Job

In not a few respects Job is the most remarkable book either in the Bible or out of it. Looked at merely as an effort of genius, apart altogether from inspiration, it is allowed by the best judges to have no equal in the profundity of its ideas, the sublimity of its imagery, or the abundance and variety of the materials which it has built up into a perfect whole. “It will one day perhaps,” says a secular writer, “when it is allowed to stand on its own merit, be seen towering up alone, far away above all the poetry of the world.”

Its unknown author must have been a traveller in many countries, especially in Arabia and Egypt; he was a close observer of nature in all her aspects and a still profounder student of human nature. He possessed all the knowledge of his time and had accumulated a vast store of observation from the orld. The whole of this experience is poured into his poem; but so great is his artistic skill that the theme is nowhere overloaded but preserved in perfect simplicity and clearness from first to last.

There is every variety of poetry in the book — pathos of the most touching order, as in the dirge on human mortality in chapter xiv.; beauty the most exquisite, as in chapters xxix. and xxx., in which the hero’s prosperity and adversity are depicted side by side; and sublimity, only equalled by the loftiest passages in Isaiah, in the descriptions of God’s works, with which the latter part of the book abounds. Every here and there the reader comes upon a long connected passage, which could be lifted out of its place and enjoyed as a poem by itself; but it is with the book as a whole that we must at present deal.

II

The first Psalm holds the place it does because it was intended to be an introduction to the whole Psalter; indeed, it lays the foundation on which the entire religion of the Old Testament rests. It says:

Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the

wicked, Nor standeth in the way of sinner3, Nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, And in His law doth he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the streams of water, That bringeth forth it» fruit in its season,

Whose leaf also doth not wither;

And whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.

The wicked are not so,

But are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.

That is to say, prosperity shall be the lot of the righteous, but misfortune shall dog the steps of the wicked.

Now, this is a great truth. It is a truth for nations, for families and for individuals. Morality and godliness are the only sure foundations of success, whilst wickedness, however imposingly it may spread itself out, will ultimately bring those who practise it to ruin. This is, however, a law to which life supplies many exceptions. The good are sometimes poor, unfortunate and, in all outward respects, miserable; and — what is still more perplexing — the wicked sometimes flourish in spite of their wickedness or even, it would sometimes appear, because of it. The honest man may be seen battling all his life with a sea of trouble and going down at last out of sight, like a strong swimmer in his agony, whilst the successful rogue rides on the crest of the wave in a sunny sea.

It is very long since this riddle of existence began to perplex thoughtful minds. In spite of the unqualified statements of Psalm i., as well as of many which follow in the Psalter, there are other Psalms which acknowledge the mystery. One of the very foremost of the psalmists tells how trying to himself this problem hid been, driving him to the verge of atheism:

But as for me, my feet were almost gone;
My steps had wellnigh slipped.
For I was envious at the arrogant,
When I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

On the contrary, he was sensible of deriving no visible advantage from his piety, but rather the reverse:

Surely in vain have I cleansed my heart,
And washed my hands in innocency;
For all the day long have I been plagued,
And chastened every morning.

Not only had this been his own experience, but he was aware that the godly in the land were uttering the same complaint:

Therefore His people return hither:

And waters of a full cup are wrung out by them.

And they say, How does God know?

And is there knowledge in the Most High ?*

It did not please God at once to reveal the solution of the mystery. On the contrary, He allowed it long to try His people, and the answer was given only bit by bit. At first they endeavoured to satisfy themselves and to quell their doubt with the solution, that the prosperity of the wicked was only temporary: they were elevated to a kiddy eminence, but only that their fall might be the more sudden

* Psalm lixiii.

lS7 and terrible. In human life there have always been plenty of facts to justify such a view; but it was not sufficient; for it came to be seen that the wicked sometimes went on prospering to the end. Then another solution was tried: at all events, it was suggested, their death is terrible: although they may prosper in life, revenge is taken on them in the terror with which they are hurried away from their ill-gotten possessions and confronted with the terrific spectacle of eternity. In support of this view, also, facts could be adduced in plenty; but it was not enough; because it was found that often the wicked passed away without their self-complacency being interrupted: they had “no bands in their death.” So the solution had to be moved on a step further, and another explanation was tried: calamity falls on the children of the wicked: though they may die themselves in peace, their hoarded wealth melts away in the hands of their heirs, and their families perish in dishonour. Of this also life affords many illustrations. Yet the problem is larger than the area which any or all of these explanations can cover. We still require to know why the righteous suffer and the wicked flourish. And this is the problem to which the whole of the Book of Job is devoted.

