THE BOOK OF JOB.
BY
ROBERT A. WATSON, D.D.,
AUTHOR OF
"JUDGES AND RUTH," "GOSPELS OF YESTERDAY," ETC.
NEW YORK
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
LAFAYETTE PLACE
1900
CONTENTS.
_PROLOGUE._
I.
PAGE
THE AUTHOR AND HIS WORK 3
II.
THE OPENING SCENE ON EARTH 19
III.
THE OPENING SCENE IN HEAVEN 33
IV.
THE SHADOW OF GOD'S HAND 50
V.
THE DILEMMA OF FAITH 67
_THE FIRST COLLOQUY._
VI.
THE CRY FROM THE DEPTH 85
VII.
THE THINGS ELIPHAZ HAD SEEN 99
VIII.
MEN FALSE: GOD OVERBEARING 116
IX.
VENTURESOME THEOLOGY 135
X.
THE THOUGHT OF A DAYSMAN 141
XI.
A FRESH ATTEMPT TO CONVICT 154
XII.
BEYOND FACT AND FEAR TO GOD 162
_THE SECOND COLLOQUY._
XIII.
THE TRADITION OF A PURE RACE 187
XIV.
"MY WITNESS IN HEAVEN" 201
XV.
A SCHEME OF WORLD-RULE 215
XVI.
"MY REDEEMER LIVETH" 222
XVII.
IGNORANT CRITICISM OF LIFE 243
XVIII.
ARE THE WAYS OF THE LORD EQUAL? 253
_THE THIRD COLLOQUY._
XIX.
DOGMATIC AND MORAL ERROR 269
XX.
WHERE IS ELOAH? 281
XXI.
THE DOMINION AND THE BRIGHTNESS 298
XXII.
THE OUTSKIRTS OF HIS WAYS 302
XXIII.
CHORAL INTERLUDE 313
XXIV.
AS A PRINCE BEFORE THE KING 320
_ELIHU INTERVENES._
XXV.
POST-EXILIC WISDOM 341
XXVI.
THE DIVINE PREROGATIVE 361
_THE VOICE FROM THE STORM._
XXVII.
"MUSIC IN THE BOUNDS OF LAW" 381
XXVIII.
THE RECONCILIATION 392
XXIX.
EPILOGUE 409
INDEX 413
PROLOGUE.
I.
_THE AUTHOR AND HIS WORK._
The Book of Job is the first great poem of the soul in its mundane
conflict, facing the inexorable of sorrow, change, pain, and death,
and feeling within itself at one and the same time weakness and
energy, the hero and the serf, brilliant hopes, terrible fears. With
entire veracity and amazing force this book represents the
never-ending drama renewed in every generation and every genuine life.
It breaks upon us out of the old world and dim muffled centuries with
all the vigour of the modern soul and that religious impetuosity which
none but Hebrews seem fully to have known. Looking for precursors of
Job we find a seeming spiritual burden and intensity in the Accadian
psalms, their confessions and prayers; but if they prepared the way
for Hebrew psalmists and for the author of Job, it was not by awaking
the cardinal thoughts that make this book what it is, nor by supplying
an example of the dramatic order, the fine sincerity and abounding art
we find here welling up out of the desert. The Accadian psalms are
fragments of a polytheistic and ceremonial world; they spring from the
soil which Abraham abandoned that he might found a race of strong men
and strike out a new clear way of life. Exhibiting the fear,
superstition, and ignorance of our race, they fall away from
comparison with the marvellous later work and leave it unique among
the legacies of man's genius to man's need. Before it a few notes of
the awakening heart, athirst for God, were struck in those Chaldæan
entreaties, and more finely in Hebrew psalm and oracle: but after it
have come in rich multiplying succession the Lamentations of Jeremiah,
Ecclesiastes, the Apocalypse, the Confessions of Augustine, the Divina
Commedia, Hamlet, Paradise Regained, the Grace Abounding of Bunyan,
the Faust of Goethe and its progeny, Shelley's poems of revolt and
freedom, Sartor Resartus, Browning's Easter Day and Rabbi Ben Ezra,
Amiel's Journal, with many other writings, down to "Mark Rutherford"
and the "Story of an African Farm." The old tree has sent forth a
hundred shoots, and is still full of sap to our most modern sense. It
is a chief source of the world's penetrating and poignant literature.
