a due retribution, there can be little doubt in the mind of any student of Verses 19-21, 24, 25, that he had persuaded himself that Job was, or was like, the raiding freebooter whom he there describes. In the very next verse, indeed (Verse 11), there is a distinct allusion to Job's complaint (Chap. xiii. 26), that God was making him "to inherit the sins of his youth." "Yes," retorts Zophar, "your youth, or the sin of your youth, has come back upon you; nor need you think to escape it: it shall go down with you into the dust of death." In the next section of the Chapter (Verses 12-22) Zophar proceeds to affirm that the destruction of the wicked manthat convenient cloak or figment behind which all the Friends stab at Job in turn-is purely natural and retributive, that it is due to and provoked by his sins. But here, again, all the Commentators are agreed that Zophar is animated by a coarseness and fierceness such as we find in no other of the interlocutors in this tragedy. The Poet is consistent in attributing this intolerant heat and passion to him alone. And yet, in Verses 12-15, we have a veritable touch of the Poet himself, who, like Shakespeare, is apt at times to speak through the personages of his drama. The way in which the figure of these Verses is elaborated is in his most characteristic manner,1 and the figure itself might fairly be taken as an illustration of the way in which he lingers over any simile that takes his fancy, holding it in his mouth, and refusing to part with it till he has extracted the last possibility of virtue or sweetness from it. The image of the Verses is, of course, that of an epicure with a dainty on his palate, bent on making the most of it not a pleasant figure, though it is touched in with wonderful skill. Job, or Job's double, "the wicked man," is the epicure; sin is the dainty, which he loves so well that he holds it under his tongue, touching it and yet sparing it, loth to leave it, and still more loth to exhaust its flavours, only swallowing it unwillingly, and when he can no longer relish it. But no sooner has he swallowed it than, as dainties are apt to do, it turns to poison within him, so that he is compelled to vomit it up again. And the special sin which Zophar assumes to have been so perilously sweet to him was-the lust of 1 See Note on Chapter xv. Verse 10, with footnote. wealth, a charge for which there was absolutely no foundation, except that Job had been a wealthy man, too wealthy, perhaps, for the greedy eyes of his Friend; for then, as now, even good men were apt to admire riches and to covet them. That Zophar was touched by this base admiration and craving seems indicated in Verse 17, in which he employs the usual metaphor for Paradisaical happiness, streams of milk and honey, to denote the enjoyments which even an ill-gotten wealth may procure-a profanation of the metaphor which we should not have expected from him, for he is sound in creed, if not in heart. In a series of conspicuously vigorous sentences he continues to affirm that even this sin carries its own punishment with it; that wealth ill-gotten cannot be enjoyed; and that, therefore, 'tis better to have modest and lowly aims,— And range with humble livers in content, In the third section of the Chapter (Verses 23-28) he proceeds to assert that the action of this law of retribution is not automatic, though it looks as if it were; that it does not administer itself, but is administered by God. All the forces of Nature array themselves against the greedy, rapacious, insatiable sinner, and all the instincts and interests of men; but it is God who rules these forces, and God who has so made men, and so guides and directs them, that they resent wrongdoing, and pull down the wrong-doer from his pride of place. Even though the sinner may for a moment have compassed the good fortune at which he aimed, yet at the very moment he is revelling in it God will shower upon him a hot wrath and vengeance by which he shall be consumed (Verse 23). Such, implies Zophar, had been Job's fate, when he was struck from the very summit of prosperity and happy hours to the depths of ruin and despair. In Verses 24-27 he grows at once more definite and more harsh. For here he depicts Job under the image of a freebooter, slain in a foray against some neighbouring clan. Bent on plunder, he is suddenly confronted with the sword of his purposed victim; he flees from it, only to be transfixed by an arrow a comrade draws it out, but his life-blood follows the sharp gleaming point, and he falls and dies. And the treasure, the booty, which he had carefully buried in the ground or concealed in his tent before he set out on his last expedition, will remain concealed, hidden in darkness, until it is consumed either by a chance fire, a fire not kindled and blown and fed by men, or by the fire which God hurls at it from heaven. But in Verse 27, as I have already said, we have the culminating point of Zophar's cruelty. What he most resents is that one who dissents from his views, and is not pious after his pattern, should claim to have a deeper faith than he has, a firmer assurance of the Divine favour. He is conscious that Job feels himself to be both the wiser and the better man of the two, with wider