2232.\ Sch. R. Gg 354 eo THE AVERA Bible Collection. ae ee Library of Trinity College, DURHAM, N. ©. JAN 2 1 1919 Received evenly twa tarthn 2 ’ THE NEW-CENTURY BIBLE JOB THE NEW-CENTURY BIBLE ~ Now Complete GENESIS, by the Rev. Prof. W. H. Bennett, Litt.D., D.D. EXODUS, by the Rev. Prof. W. H. Bennetr, Litt.D., D.D. LEVITICUS anp NUMBERS, by the Rev. Prof. A. R. S. KENNEDY, M.A., D.D. DEUTERONOMY anp JOSHUA, by the Rev. Prof. H. WHEELER Rosinsoy, M.A. UDGES anp RUTH, by the Rev. Principal G. W. THATCHER, M.A., B.D. AnD II SAMUEL, by the Rev. Prof. A. R. S. Kennepy, M.A., D.D. I AnD II KINGS, by the Rev. Principal Skinner, D.D. I Anp II CHRONICLES, by the Rev. W. HARVEY-JELLIE, M.A., B.D. EZRA, NEHEMIAH, anv ESTHER, by the Rev, Prof. T, WiTToN DAVIEs, B.A.,-Ph.D., D.D. OB, by Prof. A. S. PEAKE, M.A., D.D. SALMS Val I)I To LXXII, by the Rev. Prof. Davison, M.A., D.D. PSALMS (Vol. II) LXXIII To END, by the Rev. Prof. T. Witrow DAvres, B.A., Ph.D., D.D. PROVERBS, ECCLESIASTES, asp SONG OF SOLOMON by the Rev. G. CURRIE MArTIN, M.A., B.D. ISAIAH I-XXXIX, by the Rev. Prof. OWEN C. WHITEHOUSE, M.A., D.D. ISAIAH XL-LXVI, by the Rev. Prof. Owen C. WHITEHOUSE, M.A., D.D. EREMIAH (Vol. I), by Prof. A. S. Pearce, M.A., D. _ aS (Vol ID, AND LAMENTATIONS, by Prof. A. S. PEAKE, -A., D.D. EZEKIEL, by the Rev. Prof. W. F. Lortnouse, M.A. DANIEL, by the Rev. Prof. R. H. CHARLES, D.D, MINOR PROPHETS: Hosea, JOEL, Amos, OBADIAH, JONAH, MICAH, by the Rev. R. F. Horton, M.A., D.D. MINOR PROPHETS: NaAnumM, HABAKKUK, ZEPHANIAH, HAGGAI, ZECHARIAH, MALACHI, by the Rev. Canon Driver, Litt.D., D.D. MATTHEW, by the Rev. Prof. W. F. SLATER, M.A. MARK, by the Jate Principal SALMOND, D.D. LUKE, by Principal W. F. ApEney, M.A., D.D. JOHN, by the Rev. J. A. Mc¢CLymont, D.D. ACTS, by the Rev. Prof. ]. VERNON BARTLET, M.A., D.D. ROMANS, by the Rev. Principal A. E. GAkviE, M.A., D.D. I AnD II CORINTHIANS, by Prof. J. MAsste, M.A., D.D. EPHESIANS, COLOSSIANS, PHILEMON, PHILIPPIANS, by the Rey. G. CURRIE MArTIN, M.A., B.D. I anp II THESSALONIANS, GALATIANS, by Principal W. F. ADENEY, M.A., D.D. THE PASTORAL EPISTLES, by the Rev. R. F. Horton, M.A., D.D. HEBREWS, by Prof. A. S. PEAK#, M.A., D.D. THE GENERAL EPISTLES, by the Rev. Prof. W. H. Bennett, Litt.D., D.D. REVELATION, by the Rev. Prof. C. ANpERson Scott, M.A., B.D. The Mew-Centurp Gible GENERAL EpiTor: PrincrpaL Wa ter F. Aveney, M.A., D.D. Ao8 INTRODUCTION REVISED VERSION WITH NOTES AND INDEX cae EDITED BY A. S. PEAKE, M.A.;\D.D, PROFESSOR OF BIBLICAL EXEGESIS IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER TUTOR IN THE PRIMITIVE METHODIST COLLEGE, MANCHESTER, AND LECTURER IN LANCASHIRE INDEPENDENT COLLEGE ; SOMETIME FELLOW OF MERTON COLLEGE, AND LECTURER IN MANSFIELD COLLEGE, OXFORD 5 Dy Lee NEW YORK: HENRY FROWDE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, AMERICAN BRANCH EDINBURGH: T. C. & E. C. JACK ine - SRE IMCD Apo , * fwot%ta? pe OO. A Wea RT ONL oe 3 Fee Tia Ae if y) ‘O- eee 3 The Revisev Version ts printea AA - pati i ‘ i i dob | 4 t Soi) eb Gat aN 4 as . ‘ee : at tae RIM Al ID Poy eee ; muitoweta’ 7 22 ics lisse | : mi jit , BO // as ‘ ¢ , > ‘ a d AGWOAT YAYAH - OY VB HOV.ASE ASLATMA 220 5% VTA MOA O 28 DP eee i=>) ef AIO SE: es se a a hag Se N ee = “= ~ PREFACE “2 > << IT may seem unnecessary to publish a new com- mentary on Job, when the student already possesses a work by one of our greatest Old Testament scholars. But while Dr. A. B. Davidson’s commentary summed up the chief exegetical and critical results reached at the time when it was written, much of first-rate im- portance has appeared during the twenty years it has been before the world. The thoroughly revised last edition of Dillmann’s comprehensive commentary, the commentaries by Budde, Duhm, and Marshall, the special discussions in Biblical Dictionaries and Old Testament Theologies and Introductions, the investi- gations into the text by Bickell, Siegfried, Beer, Klostermann, Cheyne and others, more general works such as Cheyne’s Job and Solomon, have all appeared during this period, and it has been necessary to take account of them. New problems have emerged, and many of the old problems are now before us in a very different form. If for no other reason than to place before the student the present position, the publication of a new commentary would be abundantly justified. How far the writer has done more than report and estimate the contributions of his predecessors must be left to others to determine. He has at least tried vi PRFFACE to see things with his own eyes and say them in his own way. To apportion his obligations to other scholars would be impossible, but he is conscious of special indebtedness to Duhm and Kuenen. The work by Fries, Das philosophische Gespriich von Hiob bis Platon, came into his hands too late to be used in any way. To place the Book of Job in its proper historical setting it would be necessary to sketch the treatment of its problem in the literature of Israel. Such an outline would have been given in the present work if the writer’s recent volume, Zhe Preblem of Suffering in the Old Testament, had not been specially devoted to this subject. The discussion of the Book of Job contained in it presents the subject in a different way from that adopted in the commentary, and may form a useful supplement to it. MANCHESTER, December 30, 1904. PREFACE Epitor’s INTRODUCTION . Text oF THE ReEvISED VERSION WITH ANNOTATIONS INDEX CONTENTS PAGE 349 THE BOOK OF JOB INTRODUCTION THE BOOK OF JOB INTRODUCTION THIS book sets before us the history of a man, whose blameless piety is confessed by Yahweh Himself, but challenged by the Satan, who in his unresting service of God has detected so much evil masked by fair appearance, that he has become utterly cynical and lost all faith in disinterested human goodness. To prove against him that Job’s piety is independent of all self-regarding motives, Yahweh permits the Satan first to strip him of all his wealth and slay his children, and then afflict him with an intolerable disease. From these trials Job emerges triumphantly, and Yahweh’s confidence is splendidly vindicated. Then three friends of Job, having heard of his troubles, come to condole with him; and sit seven days in silence with him. Unmanned by their presence \Job at last gives vent to the passionate complaints he has so long repressed, and curses the day of his birth. This leads to a debate between himself and his friends; they reproving him for his complaints against God and attrib- /uting his suffering to his sin, while he vehemently protests _his innocence and charges God with immoral government of the world, and with malignant persecution of himself in spite of his innocence. After the debate is exhausted and Job has solemnly affirmed the righteousness of his life before the blow fell upon him, Elihu, a new speaker, intervenes to set both parties right. He recognizes the failure of the friends, but in his violent polemic against Job does little more than repeat their arguments. Whet his speeches are at last ended Yahweh Himself answers B 2 eae THE BOOK OF JOB < Job out of the storm, and in language of matchless power and beauty brings before him the marvels of creation, and convicts him of his ignorance of the mysteries of the universe. Job is humbled and subdued, and with his penitent confession of presumption in criticizing what lay so far beyond his comprehension the poem closes. The prose narrative is then resumed, and we are told that Yahweh condemned the friends for not speaking truly of Him as Job had done. Job,intercedes for them, and they are forgiven. He himself is restored to health and prosperity. It is clear that the book is not to be regarded as historical. This is shown by the account of the heavenly “councils, by the symbolic numbers of Job’s family and flocks, by the escape of one messenger and one only from each catastrophe, by the exact doubling of his possessions at the end of his trial. And even more obvious is it that the speeches of Job and his friends cannot be literal reports of actual speeches, since they mark the highest point attained by Hebrew poetical genius, and since no such debate could be imagined in the patriarchal age. Yet it would be a mistake to suppose that the story is a pure romance, freely invented by the author. It was the method of antiquity to work with traditional material, and only so could the author count on securing the interest of his readers. Moreover, had they not been familiar with the story of a righteous man overwhelmed with misfortune, they could have retorted that the poem wanted all basis in fact, and therefore the problem it’ presented was unreal. But how much was taken from tradition, how much due to the author, it would be impossible to say. It is not unlikely that the story itself was borrowed by the Hebrews from abroad, since Job is represented as a dweller in the land of Uz, and no satisfactory explanation of his name can be derived from Hebrew. INTRODUCTION 5 GOD AND THE UNIVERSE - The poet was a strict monotheist ; his doctrine of God left no room for any rival déity. He understood, indeed, the spell cast on the imagination by the sun in its splendour, or the moon as it moved, radiant and majestic, across the heavens. The old nature, which in earlier ages poured forth in adoration to the glorious rulers of day and night, was not wholly dead within him, but the faint quiver of response was rigorously suppressed. Apart from this we have no reference to idolatry or to heathen deities. We are reminded of the second Isaiah as we read the descriptions of God’s greatness and wisdom, His power as displayed in nature and in history. Yet they are not in Job part of a sustained polemic against heathenism, but designed to convince man of his insignificance before ' God and his incompetence to pass judgement on His ways. Monotheism is so completely the poet’s settled belief, that it is everywhere taken for granted and represented as the unquestioned creed of the non-Israelitish speakers. . God dwells in the height of heaven, where His throne is firmly established, shrouded in clouds and darkness, so that He is invisible to man. He is not beset with human limitations) with man’s short-sighted vision, or his brief life. The clouds that shut Him in do not obstruct His piercing gaze, which not only sees all human actions, but strikes through the ocean to the gloomy depths of Sheol. He is the All-wise, none can teach Him, none hope to find Him out to perfection. Nay, when man has said his utmost, he has to confess that he has but touched the fringes of God’s ways. His power and wisdom have been manifested in many forms. First, in the crushing of His foes.. The ancient lore of Babylon knew of a mighty conflict between the god Marduk and the chaos-monster Tiamat and her brood. Purged of its gross polytheism the same conception finds an echo in Hebrew literature, where we read of the 6 THE BOOK OF JOB - overthrow of the chaos-monster, Rahab or Leviathan, by Yahweh. Allusions to this gccur in our book. By His wisdom God smote,through Rahab, and her helpers cower beneath Him. When the sea burst turbulently from the bowels of chaos, and rushed upward, as if it would leap to the sky,,God shut it down with doors and bars, set bounds for it that its proud waves should not overpass. Still with His strong hand He quiets its mutinous raging. ’ Hence Job asks in bitter scorn if he is a sea or a sea- monster, that God must watch him so narrowly, lest, were His vigilance relaxed, Job should take Him off His guard, and reclaim heaven and earth for chaas. Once more, the poet knows of the rebel-giant Orion, bound tg the sky as 34 a constellation, yet with his bonds loosened in derision of his impotence. Or again, we read how God pins to the sky the swift serpent that causes the eclipse. But God’s greatness is shown especially in the creation and sustaining of the universe. He planned the mighty ‘ edifice, and measured and prepared the site. He laid its foundations and its corner-stone. It is supported from above, but hangs over empty space. Its lowest region is Sheol, the realm of unutterable gloom, the common home of all the dead. There, too, is the chaotic deep, from which the sea burst upward, and from which it is still fed - by the springs in the ocean bed that lies between it and _ the nether deep. The dry land is girdled by the sea. On the face of its waters rests the vault of heaven, and its rim marks the boundary between light and the outer darkness. The dome is also supported by the mountains, which catch it at various points, and thus form the pillars of heaven. Above this dome lies the heavenly ocean, — from. which the torrential rain descends by a sluice cut - ‘through the solid roof. The less violent rains come from . the clouds, the bottles of heayen, which are filled with water, and, when they are tilted, spill the water on the earth in the form of rain. It especially moves the poet's wonder that the filmy clouds do not burst with the weight INTRODUCTION 9 ~ of water that they carry. It isa similar marvel that the mountain masses of the mysterious north should hang in the void. In the sky God has placed the constellations He has made. There, too, are the chambers and granaries where light and darkness and the heavenly bodies have their home, and where the elements, snow and hail, are stored. Each day of the year has its individual existence, annually, as its turn comes round, it dawns on the world. When God appears in anger He convulses the earth and overturns mountains uncon- sciously; His fire, the lightning, flashes along the path He has assigned to it; the pillars of heaven es at the thunder which is His voice; the sun suffers eclipse ; the stars : are sealed up in their sangha and not pi nuit to come forth into the sky. When, however, His breath blows the clouds away, the face of the sky grows clear and bright. ~The same general theory underlies the descriptions of Elihu, but some further points call for mention. The™ firmament is spread out strong and polished like a molten mirror. The dark thunder-cloud forms God’s pavilion, but, while black without, it is luminous at the core, for it is all filled with the light in which God dwells. This light shoots in lightning-flashes from the cloud, or streams forth as the Aurora in the northern heavens, | God takes the light in His hands, concealing them in it from the gaze of men, and sends the shaft of lightning home to its mark. As He utters His voice in His pavilion men hear it as thunder. The waters are drawn up from the sea into the clouds, which, though so heavily laden with moisture, float free'i in the sky.. Then the water is poured out in the form of rain. ‘The storm comes forth from its chamber, the cold from its granary. The poet has not a little to say of other spiritual beings, who are called the Elohim race (‘sons of God’). There is mention made of a ‘first’ or archetypal ‘man,’ older than the hills, who shared in’the council of God; the wa > 8 THE BOOK OF JOB conception is similar to that of the Divine Wisdom in Prov. viii. 22-31. But he is not brought into connexion with ‘the sons of God.’ They are older than the creation of the earth, for, when the foundations were laid, the morning stars sang together and the sons of God raised the ringing shout. These heavenly beings are by no means free from blame. The heavens are not clean in God’s sight. He puts no trust in His servants, and charges Hig angels with folly ; He judges them that are high. Weread further that God makes peace in His high places. At stated periods these spirits present themselves before Yahweh, to give an account of the way in which they have discharged their duties. One of them is named ‘ the Satan’ (not to be identified with the devil), and his function is to oppose man’s standing before God. He has therefore to test the characters of those reputed righteous, and to detect the sin which lurks under the mask of virtue. Unlike what seems to have been the case with the others of his class, he had no locally defined sphere in which to work, but freely ranged over the whole world as his province. Elihu adds one interesting development : a doctrine of intercessory angels, of whom there are a thousand. These may graciously instruct a man in the reasoh for his affliction, and redeem him from the destroying angels. If the sons of God are thus impure in God’s sight, how much more is this true of man! He is a creature of flesh, dwelling in a house of clay. As the woman-born, his origin is unclean; he is abominable and corrupty More- over his life is wretched; his days are brief and full of trouble. He is crushed as easily as the moth, short- lived as the delicate flower. Swiftly he passes from the poor pleasures life has to offer to the dense and dreary darkness of Sheol, the home appointed for all living, from which there is no return. There the bloodless shades drag out an apathetic semblance of life, in a peace whose intolerable tedium could seem welcome relief only INTRODUCTION 9 to the bitterest anguish. There all earth’s distinctions. are unknown, all its dearest ties are forgotten, even fellowship with God is no longer possible. The pale phantom is stung into a dim consciousness by the pain of his body, as it goes to corruption in the tomb, or quails before God’s gaze, when, in great convulsions of nature, Sheol is stripped to His view. It is on earth alone, then, that man and God come into relation with each other. Man’s duty is to fear God and turn away from evil. And God, because He is the All- powerful and the All-wise, is also the righteous Ruler, who gives to man the due reward of his deeds, At this point, however, the problem of the book emerges, for it is just the dogma of God’s righteousness which Job is forced to dispute. THE PROBLEM OF THE BOOK Job had met the loss of wealth and children with pious recognition of Yahweh’s right to take back what He had given and with blessing of His Name. When his wife’s faith had failed in his second trial, the sufferer, in his excruciating pain, rebuked her temptation to blasphemy with the noble words, ‘ Good shall we receive at the hand of God, and evil shall we not receive. But the un- swerving integrity was only the continuance of the old relation into conditions ultimately incompatible with it. It was an axiom of theology that the lot of the righteous was blessed, and Job was assured of his uprightness and fidelity to God. But now the axiom, so long verified in his own felicity, had proved unequal to the strain of facts. Not all at once could the deep-rooted faith of a lifetime be plucked up, and the inference be drawn that the God, who tortured the innocent, could not Himself be moral. Yet the spirit, caged in the inexplicable, must sooner or later break from the blind alley into a clearer if un- kindlier air. Even before his friends came to him he felt himself slipping from the fear of God. He craved for ’ oe to THE BOOK OF JOB their sympathy to restore his fainting spirit, as the parched caravan craves for the stream in the desert. But the calamities that had made his need so desperate had dried up the springs. In the presence of his tried companions the sufferer was confident that the long- repressed complaint might find free utterance ; wise and tolerant, they would not narrowly scrutinize the wild words of his despair, but soothe and reconcile him to his pain. But they failed him miserably, and, when he hungered for sympathy, offered him a flinty theology’ Not, indeed, that they were callous to his suffering ; they uttered their piercing lamentations, and, after demon- strations of their sorrow, sat in silent grief and com- passion seven days. It is possible that their silence expressed the moral condemnation of so great a sufferer that their dogma demanded, Yet Job betrays no con- sciousness of this; the unrestrained complaint with which he breaks the silence proves that he confidently cast himself on their kindness. And while the friends must have inferred his sinfulness from his disasters, the debate opens with the assumption of his fundamental integrity. The artistic movement of the discussion has been disguised by the dislocation of the speeches in the third cycle of the debate. When they have been restored to their primitive condition the scheme followed by the author seems to have been as follows. In the first round of speeches the friends ply Job with the thought of God, Eliphaz dwelling on His transcendent purity, Bildad on His inflexible righteousness, and Zophar on His in- scrutable wisdom. Failing to impress Job along this line, the friends in the second cycle of speeches paint lurid pictures of the fate of the wicked; after a life spent in torments he comes to a swift and miserable death, and his posterity is rooted out. In the third cycle Eliphaz directly charges Job with flagrant sin. But, instead of permitting the other friends as before to follow in the same strain, the poet secures variety by letting the debate INTRODUCTION 11 double back on itself. The third speech of Bildad (xxv. 2, 3, XxVi. 5-14) repeats the theme of the first cycle, the incomparable greatness of God; the third speech of Zophar (? xxvii. 7-10, 13-23) repeats the theme of the second cycle, the miserable fate of the wicked. The friends have little to say beyond the general principles just mentioned. The righteousness of God is not clearly disengaged from His power and wisdom. Right and wrong are just what the Almighty decrees them to be. Hence they find it hard to conceive the distinction on which Job insists, and utterly refuse to accept it, since Job’s righteousness was naturally less certain to them than God’s. Nor have they suffered themselves to be disturbed by the facts which seem to Job so eloquent of God’s misgovernment. But they had not had Job’s experience to take the scales from their eyes and make them sensitive to the world’s inexplicable pain. It is not the case, however, that they. interpret suffering simply as punishment. In his first speech Eliphaz depicts for Job’s encouragement the blessedness of that man whom God chastens. The friends probably saw in Job’s affliction both punishment and discipline, till his rebellious words forced on them the conviction that his sin'was deeper than they had surmised. It must strike the reader as strange that the antagonists develop their arguments with such little reference to the case advanced by the other side. A Western poet would have made the speakers submit the positions maintained by the opponent to a more searching criticism. But the poet is an Oriental, with far less care for pure reasoning. The friends have their settled beliefs about God and His government; nothing Job can say will move them. Hence in the first two cycles of the debate the three friends take substantially the same line, with very little reference to anything Job may have urged. Even the great passage xix. 25-27 might just as well not have been spoken, for all the influence. it has on their subsequent speeches. 12 THE BOOK OF JOB Similarly Job, in several of his speeches, contents himself with some words of blistering sarcasm, and then pursues his own train of thought, without reference to what his antagonists have said, though when the case has been stated by all three of the speakers he pulverizes it. He neglects them because he is wholly engaged with God. It is this preoccupation with God which gives Job’s speeches their marvellous fascination. Quite apart from all the lofty qualities that make the book a perennial delight to lovers of poetry for its own sake, there is a situation whose development is followed with breathless eagerness. Here, indeed, in the history of a soul, rather than the discussion of a problem, lies the supreme interest of the book. The detailed movement from stage to stage of the debate is exhibited in the special sections devoted to this purpose in the commentary. At present a more general sketch may suffice. 4 Job’s problem is, in the first instance, personal. Why has God sent such undeserved calamities on His faithful servant? In his first rebellious utterance he had barely referred to God. But the reply of Eliphaz, with all its considerateness, stung him to the quick, since it took for granted his guilt and rebuked the temper he dis- “played: “Tts chief result was to drive him into open revolt against God and scornful protest against His lack of Magnanimity. Yet he ends with a pathetic reminder to God that, when regrets are too late, He will long once more for fellowship with the victim He had so harshly crushed. When Bildad replies with an assertion that God cannot pervert judgement, Job bitterly assents. The Almighty sets the standard of righteousness; how can a frail mortal make good his case against omnipotence ? For it is God’s settled determination to make him guilty, and He who selects His victims with no moral discrimina- tion will readily effect His purpose. If God would only release him from his pain and not paralyse him with His terror, then he would plead his cause undismayed. Re- home INTRODUCTION 13 sentful but wistful, he appeals to God not wantonly to destroy His creature, on whom He had lavished such pains and skill. Then with sudden revulsion, as a new light bursts in, he sees in God’s care a darker design than he had guessed. All along God had planned the stroke, but He had smiled on Job to betray him, meaning to mock his confidence and make his misery extreme. And now He performs exploits of valour against His de- fenceless victim. Ah! why did He suffer him to be born? let him have’a brief respite from torture, ere he goes for ever to Sheol’s utter gloom. The reply to Zophar de- finitely assails the dogma of the friends. God is wise and mighty—no need to teach him such platitudes. But these qualities are displayed in destructive rather than in beneficent operations. With the friends he does not care to argue, sycophants, who would fain curry favour with God by smearing their lies over His misgovernment. As if God would tolerate such apologists, as if He dreaded to be found out! Job will fearlessly speak his whole mind, reckless though he imperils his life. Why does God refuse to answer him, and persecute him so relentlessly? Why does He bring into judgement man, so short-lived,-so frail, so impure? Let him pass his brief day in such comfort as may be possible, for man dies and never wakes from the sleep of death. If only there might be a waking! if in Sheol, where there is no remembrance of God, he might wait till God’s anger had ceased to burn, and then hear His voice calling him back in love, how gladly he would resume the blessed communion with Him. Vain dream of bliss! from Sheol no man can return. Job has told all that was in his heart. He charges God outright with immorality, yet he feels that fellowship __ with Him is the highest good. Hence he holds together incompatible conceptions of God. The God whom he knew in the past and whom he might know again in the future, if he could still be alive to know Him, is quite 14 THE BOOK OF JOB other than the God of whom he has such bitter experi- ence in the present. The hope that God might recall him from Sheol he firmly sets aside. It never establishes itself in his mind. But the feeling that his present ex- perience of God does not reflect God’s inmost character is a feeling which develops at last into the great belief, ‘I know that my vindicator liveth.’ In the second cycle of the debate the friends simply describe the fate of the wicked. We need not assume that their main object was to hola up a mmror for Job, the allusions to his case are far less pointed than is sometimes asserted. If their descriptions fitted him, well and good ; if not, they served the main purpose of establishing against Job the retributive justice of God. But while their side makes little advance, Job moves forward to amore peaceful state of mind. The very vehemence with which he paints God’s hostility sends him by sharp recoil to seek his vindicator in Him. From the scorn of his friends he is driven to God, beseeching Him with tears to maintain his right. But with whom? With whom can it be but with Himself? Let the God of the future be surety for him with the God of the present. In his next speech this thought attains its climax. .Two things are added. The prayer becomes an assurance, God will vindicate him. And though he has passed from this life, he will as a disembodied spirit be permitted to see God and know that his integrity is established. This lofty certainty is not without effect on ‘Job’s subsequent utterances. Yet it plays a much smaller part than we should have anticipated. This is partly due to the fact that at this point the personal gives way to the universal problem. For, as in the first, so also in the second round of the discussion, Job does not assail the friends’ position till all three have stated it. Accord- ingly his third speech in this cycle is devoted to an attack on their dogma that the wicked suffer for their sin. Job flatly denies it, on the contrary they live a happy life -INTRODUCTION 15 in prosperity and die without lingering illness. To the suggestion that they suffer in the suffering of their children, Job answers that a penalty of which they are not conscious is no penalty at all. In the third discussion Job ignores the direct assault of Eliphaz on his character, though in the course of his first speech he affirms his integrity. The greater part of this speech is occupied with another description of God’s misgovernment. But he also comes back to his own relations to God, and strikes a less confident note than in xix. 25-27. It was perhaps natural that faith should not maintain itself at such a height. But we may also trace in the relapse the influence of the indictment he has urged against the moral order of the world. Though he would fain come face to face with God, and argue his cause with Him, his inscrutable, irresponsible Judge eludes him and baffles his most earnest search. The reply to Bildad’s third speech (xxv. 2, 3, xxvi. 5-14) seems to have been for the most part lost. Probably it contained, between xxvii. 11 and xxvii, 12, a criticism of God’s government, so bold that it was struck out as dangerous to piety. In what remains Job once more firmly asserts his integrity. To Zophar’s third speech, reaffirming the doom of the wicked, Job’s final speech (xxix-xxxi) constitutes the formal reply. Really it lies outside the debate. ( Job first describes his former happi- _~ ness in the favour of God, the possession of his children, } \ the honour of men ; then sets against this the scorn and © insult heaped upon him, the pain from which he is suffering, and God’s cruel enmity ; lastly, he solemnly . declares himself innocent of any such sins as might justify his calamities, and proudly declares himself ready to confront God. So the human debate reaches a worthy close. The friends have exhausted their case and failed to vanquish Job. ‘Their platitudes about God’s greatness he feels to be irrelevant, or rather to make His immorality worse, 16 THE BOOK OF JOB Their assertion of His righteousness he denies, the plain- est facts seem to him to refute it. Their personal accusa- tions are shivered against his conscious integrity. In the course of his pleadings with God he has been distracted between God's persecution of him in the present and His kindness in the past. He has swung from one extreme to the other; now holding God’s former goodness to have been carefully calculated to make his present suffer- ing more intense, now feeling the old communion with Him to be the pledge that His love would reassert itself. And yet the fire of His wrath burns so fiercely that at best it will not die down till the victim has passed into the gloom of Sheol. Then when this inexplicable aberration has given place to God’s normal mood, He will remember the servant whose love had been precious to Him. Once more He would call him back to renew the happy inter- course. But it will be too late. Yet not too late for some reparation. God will Himself establish his innocence, and he for one blissful moment will see God as his vindi- cator. And there is no stranger thought in the book than that God may be surety to Himself for Job. It is as though God suffers the knowledge of His future attitude to mitigate the full sweep of His anger. He is to take sides against Himself, to secure Himself against vain regrets. The God of the past and the future was the real God, Job’s God of the present was a spectre of his morbid imagination. And when God appears, we expect that this will be plain. But He wears the spectre’s mask. He speaks out of the storm, laying aside none of His terror, while Job still writhes in the grip of his unresting pains. He mocks his ignorance and limitations, plying him with questions that he cannot answer, and displaying in the marvels of the universe the wisdom and might of its Creator. Now Job had all along admitted the wisdom and power of God; he had confessed that he could not meet God on equal terms, or solve one in a thousand of INTRODUCTION - ry the problems with which omniscience could baffle his human understanding. Moreover, he had implored God to release him from pain when He appeared for the contest, and not to affright him with His terror; he had even expressed his confidence that God would not con- tend with him in the greatness of His power. Not only, then, does God seem to be forcing an open door, but to act less worthily than Job had expected of Him. The reader is also surprised that God does not explain to Job why he suffers, and especially why light is not thrown on the general problem of suffering. These phenomena, which have led some to regard the speech of Yahweh as a later addition, have their sufficient reason. The speech is designed in the first place to widen Job’s view. Maddened by his pain he had freely asserted that God’s government of the world was immoral, a sweeping generalization, drawn in the first instance from his own experience, though he easily found numerous facts to support it. God convicts him of narrow outlook, and suggests in doing so the unimagined complexity of the problem. He alone, who has comprehended the vast universe that God must govern, has the full right to say whether He governs it well or ill. But Job, while he has spoken of God’s power as displayed in the world, is quite unable to explain its phenomena. One by one God makes him ponder them, if each is an inscrutable mystery, what must be the mystery of that universe, whose government Job has so confidently condemned ? (If God is wise and strong as Job has confessed, ought there not to be much in His action that man cannot properly appraise? Further, Job is reminded that man does not constitute the whole of God’s animate creation. All the incomparable pictures of the untamed creatures of the desert are meant to bring home to him the range of God’s interests and the tender care He lavishes on such beings as are beyond man’s everyday horizon. Thus man comes to a humbler view of his own importance, and learns c 18 THE BOOK OF JOB that he must transcend his self-centred attitude, if he is to judge the ways of God aright.) A second lesson, which Job learns, is, that it is not for him to lay down the terms on which God must meet him. He had challenged God to justify the treatment meted out to him, and. God ignores his demand. He is assured that God will not contend with him in the great- ness of His power, and God answers him out of the storm and makes him feel how tremendous are the resources of His energy. He concludes his proud self-vindication with the words, ‘as a prince I would go near unto Him,’ and so he quails before the vision of God and repents in dust and ashes. That this was less worthy of God the poet would not have admitted. It might indeed seem as if the majesty of God and the taunting irony of His words were calculated to bludgeon Job into submission, rather than change his opinions by convincing his reason. But Job needed a sharp lesson of this kind to chasten his presumption ; the must learn the true relation of man to God.| Yet this is not the chief cause why the poet chose to introduce God as he did. It was because only thus could the desired result be fully attained. For it is not what God says that is all important. It is the over- whelming impression made on fob by the vision of God that leaves him at the end of the poem contrite and sub- dued. All that God says he had theoretically known before, though in all its detail it had not lived to his imagination. But now he attains an experience new in quality. ‘I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, But now mine eye seeth thee ; Wherefore I abhor myself and repent In dust and ashes.’ And we see with what subtle art the poet has introduced those very features in the poem which critics have urged to prove that the speech of Yahweh is a later addition. For it is just the fact that Job is already well aware of what God tells him which enables us to measure the impression that the vision of God makes upon him. And it is only in Nee a INTRODUCTION 19 accordance with his practice of anticipating later develop- ments, when he makes Job deny that God would appear as He actually appears in the sequel. ut whypdoes he permit God to speak and yet offer no problem? Probably he had no“@olution, or rely have so constructed his poem as not simply to indicate it, but to throw it into relief. Ought he then to have icopte silence, lest he should be charged with attempting a task too hard for him, or reminding men of a misery he had no skill to charm away? There would be much force in such a criticism were peace to be won only in this way. But the author knows another path. And because he knows it the speech of Yahweh does not explain the origin of Job’s suffering. Here his instinct was sounder than that of those who urge this silence in proof that the speech is later. It was not necessary for the reader to learn why Job suffered ; he had known it all along from the Prologue. But it_was necessary that Job should not be enlightened. (Quite apart from tke fact that the question in the Prologue is not one between Yahweh and Job but between Yahweh and the Satan, the poet, by revealing to Job what had passed in heaven, would have ruined the artistic effect and flung away the deepest teaching he had to give.