Job IS the Phoenix

Did you know that the phoenix appears in Jewish tradition?
There are a number of sources for it.

It is said to have been at the Garden of Eden, the only animal that did not accept Eve’s offer to eat of the forbidden fruit.“It lives a thousand years, and at the end of a thousand years, fire emerges from its nest and burns it. An egg-bulk remains of it and it then grows limbs, and lives again," the midrash tells us.

It is also said to have been in the ark, where, in an alternative explanation for its longevity, Noah blessed it with eternal life after it modestly did not want to trouble him to feed it.

But both interesting and odd is to find it referenced in Job (29:18).

And I said [to myself], I shall die in my nest;
and my days shall be numbered like the sand.

Rashi, drawing on the midrash, explains on the word “sand”:

This is referring to a bird known as חול (the Phoenix), and the punishment of death was not laid upon it, for it did not taste from the tree of Knowledge [at the sin of Adam and Eve]. After 1,000 years, it renews itself and returns to its youth.

In other words, Job had expected his days to be numbered like the sand bird, namely the phoenix. He had expected to live a long life.

Now what is intriguing about the phoenix is that it is not a creature that is simply immortal – that simply lives forever without death. Rather, the intriguing and unique aspect of the phoenix is that it dies and is reborn. Its old self dies in flames and its new self is reborn.

The verse in Job is meant to be a lament for what is lost.

That chapter (29) begins with the bereft and broken Job crying out “O that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me.” Those were the days when he expected to die peacefully at home of old age.

And yet, the unusual connection made by the midrash between this verse and the phoenix made me think about it in greater depth. And I realised: Job indeed was like the phoenix. His old life went up in flames, he lost his children, his possessions, his health - everything. And yet, after going through an excruciating process of pain and questioning, Job is finally given a mysterious revelation and rests his quest, accepting that the divine plan cannot be known, it shall always remain beyond human grasp.

At that point, in the final verses of the book (chapter 40) we are told:

12. So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning; for he had fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand female asses. 13. He also had seven sons and three daughters. 14. And he called the name of the first, Jemima; and the name of the second, Kezia; and the name of the third, Keren-Happuch. 15. And in all the land no women were found so pretty as the daughters of Job; and their father gave them inheritance among their brothers. 16. And after this Job lived a hundred and forty years, and saw his sons, and his grandsons, four generations.
17. And Job died, old and full of days.

Phoenix-like he is reborn and has, if anything, even more vigor and vitality than before, like a young bird emerging from its egg.

The connection, through the word chol, sand, teaches us this – that after destruction, rebirth can (hopefully) ensue.

(With thanks to Shaatnez - a group dedicated to Judaism and speculative literature)