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The Book of Job is not the earliest monument of Hebrew ‘wisdom,’ but for various reasons will be treated first in order. The perusal of some of the pages introductory to Proverbs will enable the student to fill out what is here given. The Hebrew ‘wisdom’ is a product as peculiar as the dialectic of Plato, and not less worthy of admiration; and the author of Job is its greatest master. To him are due those great thoughts on a perennial problem, which may be supplemented but can never be superseded, and which, as M. Renan truly says, cause so profound an emotion in their first naïve expression. His wisdom is that of intuition rather than of strict reasoning, but it is as truly based upon the facts of experience as any of our Western philosophies. He did not indeed reach his high position unaided by predecessors. The author of the noble ‘Praise of Wisdom’ in Prov. i.-ix. taught him much and kindled his ambition. Nor was he in all probability without the stimulus of fellow-thinkers and fellow-poets. The student ought from the outset to be aware of the existence of discussions as to the unity of the book—discussions which have led to one assured and to several probable results—though he ought not to adopt any critical results before he has thoroughly studied the poem itself. The student should also know that the supposed authors of the (as I must believe) inserted passages belong to the same circle as the writer of the main part of the book, and are therefore not to be accused of having made ‘interpolations.’ I need not here distinguish between passages added by the author himself as afterthoughts (or perhaps paralipomena inserted by disciples from his literary remains) and compositions of later poets added to give the poem greater didactic completeness. A passage which does not fall into the plan of the poem is to all intents and purposes the work of another poet. The philosophic Goethe of the second part of Faust is not the passion-tossed Goethe of the first.

All the writers who may be concerned in the production of our book are, however, well worthy of reverent study; they were not only inspired by the Spirit of Israel’s holy religion, but in their various styles true poets. In some degree we may apply to Job the lines of Schiller on the Iliad with its different fathers but one only mother—Nature. In fact, Nature, in aspects chiefly familiar, but not therefore less interesting, was an open book to these poets, and ‘Look in thine heart and write’ was their secret as well as Spenser’s for vigorous and effective expression.

I now proceed to give in plain prose the pith and substance of this great poem, which more than any other Old Testament book needs to be brought near to the mind of a Western student. I would entitle it The Book of the Trial of the Righteous Man, and of the Justification of God.

In its present form the Book of Job consists of five parts—

1. The Prologue, written in prose (ch. i.-ii.), the body of the work in the Hebrew being written in at any rate an approach to metre;^[4]

2. The Colloquies between Job and his three friends (ch. iii.-xxxi.);

3. The Discourses of Elihu (ch. xxxii.-xxxvii.);

4. Jehovah’s Reply to Job (ch. xxxviii.-xlii. 6);

5. The Epilogue, in prose (ch. xlii. 7-17).

There are some differences in the arrangement which will presently be followed, but these will justify themselves in the course of our study. Let us first of all examine the Prologue, which will bear to be viewed by itself as a striking specimen of Hebrew narrative. The idyllic manners of a patriarchal age are delineated with sympathy—no difficult task to one who knew the early Hebrew traditions—and still more admirable are the very testing scenes from the supernatural world.