“ It is imperative that Job should be left in ignorance: at the end, since the lesson he learns is just this that he must trust God, even if he does not understand the reason for His actiom} And it is precisely this which constitutes the imperishable value of the book and its universal significance. For the explanation of Job’s suffering would have been but the explanation of a single case, of no avail for others since the Satan would not court such discomfiture again. But Job, ignorant yet trustful, is a model and a help to all who are confronted by the insoluble mystery of their own or the world’s pain. Even had the author so completely solved the problem that no problem remained, this would have been less precious c2 20 | THE BOOK OF JOB than what he has actually given us. Ge had founa another way. Job does not know now, any more than before, why he suffers. But his ignorance no longer tortures him, he does not wish to know. For he has escaped int6"a region where such problems exist no longer. He has attained peace and knows that all is well, though he does not know, or care to know, how it is possible And it is most instructive to observe how the poet repre- sents this inward rest to have been won. The caustic irony of the Divine questions, and the impressive array of the wonders of nature and Providence, above all the vision of God Himself, crush and humble the pre- sumptuous critic of God’s ways. Yet the very sense of his own ignorance and frailty, and of God’s wisdom and might, is a return to the religious temper of mind, (He has become a man of broken and contrite heart, penitent and self-loathing, who, because he knows himself to have nothing and deserve nothing, can most readily cast him- self upon God, whose wisdom and omnipotence no longer crush but uphold and uplift him. Such is the way of peace the poet offers, a certainty of God, which rises above all the dark misgivings of His goodness, and is itself inspired by God’s revelation of Hims Here, so far as Job was concerned, the book might have closed. He could go forward in pain and penury, still mocked .by the base, still suspected by the good. He ‘needed no outward confirmation of the assurance he had won in the vision of God. But is God to leave His loyal servant, who has won His wager with the Satan for Him, who has blessed Him in bereavement, and uttered the language of resignation in his pain, who has held fast his integrity, and refused to curry favour with Him by flattery, is He to leave him in misery, now that the cause for misery has passed away ? What kind of a God would He be to do it? The writer could not represent Job as rewarded in another life, for though he tumed with longing to the thought of immortality, he could not accept INTRODUCTION ai it with any confidence. Hence it was necessary for God - to restore him in this life, if He restored him at all. Thus the author leaves, not only his hero, but his reader re- conciled to God. THE INTEGRITY OF THE BOOK Scholars are almost unanimous in the view that the book has received additions since it came from the hands of the original author. We may take the speeches of Elihu first, since there is the most general consensus of opinion about them. The great majority of scholars consider them to be an addition by a later author. The chief critics who regard them as part of the original poem are Budde, Cornill, Wildeboer and Briggs, while Kamp- hausen and Merx think that they are by the author of the book, but were subsequently inserted in it, the work not having contained them originally. As a rule those who attribute the speeches of Elihu to the same author as the other speeches regard them as a serious contribution to the debate, and in fact as containing the author’s own solution of his problem. But the view has also been taken, e. g. by Briggs and Genung, that the author intro- fluces Elihu as the self-confident young man, who intervenes in the debate to set both parties right, but \really contributes little that is of value. This view may be safely set aside. It rests on a correct estimate of the worth of Elihu’s utterances, and the extravagant self- eulogy in which he indulges leaves an almost comic impression on the reader’s mind. But the inflated style in which he announces his perfect wisdom would strike an Oriental differently, and the contents of the speeches show plainly that they are seriously meant by the author, and not simply that Elihu takes himself seriously. The author gives no hint to the contrary, and the whole drift of the speeches is inconsistent with the view that Elihu is the butt of his ridicule. For while he says little that is new, he speaks in a very earnest tone, and says much 22 THE BOOK OF JOB that is worthy and true. It would, in fact, reflect great discredit on the author if he put such sentiments as we find in Elihu’s speeches in the mouth of a man whom he introduced for the express purpose of making him ridiculous. And this is all the more evident when we observe that Elihu anticipates to some extent the line taken by Yahweh. The author certainly cannot have intended to pour contempt on the latter; had he wished to treat Elihu in this way he would have carefully re- frained from putting into his mouth the ideas which are ‘present in the speeches of Yahweh. It is interesting to notice that, according to the Testament of Job, Elihu was imbued with the spirit of Satan, and was afterwards declared by God to be a serpent, not a man, and was not pardoned with the friends, but cast into Sheol. In the Jerusalem Talmud he is identified with Balaam. Assuming then that Elihu is to be taken seriously, the objections to the view that his speeches belong to the original poem must be considered. In the first place he is not mentioned in the Prologue or the Epilogue. It is perhaps of little importance that he is omitted in the Prologue, since he has a Prologue to himself (xxxii. 1-5), though even in if no explanation is given of his presence \ at the debate. ¥ But it is most significant that he is not mentioned in the Epilogue, where judgement is given on the other speakers. He is not contemptuously passed over, for we have seen that the writer considers his contribution to be real and important. Nor is it satis- factory to say that the silence implies tacit approval. For then we should have expected that even more than Job he would have been singled out by Yahweh as having spoken of Him the thing that was right. Moreover, it is difficult to believe that the author of the book would have passed a different judgement on Elihu from that passed upon the friends, so that if his speeches belonged to the original work we should have expected him to be involved with them in a common condemnation. With this, how- INTRODUCTION 23 ever, we have already assumed the truth of the second reason for judging the speeches to be later. This is that Elihu occupies substantially the same standpoint as the friends, and says little more than they have said already, and said better. He, as well as they, asserts that the sufferings of Job are due to his sins. It is true that he lays more stress on the value of suffering for man’s discipline and on God’s goodness in dealing with men. But these are not new thoughts, for in the very first speech of Eliphaz the blessedness of the man whom God chastens is described. But in any case it is true that substantially the attitude of Elihu is that of the friends. It can hardly be regarded as likely that after the case has been stated at such length by the friends, and has been conclusively refuted by Job, the author, and especially a poet of such genius, should have delayed the movement of the poem by interposing a series of speeches which are a mere repetition of what has been said before. The awkwardness is too glaring. The debate is exhausted, the friends have unfolded their arguments, Job has not only replied, but also solemnly and at length affirmed the innocence of his past life. Now it is appropriate for Yahweh to intervene. But before He does so Elihu attempts to galvanize the debate into life. Yet though he makes four speeches Job makes no reply, though it would have been easy to show the insufficiency of his arguments. The same conclusion that these speeches are later follows from the style. The literary genius dis- played in them is much inferior to that shown in the rest of the book. They are diffuse and tedious, less spon- taneous, and often very obscure. Budde himself confesses, that the speeches as a whole make an unfavourable impression upon him, when he looks away from details, but he thinks that this may be removed if certain portions are regarded as glosses. In reply to this it may be said that if it is to be really removed we should have to cut so deep that little would be left to defend. The language also is 24 THE BOOK OF JOB unlike that of the rest of the book. It is strongly marked _ by Aramaisms, and uses words which rarely or never occur elsewhere in the poem. It would imply much too artificial a view of the poet’s method to suppose that he consciously placed Aramaisms on the lips of Elihu, as appropriate to his Aramaic origin, and it is doubtful if such was his origin. It is true, however, that Budde'’s careful investigations have greatly modified the argument from language. Again, it is very hard to believe that the original poet should have weakened and partly spoiled the effect of the speeches of Yahweh by inserting before them Elihu’s description of the heavens and their phenomena, Nor, if Elihu’s speeches are an integral part of the poem, is it easy to understand the opening words of Yahweh. They are not a scornful dismissal of Elihu, for Yahweh is answering Job, and the author of the Elihu speeches, as we have already seen, did not regard them as words without knowledge. Moreover, the reference to Job and not to Elihu seems to be fixed by xhi. 3. But since they seem to refer to the last speaker, it follows that Job was the last speaker, and that the Elihu speeches formed no part of the original work. There are some differences between these speeches and those of the friends which point to difference of author- ship. While the latter quote Job from memory, Elihu quotes from the earljer speakers more precisely, as if their speeches lay before him in a book. He also often mentions Job by name, though this may be partly accounted for by the fact that he is blaming both parties and may wish to distinguish. But neither the friends nor Yahweh ever mention Job by name. Elihu is also introduced at much greater length than the friends. Finally, the very fact that the speeches can go out en- tirely and not be missed speaks strongly for their — origin. Budde considers that the speeches of Elihu: contain the author’s solution of the problem, but he states the INTRODUCTION 25 idea of the book in a peculiar way. He argues that while Job was outwardly blameless, and regarded himself as blameless, sin slumbered in his heart, unknown to himself. God sent his sufferings to bring it to expression, and after it had been thus detected to bring him to penitence. This sin was spiritual pride, which, under the pressure of his pain, came to full manifestation in his Job this defect in his character and explain his sufferings in the light of it. A similar view is taken by others, among whom Cornill may especially be mentioned. This view labours under great improbabilities. It is a serious objection to it that the contrast between spiritual pride and acts of wickedness is not plainly expressed. Elihu does not seem to confine himself to the former, and alludes to pride only in xxxiii. 17 and xxxvi. 9. This is very strange if this solution was the piece of perfect wisdom with which the author wished to solve the problem. Further, the whole poem has been strangely constructed if such is the main lesson the author intended to teach. The long speeches of Job and the friends have on this interpretation little significance. Nor does the theory cast a very favourable light on the Divine speeches. It may be fitting that after Job has proudly summoned God to debate with him he should be reduced to silence by a mere man, who meets him with merely human weapons, and cannot overwhelm him with the terror of Divine majesty. But when he has thus been abashed and vanquished by his youthful antagonist, it is hardly fitting that God should ply him with ironical questions to bring heme to him the limitations of which Elihu has already convicted him. Moreover, Job himself speaks as if he had been shown his fault not by Elihu at all, but by the ( vision of Yahweh. A further difficulty arises out of the statements in the Prologue. There Job is presented as a blameless and upright man, fearing God and turning away from evil, Yahweh himself endorses this view of 7 / speeches. The function of Elihu in the poem is to show / \ 26 THE BOOK OF JOB his character, and affirms that there is none like him in all the earth. In His words no irony can reasonably be detected. We therefore get no hint that all along Yahweh’s attention is concentrated on the latent sin of Job. If it was really His purpose to bring it into explicit consciousness the reader is set on a false track at the outset, for he understands that it is a really righteous man who is suffering, and that he suffers to vindicate Yahweh’s faith in the disinterested goodness of His servant, against the Satan’s cynical disbelief. Budde argues that it is Yahweh who takes the initiative in calling attention to Job, and that He was therefore already meditating the ordeal through which the patriarch had to pass. But while it is true that Yahweh takes the initiative, it is far more reasonable to think that He does so to cure the Satan of his cynicism than to probe the hidden depths of Job’s heart. Cornill urges that a poet who stated the problem so sharply and drove it to its extreme conclusions must have had a solution, or he would stand confessed as having attempted a problem beyond his powers, a tormentor of mankind, driving his sting with delight deeper and deeper into the deadly wound. Where then, he asks, is the solution to be found? Not in the speeches of Job and his friends, for in the very last speech of Job, xxix—xxxi, the dilemma is set forth with unexampled sharpness. Nor is it in the speeches of Yahweh, which give Job no friendly comforting word, but only a rough repulse, clothed in the form of irony. Nor does the Prologue provide it, for Job knows nothing of the test to which he has been submitted to prove his fidelity. And it is absolutely necessary that he should get an answer to his question. But the speeches of Elihu do provide an-answer. In isolated cases of apparent unrighteousness one must not overlook the love and providential wisdom of God, which are to be seen in the normal order of the world. Further, if God does not hear men, this is not at all because He cannot or will not, ‘INTRODUCTION 29 but because men do not call on Him in the right way. But Elihu’s chief contribution is ‘that suffering is an educative instrument in God’s hands; it leads man to self- knowledge, temptation reveals to him the sin slumbering within him, which as yet perhaps has only failed of an opportunity. If a man mistakes this educative function of suffering he commits a grave sin and is rightly punished by God, but if he recognizes it and takes it to heart, suffering becomes for him a source of endless blessing, the highest activity of the Divine love to him. Cornill regards this as the highest solution open to one who stood at the Old Testament standpoint, for having no know- ledge of a future life; he had to find an answer without passing beyond this life. We have already seen, however, that it is very hard to believe that the poet regarded it as the chief aim of Job’s suffering to elicit the sin that unknown to himself slumbered in his breast. Nor can Cornill’s postulate be granted that the author must have felt himself to be in possession of an intellectual solution-of-the-problem, before he would have ventured to compose his poem. It is more probable, as we have seen already, that he had no such solution, but found peace in another way. We may, then, conclude with confidence that the speeches of Elihu are a later addition. Nor is it hard to understand why their author added them to the original work. He was dissatisfied with the discussion as it stood. He felt that the three friends might have made more of their case. That he did not improve upon their statement is no disproof of his dissatisfaction with it, since it is one thing for a man to see the failure of his predecessors, another for him to provide anything superior, or to realize that what he has provided is not superior. But while dis- satisfied with the friends, he was even more shocked by <... Job’s language about God, which was certainly bold tothe | verge of blasphemy. He accordingly added the Elihu speeches, partly to protest against Job’s tone, partly to © j if / | } YG) 28 THE BOOK OF JOB draw out at fuller length the lines of thought hinted at in he other speeches, the goodness of God and the discipline of suffering. And in his estimate of Job, and the reason he alleges for his suffering, he comes in conflict also with the statements of the Prologue. That he does not take up an explicit attitude to the account of Job’s suffering given in the Prologue cannot be urged as a reason for supposing that the speeches are the work of the original author, who consistently represents his characters as ignorant of the Heavenly Councils. Artistic propriety equally required that a later poet should represent his characters as similarly ignorant. It is true that he might have placed in Elihu’s mouth a denial that suffering was ever to be explained as it is in the Prologue. But, while this may very well have been his view, it would have been a very bold thing to contradict the Prologue outright. The reader would not have known what to think. Since, how- ever, he does give an explanation of Job’s suffering different from that in the Prologue, we must conclude that he really disagreed with the latter and wished tacitly to condemn it. The speeches of Yahweh have been regarded by nearly all scholars as part of the original work. This view has been rejected, however, by a few critics, especially Studer, Cheyne, and Hoonacker. The grounds of their opinion are first that the speeches adopt a line of argument which Job has discounted already, and secondly that we have no declaration of Job’s innocence nor explanation of his suffering. These ‘objections have been already sub- stantially discussed in the preceding section. Theoretically Job had discounted the Divine speeches; in other words, he had largely granted beforehand the truth of what God now says to him. Yet the general confession was com- patible with a dull sense of God’s working in the details of Nature, and Job had shown no appreciation of His tender loving care for His sentient creatures. In both respects the speeches correct his limitations. But the great experience, which overwhelmed and assured him, el adie INTRODUCTION 29 was the realization of God Himself. It has further been ~ explained already why the author does not represent God as giving any explanation of Job’s sufferings or any solution of the general problem. It has been urged by Hoonacker that the author of the Elihu speeches cannot have been acquainted with the Divine speeches or the Epilogue. Otherwise he would not have added his own contribution. He gives the following reasons: (a) The author would have felt no difficulty as to the silence of the friends if God Himself intervened. (4) He regards Job as not merely lacking in wisdom but as impious (xxxiv. 7, 8, 34 ff., xxxv. 16); when writing xxxiv. 34 ff. he had not before him the story of Job’s repentance and pardon. (c) Elihu does not admit that God can grant Job's wish to debate directly with Him; he considers it useless to expect that God should deign to answer him ; accordingly Job’s hope was absurd, and his complaint of God’s refusal an attack on His majesty (xxxiii. 12 ff.). (d) Elihu believes that Job can still be refuted, and in xxxii. 13f. deprecates the conduct of the friends in leaving Job to'God, not toman. The facts, however, are capable of a much simpler explanation. Not only did the author of the Elihu speeches dissent from the Prologue, he wished also to attack the original poet for the impro- priety of which he had been guilty in permitting God to participate in the debate. Not only did it compromise His dignity in the eyes of this author, but the introduction of a Deus ex machina seemed unnecessary. He felt him- self quite equal to solving the problem, and reverence forbade that God should be brought in to solve a situa- tion that man could solve by his own power. While the recognition of this polemical purpose amply accounts for the facts, there are positive considerations in its favour. If the poem as read by this author did not contain the speech of Yahweh, how did he hit on the thought that the friends were leaving Job to be vanquished by’ God? There was no suggestion of this in their speeches; it isan 30 THE BOOK OF JOB inference from the two facts, their silence and the reply of God. Moreover, how strange that another supple- menter, quite ignorant of the author of the Elihu speeches, should also have hit on the idea of Yahweh’s intervention in the debate, in this case to execute, and not to deprecate, it. It is not unlikely that the author disapproved of the Epilogue. Still, the difficulty here is much slighter than that of harmonizing it with the speech of Yahweh. While, however, we may with confidence regard the words out of the storm as an integral part of the original poem, we should with the great majority of scholars, look on the descriptions of\behemoth and leviathan as a late insertion.) The reasons‘ for this conclusion are given in the introduction to that section (pp. 329-331), where it is also pointed out that we should probably combine the two Divine speeches into one, as also the two penitent confessions of Job. Objections have been urged against the Prologue and Epilogue. The former, however, is indispensable ; apart from it the subsequent debate would be unintelligible. The objection that the explanation of Job’s suffering expounded in it is not put forward in the poem, not even in the speech of Yahweh, has been met already. The speech was not intended to explain why Job suffered, and could not have explained it without losing much of its value. Dr. Marshall thinks the Prologue is later than the poem, since the poem asserts the sole causality of God, and therefore leaves no room for the activity of the Satan. But, quite apart from the question how far we may identify the views of the speakers with those of the author, there seems to be no such advance in speculation as would prevent our ascribing the Prologue tothe same age as the poem. The Satan is strictly subordinate to Yahweh, and acts only by His permission. It is just because it is his special function to strip off the cloak of fair pretence that he disbelieves in disinterested goodness. He has no personal ends to serve, rather, as a loyal servant, he would INTRODUCTION 31 guard his Master against the abuse of His goodness. Naturally, holding his opmion so obstinately, he will gladly ruin Job to prove himself right. It is not so much that he hates his victim as that he hugs his own cynicism ; though there was a malicious zest in so piquant an experiment, to say nothing of the gambler’s instinct. Really the relation he sustains to God is substantially the same as that held by the lying spirit in the mouth of Ahab’s prophets, and this does not occur in a late passage. Nor can the present writer grant that the theodicy of the Prologue is the sublimest in the book, inasmuch as Job does not in his view suffer for the glory of God, but to vindicate God’s faith in the genuineness of his piety. Several have objected to the Epilogue on the ground that the happy ending cannot have been added ‘by the’ original writer. 4It moves too much, they think, in the region of the old ideas, against which the poem is a pas- sionate protest. Job receives a vulgar compensation, and the old doctrine of prosperity for the righteous is reaffirmed. But this is perhaps foo modern in its sentiment, and it overstates thé case” For the Epilogue traces no inevitable | connexion, as thé old theory did, between character and | circumStances§ how,could the author have done so, with “the ‘Story of Job's’ sufferings before him? It was his concern, wot te deny that sin and adversity, righteousness and prospefity, often went together, but to affirm that they : did not invariably accompany each other. After all, the iene Gospel itself takes up essentially the same position as the Epilogue. It has, further, been pointed out that the function of the Epilogue is to leave the reader content with God’s conduct ; it is added for His sake rather than for Job’s. Some have felt that the Satan ought to have been brought forward to confess the disinterested character of Job’s piety. But such a formal confession the author may well have felt to be unnecessary. The-Testament of Job represents Job’s sufferings as going on for many years, ia his wife bravely wins a livelihood for him, but only \ a bins < 32 THE BOOK OF JOB at the last yields to the instigation of Satan and bids Job curse God. Job rebukes her and then challenges Satan to contend with him, not with a frailwoman. Then Satan broke forth into tears, and said, ‘ I yield to thee who art the great wrestler.’ The desirability of a confession of defeat on the Satan’s part was felt early. It is quite possible that the author borrowed both Prologue and Epilogue from an_ earlier book, which may have been known to Ezekiel (Xiv. 14), though his reference / to Job could be explained by knowledge of an oral tradition. Some of the arguments adduced in favour of this view are weak. But it is certainly very difficult to believe that the poet should himself have written xiii-7~8. God had intro- duced His speech with a description of Job’s utterances as ‘words without knowledge,’ and this strikes the key-note of His whole speech. Job responds in language of con- trition, loathing his words. How strange then that God should immediately after say that Job had spoken of Him ‘the thing that is right,’ a judgement hard to reconcile with the tone and explicit statement of God’s speech or with Job’s confession. Again the friends had been mis- guided, but they were sincere and God-fearing men, why then should God be so angry at their ‘folly’ that He can be appeased only by sacrifice and Job’s intercession? Usually it is said that Job’s bold facing of the facts of life was more congenial to God than the friends’ attempts to conceal them. This, however, does not escape the difficulty. We cannot avoid the conclusion that for God to represent Job’s speeches as right, and those of the friends as impious, does not harmonize with His attitude to Job in the Divine speech or with the line taken by the friends in the debate. It is more probable that this judgement originally referred to a wholly different set of speeches. The ‘folly’ of the friends reminds us of that of Job’s wife, an impiety consisting of a temptation to curse God. Job’s right speech about God is more likely to have been of the character of his utterances in the — INTRODUCTION 33 Prologue. Probably, then, in an earlier Book of Job another type of debate stood between the present Prologue and Epilogue; the friends talking ‘folly’ or impiety, inciting the sufferer to abandon his integrity, while Job spoke that which was ‘right,’ the language of pious resignation. The poet had to cut out this dialogue and substitute his own. But he left the Epilogue as he found it, since, though he would not have chosen such terms to express the character of the speeches, they could be harmonized with his general intention to applaud Job and condemn the friends, as, indeed, they usually have been harmonized. Several other problems are raised with reference to various parts of the book. They are discussed in the course of the exposition; it will be convenient to register the results here. xxv-xxvil. Bildad’s third speech probably consisted of XXV. 2, 3; Xxvi. 5-14. We should eliminate xxv. 4-6 as a gloss, based on xv. 14-16. Job’s reply consisted of XXVl. 2-4, xxvii. 2-6, II, 12. The greater part of his speech, containing probably a very bold criticism of the Divine government, stood originally, it would seem, be- tween xxvii. I1 and xxvii. 12. Zophar’s third speech is largely preserved in xxvii. 13-23 ; possibly 7—10 belongs to him, though 8-10 may be a gloss. xxviii. is a later addition, and not to be assigned either to Job or Zophar. xxiv. I-24 may possibly be a later addition, or perhaps substituted for a less acceptable speech, but it may quite well be genuine in the main, though verses 18-21 are in any case impossible on Job’s lips, and are probably an insertion. xxx. 2-8 probably stood originally in connexion with xxiv. 5 ff. Other dislocations are xxviii. 7, 8, which should probably follow xxviii. 12 ; xxix. 21-25, which should follow xxix. 10; xxxi. 38-40, which should come at an earlier point in the D 34 THE BOOK OF JOB chapter, though it is quite uncertain where; xxxiii. 4, which should follow xxxiii. 6; xli. 9-12, which should follow xl. 24. Perhaps vi. 27 should follow vi. 23. xxxi. I is out of place in its present context, but an emendation is suggested in the note on that verse to remove the difficulty. THE TEXT The text of the book has been till recently regarded as very well preserved. But for some years past a very different estimate has been formed by several scholars, and the received text has been made the subject of much emendation. It is not easy to treat the question with profit in a work intended largely for the English reader. But some reference must be made to it, especially since the difficulties of interpretation raise so often the problem of the text. Since Hebrew was written without vowels, and many of the consonants were much alike, it was quite easy, and ~ in fact has not been uncommon, for one letter or group o _ letters to be mistaken for another, and this was helped by the comparative ease with which letters could be rubbed and partially or entirely obliterated. Mistakes might also arise through the carelessness of the copyist, or through defective hearing if he wrote from dictation. Deliberate alterations might be made to avoid anthropomorphisms or expressions in other ways objectionable, or to smooth roughnesses and make the style trim and tame, in harmony with the scribe’s canons of literary elegance. The criteria for detecting and healing corruption are partly supplied by the divergence of the versions (especially the Septuagint) from the Hebrew, partly by considerations of inherent probability. Our Hebrew MSS. present practically the same text, and have probably been ultimately derived from one copy, in whose favour all rival texts were suppressed. The use of the Septuagint (LXX) is complicated by the fact that the true text of the LXX is nearly four hundred INTRODUCTION 35 lines shorter than the Hebrew. The missing lines were supplied by Origen from the translation of Theodotion, and although the asterisks with which he marked these additions were largely retained in five MSS., it was not till the publication in 1889 of a Coptic translation of the LXX, that the actual extent of its text was determined. Bickell, who had previously explained the omissions in the LXX as due to the obscurities of the Hebrew, or the theological objections taken to some of Job’s utterances, or the sheer looseness of the translator’s rendering, now argued that the four hundred lines in question were added to the original poem (see also Hatch, Essays in Biblical Greek, pp. 215-45; this was subjected to a searching criticism by Dillmann in an article entitled Zextkritisches zum Buche fiiob, published in the Sztzungsberichte der K. Akademie, Berlin, 1890, pp. 1345-73). But Bickell went a great deal further. Many lines were struck out by him which are found both in Hebrew and LXX. Partly his treatment was occasioned by material, partly by formal objections to the present text. It might be that he detected incon- sistencies, or needless repetitions, or excessive diffuseness, and on the ground of these material objections eliminated the portions that offended his reason or his taste. Cases of this kind have to be settled each on its merits. But his formal principles postulated a regularity in structure which could tolerate no deviation, and the text had perforce to be fitted into his scheme. The original poem consisted, in his judgement, exclusively of four-lined stanzas. The present poem is, as a matter of fact, written mainly in couplets, two of which may very frequently be combined to forma quatrain. But sometimes the number of couplets is odd, not even; in that case, when the section is distri- buted into quatrains, a recalcitrant couplet is left, and has to be expunged, or by extensive alterations six lines have to be manipulated into four. But we have several instances where the couplet is replaced by a triplet. In this case similar measures have to be employed. Nor is this all, D2 36 THE BOOK OF JOB for not only have there to be so many lines to a stanza, but each line must be built on a given pattern; it must in fact be written in a certain metre. Now with all the freedom of scansion which Bickell exercises, very many lines will not as they stand conform to his rules; and they must be made to conform, or if that prove impracticable, be deleted. The outcome is that the poem has to lose not merely the four hundred lines absent from the original LXX, but an enormous number besides, and that very extensive alterations are made in those that are left. The theory has met with little favour, though it has been adopted wholesale by Dr. Dillon in his Sceftics of the Old Testament (1895). This work contains a trans- lation of Bickell’s text, and exposition of the ideas of the poem as thus restored. It called forth a very valuable article by Dr. Driver in The Contemporary Review for Feb. 1896, which may be earnestly commended to those who wish to see convincing reasons for not adopting the theory. This is not the place for any detailed discussion, but a few general remarks may be offered. The LXX text does little to remove the stumbling-blocks of the Hebrew, and it creates worse difficulties of its own. It retains the passages which give rise to the most serious questionings, while its omissions dislocate the movement of the poem. he theory that quatrains alone are legitimate rests on vidence altogether too slender, and the couplets of which ey are composed are often unequally yoked together. Triplets may fall under suspicion, but only if material as well as formal objections can be urged against them. As to metre, the whole subject at present lies in too much obscurity to warrant textual changes on this basis alone. A line may be suspicious because it is abnormally long or abnormally short, but beyond this, in Job, at any rate, it is not safe to go. ‘ It no doubt often happens that the Versions help us to correct the Hebrew, sometimes by presupposing, at other times by giving the clue to a better original, In other INTRODUCTION 37 cases the critic must resort to conjecture, in which the parallelism or the demands of the general sense may guide him to a satisfactory correction. Naturally the process is attended with much danger of error; but few, who have any knowledge of the results it has achieved in skilful hands, will be inclined to make light of it. The numerous studies devoted of late to the emendation of Job have certainly not been without substantial result, as will be clear from the commentary. THE DATE It is needless to waste many words on the old-fashioned view that the poem dates from the time of Moses or earlier. The antique colouring is proof, not of the book’s antiquity, but of the author’s art, in conforming his presentation to the age in which the hero lived and suffered. The absence of explicit reference to Hebrew law or history ought never to have been quoted to prove the author’s ignorance of them, since he would have been a poor artist indeed to let his characters exhibit familiarity with the institutions of a people that belonged to a period later than the time in which they were placed. It would be more plausible to think of the reign of Solomon, a period of intellectual activity and intercourse with foreign nations. But the phenomena of the book hardly permit us to place it earlier than the time of Jeremiah. The decisive argument in -favour of this view is the stage of religious reflection represented by it. It was not till the age of Jeremiah, when the state was breaking up under the assault of Babylon, that the old belief in the association of prosperity and righteousness began to give way before the facts which disproved it. The destruction of Jerusalem and the Exile made the question a burning one. It is hard to believe that it can be as early as the time of Jehoiachin or Zedekiah, in which Dillmann places it. Nor indeed can it well be as early as the beginning of the Babylonian 38 THE BOOK OF JOB Exile, the latest date wh ich Dillmann is prepared to leave open as a possibility... /The problem is no longer in its elementary stage. It bas been long pondered and discussed, and this agrees best with a date considerably later than that of Jeremiah. Several scholars have placed it towards the close of the Exile, making the author contemporary with fhe author of Isa. xl-lv. A comparison of the two writers discloses correspondences which cannot be accidental. There are especially close points of contact between the figure of Job and that of the Suffering Servant of Yahweh. The Servant is to be identified with the historical Israel, which had died in the Exile and was to be restored to life by a return from captivity and re-establishment in its old home. The meaning of its suffering and death is closely connected with its mission to the world. That mission was to bring to the Gentiles the knowledge of the true God. When the Servant has been restored from exile, the Gentile nations perceive the error they had made in con- necting its calamities with its sin. Israel, that had been faithful to the true God, had suffered; the idolatrous Gentiles had escaped. The sufferings of Israel are ac- cordingly interpreted as vicarious; by its stripes the nations are healed. The suffering of the innocent, the miscon- ception of the suffering as penal, the restoration, are all paralleled in the case of Job. But the profound explanation _ that the suffering is vicarious is not to be found in Job. This has led many scholars to the belief that Job must be earlier than the Servant poems. Could he have neglected the interpretation of the problem offered by them? He had sought long for an answer to the question which wrung his heart ; could he have been blind or indifferent to a solution so illuminating? The argument is telling, but by no means conclusive. The author may have found no help in the thought of vicarious suffering. But, apart from this, he may well have hesitated to transfer this explanation of the calamities which had befallen a nation, elect to a world-wide mission, in furtherance of that INTRODUCTION 39 mission, to the calamities of an individual. Job has no such sphere of universal significance to fill. Israel may suffer for the nations, but what would Job’s vicarious suffering avail? We need not therefore regard this as an insuperable objection to the view that Job is dependent on the Second Isaiah, if there are reasons for adopting this conclusion. And there are such reasons. While both powerfully assert the power and wisdom of God as shown in the Creation, this forms part of a sustained polemic against heathenism in Isa. xl-lv, whereas in Job it is a securely-won doctrine, taken for granted by non- Israelitish speakers, while idolatry is left almost entirely out ofaccount. In other words, the conflict with paganism, which fills so large a place in the literature of Israel down to the Return, and is not completely extinct even later, is here left out of account. And the relation of Job to the Servant of Yahweh really leads to the same result. For Job is not, as some have argued, to be identified with the Servant; he is not the nation, but an individual. There . can be little question whether the problem of suffering was raised first in connexion with the nation or with the individual. The recognition of the individual was quite late in comparison with that of the nation, the suffering of the one created a problem sooner than that of the other. Attention was at first too much absorbed by the colossal disasters of the nation for the individual case to receive attention. The dependence lies with Job rather than with the Second Isaiah, since the figure of the suffering Servant was directly created by the contemporary circum- stances, and the author needed to take no suggestion for it from elsewhere. The author of Job carries the question a stage further from the nation to the individual. The post-exilic date is confirmed by other considerations. ‘The angelology is late, its affinities lie largely with the doctrine of angels in the literature subsequent to the Return. The Satan occurs in no early literature, but only in Zechariah and Chronicles. The inwardness of its 40 THE BOOK OF JOB ethics points to a time later than Jeremiah’s prophecy of the New Covenant. The diction is late rather than early, Aramaic, and to a certain extent Arabic, words BeMg Tou in it, and there are many words which occur elsewhere only in the latest parts of the O.T. It is unfortunate that in several instances, where Job and other pieces of literature exhibit marks of dependence, no judgement can be expressed with any confidence as to the side on which dependence lies, equally competent critics holding opposite , views. Moreover, some of these related sections of the .O. T. are themselves of very uncertain date, xii. 7-10 suggests that the author may have had Gen. i, 20-25 in mind. . A clear case of dependence is that of vii. 17, 18 on Ps. viii. 4. Job bitterly parodies the Psalmist’s question, The eighth Psalm is often thought to presuppose Gen. i, which belongs to the Priestly Document promulgated in 444 B.C. Wecould in that case hardly place Job earlier ‘than about 400 B.c. The close affinities with Malachi sug- gest a similar conclusion, which is perhaps the most pro- bable view. We need feel no hesitation in adopting a date subsequent to Ezra’s reformation, on the ground that on the uncongenial soil of legalism such a poem could not have arisen. The Book of Jonah and some of the Psalms, to say nothing of Ecclesiastes at a later time, show plainly how little we can speak of any uniformity in post-exilic Judaism. There is no need to come much below 400 B. C. Oscar Holtzmann has argued in Stade’s Geschichte des Volkes Israel, ii. 348-52, that the book can be accounted for only by postulating the influence of Greek thought; and that the dialogue form is due to imitation of the dialogues of Plato, who also pondered on the cause of human suffering, and before whose mind there rose the greatness and beauty of the world. Accordingly he places the book in the Ptolemaic period. His arguments, how- ever, have rightly met with scant approval. Siegfried (Jewish Encyclopaedia, vol. vii. p.197) appears to think that it belongs to the time of the Maccabees, and considers that INTRODUCTION 41 xv. 20 ff. seems to allude to the fate of Alexander Jannaeus. We cannot say that such a date is impossible. But there is no cogent reason for adopting it. Moreover, the ad- ditions made to the book imply a fairly long history. THE ART OF THE BOOK There has been much fruitless controversy as to the literary label that should bé attached to the book. We cannot force this splendid fruit of Hebrew wisdom into a Greek scheme, and it is really futile to discuss whether it is a