[1] That the murder of Zechariah the son of Jehoiada (2 Chron.
_l.c._) is referred to in Matt. xxiii. 35, Luke xi. 51 is commonly
held; but see Cheyne, _Ency. Bib._ col. 5373.
JOB. The book of Job (Heb. [Hebrew: Iyyob] _'Iyyob_, Gr. [Greek: Iôb]),
in the Bible, the most splendid creation of Hebrew poetry, is so called
from the name of the man whose history and afflictions and sayings form
the theme of it.
_Contents._--As it now lies before us it consists of five parts. 1.
The prologue, in prose, chr. i.-ii., describes in rapid and dramatic
steps the history of this man, his prosperity and greatness
corresponding to his godliness; then how his life is drawn in under
the operation of the sifting providence of God, through the suspicion
suggested by the Satan, the minister of this aspect of God's
providence, that his godliness is selfish and only the natural return
for unexampled prosperity, and the insinuation that if stripped of his
prosperity he will curse God to His face. These suspicions bring down
two severe calamities on Job, one depriving him of children and
possessions alike, and the other throwing the man himself under a
painful malady. In spite of these afflictions Job retains his
integrity and ascribes no wrong to God. Then is described the advent
of Job's three friends--Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and
Zophar the Naamathite--who, having heard of Job's calamities, come to
condole with him. 2. The body of the book, in poetry, ch. iii.-xxxi.,
contains a series of speeches in which the problem of Job's
afflictions and the relation of external evil to the righteousness of
God and the conduct of men are brilliantly discussed. This part, after
Job's passionate outburst in ch. iii., is divided into three cycles,
each containing six speeches, one by each of the friends, and three by
Job, one in reply to each of theirs (ch. iv.-xiv.; xv.-xxi.;
xxii.-xxxi.), although in the last cycle the third speaker Zophar
fails to answer (unless his answer is to be found in ch. xxvii.). Job,
having driven his opponents from the field, carries his reply through
a series of discourses in which he dwells in pathetic words upon his
early prosperity, contrasting with it his present humiliation, and
ends with a solemn repudiation of all the offences that might be
suggested against him, and a challenge to God to appear and put His
hand to the charge which He had against him and for which He afflicted
him. 3. Elihu, the representative of a younger generation, who has
been a silent observer of the debate, intervenes to express his
dissatisfaction with the manner in which both Job and his friends
conducted the cause, and offers what is in some respects a new
solution of the question (xxxii.-xxxvii.). 4. In answer to Job's
repeated demands that God would appear and solve the riddle of his
life, the Lord answers Job out of the whirlwind. The divine speaker
does not condescend to refer to Job's individual problem, but in a
series of ironical interrogations asks him, as he thinks himself
capable of fathoming all things, to expound the mysteries of the
origin and subsistence of the world, the phenomena of the atmosphere,
the instincts of the creatures that inhabit the desert, and, as he
judges God's conduct of the world amiss, invites him to seize the
reins, gird himself with the thunder and quell the rebellious forces
of evil in the universe (xxxviii.-xlii. 6). Job is humbled and
abashed, lays his hand upon his mouth, and repents his hasty words in
dust and ashes. No solution of his problem is vouchsafed; but God
Himself effects that which neither the man's own thoughts of God nor
the representations of the friends could accomplish: he had heard of
him with the hearing of the ear without effect, but now his eye sees
Him. This is the profoundest religious deep in the book. 5. The
epilogue, in prose, xlii. 7-17, describes Job's restoration to a
prosperity double that of his former estate, his family felicity and
long life.
