Читать книгу Job and Solomon: Or, The Wisdom of the Old Testament - T. K. Cheyne - Страница 11

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‘The words of Job are ended’ (xxxi. 40b), remarks the ancient editor, and amongst the last of these words is an aspiration after a meeting with God. That Job expected such a favour in this life is in the highest degree improbable, whatever view be taken of xix. 25-27. It is true, he sometimes did almost regard a theophany as possible, though he feared it might be granted under conditions which would make it the reverse of a boon (ix. 3, 15, 33-35; xiii. 21, 22). He wished for a fair investigation of his character, and he craved that God would not appear in too awful a form. It seems at first sight as if Jehovah, casting hard questions at Job out of the tempest, and ignoring both the friends’ indictment and Job’s defence (xxxi. 35-37), were realising Job’s worst fears and acting as his enemy. The friends had already sought to humble Job by pointing him to the power and wisdom and goodness of God, and Job had proved conclusively that he was no stranger to these high thoughts. Is the poet consistent with himself, first, in introducing Jehovah at all, and, secondly, in making Him overpower Job by a series of sharp, ironical questions? Several answers may be given if we wish to defend the unity of the poem. Job himself (it may be said) has not continued at the same high level of faith as in xix. 25-27 (assuming Prof. Davidson’s view of the passage); he needs the appearance of Jehovah more than he did then. As to the course attributed in xxxviii. 1 to Jehovah, this too (the poet may have felt in adding these speeches) was really the best for Job. Jehovah might no doubt have declared Job to be in the right as against his friends. He might next have soothed the sufferer’s mind by revealing the reason why his trials were permitted (we know this from the Prologue). But this would not have been for Job’s spiritual welfare: there was one lesson he needed to learn or to relearn, one grace of character he needed to gain or to regain—namely, devout and trustful humility towards God. In the heat of debate and under the pressure of pain Job’s old religious habit of mind had certainly been weakened—not destroyed, but weakened—and a strong remedy was necessary if he was not to carry his distracted feelings to the grave. And so, as a first joyful surprise, came the theophany: to ‘see’ God before death must have been a joyful surprise; and if the questioning cast him down, yet it was only to raise him up in the strength of self-distrust. The object of these orations of Jehovah is not to communicate intellectual light, but to give a stronger tone to Job’s whole nature. He had long known God to be strong and wise and good, but more as a lesson learned than as personal experience (xlii. 5). And the means first adopted to convey this life-giving ‘sight’ is not without a touch of that humour which we noticed in the Prologue. Job, who was so full of questions, now has the tables turned upon him. He is put through a catechism which admits of but one very humbling answer, each question being attached to a wonderfully vivid description of some animal or phenomenon. For descriptive power the first speech of Jehovah, at any rate, is without a parallel. The author, as Prof. Davidson remarks, ‘knew the great law that sublimity is necessarily also simplicity.’ It is true he does but give us isolated features of the natural world: no single scene is represented in its totality. But this is in accordance with the Hebrew genius, to which nature appears, not in her own simple beauty, but bathed in an atmosphere of emotion. The emotion which here animates the poet is mainly a religious one; it is the love of God, and of God’s works for the sake of their Maker. He wishes to cure the murmuring spirits of his own day by giving them wider views of external nature and its mysteries, so wondrously varied and so full of Divine wisdom and goodness. He has this great advantage in doing so, that they, like himself (and Job), are theists; they are not of those who say in their heart, ‘There is no God,’ but of the ‘Zion’ who complains, ‘Jehovah has forsaken me, and my Lord has forgotten me’ (Isaiah xlix. 14). And the remedy which he applies is the same as that of the Babylonian-Jewish prophet, a wider study of the ways of God. Job had said, ‘I would tell Him the number of my steps;’ Jehovah replies by showing him, in a series of questions, not irritating but persuasive, the footprints of His own larger self-manifestation.

The Divine Speaker is introduced by the poet thus:

And Jehovah answered Job out of a tempest, and said.

A storm was the usual accompaniment of a Divine appearance: there was no intention of crushing Job with terror. In Blake’s thirteenth drawing Job (and his wife!) are represented kneeling and listening, with countenances expressive of thankfulness; in his fourteenth, Job and his four friends kneel rapt and ecstatic, while the ‘sons of God,’ sweet, vital, heavenly forms, are shouting for joy. In fact, the speeches of Jehovah contain, not accusations (except in xxxviii. 2), but remonstrances, and, though the form of these is chilling to Job’s self-love, yet the glorious visions which they evoke are healing to every sorrow of the mind. The text of the speeches is unfortunately not in perfect order. For instance, there are four verses which have, no one can tell how, been deposited in the description of behemoth (xli. 9-12, A. V.) but which most probably at one time or another opened the first speech of Jehovah. Perhaps the author himself removed them, feeling them to be too depressing for Job to hear; or perhaps it was purely by accident that they were transferred, and Merx and Bickell have done well to replace them in their corrected editions of Job between xxxi. 37 and xxxviii. 1. As corrected by the former they run thus:—

Behold, his hope is belied:

will he fight against mine appearing?

