INTRODUCTION The unknown writer of the. Book of Job must be reckoned among the greatest of the poets, whether we regard the beauty of his language or the sublime courage of his thought. As Goethe adopted the legend of Faust so our Poet adopts the legend of Job, whose name, like that of Noah, went back to mythical antiquity (Ezek. xiv. 14, 20). This old-world name suits his purpose because he is dealing with the world-wide question of human suffering. He lays the scene of his poem, not in Israel, but in the far-off land of Uz. Since Edom was the famed home of "Wisdom" (Jer. xlix. 7: Obad. 8), he makes Eliphaz, the Edomite, Job's oldest friend; the other friends being also "children of the East": for one of the aims of our Poet is to shew how feeble "Wisdom" is when confronted with the mystery of suffering. The fact that the Book of Job belongs to the "Wisdom Literature" of the Old Testament helps us to assign its date. The writer cannot be earlier than the closing years of the Captivity. He is familiar with the Book of Deuteronomy, the late alphabetical Psalms, and the Proverbs. We must not, of course, assume that these Books would, in his time, have had the full authority of Scripture. But the popular teaching, based upon these sources, was not without danger since it maintained that righteousness would always be rewarded by prosperity. With this teaching our Poet is profoundly dissatisfied. He knows that good men, like Jeremiah, often suffer most, and that their sufferings fall upon them, not because of their sins, but because they are God's servants. He knows that Israel, as a nation, is righteous when compared with the Nations of the World; but he sees that the wicked nations prosper, while Israel not only suffers, but, in some mysterious way, suffers for God (cf. Ps. xliv. 17 ff.). He longs to find light on this old-world mystery, "Why do the righteous suffer?" This mystery presses on him the more intensely because he has no clear view of any life beyond the grave. Nor has he any conception of what we regard as "secondary causes." In every event he sees only the direct action of God. Thus Browning makes Luria say: "My own East! How nearer God we were! He glows above We feel him, nor by painful reason know! Is felt there; now it is, as it was then; All changes at his instantaneous will, Not by the operation of a law Whose maker is elsewhere at other work." This tells both ways. In prosperity it is sweet to feel God's hand (Job xxix. 2 ff.), but what if the despairing dreams of sickness be of His sending? (Job vii. 14: and compare Ps. viii. with Job vii. 17 ff.). How shall man know which of the "two voices" is truly the voice of God? This problem still presses on the minds of men as in Tennyson's poem of "The two Voices," but in Old Testament times it was a far harder problem to solve; and the reader will notice that, for Job, as for Tennyson, the solution came, not to the intellect but, to the eye of faith. This, too, was through that wider view of Nature's plan which came home to Job in chaps. xxxviii.—xlii. "So variously seem'd all things wrought, Some have supposed that the Prologue (chaps. i. and ii.) and the Epilogue (chap. xlii. 7-17), which are in prose, were actually adopted by our Poet and incorporated in his work. This is possible: but, if so, the episode respecting "the Satan" must have been added by the Poet, since the conception of the Satan dates from the Persian period (Zech. iii. 2). It is true that Satan does not again appear after the Prologue, but the scene in Heaven (i. 6-12: ii. 1-6), which Goethe imitates in Faust, is needed for the Poem, since it enables the reader to see that God may permit suffering to fall upon His servant for some good reason beyond the ken of earth, while He regards him, all the more, with love and sympathy. Satan departs: but Job's three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, carry on the Satan's work. These three men are exponents of the strict orthodoxy of the time, and, if we had fuller knowledge, we should doubtless be able to recognise the different phases of that orthodoxy. Eliphaz of Teman, who seems to be the eldest, claims, at least on one occasion, to speak by inspiration (iv. 12 ff.). He is the theologian, and his speeches contain many references to prove from Psalms and Proverbs and other Scriptures that prosperity and adversity are invariably assigned by God as the reward of righteousness or as the penalty of sin'. He is so convinced of this that when Job asserts his innocence he appears to Eliphaz to be a subverter of all true religion (xv. 4, 12 f.), and, in his third speech, he directly charges Job with grievous 1 See on iv. 7—11 : v. 2 f., 8—17: xv. 32 ff. &c. sins which he must have committed because of his sufferings'. Such was the wisdom of Teman (cf. Jer. xlix. 7). Bildad, the Shuhite, should, from the name of his clan, be akin to the Midianites (Gen. xxv. 2). He seems to represent the man of the world, and his speeches abound in homely proverbs2 which Job treats with something very like contempt (xii. 11 f.: xxvi. 3). Zophar, the Naamathite, is the hardest and most unfeeling of the three friends. He is the philosopher, and seems to me to represent that cold fatalism of the Wisdom literature which finds expression in such passages as Eccles. iii. 14 f. Thus, according to Zophar, the all-seeing "Wisdom" of God sees evil where men would fail to see it (xi.). God is the great inquisitor (xx.). If chapter xxvii. respecting the hidden Wisdom be also, as I believe, a portion of Zophar's last speech, then it is but a return to the thought of his first speech, that man has no power of knowing God-he cannot expect to see but he may well expect to feel-therefore his only wisdom is in obedience (xxxvii. 28). The speeches are arranged in three cycles, though the headings are not altogether to be trusted3. Job replies to each of the friends in turn and, when they are silenced, he turns from man to God protesting his innocence of those sins on which the curse (in Deuteronomy) has been pronounced and challenging the Almighty to convict him (xxx., xxxi.). This challenge is answered "from the whirlwind" in the Divine speeches (xxxviii.—xlii.), which contain some of the finest poetry in the Hebrew language. In the Divine speeches Job is not accused of sin but he is made to feel that God has purposes in Creation that extend to 1 See xxiii. 5 ff. 2 See viii. 11 ff.: xviii. 5-14 &c. |