drama or an epic. It is itself. We may more profitably linger on some of its literary qualities. Like Hebrew poetry in general its most striking formal characteristic is its parallelism. Usually the second line repeats the thought of the first, though sometimes it states the contrast to it, or perhaps it completes the thought begun but left unfinished in the first. The parallel struc- ture brings to the ear the same kind of satisfaction as rhyme, but unless very skilfully used it is apt to pall in a long poem. In this book its monotony is largely — overcome by the poet’s blending of various types of parallelism and by the occasional use of triplets instead of couplets. The poet is a master of metaphors, taken from many spheres of life. The work of the farm suggests a figure to describe those who sow iniquity and reap trouble, or the comparison of death in a ripe old age to the coming into the barn of the shock of corn in its season. The fate of the wicked is likened to that of the stubble driven by the wind from the threshing-floor or the chaff chased by the storm. Job compares himself in his prosperity to a tree drinking up the water by its roots while its branches were refreshed by the dew. His words were awaited by the assembly as thirstily as the parched clods look up for the rain. In the long life he then anticipated he compared himself to the phoenix, He longs for death as the slave 42 THE BOOK OF JOB panting under the heat longs for the cool evening which will bring him his rest; or again, death is sought with the eagerness that characterizes those who dig for hid treasures. The wicked is compared to the Nile grass suddenly cut off from the moisture and withering rapidly ; his trust can as little support him as a flimsy spider's web. Man’s brief life is like the flower opening in beauty and suddenly cut down, the swiftness with which it passes is illustrated by the weaver’s shuttle, the courier, the speed of the light skiffs on the river, or of the eagle as it swoops on its prey. The completeness of his disappear- ance from earth when he passes into Sheol is compared with the vanishing of the cloud, The failure of streams supplies him with several metaphors; thus Job illustrates the disappointment he had experienced from the friends by the caravan that comes to the channel down which the turbid torrent swept in winter, only to find the brawl- ing stream scorched out of existence in the summer heat, and perish in the search for new supplies. The failing waters furnish an apt metaphor for the irretrievable ebbing away of life, while the forgetfulness of past trouble is illustrated by the oblivion into which they run. Military figures are common. More than once Job describes God as an archer with Job for His target. He tortures him with suspense, letting His arrows whistle about him, before He sends them home. Or He is a wrestler of gigantic strength with Job for His antagonist and victim. A third illustration is that of a fortress with a breach made in the walls through which the enemy pours. The fate of the wicked is set forth under the figure of an attack on a den of lions, the old lions have their teeth dashed out and perish for lack of prey, while the whelps are scattered abroad. There are many other metaphors for the evil destiny that awaits the godless. His branch is not green, or it is dried up by the flame, or again his root is withered beneath, and his branch cut off above ; he is like the vine that fails to bring to maturity its unripe INTRODUCTION 43 grape, or the olive shedding its flowers. His path is all beset with snares, the hell-hounds of terror chase him, but which ever way he turns they meet him, closing on him from every side. While he flees from the iron weapon the brass bow pierces him with its arrow. He is driven away as utterly as a dream of the night. While wickedness is a dainty tit-bit in the sinner’s mouth, held fast that all its delicious sweetness may be enjoyed, and only reluctantly let go, yet it will turn to the gall of asps within him. Natural phenomena are described by graphic images. Clouds formed the garment and swaddling band for the infant sea, new born from the bowels of the chaotic deep. The clouds as they float in the sky are like bottles filled with water, which when they are tilted spill the rain. The dawn is a woman peeping over the crest of the hills, and the rays of light are her eyelashes. Darkness is a coverlet in which the wicked are shrouded from sight, suddenly the light comes and twitches the covering away so that the wicked are shaken out of it and stand revealed in the glare of day. And under the light the world lies all clear cut like clay freshly stamped by the seal, or like a body clothed with its close-fitting robe. The caracole of the horse is compared to the leaping of a locust. The book is studded with the most exquisite descrip- tions. The whole of Yahweh’s speech is a sustained effort of the highest genius, unsurpassed in the world’s literature. The animal pictures are like instantaneous photographs, catching a characteristic attitude, and fixing it for us in the most vivid words. And with what power and beauty are the marvels of the universe set forth! The laying of its foundation amid the songs of the morning stars and the joyous shouts of the sons of God ; the birth of the sea, and the staying of its tumultuous heavenward leap; the punctual dayspring, flooding the world with light; the springs that feed the sea from the nether deep; the gates of Sheol; the dwelling of light 44 THE BOOK OF JOB and darkness; the stores of hail and snow made ready for God’s battles ; the sluice cut through the firmament by which the torrential rain descends; the frost that turns the streams to stone; the rain that falls on the waste afar from man; the mighty constellations, obedient to God's behest; the lightning with its purposeful movement; all pass before the mind as God unrolls the panorama of the universe. And fully worthy to be mentioned with this is the wonderful description in Bildad’s third speech, closing with the awed confession that we stand but at the outskirts of God’s ways, where the deafening thunder of His power is mercifully heard from afar. Less note- worthy than these is the fine description of God’s power and wisdom in ix. 5-10. Or take the vision of Eliphaz, where the old terror masters him as he narrates it. How vividly it all passes before us; the preparation in the musings on his night trances; the fear that sets his bones quaking, the cold breath across the face, the hair on end, the vague thing that his straining eyes could resolve into no shape he could name, the dead silence and then the thin voice. Or, for its quiet soothing beauty, the perora- tion to the same speech. And what a sense of peace steals over the weary as he reads the longing words in which Job describes the untroubled calm of Sheol, where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest. How full of dismay and yearning is the plaintive assertion of the hopelessness of man’s fate (xix. 7-21)! How graphic Bildad’s picture of the terrors that surround the sinner and the evil destiny to which he is doomed ! The poet’s power of irony is displayed most con- spicuously in the speech of Yahweh. But examples may be culled from the debate. Thus Job bitterly asks God what is frail man that He must so narrowly observe him, or whether he is himself a sea or sea-monster that God should set a watch over him. The friends’ arguments he satirizes with pungent scorn, their proverbs are proverbs of ashes, their wisdom consists only of platitudes ; he tells INTRODUCTION 45 Bildad that he really must have been inspired to make one of his speeches. One of his most biting and delight- ful phrases is aimed at them, ‘ How irritating are words of uprightness.’ Bitter indeed is the question whether he had taxed their friendship by asking them to do anything for him, as if he had thought friendship could stand such a test! His pathos is deeply moving. Job feels acutely the unkindness of his friends, he even turns to them with the appeal, ‘Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends!’ But it is little that he says to the friends in this strain. It is rather to God that his pathetic pleadings are addressed. ‘ My friends scorn me, But mine eye poureth out tears unto God.’ With such care had God fashioned him, with such kindness preserved him, why does He wantonly destroy him? Soon he must die under God’s stroke, but by and by God’s present mood will pass, then He will seek for His servant in love, but alas! too late. Especially the swift movement to death elicits some of Job’s most touching words, and the thought of the dreary interminable darkness that awaits him. The character-drawing of the book is not highly developed. The friends are distinguished to some extent, but they have no very clearly-marked individuality, and they take very much the same line. The character-study of Job is more subtle, as the interest of the poem centres about the struggle of his soul caught in the web of mystery and pain. On this, however, it is not necessary to Es what is said elsewhere. THE AUTHOR It is not needful to add many words. We know nothing of the author save what we learn from his book. He was a Jew, and lived probably in the south of Judaea - on the edge of the wilderness. The restraints of civiliza- tion were irksome to him; he loved freedom, and sym- pathized deeply with the wild life of the desert, far from 46 THE BOOK OF JOB cities and their bondage. He had travelled in the desert, probably in a caravan, had marked the streams swollen in the snow’s thaw, and how they vanished in the summer heat. Possibly he had himself been in danger of the fate he describes in vi. 18. He had seen and pitied the wretched \_ outcasts, without home or clothing, huddled under the \. tocks for shelter from the drenching rains, famished esse food was so scarce, and driven to theft to keep themselves and their children alive. He had journeyed to the sea, which seemed in its turmoil to seek escape from its bonds, and had seen how its waves tossing never so high always fell back, and how it could not pass its appointed bounds. Herein he had recognized the re- straining might of God. To the desert-lover the uncon- genial sea appeared an impious thing. Probably he had travelled as far as Egypt, though he may have known it only by report. He had often watched the constellations, and the marvels of nature had roused his curiosity and awe. Ne But he had pondered far more deeply the ethical and ‘\._ religious problem presented by the moral order of the “world. With a flaming hatred of wrong and tender pity for the oppressed, he saw the triumph of the wicked and the misery of the just. He was familiar with the current doctrines, and knew how they ignored the most patent facts. A truly religious man, he had found his heart drawn to God by the irrepressible instinct for fellowship with Him, driven from Him by the apparent immorality of His government. He had known what it was to be baffled in his search for God and to feel himself slipping \ from the fear of the Almighty. An intellectual solution e had not been able to reach. But in humble submission to God’s inscrutable wisdom, and in a profounder sense of fellowship with Him, he had escaped into the region of unclouded trust. It is a wonderful victory of Jewish piety that our author, who saw the anguish of the world as clearly, felt it as acutely, exposed it as relentlessly as the author of Ecclesiastes, yet unlike him rested at last in God, INTRODUCTION 47 SELECTED LITERATURE The commentaries and special discussions are so numerous that no useful purpose could be served by naming a tithe of them. Of the older literature it may suffice to mention Schultens and Rosenmiiller, both written in Latin. The chief modern German comment- aries and expositions are those of *Ewald, *Delitzsch, Kamphausen, *Zockler (in Lange), Merx, Hitzig, Hoffmann, Dillmann, Budde, Duhm, Fried. Delitzsch, Ley. [Those marked with an asterisk have been translated into English.] Of English expositions no more need be named than those of A. B. Davidson (Vol. i, 1862, all published), and of the same author in the Cambridge Bible, Cox, Elzas (Jewish), Watson (Z£xfositor’s Bzble), Bernard (Christian Jew), G. H. B. Wright, Bradley, Gibson (Westminster Com- mentaries), Marshall (American Baptist Commentary), Addis (Zemple Bible). Several of the commentaries contain translations. Other translations are: (a) into German, Reuss, Baethgen (in Kautzsch), Bickell (from his reconstructed text, accessible to the English reader in Dillon’s Sceptics of the Old Testament), Duhm; (4) into French, Renan and Reuss; (c) into English, Gilbert, The Poetry of Job, Genung, The Epic of the Inner Life, and Rotherham in The Emphasized Bible. Special discussions are to be found in the Introductions to the O.T., the Bible Dictionaries, Histories of Israel, and Old Testament Theologies. The following may be added: Godet, Old Testament Studies; Budde, Bettrage zur Kritik des Buches Hiob; Giesebrecht, Der Wende- punkt des Buches Hiob, Froude in Short Studies ; A. M. Fairbairn in The City of God; C. H. H. Wright, Biblical Essays; Green, The Argument of the Book of Job Unfoliied; Cheyne, Job and Solomon (and numerous articles in the Eafositor, Expository Times, and Critical Review) ; Duhm in The New World for 1894; Bruce in The Moral Order of the World; Davison, The Wisdom 48 THE BOOK OF JOB Literature of the Old Testament; Peake, The Problem of Suffering in the Old Testament. For textual criticism the books and articles mentioned in the section on the text, and in addition Siegfried’s edition of the Hebrew text in the Polychrome Bible (the English translation with commentary has not been published, the author’s general conclusions may be found in the articles ‘Wisdom’ in Hastings’ Dictionary and ‘Job’ in The Jewish Encyclopaedia) ; Beer, Der Text des Buches Hiob, and Texthritische Studien zum Buche Hiob in Stade’s Zeztschrift; Klostermann, article ‘ Hiob’ in Herzog, Realencyklopadie (third edition). Recent com- mentaries deal pretty fully with this side of the subject ; Duhm especially is rich in emendations. Since a mere list of names is of little use to the student without further guidance, a few remarks are offered on the selection of books. If he is restricted to English works, he might take the chapter in Driver’s Jntroduction, or the article by Margoliouth in Smith’s Dictionary (second edition), or by Davison in Hastings, for his starting-point. For detailed exegesis he would have, in addition to the present work, the two commentaries by Davidson. Of these the former is, so far as it goes, by far the more valuable, and Davidson’s failure to complete it is a permanent impoverishment of our English exegesis. Its critical point of view was rightly abandoned later, but in every other respect it is to be preferred. In no later work did the author seem as though he could ‘ recapture That first fine careless rapture.’ Still, the disappointment that the later commentary provokes is simply created by comparison with the author himself, and by the fact that in the twenty years which have elapsed since it was written many new problems have emerged. He could next take Cheyne’s Jod and Solomon, and then his article in The Encyclopaedia Biblica. He should be on his guard against the excessive literary analysis in both, especially the latter, and against the radical textual INTRODUCTION 49 criticism, which, however, “s very little affected by his Jerahmeelite theory that has since attained such a re- markable development. He could then turn to some of the special studies mentioned, and the recent fresh and suggestive commentary by Marshall. If, however, he can read German, he should study Kuenen’s valuable discussion in his Introduction, and take Dillmann’s commentary as the basis for his de- tailed work. To this he should add Budde and Duhm, the latter of which is among the most suggestive and original commentaries on the book ever published. All three of these will be much more useful to the reader who knows something of Hebrew than to those who are ignorant of it. EXPLANATION OF SYMBOLS A. The main portion of the book, including Prologue and Epilogue, not improbably incorporated from an older book. B. The speeches of Elihu. W. The poem on Wisdom (ch. xxviii). L. The Behemoth and Leviathan sections. M. Later additions. Dislocations and wrong allocations of speeches cannot be indicated by these symbols; they are pointed out in the chapter on ‘ The Integrity of the Book.’ It is unnecessary, and in this case not very satisfactory, to give a brief table of contents. The exposition of each section is preceded throughout by a full analysis. THE BOOK OF JOB REVISED VERSION WITH ANNOTATIONS E2 THE BOOK OF JOB [A] THERE was a man in the land of Uz, whosel i. 1-5. The character, wealth, and family of Job. The un- broken merry-making of his children, and his scrupulous pre- cautions to atone for possible impiety occasioned by it. 1. The author plunges at once into his story, without pre- ‘liminary moralizing or anticipation of his subject. He introduces his hero, with a bare mention of his name and home, and then describes to us his character and possessions, fittingly giving the place of honour to the former. For he wishes to set his problem before us in the sharpest form; there must be no room for the misgiving that the sufferer’s afflictions are the due reward of his deeds. And thus to emphasize how inexplicable, on the current theory of retribution, were his calamities and disease, he depicts him as one ‘blameless and upright, God-fearing and turning away from evil.’ Alike to himself and to others this was attested by his worldly prosperity. A numerous family and wonderful wealth proclaimed to all how high he stood in the favour of Heaven. For the author does not wish simply to move us by the spectacle of sudden and immense disaster, moving though such a spectacle must always be, and trebly pitiful when disaster is undeserved. He accentuates as much as possible the prosperity of Job, that he may make his tragic change of fortune utterly bewildering to himself and all too plain to the world. For long happiness had beguiled him into a sweet certainty of God’s favour, and, in the light of his conscious innocence, a blow so crushing could be at best a dark mystery, but to gloomier moods a devilish mockery. It was all the more hideous that it struck him deeply in his honour. In the world’s judgement a clever hypocrite had been at length unmasked, whose sin could be measured by the overwhelming greatness of his punishment. Asin a Greek tragedy, the suspense is deepened for the reader by his knowledge from the first of the facts hidden from the sufferer and his friends. Since he is un- distracted by any doubt of Job’s piety, and knows that it is the Satan who has achieved his ruin, his attention is concentrated on the real dramatic interest, the struggle of a soul, conscious only of its own rectitude, to adjust its exquisite but unmerited pain to the theistic beliefs it has previously entertained. While the author emphasizes not only the excellence of Job’s character but the N 54 JOB. 1. 2.30 name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil. And greatness of his wealth, we see that his goodness was more eminent even than his substance, for while he was ‘the greatest of all the children of the East,’ there was none to compare with him for character and piety in all the earth. the land of Uz. The situation is uncertain, According to Gen. x. 23 Uz was connected with the Aramaeans, and accord- ing to Gen. xxii. 21 with Nahor. This suggests that it should be sought in Naharina (the so-called Aram Naharaim), on the east of the Euphrates. This is favoured by the inclusion of Job among ‘the children of the East,’ and perhaps by the fact that the raid on his cattle was made by the Chaldeans. It would agree further with this that Bildad the Shuhite (cf. Gen. xxv. 2, 6) may have belonged to the Sahu, who, as we learn from the inscriptions, lived on the right bank of the Euphrates, south of Carchemish. Elihu is a Buzite (xxxii. 2), and Buz, like his brother Uz, is represented in Gen. xxii. 21 as ason of Nahor. He is further described as of the family of Ram. This, however, favours the connexion of Uz with Edom, for Ram, according to 1 Chron. ii, was the son or brother of Jerahmeel (cf. Ruth iv. 19), and the Jerahmeelites, like the Calebites, lived on the south of Judah. Still, it is possible to regard Elihu as an Aramaean, if Ram is either an abbreviation or a mistake for Aram. Although the account of Elihu is a later addition, it is important as very early evidence of the position to which Uz was assigned. Fried. Delitzsch thinks that Uz occurs, as the name of a district, in the cuneiform inscriptions, but Winckler reads differently. If Delitzsch is correct the exact position is still disputed. He fixes the situation near Palmyra; Dr. Francis Brown, however, says it must be near the Orontes. But many scholars seek for the land of Uz not to the north of Palestine at all, but to the south-east, in the neighbourhood of Edom. In Gen. xxxvi. 28 Uz is named as a grandson of Seir the Horite, in other words, Seir is closely connected with Edom. This is the case also with Lam. iv. 21: ‘ Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom, that dwellest in the land of Uz.’ Among those who are named in Jer. xxv. 17-26 as drinking of the cup of fury, we find ‘all the kings of the land of Uz’ (ver. 20) ; Edom, however, is mentioned separately (ver. 21). Eliphaz was a Temanite, i. e. he came from Edom ; and he bears an Edomite name (Gen. xxxvi. 4). We can hardly, in any case, identify Edom and Uz, but they must have been neighbouring countries. It is difficult to decide which land of Uz is to be regarded as Job’s home. Possibly the traditional connexion of ‘wisdom’ with Edom should incline the balance in its favour. whose name was Job (Heb. Jyyob). The name has been JOB 1.3,4. A 55 there were born unto him seven sons and three daughters. His substance also was seven thousand 3 sheep, and three thousand camels, and five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she-asses, and a very great household ; so that this man was the greatest of all the children of the east. And his sons went and 4 held a feast in the house of each one upon his day ; and they sent and called for their three sisters to eat and to very variously explained. Among the meanings assigned to it are : ‘the hated one,’ ‘the depressed,’ ‘the penitent,’ ‘the pious.’ The author can hardly have invented it, since there is no hint in the book that he saw in it any fitness to Job’s character or career, It no doubt belonged to the traditional story, and the Hebrews may have explained it to mean ‘the persecuted one.’ But if the name of the hero was derived with the story from abroad, it would probably be vain to attempt the discovery of its original meaning. perfect. The author does not mean that he was sinless. It would be better to translate ‘blameless’ ; he could not be charged with wickedness towards God or man. In this and the following words the author would show us that Job fulfilled the ideal alike of religion and morality. Yahweh Himself endorses this estimate of Job’s character (ver. 8, ii. 3), Job insists on it vehemently, as the one thing that remains firm, amid the collapse of his earlier convictions, and the friends at times confess it. 2. Foremost among the blessings of heaven stood a numerous posterity. The numbers, seven and three, are chosen to show his perfect good fortune in this respect, while the preponderance of sons over daughters reflects the Eastern estimate of women. In the enumeration of Job’s possessions the writer operates with multiples of seven and three, and of ten, their sum. 3. substance (marg. ‘cattle’). The latter is the usual sense of the word, and generally its use is restricted to sheep and horned animals; sometimes, as here, it is used in a wider sense. The she-asses were more valuable than the males on account of the foals. To look after so large an establishment a very numerous body of servants was necessary. 4. The author gives here an example of Job’s anxious piety, and at the same time prepares the way for the catastrophe narrated in verses 18, t9. The meaning seems to be that Job’s children lived a life of constant festivity. Every day the sons met in each other’s houses beginning with the eldest, and going to the others in rotation. Apparently they were not married, since no mention is made of their wives, but each had his own house. The three 56 JOB 1.5. A 5 drink with them. And it was so, when the days of their feasting were gone about, that Job sent and sanctified sisters, who probably lived with their father and mother, joined their brothers each day at the feast. The feast at each brother’s house seems to have lasted only a single day, and there was a regular cycle of feasts, lasting seven successive days. When one cycle of feasts was ended Job offered sacrifices, and a new series began. Some think this cannot be the meaning, but that feasts were held more rarely, each feast lasting several days, and ending with sacrifice. ‘His day’ would in that case probably mean his birthday (cf. Hos. vii. 5). But the language of verses 4, 5 does -not favour the view that the feasts occurred at irregular intervals. We are not reading prosaic history. The life depicted is like that of princes in fairy tales, a never-ending round of mirth, disclosing at once the great prosperity of Job and the happiness of his family. ‘His day’ means the day that falls to each in the order of seniority, the eldest son entertaining on the first day and the youngest on the seventh. 5. There is no touch of moroseness in Job’s piety, nor any wish to check their innocent joy. So week by week he lets the full round of festivity be completed, without any interference. But while his piety is not gloomy, it seeks to avoid the mere possibility of evil. Open blasphemy of God he does not suspect among his children. But he knows the danger that when wine has weakened the normal self-restraint, irreverence or a still darker impiety may rise and be cherished in the heart. So lest any of his children should have sinned in this way, Job sends for them at the end of each cycle of feasting and sanctifies them. Having thus prepared them for the holy rites, he offers burnt offerings for each, and thus atones for their possible transgressions. The author insists on this for a twofold reason. He wishes to deepen the impression of Job’s piety. Others might wait till they knew sin had been committed, Job is so scrupulous that he guards against the possibility that it may have been committed. Moreover, while little regard was paid in antiquity to any trans- gression save in act or word, the inwardness of Job’s religion is displayed in that he feels the guilt ofa sin in thought. The second reason is that he wishes to show that the catastrophe which destroys Job’s children cannot be accounted for by their sin (as Bildad hints, viii. 4), since it occurs on the very day when the atoning sacrifice has been offered for them (verse rg). We should perhaps translate, ‘when they had let the days of the feast go round.’ The point of time indicated is when one cycle of festivity had ended and the next had not yet begun. sent and sanctified them: the meaning is probably that JOB 1.5, A | them, and rose up early in the morning, and offered burnt offerings according to the number of them all: for Job said, It may be that my sons have sinned, and re- nounced God in their hearts. Thus did Job continually. Job sent for them and sanctified them when they came, hardly that he sent a priest and sanctified them, as Fried. Delitzsch supposes. The sanctification is not something effected by the sacrifice, but the ceremonial preparation for it, cf. 1 Sam xvi. 5. In what this ritual purification consists we are not told, but probably in ablutions and either the washing of their garments or the putting on of robes specially reserved for religious rites. The thought underlying this is that on the one side the stain of the world must be removed before the worshipper enters the presence of God, on the other side that the contagious holiness of altar or sanctuary renders garments worn by the worshipper in his approach to God unfit for use in the ordinary duties of life. This inconvenient holiness might be washed out of the robes, but it was simplest to keep a special set of clothes for holy occasions (see Gen. xxxv. 2; Exod. xix. 10-25; Ezek. xliv. 19; Isa. Ixv. 5, ‘Come not near to me lest I make thee holy’ ; 2 Kings x, 22). offered burnt offerings. The sacrifice is not the technical sin-offering of the Priestly Code, but it atones for sin. The dis- tinguishing feature of the burnt offering is that it was completely devoted to God, no part of the victim being eaten by the worshipper, as was usual in early sacrifices, which were com- nion feasts strengthening or re-knitting the bond between the eity and the worshippers. In the burnt offering the idea of physical communion has fallen into the background, and the thought is rather of the efficacy of a victim wholly surrendered to God. In the later days of national disaster the burnt offering assumed a wholly new prominence, and prepared the way for the later development of a specific sin-offering. It is to be noticed that- Job acts as priest for his own household; probably he offered a burnt offering for each of his ten children. The sacrifice takes place on the morning when the feast is in the eldest brother’s house. renounced (marg. ‘blasphemed’). The word inthe Hebrew text means properly ‘to bless.’ Probably this is the sense in- tended here, in which case we must regard it as a euphemism for ‘curse,’ a similar usage existing in colloquial English. What seems to be meant is not a deliberate cursing of God, for which antiquity would have expected the death penalty, but such irreverent feeling about God as wine might engender. While Duhm thinks the author is himself responsible for the euphemism, 58 JOB 1.6 A 6 Now there was a day when the sons of God came to some other scholars believe that the author wrote ‘cursed,’ but that a scribe altered it out of reverence. The scribes have let it stand, however, in Isa. viii. 21. Possibly, as Budde suggests, a milder word than ‘cursed’ stood here originally, as would, indeed, be more suitable. Gesenius in his Thesaurus took the view that since the word meant originally ‘to kneel,’ it might come to mean indifferently ‘to curse’ or ‘to bless,’ as a man kneels to invoke cither a curse or a blessing; but we should in that case have expected the word to be frequently used in both senses. Another view, which is accepted in R. V. text, and en- dorsed by the high authority of Dillmann, Davidson, and Kuenen, is that since partings were accompanied with blessing, the word got the sense ‘to say good-bye to,’ ‘renounce.’ But blessings were also invoked when people met as well as when they parted (x Sam. xiii. 10; 2 Kings iv. 29, x. 15). And ‘renounced’ surely implies.something too deliberate. The same word recurs in verse I1 and in ii. 5, 9. i. 6-12. In a heavenly council the Satan reports himself to Yahweh with the other ‘sons of God.’ Challenged by Yahweh to detect any flaw in Job’s piety, the Satan urges that it is purely self-regarding, and that if Yahweh would reduce him to utter poverty he would curse Him to His face. The Satan is per- mitted to put Job to this test, but forbidden to smite his person. 6. The scene in heaven is meant to prepare the reader for the catastrophe and give him the clue to it. The closest parallel is 1 Kings xxii. 19-23. Apparently at stated seasons the sons of God come to the heavenly assembly to give Yahweh a report of the way in which their duties have been performed, Each probably has his fixed province, since it was thought that each kingdom had its own angel-prince (Dan. x. 13, 20, 21, xii. 1; Isa. xxiv. 21, 22). They are regarded as responsible for the order of their provinces, hence they are condemned for the misgovern- ment that prevails in the world, as in the apocalyptic passage in Isaiah just quoted, andin Pss. lviii, Ixxxii. The term ‘sons of God’ suggests a wrong idea to the English reader. The meaning is not that they are sons of God, or servants of God; but ‘sons of the Elohim’ means those who possess the Elohim nature, those who belong to the order of Elohim, supernatural, spiritual beings, just as ‘sons of men’ means those who belong to the human order, and ‘sons of the prophets’ means members of the prophetic order. Morally, they are not regarded as more perfect than men, rather they may be described as morally neutral, our distinction between good and evil angels being unknown. Thus TOR Tye” as 59 present themselves before the Lorp, and Satan came also among them. And the Lorp said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the Lorn, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from the sons of the Elohim contract unions with the daughters of men (Gen. vi. 1-4) from which spring the Nephilim. So the spirit, who in Micaiah’s striking vision becomes a lying spirit in the mouth of Ahab’s prophets to entice the king to his death, is a member of the heavenly host. Since with the exception of the Satan these sons of the Elohim have no further significance for his story, the author does not linger on what passes between them and Yahweh, but goes on at once to the conversation between Yahweh and the Satan. Satan. As the margin says, the word means ‘ The Adversary.’ The word is in not uncommon use in Hebrew. It has the article here, and is not a proper name, hence it would be far better to translate ‘the Satan,’ Although not yet a proper namie, it is atitle borne by a particular spirit, expressive of the function he exer- cises. He observes the doings of men that he may detect them in sin, and then oppose their claims. to righteousness before God (cf, Zech. iit). Since it is his duty to see the bad side of human action and character (the good side perhaps falling to be observed by another spirit), he has in the exercise of it grown cynical. He has seen so much evil cavered by fair appearance, that he has lost all faith in human goodness. In 1 Chron. xxi. 1 the ~ term has become a proper name. As he appears in Job he cannot, of course, be identified with the devil, who only later found a place in Hebrew thought. He is one of the sons of the Elohim, entrusted with a special Divine commission and existing only to do Yahweh’s will. Yet his cynical disbelief in dis- interested goodness, and the heartlessness and malicious zest with which he suggests the trial of Job and carries it out, make it easy to account for the later development by which he came to be recognized as an evil spirit, hostile to God, and as one who tempted man not to vindicate his disbelief in human goodness, but to seduce men from God to their ruin and His sorrow. 7. While some at least of the other Elohim are entrusted with a kingdom for their province, the Satan is entrusted with a function, and is therefore not subject to their local limitations, Since, then, there is no fixed region of the earth, to which his energies are confined, Yahweh asks him whence he comes. In his reply he does not name any special part of the world where -he has been working, for in his unresting service of Yahweh he has been visiting all parts of it. 8 Io Il 60 JOB 1. 8-11. A walking up and down in it. And the Lorp said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job? for there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil. Then Satan answered the Lorp, and said, Doth Job fear God for nought ? Hast not thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath, on every side? thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land. But put 8. Yahweh takes the initiative, but not because he is already planning Job’s trial, with the view of bringing to light the spiritual pride, which, unknown to Job himself, lurked in his heart. He Himself endorses the judgement which the author has passed on Job, certainly with no touch of irony, but meaning what He says. Moreover, inii. 3 He charges the Satan with inciting Him against Job. It is therefore clear that His reason for calling his attention to Job is that He may cure him of his cynicism by pointing to so conspicuous a refutation of it. for: we should perhaps adopt the marginal translation ‘that,’ since for suggests that the contemplation of an upright character would be pleasing to the Satan. in the earth: echoes the Satan’s words in the previous verse. He had ransacked the world, had he ever found Job’s peer? 9. The Satan has long ago ‘considered’ Job, and tacitly concedes that Yahweh’s description is just. But if he cannot deny his piety, he can at least impugn its motive. The spoiled darling of Heaven may well seek to please his Master and keep his place. Small wonder that he is so devoted to God, when God has made devotion so worth his while! It is rather interesting that some Old Testament writers think abundant wealth a snare. Thus the writer of Prov. xxx. 5-9, reproving the agnostic utter- ance in verses I*-4, prays that he may have neither poverty nor riches, the former leading to theft and blasphemy, the latter to the denial of God (cf. Deut. xxxii.15). It is a Christian common- place, at least in theory. 10. The description is such as to bring out in the strongest way how great are Job’s possessions and how absolutely secure he is from attack. ‘Thou’ is emphatics hast not Thou, the all- powerful, so protected him that no evil can strike him? There is not the least chink in the hedge, that Yahweh has set about him, through which disaster can steal upon him, , JOB 1. 12,13, A 61 forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will renounce thee to thy face. And the Lorp said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand. So Satan went forth from the presence of the Lorp. And it fell on a day when his sons and his daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s 11. But let Yahweh tear down the hedge, and leave His servant bare to the blast, let Him strip him of all that he has. Then Job will be His fawning sycophant no longer, but will curse Him to His face. The literal translation of the last clause is, ‘if he will not curse Thee to Thy face.’ Originally the formula was one of impre- cation, If such or such a thing does not happen, may evil befall me. In its present form it is incomplete, the invocation of evil being omitted. The phrase has thus become a strong assertion, ‘he will certainly curse Thee’ is the meaning here. 12. Yahweh accepts the challenge, not that He may prove Job, as He is said to have proved Israel, to see what was in his heart, but that He may vindicate His servant against the in- sinuations ofthe Satan. Nor have we any reason to think that His consent implies any wish to raise Job to a loftier level of virtue through the discipline of suffering. Job is already morally blameless, and in ii. 3 Yahweh asserts that it was at the Satan’s instigation that the trial had been permitted. It was not in any solicitude for Job’s character, but in the need for refuting the criticism of his piety, that we are to seek the reason for Yahweh’s action. It should be observed that though the Satan had said ‘Put forth thine hand,’ Yahweh Himself will not smite. He permits the Satan to do it, but strictly limits his power, well aware of the relentless thoroughness with which His servant will do his work. went forth: intent, like Judas, on his ghastly errand (John ili, 30). 3 i. 13-22. Ona day when the feast is in the eldest brother’s house four successive messengers announce to Job the loss of his stock, his slaves, and his children. Job is utterly prostrate with grief, but blesses Yahweh, who, as He has given, has also the right to take away. Thus he emerges unscathed from his first trial. 13. Budde urges this verse against the view that Job’s children feasted together every day, since in that case the Satan might 62 JOB 1. 14-16. A 14 house, that there came a messenger unto Job, and said, The oxen were plowing, and the asses feeding beside 15 them: and the Sabeans fell upon them, and took them away ; yea, they have slain the servants with the edge of the sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. 16 While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The fire of God is fallen from heaven, and hath burned up the sheep, and the servants, and con- have availed himself of Yahweh’s permission as soon as he had received it. But this does not follow. While Job’s children were together every day, and could therefore at any time have been destroyed at a blow, the author meant to show that the catastrophe occurred on the very day when by Job’s sacrifice any possible sin of his children had been expiated. He must leave no loophole for the explanation of the calamity as due to their sin or to Job’s. Accordingly he must make the destruction take place when they met in the eldest brother’s house, since on the morning of that day the sacrifices had been offered (verse 5). Besides, while the natural impression made by verse 13 is that an interval elapsed between the heavenly council and the ruin of Job, and this is confirmed by the different representation of the second trial in ii. 7, it may be pointed out that the author, both in i. 5 and ii. 1, introduces a fresh scene with the formula, ‘And it came to pass on a day,’ so that too much must not be inferred from it here, whereas in the second trial it would obviously have been less fitting to make the account of it a separate narrative. 