THE BOOK OF JOB.
BY
ROBERT A. WATSON, D.D.,
AUTHOR OF "JUDGES AND RUTH," "GOSPELS OF YESTERDAY," ETC.
NEW YORK
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
LAFAYETTE PLACE
1900
THE AUTHOR AND HIS WORK.
The Book of Job is the first great poem of the
soul in its mundane conflict, facing the inexorable
of sorrow, change, pain, and death, and feeling within
itself at one and the same time weakness and energy,
the hero and the serf, brilliant hopes, terrible fears.
With entire veracity and amazing force this book
represents the never-ending drama renewed in every
generation and every genuine life. It breaks upon us
out of the old world and dim muffled centuries with
all the vigour of the modern soul and that religious
impetuosity which none but Hebrews seem fully to
have known. Looking for precursors of Job we find a
seeming spiritual burden and intensity in the Accadian
psalms, their confessions and prayers; but if they
prepared the way for Hebrew psalmists and for the
author of Job, it was not by awaking the cardinal
thoughts that make this book what it is, nor by
supplying an example of the dramatic order, the fine
sincerity and abounding art we find here welling up
out of the desert. The Accadian psalms are fragments
of a polytheistic and ceremonial world; they spring
from the soil which Abraham abandoned that he might
found a race of strong men and strike out a new clear
way of life. Exhibiting the fear, superstition, and
ignorance of our race, they fall away from comparison
But there is another view of the book. It may well
be the despair of those who desire above all things to
separate letters from theology. The surpassing genius
of the writer is seen not in his fine calm of assurance
and self-possession, nor in the deft gathering and arranging
of beautiful images, but in his sense of elemental
realities and the daring with which he launches on a
painful conflict. He is convinced of Divine sovereignty,
and yet has to seek room for faith in a world shadowed
and confused. He is a prophet in quest of an oracle,
a poet, a maker, striving to find where and how the
man for whom he is concerned shall sustain himself.
And yet, with this paradox wrought into its very
substance, his work is richly fashioned, a type of the
highest literature, drawing upon every region natural
and supernatural, descending into the depths of human
A phenomenon in Hebrew thought and faith—to
what age does it belong? No record or reminiscence
of the author is left from which the least hint of time
may be gathered. He, who by his marvellous poem
struck a chord of thought deep and powerful enough to
vibrate still and stir the modern heart, is uncelebrated,
nameless. A traveller, a master of his country's
language, and versed no less in foreign learning, foremost
of the men of his day whensoever it was, he
passed away as a shadow, though he left an imperishable
monument. "Like a star of the first magnitude," says
Dr. Samuel Davidson, "the brilliant genius of the
writer of Job attracts the admiration of men as it
points to the Almighty Ruler chastening yet loving
His people. Of one whose sublime conceptions,
(mounting the height where Jehovah is enthroned in
light, inaccessible to mortal eye), lift him far above his
time and people—who climbs the ladder of the Eternal,
as if to open heaven—of this giant philosopher and
poet we long to know something, his habitation, name,
appearance. The very spot where his ashes rest we
desire to gaze upon. But in vain." Strange, do we
say? And yet how much of her great poet, Shakespeare,
does England know? It is not seldom the fate
of those whose genius lifts them highest to be unrecognised
by their own time. As English history tells
us more of Leicester than of Shakespeare, so Hebrew
history records by preference the deeds of its great
King Solomon. A greater than Solomon was in Israel,
and history knows him not. No prophet who followed
him and wrought sentences of his poem into lamentation
or oracle, no chronicler of the exile or the return,
And yet the man lives in his poem. We begin to
hope that some indication of the period and circumstances
in which he wrote may be found when we
realise that here and there beneath the heat and
eloquence of his words may be heard those undertones
of personal desire and trust which once were the
solemn music of a life. His own, not his hero's, are
the philosophy of the book, the earnest search for God,
the sublime despondency, the bitter anguish, and the
prophetic cry that breaks through the darkness. We
can see that it is vain to go back to Mosaic or pre-Mosaic
times for life and thought and words like his;
at whatever time Job lived, the poet-biographer deals
with the perplexities of a more anxious world. In the
imaginative light with which he invests the past no
distinct landmarks of time are to be seen. The treatment
is large, general, as if the burden of his subject
carried the writer not only into the great spaces of
humanity, but into a region where the temporal faded
into insignificance as compared with the spiritual. And
yet, as through openings in a forest, we have glimpses
here and there, vaguely and momentarily showing what
age it was the author knew. The picture is mainly of
timeless patriarchal life; but, in the foreground or the
background, objects and events are sketched that help
our inquiry. "His troops come together and cast up
their way against me." "From out of the populous
city men groan, and the soul of the wounded crieth
out." "He looseth the bond of kings, and bindeth
The scheme of the book helps to fix the time of the
composition. A drama so elaborate could not have
been produced until literature had become an art.
Such complexity of structure as we find in
Again, a note of time has been found by comparing
the contents of Job with Proverbs, Isaiah, Ecclesiastes,
and other books. Proverbs, chaps. iii. and viii., for example,
may be contrasted with chap. xxviii. of the Book
of Job. Placing them together we can hardly escape
It is not within our scope to consider here all the
questions raised by parallel passages and discuss the
priority and originality in each case. Some resemblances
in Isaiah may, however, be briefly noticed,
because we seem on the whole to be led to the conclusion
that the Book of Job was written between the
periods of the first and second series of Isaian oracles.
They are such as these. In
It has now become almost clear that the book belongs either to the period (favoured by Ewald, Renan, and others) immediately following the captivity of the northern tribes, or to the time of the captivity of Judah (fixed upon by Dr. A. B. Davidson, Professor Cheyne, and others). We must still, however, seek further light by glancing at the main problem of the book, which is to reconcile the justice of Divine providence with the sufferings of the good, so that man may believe in God even in sorest affliction. We must also consider the hint of time to be found in the importance attached to personality, the feelings and destiny of the individual and his claim on God.
Taking first the problem,—while it is stated in some
of the psalms and, indeed, is sure to have occurred to
The importance attached to personality and the
destiny of the individual is on two sides a guide to the
date of the book. In some of the psalms, undoubtedly
belonging to an earlier period, the personal cry is
heard. No longer content to be part and parcel of the
class or nation, the soul in these psalms asserts its
Now, it has been alleged that through the Book of
Job there runs a constant but covert reference to the
troubles of the Jewish Church in the Captivity, and
especially that Job himself represents the suffering
flock of God. It is not proposed to give up entirely
the individual problem, but along with that, superseding
that, the main question of the poem is held to be why
Judah should suffer so keenly and lie on the mezbele or
ash-heap of exile. With all respect to those who hold
this theory one must say that it has no substantial
support; and, on the other hand, it seems incredible
that a member of the Southern Kingdom (if the writer
belonged to it), expending so much care and genius on
the problem of his people's defeat and misery, should
have passed beyond his own kin for a hero, should
have set aside almost entirely the distinctive name
Jehovah, should have forgotten the ruined temple and
the desolate city to which every Jew looked back across
the desert with brimming eyes, should have let himself
appear, even while he sought to reassure his compatriots
in their faith, as one who set no store by their cherished
traditions, their great names, their religious institutions,
but as one whose faith was purely natural like that of
Edom. Among the good and true men who, at the
taking of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, were left in
penury, childless and desolate, a poet of Judah would
have found a Jewish hero. To his drama what embellishment
and pathos could have been added by genius like
our author's, if he had gone back on the terrible siege
and painted the Babylonian victors in their cruelty and
pride, the misery of the exiles in the land of idolatry.
Against the identification of Job with the servant of
Jehovah in
The distinction of the Book of Job we have seen to
be that it offers a new beginning in theology. And it
does so not only because it shifts faith in the Divine
justice to a fresh basis, but also because it ventures
on a universalism for which indeed the Proverbs had
made way, which however stood in sharp contrast to
the narrowness of the old state religion. Already it
was admitted that others than Hebrews might love the
Yes: the creed of Hebraism had ceased to guide
thought and lead the soul to strength. The Hokhma
literature of Proverbs, which had become fashionable in
Solomon's time, possessed no dogmatic vigour, fell often
to the level of moral platitude, as the same kind of literature
does with us, and had little help for the soul. The
state religion, on the other hand, both in the Northern
and Southern Kingdoms, was ritualistic, again like ours,
clung to the old tribal notion, and busied itself about
the outward more than the inward, the sacrifices rather
than the heart, as Amos and Isaiah clearly indicate.
Hokhma of various kinds, plus energetic ritualism, was
falling into practical uselessness. Those who held the
religion as a venerable inheritance and national talisman
did not base their action and hope on it out in the
world. They were beginning to say, "Who knoweth
what is good for man in this life—all the days of his
vain life which he spendeth as a shadow? For who
The author of the Book of Job found no school possessed of the secret of strength. But he sought to God, and inspiration came to him. He found himself in the desert like Elijah, like others long afterwards, John the Baptist, and especially Saul of Tarsus, whose words we remember, "Neither went I up to Jerusalem, ... but I went into Arabia." There he met with a religion not confined by rigid ceremony as that of the southern tribes, not idolatrous like that of the north, a religion elementary indeed, but capable of development. And he became its prophet. He would take the wide world into council. He would hear Teman and Shuach and Naamah; he would also hear the voice from the whirlwind, and the swelling sea, and the troubled nations, and the eager soul. It was a daring dash beyond the ramparts. Orthodoxy might stand aghast within its fortress. He might appear a renegade in seeking tidings of God from the heathen, as one might now who went from a Christian land to learn from the Brahman and the Buddhist. But he would go nevertheless; and it was his wisdom. He opened his mind to the sight of fact, and reported what he found, so that theology might be corrected and made again a handmaid of faith. He is one of those Scripture writers who vindicate the universality of the Bible, who show it to be a unique foundation, and forbid the theory of a closed record or dried-up spring, which is the error of Bibliolatry. He is a man of his age and of the world, yet in fellowship with the Eternal Mind.
An exile, let us suppose, of the Northern Kingdom,
escaping with his life from the sword of the Assyrian,
THE OPENING SCENE ON EARTH.
Chap. i. 1-5.
A tradition which places the home of Job in the Hauran, the land of Bashan of Scripture, some score of miles from the Sea of Galilee, has been accepted by Delitzsch. A monastery, there, appears to have been regarded from early Christian times as authentically connected with the name of Job. But the tradition has little value in itself, and the locality scarcely agrees in a single particular with the various indications found in the course of the book. The Hauran does not belong to the land of Uz. It was included in the territory of Israel. Nor can it by any stretch of imagination be supposed to lie in the way of wandering bands of Sabeans, whose home was in the centre of Arabia.
But the conditions are met—one has no hesitation
in saying, fully met—in a region hitherto unidentified
with the dwelling-place of Job, the valley or oasis of
Jauf (Palgrave, Djowf), lying in the North Arabian desert
about two hundred miles almost due east from the
modern Maan and the ruins of Petra. Various interesting
particulars regarding this valley and its inhabitants
are given by Mr. C. M. Doughty in his "Travels
in Arabia Deserta." But the best description is that
by Mr. Palgrave, who, under the guidance of Bedawin,
visited the district in 1862. Travelling from Maan by
way of the Wadi Sirhan, after a difficult and dangerous
journey of thirteen days, their track in the last stage
following "endless windings among low hills and stony
ledges," brought them to greener slopes and traces of
"A broad, deep valley, descending ledge after ledge
till its innermost depths are hidden from sight amid
far-reaching shelves of reddish rock, below everywhere
studded with tufts of palm groves and clustering fruit
trees in dark green patches, down to the farthest end
of its windings; a large brown mass of irregular
masonry crowning a central hill; beyond, a tall and
solitary tower overlooking the opposite bank of the
hollow, and farther down, small round turrets and
flat house-roofs, half buried amid the garden foliage,
the whole plunged in a perpendicular flood of light
and heat; such was the first aspect of the Djowf as
we now approached it from the west." The principal
town bears the name of the district, and is composed
of eight villages, once distinct, which have in process
of time coalesced into one. The principal quarter
includes the castle, and numbers about four hundred
houses. "The province is a large oval depression, of
sixty or seventy miles long by ten or twelve broad,
lying between the northern desert that separates it
from Syria and Euphrates, and the southern Nefood,
or sandy waste." Its fertility is great and is aided
by irrigation, so that the dates and other fruits produced
in the Jauf are famed throughout Arabia. The
people "occupy a half-way position between Bedouins
and the inhabitants of the cultivated districts." Their
number is reckoned at about forty thousand, and there
can be no question that the valley has been a seat of
population from remote antiquity. To the other points
The question whether such a man as Job ever lived has been variously answered, one Hebrew rabbi, for example, affirming that he was a mere parable. But Ezekiel names him along with Noah and Daniel, James in his epistle says, "Ye have heard of the patience of Job"; and the opening words of this book, "There was a man in the land of Uz," are distinctly historical. To know, therefore, that a region in the Arabian desert corresponds so closely with the scene of Job's life is to be reassured that a true history forms the basis of the poem. The tradition with which the author began his work probably supplied the name and dwelling-place of Job, his wealth, piety, and afflictions, including the visit of his friends, and his restoration after sore trial from the very gate of despair to faith and prosperity. The rest comes from the genius of the author of the drama. This is a work of imagination based on fact. And we do not proceed far till we find, first ideal touches, then bold flights into a region never opened to the gaze of mortal eye.
Job is described in the third verse as one of the Children of the East or Bene-Kedem, a vague expression denoting the settled inhabitants of the North Arabian desert, in contrast to the wandering Bedawin and the Sabeans of the South. In Genesis and Judges they are mentioned along with the Amalekites, to whom they were akin. But the name as used by the Hebrews probably covered the inhabitants of a large district very little known. Of the Bene-Kedem Job is described as the greatest. His riches meant power, and in the course of the frequent alternations of life in those regions one who had enjoyed unbroken prosperity for many years would be regarded with veneration not only for his wealth, but for what it signified—the constant favour of Heaven. He had his settlement near the city, and was the acknowledged emeer of the valley, taking his place at the gate as chief judge. How great a chief one might become who added to his flocks and herds year by year and managed his affairs with prudence we learn from the history of Abraham; and to the present day, where the patriarchal mode of living and customs continue, as among the Kurds of the Persian highland, examples of wealth in sheep and oxen, camels and asses almost approaching that of Job are sometimes to be met with. The numbers—seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred she-asses—are probably intended simply to represent his greatness. Yet they are not beyond the range of possibility.
The family of Job—his wife, seven sons, and three
daughters—are about him when the story begins,
sharing his prosperity. In perfect friendliness and
idyllic joy the brothers and sisters spend their lives,
the shield of their father's care and religion defending
For the religion of Job, sincere and deep, disclosing
itself in these offerings to the Most High, is, above his
fatherly affection and sympathy, the distinction with
which the poet shows him invested. He is a fearer of
the One Living and True God, the Supremely Holy.
In the course of the drama the speeches of Job often
go back on his faithfulness to the Most High; and we
can see that he served his fellow-men justly and generously
because he believed in a Just and Generous God.
Around him were worshippers of the sun and moon,
whose adoration he had been invited to share. But he
never joined in it, even by kissing his hand when the
In the region of Idumæa the faith of the Most High
was held in remarkable purity by learned men, who
formed a religious caste or school of wide reputation;
and Teman, the home of Eliphaz, appears to have been
the centre of the cultus. "Is wisdom no more in
Teman?" cries Jeremiah. "Is counsel perished from
For a Hebrew like the author of Job to lay aside for
a time the thought of his country's traditions, the law
and the prophets, the covenant of Sinai, the sanctuary,
and the altar of witness, and return in writing his
poem to the primitive faith which his forefathers
grasped when they renounced the idolatry of Chaldæa
was after all no grave abandonment of privilege. The
beliefs of Teman, sincerely held, were better than the
degenerate religion of Israel against which Amos testified.
Had not that prophet even pointed the way
when he cried in Jehovah's name—"Seek not Bethel,
nor enter into Gilgal, and pass not to Beersheba....
Seek Him that maketh the Pleiades and Orion, and
The book which returned thus to the religion of
Teman found an honourable place in the roll of sacred
Scriptures. Although the canon was fixed by Hebrews
at a time when the narrowness of the post-exilic age
drew toward Pharisaism, and the law and the temple
were regarded with veneration far greater than in the
time of Solomon, room was made for this book of broad
human sympathy and free faith. It is a mark at once
of the wisdom of the earlier rabbis and their judgment
regarding the essentials of religion. To Israel, as St.
Paul afterwards said, belonged "the adoption, and the
glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law,
and the service of God, and the promises." But he too
shows the same disposition as the author of our poem
to return on the primitive and fundamental—the justification
of Abraham by his faith, the promise made to
him, and the covenant that extended to his family:
"They which be of faith, the same are sons of
Abraham"; "They which be of faith are blessed with
the faithful Abraham"; "Not through the law was the
From the religion of Job we pass to consider his
character described in the words, "That man was perfect
and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed
evil." The use of four strong expressions, cumulatively
forming a picture of the highest possible worth and
piety, must be held to point to an ideal life. The
epithet perfect is applied to Noah, and once and again
in the Psalms to the disposition of the good. Generally,
however, it refers rather to the scheme or plan by which
conduct is ordered than to the fulfilment in actual life;
and a suggestive parallel may be found in the "perfection"
or "entire sanctification" of modern dogma.
The word means complete, built up all round so that no
gaps are to be seen in the character. We are asked to
think of Job as a man whose uprightness, goodness,
and fidelity towards man were unimpeachable, who
was also towards God reverent, obedient, grateful,
wearing his religion as a white garment of unsullied
virtue. Then is it meant that he had no infirmity of
will or soul, that in him for once humanity stood
absolutely free from defect? Scarcely. The perfect
man in this sense, with all moral excellences and
The years of Job have passed hitherto in unbroken prosperity. He has long enjoyed the bounty of providence, his children about him, his increasing flocks of sheep and camels, oxen and asses feeding in abundant pastures. The stroke of bereavement has not fallen since his father and mother died in ripe old age. The dreadful simoom has spared his flocks, the wandering Bedawin have passed them by. An honoured chief, he rules in wisdom and righteousness, ever mindful of the Divine hand by which he is blessed, earning for himself the trust of the poor and the gratitude of the afflicted. Enjoying unbounded respect in his own country, he is known beyond the desert to a circle of friends who admire him as a man and honour him as a servant of God. His steps are washed with butter, and the rock pours him out rivers of oil. The lamp of God shines upon his head, and by His light he walks through darkness. His root is spread out to the waters, and the dew lies all night upon his branch.
Now let us judge this life from a point of view which
When did the man Job live? Far back in the patriarchal age, or but a short time before the author of the book came upon his story and made it immortal? We may incline to the later date, but it is of no importance. For us the interest of the book is not antiquarian but humane, the relation of pain and affliction to the character of man, the righteous government of God. The life and experiences of Job are idealised so that the question may be clearly understood; and the writer makes not the slightest attempt to give his book the colour of remote antiquity.
But we cannot fail to be struck from the outset with
the genius shown in the choice of a life set in the
Arabian desert. For breadth of treatment, for picturesque
and poetic effect, for the development of a drama
that was to exhibit the individual soul in its need of
The modern analogue in literature is the philosophic novel. But Job is far more intense, more operatic, as Ewald says, and the elements are even simpler. Isolation is secured. Life is bared to its elements. The personality is entangled in disaster with the least possible machinery or incident. The dramatising altogether is singularly abstract. And thus we are enabled to see, as it were, the very thought of the author, lonely, resolute, appealing, under the widespread Arabian sky and the Divine infinitude.
THE OPENING SCENE IN HEAVEN.
Chap. i. 6-12.
In contrast to the Almighty we have the figure of
the Adversary, or Satan, depicted with sufficient clearness,
notably coherent, representing a phase of being
not imaginary but actual. He is not, as the Satan of
later times came to be, the head of a kingdom peopled
with evil spirits, a nether world separated from the abode
of the heavenly angels by a broad, impassable gulf.
He has no distinctive hideousness, nor is he painted as
in any sense independent, although the evil bent of his
nature is made plain, and he ventures to dispute the
judgment of the Most High. This conception of the
Adversary need not be set in opposition to those which
afterwards appear in Scripture as if truth must lie
entirely there or here. But we cannot help contrasting
the Satan of the Book of Job with the grotesque,
gigantic, awful, or despicable fallen angels of the world's
poetry. Not that the mark of genius is wanting in
these; but they reflect the powers of this world and
the accompaniments of malignant human despotism.
The author of Job, on the contrary, moved little by
earthly state and grandeur, whether good or evil, solely
occupied with the Divine sovereignty, never dreams
of one who could maintain the slightest shadow of
Dante in his Inferno attempts the portraiture of the monarch of hell:—
The enormous size of this figure is matched by its hideousness; the misery of the arch-fiend, for all its horror, is grotesque:
Passing to Milton, we find sublimity in his pictures of the fallen legions, and it culminates in the vision of their king:—
The picture is magnificent. It has, however, little
justification from Scripture. Even in the Book of
This splendid regal arch-fiend has no kinship with
the Satan of the Book of Job; and, on the other hand,
the Mephistopheles of the "Faust," although bearing
an outward resemblance to him, is, for a quite different
reason, essentially unlike. Obviously Goethe's picture
of a cynical devil gaily perverting and damning a
human mind is based on the Book of Job. The
"Prologue in Heaven," in which he first appears, is
an imitation of the passage before us. But while the
vulgarity and insolence of Mephistopheles are in contrast
to the demeanour of the Adversary in presence
of Jehovah, the real distinction lies in the kind of
power ascribed to the one and the other. Mephistopheles
is a cunning tempter. He receives permission
to mislead if he can, and not only places his victim in
circumstances fitted to ruin his virtue, but plies him
with arguments intended to prove that evil is good,
that to be pure is to be a fool. No such power of evil
suggestion is given to the Adversary of Job. His
action extends only to the outward events by which
The scene opens with a gathering of the "sons of
the Elohim" in presence of their King. Professor
Cheyne thinks that these are "supernatural Titanic
beings who had once been at strife with Jehovah, but
who now at stated times paid him their enforced
homage"; and this he illustrates by reference to
Chap. xxi. 22 and Chap. xxv. 2. But the question in
the one passage, "Shall any teach God knowledge?
seeing He judgeth those that are high" רמִימ, the heights
of heaven, highnesses], and the affirmation in the other,
"He maketh peace in His high places," can scarcely be
held to prove the supposition. The ordinary view that
they are heavenly powers or angels, willing servants
not unwilling vassals of Jehovah, is probably correct.
They have come together at an appointed time to give
account of their doings and to receive commands, and
among them the Satan or Adversary presents himself,
one distinguished from all the rest by the name he
bears and the character and function it implies. There
Evidently we have here a personification of the
doubting, misbelieving, misreading spirit which, in our
day, we limit to men and call pessimism. Now Koheleth
gives so finished an expression to this temper that
we can hardly be wrong in going back some distance of
time for its growth; and the state of Israel before the
northern captivity was a soil in which every kind of
bitter seed might spring up. The author of Job may
well have drawn from more than one cynic of his day
when he set his mocking figure in the blaze of the
celestial court. Satan is the pessimist. He exists, so
far as his intent goes, to find cause against man, and
therefore, in effect, against God, as man's Creator. A
shrewd thinker is this Adversary, but narrowed to one
line and that singularly like some modern criticism of
religion, the resemblance holding in this that neither
shows any feeling of responsibility. The Satan sneers
away faith and virtue; the modern countenances both,
So of pessimistic research and philosophy now.
We have writers who follow humanity in all its base
movements and know nothing of its highest. The
research of Schopenhauer and even the psychology of
certain modern novelists are mischievous, depraving,
for this reason, if no other, that they evaporate
the ideal. They promote generally that diseased
egotism to which judgment and aspiration are alike
unknown. Yet this spirit too serves where it has no
dream of serving. It provokes a healthy opposition,
shows a hell from which men recoil, and creates so
deadly ennui that the least gleam of faith becomes
acceptable, and even Theosophy, because it speaks of
life, secures the craving mind. Moreover, the pessimist
keeps the church a little humble, somewhat awake to
the error that may underlie its own glory and the meanness
that mingles too often with its piety. A result of
the freedom of the human mind to question and deny,
pessimism has its place in the scheme of things.
Hostile and often railing, it is detestable enough, but
The challenge which begins the action of the drama—by whom is it thrown out? By the Almighty. God sets before the Satan a good life: "Hast thou considered My servant Job? that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil." The source of the whole movement, then, is a defiance of unbelief by the Divine Friend of men and Lord of all. There is such a thing as human virtue, and it is the glory of God to be served by it, to have His power and divinity reflected in man's spiritual vigour and holiness.
Why does the Almighty throw out the challenge and not wait for Satan's charge? Simply because the trial of virtue must begin with God. This is the first step in a series of providential dealings fraught with the most important results, and there is singular wisdom in attributing it to God. Divine grace is to be seen thrusting back the chaotic falsehoods that darken the world of thought. They exist; they are known to Him who rules; and He does not leave humanity to contend with them unaided. In their keenest trials the faithful are supported by His hand, assured of victory while they fight His battles. Ignorant pride, like that of the Adversary, is not slow to enter into debate even with the All-wise. Satan has the question ready which implies a lie, for his is the voice of that scepticism which knows no reverence. But the entire action of the book is in the line of establishing faith and hope. The Adversary is challenged to do his worst; and man, as God's champion, will have to do his best,—the world and angels looking on.
And this thought of a Divine purpose to confound
To the question of the Almighty, Satan replies by
another: "Doth Job fear God for nought?" With a
certain air of fairness he points to the extraordinary
felicity enjoyed by the man. "Hast Thou not made an
hedge about him, and about his house, and about all
that he hath, on every side? Thou hast blessed the
work of his hands, and his substance is increased in
the land." It is a thought naturally arising in the
Now, the singular thing here is the fact that the
Adversary's accusation turns on Job's enjoyment of that
outward felicity which the Hebrews were constantly
desiring and hoping for as a reward of obedience to
God. The writer comes thus at once to show the peril
of the belief which had corrupted the popular religion
Striking is the thought that, while the prophets Amos
and Hosea were fiercely or plaintively assailing the
luxury of Israel and the lives of the nobles, among
those very men who excited their holy wrath may have
been the author of the Book of Job. Dr. Robertson
Smith has shown that from the "gala days" of
Jeroboam II. to the fall of Samaria there were only
some thirty years. One who wrote after the Captivity
as an old man may therefore have been in the flush
of youth when Amos prophesied, may have been one
of the rich Israelites who lay upon beds of ivory and
stretched themselves upon their couches, and ate lambs
out of the flock and calves out of the midst of the stall,
for whose gain the peasant and the slave were oppressed
The question, then, "Doth Job fear God for nought?"
sending a flash of penetrating light back on Israel's
history, and especially on the glowing pictures of prosperity
in Solomon's time, compelling all to look to the
foundation and motives of their faith, marks a most
If we look further, we find that the very error which
has so long impoverished religion prevails in philanthropy
Much may be justly said in condemnation of the
jealous, critical spirit of the Adversary. Yet it remains
true that his criticism expresses what would be a fair
charge against men who passed this stage of existence
without full trial. And the Almighty is represented as
confirming this when He puts Job into the hands of
Satan. He has challenged the Adversary, opening the
question of man's fidelity and sincerity. He knows
what will result. It is not the will of some eternal
Satan that is the motive, but the will of God. The
The Adversary makes his proposal: "Put forth now Thine hand, and touch all that he hath, and he will bid Thee farewell." He does not propose to make use of sensual temptation. The only method of trial he ventures to suggest is deprivation of the prosperity for which he believes Job has served God. He takes on him to indicate what the Almighty may do, acknowledging that the Divine power, and not his, must bring into Job's life those losses and troubles that are to test his faith.
After all some may ask, Is not Satan endeavouring
to tempt the Almighty? And if it were true that the
prosperous condition of Job, or any man, implies God's
entire satisfaction with his faith and dutifulness and
with his character as a man, if, further, it must be taken
At this point, however, we must pause. The question that has just arisen can only be answered after a survey of human life in its relation to God, and especially after an examination of the meaning of the term evil as applied to our experiences. We have certain clear principles to begin with: that "God cannot be tempted with evil, and He Himself tempteth no man"; that all God does must show not less beneficence, not less love, but more as the days go by. These principles will have to be vindicated when we proceed to consider the losses, what may be called the disasters that follow each other in quick succession and threaten to crush the life they try.
Meanwhile, casting a glance at those happy dwellings
in the land of Uz, we see all going on as before, no
mind darkened by the shadow that is gathering, or in
the least aware of the controversy in heaven so full
of moment to the family circle. The pathetic ignorance,
THE SHADOW OF GOD'S HAND.
Chap. i. 13-22.
The writer is dealing with a story of patriarchal
life, and himself is touched with the Semitic way of
thinking. A certain disregard of the subordinate human
characters must not be reckoned strange. His thoughts,
far-reaching as they are, run in a channel very different
from ours. The world of his book is that of family
and clan ideas. The author saw more than any man
of his time; but he could not see all that engages
modern speculation. Besides, the glory of God is the
dominant idea of the poem; not men's right to joy, or
We have entirely refused the supposition that the Almighty forgot His righteousness and grace in putting the wealth and happiness of Job into the hands of Satan. The trials we now see falling one after the other are not sent because the Adversary has suggested them, but because it is right and wise, for the glory of God and for the perfecting of faith, that Job should suffer them. What is God's doing is not in this case nor in any case evil. He cannot wrong His servant that glory may come to Himself.
And just here arises a problem which enters into all religious thought, the wrong solution of which depraves many a philosophy, while the right understanding of it sheds a flood of light on our life in this world. A thousand tongues, Christian, non-Christian, and neo-Christian, affirm that life is for enjoyment. What gives enjoyment is declared to be good, what gives most enjoyment is reckoned best, and all that makes for pain and suffering is held to be evil. It is allowed that pain endured now may bring pleasure hereafter, and that for the sake of future gain a little discomfort may be chosen. But it is evil nevertheless. One doing his best for men would be expected to give them happiness at once and, throughout life, as much of it as possible. If he inflicted pain in order to enhance pleasure by and by, he would have to do so within the strictest limits. Whatever reduces the strength of the body, the capacity of the body for enjoyment and the delight of the mind accompanying the body's vigour, is declared bad, and to do anything which has this effect is to do evil or wrong. Such is the ethic of the philosophy finally and powerfully stated by Mr. Spencer. It has penetrated as widely as he could wish; it underlies volumes of Christian sermons and semi-Christian schemes. If it be true, then the Almighty of the Book of Job, bringing affliction, sorrow, and pain upon His servant, is a cruel enemy of man, to be hated, not revered. This matter needs to be considered at some length.
The notion that pain is evil, that he who suffers
is placed at moral disadvantage, appears very plainly
in the old belief that those conditions and surroundings
of our life which minister to enjoyment are the proofs
of the goodness of God on which reliance must be
The author of the Book of Job does not enter into
the problem of pain and affliction with the same
deliberate attempt to exhaust the subject as Paley has
made; but he has the problem before him. And in
considering the trial of Job as an example of the suffering
Now, as to enjoyment, we have the capacity for it, and it flows to us from many external objects as well as from the operation of our own minds and the putting forth of energy. It is in the scheme of things ordained by God that His creatures shall enjoy. On the other hand, trouble, sorrow, loss, bodily and mental pain, are also in the scheme of things. They are provided for in numberless ways—in the play of natural forces causing injuries, dangers from which we cannot escape; in the limitations of our power; in the antagonisms and disappointments of existence; in disease and death. They are provided for by the very laws that bring pleasure, made inevitable under the same Divine ordinance. Some say it detracts from the goodness of God to admit that as He appoints means of enjoyment so He also provides for pain and sorrow and makes these inseparable from life. And this opinion runs into the extreme dogmatic assertion that "good," by which we are to understand happiness,
Many hold this to be necessary to the vindication of God's goodness. But the source of the whole confusion lies here, that we prejudge the question by calling pain evil. The light-giving truth for modern perplexity is that pain and loss are not evil, are in no sense evil.
Because we desire happiness and dislike pain, we
must not conclude that pain is bad and that, when
any one suffers, it is because he or another has done
wrong. There is the mistake that vitiates theological
thought, making men run to the extreme either of
denying God altogether because there is suffering in
the world, or of framing a rose-water eschatology.
Pain is one thing, moral evil is quite another thing.
He who suffers is not necessarily a wrong-doer; and
when, through the laws of nature, God inflicts pain,
there is no evil nor anything approaching wrong. In
Scripture, indeed, pain and evil are apparently identified.
"Shall we receive good at the hands of God, and
shall we not receive evil?" "Is there evil in the city,
and the Lord hath not done it?" "Thus saith the
Lord, Behold I will bring upon Judah, and upon all
the inhabitants of Jerusalem, all the evil that I have
pronounced against them." In these and many other
passages the very thing seems to be meant which has
just been denied, for evil and suffering appear to be
made identical. But human language is not a perfect
instrument of thought, any more than thought is a
perfect channel of truth. One word has to do duty in
different senses. Moral evil, wrongness, on the one
hand; bodily pain, the misery of loss and defeat, on
the other hand—both are represented by one Hebrew
word [רַע—root meaning, displeased]. In the following
passages, where moral evil is clearly meant, it occurs
just as in those previously quoted: "Wash you, make
It is not difficult, of course, to see how the idea of
pain and the idea of moral evil have been linked together.
It is by the thought that suffering is punishment
for evil done; and that the suffering is therefore
itself evil. Pain was simply penalty inflicted by an
offended heavenly power. The evil of a man's doings
came back to him, made itself felt in his suffering.
This was the explanation of all that was unpleasant,
disastrous and vexing in the lot of man. He would
enjoy always, it was conceived, if wrong-doing or
failure in duty to the higher powers did not kindle
divine anger against him. True, the wrong-doing
Here it was the author of Job found the thought of
his people. With this he had to harmonise the other
beliefs—peculiarly theirs—that the lovingkindness of
the Lord is over all His works, that God who is
supremely good cannot inflict moral injury on any of
These questions look difficult enough. Let us attempt to answer them.
Pleasure and pain, happiness and suffering, are
elements of creaturely experience appointed by God.