III

The scene of the book is placed in the land of Uz, a country to the cast of Palestine, not far from the region out of which Abraham originally came; and Job probably lived as far back as the Father of the Faithful. In the grey twilight of the world and in the dim borderland beyond the confines of civilisation this drama was enacted.

Job was a man perfect and upright, one who feared God and eschewed evil. As he was a good man, God had correspondingly prospered him; for he had a wife, seven sons and three daughters, and his flocks and herds were on an immense scale, like those of a primeval chief or sheikh. Thus his condition was a striking exemplification of the law laid down in Psalm i.: goodness and prosperity were united in his life.

All this having been told in the first few verses of the book, the scene is changed to a totally different portion of the universe. Heaven is opened, and Jehovah revealed, surrounded by “the sons of God” — a name for the angels. Among these frequenters of the heavenly court there is one whom it is surprising to see there — no other than that fallen spirit whose diabolical work it is first to tempt and then to accuse and deride the children of men. God, who has control over even his movements,

J59 demands of him where he has been, and the reply 18, that he has been visiting the earth and walking up and down in it. God then asks him if, in the course of his peregrinations, he has taken notice of His servant Job, whose goodness was an honour to heaven and could not but be a pain to the enemy of all good. Satan replies that he knows the man, but follows up this confession with the sneer, “Docs Job serve God for nought?” The man was only good, he hinted, because he was prosperous; but, if God would withdraw this payment for virtue, the virtue itself would soon disappear, and Job would curse God to His face. Incensed at this insinuation, God gives the accuser permission to make the trial. As the angel of destruction, he may destroy all Job’s earthly possessions, and then it will be seen whether, when he becomes a poor man, Job will be an impious one.

No sooner said than done! Satan went forth at once to deliver the blow which he had received permission to inflict. As the prince of the power of the air he summoned to his aid the lightning and the storm, and, at one stroke, stripped Job of his children and all his earthly possessions. The event, however, proved how futile had been his boast; for, instead of falling into impiety and cursing God, Job shone forth with fresh lustre as a humble worshipper of the Most High, his only comment on his losses being:” Naked came I out of my

l6o mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” “In all this Job sinned not nor charged God with foolishness.”

The foiled tempter reappears in heaven, and God reproaches him with his failure. But Satan returns to the charge, sneering as before at the idea that virtue is disinterested. He has to confess that he has failed, but insinuates that Job is too selfish to be, moved even by the sufferings of his own flesh and blood; let him, however, suffer in his own person, and he will curse God to His face. Permission is given to try this new temptation; and Satan goes forth from the heavenly court to put it into execution. The most terrible bodily disease known to antiquity — that of elephantiasis — a form of leprosy — forthwith fell on Job, torturing him with ceaseless pain and making him loathsome both in his own eyes and in the eyes of others. At this new trial his wife’s faith immediately yielded, and she gave to her husband the advice to curse God and die. But the faith of Job never flinched: “Thou speakest,” was his reply, to the wife of his bosom, “as one of the foolish women speaketh. What! shall we receive good at the hand of the Lord, and shall we not also receive evil?” “In all this did not Job sin with his lips.”

Thus was Satan foiled a second time, and the thesis which he had maintained in heaven, that human goodness is never disinterested, had been victoriously disproved.

IV

These events, which are narrated in the first two chapters, are only the introduction to the real body of the book — the conflict in Job’s mind with religious scepticism, caused by the apparent injustice of his calamities. This is represented as having been aroused in him in a peculiar way. Three of his friends, living in three neighbouring countries, having heard of his calamities and communicating with one another on the subject, resolve to go in a body to the afflicted man and to be his comforters. They are grave and venerable figures — Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. On their arrival they were very welcome to Job, who was in sore need of comfort. Accordingly they sat down and wept with him in silence; and he who, in facing the opposition of his wife, was able to preserve the calm of a stoic, was so melted with the exhibition of sympathy on the part of his three friends that the floodgates of his grief flew open, and he poured into their ears all the bitterness of his heart. What could be more natural? Sympathy overcomes reserve. Job’s heart was breaking, and the arrival of his friends gave it vent.