14. In the four catastrophes that follow there is progression in the magnitude of the disasters. The first and third are inflicted by man, the second comes from heaven, and the fourth from the wilderness. Thus as he has been protected by God’s hedge from assaults from any quarter, so, now the hedge is down, they are let loose on him from every quarter. Man, God, and the Powers of the Desert seem in league against him. 15. the Sabeans (Heb. Sheba) are nowhere else in the O.T. represented as a robber tribe. They are mentioned Gen. x. 7, 28, xxv. 3. The poet refers to them in vi. 19 as a trading people. Their home was in South-west Arabia. One slave escapes from each disaster, since Job must learn what has befallen him, but only one, that his loss may be as complete as possible. 16. The fire of God is the lightning (2 Kingsi. 12; Exod. ix. 23), here regarded as at the Satan’s disposal, JOB 1. 17-19. A 63 sumed them ; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and 17 said, The Chaldeans made three bands, and fell upon the camels, and have taken them away, yea, and slain the servants with the edge of the sword ; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, Thy sons and thy daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house: and, behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, and they are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee. 17. The Chaldeans (Heb. Kasdim) may be the people com- monly so called, but if so, they are thought of as they were before they became the great conquering people who founded the later Babylonian empire. Hommel’s suggestion, ‘the men of Havilah,’ is quite improbable. Possibly Cheyne’s suggestion that for Kasdim we should read Kassim, i.e. the Kassites of Babylonia, may be correct. The attack, as often happened, was made on three sides, to prevent the escape of the camels. fell (marg. ‘made a raid’). In his Thesaurus Gesenius explains the word here translated (pashat) as meaning ‘ to spread out,’ then with the preposition used here (‘a/), as ‘to rush upon,’ ‘invade,’ with a view to booty. Recent authorities generally take the original sense as ‘to pull off,’ ‘to strip,’ and then ‘to plunder,’ ‘to make a plundering expedition.’ 19. The winds from the desert were notorious for their violence. Since it struck the four corners of the house it must have been a whirlwind. The term the young men is, of course, intended to include the daughters, perhaps the servants as well, who in any case were destroyed. Cheyne says: ‘His wife, however, by a touch of quiet humour, is spared; she seems to be recognized by the Satan as an unconscious ally’ (Job and Solomon, p. 14). But as she would naturally be in the house with Job, the device of the messenger could not have been adopted in her case, and the symmetry would have been spoiled. Besides, the author needed her for the later development of the story. She seems to have stood firm under the first trial, no small tribute to the piety of a mother, stabbed where she was most Sensitive. _ - 8 9 64 JOB 1. 20-22. A 20 Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his 2I 22 head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped ; and he said, Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lorp gave, and the Lorp hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lorp. In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God with foolishness. 20. His grief is deep and passionate, but while giving full expression to it he yields submissively to the will of God. his mantle, rather ‘his tunic,’ the upper garment worn by people of rank. and worshipped. For a beautiful parallel see the moving narrative in Personal Memoirs of Dr. John Brown's Father. ‘We were all three awakened by a cry of pain—sharp, insufferable, as if one were stung.... We found my father standing before us, erect, his hands clenched in his black hair, his eyes full of misery and amazement, his face white as that of the dead. He frightened us. He saw this, or else his intense will had mastered his agony, for taking his hands from his head, he said, slowly and gently, ‘Let us give thanks,’’ and turned to a little sofa in the room; there lay our mother, dead.’ 21. Cf. Eccles. v. 15; 1 Tim. vi. 7. The thought is quite clear, naked I came into the world, naked I shall leave it, but the language in the latter part of it is inexact, and must not be prosaically interpreted. The author puts the name Yahweh into Job’s mouth, though in the speeches he avoids it (xii. 9 and xxviii. 28 probably con- stituting no real exceptions). In direct reference to the Satan’s prediction that Job would curse God, the author puts this word of blessing in his mouth, which not only expresses his piety in overwhelming distress, but his piety held fast in spite of his belief that it was Yahweh who was afflicting him. 22. The writer wishes to preclude the suspicion that in Job’s grief there was the slightest element of murmuring against God. The last words of the verse are difficult. The word translated ‘foolishness’ properly means tastelessness, and we may accept the rendering ‘ foolishness,’ laying stress on the moral rather than the intellectual associations of the word. The majority of com- mentators adopt the view of the clause taken in the R.V. It may mean, he uttered no folly against God (so the A. V. and Duhm), but though this gives a good sense, what is wanted is an ex- pression of Job’s judgement on God’s conduct, rather than of the JOB 2. 1-4. A 65 Again there was a day when the sons of God came to 2 present themselves before the Lorn, and Satan came also among them to present himself before the Lorp. And the Lorp said unto Satan, From whence comest 3 thou? And Satan answered the Lorp, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it. And the Lorp said unto Satan, Hast thou 3 considered my servant Job? for there is none like him in the earth,a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil: and he still holdeth fast his integrity, although thou movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause. And Satan answered the 4 Lorp, and said, Skin for skin yea, all that a man hath author’s judgement on Job’s language. The translation ‘he gave God no occasion of offence’ is adopted by Ewald, Dillmann, and Budde, but does not suit the context so well, for it is Job’s feeling rather than God’s which is in question, and the sense ‘unpleasantness’ is uncertain. ji. 1-rto. At a second heavenly assembly Yahweh challenges the Satan with Job’s integrity, which he has vainly tried to discredit. The Satan answers that the man himself has es- caped, let him be smitten in his own person, and he will curse God to His face. Yahweh permits him to inflict on Job this further trial, so he smites him from head to foot with an in- tolerable disease. Job repudiates, in noble resignation, his wife’s suggestion that he should curse God; so once again the Satan’s confident prediction is falsified. 3. The Satan makes no reference to his abortive attempt, perhaps because he was mortified at its failure. But when Yahweh twits him with it, he is at no loss for a reply. although thou movedst me, i.e. in spite of. your incitement to me to destroy him. But it would be better to translate ‘so that thou movedst me,’ i.e. since he holds fast his integrity it is plain that your attack on him has been futile. This agrees better with the object of the sentence, which is to assert the Satan’s failure, and gives its proper emphasis to ‘in vain,’ which is preferable to ‘without cause.’ Yahweh repudiates responsibility for causing Job’s former trial. ; 4. The rather vulgar language of the Satan is not exactly a sign of impudent familiarity, but the free speech of an old F 66 JOB 2.5-,, A 5 will he give for his life. But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will renounce 6 thee to thy face. And the Lorp said unto Satan, Be- 7 hold, he is in thine hand; only spare his life. So Satan went forth from the presence of the Lorp, and smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his servant, who does not wish to see his master imposed upon, Unfortunately the meaning of the proverb ‘ Skin for skin’ is far from clear. Since ‘for’ translates in both cases the same Hebrew word, it must mean the same in both. It may mean ‘in exchange for’ or ‘on behalf of.’ Various views are suggested, a man gives one part of his skin to save another, or one limb for another, or one body for another, i.e. the body of another for his own. Duhm may be right in suggesting that the proverb arose among a people for whom skins were an important article of barter, and then gained a wider currency; the Beduin may have extorted his blackmail from the shepherd with this proverb, implying that if he wishes to save his own skin he must give the skins of his flock. So Job is skinned of all his possessions, . thankful to escape with his own skin whole. 7. In this case the Satan smites at once when he leaves Yahweh’s presence, since there is no need for him to wait. Job’s disease is generally identified with elephantiasis, the symptoms of which are frequently mentioned in the references to the disease in the book. Though it ordinarily attacks the body by degrees, here it naturally attacks the whole body at once. This identi- fication is not unanimously accepted. Prof. Macalister says : ‘The characters given, however, agree better with those of the Biskra button, or Oriental sore, endemic along the southern shore of the Mediterranean and in Mesopotamia, This begins in the form of papular spots, which ulcerate and become covered with crusts, under which are itchy, burning sores, slow in granulation and often multiple: as many as forty have been found on one patient. It is probably due to a parasite, is communicable by inoculation, and very intractable even under modern treatment’ (Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible, vol. iii. p. 330). This view, again, is contested in The Transactions of the Victoria Institute, vol. xxxiv. pp. 268ff. Dr. Thomas Chaplin identifies Job’s disease with ecthyma, and certainly the description he quotes from Erasmus’ Wilson reminds the reader very forcibly of Job’s symptoms. It is ‘an eruption of large pustules dispersed over the body and limbs, beginning with itching and tingling, then bursting and forming a yellowish-grey scab. When the scab is JOB 2, 8-10. A 67 crown. And he took him a potsherd to scrape himself 8 withal ; and he sat among the ashes. Then said his 9 wife unto him, Dost thou still hold fast thine integrity ? renounce God, and die. But he said unto her, Thou 1o speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? In all this did not Job sin with his lips. removed a painful, ulcerated, and often sloughing surface is ex- posed, the crust which afterwards forms over it being black with thin and livid edges. _It is slow in progress, very painful, and of long duration.” Dr. Masterman, of the English Mission Hospital, Jerusalem, communicates a note (pp. 278ff.) in which he ex- presses agreement with Dr. Chaplin, and definitely rejects the identification with the Oriental boil, which is very common in Aleppo and Baghdad, and which, chronic and unresponsive to treatment, causes no great suffering. *S. It is not quite clear whether Job was sitting among the ashes in sign of grief for the loss of property and children when he was smitten with the disease, or whether, when the disease came, he went and sat on the ash- -heap outside the city. The latter is perhaps the more probable. Macalister (l.c. p. 329) says that Job sat among the ashes to mitigate the itching, but it is usually thought that it was in sign of mourning for the new disaster, or else that he had to leave his home and sit on the ash- heap with the lepers. — 9. The advice given to Job probably means, since this life of intolerable pain is all you get from God, curse God, that He may kill you outright, death being far better than the lingering torture to which you are now condemned. 10. By foolish is meant ‘impious,’ as in the margin (cf. Ps. xiv. I). ‘Wisdom’ and ‘folly’ have in Hebrew a moral rather than an intellectual significance. We should perhaps translate the second sentence, ‘Good shall we receive from God, and evil shall we not receive?’ with a strong emphasis on ‘good.’ It is a classical expression for the spirit of resignation, which recognizes God’s right as He sends one, so also, if it be His will, to send the other. with his lips. It is not meant that Job sinned in heart, though not in speech. It was asin with the lips that the Satan had predicted, but Job, so far from cursing God to His face, rebukes the suggestion that he should do so as impious, and F 2 68 JOB 2. 11—3.2. A 11 Nowwhen Job’s three friends heard of all this evil that was come upon him, they came every one from his own place; Eliphaz the Temanite, and Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite : and they made an appoint- ment together to come to bemoan him and to comfort 12 him. And when they lifted up their eyes afar off, and knew him not, they lifted up their voice, and wept ; and they rent every one his mantle, and sprinkled dust upon 13 their heads toward heaven. So they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him: for they saw that his grief was very great. 3 After this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day. a And Job answered and said: utters an expression of whole-hearted resignation. Thus the Satan is foiled once more, and is henceforth left out of account. ii, 11-13. Job’s three friends come to console him, and, after loud lamentations over his misery, sit in silence with him for seven days. The visit of his friends naturally occurred some time later than his second trial. News of his misfortunes would have to reach them, and then the journey would probably occupy a rather long time. Eliphaz is an Edomite name (Gen. xxxvi. 4), and Teman is closely connected with Edom. On Bildad see note on i. 1. According to Néldeke his name means ‘ Bel has loved.’ Naamah can hardly be the Naamah in Judah, mentioned Josh. xv. 41, but where it was we do not know. 12. knew him not: he was so disfigured by his disease ; cf. the description of the Suffering Servant of Yahweh, ‘so marred as not to be human was his visage,’ Isa. lii. 14. sprinkled dust. They flung heavenwards handfuls of dust, which fell on their heads. 13. His pain and the reverse of his fortunes strike them dumb, for when grief is so crushing, what form but silence can sym- pathy take? iii. I-10. Job curses the day of his birth and the night of his ° conception, praying that they may be blotted out of existence. iii, T1-19. Why did he not die at his birth and enjoy the quiet which comes to all alike in Sheol? JOB; Sc 3h A 69 Let the day perish wherein I was born, iii. 20-26. Why must the wretched, who long to die, be forced to live? Such is his fate, victim as he is of unceasing troubles. Through weary months of pain Job has brooded in silence on the cruel misery of his lot. Reduced in a day from wealth to beggary, bereaved at one stroke of all his children, smitten with an excruciating disease, tempted even by his dearest to curse God and have done with life, he had been nobly patient, submissive to God’s inscrutable will. But, single-handed, he found it more and more difficult to subdue rebellious misgivings of the righteous- ness of God. Of his own integrity he was sure, but what of God, who rewarded with torture the loyalty of His servant? And in this trouble of his soul there had been no one to help him. The old way of escape to God had been cut off, even his wife had abandoned the struggle to hold fast her faith, the sufferer was driven back on himself. In the great conflict, in which faith and doubt wrestle strenuously for his soul, the rooted piety of a life- time and the happy memory of God’s goodness retreat, though stubbornly, before the agonizing present. He knows himself to be in danger of losing the fear of the Almighty. All the more eagerly does he clutch at his friends to keep him from sinking, only to find that he has clutched at a straw. He is at last in the presence of his peers, holy men, deeply sympathetic, bound to him by ties of long affection. At last the iron frost of his reserve can thaw in the genial sunshine of their compassion. Unmanned in their presence he can weep and not be ashamed, can ‘cleanse his stuff’d bosom of the perilous stuff.’ He can free his soul of all the bitterness that has festered in it, confident that his friends will not judge harshly his desperate words. They will know that frankness is best, will not misjudge it, but after he has uttered all he feels, will soothe him and strengthen him in his resignation to God’s will. Vain hope! they are wise men, but no muttering of old saws will charm away this new disease, it is beyond their practice. 1. This chapter, as Cheyne reminds us (Job and Solomon, p. 15), was read by Swift on his birthday. It is modelled in its earlier part on Jeremiah’s passionate imprecations on the day of his birth, and on the man who brought the news of it to his father (Jer. XX. 14-18), 2. answered: since silence was speech more significant than speech could have been. 8. Job breaks out in keen resentment at the bitter wrong in his birth, done to him by the day that he curses. According to the thought underlying the expression, a day did not cease to be when it was succeeded by the following day. The same day 70 JOB 3.4. A And the night which said, There isa man child conceived. 4 Let that day be darkness ; Let not God regard it from above, would return in the following year. ‘The days of the year had a kind of life of their own (cf. Ps. xix. 2) and paid annually re- curring visits to mankind’ (Cheyne, Job and Solomon, p. 16). Hence it is no mere sentimental cursing of something which has passed into a nonentity where no curse can reach it, but of some- thing which each year returns to work its malignant will. Filled with the thought of its foul crime in bringing him to the birth, Job imprecates extinction on it, that it may be fitly punished for its guilt in the past and inflict no more misery in the future. Job’s complaint is not that he was born, but that it was this baneful day which gave him birth and doomed him to misery. Had he been born on a more fortunate day, life would have been happy for him. The thought is analogous to the astrological notion of birth under a lucky or unlucky star. To the un- sophisticated feeling of antiquity the curse was not merely the discharge of anger, in relief to the feelings of him who uttered it, but filled with an inherent energy which strove to realize its own fulfilment. It was taken seriously, hence the sustained passion, solemnity, and comprehensiveness of it. But behind the day of birth lay the night of conception. The night also lives its own life, utters its pregnant words, which forward or hinder the act of man. Hence the night, which spoke the ominous words ‘A man is conceived,’ not only disclosed a secret, but uttered a mystic spell, which sealed Job’s destiny to be conceived and born. We might also translate as in A. V. ‘the night i which it was said.’ But this is much weaker, and who is supposed to be able to say this? It would become more suitable if instead of ‘a man is conceived’ we followed several scholars in reading with the LXX ‘Behold a boy’ (Ut. male). The form Adérah, translated ‘is conceived,’ does not occur elsewhere. Nevertheless the Hebrew text gives a finer sense, and it is fitting that Job should curse not only the day of his birth, but the night of his conception. man child: properly ‘ man,’ looking at what he essentially is, not at the stage of developments he has reached, 4. Bickell, followed by Cheyne, strikes out the first line. It has no parallel. In that case what follows refers to the night mentioned in verse 3. This is also the case if, with the LXX, for ‘that day’ we read ‘that night’ (so Duhm, who thinks the parallel line is to be found in the second line of verse 9). The present text seems on the whole preferable ; otherwise the night gets an undue share of the curse. The LXX reading is probably due to verse 3. JOB 3. 5-7 A qi Neither let the light shine upon it. Let darkness and the shadow of death claim it for their 5 own ; Let a cloud dwell upon it ; Let all that maketh black the day terrify it. As for that night, let thick darkness seize upon it : 6 Let it not rejoice among the days of the year ; Let it not come into the number of the months. Lo, let that night be barren ; 7 regard (marg. ‘inquire after’): Jit, ‘seek.’ The days are summoned from their dwelling-place by God to play their part on earth and then return till their time comes again in the following year. So God commands the light, or the heavenly bodies, to come forth and take their appointed place (xxxviii; Isa. xl. 26). Let God pass this day over, when its turn arrives. light: the word so rendered (°harah) occurs only here, and this is conjectured to be its meaning. Cheyne suggests /’banah, a poetical word for the moon, ‘let not the moon show her splen- dour above it.’ This would require us to suppose that the night is here referred to. The poem, however, abounds in peculiar feminine nouns. 5. shadow of death (marg. ‘deep darkness’). The margin represents the usual view of scholars, who think the word should be pointed ¢salmuth. The R.V. text adopts the traditional theory that the word is correctly pointed /salmaweth and means ‘shadow of death.’ This view has been recently defended by Néldeke, who is followed by Marti, and whose arguments have convinced Budde (Expos. Times, viii. 384), who took the other view in his commentary. Wellhausen (Dre Kleinen Propheten, p. 81 rejects both. all that maketh black. The word so translated occurs nowhere else. It is supposed to mean ‘ obscurations of,’ and to be derived from a root meaning ‘to be black,’ whose existence, however, is dubious. The text may be incorrect. Cheyne very cleverly emends with slight alteration (4m06 ’or°ré yam) and gets the sense ‘let them affright it like those who lay a ban on the ocean.” As thus restored the line is very like a variant of the first line of verse 8, and is accordingly deleted. 6. rejoice among. He means let it be excluded from the festive band of the days that make up the year. The marg. ‘be joined unto’ representsa different pointing. It is supported by the LXX and parallelism with the next clause, but is more prosaic. 7. barren (marg. ‘solitary ’): the word properly means ‘stony.’ 42 JOB 3.8.9 A Let no joyful voice come therein. 8 Let them curse it that curse the day, Who are ready to rouse up leviathan. 9 Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark : Let it look for light, but have none ; Neither let it behold the eyelids of the morning : Here as in Isa. xlix. 21 it seems to mean ‘barren.’ Job wishes that it shall do to no others the wrong it did to him, let it be cursed with sterility, so that no shout of joy may ring out upon it for the birth of a child. 8. Usually the verse is explained of sorcerers, skilled to cause eclipses by rousing the dragon which catches the sun in its coils, who thus bring a curse upon the day. The superstition that eclipses are caused by a serpent is very widespread. Cheyne objects that we know of no magic to produce, but only to prevent, eclipses, andalso that the usual interpretation involvesan incomplete parallelism. He accepts a correction by Schmidt, also defended by Gunkel, and reads yam ‘sea’ for yom ‘day.’ He translates, ‘Let them curse it that lay a spell on the ocean, that have skill to arouse leviathan.’ In this case the sea, as is not unusual in those passages in the O. T. which reflect the older mythology, is regarded as the primaeval enemy of God, now crushed into submission. - In the ocean dwells leviathan, to be identified or connected with Tiamat, the chaos-dragon, who fought with and was conquered by the Creator. This is a tempting explanation, since it brings the passage into connexion with several others which have a similar reference. We should probably in that case explain that these sorcerers have the power to cast the dragon into slumber or to rouse it from its sleep. The reading of the text, which is retained by Budde and Duhm, has the advantage of a closer connexion with the context; Job thinks that the professional cursers of the day would perhaps more effectually help forward his desire. It is, of course, possible that the first and second lines are not con- nected, and that those who curse the day are not those who cause eclipses, but those who pronounce certain days in the calendar to be unlucky. On the whole it seems best to abide by the usual view. ready: better as in marg. ‘skilful.’ 9. the stars of the twilight are the harbingers of the day. Job desires that as they promise in the morning twilight that the night shall soon be followed by the day, these prophets of the dawn should fade into darkness, and that day never come to do others the unpardonable wrong it has done to him. eyelids of the morning. We have here the relic of a Dawn JOB 3. 10-13. A 73 Because it shut not up the doors of my modher’s womb, Nor hid trouble from mine eyes. Why died I not from the womb ? j Why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly ? Why did the knees receive me ? Or why the breasts, that I should suck? For now should I have lien down and been quiet ; I should have slept ; then had I been at rest : myth, as in Isa, xiv. 12, ‘O day star, son of the Dawn.’ The Dawn is thought of as a beautiful woman, and her eyelids are ‘the long streaming rays of morning light that come from the opening clouds that reveal the sun, an exquisite image’ (Davidson). Let the dayspring from on high never visit that night is Job’s prayer. P 10. This gives the reason for his curse, the night had not pre- vented his conception. If we read in verse 3 ‘Behold a man’ (see note), the reason will be that the night had not prevented his birth. It might have done so by delaying the birth to a more auspicious day, or by slaying his mother, or, according to ancient ideas, slaying himself before birth (cf. Jer. xx. 17). Ley thinks we should translate, ‘Because He (i.e. God) did not shut.’ But the other is much finer and more forcible. 11. If he had to be born, why could he not immediately have died? Duhm brings verse 16 into immediate connexion with this verse, following Beer, and deletes verse 12. The latter suggestion is less plausible than the former, since it rests on the theory that the poem was composed in four-lined stanzas, which makes this section too long or too short by one couplet, though it is also true that verse 13 does not connect perfectly with verse 12. 12. It was the custom for the father to take the child on his knees after birth, if he meant to acknowledge it and make himself responsible for its maintenance. The verse means why, when he was born, was he not left to perish, abandoned by his father, unnourished by his mother ? 13. From the tossing in agony which is his present lot he turns with a great longing to the deep unruffled peace of Sheol that might have been his, The conception of the after-life was of a dreary monotony, a bare existence without colour or interest, the dim shade, languid and strengthless dwelling amid other shades, in whom the flame of life flickered on but faintly, just escaping extinction, But for all its gloom, which Job himself 10 II 12 74 JOB 3: 1416 14 With kings and counsellors of the earth, Which built up waste places for themselves ; 15 Or with princes that had gold, Who filled their houses with silver : 16 Or as an hidden untimely birth I had not been; As infants which never saw light. can paint in the darkest hues, Sheol has one attraction for him which outweighs in his present mood all the rich interest of life. There he would at least be at rest. It is true that if the after-life has for Job no other attractions, it has also no extreme terrors ; it is a pale, negative, cheerless existence, but without any element of torture. 14. Had he died he would now have been dwelling with the mighty dead. The phrase ‘to build waste places’ is not un- common, and means to repair cities that have fallen into desolation. But this sense is too general here, since Job is speaking of some- thing they built for themselves. Ewald, followed by ‘several scholars, including Budde and Duhm, thought the meaning was ‘who built for themselves pyramids.’ The sense ‘ pyramids,’ however, cannot be proved, and the text is probably corrupt. The best emendation seems to be Cheyne’s, ‘ who built everlasting sepulchres’ (gibréth ‘olam). Fried. Delitzsch thinks there is a sarcastic allusion to the fact that kings often abandoned to ruin the cities built by their predecessors. For Sheol as the home of the dead we may compare Lucretius as paraphrased by Mr. Mallock (Lucretius on Life and Death, p. 36). *Ancus has gone before you down that road. Scipio, the lord of war, the all-dreaded goad Of Carthage, he, too, like his meanest slave Has travelled humbly to the same abode. Thither the singers and the sages fare, Thither the great queens with their golden hair. Homer himself is there with all his songs ; And even my Master’s mighty self is there. There, too, the knees that nursed you, and the clay That was a mother once, this many a day Have gone. Thither the king with crownéd brows: Goes, and the weaned child leads him on the way.’ 15. The reference may be to princes who filled their palaces with wealth, or to those with whom great treasure was buried. 16. The child born dead is hidden, buried at once out of sight. JOB 3. 17-21. A 75 There the wicked cease from troubling ; And there the weary be at rest. There the prisoners are at ease together ; They hear not the voice of the task-master. The small and great are there ; And the servant is free from his master. Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, And life unto the bitter in soul ; Which long for death, but it cometh not ; And dig for it more than for hid treasures ; If, as is not unlikely, we should connect with verse 11, we should take it, ‘Or why was I not as a hidden untimely birth.’ 17. In this lovely picture of Sheol’s calm, untroubled peace, it is not clear whether the wicked cease from tormenting others, or from agitating themselves. The former view is strongly suggested by verse 18, the latter is perhaps favoured by the second line of this verse (marg. ‘raging’). 18. Those who worked as captives under the pitiless lash and brutal insults of the overseer lie down to a rest they had not known on earth. 19. The inequalities of earth vanish in the dead level of society in Sheol. The slave has won his freedom, and his hard toil is for ever at an end. We should translate, ‘Small and great are there the same,’ i.e. all are in the same condition. a7 18 19 zo 2i 20. The exceeding sweetness of death only throws into relief — the misery of his continued existence from which he cannot escape. And at length he ventures to utter the ominous word, which shows how far he has drifted from the old moorings, and strikes the note for much that is to follow: ‘ Wherefore does He give light?’ We might translate impersonally as in R. V., but it is more probable that Job has God inhis mind. The feeling forces itself to the surface that it is God who keeps him lingering in his pain. He hints in verse 23 that he owes his calamity to God. In vi. 4 the lecture he has received from Eliphaz drives him to Say it outright. It is of his own bitterness that he is thinking most, though in the second line he widens his view to take in other wretches doomed to life, returning to his own in verse 23. 21. And dig for it more than for hid treasures. ‘There is not another comparison within the whole compass of human actions so vivid as this. I have heard of diggers actually fainting when they have come upon evenasingle coin, They become positively 76 JOB 3.22—4n A 22 Which rejoice exceedingly, And are glad, when they can find the grave? 23 Why ts light given to a man whose way is hid, And whom God hath hedged in? 24 For my sighing cometh before I eat, And my roarings are poured out like water. 25 For the thing which I fear cometh upon me, And that which I am afraid of cometh unto me. 26 I am not at ease, neither am I quiet, neither have I rest ; But trouble cometh. 4 ‘Then answered Eliphaz the Temanite, and said, frantic, dig all night with desperate earnestness, and continue to work till utterly exhausted. There are, at this hour, hundreds of persons thus engaged all over the country. Nota few spend their last farthing in these ruinous efforts’ (Thomson, The Land and the Book, p. 135). 22. exceedingly: marg. ‘unto exultation.” 23. He no longer knows which way to turn. It is God who has thus baffled him. The poet lets the second line fall from Job’s lips, that the reader may be reminded how in a very different sense the Satan also charged God with putting a hedge about Job. There protection, here arrest and bewilderment. 24. before I eat: this gives no suitable sense. The margin ‘like my meat’ is better, or we might translate, ‘instead of my meat’; his sighing is his daily bread, cf. ‘my tears have been my meat day and night.’ Duhm omits the verse. 25. the thing which I fear cometh. We should translate, ‘If I fear a fear, then it overtaketh me, and whatever I dread cometh upon me.’ Such is his misery that he has only to dread some evil to find it overtaking him. The margin, ‘the thing which I feared is come,’ gives a wrong sense, for Job’s happiness in his time of prosperity was not undermined with dread of the future. Rather, ‘I said, I shall die in my nest’ (xxix. 18). Similarly the past tenses in the margin of verse 26 give an incorrect sense. iv, v. Through seven days the friends have sat in silence, while the sufferer has been writhing in his pain. They, too, have no clue to its meaning, but only their general theory of life and their former acquaintance with Job to guide them. And these forces pulled in opposite directions, the former suggested that such JOB 4. yer ak 77 If one assay to commune with thee, wilt thou be grieved ? 2 accumulated sufferings implied some heinous sin as its cause, while the latter testified to his integrity. Yet not only have they watched his demeanour during the seven days of silence, but they have heard his deep imprecations, his bitter complaint at his birth, his longing for death, even the hint that God is responsible for his trouble. This speech, which was no balanced, calculated utterance, but the wild outpouring of a desperate man’s soul, pained and shocked his friends, who heard and criticized in cold blood. They still believed in Job’s essential piety, but felt that other elements had also to be reckoned with. Some grievous sin must lie behind his suffering; moreover, the temper in which he was bearing his punishment was wholly unbecoming to a religious man. There is no fault to be found with Eliphaz for the tone of his speech. It is very considerate and tender; but his theology has misled his diagnosis. Hence it served only to exasperate Job into open revolt, and thus to lead the friends to a darker view of his state. So the breach widens and the character-drama develops, as the factors implicit in the situation become clearly defined. iv, 1-11. Eliphaz cannot refrain from replying to Job. How strange that one who has sustained others should break down himself at the touch of trouble. His integrity should give him confidence, for experience shows that the innocent do not perish, but it is the wicked who are consumed by the blast of God’s anger. iv. r2—v. 8. The speaker has himself learnt in an awe-inspiring vision that not even the angels, and how much less frail mankind, can be accounted righteous by God. The foolish comes to an evil end through impatience. v. 9-16. Job would do far better to commit his cause to God, who, mighty in power and inscrutable in wisdom, exalts the lowly and overthrows the crafty in their scheming. v. 17-26. How blessed the man whom God chastens, so let Job receive humbly the chastening God inflicts on him. For if He smites, it is but to heal him, and bestow the richest happiness upon him, delivering him from all misfortune and blessing him with the fullest prosperity, his long life rounded off with green old age and a quiet death. 2. wilt thou be grieved: Ut, ‘wilt thou be weary.’ The word may refer to physical weariness; is Job too ill to listen to remonstrance? Or it may be metaphorical, in which case it may mean either to be vexed, or to be discouraged. The context suggests that it is not of physical exhaustion that he is thinking. Although he feels that he may irritate or depress his friend, the _ tone of Job’s speech leaves him no alternative but to reply. . 78 JOB 4. 3-8 A But who can withhold himself from speaking ? 3 Behold, thou hast instructed many, And thou hast strengthened the weak hands. 4 Thy words have upholden him that was falling, And thou hast confirmed the feeble knees. 5 But now it is come unto thee, and thou faintest ; It toucheth thee, and thou art troubled. 6 Is not thy fear of God thy confidence, And thy hope the integrity of thy ways? » Remember, I pray thee, who ever perished, being innocent? Or where were the upright cut off? 8 According as I have seen, they that plow iniquity, - 3, 4. It is the more surprising that Job should give way, since he has in the past so effectively strengthened the suffering and despondent. With his clear, deep insight into the ways of God he had helped the wavering and steadied them when tempted to rebel at the mysterious harshness of God’s dealings with them. Let him now apply to his own case the lessons he has so successfully taught to others. What Eliphaz fails to understand is that Job’s disease needs not an irritant but an emollient. A vivid realization of the pain he is suffering, the imagination which will enable him to put himself in Job’s place, a tender sympathy, a generous comprehension, these were the qualities that would have soothed the sufferer and rekindled his flickering trust * in God. ‘To him that is ready to faint kindness should be shewed from his friend’ (vi. 14), ‘A glimmering wick he will not quench.’ 5. ‘One would really suppose Job to have broken down at the first taste of trouble? (Cheyne, Job and Solomon, p. 18). 6, 7. Eliphaz means quite seriously that Job is a pious and upright man. Grave slips may, indeed, have tarnished his record, yet he is genuinely good, the set and drift of his soul are towards God and righteousness. Then let this conscious integrity be his encouragement, For if he will bethink himself of the teachings of history and experience, he will discover that the upright do not perish, discipline and punishment are not pushed to the point of destruction. ‘Fear of God’ recalls the description of Job as ‘one that feared God’; ‘the integrity of thy ways’ recalls ‘that man was perfect and upright.’ 8. Rather, as Eliphaz can testify from his own experience, it is JOB 4. 9-12. A 79 And sow trouble, reap the same. By the breath of God they perish, And by the blast of his anger are they consumed, The roaring of the lion, and the voice of the fierce lion, And the teeth of the young lions, are broken. The old lion perisheth for lack of prey, And the whelps of the lioness are scattered abroad. Now a thing was secretly brought to me, And mine ear received a whisper thereof. those who deliberately sow mischief, after carefully preparing the ground to receive it, who invariably reap a harvest of trouble. Cf. Hos. viii. 7, x. 13. 9. Their destiny is to perish in the wrath of God. Job, itis true, might seem to have sunk into trouble as deep as that referred to in verse 8. But as his life has been different, so also will be his fate ; he will not ‘perish’ as they do (verse 7). 10,11. The wicked are compared with a den of lions, and their destruction with an attack made upon it. In this attack the lions are not slain, but the teeth of the fully-grown are broken. No longer able to seize and devour his prey, the lion dies of hunger, _ and the cubs which cannot provide for themselves, and have lost the care of their dam, are scattered abroad. Five different words are used here. ‘ Fierce lion’ is rather roaring or hoarse lion, ‘Young lions’ are lions in their early vigour. Elzas says, ‘ The Arabs boast that they have four hundred names by which to designate thelion.’ Similarly G. E. Post, Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible, iii. 126. Merx and Siegfried strike out verses 10, 11, and Duhm thinks verses 8-11 are a later interpolation. It is true that the drift of _ them is not quite clear, as they might be intended to suggest that Job’s calamity is due to his sin, and hold up a warning picture of | the fate to which he is moving. If so, the verses are probably | not original here, for this is not the position Eliphaz takes up at this stage of the debate. But it seems quite easy to suppose that | here Eliphaz is contrasting Job’s case with that of the wicked, , and the strictly unnecessary amplification in verses 10, 11 has parallels elsewhere. 12. He enforces the truth upon Job that no creature can be spot- less in God’s sight, not even the angels, who are pure spirit, far | less men, formed out of the dust and so frail that they are crushed with ease. This lesson he had learnt for himself in an experience the horror of which is renewed as he relates it. The description 9 10 if 12 80 JOB 4.1314 A 13 In thoughts from the visions of the night, When deep sleep falleth on men, 14 Fear came upon me, and trembling, Which made all my bones to shake. of it ranks with the most wonderful triumphs of genius in the world’s literature. This is displayed less in the delineation of the physical effects of terror than in the power with which the poet conveys a sense of the vague and impalpable, and the awe inspired by the wholly-felt but dimly known. The revelation came stealthily to him, and fell on his ear in a whisper, with all the dread which gathers about the secret uttered in a tone which the listener alone can hear. Already his mind had been engaged in deep pondering, arising from visions he had seen in the en- tranced sleep of the seer. As he meditates, he is suddenly seized with a panic, which causes all his limbs to tremble. Then a breath moves across his face, deepening his horror of the uncanny visitant. The nameless thing stands still, and seeking to know the worst, he strains his eyes to make out the figure before him. But he can see nothing, except that some form is there ; all is dim and intangible, making his heart quail with the dread of the un- known. Then, as he lies helpless in the grip of his fear, he is conscious of a voice, which just breaks the awful stillness, and teaches him the lesson he now impresses on Job. 13. Eliphaz is a seer who is privileged to see night visions, He does not mean that while ordinary men were wrapped in deep slumber he was receiving visions in a state of wakefulness. The night is the season when the deep sleep of trance falls upon the clairvoyant, when the senses are blunted to the external world, but the spirit is the more sensitive to the things which lie be- yond the realm of sight. It is thus in the quiet evening when the tumult of the day dies down, or in the intenser stillness of the night, that the seer, no longer distracted by the cares and bustle of the’ world, finds the inward eye open to see its visions. Thus the author of the very interesting, and, for the psychological con- ditions of the prophetic state, important passage, Isa. xxi. I-10, speaks of ‘the twilight that I desired’ (verse 4). Eliphaz was meditating on what he had seen in his trances, when the ex- perience he proceeds to describe befell him. It was not of the same character as his visions, but came to him when he was fully, awake (cf. Isa. 1. 4). 14. First of all comes the terror, with no apparent cause; here the description has often been verified in similar experiences, the sudden sense of the presence being felt before it has made itself manifest to ear, eye, or touch. a eae JOB 4. 15-18. A 81 Then a spirit passed before my face ; 15 The hair of my flesh stood up. It stood still, but I could not discern the appearance 16 thereof ; A form was before mine eyes: There was silence, and I heard a voice, saying, Shall mortal man be more just than God ? 17 Shall a man be more pure than his Maker ? Behold, he putteth no trust in his servants ; 18 15. a spirit passed before. This translation may be correct, d it is adopted by Ewald and Duhm. But more probably we should translate as in the margin, ‘a breath passed over’ ; the cold wind which is said to be felt in such experiences. The speaker slips into the imperfect tense, here equivalent to our present, as the old horror masters him and he shudders once again with vivid realization, ‘ a breath passes over my face,’ &c. 16. If we translate ‘a breath’ in verse 15, the subject of the verb is left unexpressed. ‘It stood still’ thus creates a far more powerful impression than if Eliphaz had named it. It is un- named because it is unknown, and thus the vagueness, which characterizes the description, here also heightens the terror. The last words are usually translated as in the margin, ‘I heard a still voice,’ the two nouns ‘silence and a voice’ being taken as a hendiadys. The translation ‘there was stillness and I heard a voice’ yields a finer sense, the dead hush and then the voice. That the voice was faint and thin we know already from verse 12. So the spirits of the dead chirp and mutter, Isa. viii. 19. The revelation came to Elijah with a still small voice, which stood in striking contrast to the crash and roar of the elements, here the low voice is in contrast to the utter stillness that had preceded it. 17. After so awestruck an introduction we expect an original and impressive revelation. This we do not get according to the R.V. text. So trivial a commonplace as that man is not more right- eous than God needed no vision to declare it; and it is quite irrelevant in this connexion. No one maintains the opposite; it is only ata later stage that Job impugns the righteousness of God. We should therefore translate as in the margin, ‘be just before God,’ ‘be pure before his Maker.’ The translation, adopted by Kautzsch, ‘can man be right as against God?’ would also suit better a later stage in the discussion. 18. The servants of God are, as the next line shows, the angels, The angelology of the O.T. and of Jewish theology, G 82 JOB 4. 19-21. A And his angels he chargeth with folly : 19 How much more them that dwell in houses of clay, Whose foundation is in the dust, Which are crushed before the moth ! 20 Betwixt morning and evening they are destroyed: They perish for ever without any regarding it. a1 Is not their tent-cord plucked up within them? They die, and that without wisdom. largely also of the N.T., does not recognize the distinction between good and evil angels (see note on i. 6). We should therefore take this passage inits obvious sense, and not force it into harmony with later views. folly. The word so translated (¢ohd/ah) occurs only here, so* that its meaning is uncertain. According to Dillmann it is con- nected with an Ethiopic verb meaning ‘to err,’ In that case the word will mean ‘error.’ It is not unlikely that we should correct the text slightly and read “iphlah, the word translated ‘ foolishness’ in i, 22. 19. Since the angels are spirit, they are more akin to God than men are, for the latter are material, dwelling in bodies made of clay, rooted in the earthy. As such, men are also exposed to physical sins, to which spiritual beings would not, it might seem, be tempted. Yet the narrative in Gen. vi. 1-4 shows that Hebrew thought regarded it as possible for the elohim, spirit though they were, to be tempted by sensual passion, and lead Yahweh to declare that this unhallowed mixture of spirit and flesh should not continue. The reason for man’s impurity in God’s sight is his material nature, the physical is also the morally frail. An instruc- tive parallel is Ps, Ixxviii. 39, ‘And he remembered that they were but flesh; A wind that passeth away, and cometh not again.’ foundation: i.e. of the houses, carrying on the metaphor. before the moth: the meaning may be sooner than the moth is crushed, but this is improbable. It would be better to trans- late ‘like’ as in the margin, and perhaps in iii. 24; cf. Ps. xxxix. 11. Fried. Delitzsch thinks that the word translated ‘moth’ is a distinct word, meaning a flimsy structure of some kind, 20. Their brief life does not span the period from sunrise to sunset, and when they die no one observes an event so trifling. The first words of the verse are more literally rendered in the margin ‘from morning to evening’; cf. Isa. xxxviii. 12. 21. The margin translates, ‘Is not their excellency which is in them removed?’ But the text is better, death is compared to the i JOB 5. 1,2 A 83 Call now ; is there any that will answer thee ? And to which of the holy ones wilt thou turn ? For vexation killeth the foolish man, plucking up of a tent-cord and taking down of the tent. Here again cf. Isa. xxxviii. 12, Further, man is so constituted that as he lives so he dies without attaining wisdom. v. 1. The verse seems to mean that it would be useless for Job to appeal to the angels against God. It would be an exhibition of impotent wrath, that, as verse 2 proceeds to say, would lead to his destruction. It seems strange, however, that Eliphaz should suppose Job to contemplate such a course, according] Duhm, following Siegfried, strikes out the verse, connecting v. 2 closely with iv. 2t. But this connexion is only superficially good. For iv. 21 speaks of the common lot of frail man; v. 2ff., of the destruction of the fool through his own irritation. Besides, the verse is too striking for a glossator, and how should he have inserted it in a context apparently so inappropriate? When we look more closely into the context we discover points of connexion. Eliphaz has already explained that the angels are so imperfect that God puts no trust in them, and charges them with folly (iv. 18). The thought of the close connexion between God and the angels on one side, and man and the angels on the other, led not unnaturally to the thought that the angels might intercede for man, a thought that may be expressed by Elihu (xxxiii. 23), and is found in Enoch. It was, therefore, not wholly unnatural for Eliphaz to warn Job against being driven by his desperation to invoke the angels. This warning finds its completion in verse 8, so that the general thought would be, Do not appeal to the angels who cannot help you, and thus draw down the penalty of your exasperation, but commit your cause to the all-powerful omniscient God, who can save you out of your distress. The case is parallel with the ex- hortation given by Paul to the Colossians that they should not worship angels who are themselves far from perfect, and power- less to help, but the all-sufficient Saviour in whom the fullness of the Godhead dwells. On the possible relation of verse 7 to this verse, see note on verses 6, 7. the holy ones. This designation of the angels is often thought to suggest that they, pure beings as they are, would turn with abhorrence from one who thus appealed to them. But probably ‘holy’ has here no ethical significance ; it would be strange if it had, after iv..18. Budde’s translation ‘heavenly ones’ brings out the meaning more correctly. They are supernatural beings, who live superior to the material limitations of earth, That is why Job might not unreasonably appeal to them. 2. Reason why Job should not appeal to the angels: it would G 2 84 JOB 5.3,4. A _ And jealousy slayeth the silly one. 3 I have seen the foolish taking root : But suddenly I cursed his habitation. 4 His children are far from safety, And they are crushed in the gate, Neither is there any to deliver them. be a manifestation of temper that would lead to his death. True, Job longed for death, and might be tempted to turn from God to the angels, feeling that in any case, whether it brought death or release from pain, his lot could not be worse. Eliphaz, however, looks forward to Job’s restoration and long life, and therefore bids him not let his exasperation so master him that he flings his chances away. jealousy: the margin ‘indignation’ suits the context much better. 3. It is generally agreed that the second half of the verse needs correction. In its present form its meaning is not clear, It may be, ‘1 foresaw and pronounced his doom,’ but this does not suit ‘suddenly’ ; why should he have uttered his prediction suddenly? This objection does not lie against the view that he saw the stroke of judgement fall, and then declared that it was God’s curse which was being executed, since in that case the curse is uttered in consequence of a sudden catastrophe. But this is not the natural sense of the passage, which is rather, ‘I saw him flourish, but I cursed his habitation, and it was blasted in consequence of my curse.’ Here again ‘suddenly’ is not suitable, and in spite of the power believed to lie in a curse, it is not likely that the speaker means that he effected the ruin of the foolish. He is illustrating from his own experience the principle enunciated in verse 2; he is naturally therefore only an observer of, not an agent in, the destruction. We rather expect a mention of the actual fate that befell the foolish thus suddenly. Several emendations have been proposed. An easy one is to read, ‘but suddenly his habitation became rotten.’ Since ‘rotten,’ however, is not very appropriate to ‘ habitation,’ we might possibly do better to correct the latter word also, with Cheyne, and read, ‘ but suddenly his branch became rotten,’ thus securing a correspondence with ‘taking root’ in the previous line. Budde reads ‘became empty.’ 4. Fate of his orphans. Deprived of their once powerful protector, the children are exposed to many perils, are too weak to help letting themselves be crushed (this is the sense of the Hithpael) in the gate, where the administration of justice is at the mercy of the strong arm and the long purse. . JOB 5. 5,6: A 85 Whose harvest the hungry eateth up, And taketh it even out of the thorns, And the snare gapeth for their substance, For affliction cometh not forth of the dust, 5. For Whose harvest we might better read ‘what they have reaped’ (so many scholars with LXX). They cannot secure their grain against theft. even out of the thorns: as usually explained the meaning is that they break through the thorn hedge into the field to plunder the corn. But this is not very probable; why should they trouble te do this in order to get into the field? Thomson (The Land and the Book, p. 348) suggests other explanations, either they ‘leave nothing behind them, not even that which grew among thorns,’ or the reference is to the custom of farmers to lay aside the grain after threshing in some private place near the floor, ‘ and cover it up with thorn-bushes to keep it from being carried away or eaten by animals. Robbers who found and seized this would literally take it from among thorns.’ Several scholars think the original text is not preserved, but no satisfactory emendation has been proposed. Bickell and Duhm strike out the clause, which does not suit the scheme of four-lined stanzas. the snare gapeth for their substance. This yields no very satisfactory sense. Budde retains it in his translation, and Davidson thinks it is safest, though he admits that it is ‘ rather vague and colourless.’ Generally the view, mentioned in the Margin as adopted by ‘many ancient versions,’ that instead of ‘the snare gapeth’ we should translate ‘the thirsty swallow up,’ is accepted. We thus get a parallel to ‘the hungry eateth up’ in the first line. But this is open to a double objection, the verb is singular, while the noun is plural, so that some correction is required, and the line ‘the thirsty swallow their substance’ would in any case be infelicitous, but doubly so when parallel to literal eating by the hungry in the first line. But instead of inferring from this that we had better put up with the un- satisfactory line ‘the snare gapeth for their substance,’ it is surely better to get a perfect parallelism by correcting ‘substance’ into something which satisfies the thirsty as the harvest satisfies the hungry, some form of drink, as that was some form of food. Either Duhm’s ‘and the thirsty draws from their well,’ or Beer’s ‘and the thirsty drink their milk,’ yields a good sense and parallelism with slight emendation.. The latter is perhaps preferable. 6, 7. These verses are far fam clear. They are often supposed to deny the spontaneous origin of human trouble; it does not 86 JOB 5.7 A Neither doth trouble spring out of the ground ; 7 But man is born unto trouble, As the sparks fly upward. spring like weeds from the ground, but arises out of the evil conduct of men. The connexion would seem to be, I have seen the unrighteous fall suddenly from prosperity to ruin, for trouble does not come without a cause. This is not a very good logical connexion; we should rather have expected, I have seen the ruin of the unrighteous, for sin does not fail to have its effect. Budde explains that Eliphaz argues back here from effect to cause, rather than, as we should expect, from cause to effect, because the effect, i.e. Job’s affliction, constituted his starting-point. But, apart from the logical inversion, of which it is questionable whether Budde’s explanation is satisfactory, it is noteworthy that the thought is so obscurely expressed. To say that trouble does not spring from the dust means that trouble does not arise without a cause is precarious, but it is still more so to read in the further thotght that this cause is man’s own sin. In iv. 19 we learn that the moral defect of men is due partly to the fact that like the angels they are creatures, partly to the fact that unlike them they dwell in bodies formed of dust. But Duhm is hyper- critical when he argues that this implies, in contradiction to our verse, that trouble does spring out of the dust. The uncertainty of meaning is enhanced by the fact that verse 7 is capable of so many interpretations. The word translated ‘is born’ may be pointed in five different ways, but the main question is whether we should translate ‘man is born to trouble” or ‘man begets trouble.’ The former view is that usually taken, but the latter is also possible ; the meaning would then be that man has himself to thank for the trouble he has to suffer. The sense of the second line is even more uncertain. As the margin indicates, the word translated ‘sparks’ is more literally ‘the sons of flame or of lightning.’ If we adopt the usual view, that the phrase means ‘sparks,’ the meaning will be, just as surely as sparks fly upward. But it is not at all certain that it does mean ‘sparks.’ Cheyne suggested ‘burning arrows’ shot high in the air and ready to fall on the guilty. Some think the reference is to birds; Siegfried, indeed, corrects the text and reads ‘the eagle race’ (s#esher for resheph). Fried. Delitzsch explains that they are men who are all fire and flame, blind zealots who fly on high and vanish without atrace. It is possible that Schlottmann and G. Hoffmann have best hit the meaning, they take ‘the race of flame’ to be angels (the Targum had similarly explained that they are demons). It is quite true that we cannot establish this sense by any parallels, though the angels are closely connected with the stars, It fits in JOB 5. 8-1. A 87 But as for me, I would seek unto God, And unto God would I commit my cause: Which doeth great things and unsearchable ; Marvellous things without number : Who giveth rain upon the earth, And sendeth waters upon the fields: So that he setteth up on high those that be low ; well with the general context. In verse 1 Eliphaz has condemned recourse to the angels, here he gives the reason, they soar far above human trouble, and continues, in verse 8, 1 would in your case commit myself to God. This is not to be refuted by pointing out the prevalence of a belief in the intercession of angels, for Eliphaz may be directly controverting it. The suggestion might perhaps be hazarded that the text may at one time have expressed clearly the contrast which is now dimly present in ‘from the dust’ and ‘soar on high.’ Are we nct following the wrong clue in explaining ‘not from the dust’ to mean ‘ without a cause’? The contrast suggested by ‘not from the dust’ is that trouble comes from on high (cf. Longfellow’s ‘these severe afilictions Not from the ground arise’). The ‘race of flame’ might in that case conceivably be regarded as the author of human trouble. Or possibly verse 6 may have originally said that trouble does spring from the dust, therefore (verse 7) man is doomed to it by the conditions of his earthly life, but the angels escape since they soar high above earth. It is not possible to feel any confidence as to the meaning, but the verses strike one as too powerful and original to favour Wellhausen’s view, accepted by Beer, Siegfried, and Duhn, that they are an interpolation. 8. Now Eliphaz passes from this assertion of the folly of irritation and urges him to entrust his cause to God. The Hebrew expresses with much emphasis the contrast between what Job is doing and what the speaker would do in his place. He has so little sounded the depths of Job’s trouble as to be unaware that Job felt his way to God cut off. 9. God’s greatness and power should be the ground of Job’s confidence in appealing to Him. 11. So that he setteth up. If this is closely connected with verse 10, the sense yielded by this translation or by the more obvious rendering of the A. V. ‘to set up’ is not at all satisfactory. We need not on that account strike out verse to, with Duhm, as foreign to the argument and breaking the connexion between verses 8; 9 and verses 11, 12; for verse 11 may refer to the general idea of verses 9, Io. It is possible to translate ‘setting up,’ 9° ‘9 Ic IT 88 JOB 5, 12-15. A And those which mourn are exalted to safety. 12 He frustrateth the devices of the crafty, So that their hands cannot perform their enterprise. 13 He taketh the wise in their own craftiness : — And the counsel of the froward is carried headlong, 14 They meet with darkness in the day-time, And grope at noonday as in the night, 15 But he saveth from the sword of their mouth, Even the needy from the hand of the mighty. co-ordinating the clause with what precedes, as a fresh example of God’s working. The truth expressed is general, but there is also a special reference to Job’s case. 12. A favourite idea of Hebrew wisdom that, while God exalts the lowly, He brings to nought the plans of the haughty, cannot perform their enterprise, marg. ‘can perform nothing of worth.’ The word translated enterprise (¢ushiyyah) belongs to the technical vocabulary of the Wisdom Literature, and is found with two exceptions (Isa. xxviii. 29; Mic. vi. 9) only in Job and Proverbs. A root yashah is generally assumed for it, but as it nowhere occurs, and its meaning is disputed, this gives us no clue to the sense of the derivative. Some make the idea of wisdom, rationality, prominent, but the context here and in vi. 13 favours the meaning success, something substantial and effectual... In both places the new Oxford Lexicon renders ‘ abiding success.’ 13. The quotation from this verse in 1 Cor, ‘ili, 19 is the only quotation from Job in the New Testament. 14, Cf, Deut. xxviii. 29, They are struck intellectually with darkness and grope as the men of Sodom or Elymas did literally when struck with physical darkness (Gen. xix. 115 Acts xili. 11; cf. 2 Kings vi. 18-20), 15. It seems clear that the text is corrupt. The. usual parallelism is wanting, and the words ‘he saveth the poor from the sword, from their mouth’ yield no satisfactory sense. They are explained ‘from the sword, i.e. their mouth,’ or ‘from the sword which comes out of their mouth,’ or ‘from the. sword, which is their mouth,’ i. e. their instrument} of devouring. » Several point the consonants of the word translated ‘ from the sword? differently (mohérab for méhereb). _Thus we should get-the sense, ‘ But he saves the desolate from their mouth, and, from the hand of the mighty, thé poor.’ This is generally rejected now on the ground that this word ‘ desolate’ is elsewhere used only of cities, never JOB 5. 16-19, A 89 So the poor hath hope, And iniquity stoppeth her mouth. Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: Therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty. For he maketh sore, and bindeth up ; He woundeth, and his hands make whole. He shall deliver thee in six troubles ; of persons. Some omit the second ‘from,’ ‘he saves from the sword of their mouth.’ The word translated ‘the poor’ comes in the Hebrew at the end of the second line, and we need a similar word in the first line to balance it. Budde strikes out ‘from the sword’ and inserts ‘ the orphan’ after ‘ from their mouth,’ so that the verse would run, ‘ he saves from their mouth the orphan, and, from the hand of the mighty, the poor.’ Siegfried reads, ‘he saves from the sword the needy, and, from the hand of the mighty, the poor.’ Either of these is an improvement on the present text. 16..The second line occurs in a very similar form in Ps. cvii. 42. The wicked are dumb with confusion when they see the ignominious failure of their schemes, and the exaltation of the despised, whose ruin they had been contriving. 17. And now, in a beautiful and glowing peroration, Eliphaz depicts the happiness of him who is chastened by God, and paints a lovely picture of the blessedness awaiting Job, if he receives God’s chastisement aright. Yet for all its sweet and soothing eloquence and promise of idyllic peace, the noble rhetoric rings hollow to Job’s ear. For its fundamental as- sumption is that Job’s suffering is punishment for sin, and his restoration conditional on meek submission to God’s discipline. Thus the words, which were meant to be healing, make his wounds smart the more. For how could he believe such comfort- ing assurances, when his experience taught him only too plainly how God could torture the blameless? The thought of the blessedness of the man whom God chastens is not unusual in the later Hebrew literature. A close parallel with the present verse is Prov. iii. 11, 12, which is quoted Heb. xii. 5, 6. Cf. Ps. xciv. 12, and the development given to the thought in the speeches of Elihu. : is. Cf. Hos. vi. 1, Deut. xxxii. 39. God’s drastic surgery is for the sufferer’s higher good, and the hand that uses the knife without flinching is also the gentle hand that tenderly binds up the wound. 19, The description that follows reminds one rather strikingly 8 19 9° JOB 5. 20-23. A Yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee. zo In famine he shall redeem thee from death ; And in war from the power of the sword. a1 Thou shalt be hid from the scourge of the tongue ; Neither shalt thou be afraid of destruction when it cometh. 22 At destruction and dearth thou shalt laugh ; Neither shalt thou be afraid of the beasts of the earth. 23 For thou shak be in league with the stones of the field ; And the beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee. of the exquisite ninety-first Psalm. The thrilling language is that of a truly pious man who feels deeply the truths he is expounding, and would fain uplift Job with the confidence that inspires him as he speaks. Once more God's hedge will be about him so that no evil can touch him. 21. We might translate, ‘when the tongue lasheth.’ The sense is good, though, as Duhm points out, we should rather in this context have expected a noun meaning ‘ pestilence.’ Possibly the text originally read this. We should then have the ‘four sore judgements,’ enumerated by Ezekiel : ‘the sword, and the famine, and the noisome beasts, and the pestilence ’ (Ezek. xiv. 21, cf. verses 13-19; v.17). Pestilence and destruction also occur in Ps, xci. 6. For ‘destruction’ in this verse Hoffmann reads ‘a demon’ (shéd for shdd). This strikes a modern reader as rather grotesque, but to the ancients it was more serious. The ‘terror by night’ was more real to them, and even to day Lilith has not ceased to be a peril dreaded by many Jews. There is no need to alter the pointing, though if it is retained the repetition of ‘destruction’ in verse 22 is curious. 22. Neither shalt thou be afraid: the translation misses a point here. The negative is not the same as that used in verse 21. That simply expressed the fact ‘thou shalt not fear.” This imports into the thought the speaker’s point of view, ‘thou needest not fear.’ 23. There runs through much of the Old Testament a deep sense of the sympathy between man and nature, which often finds expression in the prophetic descriptions of the happy future. Here the thought is poetically expressed that he need not fear famine (verse 22), for the stones will keep out of his field. It can surely hardly be meant that the very stones will bring forth corn and fruit, we might in that case compare Matt. iii. 9, iv. 3. Paul also thinks of the lot of Nature as inextricably bound up with that JOB 5. 24—6.1. A gt And thou shalt know that thy tent is in peace ; And thou shalt visit thy fold, and shalt miss nothing. Thou shalt know also that thy seed shall be great, And thine offspring as the grass of the earth. Thou shalt come to thy grave in a full age, Like as a shock of corn cometh in in its season. Lo this, we have searched it, so it is ; Hear it, and know thou it for thy good. Then Job answered and said, of man, and catches the undertone of pain with which she groans, - waiting for that redemption which can come only with man’s complete adoption (Rom. viii. 19-22). Cf. also, for the second line, Isa. xi. 6-9 24. For fold the marg. gives ‘habitation,’ for shalt miss no- thing, it gives ‘shalt not err.’ The text is in both cases preferable. 25. From the conventional list of earthly blessings a numerous posterity could not be absent, so Eliphaz, carried away by his own eloquence, includes it here, forgetting that Job's children had all been destroyed. It is not likely that the poet means him to predict consciously what we read in xlii. 13, though it would be quite in his manner to put an unconscious prediction in the mouth of one of the friends. He rather suggests that Eliphaz’s consolation is too conventional. 26. 2 full age: the word so translated occurs only here and in xxx. 2. It probably means ‘a ripe old age.’ Eliphaz can hold out no hope beyond the grave, but promises all that is possible, a long life and death without the failure of powers that usually attends old age. In the Epilogue we are told that after his restoration Job lived twice the threescore years and ten that are assigned in Ps. xc. ro as the normal limit of man’s whole life. 27. Looking back, not simply on his peroration but on his whole speech, Eliphaz affirms that it embodies the investigations into truth of himself and his friends, and bids Job lay it to heart. Hear it: we should probably read with the LXX, ‘we have heard it,’ the Hebrew text being strange. No change in the con- sonants is involved. vi. 1-13. Job begins his reply to Eliphaz with the wish that his pain might be balanced against his irritation, for then his desperate words would be abundantly justified. It is God who has drunk his strength with poisoned arrows, God’s terrors that are arrayed against him, The animals do not complain without reason, no 92 JOB 6. 2,3, A» 2 Oh that my vexation were but weighed, And my calamity laid in the balances together ! 3 For now it would be heavier than the sand of the seas: Therefore have my words been rash, more does he. He loathes his afflictions. Oh that God would slay him outright! he cannot endure his sufferings. vi. 14-30. In his despair he had looked to his friends for kind- ness, but had been bitterly disappointed. They were like streams, which offered abundant supply of water in the winter when they were not needed, but in the summer betrayed the caravans, which trusted in them to be saved from death. Job had not asked a gift or protection from them.. Their arguments are worthless ; they take too seriously the wild words of despair; they are devoid of pity. Let them receive the solemn assurance of his innocence. vii. 1-21. How hard is man’s lot! Job’s life is one of misery, swiftly speeding him in wretchedness to irretrievable death, So he will speak plainly out of his soul’s bitterness: Why should God watch him as if he were dangerous, and plague him with such torments? Is man of such moment that God must needs spy on all his actions? can Job’s sin hurt God? why does not God freely forgive him, before forgiveness is too late? The bitter complaint of the third chapter had elicited reproof rather than sympathy. Eliphaz had condemned Job’s impatience, ignoring his provocation, and had hinted that his trouble was occasioned by his sin. Such treatment shocked and angered the sufferer ; it drove him into open criticism of God and scornful denunciation of his friends, both mingled with touching and pitiful appeal. Conscious of his own integrity he could not understand how his trusted friends could question it. His full misery comes home to him in the distorted refléction of himself that he sees in the minds of his friends, and God’s cruelty seems all the more glaring that it has wounded him in his honour. Hence while in the complaint he only obscurely referred to God as the author of his trouble, he now attacks God without disguise. vi. 2. Job begins with a reference to the criticism of his im- patience (v. 2; cf. iv. 5). He wishes that it could be weighed against his pain; it would not then appear excessive. together: i.e. with my impatience, though the meaning might be ‘in its totality,’ i.e. all my calamity. 3. Cf. Proy. xxvii, 3: ‘A stone is heavy, and the sand weighty ; But a fool’s vexation is heavier than them both.’ rash, or ‘wild’; cf. verse 26. The admission relates rather to the form of the language than to its substance. His fevered JOB 6. 4-6. A 93 For the arrows of the Almighty are within me, ; 4 The poison whereof my spirit drinketh up: The terrors of God do set themselves in array against me. Doth the wild ass bray when he hath grass ? 5 Or loweth the ox over his fodder ? Can that which hath no savour be eaten without salt? 6 Or is there any taste in the white of an egg? utterances are due to the poison with which the Almighty has tipped His arrows (verse 4). 4. At last Job names God as the author of his troubles. It is because the pains he suffers are sent by the hand of the Almighty that they terrify and paralyse him. His spirit has drunk in the poison, which has sapped his inner strength. Changing the metaphor, he represents the terrors of God as assailing him like ahostile army. But the text may be wrong. Several scholars, including Dillmann, Budde, and Duhm, transpose two consonants, and read, ‘the terrors of God do trouble me.’ Duhm attaches to this verse the first line of verse 7, correcting ‘to touch ¢hem,’ with the LXX, into ‘to be quiet,’ the alteration required in the Hebrew being quite slight. See further on verse 7. 5. If the wild ass or ox have their desires satisfied, they do not complain; neither would Job complain, were there no adequate cause. His friends should infer from his complaints the depth of his suffering. So Amos argues that phenomena must have an adequate cause, and that the very fact of his appearance as a prophet should convince his hearers that Yahweh is about to bring some judgement to pass (Amos ili. 3-8). fodder: the word means ‘ mixed fodder,’ which was specially liked by the cattle. .6. We may translate the first line as in R. V., or we may trans- late, ‘Can that be eaten which is tasteless and without salt?’ The meaning of the second line is disputed. The phrase translated ‘the white of an egg’ means literally the slime about the yolk. The objection that the Jews learnt poultry-keeping from the Persians is not coaclusive against this, though the phrase itself is curious. Some think a plant is intended, and that we should translate ‘the juice of purslain’ (see marg.) or ‘ purslain broth.’ Klostermann says that the LXX read ‘in dréam words,’ and he adopts this, taking the meaning to be that the friends should not interpret Job’s fevered words as if they expressed his fundamental convictions. The change in the Hebrew is trifling, and Kamp- hausen, who judges Klostermann’s emendations very unfavourably as a rule, thinks that this one deserves consideration. 94 JOB 6, y-10, A » My soul refuseth to touch them ; They are as loathsome meat to me. 8 Oh that I might have my request ; And that God would grant me the thing that I long for! 9 Even that it would please God to crush me ; That he would let loose his hand, and cut me off! to Then should I yet have comfort ; Yea, I would exult in pain that spareth not: For I have not denied the words of the Holy One. 7. The margin translates the verse, ‘ What things my soul refused to touch, these are as my loathsome meat.’ If the Hebrew text is correct, this does not seem to be an improvement. The second line is, however, very strange, literally it means ‘they are as the sickness of my food,’ i.e, apparently, they are like diseased food to me, the reference being to his sufferings, cf, iii.24. Bickell strikes out the whole verse. Duhm, however, makes a very clever suggestion, As already mentioned, he transfers the first line to the end of verse 4, getting the couplet, ‘The terrors of God do trouble me, my soul refuses to be quiet.’ The second line then has no parallel, and he thinks it originated out of an Aramaic gloss on the last words of verse 6, meaning ‘that is now called white of egg.’ Ley alters a single consonant and obtains the sense, ‘they make me loathe my food.’ 8, 9. As Job dwells on the thought that his sufferings only too fully justify his complaint, the sense of all his long pain breaks on him with such overwhelming power that he vehemently cries for God to smite him so that He should not need to strike again. His deepest longing (as in ch. iii) is that God would put him out of his misery. Hitherto God has struck him with a fettered hand, so to speak; now he would have God release His hand and strike with full force, so that he should not linger in torture but be slain outright. “ 10. Job’s comfort is death, and could he but be assured of its coming, he would not let the most ruthless pain quell his exulta- tion at the prospect. If in the third line we translated ‘ that,’ as in the margin, instead of ‘for,’ the second line would be paren- thetical, and the meaning of the main sentence would be that Job’s comfort would consist in the consciousness that he had not disowned the words of the Holy One. But this thought is alien to the context; it is therefore better to translate ‘for.’ The sense is in that case that he exults in the prospect of death, because he has not ‘denied the words of the Holy One.’ Inas- nA - JOB 6. 13-2. A 95 What is my strength, that I should wait ? II And what is mine end, that I should be patient? Is my strength the strength of stones ? 12 Or is my flesh of brass? Is it not that I have no help in me, 13 And that effectual working is driven quite from me? To him that is ready to faint kindness should be shewed 14 from his friend ; much, however, as this has little meaning, except on the assump- tion of retribution after death, to which Job does not look forward, since in Sheol good and bad were all in the same case, we should perhaps strike out the third line with Siegfried, Beer, and Duhm. Job’s obedience to the commands of God was just what made his problem ‘so perplexing, and.death in conscious innocence was nevertheless death with his character uncleared, no cause for exultation. If the third line is omitted ‘comfort’ refers to death, and exultation to the prospect of it. The margin offers several alternative translations, which must be enumerated, though in each case the text is to be preferred. For ‘Yea, I would exult’ it reads ‘though I shrink back’ or ‘harden myself’; for ‘ that spareth not’ it reads ‘though he spare not’; and for ‘denied’ it reads ‘concealed.’ 11,12. Were he strong like stones or brass he might bear pain with fortitude and patience, but he is so frail that he cannot repress his cry under torture. If his suffering led to renewed health he might, endure it in patience, but since it can lead only to death, how can he be other than impatient when death comes so tardily to release him? be patient: this is the sense of the Hebrew, which is liter- ally ‘prolong my soul’ ; the translation in A. V., ‘ prolong my life,’ would require in Hebrew ‘ prolong my days.’ 13. The Hebrew for Is it not is difficult ; if the text is right, the meaning is that his strength is exhausted. Duhm divides the consonants differently and gets the sense, Behold, my help within me is nothing, i. e. my inward strength is nothing. Klostermann _ transposes two consonants and changes the pronominal suffix from first to third person, and obtains the sense ‘ should I believe my help is in him, seeing that all effectual working is driven from me?’ effectual working : : see note on v. i2. 14. The verse is difficult, the general sense is probably that is by the R. V., though it would be better to substitute > 96 JOB 6. 15-18. A Even to him that forsaketh the fear of the Almighty. 15 My brethren have dealt deceitfully as a brook, As the channel of brooks that pass away ; 16 Which are black by reason of the ice, And wherein the snow hideth itself : 17 What time they wax warm, they vanish : When it is hot, they are consumed out of their place. 18 The caravans ¢hat travel by the way of them turn aside ; ‘despairing ’ for ‘ready to faint.’ The verse expresses Job’s keen ' disappointment with his friends; he knew himself to be slipping from true religion, and hoped that his friends would by their sympathy have strengthened his failing piety. The translation in the margin ‘Else might he forsake’ would require different Hebrew. The alternative ‘but he forsaketh’ gives no satisfactory sense. Some correct the text and read, ‘He that withholdeth kindness from his neighbour forsaketh the fear of the Almighty.’ Duhm reads, ‘ He who withholdeth kindness from the despairing forsaketh the fear of the Almighty,’ and thinks it was originally a note on the two following verses, since it is too general and cold for Job’s speech. 15. In a beautiful metaphor, somewhat elaborately worked out, Job describes how bitterly his friends have disappointed him. Cf. Jer. xv. 18, ‘ Wilt thou indeed be unto me as a deceitful brook, as waters that fail?’ See Thomson, The Land and the Book, p. 488. By ‘brethren’ he means the friends, not, as Fried. Delitzsch thinks, his actual brothers. pass away: this is more fully developed in verses 17 ff. But we may also translate ‘overflow,’ and this yields a finer sense, and is further supported by the connexion with verse 16. The brooks overflow in winter time when they are not needed, but fail in the heat of summer ; so Job’s friends are full of kindness when none is needed, but when trouble comes they fail the sufferer. 16. When the thaw comes the streams rush down their channels, black with broken ice and melting snow. ‘ 17. wax warm: the word occurs only here, and its sense is doubtful. The margin translates ‘shrink,’ but the text is more probably correct. When they are scorched by the heat of summer they vanish. v caravans. This word also means paths, and if that sense is adopted here, we should translate as in the margin, ‘ the paths of their way are turned aside.’ The meaning of the verse in that case is that the streams turn aside from their course and vanish in JOB 6. 19-23. A 97 They go up into the waste, and perish. The caravans of Tema looked, The companies of Sheba waited for them. They were ashamed because they had hoped ; They came thither, and were confounded. For now ye are nothing ; Ye see a terror, and are afraid. Did I say, Give unto me? Or, Offer a present for me of your substance ? Or, Deliver me from the adversary’s hand? the desert. -But this is very unlikely. The same word is used in the next verse in the sense of ‘caravans,’ it is therefore im- probable that it should mean anything else here. The streams vanish because of the heat, not because they leave their channels and meander to extinction in the sand, though it is true enough that streams do disappear in this way. Accordingly the verse means that when the caravans strike the channel, where they expected water, and find it dry, they turn aside to seek for water and perish miserably of thirst. Naturally they turn aside only because it is their last desperate chance; they will die if they stay where they are, and the next stream is too far for them to reach. 19. Tema is a North Arabian tribe of Ishmaelite origin. For Sheba see note on i, 15. Their caravans ‘looked’ for water, ‘waited for them,’ i.e. for the streams. 20. ashamed, as often, disappointed. 21. There is a variation in the MSS. between /o’ ‘not’ and 76 ‘to it. The former is translated in the R. V. text, but the sense ‘nothing’ can hardly be defended. The margin reads the latter, but the translation ‘ are /ike thereto’ forces a meaning out of the Hebrew, and the thought would have been otherwise expressed, It is simplest to read /z ‘to me’ and to change ‘ for’ into ‘so’ (reading kén for hi), ‘so have ye been to me.’ Duhm follows Bickell in striking out the verse. He argues that while t9 20 ar 22 23 the friends were untrue they were not afraid. Still, Job may . have seen in their attitude a proof of servility to God, whom they regarded as the author of his calamities. 22. Had he presumed on their friendship to ask a gift that would cost them anything, he would not have been surprised at their treatment, such a test he hints bitterly friendship could hardly be expected to stand. ~ 23. Job had not asked them to spend any of their substance to A 98 JOB 6. 24-27. A Or, Redeem me from the hand of the oppressors? — ‘7 24 Teach me, and I will hold my peace: And cause me to understand wherein I have exred. 25 How forcible are words of uprightness ! But what doth your arguing reprove ? 26 Do ye imagine to reprove words ? Seeing that the speeches of one that is desperate are as wind, 27 Yea, ye would cast /o/s upon the fatherless, And make merchandise of your friend. redeem him from bandits by paying his ransom. Is it not possible that verse 27, which sounds extravagant, and is not closely connected with its context, may have originally stood after verse 23? Then the exaggeration would be natural. Did I ask you to ransom me from captivity? ransom me! you would much sooner sell me into it. 24, 25. Job is quite willing to be taught, and made to see his faults, but he cannot feel that Eliphaz has said anything to the purpose. : forcible: this translation may be right, but is conjectural. The radical sense of the word is sharpness, and this rather sug- gests the rendering, ‘how irritating are words of uprightness,’ a brilliant touch of nature as all will feel who have suffered from the conscientious ministrations-of a ‘candid friend.’ If this is the meaning we must, of course, substitute ‘and’ for *but’ in the second line. A very similar word would give the sense ‘how sweet,’ and possibly the word in the text may simply be a harder form, ‘and bear this meaning. Several adopt this view. yous arguing. The Hebrew is more scornful, ‘ reproving from you.’ 26. Job seems to mean that his friends have made too much of his words ; they ought rather to have penetrated behind the ex- pressions that have outraged them to the feelings that prompted, and taken into account the circumstances that excused them. They ought to understand that the words of the desperate go into the wind (marg. ‘for the wind’); they are too wild to warrant such censure as his words have received. Job is not fundamentally irreligious, as he would have been if he had spoken deliberately and in cold blood. The second line might mean that they treated his words as mere wind. 27. This is not very suitable in its context, and the charge is itself rather strange. It has been suggested in the note on verse JOB 6. 28—7.1 A 99 Now therefore be pleased to look upon me3$ For surely I shall not lie to your face. Return, I pray you, let there be no injustice ; Yea, return again, my cause is righteous. Is there injustice on my tongue? Cannot my taste discern mischievous things ? Is there not a warfare to man upon earth? And are not his days like the days of an hireling ? 23 that it would be more natural if it followed that verse. The word for ‘lots’ is not expressed; Bickell, followed by Duhm, reads ‘fall’ instead of ‘cast’ (literally ‘cause to fall’), and for *fatherless’ he reads ‘blameless.’ ‘ Ye fall upon the blameless.’ The second line has then to be read or at least explained other- wise than it is in R. V. 2s. He entreats his friends to look him straight in the face, since he would certainly not be able to meet their glance with a lie on his lips. The margin translates ‘and it will be evident unto you if I lie.’ The text is better, 29. Some think that, stumg by Job’s invectives, the friends were leaving him, and that he begs them to return. But the meaning may be, turn from your misjudgement. This suits better the concluding portions of the two lines. He pleads that they would abandon their unjust treatment of him, and urges that his cause is just, for such seems to be the meaning of the Hebrew ‘my righteousness is in it.’ 30. The first line does not mean, is there wrong in my speech ? but has my tongue lost the true taste of things, cannot it dis, criminate between good and bad? The second line ‘has probably the same meaning. vii. 1, It is very striking with what skill the poet relates the general to the special problem in Job’s mind, Hitherto he has been absorbed in the sense of his own misery, but now there dawns the consciousness that his own case is not singular. With new insight he looks at the broad field of human life, and reads its wretchedness through his own. Yet he barely glances at it, he is still so self-centred that he immediately returns to his own lot, the most poignant example of man’s cruel destiny. warfare. The word means either ‘hard service,’ military or otherwise, or, as the margin translates, ‘time of service.’ The word probably includes here both senses, the hard drudgery, the wounds and exposure of a soldier’s life, and the impossibility of release till the full time, for which he has been engaged, has H 2 100 JOB 7. 2-4. A 2 As a servant that earnestly desireth the shadow, And as an hireling that looketh for his wages : 3 So am I made to possess months of vanity, And wearisome nights are appointed to me. 4 When I lie down, I say, When shall I arise? but the night is long ; And I am full of tossings to and fro unto the dawning of the day. expired. Both thoughts are also present in the reference to the ‘hireling,?, who is probably a hired labourer, not a mercenary soldier. 2, 3. Job now returns to his own case. The verse is vom- pleted in verse 3, and is not the completion of verse 1. As the slave bearing the burden and heat of the day pants for the shades of evening, when the heat dies into the coolness and rest soothes his aching limbs, or as the hired labourer looks forward to the wages that mark the end of his toil for the day (cf. Matt. xx. 8), and to both the evening seems so long in coming, so Job, panting for the grave, feels bitterly how wearisome are the months whose dreary length he must traverse ere he attains his release. earnestly desireth. The word means ‘to pant for,’ and it would have been better so translated. wearisome nights: at first sight a curious parallel to months, but the point in ‘months’ is the duration, in ‘nights’ the intensity, of his suffering. Out of the months he selects the nights as the extreme example, just as Paul couples Scythians with Barbarians (Col. iii. 11), He thus effects the transition to verse 4. 4. Job’s ‘evening’ is death, meanwhile, unlike the labourer, he has no rest day or night. As he lies down at night his thought is ‘ would God it were morning’ (Deut. xxviii. 67). But the interminable night lies between him and the day, and is spent in unceasing tossing, his sleeplessness interrupted, as we learn from verse 14, only by terrifying dreams. The point of the reference to the night is not that the pains are more acute then than in the day-time. The full meaning can be understood only by those who have suffered through a night from violent pain ; time literally seems to stand still. The translation in the margin ‘When shall I arise and the night be gone?’ obscures the full meaning. The poet must have suffered so himself, and known with how much greater slowness time seems to move through a night than through a day of pain. JOB 7. 5-8. A 101 My flesh is clothed with worms and clods of dust ; 5 My skin closeth up and breaketh out afresh. _My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, 6 And are spent without hope. Oh remember that my life is wind : Vy Mine eye shall no more see good. 4 The eye of him that seeth me shall behold me no more: 8 5. His sores breed worms, form a hard crust, and then break andrun. In the second line the margin gives ‘is broken and become loathsome,’ but the text is better. 6. This is the most usual translation, but Elzas and Marshall have revived an older view that there is no reference to a shuttle that moves swiftly, but rather to the yarn or web which is so flimsy that the threads snap easily. In that case the word translated ‘hope’ must mean ‘thread’ as in Josh. ii. 18. Marshall renders the second line, ‘They come to an end for lack of thread.’ Elzas quotes Shaw as saying with reference to the women in his time, ‘they do not use the shuttle, but conduct every thread of the woof with their fingers.’ Cheyne corrects the text and reads ‘my days are swifter than a crane,’ and similarly in the parallel passage ix. 25, 26 he introduces birds instead of ‘ post’ and ‘swift ships’ to correspond with eagle. But it is no gain to secure uniformity by eliminating the variety of metaphor. If the translation in the text be retained, ‘without hope’ means without hope of recovery ; there is no reference to a happy future after death. There is no . radical inconsistency in the complaint that life passes swiftly and the complaint that it drags on interminably. It is simply a change in point of view. A swift death is preferable to life in agony, but if life could be passed without constant pain, its brevity is an evil, since none would willingly exchange its warm glow and thrilling interest for the cold and colourless monoteny of Sheol. 7, 8 are addressed to God, not to Eliphaz; the plural is generally used when Job is addressing the friends, since one speaks for all. The pathos of this pitiful appeal to God, just before the bitter reproaches he is about to fling at Him, is very fine and moving. It is like an echo of the old familiar relations between them. Verse 8 is omitted in the original LXX, and therefore by Bickell. It is also regarded with suspicion by Dillmann, Budde, and Beer, while Duhm thinks there is no reason for rejecting it. There is some repetition in it, but the most serious objection is that it anticipates, and thus weakens the force of the very beautiful and touching verse with which the speech closes. remember; soin x. 9. For life as wind cf, Ps. Ixxvili. 39. toa JOB 7. 9-12. A Thine eyes shall be upon me, but I shall not be. — 9 As the cloud is consumed and vanisheth away, ~ So he that goeth down to Sheol shall come up no more. 10 He shall return no more to his house, : Neither shall his place know him any more. 11 Therefore I will not refrain my mouth ; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit ; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul. 12 Am I a sea, or a sea-monster, upon me: not ‘against me.’ God will seek as of old to look on him in love, but he will have-passed to Sheol, in which God’s loving-kindness is not displayed, and whose inhabitants cannot praise Him (Ps. Ixxxviii. to—12, vi. 5 ; Isa. xxxviii. 18). 9, 10. Job here emphatically denies the possibility of a return to earth after death. It is important to observe his attitude to this question, and how subtly the poet by the very energy of Job’s denial shows the fascination the thought had for hinf, and suggests fo the reader a recoil from his hopeless outlook (ef. x. 21, 22, xiv. 7-22, xvi. 22). The Babylonians called the underworld *the land of no return.’ As an illustration of the thought Lucretius, Book III, ll. go7-9, may be compared. Mr. Mallock paraphtases the lines ‘thus : ‘ Never shalt thou behold thy dear ones more, Never thy wife await thee at the door, Never again thy little climbing boy A father’s kindness in thine eyes explore.’ Lucretius On Life and Death, p. 26. 11. Stirred by this sad picture of his troubles Job will no longer restrain himself. In his former speech, while his com- plaining i is very bitter, he says but little against God, and that little indirectly. But now, with the utmost directness, he charges God with being his tormentor, in language of incisive bitterness, not untouched with scorn, He has to die soon and in agony, but he will at least tell God plainly what he thinks of Him, while the cherished opportunity still remains to him. He comes perilously near to fulfilling the Satan’s prediction that he would curse God to His face. He hopes nothing from Him, soon he will have no more to fear from Him; he will have the relief of utter frankness, bursting the restraint he had so long placed on his s 12. In savage irony Job asks if he is so dangerous that God must keep a strict watch over him. . Is Ke the turbulent s€a, JOB. 7. 13-16. A 103 That thou settest a watch over me? When I say, My bed shall comfort me, My couch Shall ease my complaint ; Then thou scarest me with dreams, And terrifiest me through visions: So that my soul chooseth strangling, And death rather than ¢/ese my bones. I loathe my “fe; I would not live alway : fretting against the limits imposed on it by God, lest it should flood the earth or smite heaven with its angry waves? Is he the ‘sea monster,’ the dragon Tiamat, subdued by the Creator in the hoary past, but still kept in close confinement, lest once more it challenged with Him the rule of the universe? A frail, puny, mortal, already death-stricken, how could he be such a menace to God that He must watch him so narrowly ? 13-15. When he seeks rest, hoping that his complainings may cease for a little, then God sends him a sleep that is worse than waking. Avicenna says: ‘ During sleep frequent atrabilious dreams appear. Breathing becomes so difficult that asthma sets in, and the highest degree of hoarseness is reached. It is often necessary to open the jugular: vein, if the hoarseness and the dread of ; — suffocation increases.’ Lacking our modern conception of second. ~ ary causes, Job sees in these sufferings not the natural accom- ‘ paniment of his disease, but direct acts of God. 15. So great is his agony that he wishes he might be suffocated outright. There is no reference in the verse to any contemplation of suicide, and though we might translate the second line ‘death from my bones,’ this cannot be explained to mean death by my own hands. Ifthe Hebrew text is right we must translate as in R. V., and explain, I choose death in preference to being the skeleton Iam. This interpretation, however, is rather forced, and it would be better, with several scholars, to change one consonant and read ‘ death rather than my pains.’ Some also connect the first word of verse 16 (translated ‘I loathe sy life’) with this verse, translating ‘I despise death in comparison with my pains.’ It is true that it does not make very good sense in verse 16, but it is questionable whether the language will permit it to be transferred to verse 15. i 16. I loathe my hfe. Therendering ‘I loathe’ is to be preferred to the margin ‘I waste away,’ and the object of loathing is pro- bably correctly defined as ‘my life,’ though standing by itself the expression is rather strange. Similarly, ‘1-would not live alway’ 13 I4 15 16 to4 JOB 7. 17-19. A ? Let me alone ; for my days are vanity. 17 What is man, that thou shouldest magnify ima And that thou shouldest set thine heart upon him, 18 And that thou shouldest visit him every morning. ‘t And try him every moment ? 1g How long wilt thou not look away from me, Nor let me alone till I swallow down my spittle? is clearly better than the margin ‘I shall not live alway,’ as that was too obvious. Let me alone: Job calls ‘Hands off!’ to God, a bold command. vanity: marg. ‘as a breath,’ cf. verse 7. 17. In this and the following verse we have a bitter parody of Ps. viii. 5. The Psalmist, impressed with the wonders of the starry heavens, asks what is man that God should be so mindful of him and place him in a position of such high authority. Job asks, not why God should lavish on a creature so insignificant such honour and thoughtful care, but why he should be subjected to attention so alert and suspicious, as if he could really be of any importance. Job’s morbid imagination distorts the unsleeping care of God into a maddening espionage. Disdain of His creatures would have been more befitting than such spiteful vigilance. How petty His character must be, since He descends to torture one so frail, and harry him with persecution so untiring. Had he known the truth he might have argued, ‘ How loving is the God who cares so minutely for man, and how great man must be, since he is worthy of God’s unceasing regard.’ 18. visit him: Cheyne needlessly emends the text, and reads ‘prove him.’ This, it is true, gives a closer parallel to the second line, and if the parody on Ps. viii. 5 disappeared with this word, would deserve more consideration. But the opening words of verse 17, and the general drift of the two verses, would, apart from this word, suggest Ps. viii. 5, and if it was in the poet's mind we should expect him to use ‘visit.’ If ‘prove’ was the original text, it might just as well be argued that the present text was due to an intentional conformation to the Psalm as that it was due to accident. But, if so, the poet is surely more likely than an editor to have seen this, and to have written ‘visit* himself. Duhm thinks that Ps. viii is later than Job, in which case there is, of course, no parody. 19. Job feels that God has so beset him behind and before that he cannot escape from Him. To other souls than his the sense that they can never be free from God’s observation, or live their JOB 7. 20,21. A 105 If I have sinned, what do I unto thee, O thou watcher of ae men ? Why hast thou set me as a mark for thee, So that I am a burden to myself? And why dost thou not pardon my transgression, and a1 take away mine iniquity ? For now shall I lie down in the dust ; And thou shalt seek me diligently, but I shall not be. own life away from Him, has proved very oppressive. The reader will remember how prisoners have been exposed to incessant observation till the consciousness of it has driven them mad. This illustrates Job’s case, his conviction of God’s malevo- lence has sharpened his sensitiveness to His watchfulness. Cf. xiv. 6, Ps. xxxix. 13 (R.V. marg.). The expression in the second line is common in Arabic ; one would be glad to think the poet wrote something different, but that is no justification for altering the text. 20. Job does not admit that he has sinned, but he urges that, if he had done so, his sin could not hurt God, who was far beyond reach of any shafts that men might shoot at Him. We may contrast ‘Against Thee, Thee only have Isinned.’ In the phrase ‘watcher of men’ Job reiterates the thought that God is a spy on his every movement. The margin ‘preserver’ gives the wrong sense. a mark: not a target, though elsewhere Job applies this metaphor to himself (vi. 4, xvi. 12, cf. Lam. iii, r2, 13), but something against which one strikes. Job is, so to speak, always in God’s way, wherever he may be ; however anxiously he seeks to avoid contact with Him, God is always striking against him. a burden to myself: so the present Hebrew text. But Jewish tradition says that the original reading was ‘a burden on Thee,’ and that this is one of the eighteen corrections of the scribes. Many scholars (though not Dillmann and Budde) accept ‘on Thee’ as original. Since we can more easily explain why fon Thee’ should be altered to ‘on me,’ this alteration being dictated by reverence, than why the Jewish tradition should have arisen if ‘on me’ was original, the tradition is probably correct. The thought is one of amazing boldness, that Job is a burden on the Almighty ! but not too bold for the poet. 21. If he is a sinner, why should not God forgive him? Has God no magnanimity, that thus He treasures up Job’s sins, till he has paid Him the uttermost farthing of penalty?) Why not forgive before forgiveness is too late? For soon—thus with matchless 106 JOB 8.13. A 8 Then answered Bildad the Shuhite, and said, 2 How long wilt thou speak these things? nis And how Jong shall the words of thy mouth be ora a mighty wind ? 3 Doth God pervert judgement ? Or doth the Almighty pervert justice? pathos Job brings his speech to an end—he will die ; but God will not remain in His present mood; He will think on His devoted servant once more in love, filled with remorse for His fit of anger, He will long to renew the old communion. But His vain regrets will come too late, Job will be gone beyond recall. It is strange how wonderfully the poet depicts the rising of this double conception of God in Job’s mind. God as he feels Him to be in the present has not driven out God as he knew Him to be in the past. This thought of God’s higher and lower self is — in some of _ Job’s eee utterances. Vii, Bildad rebukes Job’s stormy, empty utterance. Im- pheabte ‘that the Almighty should be unjust! If Job’s Sake have perished through their sin, yet if Job is righteous and wil appeal to God, He will restore him to greater Preeyeery than before. viii. 8-19. Let Job inquire of the ancients, who really knew, and were not ignorant as men now are, and they will teach him how short-lived is the prosperity of the wicked, and how certain is his doom, viii. 20-22. God will not cast away the perfect or uplicid the wicked. Job shall be restored and his enemies come to nought. The theme of Bildad’s speech is that God cannot do wrong, He rewards the good and the evil according to their works. It is - Job’s denial of this that has shocked him most deeply; he passes by his accusations of faithlessness and his complaints of his suffering that he may bring Job to.a truer judgementofGod. His tone is milder than that of Eliphaz, and much milder than that of Zophar. Job does not answer him with scorn or reproaches in his reply to this speech. Too modest to venture anything on his own authority, and with no awe-inspiring revelations to relate, Bildad rests on the maxims of the ancients. - viii. 2. a mighty wind. The emphasis lies on the stormy character of Job’s speech, uprooting cherished beliefs ; there may be a further suggestion, that it was mere windy empty rhetoric. 3. The stress is placed in the Hebrew on God and the Almighty. How incredible that God should be unrighteous! JOB 8. 4-8 A 107 If thy children have sinned against him, 4 And he have delivered them into the hand of their __ transgression : ¥ If thou wouldest seek diligently unto God, 5 And make thy supplication to the Almighty ; If thou wert pure and upright ; 6 Surely now he would awake for thee, And make the habitation of thy righteousness prosperous, And though thy beginning was small, 7 Yet thy latter end should greatly increase. ’ For inquire, I pray thee, of the former age, 8 And apply thyself to that which their fathers have searched out: Bildad cannot think together the notions God and injustice ; they are mutually exclusive. And they are so, if God be truly defined. But the friends were in danger of identifying omnipotence with righteousness. It is Job’s merit that he disentangles the two qualities. ; 4,5. Usually verse 4 is taken as complete in itself, as in the margin, ‘If thy children sinned against him, he delivered them into the hand of their transgression.’ This is probably better than ‘the translation in the text. The reference to the death of Job’s children favours the view that the poet wrote the Prologue, or at least incorporated it in his book. Job has not died by the swift summary vengeance that destroyed his children, yet he must have sinned, for the Almighty-can do no wrong, so let him turn in penitence to God, lest the same fate overwhelm him. Cf. v. 8. . 6. If Job repents and becomes pure, then God will restore prosperity to his now righteous habitation. Instead of ‘awake for thee’ the LXX reads ‘ answer thy prayer,’ which better befits Bildad’s scrupulous reverence. , 7. This is one of the cases where the poet puts an unconscious prediction into the mouth of one of the speakers, which is later fulfilled. ' 8, 9. It is not quite clear on what principle Bildad considers the wisdom of the ancients to be superior. It may be that they lived much longer lives, and therefore could ponder the mysteries of life more deeply. Yet the speakers themselves are represented as belonging to the patriarchal age. Eliphaz is much older than Job’s father, if in xv. ro he refers to himself, and Job was not young at \ Io I I _ bn 108 JOB 8. 9-12. A (For we are but of yesterday, and know nothing, Because our days upon earth are a shadow :) Shall not they teach thee, and tell thee, And utter words out of their heart? Can the rush grow up without mire? Can the flag grow without water ? Whilst it is yet in its greenness, avd not cut down, It withereth before any o¢her herb. the time. So Job’s own life is a long one, since he lives a hundred and forty years after his restoration. On the other hand, this might seem short in comparison with the great_ages of the earlier patriarchs, and Jacob counts his one hundred and thirty years few and evil, when set beside the life of his forefathers (Gen. xlvii. 9). Dillmann thinks the thought is rather that a single generation is too short to understand these things, we need to rest on the collective wisdom of mankind, as it has been slowly gathered through its generations. But in that case surely it is the heirs of all the ages who are ‘the true ancients,’ and each generation . adds its own quota to the stock, the former age being less wise than the most recent. There may be the thought in his mind that the ancients stood nearer to the fount of wisdom, the stream becoming through successive ages more corrupt. 11. With this verse begin the wise sayings of the ancients. The Egyptian imagery suggests that Bildad regarded the Egyptians as possessors of the most ancient wisdom. It also affords evidence of the poet’s acquaintance with Egypt. rush: rather, as in marg. ‘papyrus.’ It will grow without mire, but it will not grow to its proper height. ‘Grow up’ means ‘ grow high.’ flag: marg. ‘reed-grass.’ It is an Egyptian word (af) found only here and Gen. xli. 2, 18. It means Nile grass. 12. If water be taken away from its roots, even though it be in the lusty vigour of its greenness, not yet ripe and on the edge of decay, it will wither sooner than any herb. 13. The wicked, as the Psalmist says, may spread himself like a green tree in its native soil, yet he suddenly vanishes away. Similarly Eliphaz, v. 3. Instead of ‘ paths’ we should probably read a similar word, transposing two consonants and slightly correcting another, translating ‘such is the end’ (@havith for orhéth). Duhm thinks that this verse with verse 20 formed a four-lined stanza. But since it is impossible to interpolate verse 20 between verses 13 and 14, he cuts out verses 14-I9 as a later JOB 8. 13-17. A 109 So are the paths of all that forget God ; And the hope of the godless man shall perish: Whose confidence shall break in sunder, And whose trust is a spider’s web. He shall Jean upon his house, but it shall not stand : He shall hold fast thereby, but it shall not enaure. He is green before the sun, And his shoots go forth over his garden. His roots are wrapped about the heap, He beholdeth the place of stones. interpolation. This is a heavy price to pay, and it makes Bildad’s speech very short, for this stage of the debate at any rate. 14. break in sunder: marg. ‘be cut off.’ The word might also come from a root meaning ‘to loathe,’ though this is unlikely. The parallelism requires a noun rather than a verb, corresponding to ‘spider’s web’ in the second line. If we could accept the view that the word in the text is a noun meaning ‘ gossamer’ this would give a most satisfactory parallel. Unfortunately this rests on Inadequate evidence. Beer, followed by Duhm, emends the text and reads ‘spider’s threads.’ Marshall follows Reiske in giving the sense ‘gourd,’ making a new metaphor begin here and continue to the end of verse 18. ‘It is no longer a marsh-rush suddenly dried up at the root. It isa fine climbing-plant, growing over a ricketty house, which it crushes by its weight.’ The sense is good, but the meaning ‘gourd’ is insufficiently supported. web. The Hebrew word means ‘house,’ and it would have been better to translate it so, and thus make plain the connexion with verse 15. 15. Budde deletes this verse as a gloss on verse 14, but not on cogent grounds, 16. The godless man is now compared with a plant, thriving and firmly rooted, but destroyed and its memory disowned by the very soil on which it had flourished. 17. This verse is difficult. The word translated ‘heap’ may also mean ‘fountain’ as in Cant. iv. 12, and some take it so here, translating, as in the margin, ‘beside the spring.’ The meaning of the second line is very uncertain. The translation in the text gives the sense which the words would usually bear, though ‘house’ should be substituted for ‘place,’ but in this context it is quite pointless. Several scholars assume another verb with the Same consonants meaning ‘to pierce.’ In that case we may suppose that the word translated ‘place’ really means ‘ between,’ 13 14 18 19 20 2I 22 9 Ilo JOB 8. 13—9.1 A If he be destroyed from his place, Then it shall deny him, sayizg, I have not seen thee, Behold, this is the joy of his way, And out of the earth shall others spring, Behold, God will not cast away a perfect man, Neither will he uphold the eyvil-doers, He will yet fill thy mouth with laughter, And thy lips with shouting. They that hate thee shall be clothed with shame; And the tent of the wicked shall be no more, Then Job answered and said, as in the present text of Prov. viii. 2, Ezek. xli. 9. If so it is an Aramaism, but since the text in Prov. viii. 2 is uncertain, it would be simpler to correct the last consonant, reading bém for béth, and thus get the usual word for ‘between.’ We should thus obtain the excellent sense ‘It pierces between stones,’ retaining ‘heap’ in the first line. The sense ‘ pierce,’ however, is very uncertain. Accordingly we should perhaps, with Siegfried and Duhm, follow the LXX, and altering one consonant read ‘lives.’ Siegfried translates, ‘It keeps alive between stones.’ Duhm’s translation seems better: ‘Its roots are twined about the spring, It lives in a house of stones,’ i.e. the small building erected above the spring. 18. At last its life is cut short by irretrievable destruction, and no vestige of it is left. Its place disowns it, just as the sea is said in Isa. xxiii. 4 to disown its children. 19. Several think ‘ the joy of his way’ is unsuitable, but no very satisfactory emendation has been proposed. If correct it is ironical, earth, marg. ‘dust.’ . From the ground which had given him birth others spring; he is forgotten and others fill his place. 29. Bildad closes his speech by affirming his conviction that God cannot reject the blameless or support the wicked, and by applying it to Job’s case. Perfect has reference, in the author's mind, to the descriptions of Job in the Prologue. 21. The margin ‘till he fill’ gives the sense of the Hebrew as pointed. It is unsuitable, and it is better to point differently and translate as in the text: ‘He will yet fill.’ ix. 1-4. Job replies to Bildad: True, man cannot be in the right against God, who, since He is all-wise and all-power- ful, can entangle man into self-condemnation and put him in the wrong. JOB 9.2. A Itt Of a truth I know that it is so: But how can man be just with God ? ix. 5-13. God controls all the forces of Nature, mountains and ocean, sun and stars, by His inscrutable power. None can hinder His elusive, all-powerful working. ix. 14-21. How then can Job confront Him? rather he would cast himself on His compassion. Were he to cite Him and He appeared, yet He would not listen, for He overwhelms him with His persecution, and would force him, though blameless, to con- demn himself. Hence, while his lips are free, he will assert his blamelessness, reckless of what may come upon him, ix. 22-24. Blameless and wicked God destroys alike, mocking at the despair of the innocent. Injustice reigns throughout the earth, and it is God who is directly responsible for this. ix. 25-35. Job now describes his fleeting, wretched life, and God’s fixed determination to make him guilty, in spite of all he may do to establish his innocence. He cannot meet God on equal terms, and there is no umpire to enforce his decision upon them. Let God cease to afflict him, and not paralyse him with His terror, then he would speak fearlessly, knowing that in him- self he had no need to fear. xX. I-22. Weary of life Job pours out his complaint. Why should God persecute him, His own handiwork, and innocent? is this worthy of God? Let God think with what loving care He fashioned him, whom now He is bringing to cust. Nay, the love was mere seeming, all along God had meant to destroy him. Innocent or guilty it is all the same, God assails him with His miracles. Why then was he born? Let God give him a brief respite, ere he passes for ever to Sheol’s utter gloom. ix. 2. Job accepts the general principle that God will treat the ; rp righteous according to his righteousness, But that is irrelevant to_~y al the real issue, which turns on the question, What constitutes right- / eousness? To be righteous means no more than to be in the’ right, and what is to prevent the Almighty from declaring the wicked to be in the right, or the innocent to be in the wrong? He sets the standard of righteousness, and if He is Himself immoral, the blameless may be branded as guilty, and against omnipotence can get no redress; there is no higher court of ; ; ; / | | appeal. How then can man be ‘righteous’ before God if Heis | determined to put him in the wrong? Job here touches on the problem whether a thing is right because God declares it to be so, or whether He declares it right because it is so. He sees 112 JOB 9. 3-5. A 3 If he be pleased to contend with him, He cannot answer him one of a thousand. 4 He 7s wise in heart, and mighty in strength: Who hath hardened himself against him, and pros- pered ? 5 Which removeth the mountains, and they know it not, When he overturneth them in his anger. clearly that there is no necessity in the nature of things that omnipotence should be righteous. The friends had not dis- entangled the two conceptions, see note on viii. 3. Job is not endorsing Eliphaz’s assertion that man must seem unclean to the infinite purity of God. Far from it this purity seems very dubious to him. 3. The margin is better, ‘If one should desire to contend with him, he could not,’ &c., since we thus have the same subject in both verses. If man wished to enter on a contest with God, he would be hopelessly worsted, for he could not answer one in a thousand of His subtle questions. It is very interesting that when God speaks out of the storm His speeches are com- posed almost entirely of questions to which Job can give no answer. The translation in the text seems to mean, If God be pleased to contend with man, he could not answer one in a thousand of God’s questions. We might translate, He will not answer, i. e. God would not reply to one in a thousand of man’s questions. This finds some support in verse 16, but is not probable. 4. heart is often used in the Bible when we should use in- tellect. It would be hopeless for man to pit himself against the wise and mighty God, whom none can withstand with impunity. There may be a reference to the case of Pharaoh in the second line, cf. also Prov. xxix. 1. 5. This description of the elemental convulsion in which the mountains are overturned reads curiously. What is the point of saying that the mountains do not know that God overturns them? Would they know it, whoever overturned them? It is explained that they are overturned suddenly, but we should have expected this to be differently expressed. The Syriac, followed by Bickell, Beer, and Duhm, reads ‘he knows” instead of ‘they know.’ This gives the sense that God uproots mountains with- out knowing it; to His omnipotence it is so slight a matter that He does it unconsciously. This is probably the original reading, for so daring an anthropomorphism would seem too objectionable to be left unaltered, It is not at all too daring for the poet. JOB 9. 6-5. A OES Which shaketh the earth out of her place, And the pillars thereof tremble. Which commandeth the sun, and it riseth not ; And sealeth up the stars. Which alone stretcheth out the heavens, And treadeth upon the waves of the sea. Which maketh the Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades, 6. The earth was supposed to rest on pillars, which are probably to be identified with the roots of the mountains, just as their summits were the pillars on which the firmament rested. The verse is a poetical description of an earthquake. 2 The command to the sun not to shine may refer to eclipses orto storms, The sealing up of the stars expresses the thought that they are kept in their abode and sealed upthere. Apparently they are regarded as dwelling in a certain part of the heavens, whence they are brought forth at night to shine in the firmament. Whether they appear or not depends on the will of God, who summons each by name, and by His great power compels them to come forth, so that none of those He calls is lacking (Isa. xl. 26), or seals up the door of their abode so that they cannot break out into the sky. 8. God is so strong that He stretches out the heavens by His own unaided power, cf. Isa. xl, 12, 22, xliv. 24, xlv. 12. We might also translate ‘ bends,’ but this is less likely. Waves of the sea: Heb. ‘high places ofthe sea.’ Some think it is the heavenly ocean, ‘ the waters above the firmament,’ that is intended. This is quite possible, since the rest of verses 7-9 is concerned with the skies. In themselves the words suggest rather the earthly ocean. A storm is described in which the waves rise like mountains and God walks on their crest. This verse and the following should be compared with two of the creation passages in Amos, viz. iv. 13, v. 8. 