The right use of them makes life, the wrong use of
them mars it. They are ordained, all of them in
equal degree, to a good end; for all that God does is
done in perfect love as well as in perfect justice. It is
no more wonderful that a good man should suffer than
that a bad man should suffer; for the good man, the
man who believes in God and therefore in goodness,
making a right use of suffering, will gain by it in the
true sense; he will reach a deeper and nobler life. It
is no more wonderful that a bad man, one who disbelieves
in God and therefore in goodness, should be
happy than that a good man should be happy, the
happiness being God's appointed means for both to
reach a higher life. The main element of this higher
life is vigour, but not of the body. The Divine purpose
is spiritual evolution. That gratification of the sensuous
And if it is asked how from this point of view we
are to find the punishment of sin, the answer is that
happiness as well as suffering is punishment to him
whose sin and the unbelief that accompanies it pervert
his view of truth, and blind him to the spiritual life
and the will of God. The pleasures of a wrong-doer
who persistently denies obligation to Divine authority
and refuses obedience to the Divine law are no gain,
but loss. They dissipate and attenuate his life. His
sensuous or sensual enjoyment, his delight in selfish
triumph and gratified ambition are real, give at the
On the other hand, the pains and disasters which
fall to the lot of evil men, intended for their correction,
if in perversity or in blindness they are misunderstood,
again become punishment; for they, too, dissipate and
attenuate life. The real good of existence slips away
while the mind is intent on the mere pain or vexation
and how it is to be got rid of. In Job we find a
purpose to reconcile affliction with the just government
of God. The troubles into which the believing man is
brought urge him to think more deeply than he has
ever thought, become the means of that intellectual and
moral education which lies in discovery of the will and
character of God. They also bring him by this way
into deeper humility, a fine tenderness of spiritual
nature, a most needful kinship with his fellows. See
then the use of suffering. The impenitent, unbelieving
man has no such gains. He is absorbed in the distressing
experience, and that absorption narrows and
debases the activity of the soul. The treatment of
Does it require any adaptation or under-reading of the language of Scripture to prove the harmony of its teaching with the view just given of happiness and suffering as related to punishment? Throughout the greater part of the Old Testament the doctrine of suffering is that old doctrine which the author of Job found perplexing. Not infrequently in the New Testament there is a certain formal return to it; for even under the light of revelation the meaning of Divine providence is learnt slowly. But the emphasis rests on life rather than happiness, and on death rather than suffering in the gospels; and the whole teaching of Christ, pointed to the truth. This world and our discipline here, the trials of men, the doctrine of the cross, the fellowship of the sufferings of Christ, are not fitted to introduce us into a state of existence in which mere enjoyment, the gratification of personal tastes and desires, shall be the main experience. They are fitted to educate the spiritual nature for life, fulness of life. Immortality becomes credible when it is seen as progress in vigour, progress towards that profound compassion, that fidelity, that unquenchable devotion to the glory of God the Father which marked the life of the Divine Son in this world.
Observe, it is not denied that joy is and will be
desired, that suffering and pain are and will remain
experiences from which human nature must recoil.
The desire and the aversion are wrought into our
constitution; and just because we feel them our whole
mortal discipline has its value. In the experience of
them lies the condition of progress. On the one hand
pain urges, on the other joy attracts. It is in the line
Pain is not in itself an evil. But our nature recoils
from suffering and seeks life in brightness and power,
beyond the keen pangs of mortal existence. The
creation hopes that itself "shall be delivered from the
bondage of corruption." The finer life is, the more
sensible it must be of association with a body doomed
to decay, the more sensible also of that gross human
injustice and wrong which dare to pervert God's
ordinance of pain and His sacrament of death, usurping
His holy prerogative for the most unholy ends.
And so we are brought to the Cross of Christ. When
It is now possible to understand the trials of Job. So far as the sufferer is concerned, they are no less beneficent than His joys; for they provide that necessary element of probation by which life of a deeper and stronger kind is to be reached, the opportunity of becoming, as a man and a servant of the Almighty, what he had never been, what otherwise he could not become. The purpose of God is entirely good; but it will remain with the sufferer himself to enter by the fiery way into full spiritual vigour. He will have the protection and grace of the Divine Spirit in his time of sore bewilderment and anguish. Yet his own faith must be vindicated while the shadow of God's hand rests upon his life.
And now the forces of nature and the wild tribes
of the desert gather about the happy settlement of the
man of Uz. With dramatic suddenness and cumulative
A certain idealism appears in the causes of the different calamities and their simultaneous, or almost simultaneous, occurrence. Nothing, indeed, is assumed which is not possible in the north of Arabia. A raid from the south, of Sabeans, the lawless part of a nation otherwise engaged in traffic; an organised attack by Chaldæans from the east, again the lawless fringe of the population of the Euphrates valley, those who, inhabiting the margin of the desert, had taken to desert ways; then, of natural causes, the lightning or the fearful hot wind which coming suddenly stifles and kills, and the whirlwind, possible enough after a thunderstorm or simoom,—all of these belong to the region in which Job lived. But the grouping of the disasters and the invariable escape of one only from each belong to the dramatic setting, and are intended to have a cumulative effect. A sense of the mysterious is produced, of supernatural power, discharging bolt after bolt in some inscrutable mood of antagonism. Job is a mark for the arrows of the Unseen. And when the last messenger has spoken, we turn in dismay and pity to look on the rich man made poor, the proud and happy father made childless, the fearer of God on whom the enemy seems to have wrought his will.
In the stately Oriental way, as a man who bows to
fate or the irresistible will of the Most High, Job seeks
to realise his sudden and awful deprivations. We
watch him with silent awe as first he rends his mantle,
the acknowledged sign of mourning and of the disorganisation
of life, then shaves his head, renouncing
in his grief even the natural ornament of the hair, that
the sense of loss and resignation may be indicated.
This done, in deep humiliation he bows and falls prone
on the earth and worships, the fit words falling in a
Losses like these are apt to leave men distracted. When everything is swept away, with the riches those who were to inherit them, when a man is left, as Job says, naked, bereft of all that labour had won and the bounty of God had given, expressions of despair do not surprise us, nor even wild accusations of the Most High. But the faith of this sufferer does not yield. He is resigned, submissive. The strong trust that has grown in the course of a religious life withstands the shock, and carries the soul through the crisis. Neither did Job accuse God nor did he sin, though his grief was great. So far he is master of his soul, unbroken though desolated. The first great round of trial has left the man a believer still.
THE DILEMMA OF FAITH.
Chap. ii.
Yet the typical is based on the real; and the conflict
here described has gone on first in the experience of
the author. Not from the outside, but from his own
life has he painted the sorrows and struggles of a soul
urged to the brink of that precipice beyond which lies
the blank darkness of the abyss. There are men in
A second scene in heaven is presented to our view.
The Satan appears as before with the "sons of the
Elohim," is asked by the Most High whence he has
come, and replies in the language previously used.
Again he has been abroad amongst men in his restless
search for evil. The challenge of God to the Adversary
regarding Job is also repeated; but now it has an
addition: "Still he holdeth fast his integrity, although
And now he pleads that it is the way of men to care more for themselves, their own health and comfort, than for anything else. Bereavement and poverty may be like arrows that glance off from polished armour. Let disease and bodily pain attack himself, and a man will show what is really in his heart. "Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for himself. But put forth Thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will renounce Thee openly."
The proverb put into Satan's mouth carries a plain
enough meaning, and yet is not literally easy to
interpret. The sense will be clear if we translate it
"Hide for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give
for himself." The hide of an animal, lion or sheep,
which a man wears for clothing will be given up to
save his own body. A valued article of property often,
it will be promptly renounced when life is in danger
A grim possibility of truth lies in the taunt of Satan
Time has passed sufficient for the realisation by Job
of his poverty and bereavement. The sense of desolation
has settled on his soul as morning after morning
dawned, week after week went by, emptied of the
loving voices he used to hear, and the delightful
and honourable tasks that used to engage him. In
sympathy with the exhausted mind, the body has
become languid, and the change from sufficiency of
the best food to something like starvation gives the
germs of disease an easy hold. He is stricken with
elephantiasis, one of the most terrible forms of leprosy,
But in what form does the question of Job's continued
fidelity present itself now to the mind of the
writer? Singularly, as a question regarding his
integrity. From the general wreck one life has been
spared, that of Job's wife. To her it appears that the
wrath of the Almighty has been launched against her
husband, and all that prevents him from finding refuge
The accusations of Satan, turning on the question
whether Job was sincere in religion or one who served
God for what he got, prepare us to understand why
his integrity is made the hinge of the debate. To Job
his upright obedience was the heart of his life, and it
alone made his indefeasible claim on God. But faith,
not obedience, is the only real claim a man can advance.
And the connection is to be found in this way. As
a man perfect and upright, who feared God and
eschewed evil, Job enjoyed the approval of his conscience
and the sense of Divine favour. His life had
been rooted in the steady assurance that the Almighty
was his friend. He had walked in freedom and joy
But his integrity was clear to him. That stood
within the region of his own consciousness. He knew
that God had made him of dutiful heart and given him
a constant will to be obedient. Only while he believed
this could he keep hold of his life. As the one treasure
saved out of the wreck, when possessions, children,
health were gone, to cherish his integrity was the last
duty. Renounce his conscience of goodwill and faithfulness?
It was the one fact bridging the gulf of
disaster, the safeguard against despair. And is this
not a true presentation of the ultimate inquiry regarding
The woman's part in the controversy is still to be considered; and it is but faintly indicated. Upon the Arab soul there lay no sense of woman's life. Her view of providence or of religion was never asked. The writer probably means here that Job's wife would naturally, as a woman, complicate the sum of his troubles. She expresses ill-considered resentment against his piety. To her he is "righteous over much," and her counsel is that of despair. Was this all that the Great God whom he trusted could do for him? Better bid farewell to such a God. She can do nothing to relieve the dreadful torment and can see but the one possible end. But it is God who is keeping her husband alive, and one word would be enough to set him free. Her language is strangely illogical, meant indeed to be so,—a woman's desperate talk. She does not see that, though Job renounced God, he might yet live on, in greater misery than ever, just because he would then have no spiritual stay.
Well, some have spoken very strongly about Job's
wife. She has been called a helper of the Devil, an
The answer of Job is one of the fine touches of the
book. He does not denounce her as an instrument of
Satan nor dismiss her from his presence. In the midst
of his pain he is the great chief of Uz and the generous
husband. "Thou speakest," he mildly says, "as one
of the foolish, that is, godless, women speaketh." It is
not like thee to say such things as these. And then
One might declare this affirmation of faith so clear and decisive that the trial of Job as a servant of God might well close with it. Earthly good, temporal joy, abundance of possessions, children, health,—these he had received. Now in poverty and desolation, his body wrecked by disease, he lies tormented and helpless. Suffering of mind and physical affliction are his in almost unexampled keenness, acute in themselves and by contrast with previous felicity. His wife, too, instead of helping him to endure, urges him to dishonour and death. Still he does not doubt that all is wisely ordered by God. He puts aside, if indeed with a strenuous effort of the soul, that cruel suggestion of despair, and affirms anew the faith which is supposed to bind him to a life of torment. Should not this repel the accusations brought against the religion of Job and of humanity? The author does not think so. He has only prepared the way for his great discussion. But the stages of trial already passed show how deep and vital is the problem that lies beyond. The faith which has emerged so triumphantly is to be shaken as by the ruin of the world.
Strangely and erroneously has a distinction been
drawn between the previous afflictions and the disease
which, it is said, "opens or reveals greater depths in
Job's reverent piety." One says: "In his former trial
he blessed God who took away the good He had added
to naked man; this was strictly no evil: now Job
bows beneath God's hand when He inflicts positive
evil." Such literalism in reading the words "shall we
not receive evil?" implies a gross slander on Job. If
And now the narrative passes into a new phase. As a chief of Uz, the greatest of the Bene-Kedem, Job was known beyond the desert. As a man of wisdom and generosity he had many friends. The tidings of his disasters and finally of his sore malady are carried abroad; and after months, perhaps (for a journey across the sandy waste needs preparation and time), three of those who know him best and admire him most, "Job's three friends," appear upon the scene. To sympathise with him, to cheer and comfort him, they come with one accord, each on his camel, not unattended, for the way is beset with dangers.
They are men of mark all of them. The emeer of
Uz has chiefs, no doubt, as his peculiar friends, although
the Septuagint colours too much in calling them kings.
It is, however, their piety, their likeness to himself, as
men who fear and serve the True God, that binds them
The fine idealism of the poem is maintained in this
new act. Men of knowledge and standing are these.
They may fail; they may take a false view of their
friend and his state; but their sincerity must not be
doubted nor their rank as thinkers. Whether the three
represent ancient culture, or rather the conceptions of
the writer's own time, is a question that may be variously
answered. The book, however, is so full of life, the
life of earnest thought and keen thirst for truth, that
the type of religious belief found in all the three must
have been familiar to the author. These men are not,
Approaching Job's dwelling the three friends look eagerly from their camels, and at length perceive one prostrate, disfigured, lying on the mezbele, a miserable wreck of manhood. "That is not our friend," they say to each other. Again and yet again, "This is not he; this surely cannot be he." Yet nowhere else than in the place of the forsaken do they find their noble friend. The brave, bright chief they knew, so stately in his bearing, so abundant and honourable, how has he fallen! They lift up their voices and weep; then, struck into amazed silence, each with torn mantle and dust-sprinkled head, for seven days and nights they sit beside him in grief unspeakable.
Real is their sympathy; deep too, as deep as their
character and sentiments admit. As comforters they
are proverbial in a bad sense. Yet one says truly,
perhaps out of bitter experience, "Who that knows
what most modern consolation is can prevent a prayer
that Job's comforters may be his? They do not call
upon him for an hour and invent excuses for the "Mark Rutherford."
THE CRY FROM THE DEPTH.
Job speaks. Chap. iii.
True, it is the shame and torment of his disease that move him to utter his bitter lamentation. Yet the underlying cause of his loss of self-command and of patient confidence in God must not be missed. The disease has made life a physical agony; but he could bear that if still no cloud came between him and the face of God. Now these dark, suspicious looks which meet him every time he lifts his eyes, which he feels resting upon him even when he bows his head in the attempt to pray, make religion seem a mockery. And in pitiful anticipation of the doom to which they are silently driving him, he cries aloud against the life that remains. He has lived in vain. Would he had never been born!
In this first lyrical speech put into the mouth of Job
there is an Oriental, hyperbolical strain, suited to the
speaker and his circumstances. But we are also made
to feel that calamity and dejection have gone near to
The poem may be read calmly. Let us remember
that it came not calmly from the pen of the writer, but
as the outburst of volcanic feeling from the deep centres
of life. It is Job we hear; the language befits his
despondency, his position in the drama. But surely it
presents to us a real experience of one who, in the
"What is to become of us," asks Amiel, "when everything leaves us, health, joy, affections, when the sun seems to have lost its warmth, and life is stripped of all charm? Must we either harden or forget? There is but one answer, Keep close to duty, do what you ought, come what may." The mood of these words is not so devout as other passages of the same writer. The advice, however, is often tendered in the name of religion to the life-weary and desolate; and there are circumstances to which it well applies. But a distracting sense of impotence weighed down the life of Job. Duty? He could do nothing. It was impossible to find relief in work; hence the fierceness of his words. Nor can we fail to hear in them a strain of impatience almost of anger: "To the unregenerate Prometheus Vinctus of a man, it is ever the bitterest aggravation of his wretchedness that he is conscious of virtue, that he feels himself the victim not of suffering only, but of injustice. What then? Is the heroic inspiration we name Virtue but some passion, some bubble of the blood?... Thus has the bewildered wanderer to stand, as so many have done, shouting question after question into the sibyl cave of Destiny, and receive no answer but an echo. It is all a grim desert, this once fair world of his."
Job is already asserting to himself the reality of his own virtue, for he resents the suspicion of it. Indeed, with all the mystery of his affliction yet to solve, he can but think that Providence is also casting doubt on him. A keen sense of the favour of God had been his. Now he becomes aware that while he is still the same man who moved about in gladness and power, his life has a different look to others; men and nature conspire against him. His once brave faith—the Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away—is almost overborne. He does not renounce, but he has a struggle to save it. The subtle Divine grace at his heart alone keeps him from bidding farewell to God.
The outburst of Job's speech falls into three lyrical strophes, the first ending at the tenth verse, the second at the nineteenth, the third closing with the chapter.
I. "Job opened his mouth and cursed his day." In a kind of wild impossible revision of providence and reopening of questions long settled, he assumes the right of heaping denunciations on the day of his birth. He is so fallen, so distraught, and the end of his existence appears to have come in such profound disaster, the face of God as well as of man frowning on him, that he turns savagely on the only fact left to strike at,—his birth into the world. But the whole strain is imaginative. His revolt is unreason, not impiety either against God or his parents. He does not lose the instinct of a good man, one who keeps in mind the love of father and mother and the intention of the Almighty whom he still reveres. Life is an act of God: he would not have it marred again by infelicity like his own. So the day as an ideal factor in history or cause of existence is given up to chaos.
The idea is, Let the day of my birth be got rid of, so that no other come into being on such a day; let God pass from it—then He will not give life on that day. Mingled in this is the old world notion of days having meanings and powers of their own. This day had proved malign, terribly bad. It was already a chaotic day, not fit for a man's birth. Let every natural power of storm and eclipse draw it back to the void. The night too, as part of the day, comes under imprecation.
The vividness here is from superstition, fancies of
past generations, old dreams of a child race. Foreign
they would be to the mind of Job in his strength;
but in great disaster the thoughts are apt to fall back
on these levels of ignorance and dim efforts to explain,
omens and powers intangible. It is quite easy to
follow Job in this relapse, half wilful, half for easing
of his bosom. Throughout Arabia, Chaldæa, and India
went a belief in evil powers that might be invoked to
make a particular day one of misfortune. The leviathan
Is it not something strange that the happy past is here entirely forgotten? Why has Job nothing to say of the days that shone brightly upon him? Have they no weight in the balance against pain and grief?
His mind is certainly clouded; for it is not vain to
say that piety preserves the thought of what God once
gave, and Job had himself spoken of it when his disease
was young. At this point he is an example of what
man is when he allows the water-floods to overflow him
and the sad present to extinguish a brighter past. The
sense of a wasted life is upon him, because he does
not yet understand what the saving of life is. To be
kind to others and to be happy in one's own kindness is
not for man so great a benefit, so high a use of life, as
to suffer with others and for them. What were the
life of our Lord on earth and His death but a revelation
to man of the secret he had never grasped and
still but half approves? The Book of Job, a long,
II. In the second strophe cursing is exchanged for wailing, fruitless reproach of a long past day for a touching chant in praise of the grave. If his birth had to be, why could he not have passed at once into the shades? The lament, though not so passionate, is full of tragic emotion. The phrases of it have been woven into a modern hymn and used to express what Christians may feel; but they are pagan in tone, and meant by the writer to embody the unhopeful thought of the race. Here is no outlook beyond the inanition of death, the oblivion and silence of the tomb. It is not the extreme of unfaith, but rather of weakness and misery.
It is beautiful poetry, and the images have a singular charm for the dejected mind. The chief point, however, for us to notice is the absence of any thought of judgment. In the dim under-world, hid as beneath heavy clouds, power and energy are not. Existence has fallen to so low an ebb that it scarcely matters whether men were good or bad in this life, nor is it needful to separate them. For the tyrant can do no more harm to the captive, nor the robber to his victim. The astute councillor is no better than the slave. It is a kind of existence below the level of moral judgment, below the level either of fear or joy. From the peacefulness of this region none are excluded; as there will be no strength to do good there will be none to do evil. "The small and great are there the same." The stillness and calm of the dead body deceive the mind, willing in its wretchedness to be deceived.
When the writer put this chant into the mouth of
Job, he had in memory the pyramids of Egypt and
tombs, like those of Petra, carved in the lonely hills.
The contrast is thus made picturesque between the
state of Job lying in loathsome disease and the lot of
those who are gathered to the mighty dead. For
whether the rich are buried in their stately sepulchres,
or the body of a slave is hastily covered with desert
sand, all enter into one painless repose. The whole
purpose of the passage is to mark the extremity of
hopelessness, the mind revelling in images of its own
decay. We are not meant to rest in that love of death
from which Job vainly seeks comfort. On the contrary,
To Christianity this idea is utterly foreign, yet it mingles with some religious teaching, and is often to be found in the weaker sorts of religious fiction and verse.
III. The last portion of Job's address begins with a note of inquiry. He strikes into eager questioning of heaven and earth regarding his state. What is he kept alive for? He pursues death with his longing as one goes into the mountains to seek treasure. And again, his way is hid; he has no future. God hath hedged him in on this side by losses, on that by grief; behind a past mocks him, before is a shape which he follows and yet dreads.
It is indeed a horrible condition, this of the baffled mind to which nothing remains but its own gnawing thought that finds neither reason of being nor end of turmoil, that can neither cease to question nor find answer to inquiries that rack the spirit. There is energy enough, life enough to feel life a terror, and no more; not enough for any mastery even of stoical resolve. The power of self-consciousness seems to be the last injury, a Nessus-shirt, the gift of a strange hate. "The real agony is the silence, the ignorance of the why and the wherefore, the Sphinx-like imperturbability which meets his prayers." This struggle for a light that will not come has been expressed by Matthew Arnold in his "Empedocles on Etna," a poem which may in some respects be named a modern version of Job:—
Thought yields no result; the outer universe is
The closing verses have presented considerable difficulty to interpreters, who on the one hand shrink from the supposition that Job is going back on his past life of prosperity and finding there the origin of his fear, and on the other hand see the danger of leaving so significant a passage without definite meaning. The Revised Version puts all the verbs of the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth verses into the present tense, and Dr. A. B. Davidson thinks translation into the past tense would give a meaning "contrary to the idea of the poem." Now, a considerable interval had already elapsed from the time of Job's calamities, even from the beginning of his illness, quite long enough to allow the growth of anxiety and fear as to the judgment of the world. Job was not ignorant of the caprice and hardness of men. He knew how calamity was interpreted; he knew that many who once bowed to his greatness already heaped scorn upon his fall. May not his fear have been that his friends from beyond the desert would furnish the last and in some respects most cutting of his sorrows?
In his brooding soul, those seven days and nights,
fear has deepened into certainty. He is a man despised.
Even for those three his circumstances have proved too
much. Did he imagine for a moment that their coming
Note that in his whole agony Job makes no motion towards suicide. Arnold's Empedocles cries against life, flings out his questions to a dumb universe, and then plunges into the crater of Etna. Here, as at other points, the inspiration of the author of our book strikes clear between stoicism and pessimism, defiance of the world to do its worst and confession that the struggle is too terrible. The deep sense of all that is tragic in life, and, with this, the firm persuasion that nothing is appointed to man but what he is able to bear, together make the clear Bible note. It may seem that Job's ejaculations differ little from the cry out of the "City of Dreadful Night,"
But the writer of the book knows what is in hand.
He has to show how far faith may be pressed down
and bent by the sore burdens of life without breaking.
He has to give us the sense of a soul in the uttermost
depth, that we may understand the sublime argument
which follows, know its importance, and find our own
tragedy exhibited, our own need met, the personal and
the universal marching together to an issue. Suicide
is no issue for a life, any more than universal
cataclysm for the evolution of a world. Despair is no
We are prepared for the vehement controversy that follows and the sustained appeal of the sufferer to that Power which has laid upon him such a weight of agony. When he breaks into passionate cries and seems to be falling away from all trust, we do not despair of him nor of the cause he represents. The intensity with which he longs for death is actually a sign and measure of the strong life that throbs within him, which yet will be led out into light and freedom and come to peace as it were in the very clash of revolt.
THE THINGS ELIPHAZ HAD SEEN.
Eliphaz speaks. Chaps. iv., v.
Thoughts like these were in the minds of the three
friends of Job, very confounding indeed, for they had
never expected to shake their heads over him. They
But when Job opened his mouth and spoke, their sympathy was dashed with pious horror. They had never in all their lives heard such words. He seemed to prove himself far worse than they could have imagined. He ought to have been meek and submissive. Some flaw there must have been: what was it? He should have confessed his sin instead of cursing life and reflecting on God. Their own silent suspicion, indeed, is the chief cause of his despair; but this they do not understand. Amazed they hear him; outraged, they take up the challenge he offers. One after another the three men reason with Job, from almost the same point of view, suggesting first and then insisting that he should acknowledge fault and humble himself under the hand of a just and holy God.
Now, here is the motive of the long controversy
which is the main subject of the poem. And, in tracing
it, we are to see Job, although racked by pain and
distraught by grief—sadly at disadvantage because he
seems to be a living example of the truth of their ideas—rousing
himself to the defence of his integrity and
contending for that as the only grip he has of God.
Advance after advance is made by the three, who
gradually become more dogmatic as the controversy
proceeds. Defence after defence is made by Job, who
is driven to think himself challenged not only by his
Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar agree in the opinion
that Job has done evil and is suffering for it. The
language they use and the arguments they bring
forward are much alike. Yet a difference will be
found in their way of speaking, and a vaguely suggested
difference of character. Eliphaz gives us an impression
of age and authority. When Job has ended
his complaint, Eliphaz regards him with a disturbed
and offended look. "How pitiful!" he seems to
say; but also, "How dreadful, how unaccountable!"
He desires to win Job to a right view of things by
kindly counsel; but he talks pompously, and preaches
too much from the high moral bench. Bildad, again,
is a dry and composed person. He is less the man
of experience than of tradition. He does not speak of
discoveries made in the course of his own observation;
but he has stored the sayings of the wise and reflected
upon them. When a thing is cleverly said he is satisfied,
and he cannot understand why his impressive
statements should fail to convince and convert. He
is a gentleman, like Eliphaz, and uses courtesy. At
first he refrains from wounding Job's feelings. Yet
behind his politeness is the sense of superior wisdom—the
wisdom of ages, and his own. He is certainly a
harder man than Eliphaz. Lastly, Zophar is a blunt
man with a decidedly rough, dictatorial style. He is
impatient of the waste of words on a matter so plain,
and prides himself on coming to the point. It is he
who ventures to say definitely: "Know therefore
that God exacteth of thee less than thine iniquity
deserveth,"—a cruel speech from any point of view.
He is not so eloquent as Eliphaz, he has no air of
It is not difficult to imagine three speakers differing far
more from each other. For example, instead of Bildad
we might have had a Persian full of the Zoroastrian
ideas of two great powers, the Good Spirit, Ahuramazda,
and the Evil Spirit, Ahriman. Such a one
might have maintained that Job had given himself
to the Evil Spirit, or that his revolt against providence
would bring him under that destructive power and
work his ruin. And then, instead of Zophar, one
might have been set forward who maintained that
good and evil make no difference, that all things
come alike to all, that there is no God who cares for
righteousness among men; assailing Job's faith in a
more dangerous way. But the writer has no such
view of making a striking drama. His circle of vision
is deliberately chosen. It is only what might appear
to be true he allows his characters to advance. One
hears the breathings of the same dogmatism in the
three voices. All is said for the ordinary belief that
can be said. And three different men reason with Job
that it may be understood how popular, how deeply
rooted is the notion which the whole book is meant
to criticise and disprove. The dramatising is vague,
not at all of our sharp, modern kind like that of Ibsen,
Nevertheless the first address to Job is eloquent and poetically beautiful. No rude arguer is Eliphaz but one of the golden-mouthed, mistaken in creed but not in heart, a man whom Job might well cherish as a friend.
I. The first part of his speech extends to the
eleventh verse. With the respect due to sorrow,
putting aside the dismay caused by Job's wild language,
he asks, "If one essay to commune with thee, wilt thou
be grieved?" It seems unpardonable to add to the
sufferer's misery by saying what he has in his mind;
and yet—he cannot refrain. "Who can withhold himself
from speaking?" The state of Job is such that
there must be thorough and very serious communication.
Eliphaz reminds him of what he had been—an
instructor of the ignorant, one who strengthened the
weak, upheld the falling, confirmed the feeble. Was
he not once so confident of himself, so resolute and
helpful that fainting men found him a bulwark against
despair? Should he have changed so completely?
Should one like him take to fruitless wailings and
complaints? "Now it cometh upon thee, and thou
faintest; it toucheth thee, and thou art confounded."
Eliphaz does not mean to taunt. It is in sorrow that
he speaks, pointing out the contrast between what was
and is. Where is the strong faith of former days?
There is need for it, and Job ought to have it as his
stay. "Is not thy piety thy confidence? Thy hope,
is it not the integrity of thy ways?" Why does he
It is a friendly and sincere effort to make the champion of God serve himself of his own faith. The undercurrent of doubt is not allowed to appear. Eliphaz makes it a wonder that Job had dropped his claim on the Most High; and he proceeds in a tone of expostulation, amazed that a man who knew the way of the Almighty should fall into the miserable weakness of the worst evil-doer. Poetically, yet firmly, the idea is introduced:—
First among the things Eliphaz has seen is the fate of
those violent evil-doers who plough iniquity and sow
disaster. But Job has not been like them and therefore
has no need to fear the harvest of perdition. He is
among those who are not finally cut off. In the tenth
and eleventh verses the dispersion of a den of lions is
the symbol of the fate of those who are hot in wickedness.
As in some cave of the mountains an old lion and
lioness with their whelps dwell securely, issuing forth
at their will to seize the prey and make night dreadful
with their growling, so those evil-doers flourish for a
time in hateful and malignant strength. But as on a
sudden the hunters, finding the lions' retreat, kill and
II. In the second division of his address he endeavours to bring home to Job a needed moral lesson by detailing a vision he once had and the oracle which came with it. The account of the apparition is couched in stately and impressive language. That chilling sense of fear which sometimes mingles with our dreams in the dead of night, the sensation of a presence that cannot be realised, something awful breathing over the face and making the flesh creep, an imagined voice falling solemnly on the ear,—all are vividly described. In the recollection of Eliphaz the circumstances of the vision are very clear, and the finest poetic skill is used in giving the whole solemn dream full justice and effect.
We are made to feel here how extraordinary the
vision appeared to Eliphaz, and, at the same time, how
far short he comes of the seer's gift. For what is this
apparition? Nothing but a vague creation of the
As to the oracle itself: while the words may certainly bear translating so as to imply a direct comparison between the righteousness of man and the righteousness of God, this is not required by the purpose of the writer, as Dr. A. B. Davidson has shown. In the form of a question it is impressively announced that with or beside the High God no weak man is righteous, no strong man pure; and this is sufficient, for the aim of Eliphaz is to show that troubles may justly come on Job, as on others, because all are by nature imperfect. No doubt the oracle might transcend the scope of the argument. Still the question has not been raised by Job's criticism of providence, whether he reckons himself more just than God; and apart from that any comparison seems unnecessary, meeting no mood of human revolt of which Eliphaz has ever heard. The oracle, then, is practically of the nature of a truism, and, as such, agrees with the dream vision and the impalpable ghost, a dim presentation by the mind to itself of what a visitor from the higher world might be.
Shall any created being, inheritor of human defects,
stand beside Eloah, clean in His sight? Impossible.
For, however sincere and earnest any one may be
toward God and in the service of men, he cannot pass
"Behold, He putteth no trust in His servants." Nothing that the best of them have to do is committed entirely to them; the supervision of Eloah is always maintained that their defects may not mar His purpose. "His angels He chargeth with error." Even the heavenly spirits, if we are to trust Eliphaz, go astray; they are under a law of discipline and holy correction. In the Supreme Light they are judged and often found wanting. To credit this to a Divine oracle would be somewhat disconcerting to ordinary theological ideas. But the argument is clear enough,—If even the angelic servants of God require the constant supervision of His wisdom and their faults need His correction, much more do men whose bodies are "houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, who are crushed before the moth"—that is, the moth which breeds corrupting worms. "From morning to evening they are destroyed"—in a single day their vigour and beauty pass into decay.
"Without observance they perish for ever," says Eliphaz. Clearly this is not a word of Divine prophecy. It would place man beneath the level of moral judgment, as a mere earth-creature whose life and death are of no account even to God. Men go their way when a comrade falls, and soon forget. True enough. But "One higher than the highest regardeth." The stupidity or insensibility of most men to spiritual things is in contrast to the attention and judgment of God.
The description of man's life on earth, its brevity
and dissolution, on account of which he can never exalt
Here the tearing up of the tent cord or the breaking of the bow-string is an image of the snapping of that chain of vital functions, the "silver cord," on which the bodily life depends.
The argument of Eliphaz, so far, has been, first, that Job, as a pious man, should have kept his confidence in God, because he was not like those who plough iniquity and sow disaster and have no hope in Divine mercy; next, that before the Most High all are more or less unrighteous and impure, so that if Job suffers for defect, he is no exception, his afflictions are not to be wondered at. And this carries the further thought that he ought to be conscious of fault and humble himself under the Divine hand. Just at this point Eliphaz comes at last within sight of the right way to find Job's heart and conscience. The corrective discipline which all need was safe ground to take with one who could not have denied in the last resort that he, too, had
This strain of argument, however, closes, Eliphaz having much in his mind which has not found expression and is of serious import.
III. The speaker sees that Job is impatient of the
sufferings which make life appear useless to him. But
suppose he appealed to the saints—holy ones, or
angels—to take his part, would that be of any use?
In his cry from the depth he had shown resentment
The desolation he saw come suddenly, even when the impious man had just taken root as founder of a family, Eliphaz declares to be a curse from the Most High; and he describes it with much force. Upon the children of the household disaster falls at the gate or place of judgment; there is no one to plead for them, because the father is marked for the vengeance of God. Predatory tribes from the desert devour first the crops in the remoter fields, and then those protected by the thorn hedge near the homestead. The man had been an oppressor; now those he had oppressed are under no restraint, and all he has is swallowed up without redress.
So much for the third attempt to convict Job and bring him to confession. It is a bolt shot apparently at a venture, yet it strikes where it must wound to the quick. Here, however, made aware, perhaps by a look of anguish or a sudden gesture, that he has gone too far, Eliphaz draws back. To the general dogma that affliction is the lot of every human being he returns, that the sting may be taken out of his words:—
By this vague piece of moralising, which sheds no light
on anything, Eliphaz betrays himself. He shows that
he is not anxious to get at the root of the matter. The
whole subject of pain and calamity is external to him,
not a part of his own experience. He would speak
very differently if he were himself deprived of all his
possessions and laid low in trouble. As it is he can
turn glibly from one thought to another, as if it
IV. Eloquence, literary skill, sincerity, mark the close
of this address. It is the argument of a man who is
anxious to bring his friend to a right frame of mind
so that his latter days may be peace. "As for me,"
he says, hinting what Job should do, "I would turn
to God, and set my expectation upon the Highest."
Then he proceeds to give his thoughts on Divine providence.