It soon appeared, however, that his confidence in the extent of their sympathy was misplaced. They had arranged well with one another, before arriving in Uz, how they were to deal with their friend. They were pious men, but narrow and conventional in their views of God, and they had never themselves gone through such experiences as would have made them capable of understanding his. Holding the accepted creed, that God always rewards the righteous with prosperity and punishes the wicked with calamity, they had come resolved to apply this standard to Job’s case. As calamity is the punishment of sin, his extraordinary calamities must, they concluded, be the punishment of extraordinary sins of which he had been guilty; and they thought it the duty of true friendship to induce him to confess his sin and urge him to repent; for this was the only road by which the prosperity which he had lost could be regained. Such was the purpose of their visit. They are the representatives of a hard and narrow orthodoxy, which cannot conceive the possibility of its creed being too limited to cover everything in heaven and earth.

Job’s own creed was the same as theirs; but he had not noticed how it had been contradicted by his experience, until the contradiction was pressed home on his attention by his friends. Then came the real temptation of the pious man — a temptation far more acute than those inflicted on him by Satan or that due to the tergiversation of his wife. Pressed by his orthodox friends, who all the time believed themselves to be acting on behalf of God and of the truth, and even on behalf of Job himself, he saw how utterly his creed was demolished by facts. As, however, to give up one’s belief about God always appears, at first sight, the same thing as giving up God Himself, Job felt the ground of all religion slipping from beneath his feet, and himself being precipitated into the abyss of atheism.

This discussion with his three friends occupies the main body of the book — chapters iv. to xxxi. Each of the friends delivers a speech, and Job answers each of them in turn. This occupies eleven chapters. Then the same thing happens over again, each of the friends speaking a second time and Job answering them. This occupies other seven chapters. Then, for the third time, Eliphaz and Bildad speak, and Job answers them, refuting them so completely that Zophar* does not venture to come forward a

* The reason given in the text would account for the disappearance of Zophar from the discussion, and it might account likewise for the brevity of Bildad’s contribution. But many have surmised that the third cycle of debate must, in the distribution of the materials among the four speakers, have approached to the symmetry of the first two cycles. They have, therefore, endeavoured to restore to Bildad and Zophar the passages originally belonging to them; and the reader may test his own ingenuity by conjecturing which these are. It is undeniable that in the speech, or rather speeches, put into the mouth of Job between chapters xxvi. and third time; and then Job, having routed his opponents, pursues for a chapter of two the plane of his own reflections. This occupies ten chapters. Thus there are three cycles of discussion, in which Job and the friends engage one another.

The statements of the friends are simple and straightforward and do not vary from one another very much, except that, as the discussion proceeds, their tone becomes more and more severe and uncompromising. In the first cycle they state their creed in general terms and apply it to Job’s case, with a certain amount, however, of consideration. If Job has been a sinner, they hint, he is only like his neighbours, for all are sinners; and with great unction they exhort him to repent, assuring him, in that case, of the return of his prosperity:

If thou set thine heart aright,

And stretch out thine hands toward Him;

If iniquity be in thine hand, put it far away,

And let not unrighteousness dwell in thy tents;

Surely then shalt thou lift up thy face without spot;

Yea, thou shalt be steadfast, and shalt not fear:

For thou shalt forget thy misery;

Thou shalt remember it as waters that are passed away:

And thy life shall be clearer than the noonday;

Though there be darkness, it shall be as the morning.

And thou shalt be secure, because there is hope;

Yea, thou shalt search about thee and shalt take thy rest in safety.

Also thou shalt lie down, and none shall make thee afraid.*

xxxi., the thread of connection is not easy to follow, especially in the first half, where the lost speeches must be sought, if they are lost; whereas Job rise3 grandly into his own vein in the second half. * xi. 13-19.

