Chapter 9 in Sefer Iyov is Iyov's response to the words of Bildad the Shuchite, and here we have its third part. Here Iyov does not dispute the principle that God does not pervert justice - he accepts it. Rather, he raises a fundamental question, one of the most difficult questions in Jewish thought: how does the Holy One, Blessed is He's foreknowledge of the future reconcile with man's free will? From this premise, he builds his entire argument against the very judgment decreed upon him.
Iyov's companions argued that the Holy One, Blessed is He, is omnipotent, and as omnipotent He also knows everything - "and nothing is hidden and nothing is concealed from Your Throne of Glory." This means: the Creator, blessed be He, knows all human actions and all secrets, and not only that, but He also knows the future, including what a person is destined to do. Up to this point, all is agreed. But if we introduce an additional premise, we encounter a contradiction to the first. The additional premise is that man possesses free will over his actions: he can decide to act or decide not to act, to choose good or to choose evil. "I have set before you life and good, death and evil" - and what does the Torah command? "And you shall choose life." This is a cornerstone of Jewish faith. Without free will, a person cannot be punished, cannot be rewarded, and there is no purpose in his coming into the world - for man's purpose in this world is to choose good and receive reward.
These two premises, Iyov argues, contradict one another. For if the Holy One, Blessed is He, knows everything a person will do, then so to speak, if we were to visualize it, it is already on file with the Creator of the universe that Reuven will desecrate the Shabbat this coming week. And since the first premise holds that Hashem does not make mistakes, and it is impossible that He does not know what will happen or that His knowledge is incorrect, then what is recorded there is absolute truth. If so, the second premise is undermined: if Hashem already knows what you will do, where is your free will?
To illustrate this with a parable: consider a scene at a magic show. The magician said to one of the children: take the deck, shuffle as much as you want, choose a card, show it to everyone - and I will tell you what you chose. The child shuffled and picked; no one said a word to him, seemingly an exercise of complete free choice. He showed the card to everyone, and the magician said to him: the card in your hand is an ace. The child looked - and indeed it was. How did he know? The magician then revealed the rest of the deck: every single card was an ace. He gave the child the illusion of choice, but in reality, what was in his hand was predetermined; there was no other possibility. In the same way, Iyov argues, foreknowledge contradicts free choice. If Hashem knows that Reuven will desecrate Shabbat, it is impossible for him not to desecrate it, for if he did not, Hashem would, Heaven forbid, have been mistaken. If so, when Reuven stands one minute before that desecration, it seems to him that he is choosing to desecrate it - but why in reality did he desecrate it? Because Hashem already knew that he was destined to desecrate it. This is the argument, and this is the famous, classic philosophical question: Hashem's foreknowledge seemingly contradicts free will, for if He knew in advance, there is no possibility of acting otherwise.
We are not coming at this moment to answer Iyov's argument; once we examine the arguments in the text, we will present the answers that have been given to it. But it must be emphasized that the question itself is genuinely profound, and it was not foolish people who raised it. This is not like the riddle, "Can God create a rock so heavy that He cannot lift it?" - where if He cannot create it He is not omnipotent, and if He can create it but cannot lift it He is likewise not omnipotent - which is a foolish question that has already been answered. But the question before us is a profound and authentic philosophical dilemma: the Rambam raises it, the Ra'avad addresses it, and many of the commentators debate and grapple with it, offering various resolutions; even the Ohr HaChaim HaKadosh provides an answer. To show how weighty the question is: the Ra'avad writes regarding the Rambam's discussion that his answer is insufficient, and that he did not follow the customary way of the Sages, for he stirred up a profound question without providing a fully satisfying answer; for people who read the question find it deeply compelling, yet when they reach the answer, it does not put their minds at ease. What the Rambam wrote and how he explained it will be addressed later.
From here, Iyov concludes: man has no free will. And if man has no free will, even if you accuse me of sin and iniquity, what justification is there to afflict me? I did not choose to do evil. Even if there is an indictment against me, how can I be held accountable? I was compelled, so to speak, to commit this evil; I was forced into it by Hashem's foreknowledge. Iyov raises another question that philosophers asked in those times regarding how human thought functions compared to the Creator's knowledge, but we will not delve into that, for it is truly impossible to comprehend the Creator of the universe, and therefore impossible to analyze how He perceives.
According to Iyov, then, man is coerced in his actions, and the Holy One, Blessed is He, knows in advance everything a person will do - and why does He know? Because it is already decreed for him, apportioned for him, and predetermined for him. This stands in direct contrast to the words of Chazal, who taught that it is decreed whether a person will be rich or poor, handsome or ugly, tall or short, how long he will live, and all such technical details - but it is never decreed whether he will be righteous or wicked. Iyov claimed that everything is predetermined, and therefore he has no free will; and if there is no free will, why is he being punished and accused of wrongdoing, and told that he is being judged for it?