9. Cf. xxxviii. 31-33; Amos v. 8. The translation ‘ Orion’ is generally accepted. The word seems to mean ‘fool,’ and the reference to his ‘bonds’ in xxxviii. 31 suggests a mythological allusion to a giant bound in the sky, probably in connexion with some Titanic revolt against God. The translation ‘the Bear’ is accepted by many, though several think it means the Pleiades, or, as Stern suggests, Alcyone, the most brilliant star of that con- stellation, the other stars of the group being her children (translated in xxxviii. 32 ‘her train’). It does not occur in Amos v. 8, and it may have come in here through dittography of the first two letters of the word translated ‘which maketh.’ It is irregularly 114 JOB 9. 10-13. A And the chambers of the south. to Which doeth great things past finding out ; Yea, marvellous things without number. 11 Lo, he goeth by me, and I see him not: He passeth on also, but I perceive him not. 12 Behold, he seizeth ‘he prey, who can hinder him? Who will say unto him, What doest thou ? 13 God will not withdraw his anger ; The helpers of Rahab do stoop under him. spelt, and we should have expected ‘and’ before ‘Orion.’ The translation ‘Pleiades’ is also that most generally accepted; we should perhaps identify, however, with Canis Major, in which the bright star Sirius is situated. In that case the ‘chain’ (see R. V. marg, xxxviii. 31) is the chain by which the ‘Great Dog’ is held by Orion, at whose feet he lies. the chambers of the south: this vague term can hardly apply, as many suppose, to a constellation. Davidson says they ‘are probably the great spaces and deep recesses of the southern hemisphere of the heavens, with the constellations which they contain.’ It would be possible, however, to identify them with the storehouses of elemental forces, such as the storm, or light and darkness; cf. xxxvii. 9, xxxviii. 22. 10. Quoted from the speech of Eliphaz v. 9; but with a very different object. For Eliphaz bases upon it his counsel that Job should supplicate God, and illustrates it by reference to God’s beneficence in nature and the equity of His moral government. Job insists on God’s greatness, because he feels how much more hopeless it makes the case of one who contends with Him. His greatness is uncontrolled by goodness, and His power directed without compunction to immoral ends. Beer, Duhm, and Fried. Delitzsch strike out verses 8-ro as an insertion, but on inadequate grounds. 11. Not only is God mighty, but His working is invisible, terrible because it is so elusive. He is an unseen enemy; His victim cannot guess where He will strike, he cannot prepare for the blow or parry it, but must await it in the agony of suspense. 12. hinder him: marg. ‘turn him back.’ 13. God: placed in an emphatic position in the Hebrew. Other powers may do so freely or by compulsion, but God lets His wrath wreak itself on its object to the bitter end. As an illustra- tion, Job quotes the case of ‘the helpers of Rahab.’ The margin gives ‘arrogancy’ for ‘ Rahab,’ but this is clearly inadequate, for JOB 9. 14-18. A 115 How much less shall I answer him, And choose out my words #0 reason with him ? Whom, though I were righteous, yet would I not answer ; I would make supplication to mine adversary. If I had called, and he had answered me ; Yet would I not believe that he hearkened unto my voice. For he breaketh me with a tempest, And multiplieth my wounds without cause. He will not suffer me to take my breath, it is some definite event (translate with marg. ‘did stoop’) that is in the poet’s mind, not a mere moral maxim. In Isa. xxx. 7, to which the margin refers, Egypt is called Rahab, so apparently Ps, Ixxxvii. 4. Other passages which have been supposed to allude to Egypt are probably to be otherwise interpreted. The reference to Egypt is quite unsuitable here. Rahab is parallel to ‘ the dragon” in Isa. li. 9, and to ‘the sea’ in xxvi. 12. It is a name for Tiamat, already referred to more than once in the book. Her * helpers’ are her brood of monsters, who assisted her in the primaeval conflict with heaven. Even those mighty powers were crushed by the omnipotence of God. 14. How ill then Job would come off from a contest with Him, and quailing before the terror of His majesty, how incapable he would be of choosing the fit words in which to argue his case! 315. Job, even though innocent, would be unable to confront God and answer Him; he would rather be compelled to cast himself on the mercy of his adversary. The marg. ‘to him that would judge me’ does not bring out so well the force of the Hebrew. 1s. If the text is correct the meaning is that if Job called God to judgement, and He answered the summons, he would refuse to believe that God would really listen to him. Duhm follows the LXX in inserting a negative, ‘If I called, He would not answer me, I cannot believe that He would hearken to my voice.’ 17,18. The reason why Job thinks so gloomily of his pros- pects in a legal conflict with God. This lies in the treatment he is receiving at God’s hands, which only too clearly displays God’s temper towards him. Some think the verses describe how God would deal with him, if He were to appear in answer to Job’s summons. So far from listening, He would assail him with ex- treme violence. : breaketh: the same word as that translated in Gen. iii. 15 ‘bruise.’ The meaning is disputed, both there and here (see Bennett’s note). Some take it ‘to make at.’ 12 18 ig 20 21 22 116 JOB-9. 19-22. A But filleth me with bitterness. If we speak of the strength of the mighty, lo, Ae és there | And if of judgement, who will appoint me a time ? Though I berighteous, mine own mouth shall condemnme; Though I be perfect, it shall prove me perverse. I am perfect ; I regard not myself; I despise my life. It is all one; therefore I say, filleth me with bitterness: cf. Lam. iii. 15. 19. It is not quite clear whether we should translate as in text, or as in marg. ‘Lo, here am I, saith he.’ If we retain the former, we should probably, with Duhm and Klostermann, read ‘appoint him’ in the second line. We should read the first person in both lines or the third in both. The marg. ‘If we speak of strength, lo, he ts mighty’ is very unlikely. 20. The appearance of God would so overpower Job that, though blameless, he would confess himself guilty. It is not certain whether in the second line we should translate it, or, as in the marg., ‘he’; the former is perhaps more probable. 21. Under the strong impression that when put to the awful test he might shrink before the terror of God, and confess under torture what in his inmost heart he knew to be a lie, he seizes the present opportunity to assert his innocence, ‘Blameless 1 am.’ He speaks in impassioned recoil from the terrible possibility, to which he feels he may be driven, that he may renounce the honour that is more to him than life. For he feels that to punish this out- spoken declaration God may kill him out of hand, but he does not regard himself, in other words, he does not value his life enough to save it by silence. Iregard not myself: Heb. ‘I know not myself. The meaning is not that he is a riddle to himself, but that he holds his life of no account. I despise my life. The two words, thus translated, are short for a line. Some omit them, but the first line thus loses its parallel, Duhm makes the line of normal length, by adding the next two words translated ‘It is all one.’ He then omits ‘therefore I say.’ As the next line is then left without a parallel he secures it by adding the last line of verse 24, where we have three lines. We should thus get the couplet ‘He destroyeth the perfect and the wicked, If not he, then who is it?’ This is one of those rearrangements that ought to be right. 22. it is all one. Job seems to mean‘ it is all one and the same whether I live or die,’ or possibly ‘it is a matter of indifference JOB 9. 23-26. A 117 He destroyeth the perfect and the wicked. - If the scourge slay suddenly, He will mock at the trial of the innocent. The earth is given into the hand of the wicked: He covereth the faces of the judges thereof ; If z¢ de not he, who then is it ? Now my days are swifter than a post: They flee away, they see no good. They are passed away_as the swift ships: whether I speak or am silent.’ The interpretation ‘it is all one with the righteous and the wicked’ is generally rejected on the ground that Job is just about to say this. In the second line he is emphatic, ‘perfect and wicked HE destroys,’ but God is left unnamed. Here Job explicitly denies that there is a moral order of the universe. Granted that God slays the wicked, this does not prove a sufferer to be guilty. For he slays with no moral discrimination good and bad alike. Thus Job contradicts Bildad’s assertions in Vili. 20. 28. The ‘scourge’ is one wielded by God, even though we do not read with the Syriac ‘ his scourge.” Job means great sudden calamities, like pestilence, which do not select their victims on moral principles. The innocent die as well as the wicked, and God mocks at their despair. 24. Injustice reigns over the whole earth, a condition of things due directly to God, who perverts the very organs of justice to make them instruments of tyranny. It is not unlikely that the circumstances of the author’s time shape his expression. The words gain a fuller significance if the Jews were groaning at the time under bitter oppression from a world-empire. The second line seems to mean that God blinds the judgesso that they cannot see what is right or wrong. 25. From this general indictment of God’s government of the world Job returns to his own case. He complains that his life runs so swiftly to its end without his seeing good. Apparently he refers to the brief rest he might have expected before death came, though he may mean that in his life he has seen no good, his present pain blotting out the memory of former happiness. post, or a ‘runner’ He means a swift messenger, chosen for his work on account of his fleetness. 2S. swift ships. The margin says ‘ Heb. ships of reed. This is the view generally taken, the word translated ‘reed,’ which does not occur elsewhere, being connected with a sjmilar Arabic 23 a4 25 26 118 JOB 9. 27-31. A As the eagle that swoopeth on the prey. 27 If I say, I will forget my complaint, I will put off my sad countenance, and be of good cheer: 28 I am afraid of all my sorrows, I know that thou wilt not hold me innocent. 29 I shall be condemned ; Why then do I labour in vain? 30 If I wash myself with snow water, And make my hands never so clean ; 31 Yet wilt thou plunge me in the ditch, And mine own clothes shall abhor me, word meaning ‘reed.’ They are the papyrus boats with wooden keels, used on the Nile, manned by one or two, and very swift owing to their extreme lightness. 27. be of good cheer, /it. ‘ brighten up.’ 28. His resolve to leave off complaining and be cheerful is but momentary, for he knows that the paroxysm of pain will return. God will not hold him innocent, and will therefore continue to smite him, 29. The first line would be better translated ‘I have to be guilty.” Why should he toil to establish his innocence, when whether innocent or not God was determined to make him out to be guilty. Duhm strikes out the verse as a prosaic gloss, _ 30. with snow water. Another reading is ‘with snow.’ The difference in the Hebrew is very slight. The latter is: better, since snow water is not itself clean, and has no exceptional cleansing virtue. The latter objection might seem to lie against ‘ with snow,’ accordingly some read, with a minute change in the Hebrew, ‘like snow’ ; we might then compare ‘ whiter than snow’ in Ps. li. 7 or ‘if your sins be as scarlet, shall they be as white as snow?’ in Isa. i. 18. This is not necessary, since the perfect whiteness of snow may have seemed to confer on it especial power of purifying. And it is unlikely, for in the second line mention is made of the instrument of purification (‘ with alkali’), and it disturbs the parallelism if we read ‘like’ instead of ‘ with ’ here. make my hands never so clean, /i/, ‘ cleanse my hands with lye,’ i. e. alkali. 31. Lagarde, followed by Duhm, thinks the expression ‘my clothes shall abhor me’ too strange to be right, and suggests ‘my friends,’ with a comparatively slight alteration in the text, But — JOB 9. 32-35. A 119 For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, That we should come together in judgement. There is no daysman betwixt us, That might lay his hand upon us both. Let him take his rod away from me, And let not his terror make me afraid : Then would I speak, and not fear him ; For I am not so in myself. the text gives a striking metaphor. Though Job washes himself with snow and cleanses his hands with alkali, Yahweh plunges him in the ditch, and thus makes him so foul that his clothes loathe to cover him. Job does not mean that however pure he may be in his own eyes he must seem vile to the infinite purity of God. He does not admit that God is justified in so regarding him. The meaning is rather that while he is really innocent God is bent on making him seem guilty, a loathsome spectacle of moral foulness. Fried. Delitzsch interprets strangely. 32. Quailing at the thought of the irresponsible might of God, Job utters the bitter cry that God and he cannot meet as man to man on equal terms. How then is he to secure a fair trial of his case? $3. The LXX, followed by several scholars, though not by Dillmann and Duhm, read the word translated ‘not’ with a different vowel, ‘would that there were an umpire.’ The duty of the ‘daysman’ or ‘ umpire’ (marg.) would be to lay his hand upon both disputants, in other words, to make them submit to him and enforce his decision upon them. If God were only a man, or failing that if there were a third party who could represent one to the other, at present soestranged, so mutually unintelligible, wha could enter with sympathy into the standpoint of each, then there might be a chance of even-handed justice, and a decision which both parties to the suit would be forced to accept. The human heart yearns for a human God. The Christian answer is not at all in the poet’s mind, but the need to which it responds was his deepest craving. 34. Cf. xiii. 21, where Job makes a similar request. While God is smiting him with His pains, and terrifying him with His majesty, he is in no state to plead his cause, Let God not weight the dice against him, cease to distract him with agony, and, when He appears, not overpower him with awful dread, then collected and undismayed he would present his plea. Elihu takes up Job’s word, and says that he at any rate fulfils the conditions (xxxiii. 7). 35. Iam not soin myself: a vague expression, ‘So’ seems to 32 33 34 35 120 JOB 10. 1-5. A 10 My soul is weary of my life ; I will give free course to my complaint ; I will speak in the bitterness of my soul. 2 I will say unto God, Do not condemn me}; Shew me wherefore thou contendest with me. 3 Is it good unto thee that thou shouldest oppress, That thou shouldest despise the work of thine hands, And shine upon the counsel of the wicked ? 4 Hast thou eyes of flesh, Or seest thou as man seeth? 5 Are thy days as the days of man, refer to ‘and not fear him,’ and the meaning is that while he might be terrified by the circumstances, he had in himself no cause to fear, since his conscience was free from guilt. x. 1. Once again Job longs for death, and since life is so wretched, resolves, as in vii. 2, to speak out all the bitterness of his complaint, reckless though it may bring him a still sharper punish- ment. The complaint, however, is for the most part remonstrance or pathetic appeal. my complaint, /it. ‘my complaint with me.’ The expression is strange, perhaps we should read, with a slight emendation, ‘my complaint against Him.’ The third line is put together from vii. rz. Bickell and Duhm strike it out, and one line has to be eliminated if the scheme of four-lined stanzas must be maintained at all costs, unless we suppose that a line has fallen out after the first line, and divide the stanzas differently. 3. Isit good unto thee. Itis not clear whether this means, ‘does it please thee?’ or ‘ does it befit thee?’ or ‘is it profitable to thee ?” despise the work (Heb. /abour) of thine hands. Contempt for God’s handiwork reflects contempt on God. The last line is struck out by Bickell, followed by Beer and Duhm, and even by Budde. The thought is somewhat alien to the context, and the line seems to limit ‘the work of thy hands’ to the good as opposed to the wicked, whereas it more naturally means man as the creature of God, without reference to moral character. = ee 4. Is God’s persecution due to His inability to see more clearly than a mere man ? 5. The meaning is generally supposed to be, Is God so short- lived that He must lose no time in punishing Job, lest He should JOB 10, 6-9. A, 12h Or thy years as man’s days, That thou inquirest after mine iniquity, 6 And searchest after my sin, Although thou knowest that I am not wicked ; 7 And there is none that can deliver out of ae hand? Thine hands have framed me and fashioned me 8 Together round about ; yet thou dost destroy me. Remember, I beseech thee, that thou hast fashioned me 9 =9as, Clay.; die and His victim thus escape Him? Some think the verse explains verse 4: God is not short-sighted, for He is eternal, and has therefore had eternal experience, and thus gained perfect wisdom. 6. God seeks to discover Job’s guilt by the sufferings He inflicts ; He uses torture to make him confess. 7. The present text gives an excellent sense, God knows Job to be innocent, yet He seeks to drive him to confession of guilt ; He knows that no one can deliver Job from His power, yet He overwhelms him with suffering as if at any moment he might slip through His fingers. The verse does not present the usual parallelism. The text of the second line has been emended by Beer and Duhm to secure a parallel to the first line. The emenda- tion of the latter is preferable, since it is nearer the present text, ‘and there is no treachery in my hand.’ 8. Job begins to urge upon God the wonderful care He had lavished on him, to drive home the strangeness of His action in now destroying him. Instead of the somewhat curious ‘together round about’ the LXX reads ‘and afterwards changing.’ This is now generally accepted, because in addition to the peculiar character of the present text it involves taking part of the second line with the first, so that the division of the lines does not coin- cide with that required by the sense. It is not quite certain how the Hebrew should be restored, the sense would be something like ‘ afterwards thou turnest to destroy me.’ 9. Barth, followed by Dillmann, takes the second line as well as the first to be governed by remember, ‘I am formed of clay and must return to dust.’ But there is no reference here to the common lot of mortals, for Job’s meaning is that God is wantonly destroying His own handiwork, not that extinction must ulti- mately overtake him in the course of nature. He is not com- plaining that he must die, but that he must die before his time and so painfully. We must adopt the usual view that in the first line Job recalls the care God has taken in fashioning him, and in 122 . JOB 10, ro-14. A And wilt thou bring me into dust again? 10 Hast thou not poured me out as milk, And curdled me like cheese? 11 Thou hast clothed me with skin and flesh, And knit me together with bones and sinews. 12 Thou hast granted me life and favour, And thy visitation hath preserved my spirit. 13 Yet these things thou didst hide in thine heart ; T know that this zs with thee: 14 If I sin, then thou markest me, the second line his surprise that He should reduce to dust that on which He has spent such pains. Remember: God must be suffering from a strange lapse of memory, or He would remember what skill and labour He had lavished on that which He is now bent on destroying. : 10, 11. These verses describe the process of his formation. 12. The first line seems to refer to his birth, the second to the subsequent preservation of his life. The Hebrew in the first line is'a little strained, we should perhaps for ‘life and favour’ read ‘grace and favour’ with Beer, or ‘life and length of days’ with Duhm. 13. All this care had only masked God’s sinister design, which He had cherished from the first, thus to overwhelm him with calamity. He wished to beguile Job into a happy confidence in His love, to eradicate all fear of misfortune, that the blow might fall on him with all the more crushing, paralysing force. I know. Contrast xix. 25. 14. God’s fell purpose, long entertained, is now exhibited in more detail from this verse to verse 17; we should translate ‘If I sinned, then thou wouldst mark me, and thou wouldst not acquit me,’and similarly throughout the passage. It is possible to translate as in the text, in which case Job is describing God's present dealings with him rather than describing how God had treasured up His dark designs. If I sin, as contrasted with. ‘If I be wicked" (verse 15), refers to slight as opposed to grave sins. Whatever he did, God had made up His mind to hold him guilty. If he should commit some trifling fault, if he should be guilty of some grave wicked- ness, even if he were innocent, he would be condemned just the same. It is questionable if we ought to establish any sharp distinction between ‘thou wouldst mark me,’ ‘woe unto me,’ and ‘I must not lift up my head.’ They are ali rhetorical varia- JOB 16, 15-17. A 423 And thou wilt not acquit me from mine iniquity. If I be wicked, woe unto me; And if I be righteous, yet shall I not lift up my head ; Being filled with ignominy And looking upon mine affliction. And if my head exalt itself, thou huntest me as a lion: And again thou shewest thyself marvellous upon me, Thou renewest thy witnesses against me, And increasest thine indignation upon me ; Changes and warfare are with me. tions for the same idea. Job surely does not mean that God would punish him more severely for a heavy than’ for a light offence. His point is that God had determined how he would treat him, and would not be moved by any considerations of Job’s conduct. The immorality of God would hardly tally with such carefully graduated adjustment of penalty to offence. 15. The marg. ‘I am filled with ignominy, but look thou upon mine afflictions ; [verse 16] for it increaseth: thou huntest me as a lion’ should be rejected; if the Hebrew text is right we must translate asin R.V. But ‘looking upon mine affliction’ is very flat and prosaic. A very slight alteration in the Hebrew gives ‘drunken with affliction,’ which is much more effective and forms an excellent parallel to the preceding words. We may translate, ‘sated with shame, and drunken with sorrow.’ The LXX simply reads ‘I am sated with shame.’ Beer and Duhm strike out the words, but it would be a pity to lose them. God’s purpose was that even if Job were innocent, He should so over- whelm him with shame and sorrow that he could not lift up his head. 16. The first line is difficult, and some scholars omit it. The verb has no subject expressed ; probably we should supply ‘my head’ asin R.V. Nor is it clear whether God or Job is com- pared to alion; cf. Hos. v. 14, xiii. 7,8; Lam. iii. to. In the second line the bitter irony is heightened by the previous description of God’s wonderful creation of him. He worthily matches the miracle of creating by the pains He now inflicts. God’s present miracles are the tortures of a helpless creature by omnipotence. 17. Generally the last line is taken as a hendiadys: ‘Changes and a host are with me,’ that is, successive hosts assail him}; so the margin, ‘Host after host is against me.’ But we should perhaps follow the LXX and Syriac, and read ‘thou renewest a host against me,’ The hosts God keeps sending are His pains, 15 16 17 124 JOB 10. 18-22, (A 18 Wherefore then hast thou brought me forth out of the womb ? I had given up the ghost, and no eye had seen me, 19 I should have been as though I had not been; I should have been carried from the womb to the grave. 20 Are not my days few? cease then, And let me alone, that I may take comfort a little, 21 Before I go whence. I shall not return, £ven to the land of darkness and of the shadow of death; a2 A land of thick darkness, as darkness é¢se/f; A land of the shadow of death, without any order, And wheie the light is as darkness. 18, 19. Why should God have been so pitilessly set on His purpose as to bring Job to the birth ? Could He not have relented so far as to suffer him never to have been born? 20. But since God has not spared him the tragedy of life, let Him listen to Job’s touching appeal for the slender boon he now craves. Must his life be intolerable anguish, passing into Sheol’s dismal gloom, with no brief respite of untroubled peace? Let God remember how short a span of life is left to him, how dreary the interminable darkness that awaits him, and grant him at least that this interval may be free from pain ! The Hebrew as written gives the sense translated in the R. V. marg. ‘let him cease and leave me alone.’ The reader is directed, however, to substitute different consonants, and the sense is then that given in the text, which is the more probable. We should perhaps read with the LXX, slightly altering the Hebrew, ‘Are not the days of my life few? let me alone, that I may brighten up (see ix. 27) a little.’ 21. Whence I shall not return. Cf. vii. 9, 10, xiv. 7-22. land of darkness: yet Sheol, dreary as is its unutterable gloom, he feels, in some of his moods at any rate, to be better than life. There at least he will not be tortured. 22. Several scholars suspect this verse of being a later insertion. Its heaping together of various synonyms for darkness is strange. It would be better to abbreviate it than to cut it out, and we may omit three words in the Hebrew as due to mistaken repetition, translating ‘A land of thick darkness, without any order, And where the light is as darkness.’ This is just the place where Job may well paint Sheol in dark colours. The reader cannot fail to be struck with the poet’s skill in os, JOB li.i,2 A 125 Then answered Zophar the Naamathite, and said, Should not the multitude of words be answered ? And should a max full of talk be justified ? depicting the tumult in Job’s soul. He oscillates between the sense of God’s ruthless injustice to him now and the memory of blessed fellowship with Him in the past. His pain is real, there- fore God is his enemy ; but the fellowship in the past was also real, was not God then his friend? He feels himself driven to the terrible conclusion that from the first God had nursed against him an implacable hate, and the better to gratify it had through long years set Himself to win Job’s confidence that his calamity might not lack the uttermost bitterness, the sense that he had trusted and been betrayed. Yet even after he has expressed this convic- tion he closes with an appeal to God, an indication that the old temper of soul towards Him had not been killed out. Much of the interest of this drama of the soul lies in the growth of a consciousness in Job that God’s present anger does not represent His inmost self. It isa mood that will pass, a dark cloud eclipsing His truest character. This thought does not, however, emerge as yet. _ xi. 1-6. Zophar rebukes Job for his fluent babbling against God, who would soon convince him what depths of wisdom lay in His action. xi. 7-12. The wisdom of God is unsearchable, none can restrain Him from working His will. He knows iniquity and His chasten- ing leads to the sinner’s reformation. xi. 13-20. If Job will renounce iniquity a life of blessedness will be his portion, but the wicked shall be driven into desperate straits. Zophar is a rougher type of man than the more dignified Eliphaz or the gentler Bildad, He is a vigorous and effective speaker, and for intellectual power ranks with Eliphaz and compares favourably with Bildad. But he is the most raspmg disputant of the three. In Job’s lengthy speech he can see nothing but long-winded babblings, the accusations hurled against God and Job’s strong assertions of his innocence blinding him to its pathos and passionate appeal. 2. The length of Job’s second speech irritated the impatient Zophar. He sees in Joba fluent rhetorician, the torrent of whose eloquence must not be suffered to sweep all before it. a man fall of talk, /it. ‘a man of lips.’ Job is a sophist, with- out genuine conviction or solid argument. 126 JOB 11. 3-6 A 3 Should thy boastings make men hold their peace? And when thou mockest, shall no man make thee ashamed ? 4 For thou sayest, My doctrine is pure, And I am clean in thine eyes. 5 But Oh that God would speak, And open his lips against thee ; 6 And that he would shew thee the secrets of wisdom, That it is manifold in effectual working ! 3. Perhaps we ought to read ‘should men be silent at thy babblings?’ Job’s mockery is not the sarcasms he has flung at the friends, but the blasphemies he has uttered against God. 4. The verse might be taken as a question, but if not, Zophar is summarizing the general drift of Job’s speech, rather than quoting his actual words. According to the present text Job is said to make two statements, that the views he has enunciated are sound, and that he is innocent in God’s sight. It is not easy to believe that the second line explains the first, My doctrine is pure that God afflicts those whom He knows to be righteous, for I was righteous in His sight, yet He has afflicted me. One cannot but feel that the two statements are somewhat unequally yoked together. Beer reads ‘my walk’ instead of ‘my doctrine, with a slight change in the Hebrew, though the sense is disputed. This yields a good parallelism, and is probably correct. For ‘in thine eyes’ the LXX reads ‘in his eyes,’ which is not an improvement, for it misses the point that Job says this outright to God’s face. Siegfried reads ‘in my eyes,’ but though an accusation of self- righteousness, as if Job were the final court of appeal, is not inappropriate, the present text is better. What profoundly shocks Zophar is not Job’s self-righteousness, but his assertion of God’s unrighteousness. He is pure in God’s eyes, yet God treats him asasinner. The text also secures a much better connexion with verses 5, 6. 5. Job had said that God knew him to be innocent. But if God _responded, as Zophar devoutly wishes He would, to Job’s challenge to meet him, He would soon show him that so far from smiting him with unmerited punishment, He was really chastising him more lightly than he had deserved. That it is manifold in effectual working, marg. ‘ For sound wisdom is manifold.’ The word translated ‘ effectual working’ is that translated ‘enterprise’ in v. 12 (see note). The word translated ‘manifold’ may also mean ‘twofold.’ But ‘twofold’ JOB 11.7 A 127 Know therefore that God exacteth of thee less than thine iniquity deserveth. Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection ? of what? Obviously not, as some have taken it, of Job’s wisdom, for Zophar could hardly be guilty of the absurdity of assuring Job that God was twice as wise as he was, especially after Job had himself asserted God’s wisdom in such strong language. ‘Double what you think it is’ would be less inadequate, but the words hardly mean this. We may therefore set aside the translation ‘double,’ and accept that in the text. But several scholars now make a trifling alteration in the Hebrew and for ‘manifold’ read ‘like wonders,’ or simply ‘wonders,’ Fried. Delitzsch interprets that two belong to true wisdom, i. e. man who claims to be right and God who admits the claim. It is hardly likely that this is the true explanation. exacteth of thee less than thine iniquity deserveth: marg. ‘remitteth (Heb. causeth to be forgotten) unto thee of thine iniquity.” The sense is probably ‘brings a part of thy sins into forgetfulness for thee.” The suggestion that God is forgetful of a portion of Job’s sin, does not remember it all against him, and therefore that his suffering is less than what he might justly have received, is not too rancorous for Zophar, the coarsest of the friends, though it is rather strong even for him at this stage of the debate. Nevertheless the LXX reading, ‘that thy deserts have happened to thee from the Lord for thy sins,’ while milder, is probably not to be preferred, and to omit the line with Bickell, who omits a good deal in verses 4-12, and Duhm is very un- satisfactory. We may contrast with this line the beautiful saying of the Second Isaiah, ‘She hath received at Yahweh’s hands double for all her sins’ (Isa. xl. 2). 7. The translation of the first line is hardly defensible. The marg. ‘Canst thou find out the deep things of God?’ gives what is probably the true sense. The word translated ‘deep things’ probably means ‘the object of search,’ though the word may also mean ‘the act of search’ or ‘the result of search.’ If the act of search is intended, the meaning would be, can you discover the limits of God’s investigation ? findout the Almighty untoperfection. For ‘find out’ another verb probably stood in the original text, not merely because the repetition is unlikely, but because the Hebrew is rather strange. The text would probably run originally something like ‘ Canst thou reach to the perfection of the Almighty ?’ 128 JOB 11. 8-12. A 8 It is high as heaven ; what canst thou do? Deeper than Sheol; what canst thou know? g The measure thereof is longer than the earth, And broader than the sea. 1o If he pass through, and shut up, And call unto judgement, then who can hinder him ? 11 For he knoweth vain men: He seeth iniquity also, even though he consid it not. 12 But vain man is void of understanding, Yea, man is born as a wild ass’s colt. 8. In what follows the reference is probably to the Divine wisdom, not to the Divine nature. It is high as heaven: literally, as in the marg., ‘The heights of heaven.’ If this is correct the words are an exclama- tion, ‘ Heights of heaven! what canst thou do?” But as we have in the next three lines deeper than Sheol,.. . longer than the earth, . .. broader than the sea, we should clearly read here, ‘Itis higher than the heavens.’ Zophar takes the extreme examples of height and depth, of length and breadth in the physical universe to set forth the vastness, the comprehensiveness and infinite range of God’s wisdom, against which Job pits himself in vain. 10. Zophar takes up Job’s own words ix. 11, 12, We need not suppose, with Duhm, that the verse is a misplaced portion of Job’sspeech. ‘Call unto judgement’ is literally ‘ call an assembly.’ 11. The wisdom of God finds a sphere of action in His moral government. He knows the wicked, without needing to consider it, i. e. He has intuitive knowledge, and therefore does not depend on observation. The question arises here, as in several other passages, whether for /o’ ‘ not’ we should read / ‘to it’: ‘ He seeth iniquity also and payeth regard to it.’ The margin ‘and him that considereth not’ is not so good. 12. This is a very difficult verse. The translation ‘is void of understanding’ is dubious, the word bears this privative meaning in another conjugation (Piel), but it is questionable whether the conjugation here used (/Aiphal), as the word is pointed, can mean this. It would be quite easy to get over this difficulty, but the sense is not satisfactory ; it is mere tautology to say that a hollow man is without understanding. Accordingly we should take the verb to mean ‘will get understanding.’ But, even then, there are more ways than one of interpreting the verse. The marg. ‘ But an empty man will get understanding, when a wild ass’s colt is born a man’ yields a good sense in itself, the second line then express- * JOB 11. 13-17. A 129 If thou set thine heart aright, And stretch out thine hands toward him ; If iniquity be in thine hand, put it far away, And let not unrighteousness dwell in thy tents ; Surely then shalt thou lift up thy face without spot ; Yea, thou shalt be stedfast, and shalt not fear: For thou shalt forget thy misery ; Thou shalt remember it as waters that are passed away : And /fy life shall be clearer than the noonday ; Though there be darkness, it shall be as the morning. ing the idea of ‘never,’ like our ‘when pigs fly.’ But it does not spring naturally out of the context, and cannot be well fitted into it. It would accordingly be better to translate, ‘So an empty man gets understanding, And a wild ass’s colt is born a man.’ Thus we get’a good connexion with what precedes, God chastens the wicked, and thus the empty man gains wisdom. The wild ass’s colt is the type of that which is undisciplined and hard to tame. The second line is strangely expressed. If the text is right it is probably a popular proverb. Budde slightly alters the text and reads ‘is tamed.’ We could then translate, ‘And a wild ass’s colt of a man is tamed,’ the phrase being copied from the description of Ishmael, Gen. xvi. 12. Orwe might read, ‘A wild ass’s colt is tamed,’ supposing that ‘man’ is a subsequent inser- tion under the influence of Gen. xvi. 12, or to make sense after ‘tamed’ had been corrupted into ‘born.’ Siegfried unnecessarily omits the verse. 13. Zophar, like Eliphaz, closes his speech with exhortation, and a promise of prosperity, but, as is to be expected in a man of his temper and at this more developed exhibition of Job’s attitude, he more openly assumes Job’s guilt, and in the general statement as to the fate of the wicked with which he ends. does not exclude Job from those to whom it may apply. 14. The text assumes that Job is guilty of sin. Bickell and Siegfried quite needlessly strike out the verse. Duhm may be right in reading ‘If evil be not in thine hand, and wickedness dwell not in my tent.’ Nevertheless, the assumption of guilt is not premature at this point in the debate. 15. Zophar is referring to Job’s complaint in x. 15. 17. be clearer than: marg. ‘arise above.’ Cheyne thinks the Hebrew, which is strange, cannot be correct; he reads ‘And the days of thy life shall be as the noonday.’ _ Though there be darkness: this is the best way of taking K 13 14 130 JOB 11. 18-12... A xg And thou shalt be secure, because there is hope; Yea, thou shalt search adout thee, and shalt take thy rest in safety. rg Also thou shalt lie down, and none shall make thee afraid ; Yea, many shall make suit unto thee. 20 But the eyes of the wicked shall fail, And they shall have no way to flee, And their hope shall be the giving up of the ofiodhed 12 Then Job answered and said, the words as pointed ; the meaning is that the very darkness shall be light, a striking antithesis to Job’s description of the gloom of Sheol that awaits him, where the light is as darkness. Possibly the words may mean ‘though a period of darkness has still to be endured, it will soon break into radiant dawn, The word may be a noun, ‘ Darkness shall be as the morning.’ 19. The court favourite has many flatterers ; when Job is once more God’s favourite he will not lack this testimony to his dignity. In his prosperity he had received deep respect even from princes and the aged (xxix. 7-10, 21-25). Now, as he bitterly complains, the lowest ranks of society and those younger than himself have him in derision (xxx. 1-10), the very children despise and mock at him (xix. 18). 