It may perhaps seem strange that this should be only a prose poem, but the truth is that narrative poetry was entirely alien to the Hebrew genius, which refused to tolerate the bonds of protracted and continuous versification. Like that other great hero of parallelistic verse Balaam, Job is a non-Israelite; and in this the unknown author shows a fine tact, for he is thus absolved from the embarrassing necessity of referring to the Law, and so complicating the moral problem under consideration. Job, however, though an Arabian sheich^[5] (as one may loosely call him), was a worshipper of Jehovah, who declares before the assembled ‘sons of the Elohim’ that ‘there is none like Job in the earth,’ &c. (i. 8). Job’s virtue is rewarded by an outward prosperity like that of the patriarchs in Genesis: he was a great Eastern Emeer, and had not only a large family but great possessions. His scrupulous piety, which takes precautions even against heart-sins, is exemplified to us by the atoning sacrifice which he offers as head of his family at some annual feast (i. 4, 5). Then in ver. 6 the scene is abruptly changed from earth to heaven. The spirit of the narrative is not devoid of a delightful humour. In the midst of the ‘sons of the Elohim’—supernatural, Titanic beings, who had once been at strife with Jehovah (if we may illustrate by xxi. 22, xxv. 2), but who now at stated times paid Him their enforced homage—stood one who had not quite lost his original pleasure in working evil, and who was now employed by his Master as a kind of moral and religious censor of the human race. This malicious spirit—‘the Satan’ or adversary, as he is called—had just returned from a tour of inspection in the world, and Jehovah, who is represented under the disguise of an earthly monarch, boldly and imprudently draws his attention to the meritorious Job. The Satan refuses to give human nature credit for pure goodness, and sarcastically remarks, ‘Does Job serve God for nothing?’ (i. 9.) Jehovah therefore allows His minister to put Job’s piety to as severe a test as possible short of taking his life. One after another Job’s flocks, his servants, and his children are destroyed. His wife, however, by a touch of quiet humour, is spared; she seems to be recognised by the Satan as an unconscious ally (ii. 9). The piety of Job stands the trial; he is deeply moved, but maintains his self-control, and the scene closes with a devout ascription of blessing to Jehovah alike for giving and for recalling His gifts.

Before passing on the reader should notice that, according to the poet, the ultimate reason why these sufferings of Job were permitted by the Most High was that Job might set an example of a piety independent of favouring outward circumstances. The poet reveals this to us in the Prologue, that we may not ourselves be staggered in our faith, nor cast down by sympathy with such an unique sufferer; for after the eulogy passed upon Job in the celestial court we cannot doubt that he will stand the test, even if disturbed for a time.

A second time the same high court is held. The first experiment of the Adversary has failed, and this magnified earthly monarch, the Jehovah of the story, begins to suspect that he has allowed a good man to be plagued with no sufficient motive. Admiringly he exclaims, pointing to Job, ‘And still he holds fast his integrity, so that thou didst incite me against him to annihilate him without cause’ (ii. 3). Another sarcastic word from the Adversary (‘Touch his bone and his flesh, and then see....’), and once more he receives permission to try Job. The affliction this time is elephantiasis, the most loathsome and dangerous form of leprosy. But Job’s piety stands fast. He sits down on the heap of burnt dung and ashes at the entrance of the village, such as those where lepers are still wont to congregate, and meets the despairing counsel of his wife (comp. Tobit’s wife, Tob. ii. 14) to renounce a God from whom nothing more is to be hoped but death with a calm and pious rebuke. So baseless was the malicious suggestion of the Satan! Meantime many months pass away (vii. 3), and no friend appears to condole with him. Travelling is slow in the East, and Job’s three friends^[6] were Emeers like himself (the Sept. makes them kings), and their residences would be at some distance from each other. At last they come, but they cannot recognise Job’s features, distorted by disease (as Isa. lii. 14). Overpowered with surprise and grief, they sit down with him for seven days and seven nights (comp. Ezek. iii. 15). Up to this point no fault can be found with his friends.

I never yet did hear

That the bruised heart was pierced through the ear.

(Othello, act i, scene 3.)

It was their deep, unspoken sympathy which encouraged him to vent his sorrow in a flood of unpurified emotion (chap. iii.) The very next thing recorded of Job is that he ‘opened his mouth and cursed his day’ (i.e. his birthday; see ver. 3). This may at least be the poet’s meaning, though it is also possible that the prologue and the body of the poem are not homogeneous. Not to mention other reasons at present, the tone of Job’s speech in chap. iii. (the chapter read by Swift on his birthday) is entirely different from the stedfast resignation of his reply to his wife, which, as Prof. Davidson has said, ‘reveals still greater deeps in Job’s reverent piety’ than the benediction at the end of chap. i., the latter being called forth not by the infliction of positive evil, but merely by the withdrawal of unguaranteed favours.

How strangely vivid were the sensations of the race to which the author of Job belonged! How great to him must have been the pleasures of existence, and how great the pains! Nothing to him was merely subjectively true: his feelings were infallible, and that which seemed to be was. Time, for instance, had an objective reality: the days of the year had a kind of life of their own (comp. Ps. xix. 2) and paid annually recurring visits to mankind. Hence Job, like Jeremiah (Jer. xx. 14-18), in the violence of his passion^[7] can wish to retaliate on the instrument of his misery by ‘cursing his day.’