In the second cycle, irritated with Job’s resistance, they become much more severe and personal; and in the third, casting away all moderation, they tell Job plainly, that they do not believe in his professions of innocence, but are certain he must be hiding in his heart the very worst of crimes. Of this the severity and variety of his calamities afford sufficient proof; for in the eyes of these judges every single calamity is the punishment for a specific sin.

Job’s speeches are far more interesting than those of the friends and contain a far greater variety of matter. The changing phases of his mental condition, as these are revealed in his words, form the real interest of the book. The question all through is, whether Job is going to fall away from faith in God or not. The attitude of his friends, when he discovered what it was, gave him a great shock. He had welcomed them, when they came, and expected comfort from their sympathy; but they turned out to be enemies rather than friends; and it was not long before he had to tell them that they were “miserable comforters.” The new pain occasioned by their lack of sympathy very naturally revived all hi9 own sufferings; and in his speeches he gives ever and anon heartrending accounts of his condition, breaking into long descriptions of his bereavements and woes. All God’s waves and billows are passing over him. There is something awful and even unearthly in the intensity of his grief. It could scarcely be believed that the heart of man could contain such an ocean of sorrow.* The worst, however, was the contradiction of his creed contained in his experiences. As the mere exertion of utterance made him conscious of the situation in all its length and breadth, he felt God to be passing utterly beyond his reach. This was sorrow’s crown of sorrow.

Job was hemmed in by three alternatives. First, his friends accused him of heinous sin and urged him to confess it. If he could have felt this to be true, it would have been a relief to him; for it would have justified God’s dealing with him. Secondly, he might have given up his creed, acknowledging it to be untrue or inadequate. But all who have ever been in a similar case know how difficult this is, the breaking- down of an old and dearly loved faith being like the cutting- off of a right hand. Thirdly, there was but one more alternative, and this was to rebel against God altogether or give up even believing in Him. Against these three barriers we see the mind of Job dashing itself like an angry sea, seeking outlet. This is what is revealed in these chapters, and it is a tragic sight — a godly man reeling on the brink of atheism.

* The late Canon Mozley, in his essay on the Book of Job, in Essays Historical and Theological, compares the exclamations of Io against the injustices of Jove in the Prometheus Vinctus of ^Eschylus, and he has a characteristic passage on the majesty yet clamorousnes8 of the sense of justice in the human breast.

Which of the three barriers is going to give way? One of them must yield; no mind could long exist in the state in which Job’s was. Could he, in the first place, confess his sin, as his friends demanded? Again and again he examined his life, but always arrived at the same conclusion — that there had been no observable lapse and no concealed crime, as they alleged. This he repeats again and again, and at last takes up his conclusive stand upon it:

God forbid that I should justify you: Till I die I will not put away my integrity from me. My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it go: My heart shall not reproach me so long as I live.*

In the second place, could he curse God as a cruel oppressor or give up belief in His existence and government altogether? The reader trembles to observe how near his mind was frequently driven to this extremity. He uses language about God’s injustice in afflicting that all but oversteps the bounds of blasphemy. Yet even at the worst, it becomes evident, he cannot let God go. Nearly every speech closes with a passionate prayer — a cry to God to appear and vindicate his innocence. He is like a child in a tumult of passion at the father who has chastised him, crying out against him and striking out at him; and yet, with it all, he loves his father and will at last, when the storm is spent, weep out his heart on his father’s breast.

* xivii. 5.

These two barriers thus failing to give way, the third must yield. The traditional view of God — the creed which maintained that happiness invariably waited upon righteousness and misfortune followed sin — had to crumble down like an embankment before the irresistible force of a flood. More and more clearly, as the discussion went on, did Job recognise this. He lifted his eyes from his own grief to the general sorrow of the world, and, as his vision cleared from the mists of prejudice, he saw evidence everywhere that there must be other reasons for the distribution of prosperity and adversity than he had hitherto recognised. The best men were often oppressed and miserable, the worst often prosperous and happy. Thus were the bottles of the old faith rent by the fermenting wine of new experience, and the first step taken towards a new and truer conception of God. The Book of Job is the record of the birth of a new faith, Job’s sorrows being the birth-pangs.

