honestly and sorrowfully confess that I have failed to detect these subtle and delicate strokes, though I have looked for them carefully and often. All I can see of difference in the three men amounts only to this: Eliphaz-probably the oldest and wisest of the Three, with a considerable likeness to Job himself in the general cast of his character and his tone of thought-is of the prophetic order of men; his conclusions and arguments seem to have been framed very largely on oracles and revelations, although, like Bildad, he is also an erudite man and can readily cite the wisdom of the ancients: he has been brought into a closer and more immediate intercourse with Heaven than his fellows, and, like Balaam, another son of the ancient East, he is a seer of visions and a dreamer of dreams, Bildad goes more on tradition, on the gathered and priceless wisdom of the ancients. A much lesser man every way than Eliphaz, with a much more contracted range of thought and sympathy, he deals in proverbs, in citations from the fathers, and takes a severer and more personal tone in addressing Job. But if Eliphaz is the prophet and Bildad the sage of the trio, what shall we say of Zophar? So far as I can read his character in his words, Zophar is the common good man of his day, the vulgar but sincere formalist; the man who thinks what he says will become true if only he says it often enough and forcibly enough; the man who implicitly believes what he has been taught and demands not only that every one else should believe it too, but also that they should accept it in the very forms in which it has commended itself to him, and, above all, that they should refuse to believe anything more. He is sharp, and bitter, and hasty in tone, moreover; he puts a coarse tearing edge on the insinuations of his companions; and prided himself, I dare say, on being a plain blunt man, who said what he meant and meant what he said. A dangerous man to differ from, or to outstrip; the kind of man with whom it is of no use to go a mile if you go but a single inch beyond him; the kind of man, too, who is very apt, as Lowell, with humorous exaggeration, says of Carlyle, "to call down fire from heaven whenever he cannot conveniently lay his hand on the match-box."

These are the three figures which, for me at least, loom

dimly out of the past as I study this Poem; and if their outlines are not very distinct or wrought out with much subtlety of thought, we can nevertheless see how admirably they would serve the Poet's turn. He was bent, not only on solving the main problem of the Book, but also on depicting the whole world of thought and emotion quickened in the hearts of men as they contemplated the inequalities and apparent inequities of human life; just as Tennyson, in "In Memoriam," sets himself, not simply to bewail a personal loss, but to express the whole round of thought and emotion to which such a loss as his gives birth. And, therefore, it was necessary that he should bring Job into relation with typical men, men who would say what, on the whole, the entire ancient world would have said. Only thus could he secure that full and comprehensive treatment of his subject which he desired. Accordingly, he selects a prophet, who could bring to the discussion the highest disclosures Heaven had yet made to earth; a sage, who could pour the light of ancient wisdom on it; and the ordinary good man, orthodox but creed-bound, formal but sincere, pious but uncharitable, who could contribute to the discussion whatever was to be found in the accepted formulas of the age.

How long an interval elapsed, after the second trial of Job, before the Friends came to comfort him, it is impossible to determine: some conjecture a year; others, only a few weeks: but we may fairly assume, I think, that, as at the close of the first trial, a considerable period passed, in which Job would be permitted to enter into its full bitterness and adjust himself to his new conditions, before other and profounder miseries were imposed upon him. Indeed, his tone throughout the Poem implies that many months had intervened, months in which his kinsfolk drew back and stood aloof from him, his most inward friends learned to abhor him, and even the "baseborn and base" aborigines of the land, whose sires he had "disdained to rank with the dogs of his flock," had grown bold enough to make him their byword and reproach (Chaps. vii. 3; xix. 8-22; xxx. 1-15). The fact, too, that his disease had made such havoc with his frame that the three Friends could no longer recognize him when they saw him, points to the same conclusion.

Verse 11.-Esau had a son named Eliphaz; and this Eliphaz had a son named Teman. (Gen. xxxvi. 4, 10, 11.) Possibly the Eliphaz of our Poem was a descendant of Eliphaz the son of Esau; almost certainly the district of Teman took its name from Esau's grandson. This district lay on the north-east of Edom, within easy reach of the Hauran. Its inhabitants were long famed for wisdom throughout the East, and especially for the wisdom which clothes itself in proverbs, parables, and dark oracular sayings. Thus Jeremiah (Chap. xlix. 7) asks concerning Edom: "Is wisdom no more in Teman? is counsel perished from the prudent? is their wisdom poured out?" i.e. to the last drop.