Perish the day wherein I was born,

and the night which said, A man has been conceived.

(iii. 3; comp. 6);

i.e. let my birthday become a blank in the calendar. Or, if this be too much and the anniversary, so sad to me, must come round, then let magicians cast their spell^[8] upon it and make it an unlucky day (such as the Babylonians had in abundance).

Let them curse it that curse days,

that are skilful to rouse the leviathan (iii. 8);

i.e. the cloud dragon (vii. 12, xxvi. 13, Isaiah li. 9, Jer. li. 34), the enemy of the sun (an allusion to a widely spread solar myth). So fare it with the day which might, by hindering Job’s birth, have ‘hid sorrow from his eyes!’ Even if he must be born, why could he not have died at once and escaped his ill fortune in the quiet phantom world (iii. 13-19)? Alas! this melancholy dream does but aggravate Job’s mental agony. He broods on the horror of his situation, and even makes a shy allusion to God as the author of his woe—

Wherefore gives he light to the miserable,

and life to the bitter in soul? (iii. 20.)

And now Job’s friends are shaken out of their composure. They have been meditating on Job’s calamity, which is so difficult to reconcile with their previous high opinion of him; for they are the representatives of orthodoxy, of the orthodoxy which received the high sanction of the Deuteronomic Tōra, and which connected obedience and prosperity, disobedience and adversity. Still it is not a stiff, extreme orthodoxy which the three friends maintain: calamity, as Eliphaz represents their opinion (v. 17; comp. 27), is not always a punishment, but sometimes a discipline. The question therefore has forced itself upon them, Has the calamity which has befallen our friend a judicial or a disciplinary, educational purpose? At first they may have leaned to the latter alternative; but Job’s violent outburst, so unbecoming in a devout man, too clearly pointed in the other direction, and already they are beginning to lose their first hopeful view of his case. One after another they debate the question with Job (Eliphaz as the depositary of a revelation, Bildad as the advocate of tradition, Zophar as the man of common sense)—the question of the cause and meaning of his sufferings, which means further, since Job is not merely an individual but a type,^[9] the question of the vast mass of evil in the world. This main part of the work falls into three cycles of dialogue (ch. iv.-xiv., ch. xv.-xxi., ch. xxii.-xxxi.) In each there are three pairs of speeches, belonging respectively to Eliphaz and Job, Bildad and Job, Zophar and Job. Eliphaz opens the debate as being the oldest (xv. 10) and the most experienced of Job’s friends. There is much to admire in his speech; if he could only have adopted the tone of a sympathising friend and not of a lecturer—

Behold, this have we searched out; so it is;

hear thou it, and know it for thyself (v. 27)—

he might have been useful to the sufferer. At the very beginning he strikes a wrong key-note, expressing surprise at his friend’s utter loss of self-control (vattibbāhēl, ver. 4), and couching it in such a form that one would really suppose Job to have broken down at the first taste of trouble. The view of the speaker seems to be that, since Job is really a pious man (for Eliphaz does not as yet presume to doubt this), he ought to feel sure that his trouble would not proceed beyond a certain point. ‘Bethink thee now,’ says Eliphaz, ‘who ever perished, being innocent?’ (iv. 7.) Some amount of trouble even a good man may fairly expect; though far from ‘ploughing iniquity,’ he is too weak not to fall into sins of error, and all sin involves suffering; or, as Eliphaz puts it concisely—

Man is born to trouble,

as the sparks fly upward (v. 7).

Assuming without any reason that Job would question this, Eliphaz enforces the moral imperfection of human nature by an appeal to revelation—not, of course, to Moses and the prophets, but to a vision like those of the patriarchs in Genesis. Of the circumstances of the revelation a most graphic account is given.

And to myself came an oracle stealthily,

and mine ear received the whisper thereof,

in the play of thought from nightly visions,

when deep sleep falls upon men,

a shudder came upon me and a trembling,

and made all my bones to shudder,

when (see!) a wind sweeps before me,

the hairs of my body bristle up:

it stands, but I cannot discern it,

I gaze, but there is no form,

before mine eyes (is) ...

and I hear a murmuring voice.^[10]

‘Can human kind be righteous before God?

can man be pure before his Maker?

