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BARNES 1899 1924 100 552 599 al eal HOLOGICAL TRANSLATION FUND LIBRARY. VOL. XXVIII. EW ALD'’S COMMENTARY ON THE BOOK OF JOB. COMMENTARY ON THE BOOK OF JOB WITH TRANSLATION BY THE LATE DR. GEORG HEINRICH AUGUST VON EWALD, Professor of Orrental Languages in the University of Gottingen. TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY J. FREDERICK SMITH. WILLIAMS AND NORGATE, 14, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON; AND 20, SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH. 1882. Tuts translation into English of the late Professor Ewald’s work on the Book of Job, the third part of his Dichter des Alten Bundes, has been made on the same principles as that of his work on the Prophets of the Old Testament, which has appeared as volumes ix, Xii, Xviil, xxi, and xxvi of this series. The translator has considered it his duty, in this as in the former case, to faithfully observe the fundamental principles on which the great interpreter of the Hebrew Scriptures per- formed his task of reproducing as closely as possible the mi- nutest peculiarities of his Hebrew authors, even at the cost of German grammar and idiom. Real students of Ewald would not thank an English translator for the attempt to improve upon him. On one point only has any concession been made to English popular taste. The Hebrew proper names in this volume appear, with the exception of =>, in their traditional English form. This slight departure from the author’s practice of transcribing these names in their Hebrew form can hardly be regarded as the violation of an essential principle of his Commentaries. The references in this volume to other works of the author’s have been made as explained in the ‘“‘Translator’s Preface” to the first volume of the “Prophets”. The §§ of his Hebrew VI Grammar, which in the German of this volume of the Poets of the Old Testament are those of an early edition, have been made to correspond with the paragraphing of the last editions of that work. The first edition of this Commentary has generally been compared with the second and last, from which this trans- lation is made, and important differences between the two have frequently been noted. J. F. §. ELT, TY: CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION :— The Thought of the Poem The Matter of the Poem The Art of the Poem Of the Date and History of tha. Bae TRANSLATION AND COMMENTARY :— The First Stage of the Drama: Opening of the Contention, ch. i—iil. , The Second Stage of the DaeaAE First Ree anss in the Contention, ch. iv—xiv. > & & x The Third Stage of the Drama: Second Advance in the Contention, ch. xv—xxi. Fourth Stage of the Drama: Third and ae Ad- vance in the Contention, ch. xxii—xxvili. Fifth Stage of the Drama: Solution, ch. xxix— XXXI1.. XXxXylli—xl. 14, and xlii. . Description of the Hippopotamus and the Croco- dile, ch. xl. 15—xli. 26 Elihu’s Speeches, ch. xxxii—xxxvii. PAGE I—16 16—30 30—735 74—82 81—99 100—169 170—225 226—266 267—317 318—326 326—349 THE BOOK OF JOB. INTRODUCTION. 1, THE THOUGHT OF THE POEM. It is easy to see from the first glance at the book that the poet is making the evils which afflict mortals the sub- ject of his consideration. He found the view which had pre- vailed from of old down to his own times already self-contra- dictory, and he attempted a profounder solution of the con- flicting principles. The successful accomplishment of this task, however, required as its condition the most distinct conception of the contrary notions themselves. 1. According to the notion which descended even to Christian times (John ix, 2 compared with the ancient evidence Num. xxvii, 3), the dark and grievous ills which befall man are the corre- sponding consequences of special sins. They are primarily the consequences of the suflerer’s own sins, but in exceptional cases, where the measure of calamity appears out of proportion to the particular sufferer’s guilt, the causes of it are traced back to his parents or earlier ancestors. But in every case the ills are regarded as a consequence of personal sin. Nor need it create surprise that the ancient world possessed at the first no tried and valid notion as regards the causes of human ill. The idea of evil, ill, is of such a wide and indefinite nature, the causes of it are both so various and so concealed, that even ‘fter long experience and close examination it remains difficult to present a satisfactory theory of it. As long as natural evil, that is evil which is involved in the very creation and con- I 2 THE INTRODUCTION. stitution of the world, ig not distinguished from personal evil, or from what is properly wickedness, and as long as men in their personal capacity are not more strictly looked upon as raised above merely external evil and wickedness which has not touched them personally, it will be impossible to attain to a view of evil in its relation to man which will be in all re- spects satisfactory. As long as the above conditions of such a view are unfulfilled, the best, and, as far as the simple feelings of carly religion are concerned, the most natural view is that above referred to, which arose in the most distant antiquity. This was a conception which early antiquity embraced with affection and reverence, which was subsequently held for a long time, and which must always retain a certain justification, in less elevated and more confined spheres of thought, inas- much as it contains a certain amount of truth. For every ill of the great undistinguished multitude of ills which befall a man, in whatever way it may have arisen, in any case always powerfully provokes serious consideration, and in the first in- stance compels him to abandon his customary indifference and to seek the less obvious causes of the calamities which he so painfully feels. In that case, what will he more naturally think of than his sins and ill deserts? For the unsophisticated mind feels profoundly that it is from sin that disturbance, confusion, and suffering proceed. In this way natural evil also becomes a moral one to him who is conscious of such a disturbance and disorganisation within, and the wickedness of others with which he has connexion by ties of blood or family appears justly to reach him in its consequences. As long as the con- sciousness of human imperfection and of the magnitude of guilt has not been aroused with sufficient force or clearness, this way of looking at the undistinguished mass of evil is not without reason or usefulness. Every fresh calamity snatches men from, their natural indolence and confused thoughtlessness, and every hard or severely felt blow of that kind is like the wave which is meant to impel the ship of the soul, as it is still contend- co 1, THE THOUGHT OF TILE POEM. ing with the troubled billows of ignorance, towards a calmer and fairer port. As thus in the case of men generally the re- cognition of the terrible nature of guilt in all its magnitude must become clear and vivid before they can in return overcome its terrors, so the men of early antiquity were confronted by the undistinguished aggregate of evil in all its forms in order that the truth of human guilt might be brought out most sensibly and painfully. And that nation of antiquity which experienced and felt most vividly all divine truths in this respect also passed through the profoundest experiences, although in a greater or less degree the feeling, that calamities are the consequences of sin, pervades the whole of antiquity. So natural and powerful was this feeling in those ages that it was felt by everybody in that stage of human development, not only by individuals who were themselves the immediate sufferers but also by those who were merely spectators and contemporaries. Primarily, however, by the immediate sufferer himself. He feels most directly the irresistible assault of mysterious suffer- ing, whether it be the burning fever of a violent illness or some other peril threatening complete destruction. Assailed by the most painful sensations, experiencing nothing gentle, mitigating, alleviating, he believes that instead of the former gentle, quickening divine breath, the value of which he now for the first time fully recognises, he endures the wrath of God. avin ie i axes Pe xxix lode. am, lo. 3; iil. 1; iv. 11; that he feels His indignation entering into him x. 17, that he grievously and helplessly falls under His enmity xiii. 24; xxx. 21. This feeling secks expression by means of the most varied figures. The unhappy sufferer feels as if his sufferings were an indignant, chastising hand, with which God clutches him and which rests upon him heavily and without ces- SAtlOny. ells die, Kin RIN I ele 2 RAK ds Ese xe VIN, 3; xxxix. 11. The cruel pains of his calamities appear to him like those caused by sharply pointed and deeply penetrating arrows and missiles of all kinds, vi.4; Ps. xxxvill.3; Lam. 11. 4; J * 4 THE INTRODUCTION. iii, 12. Their incessantly repeated and increasingly violent attack appears to him to be like that of a whole host of armed and fierce assailants, who continually march up with ever fresh forces to storm a fortress, relieving each other by turns, x. 17; xvi. 9, 12—14; xxx. 12—15. And the solitary, frail mortal is set up as it were to be the obnoxious aim of all such incessant attacks, vii. 20; xvi. 11; Lam. il. 12, and must probably at last succumb as if shamefully prevailed over by the proud enemy who seeks to entrap and to insult the poor unfortunate, xiv. 20; xix. 9, 10; xxx. 19; Lam. 1.4. All this appears, in consequence of the burning fire which he feels raging within, as if it were at the same time inflicted by the most indignant enemy, as if the arrows which penetrate him were poisoned vi. 4; xxx, 27, and wrathful glances from God went through him without ceasing, vii. 19; xiv. 6; xvi. 9; Ps. xxxix. 14. On account of this overwhelming burden and torture, attended by the paralysis of all his energies, the suf- ferer feels himself irrecoverably handed over to a higher power. At one time it seems to him as if shut in on all hands he could find no exit, as in trackless horrible darkness iii. 23; xix. 8; Lam. i. 7, 9; or as if he were in rigorous confine- ment where he may not move or Stir, vil. 12; xiii. 27; xiv. 16; Lam. il. 7; or as if entangled in a net and caught in snares xix. 6; Lam.1. 13. At another time, when the danger threatens and rages more violently, he seems to himself to be sinking as if forcibly overwhelmed, carried away by a vast flood, Ps. xxxvill. 5; xiii. 8; Ixxxviii. 8, 16—18; Ixix. 1 sq. (a figure not used in the Book of Job); or as if hunted and run down by a raging lion, x. 16; xvi.9; Isa. xxxviii. 13, or even a still more terrible case, as if pursued by the violence of a storm, hurled on high, dashed in pieces, ix. 11, 17; xiii. 25; xxx. 22. Now although these feelings and similes could not have arisen unless from the very first the more or less distinct forboding and terror of the divine wrath had existed in the background, , this terror nevertheless only becomes truly powerful and definite 1, THE THOUGHT OF THE POEM. 5 in the course of such calamities and pains. It is in his mys- terious afflictions that the poor sufferer thinks he finds the proof and evidence of the divine disfavour and hostility (I know that Thou will not acquit me, says Job, ix. 28; x. 13; xxx. 23). Thus the trouble is twofold, possessing the whole soul and fil- ling it with the darkest terrors. All the afflictions which are either actually endured or threatened and dreaded become thus precisely so many images of anguish and alarm to the confounded soul which is labouring under the delusion of the divine wrath; boundless dismay, horrible despair, is added to the physical tortures of the body, destroying every consolation, iii. 24, 25; ix. 11, 15—20; xxii. 16; Ps. vi. 7,8; xili.3; Ixxxviii. 16. Whilst he supposes that he feels most painfully the glance and hand of his angry God, he must still feel on the other hand that God as the glorious, kind and gracious One has withdrawn from him and appears to stand afar off with His face turned AWAY, Blile Dor Kime 1s XKilly GO, Oy RXKe CO, Ls IPS. xl, Ze x. 1 sq.; xxxvill. 15, And although with every new and unexpected stroke he experiences afresh the wonders of the divine power, this power is nevertheless simply dark and terrible in this case, ix. 11 sq.; x. 16. This dismay, this ceaseless foreboding terror, is finally the more intense in proportion as the consoling and cheering prospects which the ancient world entertained regard- ing the gloomy Underworld, or Hades, were few; from it there seemed to be no possible return, and dread of the death of the body, and of being compelled early to enter the Underworld, was great. So that a man, whom such a calamity befalls be- fore the satiety and weariness of old age, although in the moment of maddening pain the quickest death seems the one thing to be desired, vi. 8—13; vii. 15; xiii. 14, can yet at other times pray pitifully for at least a brief respite before the last breath is drawn, vil. 16, 19; x. 20; xiv. 5—12; Isa. xxxviii. 10—13.—And if the man who is thus afflicted is conscious of no definite grievous sin, it will still appear to him in the midst of all these conceptions, as if his incessant pain tor- 6 THE INTRODUCTION. tured and compelled him to reflect and in penitence and sub- inission confess transgressions the commission of which he can- not recall. His sufferings become a painful instrument of tor- ture with which God enquires after his sins, x. 6, becoming constantly more intense in proportion as he makes resistance (as in fact by the impatience and rebellion of the sufferer his sufferings increase) ix. 12—20, 34; x. 16, 17; xiii. 21. The final punishment, the end of the process of torture, death itself, appears to be irrevocably determined, and God, delaying and yet constantly bitterly punishing, merely meditating amidst the interchanging severe torments upon the manner of the cer- tain impending death, xin. 15, 26; xiv. 17; xxii. 14. In such circumstances the thought of God’s omnipotence is itself a bur- den and a terror, because a mortal (even should he innocently fall) appears unable to deliver himself in opposition to omni- potent decrees, inasmuch as beyond God there is no appeal, but He is the almighty and at the same time the highest judge, ix. 2—20, 30—33; xxili. 6, 18, 14; xxx. 18. However the Spectators and contemporaries also behold in such sufferings a sign of the divine punishment of the suf-. {crer himself: his misfortunes are an unfavourable witness not to himself alone, xiii. 27; xvi, 8, but also to his fellowmen. The alarming sight of such sufferings, which sometimes provokes disgust even, combined with the consciousness of possible parti- cipation in similar sin and punishment, excites even in the kindly-disposed and considerate friend the suspicion, that the sufferer is paying the penalty of equally grievous sins. The ordinary, pusillanimous and selfish man carefully turns away, or even insults and mocks the sufferer, not blushing to charge him with false crimes. As the poor man’s afflictions in- crease, the confusion and error of such spectators grow, and nothing causes the sufferer deeper pain than this suspicion which he meets with from his fellowmen, this narrow-minded treachery by which he finds himself isolated or betrayed, this crucl scorn with which he finds himself so bitterly persecuted, 1. THE THOUGHT OF THE POEM. q Mey Sb eS RVI. 1 8q., 10: 20> xvii, Gs Six, 226 xxx, Lsqe ES; ino, Si oa RO eG REX. Lisq3 axxvil, 12g Ii) O60. Vl OS Waa e.. 16° Isai. 7. bis. aud many other passages. The most friendly and calmest of the spectators cannot refrain from urging the poor man to do pro- found penance at least, and they insist vehemently on con- _fession of committed sins. The ancient languages also point by the forms and usages of many words to ideas of this kind as generally prevalent. Thus 23: is a stroke of God, an affliction of the body intended as a punishment; and how deeply the ancient Hebrews felt that the ideas of guilt, punishment, and suffering were interchangeable, is shown by several words which convey all these meanings, as 772, for instance, denoting properly what is wrong, a trans- eression, guilt, but also the mysterious sufferings connected therewith, Ps. xxxvili. 5; by rxtum and »we transgression, sin, the consequences of wrong-doing, the punishment, or the suf- fering, are at all events often expressed, Ps. xxxix. 9, rather than the wrong-doing itself, on the supposition that the latter implies the former. Nor, indeed, can any one deny that a profound and eternal connexion subsists between sin and suf- fering, as much as between divine right and salvation, as the ancient nations, but particularly the Hebrews, surmised in such a grand and severe manner. It is only the form under which they conceived this connexion to exist which is confused and mixed with error in the above popular conceptions. 2. For that view may fairly well suffice as long as human life remains in its first simplicity, but not as it grows more complex. With the progress of the collective life of the race, men’s relations to each other become by degrees very compli- cated. The individual and separate households get interwo- ven with the prevailing order or disorder of a great commu- nity; the individual so often suffers without corresponding per- sonal fault under the sufferings of the whole community, or bears alone even the guilt of a whole period, the consequences 8 THE INTRODUCTION. of the crrors of many centuries. As thus the disturbance of the simple equilibrium between suffering and personal conduct be- comes increasingly painful, that ancient view of the calamities of individuals as the consequence of their personal sins also receives perpetually more and more injurious shocks, inasmuch as experience so often and so decidedly contradicts it. This rift in the ancient notion, moreover, widens still further in an- other direction. The idea of guilt, which has been brought to greater perfection under this notion as its outward integument, becomes itself a means of its dissolution. For when that early delusion fully roused and aggravated the consciousness of guilt, it necessarily met with its end precisely as it attained this object: just in proportion as the heart has become softened and obedient, it has also become the more able to escape from its own darkness and errors. When once the idea of the true extent and the real magnitude of the personal guilt of mortals has become quite clear to the mind, it will turn with all the clearer perception and courage to the recognition of what does not strictly constitute a part of that guilt, and resist more and more decidedly the universal validity of the ancient belief. Men learn to put in opposite scales the measure of their suf- ferings and the measure of their possible transgressions; and in the case of the individual who suffers so severely but can- not with the most minute examination discover anything which completely answers to his afflictions, there arises from that early delusion a host of doubts and troubles xiii. 26"; Ps. xxv. 7. And then, on the other hand, God himself is the being who is full of kindness and mercy, and as time goes on is more and more inwardly and cordially felt to be such. If that is the case, wherefore shall the sufferer not hope for re- lief from the mercy and salvation of God? For, indeed, mercy must be the predominant characteristic of God, and the Creator seems to be necessitated to treat his creature rather with love than with the desire to destroy it, x. 3, 8; xiv, 15. In the midst of the growing confusion and the increasing universality 1. THE THOUGHT OF THE POEM. 9 of misery, the certainty and necessity of the indestructible di- vine mercy as the only salvation come more and more into the foreground: and when once this conviction has grown power- ful, it turns primarily against that ancient belief, which has be- come a delusion and superstition, as its dangerous antagonist. “It is true that at first the endeavour was made to main- tain both of these contradictory views, inasmuch as the suf- ferer, though still oppressed by the feeling of the divine wrath, nevertheless prays to be chastised not beyond measure but rather to be pardoned, and while he wrestles with his afflic- tion gathers from the idea of the divine mercy reasons with which to excite God’s pity. And as a fact noble souls which can discover such reasons, succeed thus in getting comfort for the moment*. The contradiction between these two ways of re- garding God,—as the hostile unjust tormentor, xxvii. 2, and as the highest judge from whom at all events no final wrong can be expected, xiii. 9; xi. 16,—the poor man seeks to overcome by thinking of God as only at present hostile, xiii. 24; xiv. 16; xxii. 3—17, and so putting forth his utmost strength he wrestles to feel that He is once more inclined to him. But notwithstanding there still remains an oppressive, unsatisfied feeling, inasmuch as this solution of the contradiction involves on its part much that is not clear and intelligible. And as the times grow in- creasingly complicated, as the life of the more conscientious gets constantly more troubled and toilsome, the hold of de- spair gets stronger, it becomes growingly difficult within the region of that ancient delusion, notwithstanding the thought of the divine mercy, to attain to lasting satisfaction. Even in cases where a noble power of faith contends with despair and aspires to victory, we soon see notwithstanding at one time how the utmost effort to escape the fear of the divine wrath ‘and the mockery of cruel persecutors, Pss. xxxv; xxxvill; Ixix; acix., succeeds only with difficulty in overcoming and assuaging i + See my Commentary on Ps. vi. 13. 10 THE INTRODUCTION. the bitter, almost scornful, contemplation of the frailty of hu- man life and cndeayours Ps. xxxix., and at another time the most melancholy longing for salvation, pining almost in vain in a last effort to find comfort and deliverance, closing with a mourn- ful outlook, Ps. lxxxviii. If in such a case the affliction ne- vertheless afresh surprises the poor man who is not at all con- scious of such great guilt, and he sees himself disappointed as regards the peace which should follow his innocence and the hope arising from divine mercy, is it not possible that at last pure despair may prevail and its source—that ancient belief— be turned against itself in fierce indignation? As a sufficient reason for such great wrath is not felt, the fear of that wrath becomes a dread of all divine leadings and providences in ge- neral, and the one thought which ought to bring comfort and hope to the sufferer—the thought of God—is changed into an image of terror. But this possible error does not reach its climax until the personal sufferer turns his dazed and dimmed eye from his own individual calamities to the consideration of the great world to find there its full confirmation. The man that is conscious of such perplexity and confusion within his own soul, such emptiness and desolation, discovers also very quickly ca- lamities of a similarly excessive character in the world around him; indeed, he simply finds there things whicb answer to his own mood and experience. How many seem, on the one hand, to suffer most profoundly though no great personal guilt can be proved or presupposed in their case! On the other hand, how prosperous often is the powerful sinner who defies all law and order! If man’s external fortunes are to serve as an index for the judgment as regards the divine favour, in such cases does not everything in the present world appear to violate all order, and docs not experience teach the exact contrary of the early belici—the adversity of the faithful and, which is the most distressing, the apparently complete and lasting prosperity of the violent and lawless? ix. 22—24; xii. 5, 6; xxi. 6,'7; { 1. THE THOUGHT OF THE POEM. 11 xxill, 14; xxiv. 1—25; comp. Pss. xlix, Ixxili, And if it is sought to excuse the outward prosperity of the wicked by the supposition, that at all events his sons would nevertheless have to suffer for it, is that really a righteous retribution propor- tionate to the dignity of God and of the human person? xxi. 19—21; comp. v. 4. On the contrary, are not the sons of those who suffer innocently sharers in their parents’ misfor- tunes from no fault of their own? Do not many follow the se- ductive example of a prosperous sinner? xxi. 32, 33. In ge- neral, where is the mighty and manifest intervention of God as judge which the early belief maintained ?