_Design._--With the exception of the episode of Elihu, the connexion of
which with the original form of the poem may be doubtful, all five parts
of the book are essential elements of the work as it came from the hand
of the first author, although some parts of the second and fourth
divisions may have been expanded by later writers. The idea of the
composition is to be derived not from any single element of the book,
but from the teaching and movement of the whole piece. Job is
unquestionably the hero of the work, and in his ideas and his history
combined we may assume that we find the author himself speaking and
teaching. The discussion between Job and his friends of the problem of
suffering occupies two-thirds of the book, or, if the space occupied by
Elihu be not considered, nearly three-fourths, and in the direction
which the author causes this discussion to take we may see revealed the
main didactic purpose of the book. When the three friends, the
representatives of former theories of providence, are reduced to
silence, we may be certain that it was the author's purpose to discredit
the ideas which they represent. Job himself offers no positive
contribution to the doctrine of evil; his position is negative, merely
antagonistic to that of the friends. But this negative position
victoriously maintained by him has the effect of clearing the ground,
and the author himself supplies in the prologue the positive truth, when
he communicates the real explanation of his hero's calamities, and
teaches that they were a trial of his righteousness. It was therefore
the author's main purpose in his work to widen men's views of the
providence of God and set before them a new view of suffering. This
purpose, however, was in all probability subordinate to some wider
practical design. No Hebrew writer is merely a poet or a thinker. He is
always a teacher. He has men before him in their relations to God,[1]
and usually not men in their individual relations, but members of the
family of Israel, the people of God. It is consequently scarcely to be
doubted that the book has a national scope. The author considered his
new truth regarding the meaning of affliction as of national interest,
and as the truth then needful for the heart of his people. But the
teaching of the book is only half its contents. It contains also a
history--deep and inexplicable affliction, a great moral struggle, and a
victory. The author meant his new truth to inspire new conduct, new
faith, and new hopes. In Job's sufferings, undeserved and inexplicable
to him, yet capable of an explanation most consistent with the goodness
and faithfulness of God, and casting honour upon his faithful servants;
in his despair bordering on unbelief, at last overcome; and in the happy
issue of his afflictions--in all this Israel may see itself, and from
the sight take courage, and forecast its own history. Job, however, is
not to be considered Israel, the righteous servant of the Lord, under a
feigned name; he is no mere parable (though such a view is found as
early as the Talmud); he and his history have both elements of reality
in them. It is these elements of reality common to him with Israel in
affliction, common even to him with humanity as a whole, confined within
the straitened limits set by its own ignorance, wounded to death by the
mysterious sorrows of life, tortured by the uncertainty whether its cry
finds an entrance into God's ear, alarmed and paralysed by the
irreconcilable discrepancies which it seems to discover between its
necessary thoughts of Him and its experience of Him in His providence,
and faint with longing that it might come into His place, and behold
him, not girt with His majesty, but in human form, as one looketh upon
his fellow--it is these elements of truth that make the history of Job
instructive to Israel in the times of affliction when it was set before
them, and to men of all races in all ages. It would probably be a
mistake, however, to imagine that the author consciously stepped outside
the limits of his nation and assumed a human position antagonistic to
it. The chords he touches vibrate through all humanity--but this is
because Israel is the religious kernel of humanity, and because from
Israel's heart the deepest religious music of mankind is heard, whether
of pathos or of joy.
Two threads requiring to be followed, therefore, run through the
book--one the discussion of the problem of evil between Job and his
friends, and the other the varying attitude of Job's mind towards God,
the first being subordinate to the second. Both Job and his friends
advance to the discussion of his sufferings and of the problem of
evil, ignorant of the true cause of his calamities--Job strong in his
sense of innocence, and the friends armed with their theory of the
righteousness of God, who giveth to every man according to his works.
With fine psychological instinct the poet lets Job altogether lose his
self-control first when his three friends came to visit him. His
bereavements and his malady he bore with a steady courage, and his
wife's direct instigations to godlessness he repelled with severity
and resignation. But when his equals and the old associates of his
happiness came to see him, and when he read in their looks and in
their seven days' silence the depth of his own misery, his
self-command deserted him, and he broke out into a cry of despair,
cursing his day and crying for death (iii.). Job had somewhat
misinterpreted the demeanour of his friends. It was not all pity that
it expressed. Along with their pity they had also brought their
theology, and they trusted to heal Job's malady with this. Till a few
days before, Job would have agreed with them on the sovereign virtues
of this remedy. But he had learned through a higher teaching, the
events of God's providence, that it was no longer a specific in his
case. His violent impatience, however, under his afflictions and his
covert attacks upon the divine rectitude only served to confirm the
view of his sufferings which their theory of evil had already
suggested to his friends. And thus commences the high debate which
continues through twenty-nine chapters.