Such is the conclusion reached by Job. But it would be a mistake to represent his new belief as an attainment clearly made out. On the contrary, it was as yet no more than a dim and hesitating conjecture. He was not even sure whether it might not be a profane and deadly heresy, as it was certainly considered by his friends; and he could only end with a passionate cry to God to appear and to explain the mystery.

Instead, however, of God immediately appearing in answer to his appeal, another human disputant at this stage steps on the scene. This is Elihu, a fourth friend of Job’s, not mentioned before, but who has been standing by, listening to the discussion. He is a young man, and for this reason has not dared to speak earlier. But he sees clearly that his elders have failed, and yet he is dissatisfied with Job, who has triumphed over them. At length he can contain himself no longer; for, he believes, he has a light to shed upon the subject. True, he has not the wisdom of age; but

It is not the great that are wise,

Nor the aged that understand judgment ;•

it is the inspiration of the Almighty that gives understanding, and this, he believes, he possesses.

Very various estimates have been formed of the contribution of Elihu, which extends over no fewer than six chapters. By many it has been pronounced to be an interpolation, supplied by a later and inferior hand. It is, however, quite up to the level of the rest of the book; and, as nature does not easily produce two authors capable of rising to the same mark, there is reason for thinking it part of * xxxii. 9.

the original. The interpolation-theory is an easymethod which the learned have of getting over difficulties. Others, while acknowledging the speeches of Elihu to be original, attach to them little importance as contributions to the discussion, or even take them to be illustrations of the rash confidence with which the young will believe themselves capable of solving difficulties with which their elders have been baffled. This is, however, a frivolous opinion; because some of the very finest things in the book come from the mouth of Elihu.

The true way to look at Elihu’s speeches is to regard them as a final human effort to cast light on the dark mystery, and thereby to enhance the value of the solution by the divine Interpreter about to be delivered. Two points especially may be recognised as contributions made by the newcomer to the discussion. First, he brings out the distinction between sin and sins. Special calamities may not be traceable to certain sins and yet they may all have their root in sin. This is a valuable distinction. Secondly, he draws attention to the difference between calamity as chastisement and calamity as punishment; between these two there is all the difference that there is between the action of a judge and that of a father; and this also was a valuable distinction.*

* For the speeches of Elihu, I confess, I have had a partiality erer since I found out for myself, long ago, the great hymn embedded

At last, however, God Himself appears in answer to Job’s many entreaties, and the closing chapters give His deliverance on the controversy. These are by far the most sublime portions of the book; and the divine decision is in Job’s favour. Job is rebuked, indeed, for the wildness of his language, and the Almighty asserts His own right to shroud many of the reasons for His conduct in darkness; but He ends by sharply reproving the friends, who, though ostensibly speaking in His defence, had not spoken of Him the thing that was right, as Job had done; and to Job He accords the beautiful triumph of interceding with Him, that the sin of his unsympathetic friends may be forgiven.

The sequel to the whole is, that Job’s original prosperity is restored. Calamity, having done its work, did not need to be continued any longer. Job gets the same number of sons and daughters as formerly, and becomes the owner of twice as many sheep and cattle as he possessed before his misfortunes; and he lives a hundred-and-forty years to enjoy his prosperity.

in them on the Awakening of the Life of God in the Soul. So important is this that I have given, in Appendix C, p. 241, a full exposition of the passage, xxxiii. 14-30. The strophic construction of these verses will not be found in any of the commentaries — not even in the latest, the able work of Professor Strahan. The editor of this series has come nearest to the discovery; but, I venture to think, I have been before even him in elucidating the real nature of the third strophe.

This proves that they are quite mistaken who represent the creed of Job’s friends as altogether false, and Job’s new creed as a total denial of the old. The old creed was narrow and inadequate, but not false, and the progress made by Job was like most really valuable movements in the sphere of belief, not so much a revolution as a development — a rise from a partial to a complete view of the truth. It is only, indeed, relatively that his newly won creed can be spoken of as complete. Perhaps what is felt most keenly at the close of the book is, that, after all, the question is not solved. It is, however, something surely that the heavy and deadly growths cumbering the ground are torn ruthlessly away, and that the fair form of the flower of truth has space and light to grow.

