CALIBAN UPON SETOBOS

Deena sent me to the market a year ago.  She asked me to bring home a pair of steamed lobsters.  When I arrived, I went to the seafood counter to place my order and a young clerk a bit on the scrawny side asked me to pick out the lobsters from the tank next to the counter.  There were about eight to twelve lobsters in the tank, but only two were actively moving about.  The clerk looked at me.  One or two lobsters appeared like they might have been dead, but the others would occasionally wave an antenna, wink, hiccup or something.  I knew not to get a dead lobster, so I pointed to one that was slowly climbing over another, the latter which was lying motionless in the tank.  The one climbing over the other was quickly scooped out and dispatched.  The clerk looked at me again, and I saw another lobster in the corner of the tank that had just started to move, as if to avoid my eyes.  I pointed to it, without knowing that it would take the clerk more than five minutes to catch it.  The crustacean started sprinting around the tank, shaking it’s menacing claws like it was fighting for its life.  In fact, it was fighting for its life.  But it was eventually plucked up and taken to the pot. I went home savoring a lobster dinner. But I felt bad after dinner, because it occurred to me (belatedly) that I shared a kinship of sorts with that second lobster. I was fighting for my life as well, as far as my cancer was concerned, and I wished–after the fact–that I would have spared this magnificent creature given its spunk and spirit.  Regrettably, however, I did not.  Hopefully there is not a lobster pot in my future.

There is not much variation in lobsters as most of us know. But not every lobster is created equal.  Some unusual ones weigh many pounds with 44 pounds or so being the record, or they may appear blue or white.  These lobsters are generally spared because they are a rarity.  Immature lobsters below a certain size are spared too, I suppose.  They are given a temporary reprieve and released back into the ocean.

Now, I am not a vegetarian or a vegan. I’m not ashamed to have beef or pork, fish or chicken for dinner. I grew up on a farm, and the farmers might dispatch and process five hundred chickens in a day and I would help.  But I was a child then, and now that I’m much older, I’m a bit more reflective.  The thought of that day a year ago in the seafood department of the market came to mind lately. Around this same time, I was thinking about Robert Browning’s poem Caliban upon Setebos which has nothing to do with lobsters by the way.  This is a difficult poem for me because it features characters from an Elizabethan play I had not yet read.  Nor is Browning always an easy read.

Caliban

In that poem, Browning draws on a figure (Caliban) from William Shakespeare’s play “The Tempest.”  I have written about this play elsewhere on my blog.  Caliban is the misshapen progeny of a witch.  Various sources describe him differently, whether a monster, or a person half man and half fish.  Shakespeare calls him a “mooncalf,” which is a reference to a miscarriage or some other monstrous birth as Harry Potter fans would know.  Additionally, Caliban is dull-witted and has, according to Shakespeare, a mercurial personality.  Finally, Caliban is a slave and personally powerless.  This, undoubtedly, colors his experiences.  

Yet, Caliban has something of a mind, and he ponders what may lie beyond his tiny island, an island which Shakespeare locates somewhere off the coast of Italy.  Caliban tries to infer what his god (Setebos) is like based on what he observes in nature.  Yet, as Christians know, this can easily be a consequential mistake, as very few Christians authentically reflect the divine virtues of their Creator (though they should at least try.)

Through Browning, Caliban’s thinking contains ideas advanced by Charles Darwin, such as natural selection (survival of the fittest.)  Says one commentary:

This poem reflects many of its era’s struggles with religion and with man’s place in the natural order. Caliban lies at the mercy of a figure who is mysterious and capricious, yet at times Caliban himself is able to act is a similar manner towards lesser creatures, like the crabs whom he either feeds or kills, at will.”

As Browning writes about yonder crabs in Caliban upon Setebos:

Thinketh, such shows nor right nor wrong in Him,

Nor kind, nor cruel: He is strong and Lord.

‘Am strong myself compared to yonder crabs

That march now from the mountain to the sea;

‘Let twenty pass, and stone the twenty-first,

Loving not, hating not, just choosing so.