-—-Whoever in this general confusion under which the world seems to be suffering feels himself involyed and overwhelmed with no light or suc- cour from within or without, must naturally either sink into a state of gloomy and oppressive dread, in which, overwhelmed by the burden, he resigns all collected thought, or, if he re- mains too strong to give way to such cowardly fear, must rise up boldly in warm indignation against the confusion itself and Him whom he regards as its ultimate cause. For the mind of a healthy, intelligent man cannot comprehend such a pre- valence of wrong, inasmuch as it is a contradiction of his own nature. The dark unresolved enigma torments and teases him most painfully. And if such an impossible, yea, preposterous state of things appears to come even from God himself, and thus to force itself upon his attention, man possesses still the marvellous power and desire to turn with a Titanic daring against Heaven itself, to call to account the Omnipotent Onc regarding that which is to his mind so inexplicable, and not to tremble even in the presence of an angry and threaten- ing God! He who is thus driven by the dark storm of doubt and perplexity is more likely to sacrifice the ancient faith altogether with all that might be true in it, and a single individual may find it easier to combat the universally preva- lent, or even the sacred, notion, than that he should from con- sideration for it betray a true experience which contradicts it [> « THE INTRODUCTION. and faint-heartcdly pay homage to the dark obscurity. And if God and all the powers of the world endeavoured by means of the ancient doctrine to deprive him of his conscious inno- cence, he could only all the more boldly in the midst of all dangers defend the hereditary faith itself against (the external) God, the outward world. But justly as the violated moral feeling revolts against the ancient delusion and in a short time inflicts upon it incurable wounds, this method produces no salutary result, but imme- diately nothing but increased perplexity, growing trouble. Thus we have, on the one hand, a delusive faith grown to a super- stition, and on the other, the same faith simply converted into its contradictory, doubt and denial degenerated into unbelief! On both sides misconception: for both still depend upon ex- ternal appearances, without having grasped the whole and the heart of the matter. Nevertheless amid these painful mental throes the higher truth may at last come to light. Contra- dictory views when most strained and decisively brought out conduct readily to the clearness of truth. When doubt has been fully developed, it soon proves its own destruction; under the ruins of it and the ancient faith there is already lying secreted the purer truth which is so anxiously longed-for and the want of which is so painfully felt, and unexpectedly a fa- vouring wind calls it forth at the right moment. 3. This correct view proceeds from the recognition of the fact, that outward evil as such is not at all necessarily the consequence and punishment of the sins of the individual, that physical evils such as earthquakes, pestilences, on the con- trary, befall both good and bad no less indiscriminately than physical benefits (comp. Luke xiii. 1—5; Matt. v. 45). On the other hand, outward evil which has its origin in human wicked- ness, €. g. oppression and cruelty, can although it affects the guilty most painfully, at the same time just as easily fall upon the innocent also. Evil as something outward, visible, and physical holds therefore no true inward relation whatever to 1. THE THOUGHT OF THE POEM. 13 the personal merits of man, inasmuch as the most guilty may sometimes enjoy what is apparently the greatest prosperity and the most innocent may for the moment bear the most painful and humiliating suffering. It can, however, never destroy the immortal spirit of man. The divine design of the evil which befalls a man must therefore be altogether different from that which the ancient belief supposed: evil must be intended simply to raise and bless him by arousing his spirit and compelling, the exercise of its profounder energies. For when it meets him’ as an enemy, it really arouses simply his hidden energies, the unused infinite treasures of his soul, to the endeavour to over- come it, and points the inexhaustible immortal spirit to its own dignity and power. But this spirit as it rises to the struggle, and partially or in the end wholly overcomes the dark, and disturbing view, becomes conscious of its own greatness. ‘It is in this struggle and victory that man becomes a partaker of the divine life, a truly free man and a ruler. So that evil “assumes even a necessary place in the divine order of the world, and where there are the most and the greatest evils there also ‘is the possibility of the most glorious victory and the highest happiness. It follows therefore that evil must befall all without ‘distinction, and if it were merely the temptation, or the danger of the idea of erring, which had to be overcome, the most in- ‘nocent would be obliged to pass through this fiery trial; just as, on the other hand, the most guilty is at all events in any cage warned and as far as is possible for him summoned to get free from his guilt. And should the sin of parents and ancestors “exert considerable influence upon their children and descendants, the spirit is notwithstanding so fresh and capable in each young “member of the race that it can annihilate all earlier evils and “return to the eternal divine mercy, comp. Deut. xxiv. 16; Jer. 'xxxi. 29, 30: Ezek. xviii. 1 sq.; John ix. 3. As accordingly trial pice withstood and pain happily overcome are no longer “> ils, outward evils do not become really evils until they are cul vard, whether this takes place by means of the evil of a sin er 1) 14 THE INTRODUCTION. which is rooted in the heart, inasmuch as the heart which is oppressed thereby is inclined to regard every evil which is added from without as related, or whether it takes place by means of the false notion of outward evil as a simple divine punishment. In the first case, the confusion of the inward evil, the evil conscience, with the external one, is put an end to by the destruction of the inward evil; in the latter case, the mis- taken notion comes to an end of itself by the shining forth of the pure truth as the noblest gain of the conflict with the evil itself, since the latter in this conflict of man with it must gra- dually reveal its own nature more and more distinctly, and as the false spectre of evil flees, the idea of true moral evil be- comes so much the plainer and more certain. Is this so, there then naturally follows as a general prin- ciple for the person actually suffering, that he can overcome evil, without fear and despondency, simply by the assurance of the immortality of the spirit and of all other divine truths, by patience and fortitude in true faith and trust, and by the clearer knowledge of himself which comes through suffering, while by the contrary, particularly by the conception of evil as simply the punishment of an angry God and by the gloomy fear and perplexity which arises therefrom, he only makes evil really dangerous and the burden of it most oppressive.—And for the spectator follows the principle, that he may not be warmed at the outward bugbear of evil and its more repulsive features, that he may not judge hastily and narrowly concerning its mysteries, nor impute to the sufferer some sin and prepare confusion by which both the suffering itself is made more painful and even the good intentions and the desire to com- fort of the sympathetic are frustrated. This thought in all its truth, according to the grounds and deepest sources from which it is necessarily derived, it is the design and aim of the Book of Job to illustrate and magnify. At the time of the writing of the book it was without doubt a new thought, which here for the first time finds its worthy 1. THE THOUGHT OF THE POEM. 15 and fully qualified apostle, but did not obtain general acceptance until a considerably later period. So greatly must the poet have outrun his age. We already mect in this book with the same fundamental view of evil which is subsequently briefly and forcibly established in the N. T. and will last for all time. But here we see it as it is still wholly new in the struggle of its discovery, wrestling with its own inner necessity, in all the freshness of its genesis and formation. By this the book re- ceives a peculiar charm and special importance in comparison with the later and more concise expressions of the same truth. If we wish to see the terrors and dangers of the opposite er- rors in a vivid light, if we desire to experience on the other hand how glorious and refreshing the pure truth is and how necessarily it springs out of its contradictions, we must weigh well what this book contains from beginning to end. Only in this one respect does the thought appear to be not quite fully brought out: we do not find here the idea of the eternal du- ration of the spirit in the same uncommon force with which it -prevailed in later times. If subsequently, amid still greater er- rors, a multitude of martyrs bore testimony with their blood to the truth, that for an advanced faith even the greatest of outward evils—death itself—must lose its ancient terrors; if in -the N. T. the highest example is given of divine victory over death; there is here, on the other hand, less ease and fami- _liarity as regards these ideas, and Job has to contend much ‘in order to get the first foundation of a certain hope in the ‘immortality of his soul and of his just cause. This is, it must -be allowed, the mark of an earlier and simpler view of life, and the ancient horror of death has not in this case been yet completely overcome by the act of an innocent death. still, -on the other hand, it is clear that the thought of the book has -no validity whatever if it cannot find the basis of its certainty | -in the immortality of the soul. For how can outward evil be overcome completely to the very end save that the soul main- tains the struggle with it to the end and is conscious that cven — 16 TIE INTRODUCTION. by the loss of the last outward good—life itself—it will not perish? The new thought of the book tends by its very nature to this truth as that wherein it attains for the first time its own perfect power and clearness of view. And from this con- sideration alone we may infer that this constituent portion of the thought of the book could not be wholly wanting. But this truth appears here as only desire, surmise, and intuition struggling jwith difficulty and aspiration out of lower views, as a final outlook and necessity which only follows from the whole thought of the book and all along remains somewhat in the distant | background: hence rather a hope than a fact. See xiv. 13—15; xvi. 18, 19; xix. 23—29; comp. the already more deeply feeling and stronger utterance of it Ps. xvi and xlix. More closely con- sidered, even this has in a certain respect its advantages, inasmuch as thus in the case of this particular truth also, which is the farthest off and highest of the whole book, we witness its throes as it were and its first birth, and feel how painfully and yet how necessarily and imperatively it forced its way out of the ancient trammels. When a truth for the first time comes to light, shooting forth in its first young impulses, it is always most easily recognised as regards its just claims, whilst later it often seems to luxuriate too rampantly and is easily again misunderstood. The Book of Job has the merit of having pre- pared for the profounder views of evil and of the immortality of the soul and of transmitting them as fruitful germs down oe subsequent times. 2. THE MATTER OF THE POEM. The poct’s design was not to express the thought of his poem hastily in the winged brevity of a lyric, as though he were still carried away by the first powerful feeling and by the magnitude of the truth; neither was it his design to present it nakedly as a simple doctrine or as a precept and direction. sut the thought lies from the very first so profoundly and also so calmly in the poct’s soul that he feels urged to present it 2, THE MATTER OF THE POEM. 17 in a complete form from all points of view. The thought there- fore shall be unfolded and established as necessary not merely out of the heart of the poet but rather out of the light of life’s past experiences. It shall emerge from its own deep foundations, in the serious conflicts with its contradictories, and everything which seems to create and mould it, its contra- dictories from both sides, the various stages and advances of truer views—all this must in its proportion and everything in its own manner and its proper force appear and cooperate, in order that the indestructible higher truth may finally proceed from it all as the conclusion and necessity. Without doubt this is a higher grade of poetry, when the inward fire which the true thought has kindled in the poet has the power of self- denial and self-restraint, whilst the calm and brightness which on that very account prevail none the less in the poet look down upon and artistically describe in peaceful contemplation the sway, the struggle and the victory of this thought in the world, so that that first fire is only the bidden warmth with which the poem and its art are aglow, and which in turn re- kindles itself in the breast of every contemplator of such a finished work. Here we have most closely united an inner life ‘and an outer form, the warmth and inwardness of feeling with the vivid realisability and truth of the calm course of every- day life, the impulse of personal hope and higher endeavour with the certainty of divine necessity; the thought of the poem is precisely thus perceived in its profundity as well as its pre- valence and power in the world. The Drama (for this kind of poetry belongs generally to the drama) includes within it 10t only lyric, but also the opposite of it, epic poetry. As the thought has to be unfolded and proved in this manner, “ts poetic quickening and embodiment is necessarily sought for rom history: but in this wide field nothing immediately presents -tself to the poet so suitable as a narrative from hoar antiquity. In the one hand, on account of the peculiar elevation, solemnity ‘nd sacredness of a narrative from such a region; the poet fcel- 2 18 THE INTRODUCTION. ing such reverence in view of the loftiness and divine truth of the thought to be represented that he prefers to accompany It into a region by the purer air of which he feels himself bene- ficially quickened and his thoughts brightened. On the other hand, on account of the poetic freedom of treatment which is allow- iable in the case of a legend of early antiquity, the more or less scattered elements of which, as they have becn preserved to me- mory, receiving from every successive narrator a new connexion and peculiar form, whilst most readily submitting to fresh hand- ling under the plastic art of a poet. As the dramatists of ancient India and of early Greece chose their materials from mythological sources, so to the poet, who is conscious of the power and vocation to give poetic life to that genuinely Hebrew thought, materials presented themselves from the antiquity of the Hebrews in the widest sense, which though not so mytho- logical were yet legendary. As such plastic material the poet chose the tradition of Job’s sufferings and deliverance. For least of all can it be seriously: doubted, that the story of Job which is here handled, is not described by the poct for its own sake as in the stricter sense history, but only serves as the material for the energies of the creative spirit of the poet, and is intended as the foundation for the artistic working-out of the leading thought to be pre- sented. For the work of the poet is not so much a history of Job as of his sufferings and his deliverance, and of the latter only so much is described as is required for the working-out of the thought of the poem. But whatever serves this purpost is wisely selected to meet the laws of artistic proportion. Jus as this art, as dealing unrestrainedly with the details accord: ing to its own designs, determines the general arrangement 0 the entire book, as will be subsequently shown, so it pervade: it in every minute detail, to such an extent. that hardly : single word is put down without its artistic propriety and suit- ability in the place it occupies. When, e.g., the poet gives to Job before his calamities seven sons and three daughters and 2. THE MATTER OF THE POEM. 19 afterwards restores to him the same number; when he de- scribes Job as living 140 years after his deliverance; when he presents every detail which the proportion of the whole work requires him to touch upon after the manner of such general proportions and relations—how is it possible to avoid seeing that the story itself has become poetic and artistic under the hand of the poet? And if we had simply the appearance of Satan and the speaking of God, that would be of itself suff- cient proof that the every-day level of history must not be looked for here, but a somewhat common material, in giving form to which the poetic thought constructs for itself its own higher, that is, purely divine history. But on the other hand his unformed material cannot have been simply invented by the poet. For the invention of a history from the very first, the derivation of a person, who is at the same time intended to be regarded as historical, purely from the brain of a poet, is, as extremely forced and unnatural, so entirely foreign to the antiquity of all nations that it only cradually commenced in the later periods of an ancient litera- ture and is met with fully developed only in modern times. The ancient literature of the Hebrews does not contradict this observation. Although in the feeble final growths of its ancient trunk, in the books of Judith, Tobit, the historical accounts are derived simply from the reflections of the poet, even in the case of the chief characters and events, in the older books there is no trace of this species of literary art; nor was there any necessity for it at an earlier period, inasmuch as a poet who was less removed from earlier antiquity could without difficulty draw from the fullest legendary stream, whilst in the case of later generations this source failed with the course of time. The poet who wrote the Book of Job, however, lived at a time which still remained in many ways in living relation with the views, customs, and traditions of the early antiquity which was then disappearing with its peculiar characteristics. From which circumstance alone it may be confidently inferred, 27 20 THE INTRODUCTION. that the poet was not called upon to create the material of his work, but that a happy glance into the treasury of the legends of antiquity must naturally conduct him to the man whose history was most akin to the special thought which oc- cupied his own mind. The less legitimate, therefore, the question is, whether the work of the poet as we possess it contains history or fiction, as if a third thing were not possible, or rather the case, with all the greater urgency does the other question at once arise, what then did he find as ancient tradition ready to his hand? How much did existing legends present to him? For it is only when this point has been more particularly de- termined, that the degree of freedom with which the poet handled his material and his own peculiar property in it, can be fixed. It is true that the answer to such a question is very difficult, particularly in the case of this book, inasmuch as in other cases of a similar nature in the Bible it is not easy. For a completely satisfactory prosecution of such an inquiry pre- supposes a rich store of related legends of the most various ages and localities. If the same legend can be traced through several directions and halting-places in the course of its travels, it is possible to determine more particularly how it has been cradually transformed after its first separation from its source, and what fresh changes have been made in it at each of its resting-places. Such abundant literary remains as we have from ancient India or Greece, often supply in conjunction with the other remains of antiquity sufficient assistance in this respect for such inquiries; whilst in literatures which are more meagerly preserved, as the Biblical literature of this class, a legend appears very often standing quite by itself, preserved in one form only, although it may already have passed through many. Accordingly it is only when the inquirer has previously gained experience by the study of the plainer legends of more perfectly preserved literatures that he can successfully deal with the scattered fragments of legends in more limited liter- 2. THE MATTER OF TIE POEM. 21 atures. The legend of Job is now found recorded amongst the older books of the O.T. in this Book of Job alone, and we have neither an early, nor a late, account of him which may not be referred back to our book. For all that is clsewhcre found regarding Job turns out on closer inspection to have been derived from this book, or subjoined to it. And accordingly the memory of Job would have probably wholly perished, if our poet had not preserved it in this book by immortalising therein an imperishable thought together with this ancient hero. But now that Job has most gloriously risen from the grave through the poet’s mind and art, thus immortalised he lives henceforth a second life, as a light to others, which is evidence of the profound impression which the immortalised Job of our poet produced upon the centuries which immediately followed this spiritual resurrection. Job, as the poet describes hin, is first mentioned Ezek. xiv. 14, 20, then more at length in the book of Tobit, particularly 11.12, and James v.11. But soon the endeavour prevailed to know still more of this Job than the poet had thought well to say, and accordingly his history passed through a second process of development, partly by means of the annexation of other narratives to those of this book in order to supplement them, partly by means of a free continuation and embellishment of situations which had been already described in this book in brief outline; which two sources of alterations may be regarded as generally the chief causes of the formation of apocryphal narratives. The first is found especially in the Greek addition to the Septuagint at the end of this book, where the innocent but vain attempt is made to connect Job, who was not found elsewhere in the pat- riarchal legends of the O. T., with the Idumean king Jobab, Gen. xxxvi. 33, 34, based partly upon the similarity of the names, which is however great in the Greek but not in the Hebrew 1, partly upon Uz as Job’s country, which could be 1 3R, 1658; 22°, lwRa8. 22 TILE INTRODUCTION. reckoned as belonging to Edom acc. Gen. xxxvi. 28 '. The se- cond kind of continuation, when a later distant re-narrator had the courage to further develop the poetic form and re- suscitation of the history, is met with in the Koran’, where several passages of Job’s life are freely expanded, without our being able to discover any other ultimate source of them than this book before us; for the things which the Arabians narrate of Job are based in the last instance simply upon various pas- sages of the O. T. book, and it is in vain to search in Arabic for special oral or written sources*®. Although we can thus 1 Zerah who is named as the father of Jobab, Gen. xxxvi. 33, is also then compared with the descendant of Esau, ver. 13, and a fresh basis for com. parison therein discovered; 732%, which could not well be regarded as Job's city, had to submit to serve as the name of his mother, Boocppu. The Greek augmentor ventured also to add to the number of Job’s years before his cala: mities, and to conjecture that the Hebrew book had been translated from the Syriac, i.e., probably the Idumean.—Tolerably early a variety of such detailed narratives regarding Job’s fortunes must have been written, how his wife was called Rachma, the daughter of Joseph, etc.; see Catal. cdd. syr. Mus. Brit. p. 111; Jtenerar. Herosol. p. 587 ed. Wessel.; Journal As. 1845, p.174. The additions found in part here and there in the LXX, particularly ii. 9 and at the end of the book, comp. with Aristeus in Huseb. Prapar. Evang. YX. 25, are pro: bably merely fragments of such a narrative. 2 Sur. xxxviii. 40—44; xxi. 83, 84. 3 There are in the Koran two legends of Job peculiar to it: as he prayed to God for help, it is said, a cool spring broke forth at his feet, with which he washed himself free of the burning heat of his disease (this appears to have been derived from xxix. 6); and again, it is said, that after his complete restor- ation he gently chastised his wife at the divine command (inferred from ii. 9: xlii. 8). These legends, which the Koran only briefly indicates, and some others, which where they differ have undoubtedly come from impure sources, are nar rated by the Mohammedan Chroniclers more at length, see at present in their most lengthy form in Tabari’s Annals p. 263—276, ed. Dubeux (where a city of Job in Basan, p. 273, and the names of his children, p. 276, are specially note- worthy), Abulf. Hist. Anteisl. p. 26 sq.; see also Sale’s Notes on the Koran. The name Ajjib, or Ejjib, frequent in the Mohammedan writers, was not first intro- duced by the Koran, as several Arabians of the centuries immediately preceding Mohammed were named after the ancient Hebrew hero (see the particulars in the Zeitschrift fiir die Kunde des Morgenlandes Ill. p. 234): but many Biblical names were similarly naturalised in these centuries among the Arabians. Thus every trace of Job in Islam belongs to the multitude of Biblical histories that 2. THE MATTER OF THE POEM. Za follow the narratives concerning Job from this book of our poct down into late times, on the other hand, all external evidences fail us when we attempt to pass beyond the book itself, the work of the poet alone remaining to assist in the examination of the question of the amount of raw material that descended to the poct from earlier times. And if this question is a bold onc, it cannot nevertheless be evaded, and on closer inquiry admits, in general at least, of a tolerably satisfactory answer. The work of the poet itself, when strictly examined, displays its various sources, or the points where the poet freely creates and where he was under greater external restraint. 