What then can be said? One might argue that the suffering Iyov endured was not meant as punishment - not because he acted improperly and received his due penalty - but rather like killing a venomous snake. Is killing a snake a punishment? No, it is the removal of a hazard, the elimination of a public danger. If one sees an obstacle in the middle of the road endangering drivers and clears it away, has he punished it? If there is a cinder block lying there and one smashes it so no one stumbles over it, has he punished it? He has simply removed a hazard. Thus one might argue regarding Iyov: You have no free will, and if you ask why you suffer - it is not a punishment; rather, through your evil deeds you are a hazard, and a hazard must be cleared away.
To this Iyov asks: If indeed I am a hazard and that is why Hashem is removing me - after all, we said that Hashem knows everything in advance, so He knew beforehand that when I was born, a hazard would be brought into being. Why place a hazard only to remove it later? Do not place hazards, and You will not need to remove them! Either way: If you say I am being afflicted for my sins - I have no free will, and what place is there to afflict someone who is compelled in his actions? And if you say this is not punishment but the removal of a hazard - if I am a hazard, why create me at all? Surely it would have been better had Hashem never brought me into the world in the first place! And if Hashem nevertheless concluded that even as a hazard it was worthwhile to create me - why is He now taking me away? If I was not needed from the start, He should not have created me; and if I was needed, what has changed now? Surely nothing has changed in Hashem's foreknowledge!
וַיַּעַן אִיּוֹב וַיֹּאמַר׃ אָמְנָם יָדַעְתִּי כִי־כֵן וּמַה־יִּצְדַּק אֱנוֹשׁ עִם־אֵל׃ - "Then Iyov answered and said: Indeed I know that it is so; but how can man be just before God?"
Iyov says: I agree with the principle formulated by Bildad the Shuchite when he said, "Does God pervert judgment?" - I know that it is so; I too know that God does not pervert justice. "But how can man be just before God?" In order for a man to emerge vindicated in his judgment, to prevail over God in his dispute and trial, it would have to happen in one of four ways. The first is to debate Him and defeat Him in argument: Hashem presents a claim, I present a counter-claim, and I emerge victorious.
אִם־יַחְפֹּץ לָרִיב עִמּוֹ לֹא־יַעֲנֶנּוּ אַחַת מִנִּי־אָלֶף׃ - "If he should desire to contend with Him, He could not answer Him one in a thousand."
Iyov says: For a long time now I have been seeking the Creator, asking Him to come and debate me, to explain His providence to me. But if one wishes to contend with the Holy One, blessed be He, and defeat Him in debate - Hashem does not answer him even one claim out of a thousand. I have already raised a thousand arguments, and not one of them has yet been answered. Can one possibly win an argument against Someone who does not answer you?
חֲכַם לֵבָב וְאַמִּיץ כֹּחַ מִי־הִקְשָׁה אֵלָיו וַיִּשְׁלָם׃ - "He is wise in heart and mighty in strength; who has hardened himself against Him and remained unscathed?"
A second way to overcome an opponent is through physical superiority: I am stronger than you, and thus I have defeated you. But against Hashem this is inconceivable, for the Holy One, blessed be He, is "mighty in strength." A third way is to prevail by refusing to budge from one's stance until the adversary tires, that is, a war of attrition. If people ask who is stronger, Hamas or the State of Israel - certainly the State of Israel; but if they ask who scores points, it is often Hamas or Hezbollah, because they operate through attrition: Strike me as you will, I stand my ground and will not move, continuing to harass relentlessly. A person can sometimes defeat someone stronger than himself if he is more stubborn and has the stamina to persist in his obstinacy. This was also Pharaoh's mindset: whoever remains stubborn and stands his ground will ultimately wear down the other side.
Therefore Iyov says: Against the Holy One, blessed be He, it is impossible to fight at all. If you fight with wisdom - He is wiser in heart than you; if with strength - He is mightier in strength than you; and if you say, "I will dig in my heels, harden my heart, and refuse to budge" - "Who has hardened himself against Him and remained unscathed?" Who has ever remained obstinate against Him and emerged whole? In this way too, I have no power to stand against Hashem.
Bildad HaShuchi argued: "Does God pervert judgment?" It is impossible that Hashem would commit injustice, and it is impossible that He would abandon the righteous to mere chance; surely everything Hashem does is with true judgment and justice. Iyov responds that he too agrees that committing injustice is contrary to the laws of God and contrary to Hashem's governance. However, as we saw in the introduction, he has no claims of injustice against the Creator of the world. For anyone who looks and sees injustice in the world is focusing on a specific detail rather than looking at the overall picture; had he looked at the overall picture, he would see that it contains far more good than injustice, and that the suffering and pain in the world are as nothing compared to the goodness within it.