Behold, he trusts not his own servants,

and imputes error to his angels^[11]’. (iv. 12-18).

There is no such weird passage in the rest of the Old Testament. It did not escape the attention of Milton, whose description of death alludes to it.

If shape it could be called that shape had none,

Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb;

Or substance might be called that shadow seemed.

(Par. Lost, ii. 266.)

A single phrase (‘a murmuring voice,’ ver. 16) is borrowed from the theophany of Elijah (1 Kings xix. 12), but the strokes which paint the scene, and which Milton and Blake between them have more than reproduced, are all his own. The supernatural terror, the wind betokening a spiritual visitor, the straining eyes which can discern no form, the whispering voice always associated with oracles^[12]—each of these awful experiences we seem to share. Eliphaz himself recalls his impressions so vividly that he involuntarily uses the present tense in describing them.

But why should Eliphaz imagine that because Job had not had a revelation of this kind he is therefore ignorant of the truth? He actually confounds the complaints wrung from Job by his unparalleled mental and bodily sufferings with the ‘impatience’ of the ‘foolish man’ and the ‘passion’ of the ‘silly’ one, and warns him against the fate which within his own experience befell one such rebellious murmurer against God—an irrelevant remark, unless he has already begun to suspect Job of impiety. Then, as if he feels that he has gone too far, he addresses Job in a more hopeful spirit, and tells him what he would do in his place, viz. turn trustfully to God, whose operations are so unsearchable, but so benevolent. Let Job regard his present affliction as a chastening and he may look forward to even more abundant blessings than he has yet enjoyed.

In these concluding verses Eliphaz certainly does his best to be sympathetic, but the result shows how utterly he has failed. He has neither convinced Job’s reason nor calmed the violence of his emotion. It is now Job’s turn to reply. He is not, indeed, in a mood to answer Eliphaz point by point. Passing over the ungenerous reference to the fate of the rebellious, which he can hardly believe to be seriously meant, Job first of all justifies the despair which has so astonished Eliphaz.^[13] Since the latter is so cool and so critical, let him weigh Job’s calamity as well as his words, and see if the extravagance of the latter is not excusable. Are these arrow wounds the fruit of chastisement? Does the Divine love disguise itself as terror? The good man is never allowed to perish, you say; but how much longer can a body of flesh hold out? Why should I not even desire death? God may be my enemy, but I have given Him no cause. And now, if He would be my friend, the only favour I crave is that He would shorten my agony.

Then should (this) still be my comfort

(I would leap amidst unsparing pain),

that I have not denied the words of the Holy One (vi. 10).

Job’s demeanour is thus fully accounted for; it is that of his friends which is unnatural and disappointing.

My brethren have been treacherous as a winter stream,

as the bed of winter streams which pass away:

(once) they were turbid with ice,

and the snow, as it fell, hid itself in them;

but now that they feel the glow they vanish,

when it is hot they disappear from their place.

Caravans bend their course;

they go up into the desert and perish.

The caravans of Tema looked;

the companies of Sheba hoped for them;^[14]

they were abashed because they had been confident;

when they came thither they were ashamed (vi. 15-20).

And was it a hard thing that Job asked of his friends? No; merely sympathy. And not only have they withheld this; Eliphaz has even insinuated that Job was an open sinner. Surely neither honesty nor wisdom is shown in such captious criticism of Job’s expressions.

How forcible is honest language,

and how cogent is the censure of a wise man!

Think ye to censure words,

and the passionate speech of one who is desperate? (vi. 25, 26.)

With an assertion of his innocence, and a renewed challenge to disprove it, this, the easiest part of Job’s first reply, concludes.