But there is another view of the book. It may well be the despair of
those who desire above all things to separate letters from theology.
The surpassing genius of the writer is seen not in his fine calm of
assurance and self-possession, nor in the deft gathering and arranging
of beautiful images, but in his sense of elemental realities and the
daring with which he launches on a painful conflict. He is convinced
of Divine sovereignty, and yet has to seek room for faith in a world
shadowed and confused. He is a prophet in quest of an oracle, a poet,
a maker, striving to find where and how the man for whom he is
concerned shall sustain himself. And yet, with this paradox wrought
into its very substance, his work is richly fashioned, a type of the
highest literature, drawing upon every region natural and
supernatural, descending into the depths of human woe, rising to the
heights of the glory of God, never for one moment insensible to the
beauty and sublimity of the universe. It is literature with which
theology is so blended that none can say, Here is one, there the
other. The passion of that race which gave the world the idea of the
soul, which clung with growing zeal to the faith of the One Eternal
God as the fountain of life and equally of justice, this passion in
one of its rarest modes pours through the Book of Job like a torrent,
forcing its way towards the freedom of faith, the harmony of intuition
with the truth of things. The book is all theology, one may say, and
all humanity no less. Singularly liberal in spirit and awake to the
various elements of our life, it is moulded, notwithstanding its
passion, by the artist's pleasure in perfecting form, adding wealth of
allusion and ornament to strength of thought. The mind of the writer
has not hastened. He has taken long time to brood over his torment and
seek deliverance. The fire burns through the sculpture and carved
framework and painted windows of his art with no loss of heat. Yet, as
becomes a sacred book, all is sobered and restrained to the rhythmic
flow of dramatic evolution, and it is as if the eager soul had been
chastened, even in its fieriest endeavour, by the regular procession
of nature, sunrise and sunset, spring and harvest, and by the sense of
the Eternal One, Lord of light and darkness, life and death. Built
where, before it, building had never been reared in such firmness of
structure and glow of orderly art, with such design to shelter the
soul, the work is a fresh beginning in theology as well as literature,
and those who would separate the two must show us how to separate them
here, must explain why their union in this poem is to the present
moment so richly fruitful. An origin it stands by reason of its
subject no less than its power, sincerity, and freedom.
A phenomenon in Hebrew thought and faith--to what age does it belong?
No record or reminiscence of the author is left from which the least
hint of time may be gathered. He, who by his marvellous poem struck a
chord of thought deep and powerful enough to vibrate still and stir
the modern heart, is uncelebrated, nameless. A traveller, a master of
his country's language, and versed no less in foreign learning,
foremost of the men of his day whensoever it was, he passed away as a
shadow, though he left an imperishable monument. "Like a star of the
first magnitude," says Dr. Samuel Davidson, "the brilliant genius of
the writer of Job attracts the admiration of men as it points to the
Almighty Ruler chastening yet loving His people. Of one whose sublime
conceptions, (mounting the height where Jehovah is enthroned in light,
inaccessible to mortal eye), lift him far above his time and
people--who climbs the ladder of the Eternal, as if to open heaven--of
this giant philosopher and poet we long to know something, his
habitation, name, appearance. The very spot where his ashes rest we
desire to gaze upon. But in vain." Strange, do we say? And yet how
much of her great poet, Shakespeare, does England know? It is not
seldom the fate of those whose genius lifts them highest to be
unrecognised by their own time. As English history tells us more of
Leicester than of Shakespeare, so Hebrew history records by preference
the deeds of its great King Solomon. A greater than Solomon was in
Israel, and history knows him not. No prophet who followed him and
wrought sentences of his poem into lamentation or oracle, no
chronicler of the exile or the return, preserving the names and
lineage of the nobles of Israel, has mentioned him. Literary
distinction, the praise of service to his country's faith could not
have been in his mind. They did not exist. He was content to do his
work, and leave it to the world and to God.