Unsearchable, wonderful are the doings of
God. He is the Rain-giver for the thirsty fields and
desert pastures. Among men, too, He makes manifest
His power, exalting those who are lowly, and restoring
Fine, indeed, as dramatic poetry; but is it not, as
reasoning, incoherent? The author does not mean it
to be convincing. He who is chastened and receives
the chastening may not be saved in those six troubles,
yea seven. There is more of dream than fact. Eliphaz
is apparently right in everything, as Dillmann says;
but right only on the surface. He has seen—that they
Useless in religion is all mere talk that only skims
the surface, however often the terms of it may be
repeated, however widely they find acceptance. The
creed that breaks down at any point is no creed for
a rational being. Infidelity in our day is very much
MEN FALSE: GOD OVERBEARING.
Job speaks. Chaps. vi., vii.
Supreme mark of a healthy nature, this. People
are apt to praise a mind at peace, moving composedly
from thought to thought, content "to enjoy the things
which others understand," not distressed by moral
questions. But minds enjoying such peace are only
And here we join issue with the agnostic, who
denies this vital demand of the soul. Our thought
dwelling on life and all its varied experience—sorrow
But the man whose soul is eager in the search for
reality must endeavour to wrest from Heaven itself the
secret of his dissatisfaction with the real, his conflict
with the real, and why he must so often suffer from
the very forces that sustain his life. Yes, the passion
In his reply to Eliphaz, Job first takes hold of the charge of impatience and hasty indignation made in the opening of the fifth chapter. He is quite aware that his words were rash when he cursed his day and cried impatiently for death. In accusing him of rebellious passion, Eliphaz had shot the only arrow that went home; and now Job, conscientious here, pulls out the arrow to show it and the wound. "Oh," he cries, "that my hasty passion were duly weighed, and my misery were laid in the balance against it! For then would it, my misery, be found heavier than the sand of the seas: therefore have my words been rash." He is almost deprecatory. Yes: he will admit the impatience and vehemence with which he spoke. But then, had Eliphaz duly considered his state, the weight of his trouble causing a physical sense of indescribable oppression? Let his friends look at him again, a man prostrated with sore disease and grief, dying slowly in the leper's exile.
We need not fall into the mistake of supposing that it is only the pain of his disease which makes Job's misery so heavy. Rather is it that his troubles have come from God; they are "the arrows of the Almighty." Mere suffering and loss, even to the extremity of death, he could have borne without a murmur. But he had thought God to be his friend. Why on a sudden have those darts been launched against him by the hand he trusted? What does the Almighty mean? The evil-doer who suffers knows why he is afflicted. The martyr enduring for conscience' sake has his support in the truth to which he bears witness, the holy cause for which he dies. Job has no explanation, no support. He cannot understand providence. The God with whom he supposed himself to be at peace suddenly becomes an angry incomprehensible Power, blighting and destroying His servant's life. Existence poisoned, the couch of ashes encompassed with terrors, is it any wonder that passionate words break from his lips? A cry is the last power left to him.
So it is with many. The seeming needlessness of
their sufferings, the impossibility of tracing these to
any cause in their past history, in a word, the mystery
of the pain confounds the mind, and adds to anguish
and desolation an unspeakable horror of darkness.
Sometimes the very thing guarded against is that which
happens; a man's best intelligence appears confuted by
destiny or chance. Why has he amongst the many
been chosen for this? Do all things come alike to all,
righteous and wicked? The problem becomes terribly
acute in the case of earnest God-fearing men and
The truth, however, as shown in a previous chapter,
is that suffering has no proportion to the guilt of sin,
but is related in the scheme of Divine providence to
life in this world, its movement, discipline, and perfecting
in the individual and the race. Afflictions,
pains, and griefs are appointed to the best as well as
the worst, because all need to be tried and urged on from
Beginning with the fifth verse we have a series of questions somewhat difficult to interpret:—
By some these questions are supposed to describe
sarcastically the savourless words of Eliphaz, his
"solemn and impertinent prosing." This, however,
would break the continuity of the thought. Another view
makes the reference to be to Job's afflictions, which he
is supposed to compare to insipid and loathsome food.
But it seems quite unnatural to take this as the
meaning. Such pain and grief and loss as he had
undergone were certainly not like the white of an egg.
But he has already spoken wildly, unreasonably, and
he now feels himself to be on the point of breaking out
afresh in similar impatient language. Now, the wild
ass does not complain when it has grass, nor the ox
when it has fodder; so, if his mind were supplied with
necessary explanations of the sore troubles he is
enduring, he would not be impatient, he would not
At this point there is a brief halt in the speech. As if after a pause, due to a sharp sting of pain, Job exclaims: "Oh that God would please to destroy me!" He had felt the paroxysm approaching; he had endeavoured to restrain himself, but the torture drives him, as before, to cry for death. Again and again in the course of his speeches sudden turns of this kind occur, points at which the dramatic feeling of the writer comes out. He will have us remember the terrible disease and keep continually in mind the setting of the thoughts. Job had roused himself in beginning his reply, and, for a little, eagerness had overcome pain. But now he falls back, mastered by cruel sickness which appears to be unto death. Then he speaks:—
The longing for death which now returns on Job is
Nor may we say that Job is deterred from the act of self-destruction by Hamlet's thought, "The dread of something after death" that
Job has the fear and faith of God still, and not even the pressure of "unsparing pain" can move him to take into his own hands the ending of that torment God bids him bear. He is too pious even to dream of it. A true Oriental, with strong belief that the will of God must be done, he could die without a murmur, in more than stoical courage; but a suicide he cannot be. And indeed the Bible, telling us for the most part of men of healthy mind, has few suicides to record. Saul, Zimri, Ahithophel, Judas, break away thus from dishonour and doom; but these are all who, in impatience and cowardice, turn against God's decree of life.
Here, then, the strong religious feeling of the writer
obliges him to reject that which the poets of the world
have used to give the strongest effect to their work.
From the Greek dramatists, through Shakespeare to
Browning, the drama is full of that quarrel with life
Job has not cursed God nor denied his words. With this clear conscience he is not afraid to die; yet, to keep it, he must wait on the decision of the Almighty—that it would please God to crush him, or tear him off like a branch from the tree of life. The prospect of death, if it were granted by God, would revive him for the last moment of endurance. He would leap up to meet the stroke, God's stroke, the pledge that God was kind to him after all.
According to Eliphaz there was but one way for a
sufferer. If Job would bow humbly in acknowledgment
of guilt, and seek God in penitence, then recovery
would come; the hand that smote would heal and set
him on high; all the joy and vigour of life would be
renewed, and after another long course of prosperity,
he should come to his grave at last as a shock of corn
Why, his condition is hopeless. What can he look for but death? Speak to him of a new term; it was adding mockery to despair. But he would die still true to God, and therefore he seeks the end of conflict. If he were to live on he could not be sure of himself, especially when, with failing strength, he had to endure the nausea and stings of disease. As yet he can face death as a chief should.
The second part of the address begins at the fourteenth
verse of chap. vi. Here Job rouses himself
anew, and this time to assail his friends. The language
of their spokesman had been addressed to him from
a height of assumed moral superiority, and this had
stirred in Job a resentment quite natural. No doubt
the three friends showed friendliness. He could not
forget the long journey they had made to bring him
comfort. But when he bethought him how in his
prosperity he had often entertained these men, held
high discourse with them on the ways of God, opened
his heart and showed them all his life, he marvelled
that now they could fail of the thing he most wanted—understanding.
The knowledge they had of him
should have made suspicion impossible, for they had
the testimony of his whole life. The author is not
The poetical genius of the writer overflows here. The allegory is beautiful, the wit keen, the knowledge abundant; yet, in a sense, we have to pardon the interposition. Job is not quite in the mood to represent his disappointment by such an elaborate picture. He would naturally seek a sharper mode of expression. Still, the passage must not be judged by our modern dramatic rules. This is the earliest example of the philosophic story, and elaborate word-pictures are part of the literature of the piece. We accept the pleasure of following a description which Job must be supposed to have painted in melancholy humour.
The scene is in the desert, several days' journey from the Jauf, that valley already identified as the region in which Job lived. Beyond the Nefood to the west towers the Jebel Tobeyk, a high ridge covered in winter with deep snow, the melting of which fills the ravines with roaring streams. Caravans are coming across the desert from Tema, which lies seven days' journey to the south of the Jauf, and from Sheba still farther in the same direction. They are on the march in early summer and, falling short of water, turn aside westward to one of the ravines where a stream is expected to be still flowing. But, alas for the vain hope! In the wadi is nothing but stones and dry sand, mocking the thirst of man and beast. Even so, says Job to his friends, ye are treacherous; ye are nothing. I looked for the refreshing water of sympathy, but ye are empty ravines, dry sand. In my days of prosperity you gushed with friendliness. Now, when I thirst, ye have not even pity. "Ye see a terror, and are afraid." I am terribly stricken. You fear that if you sympathised with me, you might provoke the anger of God.
From this point he turns upon them with reproach.
Had he asked them for anything, gifts out of their
herds or treasure, aid in recovering his property?
They knew he had requested no such service. But
again and again Eliphaz had made the suggestion that
he was suffering as a wrong-doer. Would they tell
him then, straightforwardly, how and when he had
transgressed? "How forcible are words of uprightness,"
words that go right to a point; but as for their
reproving, what did it come to? They had caught at
his complaint. Men of experience should know that
the talk of a desperate man is for the wind, to be blown
away and forgotten, not to be laid hold of captiously.
In this vivid eager expostulation there is at least
much of human nature. It abounds in natural touches
common to all time and in shrewd ironic perception.
The sarcasms of Job bear not only upon his friends,
but also upon our lives. The words of men who are
sorely tossed with trouble, aye even their deeds, are to
be judged with full allowance for circumstances. A
man driven back inch by inch in a fight with the world,
irritated by defeat, thwarted in his plans, missing his
calculations, how easy is it to criticise him from the
standpoint of a successful career, high repute, a good
balance at the banker's! The hasty words of one who
is in sore distress, due possibly to his own ignorance
and carelessness, how easy to reckon them against him,
find in them abundant proof that he is an unbeliever
and a knave, and so pass on to offer in the temple the
Pharisee's prayer! But, easy and natural, it is base.
The author of our poem does well to lay the lash of
his inspired scorn upon such a temper. He who stores
in memory the quick words of a sufferer and brings
them up by and by to prove him deserving of all his
troubles, such a man would cast lots over the orphan.
Beginning another strophe Job turns from his friends, from would-be wise assertions and innuendoes, to find, if he can, a philosophy of human life, then to reflect once more in sorrow on his state, and finally to wrestle in urgent entreaty with the Most High. The seventh chapter, in which we trace this line of thought, increases in pathos as it proceeds and rises to the climax of a most daring demand which is not blasphemous because it is entirely frank, profoundly earnest.
The friends of Job have wondered at his sufferings. He himself has tried to find the reason of them. Now he seeks it again in a survey of man's life:—
The thought of necessity is coming over Job, that man
is not his own master; that a Power he cannot resist
appoints his task, whether of action or endurance, to
fight in the hot battle or to suffer wearily. And there
is truth in the conception; only it is a truth which is
inspiring or depressing as the ultimate Power is found
in noble character or mindless force. In the time of
prosperity this thought of an inexorable decree would
have caused no perplexity to Job, and his judgment
would have been that the Irresistible is wise and kind.
But now, because the shadow has fallen, all appears in
gloomy colour, and man's life a bitter servitude. As
a slave, panting for the shade, longing to have his
work over, Job considers man. During months of
vanity and nights of weariness he waits, long nights
Does the Almighty consider how little time is left to him? Surely a gleam might break before all grows dark! Out of sight he will be soon, yea, out of the sight of God Himself, like a cloud that melts away. His place will be down in Sheol, the region of mere existence, not of life, where a man's being dissolves in shadows and dreams. God must know this is coming to Job. Yet in anguish, ere he die, he will remonstrate with his Maker: "I will not curb my mouth, I will make my complaint in the bitterness of my soul."
Striking indeed is the remonstrance that follows.
A struggle against that belief in grim fate which has
so injured Oriental character gives vehemence to his
appeal; for God must not be lost. His mind is
represented as going abroad to find in nature what is
most ungovernable and may be supposed to require
most surveillance and restraint. By change after
change, stroke after stroke, his power has been curbed;
till at last, in abject impotence, he lies, a wreck upon
the wayside. Nor is he allowed the last solace of
nature in extremis; he is not unconscious; he cannot
sleep away his misery. By night tormenting dreams
haunt him, and visions make as it were a terrible wall
against him. He exists on sufferance, perpetually
In a daring figure he imagines the Most High who sets a bound to the sea exercising the same restraint over him, or barring his way as if he were some huge monster of the deep. A certain grim humour characterises the picture. His friends have denounced his impetuosity. Is it as fierce in God's sight? Can his rage be so wild? Strange indeed is the restraint put on one conscious of having sought to serve God and his age. In self-pity, with an inward sense of the absurdity of the notion, he fancies the Almighty fencing his squalid couch with the horrible dreams and spectres of delirium, barring his way as if he were a raging flood. "I loathe life," he cries; "I would not live always. Let me alone, for my days are a vapour." Do not pain me and hem me in with Thy terrors that allow no freedom, no hope, nothing but a weary sense of impotence. And then his expostulation becomes even bolder.
"What is man," asks a psalmist, "that Thou art mindful of him, and the son of man, that Thou visitest him?" With amazement God's thought of so puny and insignificant a being is observed. But Job, marking in like manner the littleness of man, turns the question in another way:—
Has the Almighty no greater thing to engage Him
that He presses hard on the slight personality of man?
And finally, coming to the supposition that he may have transgressed and brought himself under the judgment of the Most High, he even dares to ask why that should be:—
How can his sin have injured God? Far above man the Almighty dwells and reigns. No shock of human revolt can affect His throne. Strange is it that a man, even if he has committed some fault or neglected some duty, should be like a block of wood or stone before the feet of the Most High, till bruised and broken he cares no more for existence. If iniquity has been done, cannot the Great God forgive it, pass it by? That would be more like the Great God. Yes; soon Job would be down in the dust of death. The Almighty would find then that he had gone too far. "Thou shalt seek me, but I shall not be."
More daring words were never put by a pious man
into the mouth of one represented as pious; and the
whole passage shows how daring piety may be. The
inspired writer of this book knows God too well,
honours Him too profoundly to be afraid. The Eternal
Father does not watch keenly for the offences of the
creatures He has made. May a man not be frank with
God and say out what is in his heart? Surely he may.
But he must be entirely earnest. No one playing with
There is indeed an aspect of our little life in which sin may appear too pitiful, too impotent for God to search out. "As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth." Only when we see that infinite Justice is involved in the minute infractions of justice, that it must redress the iniquity done by feeble hands and vindicate the ideal we crave for yet so often infringe; only when we see this and realise therewith the greatness of our being, made for justice and the ideal, for moral conflict and victory; only, in short, when we know responsibility, do we stand aghast at sin and comprehend the meaning of judgment. Job is learning here the wisdom and holiness of God which stand correlative to His grace and our responsibility. By way of trial and pain and these sore battles with doubt he is entering into the fulness of the heritage of spiritual knowledge and power.
VENTURESOME THEOLOGY.
Bildad speaks. Chap. viii.
With the instinct of the highest and noblest thought, utterly removed from all impiety, the writer has shown his inspiration in leading Job to a climax of impassioned inquiry as one who wrestles in the swellings of Jordan with the angel of Jehovah. Now he brings forward Bildad speaking cold words from a mind quite unable to understand the crisis. This is a man who firmly believed himself possessed of authority and insight. When Job added entreaty to entreaty, demand to demand, Bildad would feel as if his ears were deceiving him, for what he heard seemed to be an impious assault on the justice of the Most High, an attempt to convict the Infinitely Righteous of unrighteousness. He burns to speak; and Job has no sooner sunk down exhausted than he begins:—
How far wrong Bildad is may be seen in this, that he dangles before Job the hope of greater worldly prosperity. The children must have sinned, for they have perished. Yet Job himself may possibly be innocent. If he is, then a simple entreaty to God will insure His renewed favour and help. Job is required to seek wealth and greatness again as a pledge of his own uprightness. But the whole difficulty lies in the fact that, being upright, he has been plunged into poverty, desolation, and a living death. He desires to know the reason of what has occurred. Apart altogether from the restoration of his prosperity and health, he would know what God means. Bildad does not see this in the least. Himself a prosperous man, devoted to the doctrine that opulence is the proof of religious acceptance and security, he has nothing for Job but the advice to get God to prove him righteous by giving him back his goods. There is a taunt in Bildad's speech. He privately believes that there has been sin, and that only by way of repentance good can come again. Since his friend is so obstinate let him try to regain his prosperity and fail. Bildad is lavish in promises, extravagant indeed. He can only be acquitted of a sinister meaning in his large prediction if we judge that he reckons God to be under a debt to a faithful servant whom He had unwittingly, while He was not observing, allowed to be overtaken by disaster.
Next the speaker parades his learning, the wisdom he had gathered from the past:—
The man of to-day is nothing, a poor creature. Only by the proved wisdom of the long ages can end come to controversy. Let Job listen, then, and be convinced.
Now it must be owned there is not simply an air of
truth but truth itself in what Bildad proceeds to say
in the very picturesque passage that follows. Truths,
however, may be taken hold of in a wrong way to
establish false conclusions; and in this way Job's interlocutor
errs with not a few of his painstaking successors.
The rush or papyrus of the river-side cannot grow
without mire; the reed-grass needs moisture. If the
water fails they wither. So are the paths of all that
forget God. Yes: if you take it aright, what can be
more impressively certain? The hope of a godless
man perishes. His confidence is cut off; it is as if he
trusted in a spider's web. Even his house, however
strongly built, shall not support him. The man who
has abandoned God must come to this—that every
earthly stay shall snap asunder, every expectation fade.
There shall be nothing between him and despair. His
strength, his wisdom, his inheritance, his possessions
piled together in abundance, how can they avail when
the demand is urged by Divine justice—What hast thou
done with thy life? This, however, is not at all in
Bildad's mind. He is not thinking of the prosperity of
the soul and exultation in God, but of outward success,
But one sentence of his speech, that in which (ver. 4)
he implies the belief that Job's children had sinned and
been "cast away into the hand of their rebellion," shows
the cold, relentless side of his orthodoxy, the logic, not
unknown still, which presses to its point over the whole
human race. Bildad meant, it appears, to shift from
Job the burden of his children's fate. The catastrophe
which overtook them might have seemed to be one of the
arrows of judgment aimed at the father. Job himself
may have had great perplexity as well as keen distress
Those who attempt to explain God's ways for edification and comfort need to be very simple and genuine in their feeling with men, their effort on behalf of God. Every one who believes and thinks has something in his spiritual experience worth recounting, and may help an afflicted brother by retracing his own history. But to make a creed learned by rote the basis of consolation is perilous. The aspect it takes to those under trial will often surprise the best-meaning consoler. A point is emphasised by the keen mind of sorrow, and, like Elijah's cloud, it soon sweeps over the whole sky, a storm of doubt and dismay.
THE THOUGHT OF A DAYSMAN.
Job speaks. Chaps. ix., x.
Step by step the thought here advances into that dreadful imagination of God's unrighteousness which must issue in revolt or in despair. Job, turning against the bitter logic of tradition, appears for the time to plunge into impiety. Sincere earnest thinker as he is, he falls into a strain we are almost compelled to call false and blasphemous. Bildad and Eliphaz seem to be saints, Job a rebel against God. The Almighty, he says, is like a lion that seizes the prey and cannot be hindered from devouring. He is a wrathful tyrant under whom the helpers of Rahab, those powers that according to some nature myth sustain the dragon of the sea in its conflict with heaven, stoop and give way. Shall Job essay to answer Him? It is vain. He cannot. To choose words in such a controversy would be of no avail. Even one right in his cause would be overborne by tyrannical omnipotence. He would have no resource but to supplicate for mercy like a detected malefactor. Once Job may have thought that an appeal to justice would be heard, that his trust in righteousness was well founded. He is falling away from that belief now. This being whose despotic power has been set in his view has no sense of man's right. He cares nothing for man.
What is God? How does He appear in the light of the sufferings of Job?
No one, that is, can call God to account. The temper of the Almighty appears to Job to be such that man must needs give up all controversy. In his heart Job is convinced still that he has wrought no evil. But he will not say so. He will anticipate the wilful condemnation of the Almighty. God would assail his life. Job replies in fierce revolt, "Assail it, take it away, I care not, for I despise it. Whether one is righteous or evil, it is all the same. God destroys the perfect and the wicked" (ver. 22).
Now, are we to explain away this language? If not, how shall we defend the writer who has put it into the mouth of one still the hero of the book, still appearing as a friend of God? To many in our day, as of old, religion is so dull and lifeless, their desire for the friendship of God so lukewarm, that the passion of the words of Job is incomprehensible to them. His courage of despair belongs to a range of feeling they never entered, never dreamt of entering. The calculating world is their home, and in its frigid atmosphere there is no possibility of that keen striving for spiritual life which fills the soul as with fire. To those who deny sin and pooh-pooh anxiety about the soul, the book may well appear an old-world dream, a Hebrew allegory rather than the history of a man. But the language of Job is no outburst of lawlessness; it springs out of deep and serious thought.
It is difficult to find an exact modern parallel here;
but we have not to go far back for one who was
driven like Job by false theology into bewilderment,
something like unreason. In his "Grace Abounding,"
John Bunyan reveals the depths of fear into which
hard arguments and misinterpretations of Scripture
often plunged him, when he should have been rejoicing
in the liberty of a child of God. The case of Bunyan
is, in a sense, very different from that of Job. Yet both
are urged almost to despair of God; and Bunyan,
realising this point of likeness, again and again uses
words put into Job's mouth. Doubts and suspicions
are suggested by his reading, or by sermons which he
hears, and he regards their occurrence to his mind as
a proof of his wickedness. In one place he says:
"Now I thought surely I am possessed of the devil:
at other times again I thought I should be bereft of
my wits; for, instead of lauding and magnifying God
with others, if I have but heard Him spoken of,
presently some most horrible blasphemous thought or
other would bolt out of my heart against Him, so that
whether I did think that God was, or again did think
there was no such thing, no love, nor peace, nor gracious
disposition could I feel within me." Bunyan had a
vivid imagination. He was haunted by strange cravings
for the spiritually adventurous. What would it
be to sin the sin that is unto death? "In so strong a
measure," he says, "was this temptation upon me, that
often I have been ready to clap my hands under my
chin to keep my mouth from opening." The idea that
he should "sell and part with Christ" was one that
terribly afflicted him; and, "at last," he says, "after
much striving, I felt this thought pass through my
heart, Let Him go if He will.... After this, nothing
The Book of Job helps us to understand Bunyan and those terrors of his that amaze our composed generation. Given a man like Job or like Bunyan, to whom religion is everything, who must feel sure of Divine justice, truth, and mercy, he will pass far beyond the measured emotions and phrases of those who are more than half content with the world and themselves. The writer here, whose own stages of thought are recorded, and Bunyan, who with rare force and sincerity retraces the way of his life, are men of splendid character and virtue. Titans of the religious life, they are stricken with anguish and bound with iron fetters to the rock of pain for the sake of universal humanity. They are a wonder to the worldling, they speak in terms the smooth professor of religion shudders at. But their endurance, their vehement resolution, break the falsehoods of the time and enter into the redemption of the race.
The strain of Job's complaint increases in bitterness.
He seems to see omnipotent injustice everywhere. If
a scourge (ver. 23), such as lightning, accident or disease,
slayeth suddenly, there seems to be nothing but
mockery of the innocent. God looks down on the
wreck of human hope from the calm sky after the
thunderstorm, in the evening sunlight that gilds the desert
grave. And in the world of men the wicked have their
way. God veils the face of the judge so that he is
blinded to the equity of the cause. Thus, after the
arguments of his friends, Job is compelled to see wrong
everywhere, and to say that it is the doing of God.
The short passage from the twenty-fifth verse to the end of chap. ix. returns sadly to the strain of personal weakness and entreaty. Swiftly Job's days go by, more swiftly than a runner, in so far as he sees no good. Or they are like the reed-skiffs on the river, or the darting eagle. To forget his pain is impossible. He cannot put on an appearance of serenity or hope. God is keeping him bound as a transgressor. "I shall be condemned whatever I do. Why then do I weary myself in vain?" Looking at his discoloured body, covered with the grime of disease, he finds it a sign of God's detestation. But if he could wash it with snow, that is, to snowy whiteness, if he could purify those blackened limbs with lye, the renewal would go no further. God would plunge him again into the mire; his own clothes would abhor him.
And now there is a change of tone. His mind, revolting from its own conclusion, turns toward the thought of reconciliation. While as yet he speaks of it as an impossibility there comes to him a sorrowful regret, a vague dream or reflection in place of that fierce rebellion which discoloured the whole world and made it appear an arena of injustice. With that he cannot pretend to satisfy himself. Again his humanity stirs in him:—
If he could only speak with God as a man speaks with his friend the shadows might be cleared away. The real God, not unreasonable, not unrighteous nor despotic, here begins to appear; and in default of personal converse, and of a daysman, or arbiter, who might lay reconciling hands upon both and bring them together, Job cries for an interval of strength and freedom, that without fear and anguish he may himself express the matter at stake. The idea of a daysman, although the possibility of such a friendly helper is denied, is a new mark of boldness in the thought of the drama. In that one word the inspired writer strikes the note of a Divine purpose which he does not yet foresee. We must not say that here we have the prediction of a Redeemer at once God and man. The author has no such affirmation to make. But very remarkably the desires of Job are led forth in that direction in which the advent and work of Christ have fulfilled the decree of grace. There can be no doubt of the inspiration of a writer who thus strikes into the current of the Divine will and revelation. Not obscurely is it implied in this Book of Job that, however earnest man may be in religion, however upright and faithful (for all this Job was), there are mysteries of fear and sorrow connected with his life in this world which can be solved only by One who brings the light of eternity into the range of time, who is at once "very God and very man," whose overcoming demands and encourages our faith.
Now, the wistful cry of Job—"There is no daysman
between us"—breaking from the depths of an experience
to which the best as well as the worst are exposed
in this life, an experience which cannot in either case
be justified or accounted for unless by the fact of
immortality, is, let us say, as presented here, a purely
Job has prayed for rest. It does not come. Another attack of pain makes a pause in his speech, and with the tenth chapter begins a long address to the Most High, not fierce as before, but sorrowful, subdued.
It is scarcely possible to touch the threnody that follows without marring its pathetic and profound beauty. There is an exquisite dignity of restraint and frankness in this appeal to the Creator. He is an Artist whose fine work is in peril, and that from His own seeming carelessness of it, or more dreadful to conceive, His resolution to destroy it.
First the cry is, "Do not condemn me. Is it good unto Thee that Thou shouldest despise the work of Thine hands?" It is marvellous to Job that he should be scorned as worthless, while at the same time God seems to shine on the counsel of the wicked. How can that, O Thou Most High, be in harmony with Thy nature? He puts a supposition, which even in stating it he must refuse, "Hast Thou eyes of flesh? or seest Thou as man seeth?" A jealous man, clothed with a little brief authority, might probe into the misdeeds of a fellow-creature. But God cannot do so. His majesty forbids; and especially since He knows, for one thing, that Job is not guilty, and, for another thing, that no one can escape His hands. Men often lay hold of the innocent, and torture them to discover imputed crimes. The supposition that God acts like a despot or the servant of a despot is made only to be cast aside. But he goes back on his appeal to God as Creator, and bethinks him of that tender fashioning of the body which seems an argument for as tender a care of the soul and the spirit-life. Much of power and lovingkindness goes to the perfecting of the body and the development of the physical life out of weakness and embryonic form. Can He who has so wrought, who has added favour and apparent love, have been concealing all the time a design of mockery? Even in creating, had God the purpose of making His creature a mere plaything for the self-will of Omnipotence?
These things—the desolate home, the outcast life,
the leprosy. Job uses a strange word: "I know that
this was with Thee." His conclusion is stated roughly,
that nothing can matter in dealing with such a Creator.
The supreme Power of the world has taken an aspect not of unreasoning force, but of determined ill-will to man. The only safety seems to be in lying quiet so as not to excite against him the activity of this awful God who hunts like a lion and delights in marvels of wasteful strength. It appears that, having been once roused, the Divine Enemy will not cease to persecute. New witnesses, new causes of indignation would be found; a changing host of troubles would follow up the attack.
I have ventured to interpret the whole address in
terms of supposition, as a theory Job flings out in the
utter darkness that surrounds him. He does not adopt
it. To imagine that he really believes this, or that the
writer of the book intended to put forward such a theory
as even approximately true, is quite impossible. And
yet, when one thinks of it, perhaps impossible is too
strong a word. The doctrine of the sovereignty of God
is a fundamental truth; but it has been so conceived
and wrought with as to lead many reasoners into a
dream of cruelty and irresponsible force not unlike that
which haunts the mind of Job. Something of the kind
has been argued for with no little earnestness by men
who were religiously endeavouring to explain the Bible
and professed to believe in the love of God to the
world. For example: the annihilation of the wicked
is denied by one for the good reason that God has a
profound reverence for being or existence, so that he
who is once possessed of will must exist for ever; but
One thing this Book of Job teaches, that we are not
to go against our own sincere reason nor our sense of
justice and truth in order to square facts with any
scheme or any theory. Religious teaching and thought
must affirm nothing that is not entirely frank, purely
just, and such as we could, in the last resort, apply out
and out to ourselves. Shall man be more just than
God, more generous than God, more faithful than God?
Perish the thought, and every system that maintains so
false a theory and tries to force it on the human mind!
Nevertheless, let there be no falling into the opposite
error; from that, too, frankness will preserve us. No
sincere man, attentive to the realities of the world and
the awful ordinances of nature, can suspect the Universal
Power of indifference to evil, of any design to leave law
without sanction. We do not escape at one point;
As the colloquies proceed, the impression is gradually made that the writer of this book is wrestling with that study which more and more engages the intellect of man—What is the real? How does it stand related to the ideal, thought of as righteousness, as beauty, as truth? How does it stand related to God, sovereign and holy? The opening of the book might have led straight to the theory that the real, the present world charged with sin, disaster, and death, is not of the Divine order, therefore is of a Devil. But the disappearance of Satan throws aside any such idea of dualism, and pledges the writer to find solution, if he find it at all, in one will, one purpose, one Divine event. On Job himself the burden and the effort descend in his conflict with the real as disaster, enigma, impending death, false judgment, established theology and schemes of explanation. The ideal evades him, is lost between the rising wave and the lowering sky. In the whole horizon he sees no clear open space where it can unfold the day. But it remains in his heart; and in the night-sky it waits where the great constellations shine in their dazzling purity and eternal calm, brooding silent over the world as from immeasurable distance far withdrawn. Even from that distance God sends forth and will accomplish a design. Meanwhile the man stretches his hands in vain from the shadowed earth to those keen lights, ever so remote and cold.
A FRESH ATTEMPT TO CONVICT.
Zophar speaks. Chap. xi.
True it was, Job had used vehement speech. Yet it
is a most insulting suggestion that he meant little but
irreligious bluster. The special note of Zophar comes
out in his rebuke of Job for the mockery, that is,
sceptical talk, in which he had indulged. Persons who
merely rehearse opinions are usually the most dogmatic
and take most upon them. Nobody reckons himself
more able to detect error in doctrine, nobody denounces
rationalism and infidelity with greater confidence, than
the man whose creed is formal, who never applied his
mind directly to the problems of faith, and has but a
moderate amount of mind to apply. Zophar, indeed,
Now, beneath any mistaken view held by sincere
persons there is almost always a sort of foundation of
truth; and they have at least as much logic as satisfies
themselves. Job's friends are religious men; they do
not consciously build on lies. One and all they are
convinced that God is invariable in His treatment of
men, never afflicting the innocent, always dealing out
judgment in the precise measure of a man's sin. That
belief is the basis of their creed. They could not
worship a God less than absolutely just. Beginning
the religious life with this faith they have clung to it
Trying to get at the source of the belief we must
confess ourselves partly at a loss. One writer suggests
that there may have been in the earlier and simpler
conditions of society a closer correspondence between
wrong-doing and suffering than is to be seen nowadays.
There may be something in this. But life is
not governed differently at different epochs, and the
theory is hardly proved by what we know of the ancient
world. No doubt in the history of the Hebrews, which
lies behind the faith attributed to the friends of Job, a
connection may be traced between their wrong-doing
as a nation and their suffering as a nation. When they
fell away from faith in God their obedience languished,
their vigour failed, the end of their existence being lost
sight of, and so they became the prey of enemies. But
this did not apply to individuals. The good suffered
along with the careless and wicked in seasons of
But the theory seems to have been made out rather
by the following course of argument. Always in the
administration of law and the exercise of paternal
authority, transgression has been visited with pain and
deprivation of privilege. The father whose son has
disobeyed him inflicts pain, and, if he is a judicious
father, makes the pain proportionate to the offence.
The ruler, through his judges and officers, punishes
transgression according to some orderly code. Malefactors
are deprived of liberty; they are fined or
scourged, or, in the last resort, executed. Now, having
in this way built up a system of law which inflicts
punishment with more or less justice in proportion to
the offence imputed, men take for granted that what they
do imperfectly is done perfectly by God. They take
for granted that the calamities and troubles He appoints
are ordained according to the same principle, with
precisely the same design, as penalty is inflicted by a
father, a chief, or a king. The reasoning is contradicted
in many ways, but they disregard the difficulties. If
this is not the truth, what other explanation is to be
found? The desire for happiness is keen; pain seems
the worst of evils: and they fail to see that endurance
can be the means of good. Feeling themselves bound
to maintain the perfect righteousness of God they
Now, Zophar, like the others full of this theory, admits that Job may have failed to see his transgression. But in that case the sufferer is unable to distinguish right from wrong. Indeed, his whole contention seems to Zophar to show ignorance. If God were to speak and reveal the secrets of His holy wisdom, twice as deep, twice as penetrating as Job supposes, the sins he has denied would be brought home to him. He would know that God requires less of him than his iniquity deserves. Zophar hints, what is very true, that our judgment of our own conduct is imperfect. How can we trace the real nature of our actions, or know how they look to the sublime wisdom of the Most High? Job appears to have forgotten all this. He refuses to allow fault in himself. But God knows better.
Here is a cunning argument to fortify the general
position. It could always be said of a case which
presented difficulties that, while the sufferer seemed
innocent, yet the wisdom of God, "twofold in understanding"
(ver. 6) as compared with that of man,
perceived guilt and ordained the punishment. But
the argument proved too much, for Zophar's own health
and comfort contradicted his dogma. He took for
granted that the twofold wisdom of the Almighty
found nothing wrong in him. It was a naïve piece
of forgetfulness. Could he assert that his life had
no flaw? Hardly. But then, why is he in honour?