It took centuries to grow; and it is interesting to note from which directions the growing truth came. Perhaps the words of the Almighty in Job, when at last He utters Himself, are disappointing. They do not supply the truth required by the occasion in any clear or simple formula. But the important point was that God spoke at all. Job had felt deserted; but, now that the living God had announced Himself, and Job was sure of Him, he could say, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.” This was the form in which others after him obtained assurance. God communicated Himself to them, person to person. This was a possession superior to all other forms of prosperity; and, as long as it remained theirs, no earthly losses could impoverish them. They love God for His own sake; religion has its reason in itself; and it can survive as an undying consolation in the midst of bereavements and calamities.

Out of this was developed the belief in immortality; because a union with God so close as this cannot be dissolved. It has generally been supposed that Job himself reached this inference, especially in the great passage which, in the familiar version, runs: “For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He will stand at the latter day upon the earth; and, though, after my skin, worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God; whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another, though my reins be consumed within me” ;• but this has been such a battlefield for interpreters, and the resultant rendering is so dubious, that it is difficult to know how much importance to attach to it. In the chapter on the Psalms it has been seen how the development went on, until in subsequent times not only the immortality of the soul but, in Daniel, even the resurrection of the body would appear to have been reached. Even outside the circle of inspiration the hope of another life had spread so far that Cicero declares it to have been in his day universal. Yet, there is deep truth in the

* xix. 25-27. ’74 apostolic statement, that it was Jesus who brought life and immortality to light by the Gospel; for it was only the word of one who had been Himself an inhabitant of the other world which could give final assurance to the doubting hearts of men, and it is because He was raised from the dead that those who believe in Him are sure of being raised also. When immortality and resurrection are assured, the puzzle of evil, with which Job and the saints of the Old Testament were almost strangled, relaxes its grip; because in a future life there will be ample space for both the punishment of the wicked and the rewarding of the righteous.

The Old Testament, however, does not close without an indication of a solution, in some ways even deeper, of the problem of evil. In the latter half of Isaiah, and especially in chapter liii., a servant of the Lord appears who is a sufferer to an extreme degree, but is so not for Himself but for others. He is abused and despised even unto death and beyond it; but out of His sacrifice there come immeasurable blessings to many; and from the height of the after-life He sees of the travail of His soul and is satisfied. This is the heroic solution of the problem; and it reappears in the New Testament. Like Job, Jesus ot Nazareth was an example of a righteous man, not prosperous but exposed to the uttermost misfortune and woe. As Job’s calamities were an offence to his friends, so was Christ crucified to the Jews a stumbling-block and to the Greeks foolishness. Yet He was made perfect through suffering, and, because He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, He now sits on the throne where all power is given unto Him in heaven and in earth; and His shining example is dailyteaching thousands that the one pathway to glory, honour and immortality is that of cross-bearing and self-denial.

It cannot, however, be ignored — though it often is by writers on the Book of Job — that one of the chief effects of this book was the development of belief in a world of evil spirits, of which Satan is the head. At the beginning of the book Satan is an equivocal figure, half-angel and half-devil. But the calamities against which the hero protests, as coming from the hand of God, are really the handiwork of this sinister being; and it is when his hand is lifted that the fortunes of Job rebound to more than their initial luxuriance. After growing in the Old Testament and being very conspicuous in the period between the Old Testament and the New, this doctrine reappears in the New Testament, being shared by the apostles and even by Jesus Himself. It has become usual to explain it away as part of a contemporary vocabulary of ideas without which neither Jesus nor the apostles could either have thought themselves or have been understood by others. But it is questionable if the New Testament can be delivered on such terms from responsibility. It is a doctrine which is capable of abuse, and which has been abused to the discredit of the Church. Yet there are temptations which come with such sudden and overmastering violence as to suggest an unseen tempter of consummate skill, and the world is never without embodiments of evil which suggest the machinations of a prince of evil. Least of all are these absent from the advanced age in which we live, when war has burst forth among the most civilised nations and is using for purposes of devastation and destruction the skill and instrumentalities of science in its very latest developments. Goethe mentions that in his day there were some who showed their cleverness by denying the existence of a devil, and some of them, he adds, exhibited no other sign of cleverness.* Kant, with his strong ethical sense, believed in a radical evil. From the country of these thinkers have come most of the attempts to turn into ridicule the existence of a Satan; but from the same quarter have come the experiences which have put to shame the rosy views of human nature which many were beginning to entertain. The atrocities perpetrated against Armenia and those, too like them, attending the