The three friends of Job came to the consideration of his history with
the principle that calamity is the result of evil-doing, as prosperity
is the reward of righteousness. Suffering is not an accident or a
spontaneous growth of the soil; man is born unto trouble as the sparks
fly upwards; there is in human life a tendency to do evil which draws
down upon men the chastisement of God (v. 6). The principle is thus
enunciated by Eliphaz, from whom the other speakers take their cue:
where there is suffering there has been sin in the sufferer. Not
suffering in itself, but the effect of it on the sufferer is what
gives insight into his true character. Suffering is not always
punitive; it is sometimes disciplinary, designed to wean the good man
from his sin. If he sees in his suffering the monition of God and
turns from his evil, his future shall be rich in peace and happiness,
and his latter estate more prosperous than his first. If he murmurs or
resists, he can only perish under the multiplying chastisements which
his impenitence will provoke. Now this principle is far from being a
peculiar crotchet of the friends; its truth is undeniable, though they
erred in supposing that it would cover the wide providence of God. The
principle is the fundamental idea of moral government, the expression
of the natural conscience, a principle common more or less to all
peoples, though perhaps more prominent in the Semitic mind, because
all religious ideas are more prominent and simple there--not suggested
to Israel first by the law, but found and adopted by the law, though
it may be sharpened by it. It is the fundamental principle of prophecy
no less than of the law, and, if possible, of the wisdom of philosophy
of the Hebrews more than of either. Speculation among the Hebrews had
a simpler task before it than it had in the West or in the farther
East. The Greek philosopher began his operations upon the sum of
things; he threw the universe into his crucible at once. His object
was to effect some analysis of it, so that he could call one element
cause and another effect. Or, to vary the figure, his endeavour was to
pursue the streams of tendency which he could observe till he reached
at last the central spring which sent them all forth. God, a single
cause and explanation, was the object of his search. But to the Hebrew
of the later time this was already found. The analysis resulting in
the distinction of God and the world had been effected for him so long
ago that the history and circumstances of the process had been
forgotten, and only the unchallengeable result remained. His
philosophy was not a quest of God whom he did not know, but a
recognition on all hands of God whom he knew. The great primary idea
to his mind was that of God, a Being wholly just, doing all. And the
world was little more than the phenomena that revealed the mind and
the presence and the operations of God. Consequently the nature of God
as known to him and the course of events formed a perfect equation.
The idea of what God was in Himself was in complete harmony with His
manifestation of Himself in providence, in the events of individual
human lives, and in the history of nations. The philosophy of the wise
did not go behind the origin of sin, or referred it to the freedom of
man; but, sin existing, and God being in immediate personal contact
with the world, every event was a direct expression of His moral will
and energy; calamity fell on wickedness, and success attended
right-doing. This view of the moral harmony between the nature of God
and the events of providence in the fortunes of men and nations is the
view of the Hebrew wisdom in its oldest form, during what might be
called the period of principles, to which belong Prov. x. seq.; and
this is the position maintained by Job's three friends. And the
significance of the book of Job in the history of Hebrew thought
arises in that it marks the point when such a view was definitely
overcome, closing the long period when this principle was merely
subjected to questionings, and makes a new positive addition to the
doctrine of evil.
Job agreed that afflictions came directly from the hand of God, and
also that God afflicted those whom He held guilty of sins. But his
conscience denied the imputation of guilt, whether insinuated by his
friends or implied in God's chastisement of him. Hence he was driven
to conclude that God was unjust. The position of Job appeared to his
friends nothing else but impiety; while theirs was to him mere
falsehood and the special pleading of sycophants on behalf of God
because He was the stronger. Within these two iron walls the debate
moves, making little progress, but with much brilliancy, if not of
argument, of illustration. A certain advance indeed is perceptible. In
the first series of speeches (iv.-xiv.), the key-note of which is
struck by Eliphaz, the oldest and most considerate of the three, the
position is that affliction is caused by sin, and is chastisement
designed for the sinner's good; and the moral is that Job should
recognize it and use it for the purpose for which it was sent. In the
second (xv.-xxi.) the terrible fate of the sinner is emphasized, and
those brilliant pictures of a restored future, thrown in by all the
speakers in the first series, are absent. Job's demeanour under the
consolations offered him afforded little hope of his repentance. In
the third series (xxii. seq.) the friends cast off all disguise, and
openly charge Job with a course of evil life. That their armoury was
now exhausted is shown by the brevity of the second speaker, and the
failure of the third (at least in the present text) to answer in any
form. In reply Job disdains for a time to touch what he well knew lay
under all their exhortations; he laments with touching pathos the
defection of his friends, who were like the winter torrents looked for
in vain by the perishing caravan in the summer heat; he meets with
bitter scorn their constant cry that God will not cast off the
righteous man, by asking: How can one be righteous with God? what can
human weakness, however innocent, do against infinite might and
subtlety? they are righteous whom an omnipotent and perverse will
thinks fit to consider so; he falls into a hopeless wail over the
universal misery of man, who has a weary campaign of life appointed
him; then, rising up in the strength of his conscience, he upbraids
the Almighty with His misuse of His power and His indiscriminate
tyranny--righteous and innocent He destroys alike--and challenges Him
to lay aside His majesty and meet His creature as a man, and then he
would not fear Him. Even in the second series Job can hardly bring
himself to face the personal issue raised by the friends. His
relations to God absorb him almost wholly--his pitiable isolation, the
indignities showered on his once honoured head, the loathsome
spectacle of his body; abandoned by all, he turns for pity from God to
men and from men to God. Only in the third series of debates does he
put out his hand and grasp firmly the theory of his friends, and their
"defences of mud" fall to dust in his hands. Instead of that roseate
moral order on which they are never weary of insisting, he finds only
disorder and moral confusion. When he thinks of it, trembling takes
hold of him. It is not the righteous but the wicked that live, grow
old, yea, wax mighty in strength, that send forth their children like
a flock and establish them in their sight. Before the logic of facts
the theory of the friends goes down; and with this negative result,
which the author skilfully reaches through the debate, has to be
combined his own positive doctrine of the uses of adversity advanced
in the prologue.