1. The name Job is not one first coined by the poct. His procedure in case he wished to coin names required for his purpose, may be inferred from the names of Job’s daughters, xliil. 14: for though he forms these names simply because he needs them in order to supply briefly with them the proof of the perfect beauty of these daughters, on that very account he coins them with a meaning which is easily perceived to suit his purpose. A similarly transparent, only slightly veiled meaning, is, however, not to be found in the name Job, as there are neither any traces of it elsewhere in the O. T., nor can any plain derivation of it be found in the Hebrew tongue. The name may perhaps originally, like most very early ones, have had its origin in the life of this hero, as a concise ex- pression of his chief characteristics, as the world remembered them?!: still, the poet has plainly received it from tradition, found their way to Mohammed only through the medium of indirect sources of various kinds. 1 It is difficult to find the one correct derivation of the word 353R, So much is clear, the root 3°8, as a softer form of 217, 25V, denotes to turn, and also to turn inwardly, to return, (5) hence sy walt a bottle, belly, so called from the notion of turning into itself, morally conversion from +204, and also, with a dialectic difference, to turn against others, whence in Hebrew 2°N enmity. 3**S as the designation of our hero, would therefore most suitably denote a man, 24 THE INTRODUCTION. and can hardly have regarded even once its etymological meaning as significant, inasmuch as he does not apply it at all as con- tributing to his purpose. Similarly, the names of the three friends bear no relation whatever to the main idea of the book, or even to the special character of any of them as it is de- scribed in the book. From whatever legendary source the poet may have derived these three names’, it is at all events cer- tain, that they were actual names which did not first origi- nate at the will and in the art of the poet. On the other hand, the manner in which the name and the entire idea of the hero would spring from the thought of the poem, is shown by the words Tobith and Tobia, Judith: names which have a perfectly intelligible meaning in Hebrew, and the veil of which may be easily withdrawn by any one who follows the poetical thought of the book in which they occur. 2. The hero is removed into a particular country, Uz, or according to the pronunciation of the LXX “4vg. The deter- mination of its position is reserved for future inquiries: in the Bible the ancestor of Uz is in the first instance reckoned to be- long to Syria, as a son of Aram, Gen. x. 23, undoubtedly because Aramaic was spoken there; but in the second instance he is reckoned more particularly amongst the sons of Nahor, or the relatives of Abraham, Gen. xxii. 21; or he appears too, because who after sad despair, turns within himself and by that act turns to God again: for, in fact, in this consists the highest idea of the history of this hero, xlii. 6; and we may without difficulty suppose that Job’s memory in general was pre- served in this form in ancient legend. The conjecture of some moderns, that 31°X denotes properly the man hated, treated as an enemy (by God), which would be a name in the highest degree indefinite, inexpressive, and indeed (in- asmuch as the chief idea, God, would be absent from it) wholly obscure, is much less appropriate, the only recommendation of it being really the prejudice in favour of a Hebrew derivation. 1 The first of the three, Eliphaz, is an old renowned Idumean name, Gen. xxxvi. 4, 10, 12, which the poet undoubtedly chose because he wished to have a famous ancient sage out of Edom. Bildad and Zophar must equally have been actual names from early legendary history, of which we have simply now lost the trace; there is no possibility of discovering a figurative meaning in them. 2. THE MATTER OF THE POEM. 25 the country was at last, if perhaps only partially, subjugated by Edom, as a descendant of Edom’s, Gen. xxxvi. 281. Ac- cording to this, it lay therefore, as the Greek addition to the -LXX says, on the confines of Idumea and Arabia, that. is, ‘bounded on the south by Idumea, on the west by Judea, on ‘the east by Arabia; on the north lay probably Bashan, with which it is even confounded if the Mohammedans mean to de- ‘scribe the country of Job?. After another fashion, this country is -also made to belong probably to northern Arabia, as the southern ‘boundaries of Syria and those of northernmost Arabia run “very much into each other, and the Arabians extended them- ‘selves continually in this direction; according to this geography, Job is reckoned amongst the children of the East, i.e. the Sa- “‘racens, 1.3, comp. Gen. xxv. 6; Judg. vi. 3. Further Uz has no renown in the legendary history of the Hebrews, either as a country or a people; it 1s, on the contrary, plain that the land first acquired a certain name through this book, and if 1 Or reversely, and with equal truth, Uz is called the native land of Edom, Lam. iv. 21. 2 See above p. 22 and Abulf. p. 26; Josephus also, Ant. i. 16. 4. places the _country towards the north-east The Arabians know nothing of a Jand Uz; it ‘i$ @ question whether their name (as, for Esau, contains a reminiscence of Uz, and is on that account so greatly altered from Esau. For it is certainly allowable to raise the question, whether the names Uz and Esau are not ulti- mately related and only two different formations of one primitive name. I have some time ago expressed elsewhere the view, that the name Uz was originally --dentical with Esau, i.e., at first denoted the same uncultivated land (and people) “which was also called Esau. To this the expression Lam, iv. 21 in particular -plainly points, and that it is legitimate so far as the letters of the words are <:oncerned follows almost from what is remarked Jhstory of Joiacl Lp. 234 _ I. p. 336). The various localities and small countries to which the name Uz was subsequently further attached, appear therefore simply as remnauts of a land _and nation which in primitive times, at all events, must have extended far beyond the country usually called Idumea; and perhaps the small country intended in the Book of Job may have been that which, as late as Ptolemy, is specially named ’Arcitie. It is, however, unmistakeable that the name appears in the Book of Job precisely as a very ancient one, and that only after it had thus become so fa- -mous again is it used Jer. xxv. 20 in conjunction with Edom, ver. 21, and also applied in another manner Lam. iv. 21. 20 THE INTRODUCTION. at the time of Jeremiah it was exceptionally more spoken of, Jor. xxv. 20, Lam. iv. 21, the explanation according to all the peculiar circumstances is, that the name at that time had again become more current by means of this book. It docs not ap- pear, therefore, why the poct should choose a name which was so little renowned and almost forgotten in his time, unless he had been induced to do so by an ancient legend concerning Job.—Similarly, the three friends whom the poct thinks wel to introduce are described so definitely as regards their native country that we are compelled to suppose that he has borrowe the names of these men and of the places of their extractio from early legends. The better known Idumean city, Teemay, is everywhere closely associated with the name of Eliphay Gen. xxxvi. 11, 15: although it is very probable that the pod selected an Idumean as the first and oldest friend of Job simph because this man, according to the poetic requirements of the book, must be the wisest of the friends, and wisdom at the time of the poet was regarded as specially indigenous in Edou and particularly in the city of Teeman?!. Shuach, whence the second friend came, is, according to Gen. xxv. 2, a small cla between Palestine and the Euphrates, probably, according t) Gen. xxv. 2 and Job 11.112, north-east of Uz. Naama, the home of the third, is met with elsewhere as a city of Juda, Josh. xv. 41%. Although, therefore, it will appear further on, that the poct in the first instance interwove this group of three friends who come from the south, the north, and the west to Job, into hi book, because he could not dispense with them in carrying out it idea, the particular men and places themselves cannot nevertheles 1 Comp. History of Isvacl IV. 193 (III. p. 696). 2 It is true Burekhardt’s Syr. p. 623 refers to a mountain pls iD ancient Moab, but the name of it is rather to be compared with that of thi early King Szhon of that district. 3 The better known name of the Minites, which is uniformly substituted 1! the LXX (see LHistory of Israel I. p, 240 sq. (I. p. 344), can only have arise! from confusion with another name, as Aristeus (in Eusebius’ Prepar. Evang IX. 25) still wrote Mavyaiog. 2. THE MATTER OF TILE POEM. Ol have been arbitrarily invented, but must have been found ex- isting here or there in ancient legend. 8. In addition to other commoner calamities which pure poetic invention could put forward, there is a very special and rare one placed upon the hero, which the poet makes to sur- pass all others, as the chief calamity and most violent and per- sistent pain, and to pervade the entire drama. Although it is at first, i. 7, called simply a bad boil covering the whole body, in the course of the book it is so often and so plainly morc particularly touched on that the most attentive readers of all ages have observed that the poet borrows his description from the worst of skin diseases, the elephantiasis, which is in gen- eral one of the most distressing, wearisome, and commonly most incurable of maladies. At the beginning violent itching of the skin, ii. 8; next the transformation of the healthy skin into one covered with loathsome boils, which now gather and run and then get hardened again, the skin thus becoming cracked, scaly and rigid, in many places thickening as if it were an elephant’s hide, vii. 5; the gradual emaciation of the ‘body under the disease often of many years duration, xvi. 5; “xix. 20; xxx. 18; the fetid breath, which often of itself, even if the disease were not known to be contagious, frightens every- body from the presence of the diseased person, xix. 17; lastly ‘the constant inward agony of the sufferer night and day as he feels his breathing oppressed and fears suffocation, vil. 4, 13, 14; xxx. 17,1—all these are unequivocal indications that the poet really intended in the whole course of Job’s severe af- fliction to describe this one as the greatest and last of those which affected his body?. Now, the reason why the poet se- \ 1 Hence sufferers from this disease often desire to commit suicide, see Ab- dias’ Hist. of Apost. VII. 15. 2 A medical view of this disease, which is met with in all the hot countries of Asia and Africa, though of infrequent occurrence and also varying with its localities, will not be expected here. But we may remark, that as far back as the accounts of the Job of our book reach, elephantiasis is named as his disease, 28 THE INTRODUCTION. lected precisely this uncommon calamity before all others, see. ine that he could just as well have supposed a number o others, and the reason why he adheres through the whole book to this one with such great tenacity, showing such lucidity and vividness in his descriptions, as if he had been compelled by some external necessity not to depart from it,—this is most casily explained if he was most particularly here led by the legends about Job. For the motive does not lie in a men poctic or artistic necessity; and the book of Tobit may her avain serve as a counterpicce to assist us to perceive that the material of the Book of Job has not been throughout invented And no one qualified to judge will maintain, that just as mo. dern poets must carefully preserve throughout the situation, even of invented characters, which has once been adopted, » likewise the ancient poet would have been helplessly bound by his own arbitrary supposition: such equivocal art, in which often the highest skill of modern poetry shows itself, was wholly unknown to early antiquity, particularly to the ancien! Hebrews, as we shall further see subsequently in the case d this book. This is, however, everything that we can certainly say the poet had received from legendary tradition: it is not possible with ow present means of inquiry further to lift this veil Plainly the poct was bound, by the force of the legend which he found the most suitable for his purpose,—to the names, the Orig. Con. Cel. VI 5, 2; Abulf. fist. Anteisl. p. 26 (guddm i.e. mutilation, in aswuch as the extremities fall off in the end through this disease); comp. J. D. Michaelis Hinleituny ins A. 2. 1. p. 57—65. If it is desired to see how true the descriptions in the Book of Job are, the lamentations of a noble Arab af- flicted by it may be compared Abulf. Ann. Mosl. t, II. p. 266, 2, 3.—The Sy- rians and Arabs probably also call it the UWon-disease on account of its terrible nature, see Catalog. codd. syr. Mus. Brit. p. 65. The Hindoos call it kushtham i.e. falling-off, like the Arabic word, or the black leprosy in contrast to evittre the white, Man. iil. 7; and they deem it an hereditary punishment from God. W. Ainslie describes it from his personal observations, in the Zvansactions of the Royal Asiatic Soc. of G. Brit. Vol. I. p. 282—303. Comp. also Bruce's Travels ; and Déseription de UEgypte, état mod. t. xiii, p. 174 sq. 2. THE MATTER OF THE POEM. 29 country, the age, and the main features of the history of his 1ero. But every early tradition which has not yet received a less nelding shape by its later fortunes is extremely fusible, impres- vible, plastic. We may, therefore, equally well suppose that the istory of Job received new life and a more fixed form at the ‘ands of our poet, inasmuch as he recoined and ennobled it -y means of the higher thought which he had to expound. Whatever the actual personal history of Job may have been, ~i was not by it alone that the poet was moved and inspired: -ut clearly the poet’s soul, already filled with the great thought -£ the poem, sought in tradition his material and found in the -sgendary story of Job what was most suited to his purpose; ~) that the Job of olden times rose again in the light of a later -ad more advanced age as a mirror and instruction for it.— ut in that thus the thought and the material of its embodi- -ent coincide in the attractive presentation of the truth, the ore modern time supplying its deeper feeling and warmth, _ le ancient time its elevation and calmness, the poet is con- _ lous in the midst of his own most personal effort of being the same time supported and elevated by the greatness of ~e@ antiquity which he in turn ennobles with his thought. Job _ to him no mere semblance, no mere creation of the imagi- ition, but a true hero of the hoar past, whose history shines -tth before him only in the brightness of a new truth so glo- —usly that amongst the numerous traditionary legends of an- juity he selects precisely it alone, and that the material freely - osen in turn assists and moulds his thought. The question raised by recent commentators, whether Job is not a purely é egorical person, and his sufferings merely figurative, is accordingly frivolous. iat would be pretty much as if it should be supposed that the diseases of the iloktetes of Sophokles were allegorical and were thus understood by Sopho- 2s Even Pss. vi, xiii., xxxviii., Ixxxvili., the descriptions of physical suffer- ss are not to be taken in w figurative sense: how much less in this book, 1ose fundamental thought does not at all depend on such details of the de- ‘iption. All the particular calamities and lamentations of Job are to be taken ~ storically in the sense of the legend, accordingly in conformity with the poetic 30 THE INTRODUCTION. purpose of the book: but the sense of the poem itself is expressed only by th Whole work, and in this respect the material is very properly to be distinguishe/ from the peculiar idea and aim of the poet. 3 THE ART OF THe. POMM: The task which the art of the poet has to accomplish i to combine this material with the thought, before explained, in such a way that neither shall receive undue prominence lit both cooperate in the production of a work of beauty. Th poet may neither lose his individuality in the matter he handle by delineating anything of importance in the history whid would be unsuitable or superfluous to his thought, nor, on the other hand, laboriously put forward the thought, as if this di not of itself proceed from that treatment of the material whic was suited to it. The thought must permeate and control th material, while the material must be entirely submerged in th thought and lend itself to the latter simply as its conveniet and pleasing garment. If both thus cooperate, with the pw eress of the treatment of the subject in this animated and viul form, the deeper, secretly moving thought, will in its variou members successively come out more clearly, and permit itsel to be surmised in its truth and necessity with increasing cou: pleteness, until with the end of the poct’s utterance it shin forth in its fullest brightness. The thought as it lives in th poct’s own soul from the very first, thus retreats outwardl into the background, like a light which flashes forth simpl from within, of which with wise restraint only so much shine through in the course of the work as the development of th adopted structure of the members in each instance requirt until at the end all rays combine in one bright light, and ol of the finished, beautiful, outward form the soul dwelling with shines forth more distinctly than it could have done had it 1 created for itself such a beautiful body as its visible and ¢ during representation. 2 3. THE ART OF THE POEM. ol This task, we maintain, the poct has fulfilled most satis- factorily, although following simply his own individual impulses, without painful toil or scrupulous adherence to a modern rule of art. But since this is not easy for us at once to under- stand, we must now show more particularly in detail, how the poet brings together by an inseparable bond the thing in ques- tion, or the thought, and its representation, or Job’s history: for it is in the true combination and fusion of these two things that the stage of art which here bears the sway displays its highest powers. As the thought is intended to be put forward in a concrete and living illustration, the antitheses in which it successively advances become visible in certain prominent persons, who come ut the provocation of the obscure question at issue into con- vact and embroilment, until the confusion and embarrassment yegins gradually to work its own destruction, and with the complete solution of the enigma a general reconciliation also ‘akes place. The point was, thercfore, to procure perfectly suit- vble, clearly defined characters to represent these antitheses, vho would contribute by an inward necessity to the progress of the thought, and then to cause them, according to their various powers, to go through their respective ranges of mental conflict in mutual relation to the development of the action. trom this plan and its working-out follows of itself the cor- -esponding division and memberment of the whole work. I. The poet must call into action three dominating powers: _Vith regard to dark mysterious suffering, unbelief and super- tition must enter into conflict with each other, until on heir mutual destruction true faith follows. Therefrom result _hree essentially different representative characters, or pecr- onated antitheses, by the contact of whom the action of the oem opens, and reaches the point of dramatic entanglement, ‘yhich has then to find its solution. These three characters, iot more, result therefore, as a fourth antithetic element is not ‘onceivable; and not less: although it is possible that one of 52 THE INTRODUCTION. the three antitheses should resolve itself into several separate persons. These three, as the poet with wise selection deter. imines, are Job, the three friends, God. 1. Job the mortal hero, the person in whom the whole action centres, represents the part of despair and unbelief, raging against heaven itself in his madness, appearing dangerous and terrible as any Titan inflamed in burning rage against the Gods. However, this is not a despair which springs from an ignoble source, which indeed no true poet can desire either t clorify or to excuse. On the contrary, it is a purely humaz, noble despair, generated not in an evil but in a good con science, not by great and destructive personal guilt, but bya painful enigma of life, the puzzle of which so powerfully op- presses and perplexes the mortal who is not prepared for it nor as yet able to meet it. That is, Job is a true model of manly godliness as it grows conscious of its foundations, a man who in his ripe manhood can without vainglory boast that he has not from his youth up committed even lesser sins, xiii. 26: Xxx1 sq., who therefore bears the most extreme calamities for a long time with the noblest resignation and fortitude, because he feels himself strong in his innocence, i. 20—22; ii. 10; yea, who in the midst of the frenzy of most intense pain and i the outbreak of terrible despair has retained from the hidde treasures of his past blameless life so much wise self-posses sion that he never wholly forgets the grandeur anc necessity of integrity, and even defends it against all sad appearances to the contrary most heartily with the language of happy per sonal conviction and experience, vi. 10; xiii. 16, 23; xvi. 17, 18) xxl. 16; xxill. LO—12; xxvil., xxix—xxxi. When notwithstan¢- ing such nobleness of life and strength of a pure, fearless col science, and notwithstanding the clear conviction in the mids of his calamities that he is innocent before God and joyful) awaits and desires his judgment, x. 7; xiii. 3, 16—19; xiv. 15; xvi, 19; xix. 25 sq.; xxill. 10, 17; xxvii. G; xxxi., he is never theless seized and more and more completely carried away i 3. THE ART OF THE POEM. So his despair by the force of an unbelief which defies Heaven, the cause of this is to be found sunply in the fact, that the noble, outspoken man, at the time when he is surprised in his integrity by his calamities, still shares the general comfortless views of antiquity and particularly the delusion that mys- terious suffering announces the wrath of God. This is a super- ‘Stition which he can for a time permit to sleep, but inasmuch ag it remains lurking in the background, when aroused and provoked by an unexpected occasion it soon breaks forth ve- hemently, and is transformed, in conflict with that diametrically apposite feeling of innocence, into unbelief: for unbelief. is superstition already come to light but not yet overcome and -esolved into pure truth. On the one hand, he believes that ie suffers the wrath and punishment of God as if he were cuilty; on the other, he knows that he is certainly innocent, yut is again in the peace and happiness of this conscious- ess disquicted by apparently the plainest, most undeniable roots of the divine punishment and by the accusations and _ttacks of men based thereon; with a pure conscience he hopes 1 God’s graciousness and kindness, and yet is again most pro- oundly perplexed and troubled by his own hard lot of con- -lnued and increasing painfulness, and still more by the like ~pparent injustice and wrong state of things which seem to reyail throughout the world. Thus assailed from the most “pposite sides, seeing the ancient superstition shaken by a “ew, stronger and more certain expericnce, and still discovering s yet no clear truth in the place of it, a tremendous despair “just take possession of him. Then, as he does not under- ‘tand in God the calamity which he feels bound to regard as ~ suitable divine punishment of wickedness, and as he struggles “1 vain to find human insight and consolation, he is compelled to ‘arn in wild vehemence against God, against Him who created ‘uch a painful enigma, impetuously urging its solution, even assionately, and, as it seems, defiantly rising up against the God ‘ho created such an incomprehensible and indeed preposterous 3 o4 TILE INTRODUCTION. state of things. He is thus led astray by passion to the most inconsiderate assertions, though all along simply jealous for the divine righteousness and really moved by the force of the purest self-consciousness. Integrity, when called upon to sacri. fice its one peculiar possession—a clear, happy conscience—for the sake of an opposing view, however sacred it may scem to be, prefers with self-denial to throw away with indignation and maddened daring everything which is opposed to it, as the consideration of mankind, the prevailing views, laws and ex. ° periences, the God of outward nature Himself should He seen to set Himself against it, evil and good, falsehood and truth, whatever appears hostile to it, before it sacrifices itself and the one firm, certain, inalienable truth which is clear at all events to it. For integrity is for the individual the one sole fim, certain, and inalienable thing which can turn even against beclouded Heaven with a giant’s energy, vil. 11; ix. 22 sq, xill. 13 sq.; xvii. 8; xxni. 15—17; xxvii. 