And now, having secured his right to complain, Job freely avails himself of his melancholy privilege. A ‘desperate’ man cares not to choose his words, though the reverence which never ceased to exist deep down in Job’s nature prompts him to excuse his delirious words by a reference to his bitter anguish (vii. 11). Another excuse which he might have given lies on the very surface of the poem, which is coloured throughout by the poet’s deep sympathy with human misery in general. Job in fact is not merely an individual, but a representative of mankind; and when he asks himself at the beginning of chap. vii.—

Has not frail man a warfare [hard service] upon earth,

and are not his days like the days of a hireling?—

it is not merely one of the countless thoughts which are like foam bubbles, but the expression of a serious interest, which raises Job far, very far above the patriarchal prince of the legend in the Prologue. It is the very exaggeration of this interest which alone explains why the thought of his fellow-sufferers not only brings no comfort^[15] to Job, but fails even to calm his excitement.

Am I the sea (he says) or the sea monster,

that thou settest a watch over me? (vii. 12.)

It is an allusion to a myth, based on the continual ‘war in heaven’ between light and darkness, which we have in these lines. Job asks if he is the leviathan (iii. 8) of that upper ocean above which dwells the invisible God (ix. 8, Ps. civ. 3). He describes Jehovah as being jealous (comp. Gen. iii. 4, 5, 22) and thinking it of importance to subdue Job’s wild nature, lest he should thwart the Divine purposes. But here, again, Job rises above himself; the sorrows of all innocent sufferers are as present to him as his own; nay, more, he bears them as a part of his own; he represents mankind with God. In a bitter parody of Ps. viii. 5 he exclaims—

What is frail man that Thou treatest him as a great one

and settest Thy mind upon him;

that Thou scrutinisest him every morning,

and art every moment testing him? (vii. 17, 18.)

It is only now and then that Job expresses this feeling of sympathetic union with the human race. Generally his secret thought (or that of his poet) translates itself into a self-consciousness which seems morbidly extravagant on any other view of the poem. The descriptions of his physical pains, however, are true to the facts of the disease called elephantiasis, from which he may be supposed to have suffered. His cry for death is justified by his condition—‘death rather than (these) my pains’^[16] (vii. 15). He has no respite from his agony; ‘nights of misery,’ he says, ‘have been allotted to me’ (vii. 3), probably because his pains were more severe in the night (xxx. 17). How can it be worth while, he asks, thus to persecute him? Even if Eliphaz be right, and Job has been a sinner, yet how can this affect the Most High?

(Even) if I have sinned, what do I unto thee,

O thou watcher of men? (vii. 20.)

What bitter irony again! He admits a vigilance in God, but only the vigilance of ‘espionage’ (xiii. 27, xiv. 16), not that of friendly guardianship; God only aims at procuring a long catalogue of punishable sins. Why not forgive those sins and relieve Himself from a troublesome task? Soon it will be too late: a pathetic touch revealing a latent belief in God’s mercy which no calamity could destroy.

Thus to the blurred vision of the agonised sufferer the moral God whom he used to worship has been transformed into an unreasoning, unpitying Force. Bildad is shocked at this. ‘Can God pervert judgment’? (viii. 3.) In his short speech he reaffirms the doctrine of proportionate retribution, and exhorts Job to ‘seek earnestly unto God’ (viii. 5), thus clearly implying that Job is being punished for his sins.^[17] Instead of basing his doctrine on revelation, Bildad supports the side of it relative to the wicked by an appeal to the common consent of mankind previously to the present generation (viii. 8, 9). This common consent, this traditional wisdom, is embodied in proverbial ‘dark sayings,’ as, for instance—

Can the papyrus grow up without marsh?

can the Nile reed shoot up without water?

While yet in its verdure, uncut,

it withers before any grass.

So fares it with all that forget God,

and the hope of the impious shall perish (viii. 11-13).

It is interesting to see at how early a date the argument in favour of Theism was rested to some extent on tradition. ‘We are of yesterday, and know nothing,’ says Bildad, ‘because our days on earth are a shadow’ (viii. 9), whereas the wisdom of the past is centuries old, and has a stability to which Job’s novelties (or, for this is the poet’s meaning, those of the new sceptical school of the Exile) cannot pretend. But Job at least is better than his theories, so Eliphaz and Bildad are still charitable enough to believe, and the closing words of the speech of Bildad clear up any possible doubt with regard to his opinion of erring but still whole-hearted^[18] (‘perfect’) Job.