And why are there troubles at all? To this, Iyov says: I do not call this injustice at all, because these are phenomena that stem from the very nature of physical reality. A physical entity, by its very existence, is destined for loss; everything physical is subject to destruction, loss, and damage. It is impossible for a person to live forever, and it is impossible for a physical object to endure forever in the exact same form and condition - wear and tear affect it, deterioration affects it. Man is physical and material, and by virtue of his very materiality, breakdowns and damages are inevitable within him. To what can this be compared? To a person who owns a car: after ten thousand kilometers it needs servicing, and if he fails to service it, components begin to break down. Has the car done him an injustice? He simply did not maintain it properly and did not bring it to the garage. Such is the character and nature of a material object.
And should you say: Nevertheless, is there not evil in the world? In proportion to the entire world, it is negligible. Most of the world does not experience severe affliction; most of the world is not afflicted like Iyov with boils and whole-body itching. What has befallen me is merely a tiny fraction. It is like that same car having one button that does not work - does one sell a car on account of that? Had it been the button that starts the car, that would be one thing; but what if it is only the button for the rear-window defroster? Look at what is working: a functioning engine, transmission, gears, an intact frame, windows. So too is the evil in the world - a small deficiency, and there is no room to complain about it. Furthermore, even this evil is neither vengeance nor the deliberate malice of someone trying to harm me; rather, it stems from the very nature of matter, which is subject to loss.
הַמַּעְתִּיק הָרִים וְלֹא יָדָעוּ אֲשֶׁר הֲפָכָם בְּאַפּוֹ׃ - "He Who removes mountains and they do not know it, Who overturns them in His anger."
The Holy One, blessed be He, is "He Who removes mountains" - so to speak, He causes an earthquake and moves mountains from their place, and in that quake, says the Malbim, thousands of human beings perish. Just as occurred in the earthquake in Haiti, where a hundred thousand people were killed, may Hashem protect us. And what does Iyov say? "And they do not know it, Who overturns them in His anger" - no person can definitively know or determine that this was done out of divine wrath. You cannot necessarily draw the conclusion that an earthquake occurred because Hashem was angry; there are geological pressures, tectonic collisions, seismological activity - whatever sounds logical. One must understand that this is nature, and within this nature, when subterranean pressures, shifts, and gases seek release, the ground overturns and mountains are displaced by that force. And should you say: But this is an evil - what is it compared to the entire world? A hundred thousand were affected, but six or seven billion were unharmed. In proportion to the world as a whole, this evil is truly minimal.
הַמַּרְגִּיז אֶרֶץ מִמְּקוֹמָהּ וְעַמּוּדֶיהָ יִתְפַּלָּצוּן׃ - "Who shakes the earth from its place, and its pillars tremble."
Iyov continues: Even if one were to imagine that the Holy One, blessed be He, were to shake the earth from its place - meaning the entire planet Earth, should Hashem return it tomorrow to unformed chaos - who could come and argue that He destroyed and ruined it in His anger, out of wrath against the world? For what is the planet Earth in proportion to the entirety of existence? Not even a speck of dust. Look at planet Earth compared to our galaxy, and beyond our galaxy there are endless other galaxies, measured across hundreds and thousands of light-years, distances of billions of years. If so, what is a single globe? If one globe is lost, there are millions more like it.
Therefore, even if the pillars of the earth tremble, who could come and say "Who overturns them in His anger"? Who could argue that this stems from wrath? It is insignificant in the grand cosmos, and there is nothing to be done: the world is physical. There could be a meteor strike, where a meteor hits Earth and completely alters its tilt, plunging the planet into a deep freeze so that everything on it freezes, God forbid. Theoretically, anything can happen; there are scientists who love to issue apocalyptic forecasts and earn a living through fearmongering - claiming that in such-and-such a year the world will return to chaos, and in another year the heat will be so extreme that everything will change. Iyov says: Even if such a catastrophe were to occur, one cannot claim that it is an injustice, nor can one claim that it is unlawful. It cannot be helped - the world is constructed of physical, material nature, and anything physical and material is subject to destruction and decay.
Iyov begins here with a foundational premise with which he does not disagree - God does not pervert judgment - and contrasts it with the profound contradiction between divine foreknowledge and human free will. His conclusion is that man possesses no free choice, and therefore there is no justification either for punishment or for removing the "flaw" with which man was created from the outset. Subsequently, he demonstrates that there is no way to emerge justified in judgment before the Creator: not through debate, for "he cannot answer Him one in a thousand"; not through physical might, for He is "mighty in strength"; and not through stubbornness and attrition, for "who has hardened himself against Him and remained whole?" Finally, he teaches that one cannot infer divine anger from the catastrophes in the world: "Who removes mountains" and "Who shakes the earth from its place" - all of these are simply the nature of physical entities subject to destruction, and in proportion to the overall picture, they are merely a minuscule fraction.