2—7. On that account, therefore, even this despair, though to be lamented and i deed dangerous, inasmuch as a weaker man might easily quite succumb to it, is not without hope and the possibility of deliver: ance in the case of Job. For in the agitated raging sea d pain, doubt, bitterness and deepest calamity, when everything is in most violent commotion and turned upside down, its precisely the consciousness of his integrity, which is by thi very resistance strengthened and fortified, that must increasing] become conscious of itself as the only immovable rock, arounl which all lost possessions may again collect and new noble ones may gather. His pure soul is thus violently assailed aul brought into such severe struggles only in order that it ma in the first instance be thrown back upon itself and git up every untrue and frail hope. When this has been dott further advances will be possible. It can then go on to di cover its own immortality and certainty. From the new cleat ness of view thus obtained, it is possible both to correct. th indiscretions and exaggerations which had escaped him in tht [2 3. THE ART OF THE POEM. 35 heat of the struggle, as well as readily to acknowledge the ultimate and most difficult thing as soon as it is revealed, namely, the higher view of mysterious suffering and divine leading, the want of which had been the sole cause of such heavy trouble. When this higher view is revealed, everything at once finds its reconciliation and adjustment, and the brave spiritual contender is most signally rewarded with the truth Which he so zealously sought and surmised but so seriously suffered the loss of when in human haste he missed it, he being as zealous and sincere a recipient of it as he was a searcher after it. As Israel by contending with God obtains for himself a holy divine blessing, so Job passes through au | long and severe conflict with the God of outward nature Him- | self, in order finally to begin as a regenerated man a new higher life, after he has by toil and distress achieved the di- -vine revelation so fervently longed for. For it is precisely the divine promises and truths which have to be won at greatest cost. God, as He at first appears in the outward course of the. world, confronts man in order to reveal Himself to him to the | extent to which he by conflict forces from Him His secrets; and if the gain and the rest cannot be obtained without some ‘profound agony and penances for the human rashness and warmth, inasmuch as every spurious and impure element mixed with a noble endeavour must be again separated from it, the final victory is nevertheless all the more remunerative. And thus the aim of the poet in projecting the picture of this 10ble hero was to show, that though even the noblest man of perfect integrity may sink into the most terrible despair, he eed not nevertheless necessarily succumb, but victoriously at- cains, after the greatest pains and dangers, the higher truth ud blessedness, which as soon as they have once been reached yy one man must become the common possession of all who yehold this model. So that in the mind of the poet the one 1 Gen. xxxil. 25, comp. Jlistory of Israel I. p. 357 sq. (I. p. 512 sq.). 3. 30 THE INTRODUCTION. man Job, suffering, contending and triumphing, is intended to become the representative of the whole race as passing through similar sufferings; on which account Job is in this poem the principal person in whom everything else centres. All the various opinions and endeayours in the matter of the enigma are arranged with reference to him and powerfully affect hin as the person most immediately concerned; and although he represents chiefly unbelief, he has still properly not wholly cot free from superstition, as, on the other hand, he stands in closer relation to the true faith than appears to be the case, and as soon as ever this is revealed, without compulsiog willingly following his own perception, he appropriates it, and resigning all former errors remains faithful to it ever after. 2. The friends represent nothing but the early faith as it has already become a delusion and superstition. This faith i from its nature that which more commonly prevails, which seeks to maintain itself with emphasis and earnestness against every innovation and variation. With profound insight the poet troduces several friends in contrast with the solitary Job. Un usual calamities and unusual experience are the lot of buta few; endurance under unexpected trials and steady resistanc of current narrower views, founded upon fresh and certain es perience, is still more uncommon; but most uncommon of al is the hero who successfully brings out triumphantly a net truth which is still weak and little understood. Accordingl} the poet must bring forward Job alone, without human hel} or stay, as every great truth can at first by one man only be felt and defended so keenly and powerfully that the one act decisively for all. And although in a smaller degree mal) may have experienced the same and have similarly risen Yj like Job against it, as indeed the poet makes Job plainly si as much in the course of the conflict, xvii. 8, and makes hiv more and more contend for all who suffer like him, iii. 20 xil. 5; xxi. 6 sq.; xxiv. 1 sq., Job must nevertheless alone 1! himself wage the whole conflict and refute the antiquat 3. THE ART OF THE POEM. aL views by means of his own personal experience, which is pe- culiar to himself in this degree. On the opposite side stands the great multitude with its prepossessions, consciously or un- consciously combatting the man that revolts against them. The poet accordingly causes the representative personality hos- tile to Job to divide into a number of separate persons, bring- ing forward three old sympathetic friends of Job, who on visiting him and considering more closely his misfortunes soon become his opponents. These three men, whom the poet was the first to require for his purpose, have scarcely been borrowed from the early legend of Job, inasmuch as they are only distantly connected with it: it suffices to suppose that the poet brought them together from other scattered legends. In this instance it was necessary that they should differ from each other merely in respect of their age and mental characteristics. Eli- -phaz, the first, is the oldest, xv. 10, and most experienced, iv. 8, 12; v. 3; xv. 11, who always takes precedence of the others as the model and umpire, and contends with superior dignity and weight more forcibly than any of them. Bildad, the se- cond, possesses, on the contrary, less adroitness and resource, although not without a certain acuteness in judgment and well- meaning cautiousness. The third, Zophar, as the youngest and most easily excited, begins most hotly but is all the sooner exhausted: We must look upon Job, according to the poet’s conception of him!, as a man of ripe middle age, as older than Zophar but considerably younger than Eliphaz, and ac- ‘cordingly of about the same age as Bildad. But the views of these three are the same. Really the most honest, well-inten- tioned men, not less animated by the strictest ideas of the ‘divine exaltation and righteousness than by the most fervent abomination of all human wickedness and wrong-doing, they ‘ire still, on the other hand, so completely possessed by that ‘ancient delusion of outward evil being a necessary punishment 1 And according to the plain indication xlii. 16. 38 THE INTRODUCTION. from God of the former sins of the sufferer, that they are unable to see anything beyond it. Their rigid twofold proposi-— tion is, that surely no man can be chastised by God on ac- count of his godliness, that therefore if a man is chastised it must be on account of his sins, xxii. 4,5. Living in this be- lief as their most sacred conviction, they are accordingly com- pelled to presuppose in the case of every sufferer without dis- tinction blame and sins as the cause of his sufferings, whether he is conscious thereof and has actually committed them or not. And the sufferer with whom they sympathize they can only urge to humble himself, by repenting of and confessing his guilt, whether it is visible or not. If he refuses thus to humiliate himself, either from actual obduracy or because he is unable to discover his guilt, they are obliged to condem and discard him as obdurate. If they are asked for their reasons, they have no profounder one than, “the fact. is, man is such a frail creature, occupying a place far beneath God and the celestial beings, that, inasmuch as he sins cop- tinually, indeed lives in sin as in his element, he cannot ac cordingly be punished enough, and suffering is part of his nature; from which condition there is no other escape than that, whenever a calamity befalls him, he must implore and regain the divine mercy by confessing his guilt and humbling himself”, iv. 18—21; v. 6,7; xv. 14—-16; xxv. 4—6. In this way the friends of Job were no doubt accustomed to humiliate and mortify themselves, or, which is the same thing, they sought by endless external sacrifices accompanied by a number of prayers to avert every actual or threatened calamity. But all this is based upon a low idea of man, which gradually developed itself in such an exclusive way in Mosaism, until at last it became a fundamental principle of the Pharisees. If however, sin is such a part of human nature that it is in if a necessity, indeed the proper element of man, under the power of which he must bow himself, this nature would be not simply bad from the beginning and without the possibility of 3. THE ART OF THE POEM. 39 future amendment (a supposition which is contradicted by the history of the creation itself), but strictly speaking every ca- lamity would in that case be, as a consequence of the (after all necessary) sin, an unjust infliction of God. So that this sad, mournful view refutes itself, if there were not already the plain example of such an innocent and blameless sufferer as Job to contradict it. On that account, because it cannot be logically thought out, this reason is not found to meet the requirements of the friends; but their readiest, more obvious argument remains the ancient tradition and experience which appear to favour the above view, inasmuch as they teach, that it is only the wicked who suffer severely and perish without deliverance, while their momentary prosperity is without dura- tion. Hence the friends also dwell particularly upon this, iv. 8; v. 3; viii, 8; xv. 17—19; xx. 4; xxii. 15. But every external reason of this kind is valid only as long, in any case, as ex- perience does not plainly contradict it: even the least trying experience of the contrary overturns it, although it may have been so long considered valid and sacred. How, therefore, can the friends successfully contend with such arguments against Job, whose perfectly blameless life flatly contradicts all their experiences and opinions? How can they hope to reduce to ‘Submission the man who is not conscious in himself of the least ‘Stirrings of an evil or troubled conscience? Before the revela- tion of the higher truth comes to him, Job unconsciously goes with them in the first half of their view, namely that suffering is a divine punishment; but the second half, that it is a just punishment for corresponding sins, he is obliged from the very first to deny, and can never allow it without giving up him- self and honesty and virtue. The contention must therefore be unequal, inasmuch as Job is not only well acquainted with the ancient superstition, on the basis of which alone his friends speak, but has also to his advantage the wholly opposed and much more deeply felt experience of which they know nothing. He, as knowing both the principle and its contrary, fights with 40 THE INTRODUCTION. double weapons, whilst they simply defend the ancicnt de- lusion, which does not hold in Job’s case, and to free himself from which he has already made the commencement, though it may be unconsciously and uncertainly as yet. If they also try to touch Job’s conscience in the most pointed manner, making threatening descriptions of the certain final overthrow of the wicked in order to terrify him, asking whether he alone thinks of arraigning and upsetting the eternal divine justice, Vili. 2; xviii. 4; xxii. 4, all these attempts must glance aside from him, because his conscience is clear and he is compelled to deem otherwise than his friends of the divine righteousness, who think that every calamity is a righteous penalty for sins and that to submit in this sense to suffering is to acknowledge the divine justice. Inasmuch, therefore, as the opposite of every- thing which they maintain can be thought and asserted in the — same outward, superficial manner, they can only introduce worse confusion into the contention, not help to smooth and settle it. With reference to the question under debate, they judge even more partially and unjustly of God than Job, supposing that He sends to every man suffering only according to the measure of his sin, which neither Job nor God Himself, xlii 7, can ever allow. Starting with the best intentions, they are soon compelled, inasmuch as they gradually come to regard Job simply as an obdurate sinner, to change their attitude towards him into one of severity and hostility, thus simply increasing the sufferings which they meant to assuage. The sole service they render is, that without intending it they by their opposition and blindness, on the one hand, provoke u- belief in such energy, perfection, and self-consciousness that superstition must be dumb before it, and, on the other, drive the sufferer to that inward possession which was at first hidden from him and which has remained unconsumed in spite of all outward calamity. This inward possession is the good cor- science which he now first discovers to be his highest good and holds fast when it is about to be taken from him; and 3. THE ART OF THE POEM. Al by it he confounds his opponents and wins the victory at last. It was, therefore, the object of the poct in describing the three friends to show, how greatly superstition misconceives the truth and how little it can overcome unbelief, which is already a step in advance of it. 3. God is the revealer of the truth, the author of the nobler faith. He who occasioned this enigma must also solve it for the weal of mankind, or cause men to take closer glances into His nature and His glory; as indeed Job very clearly in the midst of the storm of calamity and passion sees to be necessary, but desires in vain to bring it about by his ve- hemence, xill. 3sq.; whilst God as the plain, gentle revealer will not stoop to man until he, putting aside all earthly pas- sions and confusions, raises himself simply to Him. Therefore the poet, with his whole being occupied with the divine idea, represents God as from the first constructing in heaven the enigma, whether a godly man can suffer though blameless and yet remain faithful, in such a way that the reader may beforehand see at all events the possibility of such a thing happening in harmony with a true idea of God, whilst in the present case it depends on the terrestrial, human participant in the problem to what extent this possibility shall become a reality by means of his personal cooperation. But as regards the earth, God cannot appear upon it to explain, decide and reward, until the human sufferer, already in fact conqueror in the struggle as between men, inwardly prepared and rendered com- _petent to penetrate the last veil, draws near to Him in pure long- ing and hope. The appearing of God then supplies simply the outward completion and confirmation of that which is already inwardly accomplished and necessary. A fleeting moment, but one of immeasurable significance, brings the longed-for pure ‘truth forth from its depths, and no sooner does it appear than at once all still remaining errors are scattered with irresistible force. The inmost mind of God comes forth plainly and dis- tinctly in this enigma, that it may never again be lost among 42 THE INTRODUCTION. men but go on to establish ever greater good. And as the poet can represent in the patriarchal age God Himself as ap- pearing personally in all His greatness and strength, he obtains thereby the happiest opportunity of describing the purest and most striking revelation of the higher truth which it is_ here intended to magnify. If superstition became silent before un- belief, so the latter in turn is silenced before the true faith, as in every question so particularly in that regarding integrity, To show this is the aim of the poet in his description of the divine revelation. II. In that these three dominating principles are brought into contact by the enigma which has to be solved, and mutu- ally, according to their respective views and forces, attract, throw into confusion, and finally come to terms with each other, we have the working-out of the poem corresponding to its plan, or the complicated action of the drama in the de velopment of which the thought is itself incarnated and ex- plained in all its parts. It is an enigma of actual life which it is intended to solve and disclose. If the proper persons and circumstances are at hand amid which it must actually originate and only after it has been solved disappear, the de- tails assume their proper form of themselves by higher ne- cessity, the first apparently insignificant commencement already involves the end, and the most violent collision of the opposing principles only promotes more rapidly the final solution. 1. The action is twice commenced, more remotely in heaven, nearer at hand on the carth, because the question regarding euilt or innocence and its potency or impotency concerns not merely men but also the divine kingdom and all divine truths, indeed in the higher sense is an affair of His who has His choicest delight in the world of men and by the glory of mel is Himself glorified. Now, inasmuch as the exceedingly grand capacity and power of man to suffer blamelessly and to over: come the outward evil and attain higher blessing by the in tegrity thus attested, has in God an eternal possibility and 3. THE ART OF THE POEM. 43 inner truth, it must also at some time come to light as actual fact and outward truth. And when thus the divine idea be- comes actual human history, it cannot lie beyond the range of the divine will and work to inflict upon the most blameless man the heaviest afflictions; inasmuch as in the case of cach concurrence of suffering and blamelessness in the world (and this collision will never be wholly absent), the eternal divine purpose simply aims at pointing man to the peculiar power which hes dormant within him of overcoming the evil under which he suffers and the incitement to wickedness which is therein hidden, and at raising him by the victory over it. Hence the poct’s magnificent description, how God in the cc- lestial council suspends over Job on the occasion of the ca- lumny of Satan the heaviest sufferings, not with an unfriendly intention, nor with the foreknowledge that he must necessarily ‘succumb to them, but continually in watchful love and in the conviction, which though not expressed is evidently strong, that such a valiant combatant as Job will finally prove faithful in utmost extremities. Thus the reader is at the same time initiated beforehand into everything by the celestial scene, and 1s able to anticipate by this glimpse into the divine mind the necessary course of the entire action.—But upon earth, where this divine intention is as yet wholly veiled, where what is possible shall first be realised by the cooperation of man, there is opened, on the other hand, a field for doubt and conflict. For such a case has hitherto been unheard of amongst men, that -. completely blameless man should suffer so severely. And ; what conflicts does a new both painful and unusual expericnee ecasion before it is properly understood and favourably ac- cepted? At first Job endures for a long time the heaviest and extremest inflictions, remaining true to himself; since it contradicts all his previously received principles to set himself against God even in the dark, hard enigma of life. But the onigma remains in the background, the still unsolved perplexity merely retreats to permit itself to be surprised and called forth 44 THE INTRODUCTION. by a lurking opportunity. As such an opportunity the poet very suitably chooses the arrival of the old friends for con- dolence. For before a friend the wounded, pent-up heart opens itself readily and without suspicion; the desire to hear con- fort and condolence elicits feelings and lamentations from the breast, which would otherwise, when carefully restrained, have never betrayed the real condition of the unfortunate sufferer, Thus for the first time the so long repressed complaint 5 freely poured forth: despondency bursting its fetters breaks out the more violently, not indeed in a rejection of God Hin- self, but still in an execration of life which leads to a sub- dued complaint regarding God’s dark providences. But thereby not only has a perilous commencement of self-bewilderment as regards divine things, and at last of a contemning of God Hin- sclf, been made (the evil which lurks in the outward evil), but the friends also, instead of perceiving Job’s whole meaning, arc thereby strengthened in their suspicion, that Job suffers on account of serious sins, since instead of showing repentance he even still continues to utter such hard things concerning God as if he desired to dispute with Him. In all directions therefere is the conflict opened up. 2. But, first of all, superstition, as the antagonist most immediately concerned, which feels itself painfully struck at, must oppose itself to the unbelief which has thus risen against it. Thus arises the merely human conflict, which, as the con- plete truth is found on neither side, becomes as passionate, complicated, and wearisome as all earthly conflicts upon which the pure light does not shine. Whence it follows that the im mediate general result can be simply, that the weakness both sides is evidently brought out, and though the old ideas must give way to the new, delusion to certain experience, superstition to unbelief, yet the latter, together with the forme, still remains without true illumination and complete satisfac tion with regard to the real matter of the conflict. 