How had he been able to come riding on his camel,
attended by his servants, to sit in judgment on Job?
Plainly, on an argument like his, no man could ever
be in comfort or pleasure, for human nature is always
Zophar rises to eloquence in declaring the unsearchableness of Divine wisdom.
Here is fine poetry; but with an attempt at theology the speaker goes astray, for he conceives God as doing what he himself wishes to do, namely, prove Job a sinner. The Divine greatness is invoked that a narrow scheme of thought may be justified. If God pass by, if He arrest, if He hold assize, who can hinder Him? Supreme wisdom and infinite power admit no questioning, no resistance. God knoweth vain or wicked men at a glance. One look and all is plain to Him. Empty man will be wise in these matters "when a wild ass's colt is born a man."
Turning from this, as if in recollection that he has
to treat Job with friendliness, Zophar closes like the
other two with a promise. If Job will put away sin,
Rhetoric and logic are used in promises given freely by all the speakers. But not one of them has any comfort for his friend while the affliction lasts. The author does not allow one of them to say, God is thy friend, God is thy portion—now; He still cares for thee. In some of the psalms a higher note is heard: "There be many that say, Who will shew us any good? Lord, lift Thou up the light of Thy countenance upon us. Thou hast put gladness in my heart, more than in the time that their corn and their wine increased." The friends of Job are full of pious intentions, yet they state a most unspiritual creed, the foundation of it laid in corn and wine. Peace of conscience and quiet confidence in God are not what they go by. Hence the sufferer finds no support in them or their promises. They will not help him to live one day, nor sustain him in dying. For it is the light of God's countenance he desires to see. He is only mocked and exasperated by their arguments; and in the course of his own eager thought the revelation comes like a star of hope rising on the midnight of his soul.
Though Zophar fails like the other two, he is not to be called a mere echo. It is incorrect to say that, while Eliphaz is a kind of prophet and Bildad a sage, Zophar is a commonplace man without ideas. On the contrary, he is a thinker, something of a philosopher, although, of course, greatly restricted by his narrow creed. He is stringent, bitter indeed. But he has the merit of seeing a certain force in Job's contention which he does not fairly meet. It is a fresh suggestion that the answer must lie in the depth of that penetrating wisdom of the Most High, compared to which man's wisdom is vain. Then, his description of the return of blessedness and prosperity, when one examines it, is found distinctly in advance of Eliphaz's picture in moral colouring and gravity of treatment. We must not fail to notice, moreover, that Zophar speaks of the omniscience of God more than of His omnipotence; and the closing verse describes the end of the wicked not as the result of a supernatural stroke or a sudden calamity, but as a process of natural and spiritual decay.
The closing words of Zophar's speech point to the finality of death, and bear the meaning that if Job were to die now of his disease the whole question of his character would be closed. It is important to note this, because it enters into Job's mind and affects his expressions of desire. Never again does he cry for release as before. If he names death it is as a sorrowful fate he must meet or a power he will defy. He advances to one point after another of reasserted energy, to the resolution that, whatever death may do, either in the underworld or beyond it he will wait for vindication or assert his right.
BEYOND FACT AND FEAR TO GOD.
Job speaks. Chaps. xii.-xiv.
And Job begins with stringent irony—
The secrets of thought, of revelation itself are yours.
No doubt the world waited to be taught till you were
born. Do you not think so? But, after all, I also
Job sees or thinks he sees that his misery makes him an object of contempt to men who once gave him the credit of far greater wisdom and goodness than their own. They are bringing out old notions, which are utterly useless, to explain the ways of God; they assume the place of teachers; they are far better, far wiser now than he. It is more than flesh can bear.
As he looks at his own diseased body and feels again his weakness, the cruelty of the conventional judgment stings him. "In the thought of him that is at ease there is for misfortune scorn; it awaiteth them that slip with the foot." Perhaps Job was mistaken, but it is too often true that the man who fails in a social sense is the man suspected. Evil things are found in him when he is covered with the dust of misfortune, things which no one dreamed of before. Flatterers become critics and judges. They find that he has a bad heart or that he is a fool.
But if those very good and wise friends of Job are
astonished at anything previously said, they shall be
more astonished. The facts which their account of
Divine providence very carefully avoided as inconvenient
Job will blurt out. They have stated and
restated, with utmost complacency, their threadbare
The tents of robbers prosper. Out in the desert there are troops of bandits who are never overtaken by justice; and they that provoke God are secure, who carry a god in their hand, whose sword and the reckless daring with which they use it make them to all appearance safe in villainy. These are the things to be accounted for; and, accounting for them, Job launches into a most emphatic argument to prove all that is done in the world strangely and inexplicably to be the doing of God. As to that he will allow no question. His friends shall know that he is sound on this head. And let them provide the defence of Divine righteousness after he has spoken.
Here, however, it is necessary to consider in what way the limitations of Hebrew thought must have been felt by one who, turning from the popular creed, sought a view more in harmony with fact. Now-a-days the word nature is often made to stand for a force or combination of forces conceived of as either entirely or partially independent of God. Tennyson makes the distinction when he speaks of man
and again when he asks—
Now to this question, perplexing enough on the face
Cold heartless power, say some; no Father, but an impersonal Will to which men are nothing, human joy and love nothing, to which the fair blossom is no more than the clod, and the holy prayer no better than the vile sneer. On this, faith arises to the struggle. Faith warm and hopeful takes reason into counsel, searches the springs of existence, goes forth into the future and forecasts the end, that it may affirm and reaffirm against all denial that One Omnipotent reigns who is all-loving, the Father of infinite mercy. Here is the arena; here the conflict rages and will rage for many a day. And to him will belong the laurels of the age who, with the Bible in one hand and the instruments of science in the other, effects the reconciliation of faith with fact. Tennyson came with the questions of our day. He passes and has not given a satisfactory answer. Carlyle has gone with the "Everlasting Yea and No" beating through his oracles. Even Browning, a later athlete, did not find complete reason for faith.
Now return to Job. He considers nature; he believes in God; he stands firmly on the conviction that all is of God. Hebrew faith held this, and was not limited in holding it, for it is the fact. But we cannot wonder that providence disconcerted him, since the reconciliation of "merciless" nature and the merciful God is not even yet wrought out. Notwithstanding the revelation of Christ, many still find themselves in darkness just when light is most urgently craved. Willing to believe, they yet lean to a dualism which makes God Himself appear in conflict with the scheme of things, thwarted now and now repentant, gracious in design but not always in effect. Now the limitation of the Hebrew was this, that to his idea the infinite power of God was not balanced by infinite mercy, that is, by regard to the whole work of His hands. In one stormy dash after another Job is made to attempt this barrier. At moments he is lifted beyond it, and sees the great universe filled with Divine care that equals power; for the present, however, he distinguishes between merciful intent and merciless, and ascribes both to God.
What does he say? God is in the deceived and in
the deceiver; they are both products of nature, that
is, creatures of God. He increaseth the nations and
destroyeth them. Cities arise and become populous.
The great metropolis is filled with its myriads, "among
whom are six-score thousand that cannot discern between
their right hand and their left." The city shall
fulfil its cycle and perish. It is God. Searching for
reconciliation Job looks the facts of human existence
right in the face, and he sees a confusion, the
This impetuous passage, full of revolution, disaster, vast mutations, a phantasmagoria of human struggle and defeat, while it supplies a note of time and gives a distinct clue to the writer's position as an Israelite, is remarkable for the faith that survives its apparent pessimism. Others have surveyed the world and the history of change, and have protested with their last voice against the cruelty that seemed to rule. As for any God, they could never trust one whose will and power were to be found alike in the craft of the deceiver and the misery of the victim, in the baffling of sincere thought and the overthrow of the honest with the vile. But Job trusts on. Beneath every enigma, he looks for reason; beyond every disaster, to a Divine end. The voices of men have come between him and the voice of the Supreme. Personal disaster has come between him and his sense of God. His thought is not free. If it were, he would catch the reconciling word, his soul would hear the music of eternity. "I would reason with God." He clings to God-given reason as his instrument of discovery.
Very bold is this whole position, and very reverent
also, if you will think of it; far more honouring to God
than any attempt of the friends who, as Job says,
To take one error of theology. All men are concluded
equally under God's wrath and curse; then the
proofs of the malediction are found in trouble, fear and
pain. But what comes of this teaching? Out in the
world, with facts forcing themselves on consciousness,
the scheme is found hollow. All are not in trouble and
pain. Those who are afflicted and disappointed are
often sincere Christians. A theory of deferred judgment
and happiness is made for escape; it does not,
however, in the least enable one to comprehend how,
if pain and trouble be the consequences of sin, they
should not be distributed rightly from the first. A
universal moral order cannot begin in a manner so
doubtful, so very difficult for the wayfaring man to
read as he goes. To hold that it can is to turn religion
into an occultism which at every point bewilders the
simple mind. The theory is one which tends to blunt
the sense of sin in those who are prosperous, and to
beget that confident Pharisaism which is the curse of
church-life. On the other hand, the "sacrificed classes,"
contrasting their own moral character with that of the
frivolous and fleshly rich, are forced to throw over a
theology which binds together sin and suffering, and to
deny a God whose equity is so far to seek. And yet,
again, in the recoil from all this men invent wersh
schemes of bland good-will and comfort, which have
simply nothing to do with the facts of life, no basis in
the world as we know it, no sense of the rigour of
Divine love. So Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar remain
Job sets them down with a current proverb—"Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise." He begs them to be silent. They shall now hear his rebuke.
Job finds them guilty of speaking falsely as special
pleaders for God in two respects. They insist that he
has offended God, but they cannot point to one sin which
he has committed. On the other hand, they affirm
positively that God will restore prosperity if confession
is made. But in this too they play the part of advocates
without warrant. They show great presumption in
daring to pledge the Almighty to a course in accordance
with their idea of justice. The issue might be what
they predict; it might not. They are venturing on
ground to which their knowledge does not extend.
They think their presumption justified because it is
for religion's sake. Job administers a sound rebuke,
and it extends to our own time. Special pleaders for
God's sovereign and unconditional right and for His
illimitable good-nature, alike have warning here. What
justification have men in affirming that God will work
out His problems in detail according to their views?
He has given to us the power to apprehend the great
principles of His working. He has revealed much in
The Book of Job, while it brands insincerity and loose reasoning, justifies all honest and reverent research. Here, as in the teaching of our Lord, the real heretic is he who is false to his own reason and conscience, to the truth of things as God gives him to apprehend it, who, in short, makes believe to any extent in the sphere of religion. And it is upon this man the terror of the Divine majesty is to fall.
We saw how Bildad established himself on the wisdom of the ancients. Recalling this, Job flings contempt on his traditional sayings.
Did they mean to smite him with those proverbs as
with stones? They were ashes. Did they intrench
themselves from the assaults of reason behind old suppositions?
Their ramparts were mere dust. Once
Now the proper beginning of this appeal is in the twenty-third verse, with the words: "How many are mine iniquities and my sins?" But before Job reaches it he expresses his sense of the danger and difficulty under which he lies, interweaving with the statement of these a marvellous confidence in the result of what he is about to do. Referring to the declarations of his friends as to the danger that yet threatens if he will not confess sin, he uses a proverbial expression for hazard of life.
Why do I incur this danger, do you say? Never mind. It is not your affair. For bare existence I care nothing. To escape with mere consciousness for a while is no object to me, as I now am. With my life in my hand I hasten to God.
The old Version here, "Though He slay me, yet will
I trust in Him," is inaccurate. Still it is not far from
expressing the brave purpose of the man—prostrate
before God, yet resolved to cling to the justice of the
case as he apprehends it, assured that this will not
only be excused by God, but will bring about his
acquittal or salvation. To grovel in the dust, confessing
himself a miserable sinner more than worthy of
The fine moral instinct of Job, giving courage to his theology, declares that God demands "truth in the inward parts" and truth in speech—that man "consists in truth"—that "if he betrays truth he betrays himself," which is a crime against his Maker. No man is so much in danger of separating himself from God and losing everything as he who acts or speaks against conviction.
Job has declared his hazard, that he is lying helpless before Almighty Power which may in a moment crush him. He has also expressed his faith, that approaching God in the courage of truth he will not be rejected, that absolute sincerity will alone give him a claim on the Infinitely True. Now turning to his friends as if in new defiance, he says:—
That is to say, he has reviewed his life once more, he
has considered all possibilities of transgression, and
yet his contention remains. So much does he build
But with his plea to God still in view he expresses once more his sense of the disadvantage under which he lies. The pressure of the Divine hand is upon him still, a sore enervating terror which bears upon his soul. Would God but give him respite for a little from the pain and the fear, then he would be ready either to answer the summons of the Judge or make his own demand for vindication.
We may suppose an interval of release from pain or at least a pause of expectancy, and then, in verse twenty-third, Job begins his cry. The language is less vehement than we have heard. It has more of the pathos of weak human life. He is one with that race of thinking, feeling, suffering creatures who are tossed about on the waves of existence, driven before the winds of change like autumn leaves. It is the plea of human feebleness and mortality we hear, and then, as the "still sad music" touches the lowest note of wailing, there mingles with it the strain of hope.
We are not to understand here that Job confesses
great transgressions, nor, contrariwise, that he denies
infirmity and error in himself. There are no doubt
failures of his youth which remain in memory, sins of
desire, errors of ignorance, mistakes in conduct such as
the best men fall into. These he does not deny. But
righteousness and happiness have been represented as
And then—is it worth while for the Almighty to be so hard on a poor weak mortal?
The sense of rigid restraint and pitiable decay was perhaps never expressed with so fit and vivid imagery. So far it is personal. Then begins a general lamentation regarding the sad fleeting life of man. His own prosperity, which passed as a dream, has become to Job a type of the brief vain existence of the race tried at every moment by inexorable Divine judgment; and the low mournful words of the Arabian chief have echoed ever since in the language of sorrow and loss.
Human frailty is both of the body and of the soul; and it is universal. The nativity of men forbids their purity. Well does God know the weakness of His creatures; and why then does He expect of them, if indeed He expects, a pureness that can stand the test of His searching? Job cannot be free from the common infirmity of mortals. He is born of woman. But why then is he chased with inquiry, haunted and scared by a righteousness he cannot satisfy? Should not the Great God be forbearing with a man?
Man's life being so short, his death so sure and soon, seeing he is like a hireling in the world, might he not be allowed a little rest? might he not, as one who has fulfilled his day's work, be let go for a little repose ere he die? That certain death, it weighs upon him now, pressing down his thought.
No arguments, no promises can break this deep gloom and silence into which the life of man passes. Once Job had sought death; now a desire has grown within him, and with it recoil from Sheol. To meet God, to obtain his own justification and the clearing of Divine righteousness, to have the problem of life explained—the hope of this makes life precious. Is he to lie down and rise no more while the skies endure? Is no voice to reach him from the heavenly justice he has always confided in? The very thought is confounding. If he were now to desire death it would mean that he had given up all faith, that justice, truth, and even the Divine name of Eloah had ceased to have any value for him.
We are to behold the rise of a new hope, like a star in the firmament of his thought. Whence does it spring?
The religion of the Book of Job, as already shown, is, in respect of form, a natural religion; that is to say, the ideas are not derived from the Hebrew Scriptures. The writer does not refer to the legislation of Moses and the great words of prophets. The expression "As the Lord said unto Moses" does not occur in this book, nor any equivalent. It is through nature and the human consciousness that the religious beliefs of the poem appear to have come into shape. Yet two facts are to be kept fully in view.
The first is that even a natural religion must not be
"Natural religion" we say: and yet, since God is always revealing Himself and has made all men more or less capable of apprehending the revelation, even the natural is supernatural. Take the religion of Egypt, or of Chaldæa, or of Persia. You may contrast any one of these with the religion of Israel; you may call the one natural, the other revealed. But the Persian speaking of the Great Good Spirit or the Chaldæan worshipping a supreme Lord must have had some kind of revelation; and his sense of it, not clear indeed, far enough below that of Moses or Isaiah, was yet a forth-reaching towards the same light as now shines for us.
Next we must keep it in view that Job does not appear as a thinker building on himself alone, depending on his own religious experience. Centuries and ages of thought are behind these beliefs which are ascribed to him, even the ideas which seem to start up freshly as the result of original discovery. Imagine a man thinking for himself about Divine things in that far-away Arabian past. His mind, to begin with, is not a blank. His father has instructed him. There is a faith that has come down from many generations. He has found words in use which hold in them religious ideas, discoveries, perceptions of Divine reality, caught and fixed ages before. When he learned language the products of evolution, not only psychical, but intellectual and spiritual, became his. Eloah, the lofty one, the righteousness of Eloah, the word of Eloah, Eloah as Creator, as Watcher of men, Eloah as wise, unsearchable in wisdom, as strong, infinitely mighty,—these are ideas he has not struck out for himself, but inherited. Clearly then a new thought, springing from these, comes as a supernatural communication and has behind it ages of spiritual evolution. It is new, but has its root in the old; it is natural, but originates in the over-nature.
Now the primitive religion of the Semites, the race to which Job belonged, to which also the Hebrews belonged, has been of late carefully studied; and with regard to it certain things have been established that bear on the new hope we are to find struck out by the Man of Uz.
In the early morning of religious thought among those
Semites it was universally believed that the members
of a family or tribe, united by blood-relationship to
each other, were also related in the same way to their
Communion with Eloah had been Job's life, and with
it had been associated his many years of wealth,
dignity, and influence. Lest his children should fall
from it and lose their most precious inheritance, he
What difficulty there was in his effort we know.
To the common thought of the time when this book
was written, say that of Hezekiah, the state of the dead
was not extinction indeed, but an existence of extreme
tenuity and feebleness. In Sheol there was nothing
active. The hollow ghost of the man was conceived
of as neither hoping nor fearing, neither originating
nor receiving impressions. Yet Job dares to anticipate
Not easily can we now realise the extraordinary step forward made in thought when the anticipation was thrown out of spiritual life going on beyond death ("would I wait"), retaining intellectual potency in that region otherwise dark and void to the human imagination ("I would answer Thee"). From both the human side and the Divine the poet has advanced a magnificent intuition, a springing arch into which he is unable to fit the keystone—the spiritual body; for He only could do this who long afterwards came to be Himself the Resurrection and the Life. But when this poem of Job had been given to the world a new thought was implanted in the soul of the race, a new hope that should fight against the darkness of Sheol till that morning when the sunrise fell upon an empty sepulchre, and one standing in the light asked of sorrowful men, Why seek ye the living among the dead?
"Thou would'st have a desire to the work of Thy
hands." What a philosophy of Divine care underlies
the words! They come with a force Job seems hardly
to realise. Is there a High One who makes men in
But the wrath of God still appears to rest upon Job's life; still He seems to keep in reserve, sealed up, unrevealed, some record of transgressions for which He has condemned His servant. From the height of hope Job falls away into an abject sense of the decay and misery to which man is brought by the continued rigour of Eloah's examination. As with shocks of earthquake mountains are broken, and waters by constant flowing wash down the soil and the plants rooted in it, so human life is wasted by the Divine severity. In the world the children whom a man loved are exalted or brought low, but he knows nothing of it. His flesh corrupts in the grave and his soul in Sheol languishes.
The real is at this point so grim and insistent as to shut off the ideal and confine thought again to its own range. The energy of the prophetic mind is overborne, and unintelligible fact surrounds and presses hard the struggling personality.
THE TRADITION OF A PURE RACE.
Eliphaz speaks. Chap. xv.
In opening the new circle of debate Eliphaz might be expected to yield a little, to admit something in the claim of the sufferer, granting at least for the sake of argument that his case is hard. But the writer wishes to show the rigour and determination of the old creed, or rather of the men who preach it. He will not allow them one sign of rapprochement. In the same order as before the three advance their theory, making no attempt to explain the facts of human existence to which their attention has been called. Between the first and the second round there is, indeed, a change of position, but in the line of greater hardness. The change is thus marked. Each of the three, differing toto cœlo from Job's view of his case, had introduced an encouraging promise. Eliphaz had spoken of six troubles, yea seven, from which one should be delivered if he accepted the chastening of the Lord. Bildad affirmed
Zophar had said that if Job would put away iniquity he should be led into fearless calm.
That is a note of the first series of arguments; we hear nothing of it in the second. One after another drives home a stern, uncompromising judgment.
The dramatic art of the author has introduced
several touches into the second speech of Eliphaz
which maintain the personality. For example, the
formula "I have seen" is carried on from the former
address where it repeatedly occurs, and is now used
quite incidentally, therefore with all the more effect.
Again the "crafty" are spoken of in both addresses
with contempt and aversion, neither of the other interlocutors
of Job nor Job himself using the word. The
thought of chap. xv. 15 is also the same as that
ventured upon in chap. iv. 18, a return to the oracle
which gave Eliphaz his claim to be a prophet. Meanwhile
he adopts from Bildad the appeal to ancient
belief in support of his position; but he has an original
way of enforcing this appeal. As a pure Temanite he
is animated by the pride of race and claims more for
his progenitors than could be allowed to a Shuchite or
Naamathite, more, certainly, than could be allowed to
one who dwelt among worshippers of the sun and
moon. As a whole the thought of Eliphaz remains
what it was, but more closely brought to a point. He
does not wander now in search of possible explanations.
The first part of the address, extending to verse 13, is an expostulation with Job, whom in irony he calls "wise." Should a wise man use empty unprofitable talk, filling his bosom, as it were, with the east wind, peculiarly blustering and arid? Yet what Job says is not only unprofitable, it is profane.
Eliphaz is thoroughly sincere. Some of the expressions
used by his friend must have seemed to him
to strike at the root of reverence. Which were they?
One was the affirmation that tents of robbers prosper
and they that provoke God are secure; another the
daring statement that the deceived and the deceiver are
both God's; again the confident defence of his own life:
"Behold now I have ordered my cause, I know that I am
righteous; who is he that will contend with me?" and
once more his demand why God harassed him, a driven
leaf, treating him with oppressive cruelty. Things
like these were very offensive to a mind surcharged
with veneration and occupied with a single idea of
Divine government. From the first convinced that
gross fault or arrogant self-will had brought down the
malediction of God, Eliphaz could not but think that
Job's iniquity was "teaching his mouth" (coming
out in his speech, forcing him to profane expressions),
The writer means us to enter into the feelings of this man, to think with him, for the time, sympathetically. It is no moral fault to be over-jealous for the Almighty, although it is a misconception of man's place and duty, as Elijah learned in the wilderness, when, having claimed to be the only believer left, he was told there were seven thousand that never bowed the knee to Baal. The speaker has this justification, that he does not assume office as advocate for God. His religion is part of him, his feeling of shock and disturbance quite natural. Blind to the unfairness of the situation he does not consider the incivility of joining with two others to break down one sick bereaved man, to scare a driven leaf. This is accidental. Controversy begun, a pious man is bound to carry on, as long as may be necessary, the argument which is to save a soul.
Nevertheless, being human, he mingles a tone of sarcasm as he proceeds.
Job had accused his friends of speaking unrighteously for God and respecting His person. This pricked. Instead of replying in soft words as he claims to have been doing hitherto ("Are the consolations of God too small for thee and a word that dealt tenderly with thee?"), Eliphaz takes to the sarcastic proverb. The author reserves dramatic gravity and passion for Job, as a rule, and marks the others by varying tones of intellectual hardness, of current raillery. Eliphaz now is permitted to show more of the self-defender than the defender of faith. The result is a loss of dignity.
After all it is man's reason against man's reason. The answer will only come in the judgment of the Highest.
Not Eliphaz himself surely. That would be to
claim too great antiquity. Besides, it seems a little
wanting in sense. More probably there is reference
to some aged rabbi, such as every community loved to
boast of, the Nestor of the clan, full of ancient wisdom.
Eliphaz really believes that to be old is to be near the
fountain of truth. There was an origin of faith and
pure life. The fathers were nearer that holy source;
and wisdom meant going back as far as possible up
the stream. To insist on this was to place a real
barrier in the way of Job's self-defence. He would
scarcely deny it as the theory of religion. What then
of his individual protest, his philosophy of the hour
and of his own wishes? The conflict is presented
The question of the eleventh verse—"Are the consolations of God too small for thee?"—is intended to cover the whole of the arguments already used by the friends and is arrogant enough as implying a Divine commission exercised by them. "The word that dealt tenderly with thee," says Eliphaz; but Job has his own idea of the tenderness and seems to convey it by an expressive gesture or glance which provokes a retort almost angry from the speaker,—
We may understand a brief emphatic word of
Formerly Eliphaz had said, "Shall man be just beside God? Behold He putteth no trust in His servants, and His angels He chargeth with folly." Now, with a keener emphasis, and adopting Job's own confession that man born of woman is impure, he asserts the doctrine of creaturely imperfection and human corruption.
First is set forth the refusal of God to put confidence
in the holiest creature,—a touch, as it were, of suspicion
in the Divine rule. A statement of the holiness of
God otherwise very impressive is marred by this too
anthropomorphic suggestion. Why, is not the opposite
true, that the Creator puts wonderful trust not only in
saints but in sinners? He trusts men with life, with
the care of the little children whom He loves, with the
use in no small degree of His creation, the powers and
resources of a world. True, there is a reservation.
At no point is the creature allowed to rule. Saint
and sinner, man and angel are alike under law and
observation. None of them can be other than servants,
none of them can ever speak the final word or
It is remarkable that there is not a single word of personal confession in any speech made by the friends. They are concerned merely to state a creed supposed to be honouring to God, a full justification from their point of view of His dealings with men. The sovereignty of God must be vindicated by attributing this entire vileness to man, stripping the creature of every claim on the consideration of his Maker. The great evangelical teachers have not so driven home their reasoning. Augustine began with the evil in his own heart and reasoned to the world, and Jonathan Edwards in the same way began with himself. "My wickedness," he says, "has long appeared to me perfectly ineffable and, swallowing up all thought and imagination, like an infinite deluge or mountains over my head. I know not how to express better what my sins appear to me to be than by heaping infinite on infinite and multiplying infinite by infinite." Here is no Eliphaz arguing from misfortune to sinfulness; and indeed by that line it is impossible ever to arrive at evangelical poverty of spirit.
Passing to his final contention here the speaker introduces it with a special claim to attention. Again it is what "he has seen" he will declare, what indeed all wise men have seen from time immemorial.
There is the pride. He has a peculiar inheritance of
unsophisticated wisdom. The pure Temanite race has
Eliphaz drags back his hearers to the penal visitation of the wicked, his favourite dogma. Once more it is affirmed that for one who transgresses the law of God there is nothing but misery, fear and pain. Though he has a great following he lives in terror of the destroyer; he knows that calamity will one day overtake him, and from it there will be no deliverance. Then he will have to wander in search of bread, his eyes perhaps put out by his enemy. So trouble and anguish make him afraid even in his great day. There is here not a suggestion that conscience troubles him. His whole agitation is from fear of pain and loss. No single touch in the picture gives the idea that this man has any sense of sin.
How does Eliphaz distinguish or imagine the Almighty distinguishing between men in general, who are all bad and offensive in their badness, and this particular "wicked man"? Distinction there must be. What is it? One must assume, for the reasoner is no fool, that the settled temper and habit of a life are meant. Revolt against God, proud opposition to His will and law, these are the wickedness. It is no mere stagnant pool of corruption, but a force running against the Almighty. Very well: Eliphaz has not only made a true distinction, but apparently stated for once a true conclusion. Such a man will indeed be likely to suffer for his arrogance in this life, although it does not hold that he will be haunted by fears of coming doom. But analysing the details of the wicked life in vers. 25-28, we find incoherency. The question is why he suffers and is afraid.
Eliphaz has narrowed down the whole contention, so that he may carry it triumphantly and bring Job to admit, at least in this case, the law of sin and retribution. It is fair to suppose that he is not presenting Job's case, but an argument, rather, in abstract theology, designed to strengthen his own general position. The author, however, by side lights on the reasoning shows where it fails. The account of calamity and judgment, true as it might be in the main of God-defiant lives running headlong against the laws of heaven and earth, is confused by the other element of wickedness—"Because he hath covered his face with his fatness," etc. The recoil of a refined man of pure race from one of gross sensual appetite is scarcely a fit parallel to the aversion of God from man stubbornly and insolently rebellious. Further, the superstitious belief that one was unpardonable who made his dwelling in cities under the curse of God (literally, cities cut off or tabooed), while it might be sincerely put forward by Eliphaz, made another flaw in his reasoning. Any one in constant terror of judgment would have been the last to take up his abode in such accursed habitations. The argument is strong only in picturesque assertion.
The latter end of the wicked man and his futile
attempts to found a family or clan are presented at the
close of the address. He shall not become rich; that
felicity is reserved for the servants of God. No
plentiful produce shall weigh down the branches of
One hesitates to accuse Eliphaz of inaccuracy. Yet the shedding of the petals of the olive is not in itself a sign of infertility; and although this tree, like others, often blossoms without producing fruit, yet it is the constant emblem of productiveness. The vine, again, may have shed its unripe grapes in Teman; but usually they wither. It may be feared that Eliphaz has fallen into the popular speaker's trick of snatching at illustrations from "something supposed to be science." His contention is partly sound in its foundation, but fails like his analogies; and the controversy, when he leaves off, is advanced not a single step.
'MY WITNESS IN HEAVEN.'
Job speaks. Chaps. xvi., xvii.
He would have them consider that perpetual harping
on one string is but a sober accomplishment!
Returning one after another to the wicked man, the
godless sinner, crafty, froward, sensual, overbearing,
and his certain fate of disaster and extinction, they
are at once obstinately ungracious and to Job's mind
pitifully inept. He is indisposed to argue afresh with
them, but he cannot refrain from expressing his sorrow
and indeed his indignation that they have offered him a
stone for bread. Excusing themselves they had blamed
him for his indifference to the "consolations of God."
All he had been aware of was their "joining words
together" against him with much shaking of the head.
Was that Divine consolation? Anything, it seemed,
was good enough for him, a man under the stroke of
Even so: the courteous superficial talk of men who said, Friend, you are only accidentally afflicted; there is no stroke of God in this: wait a little till the shadows pass, and meanwhile let us cheer you by stories of old times:—such talk would have served Job even less than the serious attempt of the friends to settle the problem. It is therefore with somewhat inconsiderate irony he blames them for not giving what, if they had offered it, he would have rejected with scorn.
The passage is throughout ironical. No change of tone occurs in verse 5, as the opening word But in the English version is intended to imply. Job means, of course, that such consolation as they were offering he never would have offered them. It would be easy, but abhorrent.
So far in sad sarcasm; and then, the sense of desolation
But as yet the appeal he has made to God remains unanswered, for aught he knows unheard. It appears therefore his duty to his own reputation and his faith that he endeavour yet again to break the obstinate doubts of his integrity which still estrange from him those who were his friends. He uses indeed language that will not commend his case but tend to confirm every suspicion. Were he wise in the world's way he would refrain from repeating his complaint against God. Rather would he speak of his misery as a simple fact of experience and strive to argue himself into submission. This line he has not taken and never takes. It is present to his own mind that the hand of God is against him. Whether men will join him by-and-by in an appeal from God to God he cannot tell. But once more all that he sees or seems to see he will declare. Every step may bring him into more painful isolation, yet he will proclaim his wrong.
He is exhausted; he has come to the last stage. The circle of his family and friends in which he once stood enjoying the love and esteem of all—where is it now? That hold of life is gone. Then, as if in sheer malice, God has plucked health from him, and doing so, left a charge of unworthiness. By the sore disease the Divine hand grasps him, keeps him down. The emaciation of his body bears witness against him as an object of wrath. Yes; God is his enemy, and how terrible an enemy! He is like a savage lion that tears with his teeth and glares as if in act to devour. With God, men also, in their degree, persecute and assail him. People from the city have come out to gaze upon him. Word has gone round that he is being crushed by the Almighty for proud defiance and blasphemy. Men who once trembled before him have smitten him upon the cheek reproachfully. They gather in groups to jeer at him. He is delivered into their hands.
But it is God, not men, of whose strange work he has most bitterly to speak. Words almost fail him to express what his Almighty Foe has done.
Figure after figure expresses the sense of persecution
by one full of resource who cannot be resisted. Job
declares himself to be physically bruised and broken.
The stings and sores of his disease are like arrows
shot from every side that rankle in his flesh. He is
At this point, where Job's impassioned language might be expected to lead to a fresh outburst against heaven and earth, one of the most dramatic turns in the thought of the sufferer brings it suddenly to a minor harmony with the creation and the Creator. His excitement is intense. Spiritual eagerness approaches the highest point. He invokes the earth to help him and the mountain echoes. He protests that his claim of integrity has its witness and must be acknowledged.
For this new and most pathetic effort to reach a
benignant fidelity in God which all his cries have not
yet stirred, the former speeches have made preparation.
Rising from the thought that it was all one to God
whether he lived or died since the perfect and the
wicked are alike destroyed, bewailing the want of
a daysman between him and the Most High, Job in
the tenth chapter touched the thought that his Maker
could not despise the work of His own hands. Again,
in chapter xiv., the possibility of redemption from
Sheol gladdened him for a little. Now, under the
Now—in the present stage of being, before those years
expire that lead him to the grave—Job entreats the
vindication which exists in the records of heaven. As
a son of man he pleads, not as one who has any
peculiar claim, but simply as a creature of the Almighty;
and he pleads for the first time with tears. The fact
that earth, too, is besought to help him must not be
overlooked. There is a touch of wide and wistful
emotion, a sense that Eloah must regard the witness
of His world. The thought has its colour from a very
Is there in any sense a deeper depth in the faithfulness of God, a higher heaven, more difficult to penetrate, of Divine benignity? Job is making a bold effort to break that barrier we have already found to exist in Hebrew thought between God as revealed by nature and providence and God as vindicator of the individual life. The man has that in his own heart which vouches for his life, though calamity and disease impeach him. And in the heart of God also there must be a witness to His faithful servant, although, meanwhile, something interferes with the testimony God could bear. Job's appeal is to the sun beyond the rolling clouds to shine. It is there; God is faithful and true. It will shine. But let it shine now! Human life is brief and delay will be disastrous. Pathetic cry—a struggle against what in ordinary life is the inexorable. How many have gone the way whence they shall not return, unheard apparently, unvindicated, hidden in calumny and shame! And yet Job was right. The Maker has regard to the work of His hands.
