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We have seen (Chap. VII.) that the unity of authorship of the Book of Job is not beyond dispute, but we shall not at present assume the results of analysis. Let us endeavour to treat of the date and place of composition on the hypothesis that the book is a whole as it stands (on the Elihu-portion however, comp. Chap. XII.) It is at any rate probable that the greater part of it at least proceeds from the same period. Can that period be the patriarchal? The author has sometimes received credit for his faithful picture of this early age. This is at any rate plausible. For instance, he avoids the use of the sacred name Jehovah, revealed to Moses according to Ex. vi. 3. Then, too, the great age ascribed to Job in the Epilogue (xlii. 16) agrees with the notices of the patriarchs. The uncoined piece of silver (Heb. kesita) which each kinsman of Job gave him after his recovery (xlii. II), is only mentioned again in Gen. xxxiii. 19 (Josh. xxiv. 32). The musical instruments referred to in xxi. 12, xxx. 31, are also mentioned in Gen. iv. 21, xxxi. 27. There is no protest against idolatry either in the Book of Job^[88] or in Genesis. Job himself offers sacrifices to the one true God, like the patriarchs, and the kind of sacrifice offered is the burnt-offering (i. 5, xlii. 8), there is no mention of guilt-or sin-offerings. The settled life of Job, too, as described in the Prologue is not inconsistent with the story of Jacob’s life in the vale of Shechem,^[89] though in reality the author probably described it from his observation of settled life in Arabia. But none of these allusions required any special gift of historical imagination. The tone of the few descriptive passages in the Colloquies, and of the reflections throughout, is that of an age long subsequent to the patriarchal. The very idea of wise men meeting together to discuss deep problems (as in the later Arabic maqāmāt, compared by Bertholdt and others) is an anachronism in a ‘patriarchal’ narrative, and (like the religious position of the speeches in general) irresistibly suggests the post-Solomonic period. The Job of the Colloquies is a travelled citizen of the world at an advanced period of history; indeed, he now and then seems expressly to admit this (xxiv. 12, xxix. 7). It is therefore needless to discuss the theory which assigns the book to the Mosaic or pre-Mosaic age,—a theory which is a relic of the cold, literal, unsympathetic method of the critics of the last two centuries. A few scholars of eminence, feeling this, placed the poem in the Solomonic period, a view which is in itself plausible, if we consider the pronounced secular turn of the great king, and his recorded taste for eastern parabolistic ‘wisdom,’ but which falls with the cognate theory of the authorship of Proverbs. A more advanced stage of society than that of the period referred to, and a greater maturity of the national intellect, are presupposed on every page of the poem. The tone of the book—I refer especially to the Colloquies—suggests a time when the nationalism of the older periods had, in general, ceased to satisfy reflecting minds. The doubters, whom Job and his friends represent, have been so staggered in their belief in Israel’s loving God, that they decline to use His revealed name:—^[90] once or twice only does it slip in (xii. 9; cf. xxviii. 28), as if to show that the poet himself has fought his way to a reconciling faith. As is clear from the cognate psalms xxxvii., xlix., lxxiii., the patriarchal theory of prosperity and adversity had been found wanting. Doubts had arisen, most painful in their intensity, from observing the disproportion between character and fortune—doubts which might indeed insinuate themselves at any time, but acquire an abnormal force in a declining community (ix. 24, xii. 4-6, 23, and especially chap. xxi.) Some had even ventured on positive doctrinal heresy. In opposition to these, Eliphaz professes his adhesion to the tradition of the fathers, in whose time religion was untainted by alien influence (xv. 17-19). It is merely an incidental remark of Eliphaz, but it points to a date subsequent to the appearance of Assyria on the horizon of Palestine. For it was the growing influence of that power, which, for good and for evil, modified the character of Israelitish religion both in its higher and in its lower forms.