To a modern reader it appears strange that both parties were so
entangled in the meshes of their preconceptions regarding God as to be
unable to break through the broader views. The friends, while
maintaining that injustice on the part of God is inconceivable, might
have given due weight to the persistent testimony of Job's conscience
as that behind which it is impossible to go, and found refuge in the
reflection that there might be something inexplicable in the ways of
God, and that affliction might have some other meaning than to punish
the sinner or even to wean him from his sin. And Job, while
maintaining his innocence from overt sins, might have confessed that
there was such sinfulness in every human life as was sufficient to
account for the severest chastisement from heaven, or at least he
might have stopped short of charging God foolishly. Such a position
would certainly be taken up by an afflicted saint now, and such an
explanation of his sufferings would suggest itself to the sufferer,
even though it might be in truth a false explanation. Perhaps here,
where an artistic fault might seem to be committed, the art of the
writer, or his truth to nature, and the extraordinary freedom with
which he moves among his materials, as well as the power and
individuality of his dramatic creations, are most remarkable. The rôle
which the author reserved for himself was to teach the truth on the
question in dispute, and he accomplishes this by allowing his
performers to push their false principles to their proper extreme.
There is nothing about which men are usually so sure as the character
of God. They are ever ready to take Him in their own hand, to
interpret His providence in their own sense, to say what things are
consistent or not with His character and word, and beat down the
opposing consciences of other men by His so-called authority, which is
nothing but their own. The friends of Job were religious Orientals,
men to whom God was a being in immediate contact with the world and
life, to whom the idea of second causes was unknown, on whom science
had not yet begun to dawn, nor the conception of a divine scheme
pursuing a distant end by complicated means, in which the individual's
interest may suffer for the larger good. The broad sympathies of the
author and his sense of the truth lying in the theory of the friends
are seen in the scope which he allows them, in the richness of the
thought and the splendid luxuriance of the imagery--drawn from the
immemorial moral consent of mankind, the testimony of the living
conscience, and the observation of life--with which he makes them
clothe their views. He remembered the elements of truth in the theory
from which he was departing, that it was a national heritage, which he
himself perhaps had been constrained not without a struggle to
abandon; and, while showing its insufficiency, he sets it forth in its
most brilliant form.
The extravagance of Job's assertions was occasioned greatly by the
extreme position of his friends, which left no room for his conscious
innocence along with the rectitude of God. Again, the poet's purpose,
as the prologue shows, was to teach that afflictions may fall on a man
out of all connexion with any offence of his own, and merely as the
trial of his righteousness; and hence he allows Job, as by a true
instinct of the nature of his sufferings, to repudiate all connexion
between them and sin in himself. And further, the terrible conflict
into which the suspicions of the Satan brought Job could not be
exhibited without pushing him to the verge of ungodliness. These are
all elements of the poet's art; but art and nature are one. In ancient
Hebrew life the sense of sin was less deep than it is now. In the
desert, too, men speak boldly of God. Nothing is more false than to
judge the poet's creation from our later point of view, and construct
a theory of the book according to a more developed sense of sin and a
deeper reverence for God than belonged to antiquity. In complete
contradiction to the testimony of the book itself, some critics, as
Hengstenberg and Budde, have assumed that Job's spiritual pride was
the cause of his afflictions, that this was the root of bitterness in
him which must be killed down ere he could become a true saint. The
fundamental position of the book is that Job was already a true saint;
this is testified by God Himself, is the radical idea of the author in
the prologue, and the very hypothesis of the drama. We might be ready
to think that Job's afflictions did not befall him out of all
connexion with his own condition of mind, and we might be disposed to
find a vindication of God's ways in this. There is no evidence that
such an idea was shared by the author of the book. It is remarkable
that the attitude which we imagine it would have been so easy for Job
to assume, namely, while holding fast his integrity, to fall back upon
the inexplicableness of providence, of which there are such imposing
descriptions in his speeches, is just the attitude which is taken up
in ch. xxviii. It is far from certain, however, that this chapter is
an integral part of the original book.