Those that hate thee shalt be clothed with shame,

and the tent of the wicked shall be no more (viii. 22).

But Job has much to say in reply. He ironically admits the truth of the saying, ‘How can man be righteous with God?’ but the sense in which he applies the words is very different from that given to them by his friends. Of course God is righteous (‘righteousness’ in Semitic languages sometimes means ‘victory’), because He is so mighty that no one, however innocent, could plead successfully before Him. This thought suggests a noble description of the stupendous displays of God’s might in nature (ix. 5-10). The verse with which it closes is adopted from Eliphaz, in whose first speech to Job it forms the text of a quiet picture of God’s everyday miracles of benevolence to man (v. 9). Where Eliphaz sees power, wisdom, and love, Job can see only a force which is terrible in proportion to its wisdom. The predominant quality in this idol of Job’s imagination is not love, but anger—capricious, inexorable anger, which long ago ‘the helpers of Rahab’ (another name for the storm dragon, which fought against the sun) experienced to their cost (ix. 13; comp. xxvi. 12). Job himself is in collision with this force; and how should he venture to defend himself? The tortures he endured would force from him an avowal of untruths (ix. 20). If only God were a man, or if there were an umpire whose authority would be recognised on both sides, how gladly would Job submit his case to adjudication! But, alas! God stands over against him with His rod (ix. 32-34). Bildad had said, ‘God will not cast away a perfect man’ (viii. 20). But Job’s experience is, ‘He destroys the perfect and the wicked’ (ix. 22). Thus Job has many fellow-sufferers, and one good effect of his trial is that it has opened his eyes to the religious bearings of facts which he had long known but not before now seriously pondered.

At last a milder spirit comes upon the sufferer. He has been in the habit of communion with God, and cannot bear to be condemned without knowing the cause (x. 2). How, he enquires, can God have the heart to torture that which has cost Him so much thought (comp. Isa. lxv. 8, 9)? A man is not a common potter’s vessel, but framed with elaborate skill.

Thy hands fashioned and prepared me;

afterwards dost thou turn^[19] and destroy me?

Remember now that as clay thou didst prepare me,

and dost thou turn me into dust again?

Life and favour dost thou grant me,

and thine oversight guarded my spirit (x. 8, 9, 12).

God appeared to be kind then; but, since God sees the end from the beginning, it is too clear that He must have done all this simply in order to mature a perfect human sacrifice to His own cruel self-will. Job’s milder spirit has evidently fled. He repeats his wish that he had never lived (x. 18, 19), and only craves a few brighter moments before he departs to the land of darkness (x. 20-22).

It was not likely that Zophar would be more capable of rightly advising Job than his elders. Having had no experience to soften him, he pours out a flood of crude dogmatic commonplaces, and in the complaints wrung from a troubled spirit can see nothing but ‘a multitude of words’ (xi. 2). Yet he only just misses making an important contribution to the settlement of the problem. He has caught a glimpse of a supernatural wisdom, to which the secrets of all hearts are open:—

But oh that God [Eloah] would speak,

and open his lips against thee.

and show thee the secrets of wisdom,

for wondrous are they in perfection!^[20]

Canst thou find the depths of God [Eloah]?

canst thou reach to the end of Shaddai?

Heights of heaven! what canst thou do?

deeper than Sheól! what canst thou know? (xi. 5-8.)

If Zophar had worked out this idea impartially, he might have given to the discussion a fresh and more profitable turn. He is so taken up with the traditional orthodoxy, however, that he has no room for a deeper view of the problem. His inference is that, in virtue of His perfect knowledge, God can detect sin where man sees none, though that cruellest touch of all with which the Massoretic text^[21] burdens the reputation of Zophar is not supported by the more accurate text of the Septuagint, and we should read xi. 6 thus:

and thou shouldest know that God [Eloah] gives unto thee

thy deserts^[22] for thine iniquity.

But indeed a special revelation ought not to be necessary for Job. His trouble, proceeding as it does from one no less wise than irresistible (xi. 10, 11), ought to dispel his dream of innocence; as Zophar generalises, when God’s judgments are abroad—

(Even) an empty head wins understanding,

and a wild ass’s colt is new-born as a man (xi. 12).