‘Say, the first straggler that boasts purple spots

Shall join the file, one pincer twisted off;

‘Say, this bruised fellow shall receive a worm,

And two worms he whose nippers end in red;

As it likes me each time, I do: so He.”

Setebos

In this passage, Caliban wonders why god (i.e., Setobos) acts as he does and why he makes the choices that he does. Caliban sees God (his god) as someone who is entirely arbitrary and capricious.  Romans 9:14ff seems to suggest this when God is quoted by the apostle Paul as saying “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. So, then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that hath mercy.”  Passages such as this makes it seem that God decides whom to bless and whom to not bless, aside from other merits, extenuating circumstances or personal petitions. In that case and in the words of Caliban (Browning): “Loving not, hating not, just choosing so.” What Setobos does to people, Caliban concludes, whether good or bad is nothing personal to Setobos. In this sense, Caliban’s god sound like some mobster in the Gambino crime family. But this interpretation of God (Jehovah) which is often adopted and promoted by people hostile to the Christian message is not what God is saying. Here, it is intended to be an assurance of God’s benevolence.  And there are limits that God has set on Himself (such as not to flood the Earth again.)  Finally, this notion of God-behaving-like-Zeus is contrary to Scripture.

In Isaiah 63:9, the prophet tells us that God, Himself, is afflicted by the afflictions of His people. And we must be careful not to judge God by the actions of his people or the ways of the world as Caliban has.  Few Christians are able to successfully emulate the attributes of God.  They are not perfect and they cannot step outside of their humanity. The author of the book of Hebrews (4:14-16) knew this when he wrote:

For our high priest is able to understand our weaknesses. He was tempted in every way that we are, but he did not sin. Let us, then, feel very sure that we can come before God’s throne where there is grace. There we can receive mercy and grace to help us when we need it.”

The planet we live on has devolved from a carefully manicured paradise to a feral jungle as described by Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan. In the words of Hobbes, people in his day (and our day as well) face: “continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Who would want to walk the streets of seventeenth century London after dark, or twenty-first century Chicago? This is not God’s doing, but a consequence of sin and corruption in the world. It is the Second Law of Thermodynamics at work which states–in part–that organized (i.e., lawful) systems eventually devolve into chaotic (lawless) systems. And sin is the grease that allows the wheels to turn, to grind people down.

Scripture, itself, refers to God as a Potter and His creations are mere clay.  Not only are we not equal to God, but we are not in the same category.  For a moment, let’s replace the example of crabs in Caliban’s comments with an example dealing with nations.

Difficult questions

I’ve always been less than patient when people avoid difficult questions. Why not just admit that you do not know? So, here is one difficult question: Why did God designate Israel as his chosen nation and not Egypt, Greece, Babylon, Canaan, or Cush?  And why was the glory of Babylon or Rome extinguished?  Why (or is) God giving Israel a “pass” today to behave badly while the Palestinians suffer?  Why does God let that happen?  Why indeed?

The notion of a Chosen People

There is, in fact, Biblical truth to the idea that the Jews have been chosen by God. As early as Deuteronomy 7:6-8 we read this:

For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession. The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your ancestors that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt.”

And in Isaiah 49:6 we read: “I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”

This does not imply Jews enjoy moral superiority over other races, and mainstream Jewish thought does not teach this. Rabbis would say that God’s right hand was offered to any and all of the nations that existed back then.  When God delivered the Covenant of the Law, and the Ten Commandments specifically, they were broadcast to all the world in seventy languages from Mt. Sinai.  If you lived then, you might have been excused from listening attentively because Philo and the Midrash, a rabbinic commentary and other sources tell us that the ground was shaking and convulsing. Then again, the Covenant of Grace was likewise announced in various languages in Jerusalem during the festival of Pentecost (Shavuot.)

What Deuteronomy 7:6-8 means is that only Israel of all the nations made an attempt to be faithful to the True God (though with less-than-ideal results.) The other nations of the world (all of which except Israel and possibly Egypt) have perished.

