Читать книгу Job and Solomon: Or, The Wisdom of the Old Testament - T. K. Cheyne - Страница 8

Even now, behold, my Witness is in heaven,

and he that vouches for me is on high.

My friends (have become) my scorners;

mine eye sheds tears unto God—

that he would right a man against God,

and a son of man against his friend (xvi. 20, 21).

It is a turning-point in the mental struggles of Job. He cannot indeed account for his sufferings, but he ceases to regard God as an unfeeling tyrant. He has a germ of faith in God’s goodwill towards him—only a germ, but we are sure, even without the close of the story, that it will grow up and bear the fruit of peace. And now, perhaps, we may qualify the reproach addressed above to Job’s friends. It is true that they have driven Job to irreverent speeches respecting God, but they have also made it possible for him to reach the intuition (which the prophetic Eliphaz has missed) of an affinity between the Divine nature and the human. In an earlier speech (ix. 32-35) he has already expressed a longing for an arbiter between himself and God. That longing is now beginning to be gratified by the certitude that, though the God in the world may be against him, the God in heaven is on his side. Not that even God can undo the past; Job requests no interference with the processes of nature. (Did the writer think that Job lived outside the sphere of the age of miracles?) All that he asks is a pledge from God, his Witness, to see his innocence recognised by God, his Persecutor (xvii. 3). So far we are listening to Job the individual. But immediately after we find the speaker exhibiting himself as the type of a class—the class or representative category of innocent sufferers. Job, then, has a dual aspect, like his God.

And he hath set me for a byword of peoples,

and I am one in whose face men spit.

At this the upright are appalled,

and the innocent stirs himself up against the impious;

but the righteous holds on his way,

and he who has clean hands waxes stronger and stronger

(xvii. 6, 7, 9).

Here it is difficult not to see that the circumstances of the poet’s age are reflected in his words. The whole Jewish nation became ‘a byword of peoples’ during the exile,^[30] and the mutual sympathy of its members was continually taxed. It was a paradox which never lost its strangeness that a ‘Servant of Jehovah’ should be trampled upon by unbelievers, and the persecutor was rewarded by the silent indignation of all good Jews. That this is the right view is shown by the depression into which Job falls in vv. 11-16, in spite of the elevating passage quoted above.

Bildad’s speech, with its barbed allusions to Job’s sad history, had a twofold effect. First of all it raised the anguish of Job to its highest point, and, secondly, it threw the sufferer back on that great intuition, already reached by him, of a Divine Witness to his integrity in the heavens. It is a misfortune which can scarcely be appraised too highly that the text of the famous declaration in xix. 25-27 is so uncertain. ‘The embarrassment of the English translators,’ remarks Prof. Green, of Princeton,^[31] ‘is shown by the unusual number of italic words, and these of no small importance to the meaning, which are heaped together in these verses.’ It is scarcely greater, however, than that of the ancient versions, and we can hardly doubt that the text used by the Septuagint translator was already at least as corrupt as that which has descended to us from the Massoretic critics.^[32] This would the more easily be the case since, as Prof. Green says again, ‘Job is speaking under strong excitement and in the language of lofty poetry; he uses no superfluous words; he simply indicates his meaning in the most concise manner.’ Without now entering on a philological discussion, we have, I think, to choose between these alternatives, one of which involves emending the text, the other does not. Does Job simply repeat what he has said in xvi. 18, 19 (viz. that God will avenge his blood and make reparation, as it were, for his death by testifying to his innocence), without referring to any consequent pleasure of his own, or does he combine with this the delightful thought expressed in xiv. 13-15 of a conscious renewal of communion with God after death?^[33] The context, it seems to me, is best satisfied by the former alternative. Job’s mind is at present occupied with the cruelty, not of God (as when he said, ‘O that thou wouldst appoint me a term and then remember me,’ xiv. 13), but of his friends. His starting-point is, ‘How long will ye (my friends) pain my soul?’ &c. (xix. 2.) We may admit that the best solution of Job’s problem would be ‘the beatific vision’ in some early and not clearly defined form of that deep idea; but if Job can say that he not merely dreams but knows this (‘I know that ... I shall see God,’ xix. 25, 26), the remainder of the colloquies ought surely to pursue a very different course; as a matter of fact, neither Job nor his friends, nor yet Jehovah Himself, refers to this supposed newly-won truth, and the only part of ‘Job’s deepest saying’ which the next speaker fastens upon (xx. 3) is the threatening conclusion (xix. 29). Ewald himself has drawn attention to this, without remarking its adverse bearing on his own interpretation.^[34]

Here, side by side, are Dr. A. B. Davidson’s and Dr. W. H. Green’s translations of the received text of vv. 25-27, and Dr. Bickell’s version of his own emended text.

But I know that my redeemer liveth,

and in after time he shall stand upon the dust^[35]

and after this my skin is destroyed

and without my flesh I shall see God:

whom I shall see for myself,

and mine eyes shall behold, and not another—

my reins consume within me!

And I know my redeemer liveth, and last on earth shall he arise; and after my skin, which has been destroyed thus, and out of my flesh [i.e. when my vital spirit shall be separated from my flesh] shall I see God....

Ich weiss, es lebt mein Retter,

Wird noch auf meinem Staub stehn;

Zuletzt wird Gott mein Zeuge,

Lässt meine Unschuld schauen,

Die ich allein jetzt schaun kann,

Mein Auge und kein andres.

Most critics are now agreed that the immediately preceding words (vv. 23, 24) are not an introduction, as if vv. 25-27 composed the rock inscription. Job first of all wishes what he knows to be impossible, and then announces a far better thing of which he is sure. His wish runs thus:

Would then that they were written down—

my words—in a book, and engraved

with a pen of iron, and with lead

cut out for a witness in the rock.^[36]

But whatever view we take of the prospect which gladdened the mind of Job, his remaining speeches contain no further reference to it. Henceforth his thoughts appear to dwell less on his own condition, and more on the general question of God’s moral government, and even when the former is spoken of it is without the old bitterness. In his next speech, stirred up by the gross violence of Zophar, Job for the first time meets the assertions of the three friends in this cycle of argument, viz. that the wicked, at any rate, always get their deserts, and, according to Zophar, suddenly and overwhelmingly. He meets them by a direct negative, though in doing so he is as much perturbed as when he proclaimed his own innocence to God’s face. He is familiar now with the thought that the righteous are not always recompensed, but it fills him with horror to think that the Governor of the world even leaves the wicked in undeserved prosperity, as if, in the language of Eliphaz, He could not ‘judge through the thick clouds’ (xxii. 16).

Why do the wicked live on,

become old, yea, are mighty in power?

Their houses are safe, without fear,

neither is Eloah’s rod upon them.

They wear away their days in happiness,

and go down to Sheól in a moment (xxi. 7, 9, 13).