We may pass over the brilliant description of prosperity consequent on a true repentance with which the chapter concludes. It fell quite unheeded on the ears of Job, who was more stung by the irritating speech of Zophar than by those of Eliphaz and Bildad.

The taunt conveyed indirectly by Zophar in xi. 12 is exposed in all its futility in the reply of Job. Zophar himself, however, he disdains to argue with; there is the same intolerable assumption of superiority in the speeches of all the three, and this he assails with potent sarcasm.

No doubt ye are mankind,

and with you shall wisdom die.

I too have understanding like you,

and who knows not the like of this? (xii. 2, 3.)

In what respect, pray, is he inferior to his friends? Has Eliphaz enjoyed a specially unique revelation? Job has had a still better opportunity of learning spiritual truth in communion of the heart with God (xii. 4). Is Bildad an unwearied collector of the wisdom of antiquity? Job too admits the value of tradition, though he will not receive it unproved (xii. 11, 12). In declamation, too, Job can vie with the arrogant Zophar; Job’s description of the omnipotence of God forms the counterpart of Zophar’s description of His omniscience. But of what account are generalities in face of such a problem as Job’s? The question of questions is not, Has God all power and all wisdom, but, Does He use them for moral ends? The three friends refuse to look facts in the face; the righteous God (we must understand the words, if there be one) will surely chastise them for insincerity and partisanship (xiii. 10).

And now Job refuses to waste any more words on his opponents.

But as for me, to Shaddai would I speak,

I crave to reason with God;

But ye—are plasterers of lies,

patchers of that which is worthless.

Your commonplaces are proverbs of ashes;

your bulwarks are bulwarks of clay (xiii. 3, 4, 12).

He forms a new project, but shudders as he does so, for he feels sure of provoking God thereby to deadly anger. Be it so; a man who has borne till he can bear no longer can even welcome death.

Behold, let him slay me; I can wait [be patient] no longer;^[23]

still I will defend my ways to his face (xiii. 15).

It is the sublimest of all affirmations of the rights of conscience. Job is confident of the success of his plea: ‘This also (guarantees) victory to me, that an impious man cannot come before him’ (xiii. 16) with such a good conscience. Thus virtue has an intrinsic value for Job, superior to that of prosperity or even life: moral victory would more than compensate for physical failure. He indulges the thought that God may personally take part in the argument (xiii. 20-22), and in anticipation of this he sums up the chief points of his intended speech (xiii. 23-xiv. 22), such as, ‘How many^[24] are my sins,’ and ‘Why chase dry stubble?’ (xiii. 23, 25). Sad complaints of the melancholy lot of mankind follow, reminding us again that Job, like Dante in his pilgrimage, is not only an individual but a representative.

Man that is born of woman,

short-lived and full of unrest,

comes up as a flower and fades,

flies as a shadow and continues not.

And upon such an one keepest thou thine eye open,

and me dost thou bring into judgment with thee! (xiv. 1-3.)

Hard enough is the natural fate of man; why make it harder by exceptional severity? An early reader misunderstood this, and thought to strengthen Job’s appeal by a reference (in ver. 4) to one of the commonplaces of Eliphaz (iv. 17-21). But ver. 5 shows that the idea which fills the mind of Job is the shortness of human life.^[25] A tree, when cut down according to the rules still current in Syria,^[26] displays a marvellous vitality; but man is only like the falling leaves of a tree (xiii. 25), or (the figure preferred here) like the canals of Egypt when the dykes and reservoirs are not properly kept up (xiv. 11; comp. Isaiah xix. 5, 6). If it were God’s will to ‘hide’ Job in dark Sheól for a time, and then to recall him to the light, how gladly would he ‘wait’ there, like a soldier on guard (comp. vii. 1), till his ‘relief’ came (xiv. 14)!—a fascinating thought, on which, baseless though he considers it, Job cannot forbear to dwell. And the beauty of the passage is that the happiness of restoration to conscious life consists for Job in the renewal of loving communion between himself and his God (xiv. 15). Alas! the dim light of Sheól darkens the glorious vision and sends Job back into despair.