The other line running through the book, the varying attitude of Job's
mind towards God, exhibits dramatic action and tragic interest of the
highest kind, though the movement is internal. That the exhibition of
this struggle in Job's mind was a main point in the author's purpose
is seen from the fact that at the end of each of his great trials he
notes that Job sinned not, nor ascribed wrong to God (i. 22; ii. 10),
and from the effect which the divine voice from the whirlwind is made
to produce upon him (xl. 3). In the first cycle of debate (iv.-xiv.)
Job's mind reaches the deepest limit of estrangement. There he not
merely charges God with injustice, but, unable to reconcile His former
goodness with His present enmity, he regards the latter as the true
expression of God's attitude towards His creatures, and the former,
comprising all his infinite creative skill in weaving the delicate
organism of human nature and the rich endowments of His providence,
only as the means of exercising His mad and immoral cruelty in the
time to come. When the Semitic skin of Job is scratched, we find a
modern pessimist beneath. Others in later days have brought the keen
sensibility of the human frame and the torture which it endures
together, and asked with Job to whom at last all this has to be
referred. Towards the end of the cycle a star of heavenly light seems
to rise on the horizon; the thought seizes the sufferer's mind that
man might have another life, that God's anger pursuing him to the
grave might be sated, and that He might call him out of it to Himself
again (xiv. 13). This idea of a resurrection, unfamiliar to Job at
first, is one which he is allowed to reach out of the necessities of
the moral complications around him, but from the author's manner of
using the idea we may judge that it was familiar to himself. In the
second cycle the thought of a future reconciliation with God is more
firmly grasped. That satisfaction or at least composure which, when we
observe calamities that we cannot morally account for, we reach by
considering that providence is a great scheme moving according to
general laws, and that it does not always truly reflect the relation
of God to the individual, Job reached in the only way possible to a
Semitic mind. He drew a distinction between an outer God whom events
obey, pursuing him in His anger, and an inner God whose heart was with
him, who was aware of his innocence; and he appeals from God to God,
and beseeches God to pledge Himself that he shall receive justice from
God (xvi. 19; xvii. 3). And so high at last does this consciousness
that God is at one with him rise that he avows his assurance that He
will yet appear to do him justice before men, and that he shall see
Him with his own eyes, no more estranged but on his side, and for this
moment he faints with longing (xix. 25 seq.).[2]
After this expression of faith Job's mind remains calm, though he ends
by firmly charging God with perverting his right, and demanding to
know the cause of his afflictions (xxvii. 2 seq.; xxxi. 35, where
render: "Oh, that I had the indictment which mine adversary has
written!"). In answer to this demand the Divine voice answers Job out
of the tempest: "Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without
knowledge?" The word "counsel" intimates to Job that God does not act
without a design, large and beyond the comprehension of man; and to
impress this is the purpose of the Divine speeches. The speaker does
not enter into Job's particular cause; there is not a word tending to
unravel his riddle; his mind is drawn away to the wisdom and majesty
of God Himself. His own words and those of his friends are but
re-echoed, but it is God Himself who now utters them. Job is in
immediate nearness to the majesty of heaven, wise, unfathomable,
ironical over the littleness of man, and he is abased; God Himself
effects what neither the man's own thoughts of God nor the
representations of his friends could accomplish, though by the same
means. The religious insight of the writer sounds here the profoundest
deeps of truth.