3. THE ART OF THE POEM. AD a A of both sides are at the begun me of the con- aintain () me the friends, having heard Job’s complaint, Sie ne a ee : may not speak Saat God, as if he were teva pe thétean God, because (2) general divine justice ee ault, by? te always expresses itself at some time in a terrier toway dds all sinners. In these two propositions, which are perfectly true in this general form, the friends hold therefore positions which cannot easily be taken: they have here strong defences from which they can make attacks and behind which they can retreat: they have here their advantage and their strength. But together with these two propositions they maintain also (3) the principle, that calamity is never un- attended by guilt, so that whoever speaks on account of ca- lamity against God and the divine righteousness betrays hun- self ipso facto as guilty. This latter is their weak, dangerous position, by which their former positions are again rendered insecure. For as this third proposition does not in the least accord with the case in question, upon which the entire con- flict is based, they get constantly in danger of falsely applying their excellent general truths. The advantage which they possess on the one side, they lose on the other; indeed, what they have of the truth must by constant diversion to false issues fall under suspicion, their best weapons must gradually get blunted. They are like orators who say much that is good and true, only it is not true and appropriate for the case in point. The more they are compelled therefore by the course of the con- tention to deal precisely with the particular case at issue, the more they must get wrong and lose their way. At first, it is true, the advantage seems to be wholly on their side; ‘inasmuch as starting from a good intention and relying upon the doctrines of antiquity generally, they meet Job with quiet confidence, with unbroken ranks, relieving and supporting each other repeatedly. Moreover, every assailant has always an advantage, how much more these men as assailants of a sufferer who is so low and degpondent as Job. Still, the assailant has let 46 THE INTRODUCTION. but to retreat at one point, and his entire cavzety the poet be lost, and woe to him if because he cannot zricnds for con- position, he must also surrender his securent-up heart opens saulted opponent who has become an anguesire to hear con- At first Job is much less favourab'Yamentations from the less man, when thus seriously suspectecfully restraine*L cused, will often blush at once to refer to the perverse and foolish charges, and the more innocent he is conscious of being, the less will he hasten with the defence of his innocence before fellow-mortals. As if he considered it beneath him, Job never speaks to his assailants simply to justify himself sedulously and scrupulously against their veiled or open reproaches; he prefers so far to expose himself even to the most unsparing sallies. Thus exposed, he further endures, all the more, great pain at the wholly unexpected attack and, as it seems to hin, perfidy of his friends. It is the addition of this trouble to all his previous calamitics which adds the climax to his woe and renders a calm defence so difficult. On the other hand, s0 far as the views and positions asserted are concerned, Job has (1) the great advantage, that from his own personal experience he can positively know and conscientiously maintain most firmly, that calamity is possible without guilt. That which i the weak and obscure side of the matter in the case of bi opponents is in his case the strongest and plainest, and as ll fact everything in the whole contention really depends on this central position, he must from the very first be in possessiol of the chief truth which is in this matter decisive, the truth which they so wholly fail to see that they stoutly maintain the exact opposite of it. But, again, because Job, still partially blinded by the old delusion, does not as yet at all comprehend this truth, under the birth-pains of which he suffers, as actuall) and justly based in the nature of God, but on the contrary & pects God will not permit the innocent to suffer, he is exposed from the beginning to the danger of falling into ercat errors aud shocking assertions, on account of his own greatly troubled 3. THE ART OF THE POEM. 47 The px mind and in respect of the course of the world. As the followizring, therefore, as he thinks unjustly, he may in Aintaln, (1) mar be easily led astray—(2) to dispute generally ster and Wiser thercly endeavouring to get reasons which might pied in default, bytu to take pity, but also calling Him to ac- counwanner toway indeed, apparently defiantly, which rashness attains its climax in the actual challenge of God to appear and to give judgment. And going still further, taking a wider view of the world generally, he may cven—(3) question the presence of the general divine righteousness in the world, and maintain the exact contrary of a connexion between happiness and innocence as prevailing in the world. ‘These are the two dangerous propositions by which Job is about to surrender the veneral truths which his friends were in possession of and which he himself must have maintained in calmer moments. They are propositions which had lurked covertly in his troubled soul from the commencement of his calamitics, but which could only gradually by the violence of the contention and the spirit of contradiction assume such a terrible power within him. In- deed, they may at last become even opposing positions and weapons against his friends, for the purpose of expelling them from their firm positions; because if really outward prosperity or adversity is to be the guide of the judgment concerning innocence or guilt, then, according to the undoubted experience of the adversity of innocence, these propositions can be with equal justice used for attacking the friends, just as they constantly wpply their truths falsely in Job’s case. But if these proposi- tions had really been uttered by Job as his truths, particularly ‘the proposition against the divine justice, there would have jecn opened for him at last the broad road of endless error, of a complete fall, of denial of God Himself, since no one can ‘n calm judgment fail to see, or even deny, the divine justice ‘without denying God Himself. His own integrity, which Job ‘will defend and protect before all things, is in extreme peril and is but a step removed from its fall, save that his con- let 48 THE INTRODUCTION. scious adherence to right is too great and powerful to permit it ever wholly to desert him in the course of the contention, even in its most extreme bewilderment and perplexity. The more, therefore, Job confines himself alone to his own case and his consciousness of pure integrity, and the more closely he is compelled to consider his own case, the greater gainer is he, whilst by that very means and to an equal extent his opposers are the losers. Notwithstanding all dangers and errors, Job possesses precisely in the special case which occasions the con- tention, and still more in the consciousness of his integrity, a secure foundation and basis of departure which cannot be wrested from him; he may go wrong in the human contention, but it is only the more certainly to recover himself. As now the positions assumed by both sides are from the very first so totally different, that they only accord in the mutual misunderstanding of the enigma to be resolved and its different false applications 1, in that Job also fails to see his case as clearly as is needed, although he is better acquainted with it than they, there can only follow from the encounter in the first instance a constant increase of the misunderstand- ing. It is true, the friends display at first much caution and forbearance in conformity with their disposition: and Job, as though he foreboded the sad danger of mutual provocation and exasperation, at first shuns the commencement of the real contention, asks for friendly consideration, vi. 283—30, and avoids for a long time speaking directly against his friends, ch. i But nevertheless the contention advances inevitably to the point of violence: if the friends only distantly hint at Job’s guilt, his inmost feelings are roused; if in his indignation or pall un ambiguous or hard word escapes him, their suspicion 1 increased. Thus they come into collision with each other and eet wider apart without meaning it, simply compelled by the 1 The friends: calamity befalls the guilty as punishment; therefore he may not speak against God—. Jvb: calamity befalls the blameless as punishment, therefore he may very properly—. 9 3. THE ART OF THE POEM. 49 growing misunderstanding neither side can give way; because the one defends the ancient, sacred belief, the other, his good conscience and human right. The most angry and difficult contention has been kindled, in which every point must be fought out to the last. Still, it is also possible provisionally to foresee as the end, that it is rather Job who will at least survive the conflict and conquer in the contention with his fellow-mortals. First, because he personally quite well knows not only what the friends allege, but also much more, and precisely what is here decisive, namely, the truth, that a blameless man may suffer severely ; and, next, because he possesses in addition the infinite treasure of a good conscience, a power which grows in the conflict with immeasurable independence and energy, which, the more the endeavour is made to dim and darken it, the less does it suffer any darkening,—which, when exasperated and injured, reacts against its enemies with a keenness which was not anticipated. The friends seek to deprive him of his good conscience, in that they urge him to confess a sin which he really cannot charge himself with, thus to perplex his pure conscience and make him surrender it; and he himself in the heat of the conflict comes into the tremendous danger of wholly losing his clear self-possession and speaking against the sacred voice of his inmost conscience. But all the more powerfully in the end his conscience rises up against all that is hostile to it, and becomes at last, since it is the one certain and per- fectly true thing in this contention, the sole victor and judge, as far as it can end and settle the human part of the conflict without the new revelation which must fully remove the enigma. When carefully considered, there follows from these primary positions and principles of the two parties also the complete plan of the necessary course of this contention, with all its ‘possible movements and vicissitudes. The assailants, it is true, possess in their mind in reserve from the first the three primary truths which constitute the strength and the weak- ness of their positions, and are unable to surrender any one 4 5O THE INTRODUCTION. of them, because they conceive human life in general, and Job’s case in particular, simply in the light of the closest combina- tion of all three truths: but they are not obliged to give equal prominence to each of the three on every occasion and in every situation of the contest. On the contrary, as Job’s half-des- pairing half-querulous complaint had led them first to suspicion, and they hope at the beginning to be still able to save hin, they advise him (1) first of all to abstain from such rash and defiant words, calling him seriously but kindly to repentance, and permitting the hard fate of the wicked to appear only in the background. If they thereby attain nothing, they can (2), by placing as they proceed their second truth in the front and bringing forward the general divine righteousness, then seek to touch his conscience by terrible descriptions of the frightful ruin threatening all the wicked, as if they regarded him as already semi-obdurate and lost. Finally, if neither this severe measure prove efficacious, they can (8) accuse him openly of the greatest sins, which they cannot, it is true, strictly prove by evidence, but presuppose as certainly committed, thus un- ambiguously and unsparingly applying their third principle, that calamity is never without guilt. This is the necessary line of progress which their attack takes. The assailant must, if he will not retreat when an assault has not attained its object, cause necessarily a still more pointed and merciless assault to follow, until at last he puts forth all his resources, even the residue and reserve of forces, which at the commence- ment of the contention he had imagined he should never be obliged to bring out. Twice this line of advance recurs; the first time more by the way, less perceptibly and abruptly, though essentially the same; iv. 2—v. 7; viii. 2—19; xi. 6: but the second time at length, very plainly and pointedly, iv., ¥, Vill., XI., XV., XVill., XX., Xxli. When they have thus not shrunk, led on by the growing heat of the conflict, from expressing the utmost that they can say, and nevertheless have not sub- dued the object of their attack, they are evidently compelled as 3. THE ART OF THE POEM. 51 completely exhausted to think of a retreat and hold their peace; their first confusion and exhaustion becomes a total de- feat, even a retreat is cut off from them if they are determined not to surrender. Whilst the assailants thus perform their movements in but a somewhat limited space, to the man attacked a much larger field is open: he can defend himself, make the attack, and withdraw in safety from the attack to his original position :— (1) He can defend himself by showing, as he adheres with increasing emphasis to his integrity, that he has the justest reason to complain on account of the undeserved mysterious sufferings which have befallen him, as vi. 2—13; xvi. 6—17; xix. 6—22; xxi. 4,5; and this remains to him a powerful stay which cannot be wrested from him, because it is exactly suited to the present case. But although he may thus defend him- self by reference to the present case itself, or at the same time complain with increasing bitterness of the harshness of his friends as they (intentionally) fail to perceive his innocence, vi. 14—27; xvi. 4, 5; xvii. 4, 1O—16, what avails even the most emphatic and sincere defence against the want of intelligence of his opponents, who, when all is said and done, are determined not to let go the proposition of their experience and faith, that calamity is never without guilt? In vain does Job endea- vour repeatedly by every possible means to get them to see his innocence. At the very commencement, he seeks to en- lighten them with an affectionate appeal to their consideration, vi.; he puts before them in agonising despair, how terrible a thing is the persecution of a blameless man, Xvi., xvil.; he tries finally, in the profoundest grief, to touch their conscience and to supplicate their compassion, xix. But all is in vain; pre- cisely the truest and deepest words of suffering integrity are in this case unintelligible to the friends; they discern in them only evidences of the growing audacity and the rashness of the sufferer! If therefore Job meant all along to confine him- self in his answers to the defensive, he would inevitably be at 4* 52 THE INTRODUCTION. last overthrown, inasmuch as integrity, particularly in its own defence, is not such a material, palpable thing that it could make its defence by openly showing itself. He must therefore, even in self-defence, (2) assume the offensive, when this at length becomes a necessity. He must attack the first two principles of his op- ponents, because from the basis of these their firm positions they perpetually defend their assertion regarding calamity as the sign of guilt. But as regards the question of Job’s guilt or innocence, it is wholly impossible they should come to an understanding; neither can Job venture a successful attack on behalf of his innocence, so long as the opponents believe in his guilt on the ground of their two general propositions, sup- posing he must be guilty because he speaks against God and the divine righteousness, and threatening him with God’s appearance and His retributive justice. They thus compel him at last to turn these dangerous weapons with which they attack him against themselves: by their blind opposition they call forth the evil spirits which from the very first he dormant in the sufferer, in order that these spirits, when they have become powerful by the provocation, may turn against themselves. For certainly Job has to some extent a right thus to retort upon them. A truth, when falsely applied to a particular case, can precisely on the basis of that case be reversed. If it is main- tained, that man may not speak against God and fail to per- ceive the divine righteousness, because innocence cannot sufler, then the man that nevertheless actually suffers though inno- cent (therefore according to the early belief contrary to justice), will be in a position to speak against God and to doubt the divine righteousness, in defiance of all who call in question his innocence; and the man who is closely pursued by his opp0- nents will, almost against his own will, be at last driven to this as his only way of escape. It is not simply Job’s fault, that when both unfairly and blindly attacked, he at last presents his uncouth aspect alone, thus likewise losing his self-possessidl. 3. THE ART OF THE POEM. 53 If the opponents desired early in the contention, as fearing their own weakness, the approach of God in judgment against Job, x1., how much more justly and courageously can the man, who is now persecuted even by his friends without a cause, appeal to this judgment on his own behalf, and eagerly turn this weapon against themselves, using this opportunity to get a moment of respite? xiii—xiv. Nor does this blow remain without its con- sequences in the case of the friends. For although Job pays dearly for this rashness, since, inasmuch as God does not ap- pear, he for the first time feels himself wholly abandoned of God, inexpressibly miserable and cast-down, still neither do the friends, confounded by such unlooked for rashness, venture ever again to invoke such a judgment; they are compelled to think of other lines of attack. And if the friends then tenaciously maintain the general proposition, that the sinner is according to the divine righteousness always unprosperous, with the im- plied meaning, that the unprosperous man, eg., Job, is always cuilty, of course Job must at length, as soon as he takes a closer view of this stronghold, perceive the terrible reverse- side of this opinion; since the mere outward appearance, which the friends follow, teaches also the exact opposite of it, that the sinner may be (at times) very prosperous, the godly man very unprosperous, just as may be most plainly perceived pre- cisely in the present case of the pertinacity, bordering on cruelty, of these fortunate friends towards the unfortunate suf- ferer. If they present to him a completely onesided, false pic- ture of the divine righteousness, he is naturally compelled, in- asmuch as it does not answer in the least to his immediate experience, to discover the exact opposite of it from his point of view: for he would only too gladly adopt the picture which his opponents present; because, if it were true, he would as innocent necessarily be made prosperous immediately. But since he is both conscious in himself of the exact opposite and also perceives it in the world, he is compelled in deepest bitterness and perplexity of soul to call in question this divine righteous- 54 THE INTRODUCTION. ness described to him. Without intending it, his discourse becomes the keenest attack upon the no less pertinacious than one-sided assertions of the friends, xxi., xxiv. But if the op- ponents are thus in their firmest positions shaken, thrust through, and if not convinced yet brought to silence, by the reckless attacks of the sufferer, which they had not looked for, so that Job is now able as conqueror to review the entire situation with greater calmness and circumspection, he must at once perceive, that he cannot permanently retain these weapons with which he combated and overcame his opponents, For if there were really nothing in the world but wrong, he would himself have no longer any ground for complaint re- garding his present personal misfortunes, nor for life at all: with the deliberate denial of divine righteousness generally, all human reflections and endeavours must be annihilated. Either Job proceeds still further upon the dangerous course (in which case there is nothing for it but to deny God himself, as the friends believe he will do, and has already done in secret); or he must now cast off the appearance of being capable of that, and must all the more necessarily do this in conformity with his own conscience, inasmuch as precisely in the course of the contention he has become conscious, with a strength never dreamed of before, of his integrity and its grandeur. For during the growing confusion of the limited views of mortals, there has already in secret been stirring and attaining clearer consciousness the superhuman energy, which can alone preserve the despairing sufferer from wholly sinking and hinder the conflict from ending in mere altercation and exasperation. While Job at first, before the attack of his friends, did not at all clearly and consciously recognize the infinite treasure of his integrity, by means of that attack he is conducted more and more forcibly, and then more and more consciously, to tt, and learns to value a possession which he had hitherto ovel- looked. The more his opponents seek to deprive him of if, the more intimately he gets acquainted with it and the more ” 3. THE ART OF THE POEM. 55 stoutly he defends it. The voice of his integrity has made itself heard, gently at first, vi. 10c¢, then with greater power, ix. 21, quite early speaking out most vehemently, when the mo- ment came to wrest from the opponents the appeal to God, xlll. It is true, that by this unreasonable, half-defiant appeal the zeal which had been awakened was greatly quenched, and the hope as it is here conceived was destroyed: but in the midst of the worst confusion of this conflict, when he regards himself as wholly cast off by men and God, his good conscience rises all the more absolutely by its own indestructible force and clear conviction above all that is wrong and enigmatical in the present: the soul recognises its own unending duration, xvi. 19; xix. 25—29. This inward certainty and pure self-re- flection, which thus germinated unobserved in the midst of the fiercest storm of all his calamity, can now all the more spring forth wholly unhindered, as Job has just now again experienced in his own case in this conflict the wealth and grandeur of integrity and already foresees, although as yet but dimly, a final deliverance. The dark, dangerous proposition of the reign of unrighteousness needs only to have been plainly brought forward in all its force, to be in this loftier and calmer frame of mind for ever abandoned. Accordingly Job has (3) a secure retreat from the attack and the victory. As a brave victor, who has after all never become unfaith- ful to God, and who has now become conscious of his own powers, he can at last draw the conclusion from the conten- tion—‘no one will again deny that calamity may exist with- out guilt’; and Job will never permit himself to be deprived of this doctrine and actual result of the contention; indeed, he can grant the misery of the wicked, of,which so much is made, because he is entitled to expect a better lot;—although to himself it is still not clear, how suffering integrity is in it- self possible and a divine arrangement. At last the clear consciousness of himself and his integrity, after it has long been overwhelmed by the billows of melancholy and despair, 56 THE INTRODUCTION. breaks forth in full splendour as the enduring fundamental principle, expressing for him, in an abiding form and in calm patience, that which is certain to him and still uncertain in God, and closing the conflict as between himself and his fellow- men not merely truly victoriously but also consciously and modestly, Xxvll.—XxVlil. It appears from this, that the turning-point of the whole conflict and the commencement of the decision of Job’s good cause, takes place at the point, which is at the same time the climax of the complication of the contention, when the friends appear outwardly to have the victory and Job appears humanly speaking to be doomed to perish, xvi.—xix. The last human hope has just been snatched from him, which he had resorted to after the perception of the unfaithfulness of the friends, God, for whose appearance he had so zealously and courageously prayed, xil.—xiv., has not appeared, the most agonising prayer is not heard: everything in which he previously believed he had a stay has perished; and bitterly deceived in all his hopes, he seeks in vain for some conceivable external support and help. But this profound humiliation and disappointment was not uncalled-for, in order to completely destroy all the elements of his previous superstition, to which he still so firmly adheres, and to direct him to the true eternal possession. Forsaken of men and of the God of the outward world in whom he had hitherto believed, he must nevertheless learn to retain and to protect his good conscience by looking to the hidden God within and the immortality of the soul. If every fragile sup- port disappear, the imperishable one is all the more clearly recognised. Thus where already complete ruin appeared to prevail, there arises from the mysterious depth of his soul, when driven into its inmost, holiest consciousness, a new, living, indestructible truth; as a flash of lightning, the light of the pure clear intuition shines through the ancient darkness, and for the first time the true, inward strength and hope springs up, towering above all times and vicissitudes, xvi. 19; xix. 25—29. | 3. THE ART OF THE POEM. DT On that account the gain of this highest moment can never be again wholly lost. Amid the final spasms of the word of the friends, who do not comprehend such a spiritual elevation, when Job also pours forth the last residue of the dark thoughts which are stirred by his opponents, the noble sufferer exhibits after all already an unlooked-for calm and confidence, as if he felt that God, though it might not be till after the death of the body, but not weak men, would be able to help him, xxl. 2—6; xxiii., xxiv., xxvi. And immediately he returns with growing conviction, after the defeat of the opponents, to that profounder consciousness, and closes with marvellously Strengthened powers xxvil., xxvii. Job’s inward power grows, therefore, under all circumstances from stage to stage, whilst that of his opponents irretrievably declines, and at last the unfavourable vicissitudes also promote his advantage. He, left to himself, passing through such profound sufferings, combats each opponent whenever one of them speaks, never wholly flagging, and not one of his speeches falls short of its adverse predecessor in point of inward or outward force and finish. He is always original and inexhaustible, whilst his opponents proceed vigorously a few steps, just at the commencement of each fresh encounter, soon flag, and getting impoverished, repeat their words with but little variation. If he several times in succes- sion positively scorns to answer, following more his own re- flections than the charges and will of his opponents, vi—vil., ix—x., Xvi—xvii., xix., yet in a single powerful speech he amply supplies subsequently everything that had been omitted and replies to three adversaries at once xii—xiv., xxl. He leaves nothing allowable and noble untried, to arouse even the compassion of his unfeeling opponents, both at the first and again in the thickest of the fight, vi. 283—30; xix. 21, 22, and resorts to severe measures only when compelled to do so. Thus concealed or openly, on the defensive or the offensive, always making victorious progress and gaining even by apparent losses, from being the suspected, persecuted, insulted sufferer, he becomes the daring, invincible hero, the wonderful teaentald xxvii. 