The philosophy of Job's appeal is this, that beneath
all seeming discord there is one clear note. The
universe is one and belongs to One, from the highest
heaven to the deepest pit. Nature, providence,—what
are they but the veil behind which the One Supreme
is hidden, the veil God's own hands have wrought?
We see the Divine in the folds of the veil, the marvellous
pictures of the arras. Yet behind is He who
weaves the changing forms, iridescent with colours
of heaven, dark with unutterable mystery. Man is
now in the shadow of the veil, now in the light of it,
So the passage we have read is a splendid utterance of the wayworn travelling soul conscious of sublime possibilities,—shall we not say, certainties? Job is God-inspired in his cry, not profane, not mad, but prophetic. For God is a bold dealer with men, and He likes bold sons. The impeachment we almost shuddered to hear is not abominable to Him because it is the truth of a soul. The claim that God is man's witness is the true courage of faith: it is sincere, and it is justified.
The demand for immediate vindication still urged is inseparable from the circumstances.
Moving towards the under-world, the fire of his spirit
This is apparently parenthetical—and then Job returns
to the result of the intervention of his Divine Friend.
One reason why God should become his surety is the
pitiable state he is in. But another reason is the new
impetus that will be given to religion, the awakening of
good men out of their despondency, the reassurance
With this hope, that his life is to be rescued from darkness and the faith of the good re-established by the fulfilment of God's suretyship, Job comforts himself for a little—but only for a little, a moment of strength, during which he has courage to dismiss his friends:—
They have forfeited all claim to his attention. Their continued discussion of the ways of God will only aggravate his pain. Let them take their departure then and leave him in peace.
The final passage of the speech referring to a hope
present to Job's mind has been variously interpreted.
It is generally supposed that the reference is to the promise
held out by the friends that repentance will bring
him relief from trouble and new prosperity. But this
is long ago dismissed. It seems clear that my hope, an
expression twice used, cannot refer to one pressed upon
Job but never accepted. It must denote either the hope
that God would after Job's death lay aside His anger
and forgive, or the hope that God would strike hands
with him and undertake his case against all adverse
forces and circumstances. If this be the meaning, the
course of thought in the last strophe, from verse 11
onward, is the following,—Life is running to a low ebb
with me, all I had once in my heart to do is arrested,
How strenuous is the thought that has to fight with the grave and corruption! The body in its emaciation and decay, doomed to be the prey of worms, appears to drag with it into the nether darkness the eager life of the spirit. Those who have the Christian outlook to another life may measure by the oppression Job has to endure the value of that revelation of immortality which is the gift of Christ.
Not in error, not in unbelief, did a man like Job fight
with grim death, strive to keep it at bay till his
character was cleared. There was no acknowledged
doctrine of the future to found upon. Of sheer
There was a religion which gave large and elaborate
answer to the questions of mortality. The wide intelligence
of the author of Job can hardly have missed
the creed and ceremonial of Egypt; he cannot have
failed to remember its "Book of the Dead." His own
work, throughout, is at once a parallel and a contrast
to that old vision of future life and Divine judgment.
It has been affirmed that some of the forms of expression,
especially in the nineteenth chapter, have their
source in the Egyptian scripture, and that the "Book
of the Dead" is full of spiritual aspirations which
give it a striking resemblance to the Book of Job.
Now, undoubtedly, the correspondence is remarkable
and will bear examination. The soul comes before
Osiris, who holds the shepherd's crook and the penal
scourge. Thoth (or Logos) breathes new spirit into See Renouf's Hibbert Lecture, also "The Unknown God," by C. Loring Brace.
There are many evident resemblances which have
been already studied and would repay further attention;
but the questions occur, how far the author of the
Book of Job refused Egyptian influences, and why, in
the face of a solution of his problem apparently thrust
upon him with the authority of ages, he yet exerted
himself to find a solution of his own, meanwhile
throwing his hero into the hopelessness of one to
whom death as a physical fact is final, compelled to
A SCHEME OF WORLD-RULE.
Bildad speaks. Chap. xviii.
With singular inconsistency the wicked man is
There is bitterness here, the personal feeling of one
who has a view to enforce. Does the man before him
think he is of such account that the Almighty will intervene
to become surety for him and justify his self-righteousness?
It is necessary that Job shall not even seem
to get the best of the argument. No bystander shall
say his novel heresies appear to have a colour of truth.
The speaker is accordingly very unlike what he was in
his first address. The show of politeness and friendship
is laid aside. We see the temper of a mind fed
on traditional views of truth, bound in the fetters of
self-satisfied incompetence. In his admirable exposition
of this part of the book Dr. Cox cites various
Arabic proverbs of long standing which are embodied,
one way or other, in Bildad's speech. It is a cold
Nowhere is the skill of the author better shown than in making these protagonists of Job say false things plausibly and effectively. His resources are marvellous. After the first circle of speeches the lines of opposition to Job marked out by the tenor of the controversy might seem to admit no more or very little fresh argument. Yet this address is as graphic and picturesque as those before it. The full strength of the opposition is thrown into those sentences piling threat on threat with such apparent truth. The reason is that the crisis approaches. By Bildad's attack the sufferer is to be roused to his loftiest effort,—that prophetic word which is in one sense the raison d'être of the book. One may say the work done here is for all time. The manifesto of humanity against rabbinism, of the plain man's faith against hard theology, is set beside the most specious arguments for a rule dividing men into good and bad, simply as they appear to be happy or unfortunate.
Bildad opens the attack by charging Job with hunting
for words—an accusation of a general kind apparently
referring to the strong expressions he had used
in describing his sufferings at the hand of God and
from the criticism of men. He then calls Job to
understand his own errors, that he may be in a position
to receive the truth. Perverting and exaggerating the
language of Job, he demands why the friends should be
counted as beasts and unclean, and why they should
Ewald's interpretation here brings out the force of the questions. "Does this madman who complained that God's wrath tore him, but who, on the contrary, sufficiently betrays his own bad conscience by tearing himself in his anger, really demand that on his account, that he may be justified, the earth shall be made desolate (since really, if God Himself should pervert justice, order, and peace, the blessings of the happy occupation of the earth could not subsist)? Does he also hope that what is firmest, the Divine order of the world, should be removed from its place? Oh, the fool, who in his own perversity and confusion rebels against the everlasting order of the universe!" All is settled from time immemorial by the laws of providence. Without more discussion Bildad reaffirms what the unchangeable decree, as he knows it, certainly is.
By reiteration, by a play on words the fact as it
The personification of death here is natural, and many
parallels to the figure are easily found. Horror of death
is a mark of strong healthy life, especially among
those who see beyond only some dark Sheol of dreary
hopeless existence. The "firstborn of death" is the
frightful black leprosy, and it has that figurative name
This cold prediction of the death of the godless from the very malady that has attacked Job is cruel indeed, especially from the lips of one who formerly promised health and felicity in this world as the result of penitence. We may say that Bildad has found it his duty to preach the terrors of God, and the duty appears congenial to him, for he describes with insistence and ornament the end of the godless. But he should have deferred this terrible homily till he had clear proof of Job's wickedness. Bildad says things in the zeal of his spirit against the godless which he will afterwards bitterly regret.
Having brought the victim of destiny to the grave, the speaker has yet more to say. There were consequences that extended beyond a man's own suffering and extinction. His family, his name, all that was desired of remembrance in this world would be denied to the evil-doer. In the universe, as Bildad sees it, there is no room for repentance or hope even to the children of the man against whom the decree of fate has gone forth.
The habitation of the sinner shall either pass into the
hand of utter strangers or be covered with brimstone
and made accursed. The roots of his family or clan,
those who still survive of an older generation, and the
As logical as many another scheme since offered to the world, a moral scheme also, this of Bildad is at once determined and incoherent. He has no doubt, no hesitation in presenting it. Were he the moral governor, there would be no mercy for sinners who refused to be convicted of sin in his way and according to his law of judgment. He would lay snares for them, hunt them down, snatch at every argument against them. In his view that is the only way to overcome unregenerate hearts and convince them of guilt. In order to save a man he would destroy him. To make him penitent and holy he would attack his whole right to live. Of the humane temper Bildad has almost none.
"MY REDEEMER LIVETH."
Job speaks. Chap. xix.
As in the twelfth hour of the night, the voices of
men sounding hollow and strange to him, the author
of the Book of Job found himself. Current ideas
about God would have stifled his thought if he had
not realised his danger and the world's danger and
thrown himself forward, breaking through, even with
defiance and passion, to make a way for reason to the
daylight of God. Limiting and darkening statements
he took up as they were presented to him over and
over again; he tracked them to their sources in ignorance,
That inspiration should thus work within bounds,
conscious of itself, yet restrained by human ignorance,
may be questioned. The apprehension of transcendent
truth not yet proved by argument, the authoritative
statement of such truth for the guidance and confirmation
of faith, lastly, complete independence of ordinary
The speech of Bildad in chap. xviii., under cover
of an account of invariable law was really a dream of
special providence. He believed that the Divine King,
who, as Christ teaches, "maketh His sun to rise on
the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and
the unjust," really singles out the wicked for peculiar
treatment corresponding to their iniquity. It is in one
sense the sign of vigorous faith to attribute action of
this kind to God, and Job himself in his repeated
appeals to the unseen Vindicator shows the same
conception of providence. Should not One intent on
righteousness break through the barriers of ordinary
law when doubt is cast on His equity and care? Pardonable
Of the treatment he receives from men Job complains, yet not because they are the means of his overthrow.
Why should his friends be so persistent in charging
him with offence? He has not wronged them. If he
Day after day, night after night, pains and fears increase: death draws nearer. He cannot move out of the net of misery. As one neglected, outlawed, he has to bear his inexplicable doom, his way fenced in so that he cannot pass, darkness thrown over his world by the hand of God.
Plunging thus anew into a statement of his hopeless condition as one discrowned, dishonoured, a broken man, the speaker has in view all along the hard human judgment which numbers him with the godless. He would melt the hearts of his relentless critics by pleading that their enmity is out of place. If the Almighty is his enemy and has brought him near to the dust of death, why should men persecute him as God? Might they not have pity? There is indeed resentment against providence in his mind; but the anxious craving for human sympathy reacts on his language and makes it far less fierce and bitter than in previous speeches. Grief rather than revolt is now his mood.
So far the Divine indignation has gone. Will his friends not think of it? Will they not look upon him with less of hardness and contempt though he may have sinned? A man in a hostile universe, a feeble man, stricken with disease, unable to help himself, the heavens frowning upon him—why should they harden their hearts?
And yet, see how his brethren have dealt with him! Mark how those who were his friends stand apart, Eliphaz and the rest, behind them others who once claimed kinship with him. How do they look? Their faces are clouded. They must be on God's side against Job. Yea, God Himself has moved them to this.
The picture is one of abject humiliation. He is rejected
by all who once loved him, forced to entreat
his servants, become offensive to his wife and grandsons;
Now we understand the purpose of the long description
of his pain, both that which God has inflicted and
that caused by the alienation and contempt of men.
Into his soul the prediction of Bildad has entered, that
he will share the fate of the wicked whose memory
perishes from the earth, whose name is driven from
light into darkness and chased out of the world. Is
it to be so with him? That were indeed a final
disaster. To bring his friends to some sense of what
all this means to him—this is what he struggles after.
It is not even the pity of it that is the chief point,
although through that he seeks to gain his end. But
if God is not to interpose, if his last hour is coming
without a sign of heaven's relenting, he would at least
have men stand beside him, take his words to heart,
believe them possibly true, hand down for his memorial
the claim he has made of integrity. Surely, surely
he shall not be thought of by the next generation as
Job the proud defiant evil-doer laid low by the judgments
of an offended God—brought to shame as one
Urgent is the appeal. It is in vain. Not a hand is
stretched out, not one grim face relaxes. The man
has made his last attempt. He is now like a pressed
animal between the hunter and the chasm. And why
is the author so rigorous in his picture of the friends?
It is made to all appearance quite inhuman, and cannot
be so without design. By means of this inhumanity
Job is flung once for all upon his need of God from
whom he had almost turned away to man. The poet
knows that not in man is the help of the soul, that not
in the sympathy of man, not in the remembrance of
man, not in the care or even love of man as a passing
tenant of earth can the labouring heart put its confidence.
From the human judgment Job turned to God
at first. From the Divine silence he had well-nigh
turned back to human pity. He finds what other
sufferers have found, that the silence is allowed to
extend beneath him, between him and his fellows, in
order that he may finally and effectually direct his hope
and faith above himself, above the creaturely race, to
Him from whom all came, in whose will and love alone
the spirit of man has its life, its hope. Yes, God is
bringing home to Himself the man whom He has
approved for approval. The way is strange to the
feet of Job, as it often is to the weary half-blinded
pilgrim. But it is the one way to fulfil and transcend
our longings. Neither corporate sympathy nor posthumous
immortality can ever stand to a thinking soul
From men to the written book, from men to the graven rock, more enduring, more public than the book—will this provide what is still unfound?
As one accustomed to the uses of wealth Job speaks. He thinks first of a parchment in which his story and his claim may be carefully written and preserved. But he sees at once how perishable that would be and passes to a form of memorial such as great men employed. He imagines a cliff in the desert with a monumental inscription bearing that once he, the Emeer of Uz, lived and suffered, was thrown from prosperity, was accused by men, was worn by disease, but died maintaining that all this befel him unjustly, that he had done no wrong to God or man. It would stand there in the way of the caravans of Tema for succeeding generations to read. It would stand there till the ages had run their course. Kings represent on rocks their wars and triumphs. As one of royal dignity Job would use the same means of continuing his protest and his name.
Yet, so far as his life is concerned, what good,—the
story spread northward to Damascus, but he, Job, lost
in Sheol? His protest is against forms of death; his
claim is for life. There is no life in the sculptured
stone. Baffled again he halts midway. His foot on
Who has not felt, looking at the records of the past, inscriptions on tablets, rocks and temples, the wistful throb of antiquity in those anxious legacies of a world of men too well aware of man's forgetfulness? "Whoever alters the work of my hand," says the conqueror called Sargon, "destroys my constructions, pulls down the walls which I have raised—may Asshur, Ninêb, Ramân and the great gods who dwell there pluck his name and seed from the land and let him sit bound at the feet of his foe." Invocation of the gods in this manner was the only resource of him who in that far past feared oblivion and knew that there was need to fear. But to a higher God, in words of broken eloquence, Job is made to commit his cause, seeing beyond the perishable world the imperishable remembrance of the Almighty. So a Hebrew poet breathed into the wandering air of the desert that brave hope which afterwards, far beyond his thought, was in Israel to be fulfilled. Had he been exiled from Galilee? In Galilee was to be heard the voice that told of immortality and redemption.
We must go back in the book to find the beginning of the hope now seized. Already Job has been looking forth beyond the region of this little life. What has he seen?
First and always, Eloah. That name and what it
represents do not fail him. He has had terrible experiences,
and all of them must have been appointed by
Eloah. But the name is venerable still, and despite all
difficulties he clings to the idea that righteousness goes
with power and wisdom. The power bewilders—the
Next. He has seen a gleam of light across the darkness of the grave, through the gloom of the under-world. A man going down thither,—his body to moulder into dust, his spirit to wander a shadow in a prison of shadows,—may not remain there. God is almighty—He has the key of Sheol—a star has shown for a little, giving hope that out of the under-world life may be recovered. It is seen that Eloah, the Maker, must have a desire to the work of His hands. What does that not mean?
Again. It has been borne upon his mind that the record of a good life abides and is with the All-seeing. What is done cannot be undone. The wasting of the flesh cannot waste that Divine knowledge. The eternal history cannot be effaced. Spiritual life is lived before Eloah who guards the right of a man. Men scorn Job; but with tears he has prayed to Eloah to right his cause, and that prayer cannot be in vain.
A just prayer cannot be in vain because God is ever just. From this point thought mounts upward. Eloah for ever faithful—Eloah able to open the gate of Sheol—not angry for ever—Eloah keeping the tablet of every life, indifferent to no point of right,—these are the steps of progress in Job's thought and hope. And these are the gain of his trial. In his prosperous time none of these things had been before him. He had known the joy of God but not the secret, the peace not the righteousness. Yet he is not aware how much he has gained. He is coming half unconsciously to an inheritance prepared for him in wisdom and in love by Eloah in whom he trusts. A man needs for life more than he himself can either sow or ripen.
And now, hear Job. Whether the rock shall be graven or not he cannot tell. Does it matter? He sees far beyond that inscribed cliff in the desert. He sees what alone can satisfy the spirit that has learned to live.
Not dimly this great truth flashes through the web of broken ejaculation, panting thought.
The Goël or Redeemer pledged to him by eternal justice is yet to arise, a living Remembrancer and Vindicator from all wrong and dishonour. On the dust that covers death He will arise when the day comes. The diseases that prey on the perishing body shall have done their work. In the grave the flesh shall have passed into decay; but the spirit that has borne shall behold Him. Not for the passing stranger shall be the vindication, but for Job himself. All that has been so confounding shall be explained, for the Most High is the Goël; He has the care of His suffering servant in His own hand and will not fail to issue it in clear satisfying judgment.
For the inspired writer of these words, declaring the faith which had sprung up within him; for us also who desire to share his faith and to be assured of the future vindication, three barriers stand in the way, and these have successively to be passed.
First is the difficulty of believing that the Most High need trouble Himself to disentangle all the rights from the wrongs in human life. Is humanity of such importance in the universe? God is very high; human affairs may be of little consequence to His eternal majesty. Is not this earth on which we dwell one of the smaller of the planets that revolve about the sun? Is not our sun one amongst a myriad, many of them far transcending it in size and splendour? Can we demand or even feel hopeful that the Eternal Lord shall adjust the disordered equities of our little state and appear for the right which has been obscured in the small affairs of time? A century is long to us; but our ages are "moments in the being of the eternal silence." Can it matter to the universe moving through perpetual cycles of evolution, new races and phases of creaturely life arising and running their course—can it matter that one race should pass away having simply contributed its struggle and desire to the far-off result? Conceivably, in the design of a wise and good Creator, this might be a destiny for a race of beings to subserve. How do we know it is not ours?
This difficulty has grown. It stands now in the way of all religion, even of the Christian faith. God is among the immensities and eternities; evolution breaks in wave after wave; we are but one. How can we assure our hearts that the inexterminable longing for equity shall have fulfilment?
Next there is the difficulty which belongs to the
individual life. To enjoy the hope, feel the certainty to
which Job reached forth, you or I must make the bold
assumption that our personal controversies are of eternal
importance. One is obscure; his life has moved in
a very narrow circle. He has done little, he knows
The third barrier is not less than the others to modern thought. How is our life to be preserved or revived, so that personally and consciously we shall have our share in the clearing up of the human story and be gladdened by the "Well done, good and faithful servant" of the Judge? That verdict is entirely personal; but how may the faithful servant live to hear it? Death appears inexorable. Despite the resurrection of Christ, despite the words He has spoken, "I am the resurrection and the life," even to Christians the vision is often clouded, the survival of consciousness hard to believe in. How did the author of Job pass this barrier—in thought, or in hope? Are we content to pass it only in hope?
I answer all these questions together. And the
Whence came our sense of justice? We can only say, From Him who made us. He gave us such a nature as cannot be satisfied nor find rest till an ideal of justice, that is of acted truth, is framed in our human life and everything possible done to realise it. Upon this acted truth all depends, and till it is reached we are in suspense. Deep in the mind of man lies that need. Yet it is always a hunger. More and more it unsettles him, keeps him in unrest, turning from scheme to scheme of ethic and society. He is ever making compromises, waiting for evolutions; but nature knows no compromises and gives him no clue save in present fact. Is it possible that He who made us will not overpass our poor best, will not sweep aside the shifts and evasions current in our imperfect economy? The passion for righteousness comes from him; it is a ray of Himself. The soul of the good man craving perfect holiness and toiling for it in himself, in others, can it be greater than God, more strenuous, more subtle than the Divine evolution that gave him birth, the Divine Father of his spirit? Impossible in thought, impossible in fact.
No. Justice there is in every matter. Surely science
has taught us very little if it has not banished the notion
that the small means the unimportant, that minute things
are of no moment in evolution. For many years past
science has been constructing for us the great argument
of universal physical fidelity, universal weaving of the
small details into the vast evolutionary design. The
Is it of importance that each of the gases shall have
laws of diffusion and combination, shall act according to
those laws, unvaryingly affecting vegetable and animal
life? Unless those laws wrought in constancy or
equity at every moment all would be confusion. Is it
of importance that the bird, using its wings, shall be able
to soar into the atmosphere; that the wings adapted
for flight shall find an atmosphere in which their
exercise produces movement? Here again is an equity
which enters into the very constitution of the cosmos,
which must be a form of the one supreme law of the
cosmos. Once more, is it of importance that the thinker
shall find sequences and relations, when once established,
Advance to the most important facts of mind, the
moral ideas which enter into every department of
thought, the inductions through which we find our
place in another range than the physical. Does the
fidelity already traced now cease? Is man at this
point beyond the law of faithfulness, beyond the
invariable correlation of environment with faculty?
Does he now come to a region which he cannot choose
but enter, where, however, the cosmos fails him, the
beating wing cannot rise, the inquiring mind reaches
no verity, and the consciousness does flutter an
inexplicable thing through dreams and illusions? A
man has it in his nature to seek justice. Peace for
him there is none unless he does what is right and can
believe that right will be done. With this high conviction
in his mind he is opposed, as in this Book of
Job, by false men, overthrown by calamity, covered
with harsh judgment. Death approaches and he
has to pass away from a world that seems to have
failed him. Shall he never see his right nor God's
righteousness? Shall he never come to his own as a
man of good will and high resolve? Has he been true
to a cosmos which after all is treacherous, to a rule of
virtue which has no authority and no issue? He
believes in a Lord of infinite justice and truth; that his
life, small as it is, cannot be apart from the pervading
law of equity. Is that his dream? Then any moment
Now let us clearly understand the point and value of the argument. It is not that a man who has served God here and suffered here must have a joyful immortality. What man is faithful enough to make such a claim? But the principle is that God must vindicate His righteousness in dealing with the man He has made, the man He has called to trust Him. It matters not who the man is, how obscure his life has been, he has this claim on God, that to him the eternal righteousness ought to be made clear. Job cries for his own justification; but the doubt about God involved in the slur cast upon his own integrity is what rankles in his heart; from that he rises in triumphant protest and daring hope. He must live till God clears up the matter. If he dies he must revive to have it all made clear. And observe, if it were only that ignorant men cast doubt on providence, the resurrection and personal redemption of the believer would not be necessary. God is not responsible for the foolish things men say, and we could not look for resurrection because our fellow-creatures misrepresent God. But Job feels that God Himself has caused the perplexity. God sent the flash of lightning, the storm, the dreadful disease; it is God who by many strange things in human experience seems to give cause for doubt. From God in nature, God in disease, God in the earthquake and the thunderstorm, God whose way is in the sea and His path in the mighty waters—from this God, Job cries in hope, in moral conviction, to God the Vindicator, the eternally righteous One, Author of nature and Friend of man.
This life may terminate before the full revelation of right is made; it may leave the good in darkness and the evil flaunting in pride; the believer may go down in shame and the atheist have the last word. Therefore a future life with judgment in full must vindicate our Creator; and every personality involved in the problems of time must go forward to the opening of the seals and the fulfilment of the things that are written in the volumes of God. This evolution being for the earlier stage and discipline of life, it works out nothing, completes nothing. What it does is to furnish the awaking spirit with material of thought, opportunity for endeavour, the elements of life; with trial, temptation, stimulus, and restraint. No one who lives to any purpose or thinks with any sincerity can miss in the course of his life one hour at least in which he shares the tragical contest and adds the cry of his own soul to that of Job, his own hope to that of ages that are gone, straining to see the Goël who undertakes for every servant of God.
By slow cycles of change the vast scheme of Divine providence draws toward a glorious consummation. The believer waits for it, seeing One who has gone before him and will come after him, the Alpha and Omega of all life. The fulness of time will at length arrive, the time foreordained by God, foretold by Christ, when the throne shall be set, the judgment shall be given, and the æons of manifestation shall begin.
And who in that day shall be the sons of God?
Which of us can say that he knows himself worthy of
IGNORANT CRITICISM OF LIFE.
Zophar speaks. Chap. xx.
If they went on declaring that the root of the matter,
that is, the real cause of his affliction, was to be found
in his own bad life, let them beware the avenging
sword of Divine justice. He certainly implies that his
Goël may become their enemy if they continue to persecute
him with false charges. To Zophar the suggestion
He speaks more hotly than in his first address, because his pride is touched, and that prevents him from distinguishing between a warning and a personal threat. To a Zophar every man is blind who does not see as he sees, and every word offensive that bids him take pause. Believers of his kind have always liked to appropriate the defence of truth, and they have seldom done anything but harm. Conceive the dulness and obstinacy of one who heard an inspired utterance altogether new to human thought, and straightway turned in resentment on the man from whom it came. He is an example of the bigot in the presence of genius, a little uncomfortable, a good deal affronted, very sure that he knows the mind of God, and very determined to have the last word. Such were the Scribes and Pharisees of our Lord's time, most religious persons and zealous for what they considered sound doctrine. His light shone in darkness, and their darkness comprehended it not; they did Him to death with an accusation of impiety and blasphemy—"He made Himself the Son of God," they said.
Zophar's whole speech is a fresh example of the
dogmatic hardness the writer was assailing, the closure
of the mind and the stiffening of thought. One might
not unjustly accuse this speaker of neglecting the moral
difference between the profane whose triumph and joy
he declares to be short, and the good man whose
career is full of years and honour. We may almost
It will be said that if things were rightly ordered,
Christian ideas prevailing in business, in legislation
and social intercourse, the best people would certainly
be in the highest places and have the best of life, and
that, meanwhile, the improvement of the world depends
on some approximation to this state of affairs. That is
to say, spiritual power and character must come into
visible union with the resources of the earth and
possession of its good things, otherwise there will be
no moral progress. Divine providence, we are told,
works after that manner; and the reasoning is plausible
enough to require close attention. There has always
been peril for religion in association with external
power and prestige—and the peril of religion is the
peril of progress. Will spiritual ideas ever urge those
whose lives they rule to seek with any solicitude the
gifts of time? Will they not, on the other hand,
increasingly, as they ought, draw the desires of the
best away from what is immediate, earthly, and in all
the lower senses personal? To put it in a word, must
not the man of spiritual mind always be a prophet, that
is, a critic of human life in its relations to the present
world? Will there come a time in the history of the
race when the criticism of the prophet shall no longer
be needed and his mantle will fall from him? That
can only be when all the Lord's people are prophets,
when everywhere the earthly is counted as nothing in
Zophar discourses of one who is openly unjust and rapacious. He is candid enough to admit that, for a time, the schemes and daring of the wicked may succeed, but affirms that, though his head may "reach to the clouds," it is only that he may be cast down.
As a certainty, based on facts quite evident since the beginning of human history, Zophar presents anew the overthrow of the evil-doer. He is sure that the wicked does not keep his prosperity through a long life. Such a thing has never occurred in the range of human experience. The godless man is allowed, no doubt, to lift himself up for a time; but his day is short. Indeed he is great for a moment only, and that in appearance. He never actually possesses the good things of earth, but only seems to possess them. Then in the hour of judgment he passes like a dream and perishes for ever. The affirmation is precisely that which has been made again and again; and with some curiosity we scan the words of Zophar to learn what addition he makes to the scheme so often pressed.
Sooth to say, there is no reasoning, nothing but
affirmation. He discusses no doubtful case, enters into
no careful discrimination of the virtuous who enjoy
from the godless who perish, makes no attempt to
explain the temporary success granted to the wicked.
The man he describes is one who has acquired wealth
by unlawful means, who conceals his wickedness,
rolling it like a sweet morsel under his tongue. We
are told further that he has oppressed and neglected
the poor and violently taken away a house, and he has
so behaved himself that all the miserable watch for his
downfall with hungry eyes. But these charges, virtually
of avarice, rapacity, and inhumanity, are far from
In an sincerity Zophar speaks, with righteous indignation
He has succeeded for a time, concealing or fortifying
himself among the mountains. He has store of silver
and gold and garments taken by violence, of cattle and
sheep captured in the plain. But the district is roused.
Little by little he is driven back into the uninhabited
desert. His supplies are cut off and he is brought to
extremity. His food becomes to him as the gall of
asps. With all his ill-gotten wealth he is in straits,
for he is hunted from place to place. Not for him now
the luxury of the green oasis and the coolness of
flowing streams. He is an outlaw, in constant danger
of discovery. His children wander to places where
they are not known and beg for bread. Reduced
to abject fear, he restores the goods he had taken by
violence, trying to buy off the enmity of his pursuers.
Vain is resistance when he is brought to bay by his enemies. A moment of overwhelming terror, and he is gone. His tent blazes up and is consumed, as if the breath of God made hot the avenging flame. Within it his wife and children perish. Heaven seems to have called for his destruction and earth to have obeyed the summons. So the craft and strength of the free-booter, living on the flocks and harvests of industrious people, are measured vainly against the indignation of God, who has ordained the doom of wickedness.
A powerful word-picture. Yet if Zophar and the
rest taught such a doctrine of retribution, and, put to
it, could find no other; if they were in the way of
saying, "This is the lot of a wicked man from God,"
how far away must Divine judgment have seemed
from ordinary life, from the falsehoods daily spoken,
the hard words and blows dealt to the slave, the
jealousies and selfishnesses of the harem. Under the
pretext of showing the righteous Judge, Zophar makes
it impossible, or next to impossible, to realise His
It is however when we apply the picture to the case of Job that we see its falsehood. Against the facts of his career Zophar's account of Divine judgment stands out as flat heresy, a foul slander charged on the providence of God. For he means that Job wore in his own settlement the hypocritical dress of piety and benevolence and must have elsewhere made brigandage his trade, that his servants who died by the sword of Chaldæans and Sabeans and the fire of heaven had been his army of rievers, that the cause of his ruin was heaven's intolerance and earth's detestation of so vile a life. Zophar describes poetic justice, and reasons back from it to Job. Now it becomes flagrant injustice against God and man. We cannot argue from what sometimes is to what must be. Although Zophar had taken in hand to convict one really and unmistakably a miscreant, truth alone would have served the cause of righteousness. But he assumes, conjectures, and is immeasurably unjust and cruel to his friend.
ARE THE WAYS OF THE LORD EQUAL?
Job speaks. Chap. xxi.
The opening words are as usual expostulatory, but with a ring of vigour. Job sets the arguments of his friends aside and the only demand he makes now is for their attention.
What he has said hitherto has had little effect upon them; what he is to say may have none. But he will speak; and afterwards, if Zophar finds that he can maintain his theory, why, he must keep to it and mock on. At present the speaker is in the mood of disdaining false judgment. He quite understands the conclusion come to by the friends. They have succeeded in wounding him time after time. But what presses upon his mind is the state of the world as it really is. Another impatience than of human falsehood urges him to speak. He has returned upon the riddle of life he gave Zophar to read—why the tents of robbers prosper and they that provoke God are secure (chap. xii. 6). Suppose the three let him alone for a while and consider the question largely, in its whole scope. They shall consider it, for, certainly, the robber chief may be seen here and there in full swing of success, with his children about him, gaily enjoying the fruit of sin, and as fearless as if the Almighty were his special protector. Here is something that needs clearing up. Is it not enough to make a strong man shake?
Contrast the picture here with those which Bildad and
Zophar painted—and where lies the truth? Sufficiently
on Job's side to make one who is profoundly interested
in the question of Divine righteousness stand appalled.
There was an error of judgment inseparable from that
early stage of human education in which vigour and the
gains of vigour counted for more than goodness and the
gains of goodness, and this error clouding the thought
of Job made him tremble for his faith. Is nature
God's? Does God arrange the affairs of this world?
Why then, under His rule, can the godless have enjoyment,
and those who deride the Almighty feast on the
fat things of His earth? Job has sent into the future
a single penetrating look. He has seen the possibility
of vindication, but not the certainty of retribution. The
underworld into which the evil-doer descends in a
moment, without protracted misery, appears to Job no
hell of torment. It is a region of reduced, incomplete
existence, not of penalty. The very clearness with
which he saw vindication for himself, that is, for the
good man, makes it needful to see the wrong-doer
From the climax of chap. xix. the speeches of Job seem to fall away instead of advancing. The author had one brilliant journey into the unseen, but the peak he reached could not be made a new point of departure. Knowledge he did not possess was now required. He saw before him a pathless ocean where no man had shown the way, and inspiration seems to have failed him. His power lay in remarkably keen analysis and criticism of known theological positions and in glowing poetic sense. His inspiration working through these persuaded him that everywhere God is the Holy and True. It is scarcely to be supposed that condemnation of the evil could have seemed to him of less importance than vindication of the good. Our conclusion therefore must be that a firm advance into the other life was not for genius like his, nor for human genius at its highest. One more than man must speak of the great judgment and what lies beyond.
Clearly Job sees the unsolved enigma of the godless
man's prosperous life, states it, and stands trembling.
Regarding it what have other thinkers said? "If the
law of all creation were justice," says John Stuart Mill, Emerson, Essay III. "Compensation."
And with respect to the high position and success
bad men are allowed to enjoy, another writer, Bushnell,
well points out that permission of their opulence and
power by God aids the development of moral ideas.
"It is simply letting society and man be what they are,
to show what they are." The retributive stroke, swift
and visible, is not needed to declare this. "If one is
hard upon the poor, harsh to children, he makes, or
may, a very great discovery of himself. What is in
him is mirrored forth by his acts, and distinctly mirrored
in them.... If he is unjust, passionate, severe, revengeful,
jealous, dishonest, and supremely selfish, he
is in just that scale of society or social relationship
that brings him out to himself.... Evil is scarcely to
be known as evil till it takes the condition of authority.
We do not understand it till we see what kind of god
it will make, and by what sort of rule it will manage its
empire.... Just here all the merit of God's plan, as
regards the permission of power in the hands of wicked
men, will be found to hinge; namely, on the fact that
evil is not only revealed in its baleful presence and
agency, but the peoples and ages are put heaving
against it and struggling after deliverance from it." Bushnell, "Moral Uses of Dark Things."
But the chapter we are considering shows, if we rightly interpret the obscure 16th verse, that the author tried to get beyond the merely sensuous and earthly reckoning. Those prospered who denied the authority of God and put aside religion with the rudest scepticism. There was no good in prayer, they said; it brought no gain. The Almighty was nothing to them. Without thought of His commands they sought their profit and their pleasure, and found all they desired. Looking steadfastly at their life, Job sees its hollowness, and abruptly exclaims:—
Good! was that good which they grasped—their
abundance, their treasure? Were they to be called
blessed because their children danced to the lute and
the pipe and they enjoyed the best earth could provide?