_Integrity._--Doubts whether particular portions of the present book
belonged to the original form of it have been raised by many. M. L. De
Wette expressed himself as follows: "It appears to us that the present
book of Job has not all flowed from one pen. As many books of the Old
Testament have been several times written over, so has this also" (Ersch
and Gruber, _Ency._, sect. ii. vol. viii.). The judgment formed by De
Wette has been adhered to more or less by most of those who have studied
the book. Questions regarding the unity of such books as this are
difficult to settle; there is not unanimity among scholars regarding the
idea of the book, and consequently they differ as to what parts are in
harmony or conflict with unity; and it is dangerous to apply modern
ideas of literary composition and artistic unity to the works of
antiquity and of the East. The problem raised in the book of Job has
certainly received frequent treatment in the Old Testament; and there is
no likelihood that all efforts in this direction have been preserved to
us. It is probable that the book of Job was but a great effort amidst or
after many smaller. It is scarcely to be supposed that one with such
poetic and literary power as the author of chap. iii-xxxi.,
xxxviii.-xli. would embody the work of any other writer in his own. If
there be elements in the book which must be pronounced foreign, they
have been inserted in the work of the author by a later hand. It is not
unlikely that our present book may, in addition to the great work of the
original author, contain some fragments of the thoughts of other
religious minds upon the same question, and that these, instead of being
loosely appended, have been fitted into the mechanism of the first work.
Some of these fragments may have originated at first quite independently
of our book, while others may be expansions and insertions that never
existed separately. At the same time it is scarcely safe to throw out
any portion of the book merely because it seems to us out of harmony
with the unity of the main part of the poem, or unless several distinct
lines of consideration conspire to point it out as an extraneous
element.
The arguments against the originality of the prologue--as, that it is
written in prose, that the name Yahweh appears in it, that sacrifice
is referred to, and that there are inconsistencies between it and the
body of the book--are of little weight. There must have been some
introduction to the poem explaining the circumstances of Job,
otherwise the poetical dispute would have been unintelligible, for it
is improbable that the story of Job was so familiar that a poem in
which he and his friends figured as they do here would have been
understood. And there is no trace of any other prologue or
introduction having ever existed. The prologue, too, is an essential
element of the work, containing the author's positive contribution to
the doctrine of suffering, for which the discussion in the poem
prepares the way. The intermixture of prose and poetry is common in
Oriental works containing similar discussions; the reference to
sacrifice is to primitive not to Mosaic sacrifice; and the author,
while using the name Yahweh freely himself, puts the patriarchal
Divine names into the mouth of Job and his friends because he regards
them as belonging to the patriarchal age and to a country outside of
Israel. That the observance of this rule had a certain awkwardness for
the writer appears perhaps from his allowing the name Yahweh to slip
in once or twice (xii. 9, cf. xxviii. 28) in familiar phrases in the
body of the poem. The discrepancies, such as Job's references to his
children as still alive (xix. 17, the interpretation is doubtful), and
to his servants, are trivial, and even if real imply nothing in a book
admittedly poetical and not historical. The objections to the epilogue
are equally unimportant--as that the Satan is not mentioned in it, and
that Job's restoration is in conflict with the main idea of the
poem--that earthly felicity does not follow righteousness. The
epilogue confirms the teaching of the poem when it gives the divine
sanction to Job's doctrine regarding God in opposition to that of the
friends (xlii. 7). And it is certainly not the intention of the poem
to teach that earthly felicity does not follow righteousness; its
purpose is to correct the exclusiveness with which the friends of Job
maintained that principle. The Satan is introduced in the prologue,
exercising his function as minister of God in heaven; but it is to
misinterpret wholly the doctrine of evil in the Old Testament to
assign to the Satan any such personal importance or independence of
power as that he should be called before the curtain to receive the
hisses that accompany his own discomfiture. The Satan, though he here
appears with the beginnings of a malevolent will of his own, is but
the instrument of the sifting providence of God. His work was to try;
that done he disappears, his personality being too slight to have any
place in the result.
Much graver are the suspicions that attach to the speeches of Elihu.
