Job reflects that in death or in the womb, he would not have seen the light and would have been like infants who never saw daylight, imagining a state of peaceful non-consciousness prior to the emergence into suffering. The contrast between the womb and the world of light and consciousness reveals the existential despair that suffering produces: consciousness itself becomes a burden to be avoided. Life and light, the basic goods of creation, are reimagined as sources of pain.

COMMUNITY REFLECTIONS

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