Bildad the Shuchite was possibly a descendant of Shuach, the son of Abraham by Keturah (Gen. xxv. 2), who appears to have given his name to a district lying to the east of the Hauran, which is now known as Shakka.

Zophar the Naamathite it is impossible to define or locate. Many places have been called Naamah in Syria and Palestine; but in all probability the home of Zophar was on the other side of the river, east of Jordan, and in the vicinity of the Hauran. The Septuagint brings him from Maon (now Maan), a district to the east of Petra, and so makes him close neighbour to Eliphaz. Probably they were all three of them nomadic princes, the sheikhs of wandering clans, with whom Job had become acquainted in his travels, or in his large and varied intercourse with the world.

These three men, when they had heard of all the evil. which had befallen him, concerted together to come and condole with him and comfort him,-to pay him, as it were, a state visit; ceremonious visits of condolence being then, as now, a point of good manners in the East.

Verses 12 and 13.-Probably they sought him first at his home, and were there directed to the mezbele on which he lay; for, we are told, "they lifted up their eyes from afar "-the scene is evidently out of doors-"and knew him not," his person being disfigured and blackened beyond recognition by the ravages of his disease. Amazed by the spectacle of his degradation and misery, now first realizing perhaps how low he had fallen, they gave mute but speaking expression

to their grief and compassion. They rent their mantles; they "sprinkled dust upon their heads to heaven," ie. caught up dust in their hands, as the Arabs still do, and threw it up into the air so that it fell back on their heads. (Comp. Homer, Iliad, xviii. 22.) They "sat down with him on the ground" -sitting on the bare earth being a customary sign of mourning (2 Sam. xii. 16; Jer. iii. 25; Lam. ii. 10); and not unfrequently, in cases of extreme sorrow, the mourning was protracted through "seven days and seven nights:" thus Joseph made "a great and very sore lamentation," "a mourning for his father seven days" (Gen. 1. 10), and the men of Israel for Saul and Jonathan (1 Sam. xxxi. 13). It was also a sign of their intense and mournful sympathy that during these days "none of them spake a word to him, for they saw that his grief was very great." In like manner, Ezekiel, when he first came on his captive brethren by the banks of the Chebar, "sat where they sat, and remained there astonished among them seven days" (Ezek. iii. 15). Among the Jews it is a point of decorum, and one dictated by a fine and true feeling, not to speak to a person in deep affliction until he gives an intimation of a desire to be comforted." There was more here than the observance of Oriental etiquette, however. Probably the friends, like Ezekiel, were "astonished"-stunned, overwhelmed with wonder and pity, so that they could not speak. Probably they felt, as we feel, the sanctity of great grief, the impossibility of assuaging it with mere words, the fear of being intrusive, irreverent even, should they open their lips. Probably, too, as they sat silent by his side, they had already begun to ask themselves of what secret sin Job had been guilty that he should have been so sorely smitten by God; perhaps even to ask each other with their eyes what was the hidden flaw in the life of one whom they had accounted perfect.

But whatever their misgivings and suspicions may have been, Job was evidently unconscious of them; he saw nothing but friendly sympathy and compassion in their silence: he assumes that they are wholly with him, that they are on his side and will take his part. And it is one of the finest and most natural touches in the Poem that the man who had

remained silent under the most terrible pressure of misfortune, holding down his unruly thoughts, letting his doubts and questions prey on his heart but refusing to utter them, resolving, like poor Lear,

No, I will be the pattern of all patience;
I will say nothing,

is surprised into utterance by the first show of sympathy and kindness. Now his pent up grief and rage and despair break all bounds; for he is confident that his friends understand him, and feel for him, and will lend him a credent and sympathetic ear. Deceived at this point, as he soon discovered that he was, he was "the more deceived;" he felt that the very citadel and sanctuary of his soul had been surprised and betrayed.