And yet the man lives in his poem. We begin to hope that some
indication of the period and circumstances in which he wrote may be
found when we realise that here and there beneath the heat and
eloquence of his words may be heard those undertones of personal
desire and trust which once were the solemn music of a life. His own,
not his hero's, are the philosophy of the book, the earnest search for
God, the sublime despondency, the bitter anguish, and the prophetic
cry that breaks through the darkness. We can see that it is vain to go
back to Mosaic or pre-Mosaic times for life and thought and words like
his; at whatever time Job lived, the poet-biographer deals with the
perplexities of a more anxious world. In the imaginative light with
which he invests the past no distinct landmarks of time are to be
seen. The treatment is large, general, as if the burden of his subject
carried the writer not only into the great spaces of humanity, but
into a region where the temporal faded into insignificance as compared
with the spiritual. And yet, as through openings in a forest, we have
glimpses here and there, vaguely and momentarily showing what age it
was the author knew. The picture is mainly of timeless patriarchal
life; but, in the foreground or the background, objects and events are
sketched that help our inquiry. "His troops come together and cast up
their way against me." "From out of the populous city men groan, and
the soul of the wounded crieth out." "He looseth the bond of kings,
and bindeth their loins with a girdle; He leadeth priests away
spoiled, and overthroweth the mighty.... He increaseth the nations and
destroyeth them; He spreadeth the nations abroad and bringeth them
in." No quiet patriarchal life in a region sparsely peopled, where the
years went slow and placid, could have supplied these elements of the
picture. The writer has seen the woes of the great city in which the
tide of prosperity flows over the crushed and dying. He has seen, and,
indeed, we are almost sure has suffered in, some national disaster
like those to which he refers. A Hebrew, not of the age after the
return from exile,--for the style of his writing, partly through the
use of Arabic and Aramaic forms, has more of rude vigour and
spontaneity on the whole than fits so late a date,--he appears to have
felt all the sorrows of his people when the conquering armies of
Assyria or of Babylon overran their land.
The scheme of the book helps to fix the time of the composition. A
drama so elaborate could not have been produced until literature had
become an art. Such complexity of structure as we find in Psalm cxix.
shows that by the time of its composition much attention was paid to
form. It is no longer the pure lyric cry of the unlearned singer, but
the ode, extremely artificial notwithstanding its sincerity. The
comparatively late date of the Book of Job appears in the orderly
balanced plan, not indeed so laboured as the psalm referred to, but
certainly belonging to a literary age.
Again, a note of time has been found by comparing the contents of Job
with Proverbs, Isaiah, Ecclesiastes, and other books. Proverbs, chaps.
iii. and viii., for example, may be contrasted with chap. xxviii. of
the Book of Job. Placing them together we can hardly escape the
conclusion that the one writer had been acquainted with the work of
the other. Now, in Proverbs it is taken for granted that wisdom may
easily be found: "Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man
that getteth understanding.... Keep sound wisdom and discretion; so
shall they be life unto thy soul and grace to thy neck." The author of
the panegyric has no difficulty about the Divine rules of life. Again,
Proverbs viii. 15, 16: "By me kings reign, and princes decree justice.
By me princes rule, and nobles, even all the judges of the earth." In
Job xxviii., however, we find a different strain. There it is: "Where
shall wisdom be found?... It is hid from the eyes of all living, and
kept close from the fowls of the air;" and the conclusion is that
wisdom is with God, not with man. Of the two it seems clear that the
Book of Job is later. It is occupied with questions which make wisdom,
the interpretation of providence and the ordering of life, exceedingly
hard. The writer of Job, with the passages in Proverbs before him,
appears to have said to himself: Ah! it is easy to praise wisdom and
advise men to choose wisdom and walk in her ways. But to me the
secrets of existence are deep, the purposes of God unfathomable. He is
fain, therefore, to put into the mouth of Job the sorrowful cry,
"Where shall wisdom be found, and where is the place of understanding?
Man knoweth not the price thereof.... It cannot be gotten for gold."
Both in Proverbs and Job, indeed, the source of Hokhma or wisdom is
ascribed to the fear of Jehovah; but the whole contention in Job is
that man fails in the intellectual apprehension of the ways of God.
Referring the earlier portions of Proverbs to the post-Solomonic age
we should place the Book of Job at a later date.
It is not within our scope to consider here all the questions raised by
parallel passages and discuss the priority and originality in each case.
Some resemblances in Isaiah may, however, be briefly noticed, because we
seem on the whole to be led to the conclusion that the Book of Job was
written between the periods of the first and second series of Isaian
oracles. They are such as these. In Isaiah xix. 5, "The waters shall
fail from the sea, and the river shall be wasted and become
dry,"--referring to the Nile: parallel in Job xiv. 11, "As the waters
fail from the sea, and the river decayeth and drieth up,"--referring to
the passing of human life. In Isaiah xix. 13, "The princes of Zoan are
become fools, the princes of Noph are deceived; they have caused Egypt
to go astray,"--an oracle of specific application: parallel in Job xii.