Most of those who have studied the book carefully hold that this part
does not belong to the original cast, but has been introduced at a
considerably later time. The piece is one of the most interesting
parts of the book; both the person and the thoughts of Elihu are
marked by a strong individuality. This individuality has indeed been
very diversely estimated. The ancients for the most part passed a very
severe judgment on Elihu: he is a buffoon, a boastful youth whose
shallow intermeddling is only to be explained by the fewness of his
years, the incarnation of folly, or even the Satan himself gone
a-mumming. Some moderns on the other hand have regarded him as the
incarnation of the voice of God or even of God himself. The main
objections to the connexion of the episode of Elihu with the original
book are: that the prologue and epilogue know nothing of him; that on
the cause of Job's afflictions he occupies virtually the same position
as the friends; that his speeches destroy the dramatic effect of the
divine manifestation by introducing a lengthened break between Job's
challenge and the answer of God; that the language and style of the
piece are marked by an excessive mannerism, too great to have been
created by the author of the rest of the poem; that the allusions to
the rest of the book are so minute as to betray a reader rather than a
hearer; and that the views regarding sin, and especially the scandal
given to the author by the irreverence of Job, indicate a religious
advance which marks a later age. The position taken by Elihu is almost
that of a critic of the book. Regarding the origin of afflictions he
is at one with the friends, although he dwells more on the general
sinfulness of man than on actual sins, and his reprobation of Job's
position is even greater than theirs. His anger was kindled against
Job because he made himself righteous before God, and against his
friends because they found no answer to Job. His whole object is to
refute Job's charge of injustice against God. What is novel in Elihu,
therefore, is not his position but his arguments. These do not lack
cogency, but betray a kind of thought different from that of the
friends. Injustice in God, he argues, can only arise from selfishness
in Him; but the very existence of creation implies unselfish love on
God's part, for if He thought only of Himself, He would cease actively
to uphold creation, and it would fall into death. Again, without
justice mere earthly rule is impossible; how then is injustice
conceivable in Him who rules over all? It is probable that the
original author found his three interlocutors a sufficient medium for
expression, and that this new speaker is the creation of another. To a
devout and thoughtful reader of the original book, belonging perhaps
to a more reverential age, it appeared that the language and bearing
of Job had scarcely been sufficiently reprobated by the original
speakers, and that the religious reason, apart from any theophany,
could suggest arguments sufficient to condemn such demeanour on the
part of any man. (For an able though hardly convincing argument for
the originality of the discourses of Elihu see Budde's _Commentary_.)
It is more difficult to come to a decision in regard to some other
portions of the book, particularly ch. xxvii. 7-xxviii. In the latter
part of ch. xxvii. Job seems to go over to the camp of his opponents,
and expresses sentiments in complete contradiction to his former
views. Hence some have thought the passage to be the missing speech of
Zophar. Others, as Hitzig, believe that Job is parodying the ideas of
the friends; while others, like Ewald, consider that he is recanting
his former excesses, and making such a modification as to express
correctly his views on evil. None of these opinions is quite
satisfactory, though the last probably expresses the view with which
the passage was introduced, whether it be original or not. The meaning
of ch. xxviii. can only be that "Wisdom," that is, a theoretical
comprehension of providence, is unattainable by man, whose only wisdom
is the fear of the Lord or practical piety. But to bring Job to the
feeling of this truth was just the purpose of the theophany and the
divine speeches; and, if Job had reached it already through his own
reflection, the theophany becomes an irrelevancy. It is difficult,
therefore, to find a place for these two chapters in the original
work. The hymn on Wisdom is a most exquisite poem, which probably
originated separately, and was brought into our book with a purpose
similar to that which suggested the speeches of Elihu. Objections have
also been raised to the descriptions of leviathan and behemoth (ch.
xl. 15-xli.). Regarding these it may be enough to say that in meaning
these passages are in perfect harmony with other parts of the Divine
words, although there is a breadth and detail in the style unlike the
sharp, short, ironical touches otherwise characteristic of this part
of the poem. (Other longer passages, the originality of which has been
called into question, are: xvii. 8 seq.; xxi. 16-18; xxii. 17 seq.;
xxiii. 8 seq.; xxiv. 9, 18-24; xxvi. 5-14. On these see the
commentaries.)
_Date._--The age of such a book as Job, dealing only with principles
and having no direct references to historical events can be fixed only
approximately. Any conclusion can be reached only by an induction
founded on matters which do not afford perfect certainty, such as the
comparative development of certain moral ideas in different ages, the
pressing claims of certain problems for solution at particular epochs
of the history of Israel, and points of contact with other writings of
which the age may with some certainty be determined. The Jewish
tradition that the book is Mosaic, and the idea that it is a production
of the desert, written in another tongue and translated into Hebrew,
want even a shadow of probability. The book is a genuine outcome of the
religious life and thought of Israel, the product of a religious
knowledge and experience that were possible among no other people. That
the author lays the scene of the poem outside his own nation and in the
patriarchal age is a proceeding common to him with other dramatic
writers, who find freer play for their principles in a region removed
from the present, where they are not hampered by the obtrusive forms of
actual life, but are free to mould occurrences into the moral form that
their ideas require.