20. Bildad’s prediction of the fate of the wicked is here repeated, but whereas he identified the wicked with Job’s enemies, Zophar leaves open the possibility that Job may himself be included in that category, and in the last line significantly alludes to Job’s repeated wish that he might die. xii. 1-6. Job ironically praises the wisdom of the friends, but he is not inferior to those who utter such trite commonplaces. His friends mock him in spite of his piety ; how easy for those who are fortunate to despise the wretched! while the wicked prosper. xii. 7-12. All creation testifies to God’s almighty rule; we should not accept all the teaching we hear, even though given by the aged, but discriminate. xii. 13-25. God is both wise and mighty, none can undo His deeds ; He overthrows the highest and turns the wisest into fools. xiii. 1-12. Well does Job know God’s manner of government ; he has nothing to learn from the friends, but desires to reason with God. The friends would show themselves wiser if they JOB 12.1 A 131 were silent ; they are flatterers of God because they dread Him, but their cringing flattery will draw down His anger. All their maxims are worthless. xiii. 13-22. Let the friends be silent, for Job at whatever risk will speak his whole mind, and maintain his cause to God’s face, confident of his innocence. But let God release him from pain and not appal him with His terror, then he will plead with Him as plaintiff or defendant. xiii, 23-28. Let him know with what sins God charges him. Why does God hide His face in hostility ?. Why pursue with such rancour one so insignificant and so frail ? xiv. 1-6. Man’s days are brief and full of trouble, why should God harass one whose life He has so rigidly limited? Let God release him from His watchfulness, that he may make the most of the time left to him. xiv. 7-12. For the tree may bud again, though it be cut down and its roots decay ; but man dies and his sleep knows no waking. xiv. 13-17. Would that God might hide him in Sheol till His wrath were spent and then remember him! How gladly he would wait to renew at last the tender intercourse, when God would once more desire His servant, watch over him and forget his sin. xiv. 18-22. But even mountains and rocks perish, and man is sent away by God into that state where he knows no Jonger how his dear ones fare on earth, but is conscious only of his own pain. Hitherto Job had said but little in direct answer to the friends, though he had expressed his deep disappointment that they had failed him in his extremity (vi. 14-23), asserted the worthlessness of their arguments (vi. 24-26), and chidden their unkindness and blindness (vi. 27-30). Itis with the conduct of God that he is most deeply engrossed. The thought of His immorality has a dreadful fascination for him, to that magnet the trembling needle con- stantly turns. Small need that the friends should talk to him of God ; he knows it all, His wisdom, His might, His exaltation above His frail creatures. So with biting sarcasm he now assails them directly. Why do they vex him with such empty common- places? Is this their boasted wisdom? They are sycophants, who try to curry favour with God by smearing over His misgovern- ment with their lies. Yet even in this speech it is with God Himself rather than with the arguments of the friends that Job is concerned. His strength and wisdom he depicts more brilliantly than the friends, thus making good his assertion that he is not inferior to them. But as he describes its working he dwells more on its destructive than its beneficent operation. Yet it is K 2 132 JOB 12.2. A 2 No doubt but ye are the people, God’s relations to himself that absorb his deepest interest. Scorning God's self-appointed champions, he would fain confront God Himself, and as he had done in his previous speech, names the terms on which he would be willing to meet Him. From this his thought passes to the brevity of man’s days, and once more he wonders that God should condescend to cast His malevolent regard on one so insignificant. It is not as though this life were to be followed by another. For then man would not be so unworthy of God’s attention, and a second life might redress the miseries of the first. But this life is all man has, if that is not happy he will have no chance of happiness elsewhere. He will go down to Sheol, his eternal home. To Sheol, yes, but might not God hide him in that inaccessible abode till His wrath had spent itself? Then He might think once more on His servant, and long for the work of His hands, He might renew the old -happy fellowship. Vain hope! man’s banishment to Sheol is irrevocable. Some scholars have impugned, in whole or in part, the genuineness of ch, xii. Siegfried, after striking out verses 4-6, omits xii. 7—xiii. I as an interpolation, intended to harmonize the speeches of Job with the orthodox doctrine of retribution. There was, however, a real reason why Job should emphasize God's might and wisdom. The friends spoke as if these attributes involved the righteousness of God. But experience has convinced Job that the Power that governs the universe need not be, and in fact is not, righteous. The friends argued, God is all-powerful and all-wise, therefore He can do no wrong; Job replied, true, God is all-powerful and all-wise, but He is unrighteous none the less, and does all the more evil, that power and wisdom guide His unrighteousness to its baneful ends. Kuenen admits that the objections to ch. xii are not groundless. The sequence leaves something to be desired, and chs. xiii, xiv form a complete answer to Zophar. Still, many difficulties may be due to textual disorder, and the poet may have let Job say more than was necessary on the wisdom or power of God, so as to show that he did not fall behind the friends. The chapter may be justified as a parallel to ix. 4-12. He adds that it is very unlikely that a later interpolator who wished to bring out Job’s superiority to the friends should have done it in this way. xii, 2. the people: some explain this to mean ‘the right kind of people,’ but it is now more generally taken in the national or tribal sense. It would then be like our colloquial repartee, ‘you’re everybody!’ Naturally, Job sarcastically continues, when they die, wisdom will die with them. It is not, however, a very probable expression, and Klostermann may be right in his very JOB 12. 3-5. A 133 And wisdom shall die with you. But I have understanding as well as you ; 3 { am not inferior to you: Yea, who knoweth not such things as these? : I am as one that is a laughing-stock to his neighbour, 4 A man that called upon God, and he answered him: The just, the perfect man is a laughing-stock. . In the thought of him that is at ease there is contempt 5 for misfortune ; It is ready for them whose foot slippeth. ingenious suggestion that ‘aw: is a relic of hayyod®‘im, the word being obliterated, with the exception of the two final consonants. If so the text ran originally, ‘No doubt but ye are they that have knowledge ;’ cf. xxxiv. 2. 3. Zophar has hinted that by God’s chastisement the hollow man gets understanding. Job, applying this to his own case, retorts that he has already as much understanding as the friends ; indeed, every one knows the shallow commonplaces that constitute their speeches. ; 4. Siegfried, followed by Duhm, omits verses 4-6. The latter urges that this passage speaks of the godless who despise the pious, whereas Job is condemned by the godly for his supposed impiety. But Job speaks out of the consciousness of his own piety, and in his reference to the mockery to which he is exposed he does not mean that he was mocked on account of his godliness, which was not true in his case, but that in spite of it he was taunted with impiety. The meaning hardly seems to be that Job complains of the contempt displayed by the friends in that they offer him such elementary instruction. Ley thinks the second line is a description of the ‘ neighbour,’ not of Job, and translates the third line ‘a laughing-stock to the just, the perfect man.’ In that case Job refers ironically to Zophar as one who called on God and was answered by Him, as a just and blameless man. Klostermann with a slight emendation gets the sense, for the second and third lines, ‘Where has there ever been one who cried to God, and to whom the righteous answered with mockery?’ : 5. Not an easy verse, but if the text is sound the R. V. trans- lation is to be adopted, except that we should perhaps take the word translated ‘it is ready’ as a noun meaning ‘a blow.’ Several emendations have been proposed, but they seem to be no improvement on the present text. Job means that it isvery natural 134° JOB 12,6-8 A 6 The tents of robbers prosper, And they that provoke God are secure ; Into whose hand God bringeth abundantly. 7 But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; And the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee: 8 Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee ; for those who are in pleasant circumstances to despise the un- fortunate ; it is quite the world’s way to hit the man who is down. 6. Although Job has simply said in verse 5 that the prosperous despise and buffet the wretched, the general maxim is coloured in his own mind by the thought of his own case, hence while he does not say that the ‘wretched, wko are thus scorned and mishandled, are righteous, the fact that it was so in his own case determines the form which the antithesis assumes in this verse. But Job not only contrasts the wicked with the unfortunate, but instead of dwelling as in verse 5 on the treatment they receive from men, asserts their unassailable position. Siegfried, followed by Budde, reads ‘Security of the tents belongs to the robbers and safety to those that provoke God.’ The form of the verb translated ‘ prosper’ is strange. The third line is difficult. With the present text we should probably translate as in the margin, ‘that bring their god in their hand.’ The meaning would then seem to be that they worship their own power and make it their god, for which idea Hab. i. 11, 16 is generally compared. A simple emendation would be to transpose the preposition with Siegfried and Beer, and get the sense, Who lifteth his hand against God, but the construction is questionable. Duhm emends ingeniously and gets the sense ‘ to him that saith, Is not God in my hand?’ 7. The wisdom which the friends have complacently been teaching Job is so rudimentary that the very animals possess it. It is not of any secret wisdom possessed by the animals that Job is speaking, such as is often ascribed to them in folk-lore, e. g. in the legends about Solomon. It is rather of a knowledge universally diffused, accessible to all God’s creatures. The passage is to be treated as poetry, but antiquity did not draw the same sharp line between human and animal intelligence as we draw. 8. speak to the earth: Clearly we ought not to have the earth itself included in an enumeration of the various living crea- tures in the earth. We have beasts, birds, and fishes mentioned in the other clauses, accordingly we should have ‘swarming things’ in this line. Those who retain the present text take ‘the earth’ to mean or include ‘all the forms of lower life with which JOB 12. 9-11. A 135 And the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee. Who knoweth not in all these, 9 That the hand of the Lorp hath wrought this? In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, 10 And the breath of all mankind. Doth not the ear try words, II Even as the palate tasteth its meat? it teems’ (Davidson). But this puts an undue strain on the language. Ewald read ‘speak to the living creatures of the earth,’ but ‘speak to the swarming things’ would be better, since the word translated ‘earth’ is much like that translated ‘swarm- ing things.’ It is questionable, however, if this is quite satis- factory. The word translated ‘speak’ isalso a noun meaning ‘plant,’ and though it is not likely that plants are here included among animals, the alternative rendering is also open to objection. An imperative in the first clause of this couplet corresponds, it is true, to the imperative in the first clause of the preceding couplet. On the other hand, as in the line before and the line after we have ‘the air’ and ‘the sea’ mentioned, the question arises whether we should not retain ‘the earth’ and correct the word translated ‘speak.’ The best emendation is probably Hitzig’s, ‘ or the swarming things of the earth.’ Duhm’s emendation ‘or the crawling things of the earth’ is perhaps transcriptionally easier, but the word is rare, occurring twice only in the O. T. and therefore not likely to occur here, since the three corresponding terms are the familiar ones. Dillmann’s suggestion that the line may not be genuine can hardly be correct, for the parallelism requires it. 9. Cf. Isa. xli. 20. The margin ‘by all these’ may be right, the meaning will then be ‘who does not know by means of all these creatures?’ Or the meaning may be ‘ which among all these creatures does not know?’ The mention of Yahweh, which is carefully avoided by the poet in the speeches (xxviii. 28 belongs to an insertion), is surprising. Some MSS. read Eloah, i, e. God, which may be original, or a correction to conform the verse to the poet’s usage. If the poet wrote Yahweh it must have been by an oversight. The meaning of wrought this is not quite clear ; certainly it does not mean ‘has made this universe,’ pro- bably the sense is, has done as Zophar represented Him as doing ; the lowest creatures all know that God is as strong and wise as you say. 11. Davidson thinks that this verse indicates that the ear as well as the eye (verses 7-10) is a channel of sound information. 136 JOB 12. 12-16. A 12 With aged men is wisdom, And in length of days understanding. 13 With him is wisdom and might ; He hath counsel and understanding. 14 Behold, he breaketh down, and it cannot be built again ; He shutteth up a man, and there can be no opening. 15 Behold, he withholdeth the waters, and they dry up; Again, he sendeth them out, and they overturn the earth. 16 With him is strength and effectual working ; The deceived and the deceiver are his. But it is the friends, rather than Job, who appealed to the wisdom of the ancients. Job lays stress rather on the judgement which the listener passes on what he hears than on the information he gets by listening. The point is, therefore, one should not believe all he hears, but test it and discriminate between false and true, as the palate distinguishes between nauseous and pleasant food. Job asserts his right to take up an independent attitude to the doctrines forced on him by the friends, and to their reliance on tradition. 12. Ifthe previous verse has been correctly explained, this verse cannot contain a statement of what Job believes. He may be summarizing the view of the friends, as the margin takes it, ‘With aged men, ye say, is wisdom,’ or it may be a question expecting the answer ‘No.’ Duhm reads, ‘ Are years wisdom?’ Some regard the verse as a later addition or as possibly misplaced. 13. In emphatic contrast to the view that wisdom belonged to the ancients, Job asserts that it is God who possesses wisdom, and might as well. The insertion of a single letter in the word translated ‘counsel’ would yield a word meaning ‘strength,’ and thus we should gain a complete parallelism with the preceding line (so Budde). Duhm regards the verse as a variant of verse 16, but the contrast between verses 12 and 1g is effective, and if 1g is eliminated the transition from 12 to 14 is rather abrupt. 14. Job now describes the working of God, in which His might and wisdom are displayed. He begins with God’s de- struction of cities, and then passes to His imprisonment of men in dungeons from which there is no escape. Probably some definite historical events are in the poet’s mind. 15. He causes both drought and deluge. Cf. Amos v. 8, ix. 6. 16. effectual working: marg. ‘sound wisdom’ ; seenote onv. 12. The deceived and the deceiver are his: apparently he means that God is responsible for both. ' JOB 12. 17-22. A 137 ” He leadeth counsellors away spoiled, And judges maketh he fools. He looseth the bond of kings, And bindeth their loins with a girdle. He leadeth priests away spoiled, And overthroweth the mighty. He removeth the speech of the trusty, And taketh away the understanding of the elders. He poureth contempt upon princes, And looseth the belt of the strong: He discovereth deep things out of darkness, And bringeth out to light the shadow of death. 17. The first line bears a suspicious resemblance to the first line of verse Io, and the parallelism with the second line is anything but close. Duhm regoves both difficulties by reading ‘counsellors of the earth he makes foolish’; the measures taken to secure the result are rather drastic, but something of the kind is more suitable than the present text. 18. The first line apparently means that God loosens the bond imposed by kings. The word as pointed means ‘correction,’ a different pointing gives us the meaning ‘bond,’ though else- where the word occurs only in the plural. Not only does God free the king’s prisoners, but He binds the kings themselves. Since to bind the loins with a girdle means to strengthen, we should probably read a slightly different word instead of ‘ girdle,’ meaning ‘ bond’ or ‘ fetter.’ 19. priests: a very important order in Israel, still more so in some other nations, e.g. Egypt. spoiled: the word may mean ‘barefoot.’ 21. For the first line see Ps. cvii. go. the strong. The word elsewhere means ‘canals,’ but this gives no suitable sense here. It is questionable if the word means ‘strong, that, however, is the sense required, and it can be obtained by a slight emendation. Cheyne reads ‘greaves’ instead of ‘belt.’ xii. 22-25. Dillmann questions if all of this is original. Duhm suspects verse 22 on account of its abstract character; some _ reject verse 23. Budde strikes out verses 22, 24, 25. 22. The meaning is not clear. The deep things may be the _ secret plans of men, or the secret decrees of God, or the depths 17 bt) 19 20 2i 22 138 JOB 12. 23—13. FA 23 He increaseth the nations, and destroyeth them: He spreadeth the nations abroad, and bringeth them in. 24 He taketh away the heart of the chiefs of the people of the earth, And causeth them to wander in a wilderness where there is no way. 25°They grope in the dark without light, And he maketh them to stagger like a drunken man. 13° Lo, mine eye hath seen all ¢his, Mine ear hath heard and understood it. 2 What ye know, ¢he same do I know also: I am not inferior unto you. 3 Surely I would speak to the Almighty, of His own nature. Duhm thinks that if the verse is genuine the sense suggested by the context is that while God overthrows the rulers He brings the poorer classes out of obscurity to honour, This gives a good contrast, but it seems a forced sense to impose on the words. 23. bringeth them in: generally the word is translated as in the marg., ‘leadeth them away,’ i.e. into captivity. This gives a good but rather questionable sense, since elsewhere the word means ‘to lead’ with a favourable significance. 24. heart: used, as often, of the intellect. As the first line of verse 21 is found in Ps. evii. 40, so the second line of that verse is found in the second line here. The word for ‘ wilderness’ is that used in Gen. i. 2 for ‘waste’ in the description of chaos. - 25. For the reference to the ‘drunken man’ the same Psalm may be compared, Ps. cvii. 27. The word translated ‘maketh them to stagger’ is the same as that rendered ‘causeth them to wander’ in the preceding verse. When God deprives the leaders of understanding, they still keep on moving, but only in an aimless, witless way. xiii. 1. In answer to the accusation that he does not understand God’s action, Job replies that he understands it perfectly well, as is plain from the description he has just given. This knowledge he has gained by his own observation and what he has heard from others. Nature and history alike have been his teachers. 2. He understands it as well as the friends. Their condescend- ing airs of superiority are quite out of place. 3. Surely should be ‘ but’ ; it is the same word as that translated "'. JOB 13. 4-6. A 139 And I desire to reason with God. But ye are forgers of lies, Ye are all physicians of no value. Oh that ye would altogether hold your peace! And it should be your wisdom. Hear now my reasoning, ‘but? in verse 4. It is not agreed whether Job means ‘ Though I know this well, yet I wish to plead with God,’ or ‘ But I wish to speak to God, not to you.’ The former is perhaps favoured by the repetition of ‘but’ at the beginning of verse 4, which suggests that the attack on the friends begins with verse 4. On the other hand the immediate impression made by verse 3 and supported by the context is that Job is contrasting debate with God and debatg with the friends. So much so, indeed, that the suggestion made by some that ‘but’ should be struck out at the beginning of verse 4, aS an incorrect repetition from verse 3, would have to be seriously considered, if its presence constituted an insuperable barrier to this view of the passage. Budde, however, thinks that the repeti- tion is merely intended to sharpen the antithesis of verse 3. If this interpretation is correct verses 4-12 do not constitute a digression. 4. forgers of lies: cf. Ps. cxix. 69. ‘Plasterers of lies’ would be a nearer translation. The word translated ‘forgers’ is the participle of a verb meaning ‘to smear over.’ The meaning may be that they plaster Job with their false statements, so as to make him seem quite other than he really is. But more probably the meaning is that they smear their lies over God’s government of the world, so as to cover up all its hideous defects and give ita fair appearance. Thus we get a thought similar to what we find in verses 7-12 when Job charges the friends with lying for God. Some give the verb the sense ‘to sew’ or ‘stitch together,’ and this seems to underlie the translation ‘forgers of lies,’ but this view is apparently incorrect. physicians of no value. This is the usual translation, though some of our best authorities think the verb, of which the word rendered ‘physicians’ is the participle. bears here its original sense to patch, which gives apparently a better parallelism with ‘plasterers of lies.’ We might then translate ‘patchers of vanities.’ Unfortunately the verb seems not to occur elsewhere in this sense. 5. The friends have talked about wisdom, but so foolishly that their only chance of a reputation for wisdom is henceforth to hold their peace. Cf. Prov. xvii. 28. : 6. We should probably, with most recent commentators, adopt 140 JOB 13, y-12, A And hearken to the pleadings of my lips. 7 Will ye speak unrighteously for God, And talk deceitfully for him? 8 Will ye respect his person ? Will ye contend for God? : 9 Is it good that he should search you out? Or as one deceiveth a man, will ye deceive him? 10 He will surely reprove you, | If ye do secretly respect persons. 11 Shall not his excellency make you afraid, And his dread fall upon you? 12 Your memorable sayings ave proverbs of ashes, Your defences ave defences of clay. the reading presupposed in the LXX, ‘Hear now the rebuke of my mouth,’ This gives a complete parallelism with the next line. 8. respect his person: i.e. show partiality towards God; marg. ‘shew him favour,’ cf. xxxii. 21. The phrase literally means to lift up the face, and is used of judges who accept bribes and show undue favouritism in consequence, then it comes to mean to show partiality. It is also used in a good sense to show favour or kindness. There is a biting irony in the choice of this expression, considering the relative position of God and man. contend for God: act as His special pleaders. 9. God is too great to be flattered, too keen of perception to be beguiled. It will not be a pleasant experience for them when God strips bare their paltry souls and shows that which masquer- aded as pious reverence to be cowardly sycophancy. deceiveth ... deceive: marg. ‘mocketh . . . mock.’ 10. It is noteworthy as showing the conflict of feeling in Job, that while he attacks with the utmost boldness the unrighteousness of God’s conduct he should have such deep-rooted confidence in His righteousness as to believe Him incapable of tolerating a lying defence even of Himself. As the poet does elsewhere, so here he lets an unconscious prediction fall from the lips of one of the speakers, cf. xlii. 7, 8. 11. Job knows the dread He can inspire only too well; one of the two conditions which he implores God to grant him, when He appears, is that His terror should not make him afraid (verse 21, ix. 34). ; a The ‘memorable sayings’ are their traditional maxims, JOB 13. 13,14 A I4I Hold your peace, let me alone, that I may speak, And let come on me what will. Wherefore should I take my flesh in my teeth, And put my life in mine hand? with which they sought to silence Job, but they are ashes, dead, obsolete relics of what may once have been glowing convictions at which men warmed their hands. defences. The word may mean the boss of a shield, and Duhm takes it so here, on the ground that a clay breastwork is not a contemptible defence. But the text gives a better sense; the poet is thinking, not of the toughness of clay, but of its brittleness as compared with stone. 13. He is a desperate man; vainly will his friends seek to restrain him from speaking all his mind to God’s face, reckless of the punishment his rash defiance may provoke. 14. The verse is difficult. Its interpretation may start best from the second line. The proverb to put the life in the hand means elsewhere to expose oneself to deadly peril. It is quite clear from verse 13 that Job is not asking why he should endanger his life; he has just expressed his intention to do so. We are not warranted in imposing another sense on the words, and ex- plaining, Why should I strive desperately to save my life? Ac- cordingly the line cannot be a question; it affirms a purpose, I will take my life in my hand. The sense of the metaphor in the first line is disputed. Several think the figure is that of a wild beast, which takes its prey in its teeth and carries it away safely. In that case the verse would mean, ‘Why should I seek to save my life? nay, I will expose it to the utmost peril.” But the close parallelism between the two lines is almost decisive in favour of taking them to mean the same thing. Probably no one would have thought of contrasting the two metaphors if it had not been for the interrogative at the beginning of the verse. If the two metaphors mean the same thing, the interrogative is as unsuitable to the first as to the second line. It does not seem to be legitimate to give the two words translated ‘wherefore’ a non-interrogative sense, as the margin does in its translation ‘At all adventures I will take, &c.’ Bickell, followed by Duhm and Klostermann, avoids the difficulty by attaching these words to verse 13 and thus making the second line of verse 13 of more normal length. The _ translation of verse 13 remains the same, but it is not clear that ; ‘ “4 the phrase ‘let come on me what upon what,’ as we could translate it literally, can bear the sense ‘let come on me what may.’ It is a much simpler way to the same end to strike out these two words. They have clearly arisen through dittography of the last two 14 142 JOB 13. 15,16. A 15 Though he slay me, yet will I wait for him: Nevertheless I will maintain my ways before him. 16 This also shall be my salvation ; For a godless man shall not come before him. ——— words of verse 13, which are almost identical in Hebrew (‘al mah being an incorrect repetition of ‘alay mah). They are also wanting in the LXX. We should then translate, ‘I will take my flesh in my teeth, and my life I will put in my hand.’ Job will dare the uttermost peril, but speak he will. , 15. This verse also is difficult, The A. V. translation, ‘Though he slay me, yef will I trust in him,’ which is that of the Vulgate, is impossible, since it is utterly out of harmony with the context. It is very beautiful in itself, and no doubt what Job ought to have said, and what he would have said after the vision of God. But it is singularly unfortunate, since it is one of the few fragments in the poem which are widely known, and has thus created an entirely false impression as to Job’s real attitude. Unhappily the text is uncertain, and, as in some other cases, we have to choose between /é ‘not’ and/6‘ for him’ or ‘ forit.’ The R. V. translates the latter in the text. But the translation ‘Though he slay me’ is indefensible, for the line makes in the R. V. much the same impression as in the A. V. The margin gives what must be the general sense with this reading, ‘Behold, he will slay me; I wait for him,’ i. e. for Him to strike. We might translate ‘ for it,’ i.e. for death. It is more probable, however, that we should read the negative. The R. V. margin then offers two alternatives, ‘I will not wait’ or ‘I have no hope.’ The objection to the former, adopted by Davidson and Dillmann, is that it does not yield a very good sense, though we may compare vi. 11. The latter is that more generally adopted, and is still retained by Budde, in spite of Dillmann’s assertion that the verb does not mean ‘ to hope.’ Duhm translates ‘I cannot hold out.’ In his Job and Solomon(p. 28) Cheyne translated ‘I can wait no longer,’ explaining ‘I can wait’ to mean ‘I canbe patient.’ Now he reads, with a slight alteration, ‘I will not desist,’ i. e. from self-justification. The precise sense of the line is uncertain, fortunately the general sense is clear. 16. This: marg. ‘He,’ but less suitably. Job’s salvation consists in what he proceeds to say in the second line, which should be introduced by ‘That’ as in the margin rather than ‘ For’ as in the text. The meaning may be, God permits no unrighteous man to come before Him, this is my salvation, for I shall come before Him, and thus my righteousness will be manifested. Or the hindrance may lie not in God’s exclusion of the wicked, but in the unwillingness of the godless to enter His presence, In JOB 13. 17-22. A 143 Hear diligently my speech, And let my declaration be in your ears. Behold now, I have ordered my cause ; I know that I am righteous. Who is he that will contend with me? For now shall I hold my peace and give up the ghost. Only do not two things unto me, Then will I not hide myself from thy face: Withdraw thine hand far from me; And let not thy terror make me afraid. Then call thou, and I will answer ; that case the argument is, I am eager to come before God, this proves my righteousness. In any case the verse is noteworthy as an expression of Job’s conviction of God’s righteousness, in striking contrast to the mood which for the most part dominates him. Yet it would be quite possible for an immoral Deity to be strict in His demands on men, a Nero legislating against vice. 18. Job is prepared to plead his case against God; he has set in order his arguments, he is confident that he will triumph. We should substitute the marg. ‘shall be justified’ for am righteous. Job is not asserting his innocence, but his assurance that he will win his case and his innocence be made plain. 19. Cf. the similar words of the Servant of Yahweh, Isa. 1. 8. No one will be found to undertake a case so unsupported by evidence. The second line seems to mean, If any one should be found to dispute my righteousness, I should die ; though it may be taken as in R. V. The marg. ‘ For now if I hold my peace, I shall give up the ghost’ is less likely. 20. As in ix. 34 Job asks God to grant him two requests in order that his trial may be fair, and he may be able to do justice to his case. Let God remove His afflicting hand and not over- whelm him with Divine terrors. Then he will plead as plaintiff or defendant as God may choose. He is so confident of his cause that his adversary may freely select the mode of procedure. When God does appear He fulfils neither of Job’s requests. He speaks from the storm to Job still suffering from his disease. It is rather strange that in explication of the negative general appeal the first particular should be stated in positive form. The general sense is clear, but formally, at any rate, the passage would have run more regularly if the first line of verse 21 had tun, ‘let thy hand no longer smite me.’ 22. Cf. the similar expression in xiv. 15, but with how 17 18 a 20 2I 22 144 JOB 13, 23-26. A Or let me speak, and answer thou me. 23 How many are mine iniquities and sins? Make me to know my transgression and may sin, 24 Wherefore hidest thou thy face, And holdest me for thine enemy ? 25 Wilt thou harass a driven leaf? And wilt thou’ pursue the dry stubble? 26 For thou writest bitter things against me, And makest me to inherit the iniquities of my youth: different a sense! Here a call to a lawsuit, there a call to fellow- ship and love. 23. Job begins his plea by a demand to know the charges against him. Like many another prisoner he has been kept in ignorance of the accusations he has to meet. He does not mean that he has committed no sins at all, but that he has done nothing which deserves punishment so severe, His suffering reflects God’s attitude to him, how does God justify that attitude ? 24. Some think that there is a pause after verse 23, while Job waits to be informed of the indictment his adversary has written, and that when God still keeps silence, he breaks out with the remonstrance ‘Wherefore hidest thou thy face?’ But probably the allusion is not to God’s refusal to meet his challenge, but to His harsh treatment of him in general. 25. Once more Job pleads his insignificance as a reason why God should not deign any longer to harass him. He is like a leaf that has fallen from the tree and is driven by the gentlest breeze, or the light stubble that scuds before the slightest breath of wind. Should the Infinite One, with all the mightiest forces” in Nature at His call, amuse Himself with the paltry sport of persecuting one so frail that he is at the mercy of the weakest forces? Has God no magnanimity, no self-respect, that He stoops so low? 26. thou writest bitter things: i.e. God ordains bitter punishment, not, as Hitzig took it, prescribes bitter medicine. The metaphor is not of a physician, but of a judge writing the sentence. the iniquities of my youth: cf. Ps, xxv. 7. Job can think of no other explanation of his suffering. He is not conscious of any sin of his manhood that God could bring against him. God has therefore to go back and rake up the long past transgressions of his immaturity, a singular proof of His harsh determination to punish him, if not on good.grounds, then on bad. JOB 13. 27—14) 2.) 0A 145 Thou puttest my feet also in the stocks, and markest all 27 my paths ; Thou drawest thee a line about the soles of my feet : Though I am like a ‘rotten thing that consumeth, 28 Like a garment that is moth-eaten, Man that is born ofa woman’ _ 14 Is of few days, and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down ; 2 27. in the stocks. Since the next clause implies a certain freedom of movement on Job’s part, this translation is hardly correct, unless the two clauses refer to different times, which is unlikely. We should therefore think rather of a block of wood fastened on the foot of captives to hamper their movements and thus prevent their escape. As a further precaution God sets a watch on all Job’s paths, i.e. apparently the paths by which he might attempt to get away from God. soles of my fect: Jit. ‘the roots of my feet.’ God draws lines closely round Job’s feet, which he must not pass. But the expression ‘roots of my feet’ is strange. Duhm thinks that ‘my feet’ has been repeated here by mistake, and strikes it out, getting the sense, with rather different pointing, ‘thou cuttest a line about my root.’ In that case the metaphor is of a tree, the roots of which are cut lest they spread too far. To complete a four- lined stanza he adds here the last line of xiv. 5, ‘thou settest’ (LXX) ‘its bound that it cannot overpass.’ This is quite possibly right, at any rate so far as concerns the eliminatiom of ‘my feet.’ 28. As the margin ‘And he jis like’ intimates, we have a third person, not a first person, in the Hebrew. Several critics think the verse is unsuitable in its present connexion, and either strike it out or place it elsewhere in the:context. If Duhm’s view of the preceding verse be adopted, this verse follows fairly well on ~ it. The root of the tree being prevented from spreading, the roots that are thus laid open rot. We should in that case translate ‘and it is like.’ Cheyne thinks it is a variant of xiy. 2. His restoration may be seen Encyclopacdia Biblica, col. 2810. xiv. 1. It is probably best to take this verse as an independent _ sentence, though some, including Dillmann, think the sentence _ is completed in verse 2, translating ‘Man, born of woman, few of days and full of trouble, cometh forth like a flower,’ &c. Man’s fraility is partly accounted for by his origin, he is born of woman *the weaker vessel.’ _ -&, ig cut down: the marg. ‘withereth’ is probably to be pre- L 146 JOB 14. 3-6. AMA He fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not. — 3 And dost thou open thine eyes upon such an one, And bringest me into judgement with thee? L po 4[M] Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not’ one. : 5 [A] Seeing his days are determined, the number of his months is with thee, And thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass ; 6 Look away from him, that he may rest, Till he shall accomplish, as an hireling, his day. ferred, though the translation in the text is adopted by several. The LXX gives ‘and falleth off.’ 3. Job expresses amazement that God should scrutinize so minutely and punish so harshly the conduct of one so frail. For me it would be better to read ‘him’ with LXX, Syriac, and _ Vulgate. 4. We should certainly translate as in the marg., *Ob" =H z clean thing could come out of an unclean! not one connexion is supposed to be: If man could only be fr ik a this severe punishment of sin would not be so unjust; but non achieve this freedom, and therefore, since all inherit a sinful nature, God ought to treat them more leniently. The passage is similar to iv. 17 ff., though Eliphaz urges the universal sinfulness of man rather in explanation of Job’s suffering. We may also compare ‘That which is born of the flesh is flesh.’ The verse raises some difficulties. The second line, ‘not one,’ is abnormally short, and if this is not! intentional may be’a gloss, as Merx thinks, and as Dillmann admits may be the case. ‘Philo omits the words. Ewald points the word translated ‘ not” differently, and gets the sense ‘would that there were one.’ Duhm thinks the shortness of the line is not due to its being a gloss, but to the omission of part of it. The thought required, he says, is, there is none with- out sins, and he cleverly suggests that a word meaning ‘ without sins’ may have fallen out after the somewhat similar word trans- lated ‘out of an unclean.’ It is very questionable, however, whether the verse can be naturally connected with its context, which reads much more smoothly without it. Bickell, Beer, and Cheyne strike it out, and Budde inclines to the same course. It is the sigh of a pious reader, written on the Ba and mis- takenly introduced into the text. 6. Cf. Ps, xxxix. 13. The sufferer begs God ‘ie release him JOB 14, 7-10. A 147 For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it, will 7 sprout again, And that the tender branch thereof will not cease. Though the root thereof wax old in the earth, Vis And the stock thereof die in the ground ; Yet through the scent of water it will bud, ' 9 And put forth boughs like a plant. But man dieth, and wasteth away : 10 Yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he? from His malignant watchfulness. Man’s lot at the best is bad, ‘all his pleasure is such as the day labourer finds in his irksome ‘day.’ Let God cease to torment and no longer grudge him this poor pleasure, but leave him to endure only the common lot. For accomplish the marg. ‘have pleasure in’ should probably be preferred. 7. In this and the following verses Job urges the hopelessness of any life after death as a reason for his plea in verse 6. It is still customary near Damascus to cut down trees, the stumps of which, through watering, put forth new shoots, as here described. We may well think that the poet, by placing in Job’s mouth this re- ference to the tree’s indomitable vitality, meant subtly to suggest that it is irrational to think that what is granted to a tree can be denied toa man, though he be frail as a flower. Yet he does not explicitly {draw the inference. The thought of a happy future life is before him, but he cannot trust it confidently... It is very instructive to compare the ‘how much) more’ of Jesus when arguing from nature 'to man. ‘If,God so clothe; the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, how much more shall heiclothe you.’ ‘Fear not : ye are-of more value than many sparrows.’ , ‘ 10. While the tree hewn down to its stump, and its root all decayed, still holds on so tenaciously to life that at the slightest stimulus, the mere scent of water, it bursts into new shoots and foliage like a tender plant in the lusty vigour of its early growth, man dies and lies prostrate, his old haunts know him no more, he never rises out of death’s everlasting sleep. ' wasteth away: marg. ‘lieth low.? The LXX reads ‘and is gone.’ F _ whereis he: if the LXX ‘and is no more’ represents a differ- _ ent Hebrew original, it seems to be clearly inferior to that in the text. L2 SSE pee 148 JOB 14. 11-14. A ix As the waters fail from the sea, And the river decayeth and drieth up ; 12 So man lieth down and riseth not: Till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, Nor be roused out of their sleep. 13 Oh that thou wouldest hide me in Sheol, That thou wouldest keep me secret, until thy wrath be past, That thou wouldest appoint me a set’ time, and remember me! 74 If a man die, shall he live agazn? All the days of my warfare would I wait, Till my release should come. 11. Quoted from Isa. xix. 5, if that passage is earlier. Several Critics strike it out here as an interpolation. But the first line of verse 12 implies that a comparison has preceded, and must also be omitted with verse IT. There seems to be no sufficient reason for this. ‘The sea’ is used here of a sheet of inland water, possibly a river, more probably a lake, In Isa. xix. 5 it means the Nile.. We might turn Job’s illustration against him, for i in its time the river which has vanished returns in flood. ’ 12. Till ‘the heavens be no’ more: i.e. never. Later; followed by several scholars, reads “Till the heavens wear out.’ 13. After this strenuous denial of the possibility that man should be wakened from the sleep of death, Job passionately expresses the wish that it might’ be Delserigises Would that he might