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,"--a
description at large. In Isaiah xxviii. 29, "This also cometh forth from
Jehovah of Hosts, which is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in
wisdom": parallel in Job xi. 5, 6, "Oh that God would speak, and open
His lips against thee; and that He would show thee the secrets of
wisdom, that it is manifold in effectual working!" The resemblance
between various parts of Job and "the writing of Hezekiah when he had
been sick and was recovered of his sickness," are sufficiently obvious,
but cannot be used in any argument of time. And on the whole, so far,
the generality and, in the last case, somewhat stiff elaboration of the
ideas in Job as compared with Isaiah are almost positive proof that
Isaiah went first. Passing now to the fortieth and subsequent chapters
of Isaiah we find many parallels and much general similarity to the
contents of our poem. In Job xxvi. 12, "He stirreth up the sea with His
power, and by His understanding He smiteth through Rahab": parallel in
Isaiah li. 9, 10, "Art thou not it that cut Rahab in pieces, that
pierced the dragon? Art thou not it which dried up the sea, the waters
of the great deep?" In Job ix. 8, "Which alone stretcheth out the
heavens, and treadeth upon the waves of the sea": parallel in Isaiah xl.
22, "That stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them
out as a tent to dwell in." In these and other cases the resemblance is
clear, and on the whole the simplicity and apparent originality lie with
the Book of Job. Professor Davidson claims that Job, called by God "My
servant," resembles in many points the servant of Jehovah in Isaiah
liii., and the claim must be admitted. But on what ground Kuenen can
affirm that the writer of Job had the second portion of Isaiah before
him and painted his hero from it one fails to see. There are many
obvious differences.
It has now become almost clear that the book belongs either to the
period (favoured by Ewald, Renan, and others) immediately following
the captivity of the northern tribes, or to the time of the captivity
of Judah (fixed upon by Dr. A. B. Davidson, Professor Cheyne, and
others). We must still, however, seek further light by glancing at the
main problem of the book, which is to reconcile the justice of Divine
providence with the sufferings of the good, so that man may believe in
God even in sorest affliction. We must also consider the hint of time
to be found in the importance attached to personality, the feelings
and destiny of the individual and his claim on God.
Taking first the problem,--while it is stated in some of the psalms
and, indeed, is sure to have occurred to many a sufferer, for most
think themselves undeserving of great pain and affliction,--the
attempt to grapple with it is first made in Job. The Proverbs,
Deuteronomy, and the historical books take for granted that prosperity
follows religion and obedience to God, and that suffering is the
punishment of disobedience. The prophets also, though they have their
own view of national success, do not dispense with it as an evidence
of Divine favour. Cases no doubt were before the mind of inspired
writers which made any form of the theory difficult to hold. But these
were regarded as temporary and exceptional, if indeed they could not
be explained by the rule that God sends earthly prosperity to the
good, and suffering to the bad in the long run. To deny this and to
seek another rule was the distinction of the author of Job, his bold
and original adventure in theology. And the attempt was natural, one
may say necessary, at a time when the Hebrew states were suffering
from those shocks of foreign invasion which threw their society,
commerce, and politics into the direst confusion. The old ideas of
religion no longer sufficed. Overcome in war, driven out of their own
land, they needed a faith which could sustain and cheer them in
poverty and dispersion. A generation having no outlook beyond
captivity was under a curse from which penitence and renewed fidelity
could not secure deliverance. The assurance of God's friendship in
affliction had to be sought.
The importance attached to personality and the destiny of the
individual is on two sides a guide to the date of the book. In some of
the psalms, undoubtedly belonging to an earlier period, the personal
cry is heard. No longer content to be part and parcel of the class or
nation, the soul in these psalms asserts its direct claim on God for
light and comfort and help. And some of them, the thirteenth for
example, insist passionately on the right of a believing man to a
portion in Jehovah. Now in the dispersion of the northern tribes or
the capture of Jerusalem this personal question would be keenly
accentuated. Amidst the disasters of such a time those who are
faithful and pious suffer along with the rebellious and idolatrous.
