Sorrow, Suffering and Faith

After having read several different stories that focused on the lives of deities in Near Eastern literature, I found it very interesting to take a new perspective of the gods through the people, their creation. While looking up the stories in the Contents, I was not surprised at all by the fact that they were all categorized under “Sorrow and Suffering.” People have the tendency to depend or rely on mystical deities for condolence and plead for help. Whenever they encounter challenges or struggles that seem out of their control, or whenever they need any favor, people of all different kinds of religion always turn to their gods. As seen through the three stories, it is easy to see a pattern in which people usually reach out to their gods only when they are met with sorrow and suffering.
The “Elegy for a Woman Dead in Childbirth” and the “Poem of the Righteous Sufferer” illustrate the pain and despair in the human characters and their plea for aid to the gods, Belet-ili and Marduk. As the woman who just gave birth realized she was about to die, she desperately pleas out with her hands out, “You are the mother of those who give birth, save my life!” In their emotional last moment, the husband and wife reach out to Belet-ili and fail. Interestingly, in “The Babylonian Theodicy”, the sufferer is the resulting character of someone who is tired of relying on his gods. After much suffering and pain, watching injustice go unnoticed and continued, he realizes that his gods must not be fair, for they never heeded to his pleas. It seems that these characters all believe that since their gods have the divine ability to help them, they “must.” People and their faith and trust in their gods seem to be “strong” especially or maybe only when they encounter sorrow and suffering.