It is the opinion of some scholars, e.g. Delitzsch, that the book
belongs to the age of Solomon. It cannot be earlier than this age, for
Job (vii. 17) travesties the ideas of Ps. viii. in a manner which shows
that this hymn was well known. To infer the date from a comparison of
literary coincidences and allusions is however a very delicate
operation. For, first, owing to the unity of thought and language which
pervades the Old Testament, in which, regarded merely as a national
literature, it differs from all other national literatures, we are apt
to be deceived, and to take mere similarities for literary allusions and
quotations; and, secondly, even when we are sure that there is
dependence, it is often uncommonly difficult to decide which is the
original source. The reference to Job in Ezek. xiv. 14 is not to our
book, but to the man (a legendary figure) who was afterwards made the
hero of it. The affinities on the other hand between Job and Isa.
xl.-lv. are very close. The date, however, of this part of Isaiah is
uncertain, though it cannot have received its final form, if it be
composite, long before the return. Between Job iii. and Jer. xx. 14 seq.
there is, again, certainly literary connexion. But the judgment of
different minds differs on the question which passage is dependent on
the other. The language of Jeremiah, however, has a natural pathos and
genuineness of feeling in it, somewhat in contrast with the elaborate
poetical finish of Job's words, which might suggest the originality of
the former.
The tendency among recent scholars is to put the book of Job not earlier
than the 5th century B.C. There are good reasons for putting it in the
4th century. It stands at the beginning of the era of Jewish
philosophical inquiry--its affinities are with Proverbs, Ecclesiasticus,
Ecclesiastes, and the Wisdom of Solomon, a body of writings that belongs
to the latest period of pre-Christian Jewish literary development (see
WISDOM LITERATURE). Its points of connexion with Isa. xl.-lv. relate
only to the problem of the suffering of the righteous, and that it is
later than the Isaiah passage appears from the fact that this latter is
national and ritual in scope, while Job is universal and ethical.
The book of Job is not literal history, though it reposes on historical
tradition. To this tradition belong probably the name of Job and his
country, and the names of his three friends, and perhaps also many other
details impossible to specify particularly. The view that the book is
entirely a literary creation with no basis in historical tradition is as
old as the Talmud (_Baba Bathra_, xv. 1), in which a rabbi is cited who
says: Job was not, and was not created, but is an allegory. This view is
supported by Hengstenberg and others. But pure poetical creations on so
extensive a scale are not probable in the East and at so early an age.
_Author._--The author of the book is wholly unknown. The religious life
of Israel was at certain periods very intense, and at those times the
spiritual energy of the nation expressed itself almost impersonally,
through men who forgot themselves and were speedily forgotten in name by
others. Hitzig conjectures that the author was a native of the north on
account of the free criticism of providence which he allows himself.
Others, on account of some affinities with the prophet Amos, infer that
he belonged to the south of Judah, and this is supposed to account for
his intimate acquaintance with the desert. Ewald considers that he
belonged to the exile in Egypt, on account of his minute acquaintance
with that country. But all these conjectures localize an author whose
knowledge was not confined to any locality, who was a true child of the
East and familiar with life and nature in every country there, who was
at the same time a true Israelite and felt that the earth was the Lord's
and the fullness thereof, and whose sympathies and thought took in all
God's works.
LITERATURE.--Commentaries by Ewald (1854); Renan (1859); Delitzsch
(1864); Zöckler in Lange's _Bibelwerk_ (1872); F. C. Cook in
_Speaker's Comm._ (1880); A. B. Davidson in _Cambridge Bible_ (1884);
Dillmann (1891); K. Budde (1896); Duhm (1897). See also Hoekstra, "Job
de Knecht van Jehovah" in _Theol. Tijdschr._ (1871), and, in reply, A.
Kuenen, "Job en de leidende Knecht van Jahveh," ibid. (1873); C. H. H.
Wright in _Bib. Essays_ (1886); G. G. Bradley, _Lects. on Job_ (2nd
ed., 1888); Cheyne, _Job and Solomon_ (1887); Dawson, _Wisd. Lit._
(1893); D. B. Macdonald, "The Original Form of the Legend of Job" in
_Journ. Bib. Lit._ (1895); E. Hatch, _Essays in Bib. Gk._ (1889); A.
Dillmann, in _Trans. of Roy. Pruss. Acad._ (1890).
(A. B. D., C. H. T.*)