The real good of life was not theirs. They had not
God; they had not the exultation of trusting and
But Job must argue still against his friends' belief that the wicked are visited with the judgment of the Most High in the loss of their earthly possessions. "The triumphing of the wicked is short," said Zophar, "and the joy of the godless but for a moment." Is it so?
One in a thousand, Job may admit, has the light extinguished in his tent and is swept out of the world. But is it the rule or the exception that such visible judgment falls even on the robber chief? The first psalm has it that the wicked are "like the chaff which the wind driveth away." The words of that chant may have been in the mind of the author. If so, he disputes the doctrine. And further he rejects with contempt the idea that though a transgressor himself lives long and enjoys to the end, his children after him may bear his punishment.
The righteousness Job is in quest of will not be
satisfied with visitation of the iniquities of the fathers
And with the sense of the inscrutable purposes of the Most High burdening his soul he proceeds—
Easy was it to insist that thus or thus Divine providence ordained. But the order of things established by God is not to be forced into harmony with a human scheme of judgment. He who rules in the heights of heaven knows how to deal with men on earth; and for them to teach Him knowledge is at once arrogant and absurd. The facts are evident, must be accepted and reckoned with in all submission; especially must his friends consider the fact of death, how death comes, and they will then find themselves unable to declare the law of the Divine government.
As yet, even to Job, though he has gazed beyond
death, its mystery is oppressive; and he is right in
urging that mystery upon his friends to convict them of
ignorance and presumption. Distinctions they affirm
So far from being overwhelmed in calamity the evil doer is considered, saved as by an unseen hand. Whose hand? My house is wasted, my habitations are desolate, I am in extremity, ready to die. True: but those who go up and down the land would teach you to look for a different end to my career if I had been the proud transgressor you wrongly assume me to have been. I would have found a way of safety when the storm-clouds gathered and the fire of heaven burned. My prosperity would scarcely have been interrupted. If I had been what you say, not one of you would have dared to charge me with crimes against men or impiety towards God. You would have been trembling now before me. The power of an unscrupulous man is not easily broken. He faces fate, braves and overcomes the judgment of society.
And society accepts his estimate of himself, counts
him happy,—pays him honour at his death. The
It is the gathering of a country-side, the tumultuous procession, a vast disorderly crowd before the bier, a multitude after it surging along to the place of tombs. And there, in nature's greenest heart, where the clods of the valley are sweet, they make his grave—and there as over the dust of one of the honourable of the earth they keep watch. Too true is the picture. Power begets fear and fear enforces respect. With tears and lamentations the Arabs went, with all the trappings of formal grief moderns may be seen in crowds following the corpse of one who had neither a fine soul nor a good heart, nothing but money and success to commend him to his fellow-men.
So the writer ends the second act of the drama, and
the controversy remains much where it was. The
meaning of calamity, the nature of the Divine government
of the world are not extracted. This only is
made clear, that the opinion maintained by the three
friends cannot stand. It is not true that joy and wealth
are the rewards of virtuous life. It is not always
the case that the evil-doer is overcome by temporal
DOGMATIC AND MORAL ERROR.
Eliphaz speaks. Chap. xxii.
And why this third round? While it has definite
marks of its own and the closing speeches of Job are
important as exhibiting his state of mind, another
motive seems to be required. And the following may
be suggested. A last indignity offered, last words of
hard judgment spoken, Job enters upon a long review
of his life, with the sense of being victorious in argument,
yet with sorrow rather than exultation because
his prayers are still unanswered; and during all this
time the appearance of the Almighty is deferred.
The impression of protracted delay deepens through
the two hundred and twenty sentences of the third
colloquy in which, one may say, all the resources of
poetry are exhausted. A tragic sense of the silence
Eliphaz begins with a singular question, which he is
moved to state by the whole tenor of Job's reasoning
One must say that Eliphaz opens a question of the
greatest interest both in theology or the knowledge of
God, and in religion or the right feelings of man toward
God. If man as the highest energy, the finest blossoming
and most articulate voice of the creation, is of no consequence
to his Creator, if it makes no difference to the
perfection or complacency of God in Himself whether
man serves the end of his being or not, whether man
does or fails to do the right he was made to love; if
it is for man's sake only that the way of life is provided
for him and the privilege of prayer given him,—then
our glorifying of God is not a reality but a mere form
of speech. The only conclusion possible would be that
even when we serve God earnestly in love and sacrifice
we are in point of fact serving ourselves. If one
wrestles with evil, clings to the truth, renounces all for
righteousness' sake, it is well for him. If he is hard-hearted
Eliphaz thinks it is for man's sake alone God has
created him, surrounded him with means of enjoyment
and progress, given him truth and religion, and laid
on him the responsibilities that dignify his existence.
But what comes then of the contention that, because
Job has sinned, desolation and disease have come to
him from the Almighty? If man's righteousness is of
no account to God, why should his transgressions be
punished? Creating men for their own sake, a beneficent
Maker would not lay upon them duties the neglect
of which through ignorance must needs work their ruin.
We know from the opening scenes of the book that the
Almighty took pleasure in His servant. We see Him
trying Job's fidelity for the vindication of His own
creative power and heavenly grace against the scepticism
of such as the Adversary. Is a faithful servant not
profitable to one whom he earnestly serves? Is it all
the same to God whether we receive His truth or reject
His covenant? Then the urgency of Christ's redemptive
work is a fiction. Satan is not only correct in
regard to Job but has stated the sole philosophy of
human life. We are to fear and serve God for what
we get; and our notions of doing bravely in the great
Regarding this what are we to say? That it is false, an ignorant attempt to exalt God at the expense of man, to depreciate righteousness in the human range for the sake of maintaining the perfection and self-sufficiency of God. But the virtues of man, love, fidelity, truth, purity, justice, are not his own. The power of them in human life is a portion of the Divine energy, for they are communicated and sustained by the Divine Spirit. Were the righteousness, love, and faith instilled into the human mind to fail of their result, were they, instead of growing and yielding fruit, to decay and die, it would be waste of Divine power; the moral cosmos would be relapsing into a chaotic state. If we affirm that the obedience and redemption of man do not profit the Most High, then this world and the inhabitants of it have been called into existence by the Creator in grim jest, and He is simply amusing Himself with our hazardous game.
With the same view of the absolute sovereignty of
God in creation and providence on which Eliphaz founds
in this passage, Jonathan Edwards sees the necessity
of escaping the conclusion to which these verses point.
He argues that God's delight in the emanations of His
fulness in the work of creation shows "His delight in
the infinite fulness of good there is in Himself and the
supreme respect and regard He has for Himself." An Jonathan Edwards, "Dissertation concerning the End for which God created the World," Section IV.
Passing to the next part of Eliphaz's address we find it equally astray for another reason. He asks "Is not thy wickedness great?" and proceeds to recount a list of crimes which appear to have been charged against Job in the base gossip of ill-doing people.
The worst here affirmed against Job is that he has
overborne the righteous claims of widows and orphans.
Bildad and Zophar made a mistake in alleging that
he had been a robber and a freebooter. Yet is
it less unfriendly to give ear to the cruel slanders
of those who in Job's day of prosperity had not
obtained from him all they desired and are now ready
with their complaints? No doubt the offences specified
are such as might have been committed by a man in
Job's position and excused as within his right. To
take a pledge for debt was no uncommon thing.
When water was scarce, to withhold it even from the
weary was no extraordinary baseness. Vambéry tells
us that on the steppes he has seen father and son
fighting almost to the death for the dregs of a skin of
water. Eliphaz, however, a good man, counts it no
Take a broader view of the same controversy. Is
there no exaggeration in the charges thundered sometimes
against poor human nature? Is it not often
thought a pious duty to extort confession of sins men
never dreamed of committing, so that they may be
driven to a repentance that shakes life to its centre and
almost unhinges the reason? With conviction of error,
unbelief, and disobedience the new life must begin.
Yet religion is made unreal by the attempt to force on
the conscience and to extort from the lips an acknowledgment
of crimes which were never intended and are
perhaps far apart from the whole drift of the character.
The truthfulness of John the Baptist's preaching was
very marked. He did not deal with imaginary sins.
And when our Lord spoke of the duties and errors of
men either in discourse or parable, He never exaggerated.
The sins He condemned were all intelligible to
the reason of those addressed, such as the conscience
Having declared Job's imaginary crimes, Eliphaz exclaims, "Therefore snares are round about thee and sudden fear troubleth thee." With the whole weight of assumed moral superiority he bears down upon the sufferer. He takes upon him to interpret providence, and every word is false. Job has clung to God as his Friend. Eliphaz denies him the right, cuts him off as a rebel from the grace of the King. Truly, it may be said, religion is never in greater danger than when it is upheld by hard and ignorant zeal like this.
Then, in the passage beginning at the twelfth verse, the attempt is made to show Job how he had fallen into the sins he is alleged to have committed.
Job imagined that God whose dwelling-place is beyond the clouds and the stars could not see what he did. To accuse him thus is to pile offence upon injustice, for the knowledge of God has been his continual desire.
Finally, before Eliphaz ends the accusation, he identifies Job's frame of mind with the proud indifference of those whom the deluge swept away. Job had talked of the prosperity and happiness of men who had not God in all their thoughts. Was he forgetting that dreadful calamity?
One who chose to go on in the way of transgressors would share their fate; and in the day of his disaster as of theirs the righteous should be glad and the innocent break into scornful laughter.
So Eliphaz closes, finding it difficult to make out his case, yet bound as he supposes to do his utmost for religion by showing the law of the vengeance of God. And, this done, he pleads and promises once more in the finest passage that falls from his lips:—
At last there seems to be a strain of spirituality.
"Acquaint now thyself with God and be at peace."
Reconciliation by faith and obedience is the theme.
Eliphaz is ignorant of much; yet the greatness and
majesty of God, the supreme power which must be propitiated
occupy his thoughts, and he does what he can
to lead his friend out of the storm into a harbour of
safety. Though even in this strophe there mingles a
taint of sinister reflection, it is yet far in advance of
anything Job has received in the way of consolation.
Admirable in itself is the picture of the restoration of
True, in the future experience of Job there may be
disappointment and trouble. Eliphaz cannot but see
that the ill-will of the rabble may continue long, and
perhaps he is doubtful of the temper of his own friends.
But God will help His servant who returns to humble
obedience. And having been himself tried Job will
Put aside the thought that all this is said to Job, and it is surely a counsel of wisdom. To the proud and self-righteous it shows the way of renewal. Away with the treasures, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life, that keep the soul from its salvation. Let the Divine love be precious to thee and the Divine statutes thy joy. Power to deal with life, to overcome difficulties, to serve thy generation shall then be thine. Standing securely in God's grace thou shalt help the weary and heavy laden. Yet Eliphaz cannot give the secret of spiritual peace. He does not really know the trouble at the heart of human life. We need for our Guide One who has borne the burden of a sorrow which had nothing to do with the loss of worldly treasure but with the unrest perpetually gnawing at the heart of humanity, who "bore our sin in His own body unto the tree" and led captivity captive. What the old world could not know is made clear to eyes that have seen the cross against the falling night and a risen Christ in the fresh Easter morning.
WHERE IS ELOAH?
Job speaks. Chaps. xxiii., xxiv.
I must speak of my trouble and you will count it
rebellion. Yet, if I moan and sigh, my pain and weariness
are more than excuse. The crisis of faith is with
him, a protracted misery, and hope hangs trembling in
the balance. The false accusations of Eliphaz are in
his mind; but they provoke only a feeling of weary discontent.
What men say does not trouble him much.
He is troubled because of that which God refuses to do
or say. Many indeed are the afflictions of the righteous.
But every case like his own obscures the providence of
God. Job does not entirely deny the contention of his
friends that unless suffering comes as a punishment
of sin there is no reason for it. Hence, even though
he maintains with strong conviction that the good are
often poor and afflicted while the wicked prosper, yet
he does not thereby clear up the matter. He must
admit to himself that he is condemned by the events of
Has the Most High forgotten to be righteous for a time? When the generous and true are brought into sore straits, is the great Friend of truth neglecting His task as Governor of the world? That would indeed plunge life into profound darkness. And it seems to be even so. Job seeks deliverance from this mystery which has emerged in his own experience. He would lay his cause before Him who alone can explain.
Present to Job's mind here is the thought that he is under condemnation, and along with this the conviction that his trial is not over. It is natural that his mind should hover between these ideas, holding strongly to the hope that judgment, if already passed, will be revised when the facts are fully known.
Now this course of thought is altogether in the
darkness. But what are the principles unknown to
Job, through ignorance of which he has to languish in
doubt? Partly, as we long ago saw, the explanation
lies in the use of trial and affliction as the means of
deepening spiritual life. They give gravity and therewith
the possibility of power to our existence. Even
yet Job has not realised that one always kept in the
primrose path, untouched by the keen air of "misfortune,"
although he had, to begin, a pious disposition
and a blameless record, would be worth little in the
But there is another principle, not yet considered, which enters into the problem and still more lightens up the valley of experience which to Job appeared so dark. The poem touches the fringe of this principle again and again, but never states it. The author saw that men were born to trouble. He made Job suffer more because he had his integrity to maintain than if he had been guilty of transgressions by acknowledging which he might have pacified his friends. The burden lay heavily upon Job because he was a conscientious man, a true man, and could not accept any make-believe in religion. But just where another step would have carried him into the light of blessed acquiescence in the will of God, the power failed, he could not advance. Perhaps the genuineness and simplicity of his character would have been impaired if he had thought of it, and we like him better because he did not. The truth, however, is that Job was suffering for others, that he was, by the grace of God, a martyr, and so far forth in the spirit and position of that suffering Servant of Jehovah of whom we read in the prophecies of Isaiah.
The righteous sufferers, the martyrs, what are they?
Always the vanguard of humanity. Where they go and
the prints of their bleeding feet are left, there is the way
of improvement, of civilisation, of religion. The most
It is in a sense startling to hear this confident expectation
of acquittal at the bar of God. The common
notion is that the only part possible to man in his natural
state is to fear the judgment to come and dread the
hour that shall bring him to the Divine tribunal.
From the ordinary point of view the language of Job
here is dangerous, if not profane. He longs to meet
the Judge; he believes that he could so state his case
We shall indeed find that after the Almighty has
spoken out of the storm, Job says, "I repudiate my
words and repent in dust and ashes." So he appears
to come at last to the confession which, from one point
of view, he ought to have made at the first. But those
words of penitence imply no acknowledgment of iniquity
after all. They are confession of ignorant judgment.
Job admits with sorrow that he has ventured too far in
The author's intention plainly is to justify Job in his desire for the opportunity of pleading his cause, that is, to justify the claim of the human reason to comprehend. It is not an offence to him that much of the Divine working is profoundly difficult to interpret. He acknowledges in humility that God is greater than man, that there are secrets with the Almighty which the human mind cannot penetrate. But so far as suffering and sorrow are appointed to a man and enter into his life, he is considered to have the right of inquiry regarding them, an inherent claim on God to explain them. This may be held the error of the author which he himself has to confess when he comes to the Divine interlocution. There he seems to allow the majesty of the Omnipotent to silence the questions of human reason. But this is really a confession that his own knowledge does not suffice, that he shares the ignorance of Job as well as his cry for light. The universe is vaster than he or any of the Old Testament age could even imagine. The destinies of man form part of a Divine order extending through the immeasurable spaces and the developments of eternal ages.
Once more Job perceives or seems to perceive that access to the presence of the Judge is denied. The sense of condemnation shuts him in like prison walls and he finds no way to the audience chamber. The bright sun moves calmly from east to west; the gleaming stars, the cold moon in their turn glide silently over the vault of heaven. Is not God on high? Yet man sees no form, hears no sound.
But Job is not able to conceive a spiritual presence without shape or voice.
Nature, thou hast taught this man by thy light and thy darkness, thy glorious sun and thy storms, the clear-shining after rain, the sprouting corn and the clusters of the vine, by the power of man's will and the daring love and justice of man's heart. In all thou hast been a revealer. But thou hidest whom thou dost reveal. To cover in thought the multiplicity of thy energies in earth and sky and sea, in fowl and brute and man, in storm and sunshine, in reason, in imagination, in will and love and hope;—to attach these one by one to the idea of a Being almighty, infinite, eternal, and so to conceive this God of the universe—it is, we may say, a superhuman task. Job breaks down in the effort to realise the great God. I look behind me, into the past. There are the footprints of Eloah when He passed by. In the silence an echo of His step may be heard; but God is not there. On the right hand, away beyond the hills that shut in the horizon, on the left hand where the way leads to Damascus and the distant north—not there can I see His form; nor out yonder where day breaks in the east. And when I travel forward in imagination, I who said that my Redeemer shall stand upon the earth, when I strive to conceive His form, still, in utter human incapacity, I fail. "Verily, Thou art a God that hidest Thyself."
And yet, Job's conviction of his own uprightness, is
it not God's witness to his spirit? Can he not be
content with that? To have such a testimony is to
have the very verdict he desires. Well does Boethius,
a writer of the old world though he belonged to the
Christian age, press beyond Job where he writes: "He
is always Almighty, because He always wills good and
never any evil. He is always equally gracious. By
His Divine power He is everywhere present. The
Eternal and Almighty always sits on the throne of His
power. Thence He is able to see all, and renders to
every one with justice, according to his works. Therefore
it is not in vain that we have hope in God; for
He changes not as we do. But pray ye to Him
humbly, for He is very bountiful and very merciful.
Hate and fly from evil as ye best may. Love virtues
and follow them. Ye have great need that ye always
do well, for ye always in the presence of the Eternal
and Almighty God do all that ye do. He beholds it
all, and He will recompense it all." "Consolation of Philosophy," chap. xlii.
Amiel, on the other hand, would fain apply to Job
a reflection which has occurred to himself in one of
the moods that come to a man disappointed, impatient
of his own limitations. In his journal, under date
January 29th, 1866, he writes: "It is but our secret
self-love which is set upon this favour from on high;
such may be our desire, but such is not the will of
God. We are to be exercised, humbled, tried and
tormented to the end. It is our patience which is the
touchstone of our virtue. To bear with life even when
illusion and hope are gone; to accept this position of
perpetual war, while at the same time loving only Mrs. Ward's translation, p. 116.
Bravely, not in mere vaunt he speaks, and it is good
to hear him still able to make such a claim. Why do
we not also hold fast to the garment of our Divine
Friend? Why do we not realise and exhibit the
But again from brave affirmation Job falls back exhausted.
"Festus," edition 1864, p. 503.
So, as Bailey makes his Festus speak, might Job have spoken here. For now it seems to him that to call on God is fruitless. Eloah is of one mind. His will is steadfast, immovable. Death is in the cup and death will come. On this God has determined. Nor is it in Job's case alone so sore a doom is performed by the Almighty. Many such things are with Him. The waves of trouble roll up from the deep dark sea and go over the head of the sufferer. He lies faint and desolate once more. The light fades, and with a deep sigh because he ever came to life he shuts his lips.
Natural religion ends always with a sigh. The sense
of God found in the order of the universe, the dim
In chap. xxiv. there is a development of the reasoning contained in Job's reply to Zophar in the second colloquy, and there is also a closer examination of the nature and results of evil-doing than has yet been attempted. In the course of his acute and careful discrimination Job allows something to his friends' side of the argument, but all the more emphasises the series of vivid touches by which the prosperous tyrant is represented. He modifies to some extent his opinion previously expressed that all goes well with the wicked. He finds that certain classes of miscreants do come to confusion, and he separates these from the others, at the same time separating himself beyond question from the oppressor on this side and the murderer and adulterer on that. Accepting the limits of discussion chosen by the friends he exhausts the matter between himself and them. By the distinctions now made and the choice offered, Job arrests personal accusation, and of that we hear no more.
Continuing the idea of a Divine assize which has
Emerson says the world is full of judgment-days; Job thinks it is not, but ought to be. Passing from his own desire to have access to the bar of God and plead there, he now thinks of an open court, a public vindication of God's rule. The Great Assize is never proclaimed. Ages go by; the Righteous One never appears. All things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. Men struggling, sinning, suffering, doubt or deny the existence of a moral Ruler. They ask, Who ever saw this God? If He exists, He is so separate from the world by His own choice that there is no need to consider Him. In pride or in sorrow men raise the question. But no God means no justice, no truth, no penetration of the real by the ideal; and thought cannot rest there.
With great vigour and large knowledge of the world
the writer makes Job point out the facts of human
violence and crime, of human condonation and punishment.
Look at the oppressors and those who cringe
under them, the despots never brought to justice, but
on the contrary growing in power through the fear
and misery of their serfs. Already we have seen how
perilous it is to speak falsely for God. Now we see,
on the other hand, that whoever speaks truly of the
facts of human experience prepares the way for a true
knowledge of God. Those who have been looking in
vain for indications of Divine justice and grace are to
learn that not in deliverance from the poverty and
trouble of this world but in some other way they must
Observe first, says Job, the base and cruel men who remove landmarks and claim as their own a neighbour's heritage, who drive into their pastures flocks that are not theirs, who even take away the one ass of the fatherless and the one ox the widow has for ploughing her scanty fields, who thus with a high hand overbear all the defenceless people within their reach. Zophar had charged Job with similar crimes, and no direct reply was given to the accusation. Now, speaking strongly of the iniquity of such deeds, Job makes his accusers feel their injustice towards him. There are men who do such things. I have seen them, wondered at them, been amazed that they were not struck down by the hand of God. My distress is that I cannot understand how to reconcile their immunity from punishment with my faith in Him whom I have served and trusted as my Friend.
The next picture, from the fifth to the eighth verse, shows in contrast to the tyrant's pride and cruelty the lot of those who suffer at his hands. Deprived of their land and their flocks, herding together in common danger and misery like wild asses, they have to seek for their food such roots and wild fruits as can be found here and there in the wilderness. Half enslaved now by the man who took away their land they are driven to the task of harvesting his fodder and gathering the gleanings of his grapes. Naked they lie in the field, huddling together for warmth, and out among the hills they are wet with the impetuous rains, crouching in vain under the ledges of the rock for shelter.
Worse things too are done, greater sufferings than these have to be endured. Men there are who pluck the fatherless child from the mother's breast, claiming the poor little life as a pledge. Miserable debtors, faint with hunger, have to carry the oppressor's sheaves of corn. They have to grind at the oil-presses, and with never a cluster to slake their thirst tread the grapes in the hot sun. Nor is it only in the country cruelties are practised. Perhaps in Egypt the writer has seen what he makes Job describe, the misery of city life. In the city the dying groan uncared for, and the soul of the wounded crieth out. Universal are the scenes of social iniquity. The world is full of injustice. And to Job the sting of it all is that "God regardeth not the wrong."
Men talk nowadays as if the penury and distress
prevalent in our large towns proved the churches to be
unworthy of their name and place. It may be so. If
this can be proved, let it be proved; and if the institution
called The Church cannot justify its existence and
its Christianity where it should do so by freeing the
poor from oppression and securing their rights to the
weak, then let it go to the wall. But here is Job carrying
the accusation a stage farther, carrying it, with
what may appear blasphemous audacity, to the throne
of God. He has no church to blame, for there is no
church. Or, he himself represents what church there
is. And as a witness for God, what does he find to be
his portion? Behold him, where many a servant of
Divine righteousness has been in past times and is now,
down in the depths, poorest of the poor, bereaved,
diseased, scorned, misunderstood, hopeless. Why is
there suffering? Why are there many in our cities
outcasts of society, such as society is? Job's case is
a partial explanation; and here the church is not to
The emphatic "These" with which verse 13 begins
must be taken as referring to the murderer and adulterer
The interpretation of verses 18-21 which makes
them "either actually in part the work of a popular
hand, or a parody after the popular manner by Job
himself," has no sufficient ground. To affirm that
the passage is introduced ironically and that verse 22
resumes the real history of the murderer, the adulterer,
and the thief is to neglect the distinction between those
Is the daring right-defying evil-doer wasted by disease, preyed upon by terror? Not so. When he appears to have been crushed, suddenly he starts up again in new vigour, and when he dies, it is not prematurely but in the ripeness of full age. With this reaffirmation of the mystery of God's dealings Job challenges his friends. They have his final judgment. The victory he gains is that of one who will be true at all hazards. Perhaps in the background of his thought is the vision of a redemption not only of his own life but of all those broken by the injustice and cruelty of this earth.
THE DOMINION AND THE BRIGHTNESS.
Bildad speaks. Chap. XXV.
The brief ode has a certain dignity raising it above the level of Bildad's previous utterances. He desires to show that Job has been too bold in his criticism of providence. God has sole dominion and claims universal adoration. Where He dwells in the lofty place of unapproachable glory His presence and rule create peace. He is the Lord of innumerable armies (the stars and their inhabitants perhaps), and His light fills the breadth of interminable space, revealing and illuminating every life. Upon this assertion of the majesty of God is based the idea of His holiness. Before so great and glorious a Being how can man be righteous? The universality of His power and the brightness of his presence stand in contrast to the narrow range of human energy and the darkness of the human mind. Behold, says Bildad, the moon is eclipsed by a glance of the great Creator and the stars are cast into shadow by His effulgence; and how shall man whose body is of the earth earthy claim any cleanness of soul? He is like the worm; his kinship is with corruption; his place is in the dust like the creeping things of which he becomes the prey.
The representation of God in His exaltation and
gory has a tone of impressive piety which redeems
Bildad from any suspicion of insolence at this point.
He is including himself and his friends among those
whose lives appear impure in the sight of Heaven. He
is showing that successfully as Job may repel the
charges brought against him, there is at all events one
general condemnation in which with all men he must
It is, however, easy to see that Bildad is still bound to a creed of the superficial kind without moral depth or spiritual force. The ideas are those of a nature religion in which the one God is a supreme Baal or Master, monopolising all splendour, His purity that of the fire or the light. We are shown the Lord of the visible universe whose dwelling is in the high heavens, whose representative is the bright sun from the light of which nothing is hidden. It is easy to point to this splendid apparition and, contrasting man with the great fire-force, the perennial fountain of light, to say—How dark, how puny, how imperfect is man. The brilliance of an Arabian sky through which the sun marches in unobstructed glory seems in complete contrast to the darkness of human life. Yet, is it fair, is it competent to argue thus? Is anything established as to the moral quality of man because he cannot shine like the sun or even with the lesser light of moon or stars? One may allow a hint of strong thought in the suggestion that boundless majesty and power are necessary to perfect virtue, that the Almighty alone can be entirely pure. But Bildad cannot be said to grasp this idea. If it gleams before his mind, the faint flash passes unrecognised. He has not wisdom enough to work out such a thought. And it is nature that according to his argument really condemns man. Job is bidden look up to the sun and moon and stars and know himself immeasurably less pure than they.
But the truth stands untouched that man whose
body is doomed to corruption, man who labours after
The commonplaces of pious thought fall stale and flat in a controversy like the present. Bildad does not realise wherein the right of man in the universe consists. He is trying in vain to instruct one who sees that moral desire and struggle are the conditions of human greatness, who will not be overborne by material splendours nor convicted by the accident of death.
THE OUTSKIRTS OF HIS WAYS.
Job speaks. Chaps. xxvi., xxvii.
Well indeed hast thou spoken, O man of singular intelligence. I am very weak, my arm is powerless. What reassurance, what generous help thou hast provided! I, doubtless, know nothing, and thou hast showered illumination on my darkness.—His irony is bitter. Bildad appears almost contemptible. "To whom hast thou uttered words?" Is it thy mission to instruct me? "And whose spirit came forth from thee?" Dost thou claim Divine inspiration? Job is rancorous; and we are scarcely intended by the writer to justify him. Yet it is galling indeed to hear that calm repetition of the most ordinary ideas when the controversy has been carried into the deep waters of thought. Job desired bread and is offered a stone.
But since Bildad has chosen to descant upon the
greatness and imperial power of God, the subject shall
be continued. He shall be taken into the abyss beneath,
First there is a vivid glance at that mysterious under-world where the shades or spirits of the departed survive in a dim vague existence.
Bildad has spoken of the lofty place where God makes peace. But that same God has the sovereignty also of the nether world. Under the bed of the ocean and those subterranean waters that flow beneath the solid ground where, in the impenetrable darkness, poor shadows of their former selves, those who lived once on earth congregate age after age—there the power of the Almighty is revealed. He does not always exert His will in order to create tranquility. Down in Sheol the refaim are agitated. And nothing is hid from His eye. Abaddon, the devouring abyss, is naked before Him.
Let us distinguish here between the imagery and the
underlying thought, the inspired vision of the writer
and the form in which Job is made to present it.
These notions about Sheol as a dark cavern below
earth and ocean to which the spirits of the dead are
supposed to descend are the common beliefs of the age.
They represent opinion, not reality. But there is a
new flash of inspiration in the thought that God reigns
over the abode of the dead, that even if men escape
punishment here, the judgments of the Almighty may
reach them there. This is the writer's prophetic insight
From Sheol, the under-world, Job points to the northern heavens ablaze with stars. God, he says, stretches that wonderful dome over empty space—the immovable polar star probably appearing to mark the point of suspension. The earth, again, hangs in space on nothing, even this solid earth on which men live and build their cities. The writer is of course ignorant of what modern science teaches, but he has caught the fact which no modern knowledge can deprive of its marvellous character. Then the gathering in immense volumes of watery vapour, how strange is that, the filmy clouds holding rains that deluge a continent, yet not rent asunder. One who is wonderful in counsel must indeed have ordered this universe; but His throne, the radiant seat of His everlasting dominion, He shutteth in with clouds; it is never seen.
At the confines of light and darkness God sets a boundary, the visible horizon, the ocean being supposed to girdle the earth on every side. The pillars of heaven are the mountains, which might be seen in various directions apparently supporting the sky. With awe men looked upon them, with greater awe felt them sometimes shaken by mysterious throbs as if at God's rebuke. From these the poet passes to the sea, the great storm waves that roll upon the shore. God smites through Rahab, subdues the fierce sea—represented as a raging monster. Here, as in the succeeding verse where the fleeing serpent is spoken of, reference is made to nature-myths current in the East. The old ideas of heathen imagination are used simply in a poetical way. Job does not believe in a dragon of the sea, but it suits him to speak of the stormy ocean-current under this figure so as to give vividness to his picture of Divine power. God quells the wild waves; His breath as a soft wind clears away the storm clouds and the blue sky is seen again. The hand of God pierces the fleeing serpent, the long track of angry clouds borne swiftly across the face of the heavens.
The closing words of the chapter are a testimony to
the Divine greatness, negative in form yet in effect
more eloquent than all the rest. It is but the outskirts
of the ways of God we see, a whisper of Him we hear.
The full thunder falls not on our ears. He who sits
on the throne which is for ever shrouded in clouds
and darkness is the Creator of the visible universe but
always separate from it. He reveals Himself in what
we see and hear, yet the glory, the majesty remain
The question may be asked, What place has this poetical tribute to the majesty of God in the argument of the book? Viewed simply as an effort to outdo and correct the utterance of Bildad the speech is not fully explained. We ask further what is meant to be in Job's mind at this particular point in the discussion; whether he is secretly complaining that power and dominion so wide are not manifested in executing justice on earth, or, on the other hand, comforting himself with the thought that judgment will yet return to righteousness and the Most High be proved the All-just? The inquiry has special importance because, looking forward in the book, we find that when the voice of God is heard from the storm it proclaims His matchless power and incomparable wisdom.
At present it must suffice to say that Job is now
made to come very near his final discovery that complete
reliance upon Eloah is not simply the fate but
the privilege of man. Fully to understand Divine
providence is impossible, but it can be seen that One
who is supreme in power and infinite in wisdom,
responsible always to Himself for the exercise of His
power, should have the complete confidence of His
creatures. Of this truth Job lays hold; by strenuous
According to his manner Job turns now from a subject which may be described as speculative to his own position and experience. The earlier part of chap. xxvii. is an earnest declaration in the strain he has always maintained. As vehemently as ever he renews his claim to integrity, emphasizing it with a solemn adjuration.
This is in the old tone of confident self-defence.
God has taken away his right, denied him the outward
signs of innocence, the opportunity of pleading his
cause. Yet, as a believer, he swears by the life of
God that he is a true man, a righteous man. Whatever
betides he will not fall from that conviction and claim.
And let no one say that pain has impaired his reason,
that now if never before he is speaking deliriously.
No: his life is whole in him; God-given life is his,
Having affirmed his sincerity Job proceeds to show what would be the result of deceit and hypocrisy at so solemn a crisis of his life. The underlying idea seems to be that of communion with the Most High, the spiritual fellowship necessary to man's inner life. He could not speak falsely without separating himself from God and therefore from hope. As yet he is not rejected; the consciousness of truth remains with him, and through that he is in touch at least with Eloah. No voice from on high answers him; yet this Divine principle of life remains in his soul. Shall he renounce it?
If I have aught to do with a wicked man such as I am now to describe, one who would pretend to pure and godly life while he had behaved in impious defiance of righteousness, if I have to do with such a man, let it be as an enemy.
The topic is access to God by prayer, that sense of security which depends on the Divine friendship. There comes one moment at least, there may be many, in which earthly possessions are seen to be worthless and the help to the Almighty is alone to any avail. In order to enjoy hope at such a time a man must habitually live with God in sincere obedience. The godless man previously described, the thief, the adulterer whose whole life is a cowardly lie, is cut off from the Almighty. He finds no resource in the Divine friendship. To call upon God always is no privilege of his; he has lost it by neglect and revolt. Job speaks of the case of such a man as in contrast to his own. Although his own prayers remain apparently unanswered he has a reserve of faith and hope. Before God he can still assure himself as the servant of His righteousness, in fellowship with Him who is eternally true. The address closes with these words of retrospection (vv. 11, 12):—
At this point begins a passage which creates great difficulty. It is ascribed to Job, but is entirely out of harmony with all he has said. May we accept the conjecture that it is the missing third speech of Zophar, erroneously incorporated with the "parable" of Job? Do the contents warrant this departure from the received text?