He is not so bold as to stir me up;

who indeed could stand before me?

Who ever attacks me in safety?

all beneath the whole heaven is mine.

I will not take his babbling in silence,

his mighty speech and its comely arrangement.

We must regard this as a soliloquy, after which, directly addressing Job, Jehovah upbraids the ‘mighty speaker’ with having shut himself out by his ‘blind clamour’ from a view of the Divine plan of his life.

Who is this that darkens counsel

by words without knowledge? (xxxviii. 2.)

To gain that ‘knowledge’ which will ‘make darkness light before him,’ Job must enrich his conception of God. Those striking pictures already referred to have no lower aim than to display the great All-wise God, and the irony of the catechising is only designed to bring home the more forcibly to Job human littleness and ignorance. Modern readers, however, cannot help turning aside to admire the genius of the poet and his sympathetic interest in nature. His scientific ideas may be crude; but he observes as a poet, and not as a naturalist. Earth, sea, and sky successively enchain him, and we can hardly doubt that the natural philosophy of the Chaldæans was superficially at least known to him.^[53] In his childlike curiosity and willingness to tell us everything he reminds us of the poet of the Commedia.

Has the rain a father?^[54]

or who has begotten the dew-drops?

from whose womb came forth the ice,

and the hoar frost of heaven—who engendered it,

(that) the waters close together like a stone,

and the face of the deep hides itself?

Dost thou bind the knots of the Pleiades,^[55]

or loose the fetters of Orion?^[56]

Dost thou bring forth the moon’s watches at their season,

and the Bear and her offspring—dost thou guide them?

Knowest thou the laws of heaven?

dost thou determine its influence upon the earth?

(xxxviii. 28-33.)

‘The laws of heaven!’ Can we refuse to observe the first beginnings of a conception of the cosmos, remembering other passages of the Wisdom Literature in which the great world plan is distinctly referred to? Without denying a pre-Exile, native Hebrew tendency (comp. Job xxxviii. 33 with Jer. xxxi. 35, 36) may we not suppose that the physical theology of Babylonia had a large part in determining the form of this conception? Notice the reference to the influence of the sky upon the earth, and especially the Hebraised Babylonian phrase Mazzaroth (i.e. mazarati,^[57] plural of mazarta, a watch), the watches or stations of the moon which marked the progress of the month. But it is not so much the intellectual curiosity manifest in these verses which we would dwell upon now as the poetic vigour of the gallery of zoology, and, we must add, the faith which pervades it, reminding us of a Bedouin prayer quoted by Major Palmer, ‘O Thou who providest for the blind hyæna, provide for me!’ Ten (or nine) specimens of animal life are given—the lion and (perhaps) the raven,^[58] the wild goat and the hind, the wild ass, the wild ox,^[59] the ostrich, the war horse, the hawk and the eagle. It is to this portion that the student must turn who would fain know the highest attainments of the Hebrew genius in pure poetry, such as Milton would have recognised as poetry. The delighted wonder with which the writer enters into the habits of the animals, and the light and graceful movement of the verse, make the ten descriptions referred to an ever-attractive theme, I will not say for the translator, but for the interpreter. They are ideal, as the Greek sculptures are ideal, and need the pen of that poet-student, faint hints of whose coming have been given us in Herder and Rückert. The finest of them, of course, is that of one of the animals most nearly related in Arabia to man (in Arabia, but not in Judæa), the horse.

Dost thou give might to the horse?

Dost thou clothe his neck with waving mane?

Dost thou make him bound as a locust?

The peal of his snort is terrible!

He paws in the valley and rejoices in his strength;

he goes forth to meet the weapons;

he laughs at fear, and is not dismayed,

and recoils not from the sword:

the quiver clangs upon him,

the flashing lance and the javelin:

bounding furiously he swallows the ground,

and cannot stand still at the blast of the trumpet;

at every blast he says, ‘Aha!’

and smells the battle from afar,

the captain’s thunder and the cry of battle (xxxix. 19-25).

The terrible element in animal instincts seems indeed to fascinate the mind of our poet; he closes his gallery with a sketch of the cruel instincts of the glorious eagle. We are reminded, perhaps, of the lines of a poet painter inspired by Job—