11, of those who endeavour to correct him, the vanq calmit of all the superstition which has prevailed till that timepin in On Job, as assailed but invincible, more and morefllow-1 torious, depends, therefore, the true progress of the conte{ ancti in all its successive steps and stages: instead of being ge on by the assailants, he soon urges them on much more Who tha they him. They take up a position against him: he comgoapek them to seek another by finally destroying it and occuye thying it himself. They are obliged continually to seek a strdenmpger and more decisive position if they expect success; and inwar fact Job’s increasing daring and apparent impiety justifies thejmn in becoming more and more pointed and decisive, inasmucprth as they find a confirmation of their suspicion in this conenduct. 58 THE INTRODUCTION. point. But if at last they cannot maintain the third extreme and decisive position which was possible (see p.f 50), they must suddenly find their strength fail them and the vic- tory is incontestably Job’s; for the friends have but three dif- ferent positions corresponding to their three main truths. | On each occasion Job does not make any great haste to attack; since warding off the enemies’ blows better becomes him who is as sorely troubled as he is innocent, and for the noble soul the attack is resorted to only in self-defence. The two first times, accordingly, he leaves his adversaries to speak without properly paying them back in their own coin and _ provoking them by intentional attacks. The first time, he avoids every irritating word towards his friends and proceeds simply 1 complaints toward God, compelled by his sadness, vi—vii, ix—x.; the second time, he is less able to bring himself to do this, XVI—xvil., xIx., it is not until the third and youngest opponent declines nevertheless to leave him in peace, that he replies by 3. THE ART OF THE POEM. 59 In attack, and the first time, when the point is the coming of “od to judgment, with a sharply irritating contradiction, lii—xiv., the second time, in connexion with the question of the divine righteousness, rather compelled by the profoundest Uunguish to opposition, xxi. Thus three times the oldest of the Whree friends, the one to whom it may soonest be left by his colleagues also, is forced to assume a new position, which the two first times the two subordinate friends maintain, the first time making also an important advance, but the second time only a little. But as the contention has thus been carried much too far to permit of an understanding and reconciliation, Job, not provoked by the unconcealed reproaches, remains by his two former attacks which have not been answered, xxili— xxlv., but, in order to put an end to the contention which has become unprofitable, he smites the second speaker who 1s scarcely able to utter a few words, xxvi., with such crushing superiority to the ground, that the third does not venture to speak again, and Job rising instead of him, can now for the first time de- clare his innocence quite triumphantly. The entire contention as carried on between these men passes, therefore, through three phases, which, inasmuch as the three friends speak each time in their order, may also be called its three revolutions or ad- vances. The first advance is on both sides an attempt, in which everything, all that is dark as well as all that is clear, is first brought into action, but everything gradually more and more into perplexity and complication. The second advance presents the highest point of complication, when Job appears outwardly as already lost, whilst his deliverance is preparing in secret. The third advance completes Job’s victory. The first two advances serve to bring out the two dangerous thoughts of Job, his resentful discontent regarding his own calamities which becomes at times a challenge to God, and his indigna- tion at the apparent injustice prevailing in the whole world; until these two thoughts, precisely because they have been made perfectly clear, are set aside before they obtain complete a, | GO THE INTRODUCTION. ascendancy. It is at the end of the third advance, after the exaggerations and passions on both sides have spent them- selves, that these thoughts are overcome by that party in the conflict which, notwithstanding all reprehensible wanderings and errors, was nevertheless right in the present matter, and possesses, morever, a good conscience, and this result which hag been brought home to the mind in the contention and trouble can make itself freely felt and remain alone dominant, in that the victor in the contention with men regards himself as vanquished by God, xxvii. —xxviil. To make a brief resumé of the whole: As between the human representatives of it, the contention proceeds in the following three antitheses, in which also its three advances and phases appear :— The three friends maintain that a Job on the contrary maintains: man may not (1) speak against God, because (2) the universal divine righteousness is never at fault ; for (3) calamity is never without guilt: so that whoever on account of calamity speaks agaiust God and divine right- eousness, 7pso facto betrays himself as guilty. (1) Calamity, it cannot be denied, is possible without guilt; therefore the blameless man, ze., the man suffering unjustly, may and must, in spite of those who try to deny that clear fact, (2) speak against God, in order to challenge Him to a defence and the restoration of justice (end of the first advance), and if nevertheless justice is not restored, (3) call in question the general di- vine righteousness (end of the second advance). But still, speaking against God and calling in question the divine righteous- ness, is after all when carefully con- sidered, not mercly useless and confusing but even impious when done deliberatily and persistently, and if done in passion for once, the godly man will not con- deliberate moments. Therefore, with w full acknowledgment tinue it in his of the divine majesty and universal jus- tice, the original proposition, 3. THE ART OF THE POEM. 61 ‘Calamity is possible without guilt’t, remains after all a divine enigma, mo- destly to be ackuowledged but still al- ways painful in the extreme (end of | ( is still valid; but how it is so, that | the third advance). This is the course of the contention together with its necessary limits. 3. Thus it is true that by the result of the contention between the mortal participants therein the enigma has not as yet been solved on earth. Those on the one side have been wearied out; the one representative of the other side has been rendered wishful by the merely negative result, not yet per- fectly satisfied and enlightened. So all long for a higher wis- dom coming from another source. Even to Job, though he is victorious over men, a still more exalted victor must approach, One whom he has in fact already begun to anticipate and in silent humility to desire to see draw near. Everything that has gathered turbidly and dark around the question has been cleared up; the merely onesided, passionate conceptions and aims lie destroyed as victims of the conflict. But not until now that the real question itself is quite closely approached, does its true darkness appear, to scatter which all past human wisdom has proved unavailing. It is only a new revelation which can here supply the deficiencies of the ancient views and illuminate what was to them impenetrable darkness. And in fact the friends already early invoked this new revelation, xi. 5, and Job at first desired nothing more intensely, indeed, challenged it with vehemence, xiil., but at last perceived with deepest pain the futility of a desire so presented, xxiil.: for the hidden truth does not come when thus called for with defiance and in persistent folly. Now for the first time, when Job has at- tained to all the calm reflection of which he is capable, does the longed-for revelation become perhaps possible—5till, the course of this weary contention has by no means been fruit- less; on the contrary, the solution has been in secret thereby 62 THE INTRODUCTION. prepared for. For, in the first place, all lower conceptions are now on the way to be completely exposed, because they have been shown to be weak and unsatisfactory. Superstition, if not convinced of the contrary, has been reduced to silence in any case, and has been perceived most plainly to be insuffi- cient. Unbelief, after it has vainly tried everything possible to it, has perceived, just as it was victorious, its own insuf- ficiency and of itself begun to rise to the inkling of a higher truth. In that the passionate, almost defiant speech towards God, as if He did injustice in the present case, and the empty despair regarding the general wrongness of the world cease, the mind turns with all the greater inwardness, intelligence, and collectedness to the calm, although intense, confiding manner of regarding the particular case in question, hoping the eternal divine truths may not fail even in this darkness, and perceiving that when this darkness is dispersed, the divine righteousness will approve itself similarly everywhere. But what is still more, integrity has only now perfectly stood the test of prac- tical action by resisting the most perilous mental trials under all extremest pains. Job has neither surrendered to supersti- tion, thus sinning against his better knowledge, nor resigned himself so far to the threatening unbelief, that he ever let God Himself and the divine truths go; since, on the contrary, in every instance where this danger specially beset him, and most of all as soon as he had clearly perceived it, he started back with horror. He went wrong in his conceptions, but never in intention and action, and so in the midst of his calamities, when the attempt is made to deprive him of his integrity, he has become fully conscious of this infinite good, and now, as a victor amongst his fellow-men, he stands upon the threshold of higher insight. How vastly he has been the gainer by the conflict in point of self-knowledge and stable conviction, is shown by nothing more plainly than the comparison of the discourse which kindles the strife, iii., with that which closes it, xxvil —xxviii.: the first is deficient in clearness and dangerous, while 3. THE ART OF THE POEM. 63 the second is admirable, and if not wholly clear is yet tending towards clearness. All the vicissitudes intervening serve only to mediate between these antitheses and the avoidance of that danger. At last the calamities of Job, which are at first com- pletely dark to human view, begin of themselves even to catch a brightening light. Inasmuch as they have not been able to destroy Job’s integrity, it may already be surmised that they are no real inward calamity, no punishment from God, but the opposite of it; and after he has learnt this by experience, Job is thereby alone prepared for this higher insight, Accordingly there is in fact nothing further wanting than the advance to the closing revelation of the pure divine voice, which recon- ciles and glorifies everything, to that awful moment when the last veil is drawn aside, in that heaven and earth meet together and what in heaven was eternally prepared is consummated upon earth. After, therefore, Job having turned away wholly from his friends, without any defiance or any sullenness as regards the world in general, quite collected and worthy of himself, serious and modest, has in grief compared together his former prosperity, now so wishfully asked for again, and his present vast misery, and at the same time most solemnly with animated certainty protested from the purest soul his innocence (and that now for the first time with such calm composure, full consciousness, and definiteness); after he has thus, exhausting all human power in agonising, holy zeal, uttered to God alone everything that he can say of a longing, painful, purifying nature before higher enlightenment has come, not violently calling forth the divine decision, yet with repressed longing desiring it, drawing forth his whole inner man with great sincerity and cordiality, xxix —xxxi;—when all this has been done by Job, at last God Him- self appears, not as an enemy and not calling Job to account for some former sin, but in order to deliver the brave con- tender, if he has suffered himself previously to be warned and enlightened by the higher truth. No complete deliverance can 64 THE INTRODUCTION. come as long as Job has not completely released himself from the bonds of delusion, ie. until he perceives that he hedges up the way to knowledge and deliverance by speaking against God and the divine righteousness. For during his calamities and temptations he has suffered himself to be misled to thoughts which alone hinder the solution of the enigma; thoughts which he has, it is true, already begun to abandon, but has not yet clearly enough perceived to be wholly false, nor sincerely enough repented of. It is always true, that the light of the divine truth does not appear without at the same time bringing to light and removing more deeply coucealed detects in what is humanly devoid of blame and sin. So in this case, it cannot appear without first cancelling certain defects in him whom it has come to deliver and exalt, and when he has been wholly purified from them then nobly to reward him. And it is always true, that man never contends with God in order that he may enter in His secrets without at the same time carrying away as conqueror at last some scars as marks of the divine superiority and traces of the mortal struggle, Gen. xxxli. 261. Now, inasmuch as Job had previously sinned in two respects, first, in that he spoke at all against God, and next that he spoke in particular against God as judge by calling in question the supremacy of righteousness in the world, God accordingly now challenges him twice to contend with Him, demanding whether he is determined really to continue the one or the other form of speech against Him Who now not only makes Himself known as the strict judge and ruler, but also as the infinitely wise arranger of the universe, as the marvellous restorer of justice, as the revealer of His full glory? And as Job, having seen the purest light, submits in humility before a glory which has now become fully revealed, xxxviii. 1—xl. 14; xli. 1—6, as he stands pure before God and has put away even the small spots which human haste and perplexity during 1 See above p. 35. o. THE ART OF THE POEM. 65 his suffering had brought and left upon him, God at last gives him the noblest opportunity of obtaining satisfaction from his three friends, namely, the opportunity of interceding for them; and for himself, God gives him deliverance from all the evils which have befallen him and the noblest reward, in that his prosperity becomes greater than it was before his calamities. And thus the higher belief is established, that integrity may suffer, in- deed, but going forth from its trial with steadfastness and victory, then first attains its true reward, having arrived at true seli-consciousness and higher knowledge. The dark enigma is nobly solved on earth to the glory of God and man. The end of the drama refers back to the beginning. Considering the example of Job and the enigma which is now solved, henceforth every one may overcome like Job, without having like him to contend so severely with superstition and to suffer so perilously from unbelief. The common supposition that it is the poet’s purpose to show, that man cannot penetrate God’s plans and therefore docs best to submit in his ignorance to everything and without complaining, has not been derived from an accurate knowledge and a clear survey of the book. If the book went no further than from ch. ii. to ch. xxviii, it might be possible to regard that supposition as not improbable, although the thought would then be bad enough and unworthy, much as it may commend itself to many in these days. However, the fact is, the plan of God is revealed in the book, in the form in which every prophet reveals it; and Job is not blamed by God because he wished to penetrate the divine plan. No more weight ought to be attached to an incidental remark of Goethe's 1 than to such 1 The remark of Goethe’s referred to is to be found in his review of La- vater's Predigten tiber das Buch Jonas, one of the early reviews contributed by him to the Frankfurter Gelehrte Anzcigen. It is simply: “In the Book of Job the proposition, God’s providence is unsearchable but nevertheless always ere and worthy of admiration on account of its issues, was undoubtedly the mamilest main purpose of the author.” Tr. 66 THE INTRODUCTION. an endless number of other superficial opinions regarding the meaning and aim of this book.—If others actually suppose that the book is confused and its thought not well worked out, they simply betray the fact, that they have not understood it either in detail or as a whole. Ill. The human portion of the contention, occupying the principle part of the main body of the book, proceeds therefore by three stages, in such a way that, although in this part of the poem speeches alone are found and neither fresh persons nor great outward events are introduced, nevertheless the ques- tion itself upon which everything in the end depends makes thereby regular and proportional progress, and the proper solution is of itself insensibly prepared for from the midst of the complication of the question as it reaches its climax. The entire poem accordingly falls into five perfectly distinct and yet most closely connected parts. And if the poem, according to what we saw above, intends by its very plan to supply the answer to its question in a corresponding illustration of it taken from the midst of human life, or in a Drama, the true development of such a drama cannot be more correctly pre- sented than is done in these five parts. For they are just the same five stages as those in which an important action in a human life must naturally unfold itself and advance to its satisfactory conclusion: first contact of the various conflicting elements, conplication, climax of the complication, commencement of the solution, solution. The complication, or entanglement, of the question follows of itself from the introduction of it with its various conflicting elements; and in that this complication ad- vances to its climax, through all the profoundly agitated aspects and torn-up recesses of the question, in order that the most hidden and apparently most impossible elements of the case may be forced to develop themselves and come to light, the commence- ment of a solution is prepared for by the new possibilities and tine Ae 3. THE ART OF THE POEM. 67 energies which come to light, under a progressive destruction of the errors. The solution itself actually comes as soon as the necessity which is at first completely hidden can at last get wholly free from its impediments by the destruction of even the last errors. This will always be the outline of the plan and development of a true drama; and inasmuch as it is in- volved in the nature of the thing itself, the Greeks were not necessary to teach it. But as early as in this Book of Job it appears carried out with such perfection and ease, both in the details and the whole poem, that our admiration of the work can only be increased as we rediscover more correctly its per- fections in this respect. Every part and every deta‘! is most compactly put together, with the first four2aiions the whole execution of the work is already clearly provided for, there is nothing redundant and nothing defective, everything is in its place, and in its place it is in all cases the right thing and just what is required. | Compactly and necessarily as the larger and smaller members of this drama all hang together and present themselves by every indication as the authentic work of the poet, with equal certainty and plainness the two pieces of the pre- sent book which are not included in the action of the drama, the speeches of Elihu, xxxii—xxxvii., and the description of the two animal-monsters, xl. 15— xli. 26 (A. V. ver. 34) do not belong to the original work. This conclusion which is explained in detail below, I established as early as 18281; and nothing has been said in reply which can be substantiated by the truth of the case. But only a serious misconception of the whole book could mislead several moderns to conjecture a want of connexion, or another hand, in the case of ch. xxvii and xxviii. Similarly, the so-called prologue, i., ii and the epilogue, xlii. 7—17, have had suspicion cast upon them without any just reason: for these prose passages thoroughly harmonize as regards their material and thought, style and art, and language also (as far as prose can be like poetry), with the ancient poetic book, and everything that has been urged to the contrary is either pure misconception or of no importance. The transposition of certain verses in ch. xxxi and xxxviii has only been erroneously proposed. Whoever has really understood the book, will, we hope, as often as he reads it over again and with closer attention, find this judgment regarding primary or later pieces in it confirmed, just as I have found nothing since the year 1828 to alter in this respect. 1 In the Theol. Stud. und Kritiken, Vol. Il. p. 767 sq. 5 Da G8 THE INTRODUCTION. Throughout the whole poem there runs, as has been said, a single, closely interwoven, sharply defined action, based upon its great thought. However this drama was not intended by the poct for actual performance on a stage. Whether or when, therefore, the action, in simple narrative, or in the elabor- ately presented speeches of the persons taking part in it, is meant to advance may be gathered from the relation of the particular description to the fundamental thought of the book: where the latter requires a closer inspection of the dangers, stages, and grounds of the higher faith, the simple thread of narrative then gives place to the broader web of the elsherate . discourses of the persons engaged in the action. Nothing can so clearly, so instructively, so inspiringly conduct «. reader into the inmost feelings and thoughts of integrity as it wrestles with calamity, with God and the world, into the soul of the restricted, antiquated, helpless faith, into the full all-surpassing grandeur of the divine mind when it reveals itself, as elaborate discourses from each representative person exhausting the reason of the matter. It is not so much rapid disconnected dialogue, such as is used in the bustle of common life, which is appropriate here, where the most serious subject is treated in its dignity and difficulty by the representatives of differing views, who are of their respective classes the worthiest and wisest, and each of the longer discourses is like a wise, well-considered, sententious proverb ?. On the contrary, the vast preponderance of purely spiritual matter, combined with the desire and capacity of the poet to give it exhaustive utterance by means of its proper instrument, the human-divine word, must cause the decided predominance of the calm, pro- foundly penetrating development of the action by means of elaborate discourses. As soon, therefore, as the action comes to the first decisive moment, which gives rise to a course of development the end of which cannot be seen, this profoundly 1 : oe . eae Suir MMVI eae Comp, xs, ae, 3. THE ART OF THE POEM. 69 penetrating mode of treatment commences in a discourse which calmly further pursues its way, ch. iii.; and it is only a little before the end, after the whole spiritual matter has already been completely treated in an uninterrupted tournament of thought and oratory, and the final result is necessarily at hand, that the continuation of the action in simple narrative again suffices, xlii. 7—17. But while thus the flow of discourse pro- ceeds in all directions, carrying forward the action of the poem at first imperceptibly and soon very perceptibly, the less im- portant accompaniments of the main action also advance with it, inasmuch as it receives everything into its stream as it is all along predominant. To much of a subordinate nature which takes place in the meantime there is, however, only incidental reference made, e.g., that according to the intention of the poet, the disasters of Job are further increased by the cowardly mockery of inferiors, becomes plain xvii. 6; xxx. 1—10; that the three stages of the contention, as is of itself probable, are meant to be distributed amongst successive days, appears from the hint let fall xxii. 2.1 As accordingly the art of the poem as a whole is brought to perfection by the judicious arrangement, accurate working- out and compact jointing of the whole, no particle of it being in the wrong place, there being nothing redundant or deficient, nothing detached and without easy transition and preparation, nor anything without effective reference to what went before or what comes after, so also im detail the poet’s art is all along the skilful mistress of his material, determining its des- tination and form in conformity with the requirements of the thought which has in each instance to be illustrated. The greatest variety of description, style, manner of presentation, is required in matters of detail by the general arrangement of the poem: the poet knows how to present in every case the most varied things at their proper places, so as to meet the 1 See on this point the further remarks in the Tiibinger Theol. Jahrbb., 1843, p. 753. 