All along Job's contention has been that though an
evil-doer could have no fellowship with God, no joy in
God, yet such a man might succeed in his schemes,
amass wealth, live in glory, go down to his grave in
Now does the passage from the twelfth verse onwards correspond with this strain of thought? It describes the fate of the wicked oppressor in strong language—defeat, desolation, terror, rejection by God, rejection by men. His children are multiplied only for the sword. Sons die and widows are left disconsolate. His treasures, his garments shall not be for his delight; the innocent shall enjoy his substance. His sudden death shall be in shame and agony, and men shall clap their hands at him and hiss him out of his place. Clearly, if Job is the speaker, he must be giving up all he has hitherto contended for, admitting that his friends have argued truly, that after all judgment does fall in this world upon arrogant men. The motive of the whole controversy would be lost if Job yielded this point. It is not as if the passage ran, This or that may take place, this or that may befall the evil-doer. Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar never present more strongly their own view than that view is presented here. Nor can it be said that the writer may be preparing for the confession Job makes after the Almighty has spoken from the storm. When he gives way then, it is only to the extent of withdrawing his doubts of the wisdom and justice of the Divine rule.
The suggestion that Job is here reciting the statements of his friends cannot be entertained. To read "Why are ye altogether vain, saying, This is the portion of the wicked man from God," is incompatible with the long and detailed account of the oppressor's overthrow and punishment. There would be no point or force in mere recapitulation without the slightest irony or caricature. The passage is in grim earnest. On the other hand, to imagine that Job is modifying his former language is, as Dr. A. B. Davidson shows, equally out of the question. With his own sons and daughters lying in their graves, his own riches dispersed, would he be likely to say—"If his children be multiplied it is for the sword"? and
Against supposing this to be Zophar's third speech
the arguments drawn from the brevity of Bildad's last
utterance and the exhaustion of the subjects of debate
have little weight, and there are distinct points of
resemblance between the passage under consideration
and Zophar's former addresses. Assuming it to be his,
it is seen to begin precisely where he left off;—only he
adopts the distinction Job has pointed out and confines
himself now to "oppressors." His last speech closed
with the sentence: "This is the portion of a wicked
man from God, and the heritage appointed unto him by
God." He begins here (ver. 13): "This is the portion
of a wicked man with God, and the heritage of oppressors
which they receive from the Almighty." Again, without
verbal identity, the expressions "God shall cast
the fierceness of His wrath upon him" (chap. xx. 23),
CHORAL INTERLUDE.
Chap. xxviii.
First the industry of man is depicted, that search for the hidden things of the earth which is significant alike of the craving and ingenuity of the human mind.
The poet has seen, perhaps in Idumæa or in Midian
where mines of copper and gold were wrought by the
Egyptians, the various operations here described. Digging
or quarrying, driving tunnels horizontally into the
hills or sinking shafts in the valleys, letting themselves
down by ropes from the edge of a cliff to reach the
On the earth's surface men till their fields, but the hidden treasures that lie below are more valuable than the harvest of maize or wheat.
The reference to fire as an agent in turning up the earth appears to mark a volcanic district, but sapphires and gold are found either in alluvial soil or associated with gneiss and quartz. Perhaps the fire was that used by the miners to split refractory rock. And the cunning of man is seen in this, that he carries into the very heart of the mountains a path which no vulture or falcon ever saw, which the proud beasts and fierce lions have not trodden.
Slowly indeed as compared with modern work of the kind, yet surely, where those earnest toilers desired a way, excavations went on and tunnels were formed with wedge and hammer and pickaxe. The skill of man in providing tools and devising methods, and his patience and assiduity made him master of the very mountains. And when he had found the ore he could extract its precious metal and gems.
For washing his ore when it has been crushed he needs supplies of water, and to this end makes long aqueducts. In Idumæa a whole range of reservoirs may still be seen, by means of which even in the dry season the work of gold-washing might be carried on without interruption. No particle of the precious metal escaped the quick eye of the practised miner. And again, if water began to percolate into his shaft or tunnel, he had skill to bind the streams that his search might not be hindered.
Such then is man's skill, such are his perseverance and success in the quest of things he counts valuable—iron for his tools, copper to fashion into vessels, gold and silver to adorn the crowns of kings, sapphires to gleam upon their raiment. And if in the depths of earth or anywhere the secrets of life could be reached, men of eager adventurous spirit would sooner or later find them out.
It is to be noticed that, in the account given here of
the search after hidden things, attention is confined to
mining operations. And this may appear strange, the
general subject being the quest of wisdom, that is understanding
of the principles and methods by which the
Divine government of the world is carried on. There
was in those days a method of research, widely practised,
to which some allusion might have been expected—the
so-called art of astrology. The Chaldæans had
for centuries observed the stars, chronicled their apparent
movements, measured the distances of the planets
from each other in their unexplained progress through
The poet proceeds:—
The whole range of the physical cosmos, whether open to the examination of man or beyond his reach, is here declared incapable of supplying the clue to that underlying idea by which the course of things is ordered. The land of the living is the surface of the earth which men inhabit. The deep is the under-world. Neither there nor in the sea is the great secret to be found. As for its price, however earnestly men may desire to possess themselves of it, no treasures are of any use it is not to be bought in any market.
While wisdom is thus of value incommensurate with all else men count precious and rare, it is equally beyond the reach of all other forms of mundane life. The birds that soar high into the atmosphere see nothing of it, nor does any creature that wanders far into uninhabitable wilds. Abaddon and Death indeed, the devouring abyss and that silent world which seems to gather and keep all secrets, have heard a rumour of it. Beyond the range of mortal sense some hint there may be of a Divine plan governing the mutations of existence, the fulfilment of which will throw light on the underworld where the spirits of the departed wait in age-long night. But death has no knowledge any more than life. Wisdom is God's prerogative, His activities are His own to order and fulfil.
The evolution, as we should say, of the order of
nature gives fixed and visible embodiment to the
wisdom of God. We must conclude, therefore, that
Yet man has his life and his law. Though intellectual understanding of his world and destiny may fail however earnestly he pursues the quest, he should obtain the knowledge that comes by reverence and obedience. He can adore God, he can distinguish good from evil and seek what is right and true. There lies his hokhma, there, says the poet, it must continue to lie.
The conclusion lays a hush upon man's thought—but leaves it with a doctrine of God and faith reaching above the limitations of time and sense. Reverence for the Divine will not fully known, the pursuit of holiness, fear of the Unseen God are no agnosticism, they are the true springs of religious life.
AS A PRINCE BEFORE THE KING.
Job speaks. Chaps. xxix.-xxxi.
In the whole circle of Job's lamentations this chant is perhaps the most affecting. The language is very beautiful, in the finest style of the poet, and the minor cadences of the music are such as many of us can sympathise with. When the years of youth go by and strength wanes, the Eden we once dwelt in seems passing fair. Of those beyond middle life there are few who do not set their early memories in sharp contrast to the ways they now travel, looking back to a happy valley and long bright summers that are left behind. And even in opening manhood and womanhood the troubles of life often fall, as we may think, prematurely, coming between the mind and the remembered joy of burdenless existence.
First in the years past Job sees by the light of memory the blessedness he had when the Almighty was felt to be his preserver and his strength. Though now God appears to have become an enemy he will not deny that once he had a very different experience. Then nature was friendly, no harm came to him; he was not afraid of the pestilence that walketh in darkness nor the destruction that wasteth at noon-day, for the Almighty was his refuge and fortress. To refuse this tribute of gratitude is far from the mind of Job, and the expression of it is a sign that now at length he is come to a better mind. He seems on the way fully to recover his trust.
The elements of his former happiness are recounted
in detail. God watched over him with constant care,
the lamp of Divine love shone on high and lighted up
the darkness, so that even in the night he could travel
by a way he knew not and feel secure. Days of strength
and pleasure were those when the secret of God, the
sense of intimate fellowship with God, was on his
tent, when his children were about him, that beautiful
band of sons and daughters who were his pride. Then
his steps were bathed in abundance, butter provided by
Chiefly Job remembers with gratitude to God the
esteem in which he was held by all about him. Nature
was friendly and not less friendly were men. When
he went into the city and took his seat in the "broad
place" within the gate, he was acknowledged chief
of the council and court of judgment. The young
men withdrew and stood aside, yea the elders, already
seated in the place of assembly, stood up to receive
him as their superior in position and wisdom. Discussion
was suspended that he might hear and decide.
And the reasons for this respect are given. In the society
thus with idyllic touches represented, two qualities were
highly esteemed—regard for the poor and wisdom in
counsel. Then, as now, the problem of poverty caused
great concern to the elders of cities. Though the population
of an Arabian town could not be great, there were
many widows and fatherless children, families reduced
to beggary by disease or the failure of their poor means
of livelihood, blind and lame persons utterly dependent
on charity, besides wandering strangers and the
vagrants of the desert. By his princely munificence to
these Job had earned the gratitude of the whole region.
Need was met, poverty relieved, justice done in every
case. He recounts what he did, not in boastfulness,
but as one who rejoiced in the ability God had given
him to aid suffering fellow-creatures. Those were indeed
royal times for the generous-hearted man. Full
of public spirit, his ear and hand always open, giving
freely out of his abundance, he commended himself to
the affectionate regard of the whole valley. The ready
way of almsgiving was that alone by which relief was
So far Job rejoices in the recollection of what he had been able to do for the distressed and needy in those days when the lamp of God shone over him. He proceeds to speak of his service as magistrate or judge.
With righteousness in his heart so that all he said and did revealed it and wearing judgment as a turban, he sat and administered justice among the people. Those who had lost their sight and were unable to find the men that had wronged them came to him and he was as eyes to them, following up every clue to the crime that had been committed. The lame who could not pursue their enemies appealed to him and he took up their cause. The poor, suffering under oppression, found him a protector, a father. Yea, "the cause of him that I knew not I searched out." On behalf of total strangers as well as of neighbours he set in motion the machinery of justice.
None were so formidable, so daring and lion-like, but
he faced them, brought them to judgment and compelled
In those days, Job confesses, he had the dream that as he was prosperous, powerful, helpful to others by the grace of God, so he would continue. Why should any trouble fall on one who used power conscientiously for his neighbours? Would not Eloah sustain the man who was as a god to others?
A fine touch of the dream-life which ran on from year to year, bright and blessed as if it would flow for ever. Death and disaster were far away. He would renew his life like the Phœnix, attain to the age of the antediluvian fathers, and have his glory or life strong in him for uncounted years. So illusion flattered him, the very image he uses pointing to the futility of the hope.
The closing strophe of the chapter proceeds with even stronger touch and more abundant colour to represent his dignity. Men listened to him and waited. Like a refreshing rain upon thirsty ground—and how thirsty the desert could be!—his counsel fell on their ears. He smiled upon them when they had no confidence, laughed away their trouble, the light of his countenance never dimmed by their apprehensions. Even when all about him were in dismay his hearty hopeful outlook was unclouded. Trusting God, he knew his own strength and gave freely of it.
Looked up to with this great esteem, acknowledged leader in virtue of his overflowing goodness and cheerfulness, he seemed to make sunshine for the whole community. Such was the past. All that had been, is gone apparently for ever.
How inexpressibly strange that power so splendid, mental, physical and moral strength used in the service of less favoured men should be destroyed by Eloah! It is like blotting out the sun from heaven and leaving a world in darkness. And most strange of all is the way in which low men assist the ruin that has been wrought.
The thirtieth chapter begins with this. Job is derided by the miserable and base whose fathers he would have disdained to set with the dogs of his flock. He paints these people, gaunt with hunger and vice, herding in the wilderness where alone they are suffered to exist, plucking mallows or salt-wort among the bushes and digging up the roots of broom for food. Men hunted them into the desert, crying after them as thieves, and they dwelt in the clefts of the wadies, in caves and amongst rocks. Like wild asses they brayed in the scrub and flung themselves down among the nettles. Children they were of fools, base-born, men who had dishonoured their humanity and been whipped out of the land. Such are they whose song and by-word Job is now become. These, even these abhor him and spit in his face. He makes the contrast deep and dreadful as to his own experience and the moral confusion that has followed Eloah's strange work. For good there is evil, for light and order there is darkness. Does God desire this, ordain it?
One is inclined to ask whether the abounding compassion
Perhaps one might say the tone he takes now is pardonable, or almost pardonable, because these wretched beings, whom he may have treated kindly once, have seized the occasion of his misery and disease to insult him to his face. While the words appear hard, the uselessness of the pariah may be the main point. Yet a little of the pride of birth clings to Job. In this respect he is not perfect; here his prosperous life needs a check. The Almighty must speak to him out of the tempest that he may feel himself and find "the blessedness of being little."
These outcasts throw off all restraint and behave with disgraceful rudeness in his presence.
The various images, of a besieging army, of those who
Thought shifts naturally to the awful disease which has caused his body to swell and to become black as with dust and ashes. And this leads him to his final vehement complaint against Eloah. How can He so abase and destroy His servant?
Standing up in his wretchedness he is fully visible
to the Divine eye, still no prayer moves Eloah the
terrible from His purpose. It seems to be finally appointed
that in dishonour Job shall die. Yet, destined
to this fate, his hope a mockery, shall he not stretch
out his hand, cry aloud as life falls to the grave in
ruin? How differently is God treating him from the
Thus the full measure of complaint is again poured out, unchecked by thought that dignity of life comes more with suffering patiently endured than with pleasure. Job does not know that out of trouble like his a man may rise more human, more noble, his harp furnished with new strings of deeper feeling, a finer light of sympathy shining in his soul. Consistently, throughout, the author keeps this thought in the background, showing hopeless sorrow, affliction, unrelieved by any sense of spiritual gain, pressing with heaviest and most weary weight upon a good man's life. The only help Job has is the consciousness of virtue, and that does not check his complaint. The antinomies of life, the past as compared with the present, Divine favour exchanged for cruel persecution, well-doing followed by most grievous pain and dishonour, are to stand at the last full in view. Then He who has justice in His keeping shall appear. God Himself shall declare and claim His supremacy and His design.
This purpose of the author achieved, the last passage
of Job's address—chap. xxxi.—rings bold and clear
I. From the taint of lustful and base desire he first
clears himself. He has been pure in life, innocent
even of wandering looks which might have drawn him
into uncleanness. He has made a covenant with his
eyes and kept it. Sin of this kind, he knew, always
Grouped along with this "lust of the flesh" is the
"lust of the eyes," covetous desire. The itching palm
to which money clings, false dealing for the sake of
gain, crafty intrigues for the acquisition of a plot of
ground or some animal—such things were far from him.
He claims to be weighed in a strict balance, and pledges
himself that as to this he will not be found wanting.
So thoroughly is he occupied with this defence that he
speaks as if still able to sow a crop and look for the
harvest. He would expect to have the produce snatched
from his hand if the vanity of greed and getting had
led him astray. Returning then to the more offensive
suspicion that he had laid wait treacherously at his
neighbour's door, he uses the most vigorous words to
show at once his detestation of such offence and the
result he believes it always to have. It is an enormity,
a nefarious thing to be punished by the judges.
More than that, it is a fire that consumes to Abaddon,
wasting a man's strength and substance so that they
are swallowed as by the devouring abyss. As to this,
Job's reading of life is perfectly sound. Wherever
society exists at all, custom and justice are made to
bear as heavily as possible on those who invade the
foundation of society and the rights of other men.
Yet the keenness with which immorality of the particular
kind is watched fans the flame of lust. Nature
appears to be engaged against itself; it may be charged
II. Another possible imputation was that as a master or employer he had been harsh to his underlings. Common enough it was for those in power to treat their dependants with cruelty. Servants were often slaves; their rights as men and women were denied. Regarding this, the words put into the mouth of Job are finely humane, even prophetic:—
The rights of those who toiled for him were sacred, not as created by any human law which for so many hours' service might compel so much stipulated hire, but as conferred by God. Job's servants were men and women with an indefeasible claim to just and considerate treatment. It was accidental, so to speak, that Job was rich and they poor, that he was master and they under him. Their bodies were fashioned like his, their minds had the same capacity of thought, of emotion, of pleasure and pain. At this point there is no hardness of tone or pride of birth and place. These are well-doing people to whom as head of the clan Job stands in place of a father.
And his principle, to treat them as their inheritance
of the same life from the same Creator gave them a right
to be dealt with, is prophetic, setting forth the duties of
all who have power to those who toil for them. Men are
often used like beasts of burden. No tyranny on earth
is so hateful as many employers, driving on their huge
III. To the poor, the widow, the fatherless, the perishing, Job next refers. Beyond the circle of his own servants there were needy persons whom he had been charged with neglecting and even oppressing. He has already made ample defence under this head. If he has lifted his hand against the fatherless, having good reason to presume that the judges would be on his side—then may his shoulder fall from the shoulder-blade and his arm from the collar-bone. Calamity from God was a terror to Job, and recognising the glorious authority which enforces the law of brotherly help he could not have lived in proud enjoyment and selfish contempt.
IV. Next he repudiates the idolatry of wealth and
the sin of adoring the creature instead of the Creator.
Rich as he was, he can affirm that he never thought
And for his religion: true to those spiritual ideas
which raised him far above superstition and idolatry,
even when the rising sun seemed to claim homage as
a fit emblem of the unseen Creator, or when the full
moon shining in a clear sky seemed a very goddess of
purity and peace, he had never, as others were wont
to do, carried his hand to his lips. He had seen the
worship of Baal and Ishtar, and there might have come
to him, as to whole nations, the impulses of wonder, of
delight, of religious reverence. But he can fearlessly
say that he never yielded to the temptation to adore
anything in heaven or earth. It would have been to
deny Eloah the Supreme. Dr. Davidson reminds us
here of a legend embodied in the Koran for the purpose
of impressing the lesson that worship should be paid
to the Lord of all creatures, "whose shall be the kingdom
on the day whereon the trumpet shall be sounded."
The Almighty says: "Thus did We show unto Abraham
the kingdom of heaven and earth, that he might become
of those who firmly believe. And when the night
overshadowed him he saw a star, and he said, This is
my Lord; but when it set he said, I like not those that
set. And when he saw the moon rising he said, This
is my Lord; but when he saw it set he said, Verily,
if my Lord direct me not, I shall become one of the
V. He proceeds to declare that he has never rejoiced over a fallen enemy nor sought the life of any one with a curse. He distinguishes himself very sharply from those who in the common Oriental way dealt curses without great provocation, and those even who kept them for deadly enemies. So far was this rancorous spirit from him that friends and enemies alike were welcome to his hospitality and help. Verse 31 means that his servants could boast of being unable to find a single stranger who had not sat at his table. Their business was to furnish it every day with guests. Nor will Job allow that after the manner of men he skilfully covered transgressions. "If, guilty of some base thing, I concealed it, as men often do, because I was afraid of losing caste, afraid lest the great families would despise me...." Such a thought or fear never presented itself to him. He could not thus have lived a double life. All had been above-board, in the clear light of day, ruled by one law.
In connection with this it is that he comes with princely appeal to the King.
The words are to be defended only on the ground that the Eloah to whom a challenge is here addressed is God misunderstood, God charged falsely with making unfounded accusations against His servant and punishing him as a criminal. The Almighty has not been doing so. The vicious reasoning of the friends, the mistaken creed of the age make it appear as if He had. Men say to Job, You suffer because God has found evil in you. He is requiting you according to your iniquity. They maintain that for no other reason could calamities have come upon him. So God is made to appear as the man's adversary; and Job is forced to the demonstration that he has been unjustly condemned. "Behold my signature," he says: I state my innocence; I set to my mark; I stand by my claim: I can do nothing else. Let the Almighty prove me at fault. God, you say, has a book in which His charges against me are written out. I wish I had that book! I would fasten it upon my shoulder as a badge of honour; yea, I would wear it as a crown. I would show Eloah all I have done, every step I have taken through life by day and night. I would evade nothing. In the assurance of integrity I would go to the King; as a prince I would stand in His presence. There face to face with Him whom I know to be just and righteous I would justify myself as His servant, faithful in His house.
Is it audacity, impiety? The writer of the book
does not mean it to be so understood. There is not
The ignorance of Job represents the ignorance of the old world. Notwithstanding the tenor of his prologue the writer is without a theory of human affliction applicable to every case, or even to the experience of Job. He can only say and repeat, God is supremely wise and righteous, and for the glory of His wisdom and righteousness He ordains all that befalls men. The problem is not solved till we see Christ, the Captain of our salvation, made perfect by suffering, and know that our earthly affliction "which is for the moment worketh for us more and more exceedingly an eternal weight of glory."
The last verses of the chapter may seem out of place. Job speaks as a landowner who has not encroached on the fields of others but honestly acquired his estate, and as a farmer who has tilled it well. This seems a trifling matter compared with others that have been considered. Yet, as a kind of afterthought, completing the review of his life, the detail is natural.
A farmer of the right kind would have great shame if poor crops or wet furrows cried against him, or if he could otherwise be accused of treating the land ill. The touch is realistic and forcible.
Still it is plain at the close that the character of Job is idealised. Much may be received as matter of veritable history; but on the whole the life is too fine, pure, saintly for even an extraordinary man. The picture is clearly typical. And it is so for the best reason. An actual life would not have set the problem fully in view. The writer's aim is to rouse thought by throwing the contradictions of human experience so vividly upon a prepared canvas that all may see. Why do the righteous suffer? What does the Almighty mean? The urgent questions of the race are made as insistent as art and passion, ideal truth and sincerity, can make them. Job lying in the grime of misery yet claiming his innocence as a prince before the Eternal King, demands on behalf of humanity the vindication of providence, the meaning of the world scheme.
POST-EXILIC WISDOM.
Chaps. xxxii.-xxxiv.
It is significant that both Elihu and his representations
are ignored in the winding up of the action. The
address of the Almighty from the storm does not take
him into account and seems to follow directly on the
close of Job's defence. It is a very obvious criticism,
therefore, that the long discourse of Elihu may be an
interpolation or an afterthought—a fresh attempt by
the author or by some later writer to correct errors
into which Job and his friends are supposed to have
fallen and to throw new light on the matter of discussion.
The textual indications are all in favour of
this view. The style of the language appears to belong
to a later time than the other parts of the book. But
to reject the address as unworthy of a place in the
It is suggested by M. Renan that the original author, taking up his work again after a long interval, at a period in his life when he had lost his verve and his style, may have added this fragment with the idea of completing the poem. There are strong reasons against such an explanation. For one thing there seems to be a misconception where, at the outset, Elihu is made to assume that Job and his friends are very old. The earlier part of the poem by no means affirms this. Job, though we call him a patriarch, was not necessarily far advanced in life, and Zophar appears considerably younger. Again the contention in the eighth verse—"There is a spirit in man, and the breath of the Almighty giveth them understanding"—seems to be the justification a later writer would think it needful to introduce. He acknowledges the Divine gift of the original poet and adding his criticism claims for Elihu, that is, for himself, the lucidity God bestows on every calm and reverent student of His ways. This is considerably different from anything we find in the addresses of the other speakers. It seems to show that the question of inspiration had arisen and passed through some discussion. But the rest of the book is written without any consciousness, or at all events any admission of such a question.
Elihu appears to represent the new "wisdom" which came to Hebrew thinkers in the period of the exile; and there are certain opinions embodied in his address which must have been formed during an exile that brought many Jews to honour. The reading of affliction given is one following the discovery that the general sinfulness of a nation may entail chastisement on men who have not personally been guilty of great sin, yet are sharers in the common neglect of religion and pride of heart, and further that this chastisement may be the means of great profit to those who suffer. It would be harsh to say the tone is that of a mind which has caught the trick of "voluntary humility," of pietistic self-abasement. Yet there are traces of such a tendency, the beginning of a religious strain opposed to legal self-righteousness, running, however, very readily to excess and formalism. Elihu, accordingly, appears to stand on the verge of a descent from the robust moral vigour of the original author towards that low ground in which false views of man's nature hinder the free activity of faith.
The note struck by the Book of Job had stirred
eager thought in the time of the exile. Just as in the
Middle Ages of European history the Divine Comedy
of Dante was made a special study, and chairs were
founded in universities for its exposition, so less
formally the drama of Job was made the subject of
inquiry and speculation. We suppose then that among
the many who wrote on the poem, one acting for a
circle of thinkers incorporated their views in the text.
He could not do so otherwise than by bringing a new
speaker on the stage. To add anything to what
Eliphaz or Bildad or Job had said would have prevented
the free expression of new opinion. Nor could
The narrative verses which introduce the new speaker state that his wrath was kindled against Job because he justified himself rather than God, and against the three friends because they had condemned Job and yet found no answer to his arguments. The mood is that of a critic rather hot, somewhat too confident that he knows, beginning a task that requires much penetration and wisdom. But the opening sentences of the speech of Elihu betray the need the writer felt to justify himself in making his bold venture.
These verses are a defence of the new writer's boldness in adding to a poem that has come down from a previous age. He is confident in his judgment, yet realises the necessity of commending it to the hearers. He claims that inspiration which belongs to every reverent conscientious inquirer. On this footing he affirms a right to express his opinion, and the right cannot be denied.
Elihu has been disappointed with the speeches of Job's
friends. He has listened for their reasons, observed
how they cast about for arguments and theories; but
no one said anything convincing. It is an offence
to this speaker that men who had so good a case
against their friend made so little of it. The intelligence
of Elihu is therefore from the first committed
Elihu tells the friends that they are not to say, We have found wisdom in Job, unexpected wisdom which the Almighty alone is able to vanquish. They are not to excuse themselves nor exaggerate the difficulties of the situation by entertaining such an opinion. Elihu is confident that he can overcome Job in reasoning. As if speaking to himself he describes the perplexity of the friends and states his intention.
His convictions become stronger and more urgent.
He must open his lips and answer. And he will use
no flattery. Neither the age nor the greatness of the
men he is addressing shall keep him from speaking his
mind. If he were insincere he would bring on himself
the judgment of God. "My Maker would soon take
me away." Here again the second writer's self-defence
The general exordium closes with the thirty-second chapter, and in the thirty-third Elihu, addressing Job by name, enters on a new vindication of his right to intervene. His claim is still that of straightforwardness, sincerity. He is to express what he knows without any other motive than to throw light on the matter in hand. He feels himself, moreover, to be guided by the Divine Spirit. The breath of the Almighty has given him life; and on this ground he considers himself entitled to enter the discussion and ask of Job what answer he can give. This is done with dramatic feeling. The life he enjoys is not only physical vigour as contrasted with Job's diseased and infirm state, but also intellectual strength, the power of God-given reason. Yet, as if he might seem to claim too much, he hastens to explain that he is quite on Job's level nevertheless.
Elihu is no great personage, no heaven-sent prophet
whose oracles must be received without question. He
is not terrible like God, but a man formed out of the
clay. The dramatising appears overdone at this point,
and can only be explained by the desire of the writer
to keep on good terms with those who already reverenced
the original poet and regarded his work as sacred.
What is now to be said to Job is spoken with knowledge
The formal indictment opens thus:—
The claim of righteousness, the explanation of his
troubles given by Job that God made occasions against
him and without cause treated him as an enemy, are
the errors on which Elihu fastens. They are the errors
of the original writer. No one endeavouring to represent
the feelings and language of a servant of God
should have placed him in the position of making so false
a claim, so base a charge against Eloah. Such criticism
is not to be set aside as either incompetent or over
bold. But the critic has to justify his opinion, and, like
It is to be noted that attention is fixed on isolated expressions which fell from Job's lips, that there is no endeavour to set forth fully the attitude of the sufferer towards the Almighty. Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar had made Job an offender for a word and Elihu follows them. We anticipate that his criticism, however telling it may be, will miss the true point, the heart of the question. He will possibly establish some things against Job, but they will not prove him to have failed as a brave seeker after truth and God.
Opposing the claim and complaint he has quoted,
Elihu advances in the first instance a proposition
which has the air of a truism—"God is greater than
man." He does not try to prove that even though a
man has appeared to himself righteous he may really
be sinful in the sight of the Almighty, or that God has
the right to afflict an innocent person in order to bring
about some great and holy design. The contention is
that a man should suffer and be silent. God is not to
be questioned; His providence is not to be challenged.
A man, however he may have lived, is not to doubt
that there is good reason for his misery if he is miserable.
He is to let stroke after stroke fall and utter no
complaint. And yet Job had erred in saying, "God
giveth not account of any of His matters." It is not
true, says Elihu, that the Divine King holds Himself
entirely aloof from the inquiries and prayers of His
The first way in which, according to Elihu, God speaks to men is by a dream, a vision of the night; and the second way is by the chastisement of pain.
Now as to the first of these, the dream or vision, Elihu had, of course, the testimony of almost universal belief, and also of some cases that passed ordinary experience. Scriptural examples, such as the dreams of Jacob, of Joseph, of Pharaoh, and the prophetic visions already recognised by all pious Hebrews, were no doubt in the writer's mind. Yet if it is implied that Job might have learned the will of God from dreams, or that this was a method of Divine communication for which any man might look, the rule laid down was at least perilous. Visions are not always from God. A dream may come "by the multitude of business." It is true, as Elihu says, that one who is bent on some proud and dangerous course may be more himself in a dream than in his waking hours. He may see a picture of the future which scares him, and so he may be deterred from his purpose. Yet the waking thoughts of a man, if he is sincere and conscientious, are far more fitted to guide him, as a rule, than his dreams.
Passing to the second method of Divine communication,
Elihu appears to be on safer ground. He describes
the case of an afflicted man brought to extremity by
disease, whose soul draweth near to the grave and his
life to the destroyers or death-angels. Such suffering
and weakness do not of themselves insure knowledge
Elihu cannot say that such an angel or interpreter
will certainly appear. He may: and if he does and
points the way of uprightness, and that way is followed,
then the result is redemption, deliverance, renewed
prosperity. But who is this angel? "One of the
ministering spirits sent forth to do service on behalf of
the heirs of salvation?" The explanation is somewhat
far-fetched. The ministering angels were not restricted
in number. Each Hebrew was supposed to have two
such guardians. Then Malachi says, "The priest's lips
should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law
at his mouth; for he is the angel (messenger) of Jehovah
Sebaoth." Here the priest appears as an angel-interpreter,
and the passage seems to throw light on Elihu's
meaning. As no explicit mention is made of a priest
or any priestly function in our text, it may at least be
hinted that interpreters of the law, scribes or incipient
rabbis are intended, of whom Elihu claims to be one.
In this case the ransom would remain without explanation.
But if we take that as a sacrificial offering, the
name "angel-interpreter" covers a reference to the
properly accredited priest. The passage is so obscure
that little can be based upon it; yet assuming the Elihu
discourses to be of late origin and intended to bring
the poem into line with orthodox Hebrew thought the
The promise he virtually makes to Job is like those of Eliphaz and the others,—renewed health, restored youth, the sense of Divine favour. Enjoying these, the forgiven penitent sings before men, acknowledging his fault and praising God for his redemption. The assurance of deliverance was probably made in view of the epilogue, with Job's confession and the prosperity restored to him. But the writer misunderstands the confession, and promises too glibly. It is good to receive after great affliction the guidance of a wise interpreter; and to seek God again in humility is certainly a man's duty. But would submission and the forgiveness of God bring results in the physical sphere, health, renewed youth and felicity? No invariable nexus of cause and effect can be established here from experience of the dealings of God with men. Elihu's account of the way in which the Almighty communicates with His creatures must be declared a failure. It is in some respects careful and ingenious, yet it has no sufficient ground of evidence. When he says—
the design is pious, but the great question of the book is not touched. The righteous suffer like the wicked from disease, bereavement, disappointment, anxiety. Even when their integrity is vindicated the lost years and early vigour are not restored. It is useless to deal in the way of pure fancy with the troubles of existence. We say to Elihu and all his school, Let us be at the truth, let us know the absolute reality. There are valleys of human sorrow, suffering, and trial in which the shadows grow deeper as the traveller presses on, where the best are often most afflicted. We need another interpreter than Elihu, one who suffers like us and is made perfect by suffering, through it entering into His glory.
An invocation addressed by Elihu to the bystanders begins chap. xxxiv. Again he emphatically asserts his right to speak, his claim to be a guide of those who think on the ways of God. He appeals to sound reason and he takes his auditors into counsel—"Let us choose to ourselves judgment; let us know among ourselves what is good." The proposal is that there shall be conference on the subject of Job's claim. But Elihu alone speaks. It is he who selects "what is good."
Certain words that fell from the lips of Job are again
his text. Job hath said, I am righteous, I am in the
right; and, God hath taken away my judgment or
vindication. When those words were used the meaning
of Job was that the circumstances in which he had
been placed, the troubles appointed by God seemed to
prove him a transgressor. But was he to rest under
a charge he knew to be untrue? Stricken with an
incurable wound though he had not transgressed, was
he to be against his right by remaining silent? This,
Job had spoken of his right which God had taken away. What was his right? Was he, as he affirmed, without transgression? On the contrary, his principles were irreligious. There was infidelity beneath his apparent piety. Elihu will prove that so far from being clear of blame he has been imbibing wrong opinions and joining the company of the wicked. This attack shows the temper of the writer. No doubt certain expressions put into the mouth of Job by the original dramatist might be taken as impeaching the goodness or the justice of God. But to assert that even the most unguarded passages of the book made for impiety was a great mistake. Faith in God is to be traced not obscurely but as a shaft of light through all the speeches put into the mouth of his hero by the poet. One whose mind is bound by certain pious forms of thought may fail to see the light, but it shines nevertheless.
The attempt made by Elihu to establish his charge has an appearance of success. Job, he says, is one who drinks up impiety like water and walks with wicked men,—
If this were true, Job would indeed be proved irreligious.
Such a statement strikes at the root of faith and
obedience. But is Elihu representing the text with
God is strong and is breaking him with a tempest. Job finds it useless to defend himself and maintain that he is perfect. In the midst of the storm he is so tossed that he despises his life; and in perplexity he cries,—It is all one whether I am righteous or not, God destroys the good and the vile alike. Again we find him saying, "Wherefore do the wicked live, become old, yea, are mighty in power?" And in another passage he inquires why the Almighty does not appoint days of judgment. These are the expressions on which Elihu founds his charge, but the precise words attributed to Job were never used by him, and in many places he both said and implied that the favour of God was his greatest joy. The second author is either misapprehending or perverting the language of his predecessor. His argument accordingly does not succeed.
Passing at present from the charge of impiety, Elihu takes up the suggestion that Divine providence is unjust and sets himself to show that, whether men delight themselves in the Almighty or not, He is certainly All-righteous. And in this contention, so long as he keeps to generalities and does not take special account of the case which has roused the whole controversy, he speaks with some power. His argument comes properly to this, If you ascribe injustice or partiality to Him whom you call God, you cannot be thinking of the Divine King. From His very nature and from His position as Lord of all, God cannot be unjust. As Maker and Preserver of life He must be faithful.