Precise historical allusions are almost entirely wanting. We may, however, infer with certainty that the book was written subsequently to the ‘deportation’ of Israel, or of Judah, or at the very least of some neighbouring people (xii. 17-19; comp. xv. 19^[91]). For the uprooting of whole peoples from their original homes was peculiar to the Assyrian policy.^[92] But which of these forced expatriations is intended?—We are not compelled to think of the Babylonian Exile by the reference to the Chaldæans in the Prologue. The Chaldæans might have been known to a well-informed Hebrew writer ever since the ninth century B.C., at which time they became predominant in the southern provinces on the lower Euphrates: we find Isaiah, speaking of the ‘land of Chaldæa’ (Isa. xxiii. 13) in the eighth century. Still I own that the description of the Chaldæans as robbers does appear to me most easily explained by supposing a covert allusion to the invasions of Nebuchadnezzar.^[93] The Assyrians are indeed once called ‘treacherous dealers’ by Isaiah (xxxiii. 1), but the Babylonians impressed the Hebrew writers by their rapacity far more than the Assyrians. The ‘unrighteous’ of the Psalms are, when foreigners are spoken of, not the Assyrians, but either the Babylonians or still later oppressors (e.g. Ps. cxxv. 3); and the description of the Babylonians in the first chapter of Habakkuk strongly reminds us of those complaints of Job, ‘The earth is given over into the hand of the unrighteous’ (ix. 24), and ‘The robbers’ tents are in peace, and they that provoke God are secure, they who carry (their) god in their hand’ (xii. 6; comp. Hab. i. 11, 16).

The view here propounded might be supported by an argument from linguistic data (see Chap. XIII.) which would lead us into details out of place here. It is that of Umbreit, Knobel, Grätz, and (though he does not exclude the possibility of a later date) the sober and thorough Gesenius. Long after the present writer’s results were first committed to paper, he had the rare satisfaction of finding them advocated, so far as the date is concerned, in a commentary by a scholar of our own who has the best right to speak (A. B. Davidson, Introduction to The Book of Job, 1884). On the other hand, Stickel, Ewald, Magnus, Bleek, Renan (1860), Kuenen (1865), Hitzig, Reuss, Dillmann, Merx, prefer to place our poem in the period between Isaiah and Jeremiah, and this seems to me the earliest date from which the composition and significance of the book can be at all rightly understood. Reasons enough for this statement of opinion will suggest themselves to those who have followed me hitherto; let me now only add that the pure monotheism of the Book makes an earlier date, on historical principles, hardly conceivable.^[94] A later date than the Exile-period is not, I admit, inconceivable (see Vatke, Die biblische Theologie, i. 563 &c.), and is now supported by Kuenen.^[95] If there were an allusion to the doctrine of the Resurrection, in xix. 26, or if the portraiture of Job were (as Kuenen thinks it is) partly modelled on the Second Isaiah’s description of the Servant of Jehovah, I should in fact be driven to accept this view. I have stated above that I cannot find the Resurrection in Job, and in Isaiah, ii. 267 that the priority of Job seems to me to be made out. I need not combat Clericus and Warburton, who ascribe the authorship of Job to Ezra. For Jeremiah (Bateson Wright) or the author of Lamentations (i.e. Baruch, according to Bunsen) something might perhaps be said, but—Ezra!

As to the place of composition. Hitzig and Hirzel think of Egypt on account of the numerous allusions to Egypt in the book; and so Ewald with regard to xl. 15-xli. 34. ‘Die ganze Umgebung ist egyptisch,’ says Hitzig with some exaggeration.^[96] More might be said in favour of the theory which places the author in a region where Arabic and Aramaic might both be heard. Stickel, holding the pre-Exile origin of the book, supposed it to have come from the far south-east of Palestine. Nowhere better than in the hill-country of the South could the poet study simple domestic relations, and also make excursions into N. Arabia. He thus accounts^[97] for the points of contact between the Book of Job and the prophecy of Amos of Tekoa (see below, Chap. XI.), which include even some phonetic peculiarities (the softening of the gutturals and the interchange of sibilants). To me, the whole question seems well-nigh an idle one. The author (or, if you will, the authors) had travelled much in various lands, and the book is the result. The place where is of far less importance than the time when it was composed.