thoughts and a heart more devout, nearer God and with a more invincible conviction of God's good-will toward him. Possibly he half suspects that Job is the wiser and the better man. And yet how can that be, when Zophar has authority, tradition, the popular creed and sympathy, all on his side? It cannot be. Job must be mistaken; his wisdom must be "consumed in confidence;" his faith must be presumptuous, if not insincere. Is it for such a one as he to appeal to heaven and earth to attest his innocence ? No, verily. Innocent he cannot be. He must be the greedy and violent sinner whom Zophar has pictured to himself. Let him appeal as he will, then, Heaven will but attest his iniquity, not his integrity, and the earth rise up against him, as unwilling to endure the presence of one so vile. And so he strikes at the one consolation left to his afflicted friendthe nascent trust in God born of his very despair. No day of mercy is about to dawn upon him, no day of redemption and vindication; but (Verse 28) a day of anger, in which all that he has hoarded up will flow away under the tempest of God's righteous indignation. In fine, we may say of Zophar that this last oration of his proves him to be one of that vast but foolish multitude who choose by show, Not learning more than the fond eye doth teach; Which pries not to the interior, but, like the martlet, Builds in the weather on the outward wall, Even in the force and road of casualty. His theology is superficial; his view of human life is superficial; and, above all, his view of Job is superficial, and not even true to the superficies of his character. He "pries not to the interior," whether of character or of events. Being so slight and shallow a man, it was but natural both that he should take it upon himself to interpret the ways of God with men, and that he should misinterpret them. It was but natural that, his interpretation being questioned and refuted, he should blaze out into wrath and denunciation, hanging out his little hoard of maxims and menaces on the outward wall, from which casualty and the weather have long since dislodged them. Perhaps, too, as Zophar is the last of the Friends to speak in this Colloquy, we ought to note, before dismissing him, how artistically the Poet throughout this Colloquy wins our sympathies away from the other speakers to fix them on the hero of his drama. While a spring of ever new thought, and thought surcharged with the most various and profound emotion, is constantly welling up from the heart of Job, and he is borne on by it to the most surprising and invaluable discoveries, the Friends have but one thought among them all-retribution, and but one emotion-indignation. are for ever harping on one string, for ever singing one song, till we grow weary both of their strain and of them. The only change in them is that they so handle their one thought as that it grows narrower and still more untrue to experience every time they take it up; that they sing their one song in an ever louder and harsher note. All the life, the variety, the progress of the drama is concentrated in Job; and thus, silently and indirectly, but most effectually, our entire sympathy with him is secured. They T 6. JOB TO ZOPHAR. CHAPTER XXI. IN his last speech Job had risen to a clear and firm conviction of a retributive life beyond the grave. But this new and sustaining conviction was based on a prior conviction, at which also he had only newly arrived, a conviction which was still strange and terrible to him, viz., that this life was not, as he had always conceived it to be, a purely retributive one. Like the Friends, he had long taken it for granted that, under the rule of a just and righteous God, righteousness must invariably result in prosperity and happiness, unrighteousness in calamity and misery. His own unmerited losses and pains and griefs had constrained him to question this traditional and accepted dogma, however; and, to his consternation, no sooner did he attempt to verify it, than he found it to be untrue alike to the facts of his own experience, and to facts which he had many times observed in the life and experience of other men. Heretofore he had not paused to consider what these facts signified, or how they bore on his narrow and inadequate interpretation of the mystery of Providence. The facts had, so to speak, lain in one compartment of his brain, and the dogma which professed to interpret them in another, with no link of connection between them. His own undeserved sufferings had now supplied the missing link; and no sooner is the connection established than the dogma grows incredible to him. He had been wont to argue-God is just, and therefore his providence must be just; the laws by which He governs the lives of men must bring good to the good and evil to the evil. Now, he argues-God is just, and therefore his providence must be just; but, as facts prove that He does. not reward every man according to his deeds in this life, there must be a future life in which the work of his providence will run to its proper retributive close. It is this new and larger conviction which gives form and colour to the thoughts recorded in the Chapter before us. True, he does not once utter that assured hope of a life beyond |