anti-slavery campaigner was an English Parliamentarian named William Wilberforce (1759-1833), an exceedingly pious born-again Christian, whose decades-long campaign not only extirpated slavery within the British Empire but also succeeded in setting strong abolitionist roots in North America. His speeches, pamphlets, and books were suffused with quotations from the King James Bible, which he read daily. He and his followers argued that the Bible, as a whole, amounted to an extended argument against the practice of slavery. Arguably, its dominant narrative tells of how God personally intervened in order to liberate an enslaved nation from under the boot of a mighty empire. Prophets such as Isaiah constantly harangued his audience for oppressing the most vulnerable in society, while Jeremiah told of God’s fury on account of the people’s refusal to grant manumission to their slaves.

Finally, the abolitionists argued, the Bible contained verses like those of our present chapter – verses that describe, in the most vivid and heart-wrenching terms, the plight of the abused worker. This chapter depicts a man who toils away day and night on behalf of another, yet is not remunerated enough to afford himself a good meal or a decent shelter. He is cast out, preyed upon by rogues and thieves, and left on his own to survive the harsh elements, uncared for and unloved.

The moral outrage that accompanies such a depiction reaches a fever-pitch in this chapter, as Job interprets such outrages as an indictment against a God who is willfully deaf and blind to human suffering. Such voices are significant indeed. “

Come what may, it’s helpful to remember Dr. King’s wise words that echo Job’s journey, and are helpful on this day and all days:

“We must accept finite disappointment but never lose infinite hope.”

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