* In Faust extensive use is made of the dramatic machinery of the Book of Job, and in the person of Mephistopheles a modern interpretation is supplied of the character and office of Satan. Cf. Masson’s The Three Devils — Luther’s, Milton’s and Goethe’s, being vol. ii. of Essays Biographical and Critical.

177 M invasion of Belgium; the sinking of non-combatants on merchant ships and the bombing of open towns; the torpedoing of hospital-ships and the inhuman treatment of prisoners of war; the belief that nations are not subject, like individuals, to the morality of Christ, and that war is a temporarysuspension of the Decalogue — the memory of such things has been carrying back the mind of the world to belief in both original sin and Satanic activity in human affairs. Yet the Book of Job will always remain among the principal encouragements to believe that there is no evil power which is not under the control of One who is able to make all things worktogether for good to them that love Him.

VI

The oftener one reads this book, the deeper is the impression it makes of extreme antiquity. Justice has not been done to its outlandish and non-Jewish character. There are no references to the stock Israelite values — “the adoption and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God and the promises.” There is no such suggestion as that of one of the psalmists, dealing with the same enigma, who, after relating at length how his mind had been baffled by the apparent course of Providence, is able to add: “Till I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I.” Though Jordan is mentioned once, there is no reference to the familiar holy places of the Hebrew mind, such as Bethel and Sinai, Shiloh and Zion; and, though there is abundant description of natural scenes, the objects are Oriental, not specifically Palestinian. The attempts frequently made to locate the book in some reign or century of Hebrew history on account of similarity in social conditions miss the mark; because such oppressions and sufferings as the book describes have never been rare in the world, and they are the more common the more remote, in time or space, any region is from civilisation.

The position of the book in the history of human beliefs could be pretty well determined if the testimony to the doctrine of the resurrection of the body in xix. 26 could be regarded as clearly made out; but we have seen above how dubious this is; and it is very significant that the flash of inspired insight, if this be really its character, is never repeated in the rest of the book. Especially is it absent from God’s address, in which is supplied the divine solution of the mystery. Here would have been the opportunity of developing the faith in a future life, had the author happened to possess it; but the divine Apologist depends entirely on the impressions as to the divine character supplied by the sublimer aspects of nature. The human mind is simply beaten down by the evidence for a divine Being, whose purposes and operations are unsearchable.

The book is not so much a document in the orderly progress of revelation as a boulder dropped from some quarter unknown. Its unintelligibility adds greatly to this impression; for there is no book in Holy Writ which it is so impossible to translate. Numerous are the verses in the Authorised Version of which the ordinary reader can make nothing at all; and the efforts in the Revised Version at improvement, though numerous, are seldom very successful. Between verse and verse the connection is often extremely obscure; and everything in the Hebrew language bearing any resemblance to the written characters has to be tried by scholars in the hope of lighting upon a tolerable sense. Yet there is extraordinary copiousness, the energy of feeling demanding endless repetition and variety of expression. This may be adduced as evidence of advanced development in the resources of the language; but it seems rather attributable to the singular genius of the writer. Ewald excised from the address of God the passages descriptive of behemoth and leviathan as being on a different level of taste; and the younger scholars have generally followed this example, some inclining to place the war-horse also among the creatures eliminated. But, I suspect, to both the author and the audience to which the address of God as a whole was sublime, the war-horse, leviathan and behemoth were the height of the sublime. Count Tolstoi found in King Lear the same overbalancing of the sublime in the direction of the grotesque; but there is no question that Shakspeare penned this drama or that the greatest of English critics have reckoned it amongst his primary works. The more perfect the art in any piece of literature, the more immune may it be supposed to be from interpolation; because the interpolator has first to persuade himself and then the public that his alteration is an improvement.