70 THE INTRODUCTION. requirements made by his work as a whole, without ever losing himself in the details, or treating any detail too feebly or too elaborately. The raving and all the misery of despair, no less than the peace and blessedness of better knowledge, the pungent, castigating speech of him that instructs from good-will or threatens from provocation, no less than the agonizing com- plaint, ending in woeful grief, of him that is bowed-down, the helpless exhaustion of him that is vanquished, no less than the exultation and pride of him that is deeply afflicted and yet not compelled to succumb, the passionateness and precipitancy of man, no less than the gladness of God, shedding its serious but smiling rays over everything, and the glory of God,—all this the poet represents attractively and adequately. It follows of itself from the entire form of Hebrew poetry, that the speeches of the persons of the poem, when they at a longer or sorter length, rise to a poetic height, may at the same time be broken up into strophes; but it is needful to remark that the poet approves himself in this respect also as a rare master!. But even the prose, where it is introduced, is worthy of the poet and bears his impress. The prolixities and repetitions of the friends too, in the second stage of the contention, though not of themselves very pleasing, only cast a shadow which all the more heightens the effect of the rest of the poem. It is only a little too clearly that we hear the voice of calamity in the century of the poet coming from the long, mournful descrip- tions of the confusion and wrongness of the world, ch. xxi. and Xxlv., as if the poet had himself delayed as long with it as possible and had at last been compelled to give it vent in the most gloomy passage of the poem. But how powerfully does Job immediately rise against it with recovered heart, xxvi sq,., and how sublime also is the close, for which everything great and surprising appears to have been preserved. Moreover, every- thing is free from all trace of constraint, without any laboured 1 The treatment of this matter which I have given in the Jahrbiicher der Bibl. Wess. Il. p. 116 sq., appears below more completely worked out in detail. 3. THE ART OF THE POEM. 71 artificiality, manifestly the easiest, most unforced effusion of a lofty poet-mind and of his unfettered art. On account of the peculiarity and complete originality of this poem, it is therefore difficult to assign it a place in Greek poetic art. As regards its matter and purpose, the book, as is evident on the face of it, is the most sub- lime didactic poem of the Bible: but it appears more difficult to say what it is as respects art. Still, when more closely considered, the book, leaving out of view adaptation for the stage which has not here been made, belongs, as we saw p. 17, to the drama, and, if it is desired to give it at least an approxi- mate Greek name, cannot properly be described otherwise than as the divine drama of the ancient Hebrews1, since it is not only unique of its class in the O. T., but is also distinguished amongst all books by the peculiar art as well as the deep feeling and sublimity of its matter. If, however, in point of simple truth and freshness particular thoughts of many other pieces of the O. T. may compare with this, on the other hand, the art which in it makes such successful efforts in a subject of such magnitude and with such a high degree of perfection is quite peculiar to it. This book supplies us with the greatest thing that the Hebrews accomplished in poetic art, in the way of a masterly handling of a given material and immortalising a thought. Accordingly it has subsequently, if not as a whole (inasmuch as for this the requisite know- ledge was very often wanting) yet in certain parts of it, been admired and imitated by many great poets, particularly has this been the case with its open- ing, which is more easily understood. This is not the place to examine the question whether Goethe’s Faust can be compared with this book or not: it is, however, plain enough that its brilliant prologue would not have been what it is without the Book of Job. With what ease the poet is able to handle his material appears also in the fact, that he draws a sharp distinction in outward respects between the time of early antiquity, which his material requires him to describe, and his own later age, and takes care to avoid every unsuitable confusion of them. It is true that he does not by any means, like our modern poets, pedantically make a point of keeping up the antique colouring in every smallest point and of carefully avoiding the appearance here and there of the age of his real contempor- 1 Inasmuch as several writers, since the appearance of the first edition of this work, have made a great ado at this view of mine, I may here just re- mark, that to Leibnitz also the book appeared to be “operatic”; as was recently remarked from a maauscript in Dr. Schmidt’s Zeitschrift fiir Geschichte 1847, Mai, p. 436. te THE INTRODUCTION. aries. On the contrary, as his design is after all really to instruct his own age, he does not scruple to let traces of it clearly shine through the artistic veil, yet always at the proper place, where it has no disturbing effect on the whole poem and appears naturally to suggest itself. If in the midst of his own maddening pain Job cast a glance also at the large number of others who like him suffer for no fault of their own, and then illustrations of calamities suggest themselves such as only the experience of later times could present in such a manner, ix. 24; xil. 23; xxi. 7 sq.; xxiv. 2—17, he uses in such cases the language of one carried away by the higher flight of imagina- tion and surveying all times, describing evils in striking ex- amples such as were in the actual time of Job already about to arise. And if the poet sometimes, as the exception, puts into Job’s mouth 1 the Mosaic divine name Jahvé, though he usually, when he makes the old men speak, uses the pre-Mosaic names Tos, D8 and sw, these are the most sublime passages in Job’s life and discourses, where the ancient hero, who according to tradition worshipped like Abraham the true ancient God ?, as if suddenly moved by the purest spirit, thus early gazed quite into the glory of the God of Moses; which exceptional use of the name Jahvé, thus introduced at the proper place, is very effective. There are also some figures borrowed from a later time, such as the frequent one from the customs of writing and sealing, xiii. 26; xiv. 17; xix. 23, 24; xxxi. 35, 36; xxxvill. 14. But where simple narrative and the connexion of circun- stances require an antique description, at the commencement 1. 11., at the close xlii. 7 sq. and elsewhere, there the genuine colouring of the time of Job, that is the time between Abra- ham and Moses, is everywhere very faithfully preserved, s0 1 1. 215 xxvill. 28, where “278 == 5", Further xii. 9, where however mnby is probably to be read, as some MSS. do.—Whcere the poet simply narrates, there is nothing in his usage to hinder him from employing the name Jahvé, Mi 23 RRS be ke SG xl 1 sq: ® Comp also particularly xxxi. 26—28. 3. THE ART OF THE POEM. to that it can be seen that the poet well kept up the difference of times when anything depended upon it. Tlistorical examples are borrowed only from the primitive and patriarchal world, as Xvill. 15; xxii. 15, 16. The question may be asked, whether the poet has not at all events in the delineation of subordinate circumstances of the action now and then forgotten himself? With regard to one circumstance in particular this question may be raised. According to i. 18,19, comp. xlii. 13—15, Job loses all his children at the very beginning of the tragedy; but according to the correct meaning of the words xiv. 21; xvii. 5; xix. 17,18, he still has children at a later stage of his calamities. This discrepancy cannot be removed by the supposition that the narrative at the commencement, i., ii, and at the end, xlii. 7 sq., is by another author: for this supposition is supported by no other reason (as we have seen); and moreover, there is the further fact that according to viii. 4, xxix. 5, comp. xxi. 11, the author of these verses presupposes the destruction of Job’s children. If the contradiction should be regarded as irreconcilable, we should still not be compelled on that account alone to lay upon the author any great blame. At all events Goethe (Gespriiche mit Eckermann, vol. III. p. 155) maintains on another occasion, that a great poet may very well for once forget himself as regards unimportant details, as Shakespeare has done in Macbeth, Act i and iv., in reference to the question whether Macbeth had children or not; as a fact, this discrepancy in Macbeth has not been removed, as Tieck’s remarks on Act iv. do not at all meet the case. Neither in the Book of Job is it enough to suppose, that Job means in his speeches by his sons really his grandsons, as the latter were in any case still quite young according to xix. 18, and as it may be supposed that probably some grandchildren escaped the de- struction of the sons. For even that only some of such grandchildren were left to him is when well considered but little accordant with the sense of the whole poem; and, moreover, these sons are expressly described, xix. 17, as of his own body. However, when we remember that the poet describes Job as a man of the same kind as Abraham, or a similar patriarch, he could very well give to him, particularly in his later age after his wife had grown old, some children by a concubine; and these children could as easily be passed over without mention in the brief narrative of ch. i., as the few scattered servants which Job still possessed according to xix. 15, 16, notwithstanding that his ser- vants were slain acc. i. 17. 74 TIIE INTRODUCTION. ON THE DATE AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK. For the discovery of the name and other personal relations of the poet, the more particular indications are now wanting, There is hardly another piece in the 0. T. by the same author: with regard to Ps. xxxix., which would most naturally claim to be compared, see my Commentary on the Psalms in loco. It is a natural supposition that the poet was inspired to under- take the work by some personal experience: but the historical evidence is wanting which would carry us beyond supposition. Neither ig it possible to fix the date of the book other than approximately by centuries. For as a deliberate product of poetic art this book did not originally proceed so immediately from the definite circumstances of a particular time as did the prophetic and most of the simple lyrics; and such circum- stances can the less be presented by it in palpable indications, in proportion as the poet, by letting go his time, has consis- tently carried through the illustrations from distant antiquity required by his materials. k evertheless, the poet plainly wrote his book for contemporaries who were prepared for and in- tensely desirous to hear its doctrine. The old faith regarding evil must already have been most profoundly shaken by con- trary experiences and unbelief have taken deep root; for with- out such precursors the thought and design of the book can- not be comprehended. Accordingly it cannot have been written in early antiquity, when the simple faith was still quite valid and satisfactory, Ex. xx.5; nor at the time when undaunted courage still contended successfully with what was unsatisfac- tory in the ancient view, as in Pss. vi, xiii. But from the eight and the seventh century B.C., the perplexing confusion of personal and national relations and circumstances was $0 greatly increased that it might quite well rouse the poet to seek a solution of the enigma of the time: the detailed proof of which belongs rather to the general history of the nation and of its literature than to this place. If the despair of the ON THE DATE AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK. 15 faithful had risen to the manifestly undue height of Ps. xxxix., and the cry for help had become so urgent as in Ps. xii., all the conditions were supplied which the poet needed for con- celving and working-out the conception of his work. One sees also in the background of this poem the picture of such extra- ordinarily disorganised, calamitous times as precisely the cen- turies above-named were for Israel!. On the other hand, the poet appears to be one of the first whose mind arose out of that perplexing confusion to this elevation of pure insight and advanced hope. For we see him still struggling with the higher part of the thought, and the greatest truth which has to be here presented is so far from being anything long since made out and ready-to-hand that it breaks forth in this book as something quite new and fresh from its first source. That which is the consequence and teaching of this book appears already in a more fixed and final form in Pss. xvi., xlix., and Ixxiil., as if the higher hope had further developed itself by the simple progress of the times. If in this book the view, that children ought not to suffer for their parents, makes it- self felt in painful struggle, as if it were only just seeking to get clear to itself, xxi. 19—21, by Jeremiah and Ezekiel (ante p. 13) it is already announced with forcible brevity as a pro- position which cannot be denied, as also the whole manner of the discourse of Ezekiel’s on the divine righteousness, xiv. 14 sq., xviii., appears like a result of our book. But, again, without doubt that steadfast faithfulness unto death, which, according to the piece on which is founded Isa. liii., the martyrs under Manasseh exhibited 2, was still not historically known to the poet. Similarly, the truth which is forcibly presented in 1 ix, 24; xii. 4A—6, 23; xv. 28; xvii 6—9; xxi., xxiv. The fire of burn- ing sympathy with which the poet really refers to the disastrous calamities of his own time and of contemporary Israel, to the ruined condition of the ancient kingdom, the rise of a tyrannis, the intrusion of foreigners (xv 19), and the commencing deportation of the nation into captivity, often flashes quite suddenly from the midst of the speeches of the heroes from an olden time. 2 Comp. History of Israel Vol. V. 207 sq. (IV. 715 5q.). rey (( THE INTRODUCTION. that chapter and in the whole of the ercat work “Isa.” xl— Ixvi., as the climax of all higher views regarding evil, namely, that the true servant of Jahvé suffers for others, and indeed for the guilty, in order that the divine kingdom may spread in ever wider circles, is not yet touched upon at all here, Putting all these things together, it will be found most probable that the poet lived not long after Isaiah, towards the end of the eighth or the beginning of the seventh century, when the northern kingdom was destroyed, the southern, Judah, suffered under various disasters. It is unfortunate that we know but little of the history of these first years under Manasseh.—This conclusion is confirmed by a comparison of the later portions of the present book with the earlier ones. The speeches of Ilihu, as will appear below, show a time considerably further advanced, which had already made a much closer acquaintance with the truth which the poet had previously experienced. According to all other signs also the distance between the dif- ferent pieces of the book is that of a century, or even of two. If therefore the later additions were written in about the se- cond half of the sixth century, as may with probability be supposed, the date of the book is brought by that fact con- siderably earlier than the time of the Babylonian captivity. Other indications do not appear to contradict this suppost- tion. A number of unusual poetic figures and conceptions ap- pear to unfold themselves in this book like a new world. From which fact the question naturally arises, whether they all ap- peared here for the first time in Hebrew poetry, and whence they originated? In consequence of the limited extent of the O. T., this question is often difficult to answer quite precisely, particularly as this book (except the Canticles, which is agall of such a very different character, in that it does not admit d sublime and lofty figures) is the only one belonging to the class of artistic poetry in the strict sense, in which therefore almost alone the poetic conception of the Hebrews regarding the W- sible and invisible world with a certain conscious purpose ale ON THE DATE AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK. tq presented at length. To mention a few of the most important things in this respect, the book contains (1) many very unusual representations and pictures of ter- restrial things, as of plants, viii. 11; ix. 26, of animals, xxix. 18; xxxix. 1 sq., of mining and precious treasures of the earth, xxviii, of the marvellous edifices of men, iii. 14. We see also that a very large knowledge of the more distant wonders of the earth must have reached the poet, which is not conceivable without an active intercourse between the nations; but we must regret that we are often imperfectly informed as regards the precise nature of the dispersion of such knowledge or traditions. Several figures appear to be borrowed from Egyptian things, ii. 14; vin. 11; ix. 26. However, it would be hasty to infer from that fact, that the author, as in this respect a fellow- sufferer with Jeremiah perhaps, wrote his book in Egypt, in- asmuch as many Egyptian and Ethopian characteristics were known in Palestine, Isa. xviii. 19, and the two chief pictures which can be cited in favour of such an inference, of the Nile- horse and the Crocodile, xl. 15—xli. 26 (A.V. xli. 34) are from a later hand. It appears, however, to be certain that all the figures of this kind might very well be well-known at the be- ginning of the seventh century. (2) A great number of astrological traditions and figures, as well as of conceptions of other celestial wonders, distinguishes this poet, by which he often trenches upon the mythological PeSion, AS 18s sO. lee SV. 22 RK ae ax. 31—33, 36. It is worth further inquiry where legends of this kind were first formed and made current. The Hebrews were certainly the furthest from being the originators of such first elements of a mythology, since everything mythological which is found amongst them was preserved or spread simply in spite of Mosaism. Yet traces of mythological elements are decidedly met with amongst them as early as the cighth cen- tury, since Rahab occurs Isa. xxx. 7, the Seven Stars and Orion 78 THE INTRODUCTION. even as early as Amos v. 8, whilst the simple herdsman Amos will be furthest from using new figures in such matters. (3) Most remarkable are the conceptions of angels and Satan which are peculiar to this book. The Satan, as he is described i., ii., is, it is true, as regards his love of tracking and punishing among men what is wicked or suspicious, quite the subsequent evil spirit: but with all that similarity, what a ercat difference is at the same time discernible! Subsequently, when these conceptions had been fully developed under the influence of the religions of Eastern Asia, we see the Satan at the head of a great empire of spirits, and between him and the empire of the good spirits an infinite and impassable gulf fixed, so that scarcely in the earliest ages of the creation is the possibility yet presupposed of the origin of this gulf. But in this book not only does Satan enter alone, without attendant hosts, into the divine Council-Meeting, and appears still as in- dependent and self-sufficient only to a very limited degree, but the entire empire of superior spirits has not as yet got into this irreconcilable separation. On the contrary, the spirits generally are regarded as such as can go astray in spite of all their elevation, just as the visible heaven notwithstanding its unearthly splendour is yet dull and impure in comparison with the purest light iv. 18; xv. 15; xxv.4—6. And the myth- ology tells not only of great revolts on the part of the higher powers, but also of how stern judgment was held over them, so that not one even of the mightiest of heaven is able to withstand the true God, but all serve Him in peace, ix. 13; xxi. 22; xxv. 2,3; xxvi. 12,13, comp. v.1. This conception of the variable moral condition of the higher spirits occupies au place midway between the ancient Mosaic conception, ac- cording to which the angels have no separate, personal will whatever, and the later view, which strictly separates good and evil in the innumerable hosts of spirits also, but makes the first angels of God all good and without error. As this phenomenon of the book cannot on closer examination be ON THE DATE AND THE IISTORY OF THE BOOK. 719 mistaken, it points to a time when the ancient conceptions of the realm of spirits, undoubtedly not wholly without the in- fluence of foreign religions, were undergoing their first trans- formation and assuming new forms, when unfaithful spirits and a spirit which secretly sought and willed evil, were spoken of, while, on the other hand, they were not yet so completely transferred into a separate realm of an entirely different nature. From the description of a prophet of the ninth century, 1 Kings xxii. 19—22, to that of this book, i., ii., which is in some re- spects so similar, there is, it must be allowed, an important step, in that the name and the idea of the Satan appear for the first time in this book; but from this description to that of Zech. iii. 1,2, where Satan and angels of God contend con- cerning a man and Jahve speaks to Satan only in anger, there is again a scarcely less important step, because that separation between good and evil in the realm of spirits appears here as already completed; and from what is here said regarding re- sisting celestial powers, that which is said by a later prophet “Isa.” xxiv. 21,22 differs in an important degree. Similarly, there occurs here for the first time the prayer to higher spirits as intercessors, v. 1, a thought which arises as soon as ever the realm of spirits is conceived as taking shape more freely; but this thought is in our book far less rigid than subsequently. And whilst later poets and prophets shrink from introducing God immediately, or even as appearing on the earth, this poet does not scruple to make Him appear and speak to Job. We can therefore come to no other conclusion than that the author of this book occupies a place midway between ancient and late conceptions, and lived at a time when that which became the prevailing view was still thoroughly malleable and modern. The language and orthography of the later pieces of the book conduct to a time when the Aramaic peculiarities were creeping in already to a considerable extent: but the language and orthography of the earlier pieces show scarcely any marks of a commencing decline, eg., the more abbreviated orthography SO THE INTRODUCTION. yw, viii. 81, instead of prox; 05975, vi. 27, instead of ‘ys, and nothing whatever which a poet of the first half of the seventh century might not have written, since the name ow-p “saints”, v. 1, for the angels of God, occurs again Zech. xiv. 5 in a piece which was certainly written before the dissolution of the kingdom of Judah. The fact that many words rarely found elsewhere occur here, is simply one of the numerous in- dications that nothing else by this poet has been preserved, probably also evidence that he did not write in Jerusalem. But if some words appear here for the first time which sub- sequently became common in the later language, the reason for that is rather to be found in the general relations of the Hebrew poetic language-—The high stage of the art of the book was neither possible in the earlier centuries, when Hebrew poetic art was only commencing its course of development, nor is it very easily conceivable in the later centuries when poetic art generally declined gradually, and most of all the higher art needful for the production of greater creations and works; neither is such a compressed, pithy style of discourse as pre- vails in this book found subsequently in longer pieces. Lastly, the observation of the outward condition in which this book is found in the series of the books of the O. T. points to the same age. It is true, to conclude from the extreme purity of the copies in which the book came into the Canon, it appears not to have been much read for a long time: but on the other hand, it must be remembered that this purity is owing to the fact that the poet must himself have provided for it in his original manuscript.? Still, the traces of the hook being read can to some extent be followed. Of the Psalms of the third period some refer back very plainly to this book, just as Zech. i. 10—14; iii. 1,2; vi. 5 presuppose the descrip- 1 Comp. }2¥W8%, xv. 7: an orthography which is also found in Sacy’s Cor- vespondence des Samarit. p. 103, 1. * According to the remarks, Llistory of Israel IV. p. 286 (III. p. 821 sq.)} see further below. ON THE DATE AND THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK. SI tions of ch.i., ii. as long known; nox, “Isa.” xl. 2, is borrowed from vii. 1, or at all events originated about the same time?. If Ezekiel mentions Job in company with Noah and Daniel as a model of a godly man (ante p. 21), it can only be, when all circumstances are considered, because our book had made that hero once more famous ?. The book must have been known in Ezekiel’s time and much read. In the Book of Jeremiah, with whose tone of mind this book accorded extremely well, and still more in the book of Lamentations, there is much reechoed from it?. On which side the employment of the words is original cannot in this case be a matter of doubt. Ps. lvili. 8 reminds us of ili. 16; Ps. Ixxii. 