Job 5:23, Loren Eiseley and Evolution

At the beginning of The Last Neanderthal, Loren Eiseley quoted the Book of Job:

“For you shall be in league with the stones of the field, and the beasts of the field shall be at peace with you” (RSV.)

In agrarian days maybe that passage meant what a contemporary linguistic translation makes so explicit: “The fields you plow will be free of rocks; wild animals will never attack you” (TEV.)

Meanings are not static – they change over time. In our day, in the age of ecology, these words in the Book of Job can refer to the relatedness of all of life and the earth, rather than to a farmer’s hope. Still, the expression remains optimistic and hopeful, as it was in agrarian days, founded on trust in the benevolence of God, or in a kind of benevolence of the cosmos, of evolution, perhaps, if one no longer speaks of God.

At the end of The Last Neanderthal, Eiseley wrote about a piece of flint he carried in his pocket, one that he, a physical anthropologist, had found years ago while digging for bones. The flint, stone of the field, tool of a wild ancestor, connected him with the past, made him think about who he was and how he lived, gave him hope, contained wisdom – the old flint and the Book of Job.