Too Lost to Sense the Darkness

Job 12:25

Amichai Lau-Lavie (he/him)

Jan 02, 2025

When we talk about the dark night of the soul we often reference personal experiences of despair that feel like an endless night with little light or comfort. For many of us, many such nights persist. It’s not only the personal but also the collective sense of loss that can be contained within these idioms that give voice to our deepest fears and horrors.

In his despair and attempt to respond to his righteous friends and their lofty words that do little to help him -- Job resorts to the motif of darkness - again and again. It feels like he’s talking about the individual experience - but it also echoes the collective darkness we are all dealing with as we try to balance darkness and light - despair and hope. It’s worthwhile taking a moment to explore how those two binaries are complementary and necessary for the full experience of growth.

As we leave Hanukkah behind we might again reflect on how light and darkness coexist. Each provides us with unique gifts that together help us with the ups and downs of our reality.

Bell Hooks wrote about it this way:

“The darkness is the light, and the light is the darkness. They are not opposites, but complements. To embrace both is to find wholeness.”

Job’s lament in Chapter 12 explores this theme and yet for him the darkness is no friend. Yes, the shadows may contain a gift, and the interplay of light and darkness may be what life’s all about. But the biblical Job, mourning and itching, describes his existence as darkness confronted with the faraway God as the ultimate lightsource - and beyond the ability to feel compassion:

מְגַלֶּה עֲמֻקוֹת מִנִּי־חֹשֶׁךְ וַיֹּצֵא לָאוֹר צַלְמָוֶת׃

“The Divine draws mysteries out of the darkness

And brings the shadows of death to the light”

‘Shadows of Death’ - ‘Tzalmavet’ is the obscure term used in Psalm 23, often translated as ‘the valley of death’.

Job is in the lurks, where it is all shadows.

He then uses the same trope to talk about humans who lack light to see what’s ahead, or how to make sense of what’s going on in a world so full of hidden meaning and obstacles.

The image is powerful and perhaps familiar -- staggering home late night, drunk in the dark streets:

יְמַשְׁשׁוּ־חֹשֶׁךְ וְלֹא־אוֹר וַיַּתְעֵם כַּשִּׁכּוֹר׃

They grope without light in the darkness,

Made to wander as if drunk.

The Hebrew here is much richer than most translations suggest - the sense if of someone trying to actually feel the dark matter - to touch the stuff one can’t see.

Darkness, for Job, is not merely the absence of light; it represents the mystery, the unanswered questions, and the vast unknown that accompanies suffering. Light, in turn, is not simply an escape from that darkness but a way to see it more clearly.

Darkness is fertile—it is where transformation begins, where truths hide until we are ready to find them. Even being drunk in a dark alley, as Job imagines -- is both dangerous but also potentially productive. It may lead to the rock bottom from which one rises. It may just be a way to stumble on some new ways of being in the world, beyond the usual frameworks and familiar boundaries.

As we pack the Hanukkah menorahs away, into a year of unknowns, untold challenges, and hopefully some good news and better surprises -- this interplay between light and dark can prove helpful.

The Hanukkah candles, so small yet significant, do not obliterate the night; instead, they shed light on what’s already there. The dance between light and shadow mirrors the rhythm of our lives. To live fully, we must learn to honor both: the clarity and enlightenment of light and the depth and creativity of darkness.

Job’s reflections resonate with this tension. He does not justify his suffering or claim that God’s revelation explains his pain. Instead, he observes how both light and darkness shape the human condition. We stagger, as he describes in verse 25, only somewhat aware or conscious of the big picture, groping for answers in a dimly lit world.

But perhaps it is in this staggering, this searching, that we learn to walk the delicate path between despair and hope, between ignorance and understanding. That’s what the Sufi poets write about a lot.

Somehow, staggering home, waking with a hangover, or dealing with whatever comes our way with as much equanimity as possible seems to be what Job’s lament suggests. I hope that this new year, with its shadows and surprises, helps us all bring a balance of both.

For Job, struggling to respond to his trials, the journey continues. In the next chapter he’ll continue challenging his creator and inviting us to keep asking these big questions as we too make our way ahead, a bit more aware and responsible, showing each other the way, as Ram Das reminded us - "we are all walking each other home" - and maybe that’s all we’ve got to do.

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Below the Bible Belt

Too Lost to Sense the Darkness

Job 12:25

As we leave Hanukkah behind we might again reflect on how light and darkness coexist. Each provides us with unique gifts that together help us with the ups and downs of our reality.

Bell Hooks wrote about it this way:

“The darkness is the light, and the light is the darkness. They are not opposites, but complements. To embrace both is to find wholeness.”

מְגַלֶּה עֲמֻקוֹת מִנִּי־חֹשֶׁךְ וַיֹּצֵא לָאוֹר צַלְמָוֶת׃

“The Divine draws mysteries out of the darkness

And brings the shadows of death to the light”

Job 12:22

‘Shadows of Death’ - ‘Tzalmavet’ is the obscure term used in Psalm 23, often translated as ‘the valley of death’.

Job is in the lurks, where it is all shadows.

He then uses the same trope to talk about humans who lack light to see what’s ahead, or how to make sense of what’s going on in a world so full of hidden meaning and obstacles.

The image is powerful and perhaps familiar -- staggering home late night, drunk in the dark streets:

יְמַשְׁשׁוּ־חֹשֶׁךְ וְלֹא־אוֹר וַיַּתְעֵם כַּשִּׁכּוֹר׃

They grope without light in the darkness,

Made to wander as if drunk.

Job 12:25

The Hebrew here is much richer than most translations suggest - the sense if of someone trying to actually feel the dark matter - to touch the stuff one can’t see.

Darkness, for Job, is not merely the absence of light; it represents the mystery, the unanswered questions, and the vast unknown that accompanies suffering. Light, in turn, is not simply an escape from that darkness but a way to see it more clearly.

As we pack the Hanukkah menorahs away, into a year of unknowns, untold challenges, and hopefully some good news and better surprises -- this interplay between light and dark can prove helpful.

But perhaps it is in this staggering, this searching, that we learn to walk the delicate path between despair and hope, between ignorance and understanding. That’s what the Sufi poets write about a lot.

Somehow, staggering home, waking with a hangover, or dealing with whatever comes our way with as much equanimity as possible seems to be what Job’s lament suggests. I hope that this new year, with its shadows and surprises, helps us all bring a balance of both.

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