12 is almost exactly repeated from xxix. 12: and thus it is not difficult to show that this book accordingly dates as far back as the beginning of the seventh century *. Reversely, passages can be quoted which show that earlier authors were before the mind of the poet, as the expression “he that walketh over the heights of the sea”, ix. 8, is formed probably after the simpler form Amos iv. 155, and the whole verse-member xiv. 11 after Isa. xix. 5%; although the poet con- tinues to be very markedly distinguished from the later artistic poets, who borrow their chief excellences from the ancient writings. 1 See Mistory of Israel IV. p. 208 (III. p. 716 sq.). 2 The relation of Daniel to the readers of that time is a distinct question which must be answered elsewhere. See now Prophets of the Old Testament V. p..169'sq.. (HI. p. 312 'sq;). 8 As Jer. xx. 14—18 from iii. 3—26; xv.18 from vi. 15 sq.; xvii. 1 from xix. 24; xlix.19 from ix. 19. As regards the Book of Lamentations, see ante p. 3sq., and comp. in addition how the words Lam. iii. 38 are only a slight echo from Job ii. 10. In all such cases the most decisive point is the multi- tude of the signs of the use of one book in another. 4 As regards the still earlier Book of Deuteronomy, see the remarks in the History of Israel I. p.127 sq. (I. p. 186); as regards Prov. i—ix., did. IV. p. 220 (III. p. 733). 5 In this case also the most decisive thing is the accumulation of indications: xviii. 16 further reminds us strongly of Amos ii. 9; xii. 15, of Amos ix. 6; and the reference to the constellations is similar in beth writers. The connexion of the words even in xxvii. 16 appears to have been taken from SRech,” 1k 2: 6 Comp. also the continuation Isa. xix, 13, 14 with the repetition Job xii. 24, 25, fy 82 THE INTRODUCTION. The book came into the Canon undoubtedly somewhat late, after the sub- sequent additions to it had also been written a considerable time, and the name, date, and circumstances of the earlier poet had long been lost to me- mory. On that account many readers of the centuries subsequent to the for- mation of the O. T. down to our own times have believed that Job himself was the poet, or at all events that the book was written in very early anti- quity by Moses or a similar holy man. Or it has been conjectured that the original language of the book (as if it were written by Job himself) was not Ilebrew, perhaps the Idumean or the Arabic. However, all such suppositions are wholly groundless, inasmuch as they have sprung ultimately from confound- ing the hero with the author of the book. Many readers have in recent times suffered themselves to be so far misled by these errors that they cannot make the book late enough, and bring it down at least into the Babylonian exile. But they thereby overlook partly the great dissimilarity that exists between the earlier and the later pieces of the book, and partly their judgment with regard to many points of it is in other respects insufficiently instructed. When, e.g., the false derivation of the word ]¥¥ i., ii. from UY i. 7, was rejected, but at the same time the absurd assertion was made, that the Satan appears here exactly as he is met with later, even the little amount of truth, however much mixed with error, was then lost again. A completely reliable proof of the view of the age of the book above offered belongs, however, rather to a treatment of the entire course of general ancient Hebrew Literature: it was intended here simply to supply briefly some of the leading marks of it. Further details have been given in various places of the History of Israel. That this book was much read as early as the seventh century B.C., appears from the evidence referred to a short time ago. And how greatly its beauty early produced all kinds of imitations and continuations of it, we shall see below, when we come to consider the two considerable pieces which were subsequently inserted into it. But originally the poem must have been written and distributed abroad in very good copies: for even yet the text, particularly in the original portion of the book, is comparatively very pure, a point carefully to be noted in connexion with the question of the sense of some- what more obscure passages !. 1 Accordingly there is no reason for supposing that many emendations of the Hebrew are necessary. The passages are rare where u few small errors may have crept in, as vi. 14, 21; xii. 133 xx. 1135 xxii. 23) SX 2s REIS. ie xxx. 12, see also below on xxi. 10. The error which could most easily arise through the fault even of early copyists, would be the omission here and there of a verse-member or a whole verse. L THE FIRST STAGE OF THE DRAMA, OPENING OF THE CONTENTION. 1. Job’s life and character, ch. i. 1—5. With reference to this, simply what is absolutely necessary ; particularly that which is of importance for the course of the action, namely, how Job was no less prosperous than god-fear- ing; everything put with individuality, yet only so as to meet circumstances which are generally suitable. Of those two as- pects of Job’s life, the prosperity and the piety of it, however, it is the last which is the more important for everything that follows: it is put forward at the very commencement, and at the end, vv. 4, 5, it is returned to with the additional detail ap- propriate here, how carefully Job watched over the purity and blamelessness not only of his own life but also of his whole house, presenting sacrifices annually, even on account of the sins which his grown-up children might possibly have com- mitted in secret. So that the calamities which followed natur- ally befell him wholly unexpectedly, inasmuch as he had, ac- cording to ancient belief, done all that was humanly possible to avert divine punishments from his whole house. But since, as will subsequently appear, all such customary religious works are insufficient to avert the calamities, the insufficiency of such works may in any case be inferred from the result. 6* 84. Li Cae = 5. a There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job: the same man was blameless and upright, godfearing 2 and departing from evil. And there were born to him seven 3 sons and threc daughters; and his possession was seven thousand head of sheep three thousand camels five hundred yoke of oxen and five hundred she-asses, and a very large household: so that the man was greater than all sons of the 4 East.—Now his sons went often and made a feast, at the house of each on his day, and sending they invited their It appears from the corresponding passages ver. 8, ii. 3, that the conjunctive ~ before ovo x") ver. 1, is not much required: for the first two adjectives are simply explained more accurately by the last two, as the integrity of the heart 0% necessarily implies the fear of God, uprightness in action the avoid- ance of evil. Thus the four words together supply the plainest definition of perfect piety.—As the occasion when the children of Job, who as might be ex- pected from the example of their father were in other respects blameless and living in perfect amity (xlii. 15), might have sinned, the poet chooses, vv. 4, 5, the annual festive gatherings1, which the sons, who had already grown-up and were living in various directions around their father’s abode in separate houses, kept in common, and where the boisterous pleasure might easily on an occasion get the better of the generally prevailing seriousness and break the bonds of the habitual earnest habits. For it must be remembered that the degree of stability in divine things which Job presupposes in the case of his sons is not that to which he supposes himself to have attained, upon which godliness is no longer a command and compulsion, is not » thing which might be lost, say in «i moment of intoxication. If it is asked more particularly of what kind these seven feasts were, after the passing-by of which Job brought an expiatory offer- ing, the birthdays of the brothers might be thought of, as if each one had kept his birthday in his house. Yet as the seven birthdays must have been spread more over the whole year, it is not easy to see why Job did not always make sacrifices immediately after each of them; neither would it in that case be said “when the days of the feast were ended”, as if all the days were connected, but something like ‘‘when the days of the year were ended” would be said. It is therefore much better to suppose that the ordinary annual feasts of joy are intended, particularly the autumn feast which was much observed in ancient times, or ayain the feast of spring, all these feasts generally lasting a week, so that exactly one day fell to each son for keeping the feast in his house ac- cording to the order of seniority, which is confirmed by ver. 13. With regard to Way DN M3 in the house on the day, 2.e., in the order, of each, see §§ 3008, 2780. 1 That is, not the simple daily meal, but special banquets are plainly in- tended, as appears from the words and the general meaning of the description. 12 Cn, 3,641, 10. 85 5 three sisters to eat and to drink with them. But when the days of the feast were gone by, Job sent and atoned for them, early in the morning bringing whole-burnt-offerings according to the number of them all. For Job thought that perhaps his sons had sinned and bidden God adieu in their heart. Thus did Job all the time. The reason for such a careful reference to the place and succession of the feast, does not appear until vv. 13, 19. Moreover, as the sons had each time to come together from their different houses in that one to which the turn fell, the description begins with their going (they went and made a feast); and be- cause their father did not keep the feast with them, he sent each time to them after it, to cause them to come and be atoned for, since the person to be puri- fied might not be absent from the sacrifice, Lev. iv., vi. 17—23; vii. 1—10; the zeal with which Job did this, is shown by the added clause early in the morning. With regard to the variation of the expression in cases where fre- quent repetition is described, vv. 4, 5, see § 3420. 2. Jub’s heavy aud heaviest calamities, determined upon in heaven, carried out on the earth, as yet withoul becoming dangerous to him, i. 6—il. 10. Mysterious calamity, the cause of which is to the earth an enigma, must fall upon Job who is so completely blameless. Yet it is mysterious only on the earth of that time; for in the presence of the pure divine light, where all scattered rays converge and whence they proceed, the clue to this enigma cannot be lost in the darkness. But for the reader, who must from the first behold under the pure light of heaven the real commencement of the action of the drama, in order that he may comprehend its necessary development, and, standing above the mortal sufferer, follow his history, the poet at once draws back the celestial curtain and lets him glance into the holy of holies, as far as the veil may be withdrawn thus early in the poem. Job is, it is true, given over by God Himself to his sufferings: but not by the malicious God, or the God who is angry with him, but by the God who knows and loves him, the compassionate One; by the God who is at first, as it were, 86 I. 2.—Cu. i. 6—ii. 10. loath to let him suffer inasmuch, as He does not desire the suffering as such and Job’s destruction, and yet must neces- sarily cause him to suffer. For Job’s godliness has not as yet passed through the fire of purification, and that God Himself cannot hinder. Indeed, the man to whom the greatest mea- sure of strength and prosperity has been granted must also contend the most painfully. If just now, within the limita- tions by which he has hitherto been surrounded, he seems to stand most securely and really so far to deserve all divine ap- proval, he is immediately sent forth to new and perilous strug- gles, that it may appear whether as conqueror there also he can more firmly hold his earlier attainments and succeed in gaining fresh and higher ones. The preparation for these perilous struggles accordingly is made in the celestial counsels. Jahvé in the divine council-chamber mentions with pleasure his servant Job to the Satan who ferrets out everything bad or suspicious and gladly inflicts evils. Jahvé refers to Job as a servant against whom this Satan can produce nothing. But the enemy with wicked cunning seeks to throw suspicion upon him, as one who is godly merely for the sake of prosperity as an earthly advantage. Inasmuch as the suspicion has once been raised, and appears not without foundation, as judged by possible, and indeed probable, human weakness, Jahvé can do no other than permit the trial which the Satan desires, were it for no other reason than simply to put the Satan himself to shame. Keeping silence as regards the issue, yet not say- ing or thinking that the godly man must succumb, prescribing to the trial its limits, Jahvé dismisses the Satan with full power. We fear as men for Job and await with intense in- terest the issue, but taking a deeper view anticipate the pos- sibility, indeed the certainty, that he will not succumb, and that evil together with the Satan will in this case only serve as the instrument for the promotion of goodness itself. That which is thus prepared for in heaven finds its fulfilment on earth within its prescribed limits, save that what in heaven [.. 2;—Cn: 1. 6—ii... 10, 87 is clear is on earth veiled, and is only painfully felt in its effects, especially as the Satan spares no pains to bring decreed calamities upon Job with surprising suddenness and severity. And yet the temptation to impatience, despair, confused think- ing, and folly is withstood by the brave man whom God dis- tinguishes by the name of his servant, and who does not dis- appoint the divine hope. He shows the noblest resignation and submission, maintaining, both from voluntary personal impulse as well as under the derision and provocation which he has to bear, the truest moderation under suffering and resignation under bereavement, although his calamities all the time continue to be dark and mysterious to him, and though accepted in humility are still regarded and borne as a positive evil sent by God. As therefore Job is thus brave and great, thus steadfast and faith- ful, the advance of this entire stage of the action is twice repeated: preparation in heaven, mysterious suffering on earth, patience and steadfastness standing the trial; all this is twice repeated, only with accumulating force and pressure. The first trial takes from him all his valued outward possessions together with his children; the second, the last outward good which outweighs all the rest, his health, by a disease which both creates disgust and threatens life itself. The first time his patience has simply to contend against himself; the second time, with the despair of the only being on an equality with him in his house remaining to him, his wife. He remains faithful, therefore, to the uttermost in that stage of religious life upon which he had hitherto moved.—All this is described, though only in a rapid narrative, with truly poetic vividness and perfection. The inapproachable dignity of Jahvé, though engaged in a consultation after the fashion of men, the alarm and surprise of calamities accumulating in rapid succession, the genuine human resignation of the godly man, can hardly be pourtrayed more forcibly than is done in these few noble lines. 8& L 2.0n: i. 6-1. 16; 6 And it came to pass on the day the sons of God came to present themselves before Jahyé, and there came also the 7 Adversary in their midst. Then said Jahvé to the Adversary; whence comest thou? and the Adversary answered Jahvé and said: from ranging through the earth and from going about 8 through it. Then said Jahvé to the Adversary: hast thou set thy attention upon my servant Job’ for there is not like him in the earth a man perfect and upright, godfearing and 9 departing from evil. And the Adversary answered Jahvé and 10 said: doth then Job fear God for nothing? surely Thou hast set a fence around him and around his house and around all that he hath, hast blessed the work of his hands, and his 11 herds spread abroad in the land; but only stretch forth Thine hand and touch all that he hath, verily to Thy face he will i. 6—12. D6 as a transitional form, in cases where an event of a single day, occurring in a space of time formerly mentioned, is intended to be referred to, means the day —= the time, then, or on the day. Sons of God is an ancient name for the celestial beings subordinate to God, Gen. vi. 2, particularly used when they are described as occupied in heaven (as in this passage, xxxviii. 7 and Ps. xxix), whilst when they are employed on the earth they are called angels. Like the magnates of an earthly realm before their king, they must present themselves at certain fixed times before Jahvé, in order to hear His inquiries and commands. If in the answer of Satan, ver. 7, the emphasis is laid on the word earth, an antithesis to other worlds might be found in it, as if he also ranged through the moon also, e.g.; but this would be quite opposed to the ideas of the ancient world, and it is plain that the emphasis is simply on the fact that Satan does not now come back from some commission in parti- cular, such as inflicting upon the earth some great calamity, but only from a general expedition into all quarters of the earth, in order to come upon some- thing of a suspicious nature somewhere or other, “4 UW expresses merely a rapid ranging-through, ~3 Tomnn the cautious and attentive movement in all directions, which is no less desirable; both words together are required to supply the complete idea of a rapid but at the same time observant journey through the earth in all directions; although either word alone would on an occasion suffice. Vv. 9, 10 said with great craft: No wonder that Job fears God, since God so carefully protects him; probably therefore he does not act from pure love, but only for the sake of his reward and advantage, in order to be thus protected in future. Evil spirits which everywhere presuppose nothing but mortal weak- ness always draw such inferences, and not without a certain justification as long as they have not been refuted by experience. To thy face, quite openly and boldly, not merely secretly in his heart, as ver. 5; comp. ii. 5; xii. 15; xvi, 8; xxi. 31 with xxi. 14; xxii. 17. I, 2.—Cu. i. 6—ii. 10. 89 12 bid Thee farewell! Then said Jahvé to the Adversary: sec thou hast all that is his; only upon him lay not thine hand! 13 And the Adversary went forth from Jahyé’s presence.— And it came to pass on the day whilst his sons and his daughters were eating and drinking wine at the house of their first-born 14 brother, there came a messenger unto Job and said: the oxen were ploughing and the she-asses were feeding at their side, 15 then the Sabeans invaded and took them, smiting the man- servants at the edge of the sword; and I only escaped alone 16 to tell it to thee. While he was yet speaking, there came another and said: Fire of God fell from heaven, set on fire the sheep and the manservants and consumed them; and I i.13—19. As the valued outward possessions of Job consist, acc. vv. 2, 3, in children and four kinds of flocks and herds, together with the servants cor- responding to them, the poet here suitably distributes everything in such a way, that at first three calamitous blows carry off all his flocks and_ herds together with his servants, the she-asses being easily connected with the oxen, ver. 14, while then there is added to these three, as the fourth and most painful calamity, the loss of all his children at once. Further, inasmuch as for these four calamitous blows four different visible causes and instruments must be put forward, the poet again interweaves the four cases so appropriately that he derives the first and third from human, the second and fourth from celestial causes. In the first pair of cases he makes the men act as robbers, and in the first instance, ver. 15, the Sabeans, the marauding part of that northwestern Arabian tribe, the other part of which was engaged in trade (vi. 19, comp. Gen. 1. 7, 28; xxv. 3), who made their attack from the south; and then, ver. 17, the still more warlike Chaldeans, who fought in a more orderly fashion, from the northeast, whose mention here seems to disclose a writer belonging to the first half of the seventh century; when the Chaldeans became once more powerful and soon after founded «a new dominion in Babylon by Nabopolassar (see History of Israel IV. p. 254 sq. (III. p. 778 sq.); of causes from the higher regions, from the welkin, the poet brings forward first, ver. 16, a fire of God, or a sudden sultriness and burning heat, which may in a moment, as by a divine blow, slay large masses of animals and men, whether it be a shower of brimstone or the Simoom (the poet makes his picture simply after ancient legends, not according to his own personal observation, comp. Ps. x63 Num. xi. 1—3; xvi. 35; 2 Kings i. 10 sq., also Lev. x. 2 compared with ix. 24) ; then ver. 19, he brings forward « mighty wind coming from the immense Arabian desert, which can easily overthrow a lightly-built house on the fringe of the desert, comp. Matt. vii. 27, Wellsted’s Reise zur Stadt der Chalifen p. 211 sq. But in one respect all four calamities must again be alike, that they destroy everything completely in one day, so that from each set of victims only a 90 bo Cin, GS 17 only escaped alone to tell it to thee. While he was yet speaking, there came another and said: The Chaldeans ap. pointed three bands, rushed upon the camels and took them, smiting the manservants at the edge of the sword, and I only 18 escaped alone to tell it to thee. While he was yet speaking there came another and said: Thy sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in the house of their first-bom 19 brother, and behold a great wind came from beyond the desert and touched the four corners of the house, so that it fell upon the children and they died; and I only escaped 20 alone to tell it to thee.-—Then Job arose, rent his garment 21 and shaved his head, fell down and worshipped; and said: Naked went I forth from my mother’s womb, and naked I return thither: Jahvé gave and Jahvé took away; let Jahve’s name be blessed! In all this Job sinned not and gave to God no offence. 2 to single messenger of evil escapes, and Job is meant to be overwhelmed with surprise and driven to despair by the calamitous tidings which always close with the same terrible refrain. That also increases the surprise, that all this happens during the first day of a festive meeting of his children, ver. 13, accordingly before his children could as he thought need atonement for their sins, vv. 4, 5; and with that the poet then found at the same time a good opportunity to describe the destruction of his children all at once, ver.19. A certain uni- formity in the four repetitions produces a good effect in the description; hence probably 72 (Gen. viii, 22) must be read ver. 18, as in thé other instances, in- stead of “2, which shorter word however may also possibly indicate duration, at all events its use is very similar viii. 21; Neh. vii. 8, comp. § 217¢. dé the edge of the sword, or according to the sharpness of the sword, vv. 15, 1%, is an ancient form of expression for to slay murderously after the usages of war. To attack i three bands, or companies, ver. 17, is an ancient war stra- tagem, in order quickly to surround and overpower the enemy, Gen. xiv. 15; Judg. vii. 16, comp. 1 Sam. xi. 11. From beyond the desert, v. 19, therefore blowing from the most remote end of the desert over its entire face with in- creasing violence.—i. 20—22. The customary signs of mourning are immediately followed by higher reflection and the resignation of all these possessions as merely outward and dispensable, which are to be received with thankfulness to God and to be resigned without murmuring against Him. hither, into the mother’s womb, but in this case, of course, into the general and the last womb, mother-earth, comp. my note on Ps. exxxix. 13—15; repeated almost verbally I, 2.—Cn. i. 6—ii. 10. 9] 1.1 And it came to pass on the day, that the sons of God came to present themselves before Jahvé, and there came also the Adversary in their midst to present himself before Jahvé. 2 Then said Jahyé to the Adversary: From whence comest thou! and the Adversary answered Jahyé and said: From ranging 3 through the earth and from going about through it. Then said Jahvé to the Adversary: Hast thou set thine attention upon my servant Job? for there is not like him on the earth aman perfect and upright, godfearing and departing from eyil; and still he is holding fast to his integrity, and nevertheless thou hast misled me against him to destroy him without cause! 4 And the Adversary answered Jahvé and said: Skin for skin; 5 and all that a man hath giveth he for his life: but only stretch out Thine hand and touch his bone and his flesh: 6 verily, to Thy face will he say to Thee farewell! Then Jahve said to the Adversary: see thou hast him; but save his life !— after this passage Ecc. v. 14. “5EM is properly what has a bad smell, or a bad taste, comp. vi. 6, hence disgust and the object or cause of it, offence, xxiv. 12: till then Jahvé had found in Job a sweet smell, a delight, and neither now did this cease, since Job thus far did nothing bad to destroy it; comp. similarly ONS Ex. Vv. 213 LSam.