The Palestinians

Earliest history suggests that the area called Gaza and the Gaza Strip was settled by Canaanites, then Philistines and successively by other groups of people. The West Bank of the Jordan now considered Palestinian was decidedly part of Biblical Israel and referred to as Judea in ancient times. However, Bedouins (from badawī or “desert dwellers”) undoubtedly lived or drifted through Judea (aka the West Bank) as they did elsewhere in the Holy Land, Arabia and North Africa. The Northern part of Israel was known as Samaria and was populated by Samaritan Jews. In fact, ethnic Samaritans trace their lineage back to the Hebrew tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, though by the time of Christ, there was a good deal of bad feelings between mainstream Judaism and the Samaritans.

Jews believe that God gave the land recognized as modern (ersatz) Israel plus the land known as Judea and Samaria to the Jews for their own homeland. This occurred around the thirteenth century B.C. as the Jews were leaving Egypt, having been slaves for four centuries. They drove the Canaanites from the land and lived there–with the exception of the half century or so of the Babylonian Captivity and following the destruction of Israel by the Romans in 72-73 A.D. Centuries later after the birth of Mohammed and the rise of Islam, the Holy Land was essentially under Muslim control until the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War I.

Were the Palestinians displaced?

The answer is generally “Yes.” Palestinians were citizens of Israel, Egypt or Jordan seventy-five years ago. Arabs living in Israel who lost their homes may have allied themselves with the Arab nations during the several wars they waged against Israel, and they were arrested or forced into exile. Others inhabitants were pushed out by settlers, Jewish terrorist groups or what we might call gentrification. Still others who were fed up sold their homes to the Israelis. Many moved to Jordan where half of their population is either Palestinian or of Palestinian origin. The U.S. did the same to the Cherokee, the Sioux, the Seminoles and many other tribes, though this does not make what Israel did right. But neither country would turn the clock back even in the name of justice. It’s true that probably more than 30,000 innocent Palestinians died in the past eight months since Hamas started the war. History tells us that the U.S killed more than 90,000 innocent Japanese in Hiroshima and another 60,000 or more in Nagasaki with two bombs in less than two hours time. Those who did not die immediately were mortally stricken. The British killed 44,000 innocents in Hamburg during Work War II fire bombings, and another 25,000 in Dresden. The Turks massacred at least 664,000 Armenians during 1914-1915. All of this does not justify the deaths of tens of thousands of people at the hands of Israel, but this is what happens in war. Again, none of the earlier belligerents have apologized. It should not have happened in Gaza, but it was the choice of Hamas to make their stand in densely populated areas. They might have spared their citizenry if they so chose. Every country, including the U.S., Israel and the Palestinians, themselves, who hope for a country, has a chequered past.

The point being that God likely does not sanction the killing of the people of Gaza. Be that as it may, Israel behaving badly does not change the past proclamations of Scripture as far as God and Israel are concerned. As far as we can tell and with only several specific incidents such as the deaths of seven employees of the World Central Kitchen, the Israeli Defense Force did not shoot to kill innocent people arbitrarily as Caliban suggested Setebos might ruthlessly crush crabs under his foot. Israel is facing an existential threat from not only Hamas, Hizbullah, ISIS, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the al-Aqsa Marty’s Brigade, but also Iran, Syria, Yeman and perhaps Lebanon as well. Russia claims that its war with Ukraine and NATO weapons in that country present something close to an existential threat to their country. If that threshold is crossed, war in Europe may follow.

The Israelis made hard choices in 2000 at Camp David when they, the Palestinian Liberation Organization and President Clinton met for two weeks. But at the last moment Yasser Arafat turned his back on the proposed peace agreement and President Clinton blamed Arafat for not deciding for peace. Immediately after the Second Intifada of violence against Israel began.

What I’ve tried to communicate in this post is that we need to be careful about attributing what we see in nature to the character of God. I’ve also commented that God is not arbitrary and He exercises mercy to all who call on His name. Israel was His first love, but other nations who seek after Him might enjoy some benefits of his favor, at least abstractly. I hope that I’ve communicated that the violence in Gaza needs to stop. This is most reasonably accomplished by Hamas releasing all their hostages and the ones that they’ve “farmed out” to other terrorist groups and then leaving Gaza for some third country.