Has God any motive for being unjust? Can any one urge Him to what is against His nature? The thing is impossible. So far Elihu has all with him, for all alike believe in the sovereignty of God. The Most High, responsible to Himself, must be conceived of as perfectly just. But would He be so if He were to destroy the whole of His creatures? Elihu says, God's sovereignty over all gives Him the right to act according to His will; and His will determines not only what is, but what is right in every case.
The life of all creatures implies that the mind of the Creator goes forth to His universe, to rule it, to supply the needs of all living beings. He is not wrapped up in Himself, but having given life He provides for its maintenance.
Another personal appeal in verse 16 is meant to secure attention to what follows, in which the idea is carried out that the Creator must rule His creatures by a law of justice.
Here the principle is good, the argument or illustration inconclusive. There is a strong foundation in the thought that God, who could if He desired withdraw all life, but on the other hand sustains it, must rule according to a law of perfect righteousness. If this principle were kept in the front and followed up we should have a fruitful argument. But the philosophy of it is beyond this thinker, and he weakens his case by pointing to human rulers and arguing from the duty of subjects to abide by their decision and at least attribute to them the virtue of justice. No doubt society must be held together by a head either hereditary or chosen by the people, and, so long as his rule is necessary to the well-being of the realm, what he commands must be obeyed and what he does must be approved as if it were right. But the writer either had an exceptionally favourable experience of kings, as one, let us suppose, honoured like Daniel in the Babylonian exile, or his faith in the Divine right of princes blinded him to much injustice. It is a mark of his defective logic that he rests his case for the perfect righteousness of God upon a sentiment or what may be called an accident.
And when Elihu proceeds, it is with some rambling
sentences in which the suddenness of death, the insecurity
of human things, and the trouble and distress
coming now on whole nations now on workers of
iniquity are all thrown together for the demonstration
of Divine justice. We hear in these verses (20 to 28)
the echoes of disaster and exile, of the fall of thrones
and empires. Because the afflicted tribes of Judah
Leaving this unfortunate attempt at reasoning we enter at verse 31 on a passage in which the circumstances of Job are directly dealt with.
Here the argument seems to be that a man like Job,
The ideas of Elihu are few and fixed. When his
attempts to convince betray his weakness in argument,
he falls back on the vulgar expedient of brow-beating
the defendant. He is a type of many would-be
interpreters of Divine providence, forcing a theory of
religion which admirably fits those who reckon themselves
favourites of heaven, but does nothing for the
many lives that are all along under a cloud of trouble
and grief. The religious creed which alone can satisfy
THE DIVINE PREROGATIVE.
Chaps. xxxv.-xxxvii.
In one of his replies Job, speaking of the wicked,
represented them as saying, "What is the Almighty
that we should serve Him? and what profit should we
have if we pray unto Him?" (chap. xxi. 15). He
added then, "The counsel of the wicked be far from
me." Job is now declared to be of the same opinion as
the wicked whom he condemned. The man who again
and again appealed to God from the judgment of his
friends, who found consolation in the thought that his
witness was in heaven, who, when he was scorned,
sought God in tears and hoped against hope for His
redemption, is charged with holding faith and religion
of no advantage. Is it in misapprehension or with
Elihu is actually proving, not that Job expects too little from religion and finds no profit in it, but that he expects too much. Anxious to convict, he will show that man has no right to make his faith depend on God's care for his integrity. The prologue showed the Almighty pleased with His servant's faithfulness. That, says Elihu, is a mistake.
Consider the clouds and the heavens which are far
above the world. Thou canst not touch them, affect
them. The sun and moon and stars shine with undiminished
brightness however vile men may be. The
clouds come and go quite independently of the crimes of
men. God is above those clouds, above that firmament.
Neither can the evil hands of men reach His throne,
nor the righteousness of men enhance His glory. It is
precisely what we heard from the lips of Eliphaz (chap.
xxii. 2-4), an argument which abuses man for the sake
of exalting God. Elihu has no thought of the spiritual
If, however, the question must still be answered, What good end is served by human virtue? the reply is,—
God sustains the righteous and punishes the wicked, not for the sake of righteousness itself but purely for the sake of men. The law is that of expediency. Let not man dream of witnessing for God, or upholding any eternal principle dear to God. Let him confine religious fidelity and aspiration to their true sphere, the service of mankind. Regarding which doctrine we may simply say that, if religion is profitable in this way only, it may as well be frankly given up and the cult of happiness adopted for it everywhere. But Elihu is not true to his own dogma.
The next passage, beginning with verse 9, seems to be an indictment of those who in grievous trouble do not see and acknowledge the Divine blessings which are the compensations of their lot. Many in the world are sorely oppressed. Elihu has heard their piteous cries. But he has this charge against them, that they do not realise what it is to be subjects of the heavenly King.
These cries of the oppressed are complaints against pain, natural outbursts of feeling, like the moans of wounded animals. But those who are cruelly wronged may turn to God and endeavour to realise their position as intelligent creatures of His who should feel after Him and find Him. If they do so, then hope will mingle with their sorrow and light arise on their darkness. For in the deepest midnight God's presence cheers the soul and tunes the voice to songs of praise. The intention is to show that when prayer seems of no avail and religion does not help, it is because there is no real faith, no right apprehension by men of their relation to God. Elihu, however, fails to see that if the righteousness of men is not important to God as righteousness, much less will He be interested in their grievances. The bond of union between the heavenly and the earthly is broken; and it cannot be restored by showing that the grief of men touches God more than their sin. Job's distinction is that he clings to the ethical fellowship between a sincere man and his Maker and to the claim and the hope involved in that relationship. There we have the jewel in the lotus-flower of this book, as in all true and noble literature. Elihu, like the rest, is far beneath Job. If he can be said to have a glimmering of the idea it is only that he may oppose it. This moral affinity with God as the principle of human life remains the secret of the inspired author; it lifts him above the finest minds of the Gentile world. The compiler of the Elihu portion, although he has the admirable sentiment that God giveth songs in the night, has missed the great and elevating truth which fills with prophetic force the original poem.
From verse 14 onward to the close of the chapter
If any one cries out against suffering as an animal in pain might cry, that is vanity, not merely emptiness but impiety, and God will not hear nor regard such a cry. Elihu means that Job's complaints were essentially of this nature. True, he had called on God; that cannot be denied. He had laid his case before the Judge and professed to expect vindication. But he was at fault in that very appeal, for it was still of suffering he complained, and he was still impious.
The argument seems to be: God rules in absolute supremacy, and His will is not to be questioned; it may not be demanded of Him that He do this or that. What is a man that he should dare to state any "righteous cause" of his before God and claim justification? Let Job understand that the Almighty has been showing leniency, holding back His hand. He might kill any man outright and there would be no appeal nor ground of complaint. It is because He does not strictly regard iniquity that Job is still alive. Therefore appeals and hopes are offensive to God.
The insistence of this part of the book reaches a
climax here and becomes repulsive. Elihu's opinions
oscillate we may say between Deism and Positivism,
Passing to chap. xxxvi. we are still among vague surmisings which appear the more inconsequent that the speaker makes a large claim of knowledge.
Elihu is zealous for the honour of that great Being whom he adores because from Him he has received life and light and power. He is sure of what he says, and proceeds with a firm step. Preparation thus made, the vindication of God follows—a series of sayings which draw to something useful only when the doctrine becomes hopelessly inconsistent with what has already been laid down.
"God despiseth not any"—this appears to have something
of the humane breadth hitherto wanting in the
discourses of Elihu. He does not mean, however, that
the Almighty estimates every life without contempt,
counting the feeblest and most sinful as His creatures;
but that He passes over none in the administration
of His justice. Illustrations of the doctrine as Elihu
intends it to be received are supplied in the couplet,
"He preserveth not the life of the wicked, but giveth
right to the poor." The poor are helped, the wicked
are given up to death. As for the righteous, two very
different methods of dealing with them are described.
For Elihu himself, and others favoured with prosperity,
the law of the Divine order has been, "With kings on
It is difficult to see precisely what Elihu considers the proper frame of mind which God will reward. There must be humility, obedience, submission to discipline, renunciation of past errors. But we remember the doctrine that a man's righteousness cannot profit God, can only profit his fellow-men. Does Elihu, then, make submission to the powers that be almost the same thing as religion? His reference to high position beside the throne is to a certain extent suggestive of this.
Elihu thinks over much of kings and exaltation beside them and of years of prosperity and pleasure, and his own view of human character and merit follows the judgment of those who have honours to bestow and love the servile pliant mind.
In the dark hours of sorrow and pain, says Elihu, men have the choice to begin life anew in lowly obedience or else to harden their hearts against the providence of God. Instruction has been offered, and they must either embrace it or trample it under foot. And passing to the case of Job, who, it is plain, is afflicted because he needs chastisement, not having attained to Elihu's perfectness in the art of life, the speaker cautiously offers a promise and gives an emphatic warning.
A side reference here shows that the original writer
dealing with his hero has been replaced by another
who does not realise the circumstances of Job with
the same dramatic skill. His appeal is forcible, however,
in its place. There was danger that one long
and grievously afflicted might be led away by wrath
The section closes with a strophe (vv. 22-25) which, calling for submission to the Divine ordinance and praise of the doings of the Almighty, forms a transition to the main theme of the address.
Chap. xxxvi. 26—xxxvii. 24. There need be little
hesitation in regarding this passage as an ode supplied
to the second writer or simply quoted by him for the
purpose of giving strength to his argument. Scarcely
a single note in the portion of Elihu's address already
considered approaches the poetical art of this. The
glory of God in His creation and His unsearchable
wisdom are illustrated from the phenomena of the
heavens without reference to the previous sections of
the address. One who was more a poet than a reasoner
might indeed halt and stumble as the speaker has done
But the ode as a whole, though it has the fault of
endeavouring to forestall what is put into the mouth of
the Almighty speaking from the storm, is one of the
fine passages of the book. We pass from "cold, heavy
and pretentious" dogmatic discussions to free and
striking pictures of nature, with the feeling that one
is guiding us who can present in eloquent language
the fruits of his study of the works of God. The
descriptions have been noted for their felicity and
power by such observers as Baron Humboldt and Mr.
Ruskin. While the point of view is that invariably
taken by Hebrew writers, the originality of the ode
lies in fresh observation and record of atmospheric
phenomena, especially of the rain and snow, rolling
clouds, thunderstorms and winds. The pictures do
not seem to belong to the Arabian desert but to a fertile
peopled region like Aram or the Chaldæan plain. Upon
the fields and dwellings of men, not on wide expanses
In the opening verses the theme of the ode is set forth—the greatness of God, the vast duration of His being, transcending human knowledge.
To estimate His majesty or fathom the depths of His eternal will is far beyond us who are creatures of a day. Yet we may have some vision of His power. Look up when rain is falling, mark how the clouds that float above distil the drops of water and pour down great floods upon the earth. Mark also how the dark cloud spreading from the horizon obscures the blue expanse of the sky. We cannot understand; but we can realise to some extent the majesty of Him whose is the light and the darkness, who is heard in the thunder-peal and seen in the forked lightning.
Translating from the Vulgate the two following verses,
Mr. Ruskin gives the meaning, "He hath hidden the
light in His hands and commanded it that it should
return. He speaks of it to His friend; that it is His
possession, and that he may ascend thereto." The
rendering cannot be received, yet the comment may be
cited. "These rain-clouds are the robes of love of
the Angel of the Sea. To these that name is chiefly "Modern Painters," vol. v., 141.
The real import does not reach this spiritual height. It is simply that the tremendous thunder brings to transgressors the terror of judgment, and the copious showers that follow water the parched earth for the sake of man. Of the justice and grace of God we are made aware when His angel spreads his wings over the world. In the darkened sky there is a crash as if the vast canopy of the firmament were torn asunder. And now a keen flash lights the gloom for a moment; anon it is swallowed up as if the inverted sea, poured in cataracts upon the flame, extinguished it. Men recognise the Divine indignation, and even the lower animals seem to be aware.
Continued in the thirty-seventh chapter, the description
appears to be from what is actually going on, a
tremendous thunderstorm that shakes the earth. The
sound comes, as it were, out of the mouth of God,
reverberating from sky to earth and from earth to sky,
and rolling away under the whole heaven. Again there
are lightnings, and "He stayeth them not when His voice
We are asked to consider a fresh wonder, that of the snow which at certain times replaces the gentle or copious rain. The cold fierce showers of winter arrest the labour of man, and even the wild beasts seek their dens and abide in their lurking-places. "The Angel of the Sea," says Mr. Ruskin, "has also another message,—in the 'great rain of His strength,' rain of trial, sweeping away ill-set foundations. Then his robe is not spread softly over the whole heaven as a veil, but sweeps back from his shoulders, ponderous, oblique, terrible—leaving his sword-arm free." God is still directly at work. "Out of His chamber cometh the storm and cold out of the north." His breath gives the frost and straitens the breadth of waters. Towards Armenia, perhaps, the poet has seen the rivers and lakes frozen from bank to bank. Our science explains the result of diminished temperature; we know under what conditions hoar-frost is deposited and how hail is formed. Yet all we can say is that thus and thus the forces act. Beyond that we remain like this writer, awed in presence of a heavenly Will which determines the course and appoints the marvels of nature.
Here, again, moral purpose is found. The poet
attributes to others his own susceptibility. Men see
and learn and tremble. It is for correction, that the
More delicate, needing finer observation, are the next objects of study.
It is not clear whether the light of the cloud means the lightning again or the varied hues which make an Oriental sunset glorious in purple and gold. But the balancings of the clouds must be that singular power which the atmosphere has of sustaining vast quantities of watery vapour—either miles above the earth's surface where the filmy cirrhus floats, dazzling white against the blue sky, or lower down where the rain-cloud trails along the hill-tops. Marvellous it is that, suspended thus in the air, immense volumes of water should be carried from the surface of the ocean to be discharged in fructifying rain.
Then again:—
The sensation of dry hot clothing is said to be very
Finally the vast expanse of the sky, like a looking-glass of burnished metal stretched far over sea and land, symbolises the immensity of Divine power.
It is always bright beyond. Clouds only hide the splendid sunshine for a time. A wind rises and sweeps away the vapours from the glorious dome of heaven. "Out of the north cometh golden splendour"—for it is the north wind that drives on the clouds which, as they fly southward, are gilded by the rays of the sun. But with God is a splendour greater far, that of terrible majesty.
So the ode finishes abruptly, and Elihu states his own conclusion:—
Is Job wise in his own conceit? Does he think he can
challenge the Divine government and show how the
affairs of the world might have been better ordered?
Does he think that he is himself treated unjustly because
loss and disease have been appointed to him?
Right thoughts of God will check all such ignorant
notions and bring him a penitent back to the throne
Elihu's failure is significant. It is the failure of an attempt made, as we have seen, centuries after the Book of Job was written, to bring it into the line of current religious opinion. Our examination of the whole reveals the narrow foundation on which Hebrew orthodoxy was reared and explains the developments of a later time. Job may be said to have left no disciples in Israel. His brave personal hope and passionate desire for union with God seem to have been lost in the fervid national bigotry of post-exilic ages; and while they faded, the Pharisee and Sadducee of after days began to exist. They are both here in germ. Springing from one seed, they are alike in their ignorance of Divine justice; and we do not wonder that Christ, coming to fulfil and more than fulfil the hope of humanity, appeared to both the Pharisee and Sadducee of His time as an enemy of religion, of the country, and of God.
"MUSIC IN THE BOUNDS OF LAW."
Chap. xxxviii.
Eloah is known through the tempest as well as in the dewdrop and the tender blossom. What is capable of strength must be made strong. That is the Divine law throughout all life, for the cedar on Lebanon, the ox in the yoke, the lion of the Libyan desert. Chiefly the moral nature of man must find its strength. The glory of God is to have sons who can endure. The easy piety of a happy race, living among flowers and offering incense for adoration, cannot satisfy Him of the eternal will, the eternal power. Men must learn to trust, to endure, to hold themselves undismayed when the fury of tempest scours their world and heaps the driven snow above their dwellings and death comes cold and stark. Struggle man shall, struggle on through strange and dreadful trials till he learn to live in the thought of Divine Will and Love, co-ordinate in one Lord true to Himself, worthy to be trusted through all cloud and clash. Ever is He pursuing an end conformable to the nature of the beings He has created, and, with man an end conformable to his nature, the possibilities of endless moral development, the widening movements of increasing life. Let man know this and submit, know this and rejoice. A dream-life shall be impossible to man, use his day as he will.
Is this Divine utterance from the storm required by the progress of the drama? Some have doubted whether its tenor is consistent with the previous line of thought; yet the whole movement sets distinctly towards it, could terminate in no other way. The prologue, affirming God's satisfaction with His servant, left us assured that if Job remained pure and kept his faith his name would not be blotted from the book of life. He has kept his integrity; no falsehood or baseness can be charged against him. But is he still with God in sincere and humble faith? We have heard him accuse the Most High of cruel enmity. At the close he lies under the suspicion of impious daring and revolt, and it appears that he may have fallen from grace. The author has created this uncertainty knowing well that the verdict of God Himself is needed to make clear the spiritual position and fate of His servant.
Besides this, Job's own suspense remains, of more
importance from a dramatic point of view. He is not
yet reconciled to providence. Those earnest cries for
light, which have gone forth passionately, pathetically
to heaven, wait for an answer. They must have some
reply, if the poet can frame a fit deliverance for the
Almighty. The task is indeed severe. On one side
there is restraint, for the original motive of the whole
action and especially the approval of Job by his Divine
Master are not to be divulged. The tried man must
not enjoy vindication at the risk of losing humility, his
victory over his friends must not be too decisive for
his own spiritual good, nor out of keeping with the
ordinary current of experience. On the other side lies
the difficulty of representing Divine wisdom in contrast
to that of man, and of dealing with the hopes and
claims of Job, for vindication, for deliverance from
It has already been remarked that the limitations of genius and inspiration are distinctly visible here. The bold prophetic hopes put into Job's mouth were beyond the author's power to verify even to his own satisfaction. He might himself believe in them, ardently, as flashes of heavenly foresight, but he would not affirm them to be Divine in their source because he could not give adequate proof. The ideas were thrown out to live in human thought, to find verification when God's time came. Hence, in the speeches of the Almighty, the ground taken is that of natural religion, the testimony of the wonderful system of things open to the observation of all. Is there a Divine Redeemer for the faithful whose lives have been overshadowed? Shall they be justified in some future state of being when their bodies have mouldered into dust? The voice from on high does not affirm that this shall be; the reverence of the poet does not allow so daring an assumption of the right to speak for God. On the contrary, the danger of meddling with things too high is emphasised in the very utterance which a man of less wisdom and humility would have filled with his own ideas. Nowhere is there a finer instance of self-denying moderation for the sake of absolute truth. This writer stands among men as a humble student of the ways of God—is content to stand there at the last, making no claim beyond the knowledge of what may be learned from the creation and providence of God.
And Job is allowed no special providence. The voice from the storm is that which all may hear; it is the universal revelation suited to every man. At first sight we are disposed to agree with those who think the appearance of the Almighty upon the scene to be in itself strange. But there is no Theophany. There is no revelation or message to suit a particular case, to gratify one who thinks himself more important than his fellow-creatures, or imagines the problem of his life abnormally difficult. Again the wisdom of the author goes hand in hand with his modesty; what is within his compass he sees to be sufficient for his end.
To some the utterances put into the mouth of the
Almighty may seem to come far short of the occasion.
Beginning to read the passage they may say:—Now
we are to have the fruit of the poet's most strenuous
thought, the highest inspiration. The Almighty when
He speaks in person will be made to reveal His
gracious purposes with men and the wisdom of His
government in those cases that have baffled the understanding
of Job and of all previous thinkers. Now we
shall see a new light penetrating the thick darkness
and confusion of human affairs. Since this is not done
there may be disappointment. But the author is concerned
with religion. His maxim is, "The fear of God
that is wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding."
He has in his drama done much for human
thought and theology. The complications which had
kept faith from resting in true spirituality on God have
been removed. The sufferer is a just man, a good man
whom God Himself has pronounced to be perfect. Job
is not afflicted because he has sinned. The author has
set in the clearest possible light all arguments he could
Is it disappointing? Does the writer neglect the
great question his drama has stirred? Or has he not,
with art far more subtle than we may at first suppose,
introduced into the experience of Job a certain spiritual
gain—thoughts and hopes that widen and clear the
horizon of his life? In the depth of despondency,
just because he has been driven from every earthly
If further it be asked why this is not made prominent
in the course of the Almighty's address from the storm,
an answer may be found. The hope did not remain
clear, inspiring, in the consciousness of Job. The
waves of sorrow and doubt rolled over his mind again.
It was but a flash, and like lightning at midnight it
passed and left the gloom once more. Only when by
long reflection and patient thought Job found himself
reassured in the expectation of a future life, would he
know what trouble had done for him. And it was not
in keeping with the gradual development of religious
faith that the Almighty should forestall discovery by
reviving the hope which for a time had faded. We
may take it that with rare skill the writer avoids insistence
on the value of a vision which could appear
charged with sustaining hope only after it was again
Assuming this to have been in the author's mind, we understand why the Almighty speaking from the storm makes no reference to the gain of affliction. There is a return upon the original motive of the drama,—the power of the Creator to inspire, the right of the Creator to expect faith in Himself, whatever losses and trials men have to endure. Neither the integrity of man nor the claim of man upon God is first in the mind of the author, but the majestic Godhead that gathers to itself the adoration of the universe. Man is of importance because he glorifies his Creator. Human righteousness is of narrow range. It is not by his righteousness man is saved, that is to say, finds his true place, the development of his nature and the end of his existence. He is redeemed from vanity and evanescence by his faith, because in exercising it, clinging to it through profoundest darkness, amidst thunder and storm, when deep calleth to deep, he enters into that wise and holy order of the universe which God has appointed,—he lives and finds more abundant life.
It is not denied that on the way toward perfect trust
in his Creator man is free to seek explanation of all
that befalls him. Our philosophy is no impertinence.
Thought must have liberty; religion must be free.
The light of justice has been kindled within us that
we may seek the answering light of the sublime justice
of God in all His dealings with ourselves and with
mankind. This is clearly before the mind of the author,
and it is the underlying idea throughout the long
colloquies between Job and his friends. They are
But now Job is given to understand that liberty has its limitation; and the lesson is for many. To one half of mankind, allowing the mind to lie inert or expending it on vanities, the word has come—Inquire what life is, what its trials mean, how the righteous government of God is to be traced. Now, to the other half of mankind, too adventurous in experiment and judgment, the address of the Almighty says: Be not too bold; far beyond your range the activities of the Creator pass: it is not for you to understand the whole, but always to be reverent, always to trust. The limits of knowledge are shown, and, beyond them, the Divine King stands in glory inaccessible, proved true and wise and just, claiming for Himself the dutiful obedience and adoration of His creatures. Throughout the passage we now consider this is the strain of argument, and the effect on Job's mind is found in his final confession.
Let man remember that his main business here is
not to question but to glorify his Creator. For the time
when this book was written the truth lay here; and
here it lies even for us, and will lie for those who come
THE RECONCILIATION.
Chaps. xxxviii. i-xlii. 6.
The voice proceeding from the storm-cloud, in which
the Almighty veils Himself and yet makes His presence
and majesty felt, begins with a question of reproach
and a demand that the intellect of Job shall be roused
to its full vigour in order to apprehend the ensuing
argument. The closing words of Job had shown
misconception of his position before God. He spoke of
presenting a claim to Eloah and setting forth his integrity
so that his plea would be unanswerable. Circumstances
had brought upon him a stain from which he had a right
to be cleared, and, implying this, he challenged the
Divine government of the world as wanting in due
exhibition of righteousness. This being so, Job's rescue
The aim of the author throughout the speech from the storm is to provide a way of reconciliation between man in affliction and perplexity and the providence of God that bewilders and threatens to crush him. To effect this something more than a demonstration of the infinite power and wisdom of God is needed. Zophar affirming the glory of the Almighty to be higher than heaven, deeper than Sheol, longer than the earth, broader than the sea, basing on this a claim that God is unchangeably just, supplies no principle of reconciliation. In like manner Bildad, requiring the abasement of man as sinful and despicable in presence of the Most High with whom are dominion and fear, shows no way of hope and life. But the series of questions now addressed to Job forms an argument in a higher strain, as cogent as could be reared on the basis of that manifestation of God which the natural world supplies. The man is called to recognise not illimitable power only, the eternal supremacy of the Unseen King, but also other qualities of the Divine rule. Doubt of providence is rebuked by a wide induction from the phenomena of the heavens and of life upon the earth, everywhere disclosing law and care co-operant to an end.
First Job is asked to think of the creation of the
world or visible universe. It is a building firmly set
on deep-laid foundations. As if by line and measure
it was brought into symmetrical form according to the
archetypal plan; and when the corner-stone was laid
Next there is the great ocean flood, once confined as in the womb of primæval chaos, which came forth in living power, a giant from its birth. What can Job tell, what can any man tell of that wonderful evolution, when, swathed in rolling clouds and thick darkness, with vast energy the flood of waters rushed tumultuously to its appointed place? There is a law of use and power for the ocean, a limit also beyond which it cannot pass. Does man know how that is?—must he not acknowledge the wise will and benignant care of Him who holds in check the stormy devastating sea?
And who has control of the light? The morning
dawns not by the will of man. It takes hold of the
margin of the earth over which the wicked have been
ranging, and as one shakes out the dust from a sheet,
it shakes them forth visible and ashamed. Under it
the earth is changed, every object made clear and sharp
as figures on clay stamped with a seal. The forests,
Atmospheric phenomena, already often described,
reveal variously the unsearchable wisdom and thoughtful
rule of the Most High. The force that resides in
the hail, the rains that fall on the wilderness where no
man is, satisfying the waste and desolate ground and
causing the tender grass to spring up, these imply a
breadth of gracious purpose that extends beyond the
range of human life. Whose is the fatherhood of the
rain, the ice, the hoar-frost of heaven? Man is subject
to the changes these represent; he cannot control them.
And far higher are the gleaming constellations that are
set in the forehead of night. Have the hands of man
gathered the Pleiades and strung them like burning
gems on a chain of fire? Can the power of man
unloose Orion and let the stars of that magnificent
constellation wander through the sky? The Mazzaroth
or Zodiacal signs that mark the watches of the advancing
year, the Bear and the stars of her train—who leads
them forth? The laws of heaven, too, those ordinances
regulating the changes of temperature and the seasons,
does man appoint them? Is it he who brings the time
when thunderstorms break up the drought and open
At verse 39 attention is turned from inanimate
nature to the living creatures for which God provides.
With marvellous poetic skill they are painted in their
need and strength, in the urgency of their instincts,
timid or tameless or cruel. The Creator is seen rejoicing
in them as His handiwork, and man is held bound
to exult in their life and see in the provision made for
its fulfilment a guarantee of all that his own bodily
nature and spiritual being may require. Notable especially
to us is the close relation between this portion
and certain sayings of our Lord in which the same
argument brings the same conclusion. "Two passages
of God's speaking," says Mr. Ruskin, "one in
the Old and one in the New Testament, possess, it
seems to me, a different character from any of the rest,
having been uttered, the one to effect the last necessary
change in the mind of a man whose piety was in other
respects perfect; and the other as the first statement
to all men of the principles of Christianity by Christ
Himself—I mean the 38th to 41st chapters of the Book
of Job and the Sermon on the Mount. Now the first
of these passages is from beginning to end nothing else
than a direction of the mind which was to be perfected,
to humble observance of the works of God in nature.
And the other consists only in the inculcation of three
things: 1st, right conduct; 2nd, looking for eternal
life; 3rd, trusting God through watchfulness of His "Modern Painters," vol. iii., p. 307.
Thus man is called to recognise the care of God for creatures strong and weak, and to assure himself that his life will not be forgotten. And in His Sermon on the Mount our Lord says, "Behold the birds of the heaven, that they sow not, neither do they reap nor gather into barns; and your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not ye of much more value than they?" The parallel passage in the Gospel of Luke approaches still more closely the language in Job—"Consider the ravens that they sow not neither reap."
The wild goats or goats of the rock and their young
that soon become independent of the mothers' care; the
wild asses that make their dwelling-place in the salt
land and scorn the tumult of the city; the wild ox that
cannot be tamed to go in the furrow or bring home the
sheaves in harvest; the ostrich that "leaveth her eggs
on the earth and warmeth them in the dust"; the
horse in his might, his neck clothed with the quivering
mane, mocking at fear, smelling the battle afar off; the
hawk, that soars into the blue sky; the eagle that makes
The reasoning is from the less to the greater, and is
therefore in this case conclusive. The lower animals
Such is the Divine law perceived by our inspired
author "through the things that are made." The view
of nature is still different from the scientific, but there
is certainly an approach to that reading of the universe
praised by M. Renan as peculiarly Hellenic, which
"saw the Divine in what is harmonious and evident."
Not here at least does the taunt apply that, from the
point of view of the Hebrew, "ignorance is a cult and
curiosity a wicked attempt to explain," that "even in
the presence of a mystery which assails and ruins him,
man attributes in a special manner the character of
grandeur to that which is inexplicable," that "all phenomena
whose cause is hidden, all beings whose end
cannot be perceived, are to man a humiliation and a
motive for glorifying God." The philosophy of the
And Job finds the way of reconciliation.
All things God can do, and where His purposes are
declared there is the pledge of their accomplishment.
Does man exist?—it must be for some end that will
come about. Has God planted in the human mind
spiritual desires?—they shall be satisfied. Job returns
on the question that accused him—"Who is this
darkening counsel?" It was he himself who obscured
counsel by ignorant words. He had only heard of
"Now mine eye seeth Thee." The vision of God is to his soul like the dazzling light of day to one issuing from a cavern. He is in a new world where every creature lives and moves in God. He is under a government that appears new because now the grand comprehensiveness and minute care of Divine providence are realised. Doubt of God and difficulty in acknowledging the justice of God are swept away by the magnificent demonstration of vigour, spirit and sympathy, which Job had as yet failed to connect with the Divine Life. Faith therefore finds freedom, and its liberty is reconciliation, redemption. He cannot indeed behold God face to face and hear the judgment of acquittal for which he had longed and cried. Of this, however, he does not now feel the need. Rescued from the uncertainty in which he had been involved—all that was beautiful and good appearing to quiver like a mirage—he feels life again to have its place and use in the Divine order. It is the fulfilment of Job's great hope, so far as it can be fulfilled in this world. The question of his integrity is not formally decided. But a larger question is answered, and the answer satisfies meantime the personal desire.
Job makes no confession of sin. His friends and
Elihu, all of whom endeavour to find evil in his life,
The writer is no doubt struggling with an idea he
cannot fully express; and in fact he gives no more
than the pictorial outline of it. But without attributing
sin to Job he points, in the confession of ignorance,
to the germ of a doctrine of sin. Man, even when
upright, must be stung to dissatisfaction, to a sense
of imperfection—to realise his fall as a new birth in
spiritual evolution. The moral ideal is indicated, the
boundlessness of duty and the need for an awakening
And at the last the challenge of the Almighty to Satan with which the poem began stands justified. The Adversary cannot say,—The hedge set around Thy servant broken down, his flesh afflicted, now he has cursed Thee to Thy face. Out of the trial Job comes, still on God's side, more on God's side than ever, with a nobler faith more strongly founded on the rock of truth. It is, we may say, a prophetic parable of the great test to which religion is exposed in the world, its difficulties and dangers and final triumph. To confine the reference to Israel is to miss the grand scope of the poem. At the last, as at the first, we are beyond Israel, out in a universal problem of man's nature and experience. By his wonderful gift of inspiration, painting the sufferings and the victory of Job, the author is a herald of the great advent. He is one of those who prepared the way not for a Jewish Messiah, the redeemer of a small people, but for the Christ of God, the Son of Man, the Saviour of the world.
A universal problem, that is, a question of every
human age, has been presented and within limits
brought to a solution. But it is not the supreme
question of man's life. Beneath the doubts and fears
with which this drama has dealt lie darker and more
stormy elements. The vast controversy in which every
human soul has a share oversweeps the land of Uz
and the trial of Job. From his life the conscience of
sin is excluded. The author exhibits a soul tried by
outward circumstances; he does not make his hero
The doctrine of the sovereignty of God, as set forth
in the drama of Job with freshness and power by one
of the masters of theology, by no means covers the
EPILOGUE.
Chap. xlii. 7-17.
Life only can reward life. That great principle
was rudely shadowed forth in the old belief that God
protects His servants even to a green old age. The
poet of our book clearly apprehended the principle; it
inspired his noblest flights. Up to the closing moment
Job has lived strongly, alike in the mundane and the
moral region. How is he to find continued life? The
author's power could not pass the limits of the natural
in order to promise a reward. Not yet was it possible,
There was nothing for it, then, but to use the history as it stood, adding symbolic touches, and show the restored life in development on earth, more powerful than ever, more esteemed, more richly endowed for good action. In one point the symbolism is very significant. Priestly office and power are given to Job; his sacrifice and intercession mediate between the friends who traduced him and Eloah who hears His faithful servant's prayer. The epilogue, as a parable of the reward of faithfulness, has deep and abiding truth. Wider opportunity of service, more cordial esteem and affection, the highest office that man can bear, these are the reward of Job; and with the terms of the symbolism we shall not quarrel who have heard the Lord say: "Well done, thou good servant, because thou wast found faithful in a very little, have thou authority over ten cities!"
Another indication of purpose must not be overlooked.
It may be said that Job's renewal in soul should
have been enough for him, that he might have spent
humbly what remained of life, at peace with men, in submission
to God. But our author was animated by the
Hebrew realism, that healthy belief in life as the gift
of God, which kept him always clear on the one hand
of Greek fatalism, on the other of Oriental asceticism.
This strong faith in life might well lead him into the
The writer's finest things came to him by flashes. When he reached the close of his book he was not able to make a tragedy and leave his readers rapt above the world. No pre-Christian thinker could have bound together the gleams of truth in a vision of the spirit's undying nature and immortal youth. But Job must find restored power and energy; and the close had to come, as it does, in the time sphere. We can bear to see a soul go forth naked, driven, tormented; we can bear to see the great good life pass from the scaffold or the fire, because we see God meeting it in the heaven. But we have seen Christ.
A third point is that for dramatic completeness the action had to bring Job to full acquittal in view of his friends. Nothing less will satisfy the sense of poetic justice which rules the whole work.
Finally, a biographical reminiscence may have given
colour to the epilogue. If, as we have supposed, the
author was once a man of substance and power in
Israel, and, reduced to poverty in the time of the
Assyrian conquest, found himself an exile in Arabia—the
wistful sense of impotence in the world must have
touched all his thinking. Perhaps he could not expect
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