Because they are faithful to God, virtuous and patriotic beyond the
rest, they may indeed have more affliction and loss to endure. The
psalmist among his own people, oppressed and cruelly wronged, has the
need of a personal hope forced upon him, and feels that he must be
able to say, "The Lord is _my_ shepherd." Yet he cannot entirely
separate himself from his people. When those of his own house and
kindred rise against him, still they too may claim Jehovah as their
God. But the homeless exile, deprived of all, a solitary wanderer on
the face of the earth, has need to seek more earnestly for the reason
of his state. The nation is broken up; and if he is to find refuge in
God, he must look for other hopes than hinge on national recovery. It
is the God of the whole earth he must now seek as his portion. A unit
not of Israel but of humanity, he must find a bridge over the deep
chasm that seems to separate his feeble life from the Almighty, a
chasm all the deeper that he has been plunged into sore trouble. He
must find assurance that the unit is not lost to God among the
multitudes, that the life broken and prostrate is neither forgotten
nor rejected by the Eternal King. And this precisely corresponds with
the temper of our book and the conception of God we find in it. A man
who has known Jehovah as the God of Israel seeks his justification,
cries for his individual right to Eloah, the Most High, the God of
universal nature and humanity and providence.
Now, it has been alleged that through the Book of Job there runs a
constant but covert reference to the troubles of the Jewish Church in
the Captivity, and especially that Job himself represents the
suffering flock of God. It is not proposed to give up entirely the
individual problem, but along with that, superseding that, the main
question of the poem is held to be why Judah should suffer so keenly
and lie on the _mezbele_ or ash-heap of exile. With all respect to
those who hold this theory one must say that it has no substantial
support; and, on the other hand, it seems incredible that a member of
the Southern Kingdom (if the writer belonged to it), expending so much
care and genius on the problem of his people's defeat and misery,
should have passed beyond his own kin for a hero, should have set
aside almost entirely the distinctive name Jehovah, should have
forgotten the ruined temple and the desolate city to which every Jew
looked back across the desert with brimming eyes, should have let
himself appear, even while he sought to reassure his compatriots in
their faith, as one who set no store by their cherished traditions,
their great names, their religious institutions, but as one whose
faith was purely natural like that of Edom. Among the good and true
men who, at the taking of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, were left in
penury, childless and desolate, a poet of Judah would have found a
Jewish hero. To his drama what embellishment and pathos could have
been added by genius like our author's, if he had gone back on the
terrible siege and painted the Babylonian victors in their cruelty and
pride, the misery of the exiles in the land of idolatry. One cannot
help believing that to this writer Jerusalem was nothing, that he had
no interest in its temple, no love for its ornate religious services
and growing exclusiveness. The suggestion of Ewald may be accepted,
that he was a member of the Northern Kingdom driven from his home by
the overthrow of Samaria. Undeniable is the fact that his religion has
more sympathy with Teman than with Jerusalem as it was. If he belonged
to the north this seems to be explained. To seek help from the
priesthood and worship of the temple did not occur to him. Israel
broken up, he has to begin afresh. For it is with his own religious
trouble he is occupied; and the problem is universal.
Against the identification of Job with the servant of Jehovah in
Isaiah liii. there is one objection, and it is fatal. The author of
Job has no thought of the central idea in that passage--vicarious
suffering. New light would have been thrown on the whole subject if
one of the friends had been made to suggest the possibility that Job
was suffering for others, that the "chastisement of their peace" was
laid on him. Had the author lived after the return from captivity and
heard of this oracle, he would surely have wrought into his poem the
latest revelation of the Divine method in helping and redeeming men.
The distinction of the Book of Job we have seen to be that it offers a
new beginning in theology. And it does so not only because it shifts
faith in the Divine justice to a fresh basis, but also because it
ventures on a universalism for which indeed the Proverbs had made way,
which however stood in sharp contrast to the narrowness of the old state
religion. Already it was admitted that others than Hebrews might love
the truth, follow righteousness, and share the blessings of the
heavenly King. To that broader faith, enjoyed by the thinkers and
prophets of Israel, if not by the priests and people, the author of the
Book of Job added the boldness of a more liberal inspiration. He went
beyond the Hebrew family for his hero to make it clear that man, as man,
is in direct relation to God. The Psalms and the Book of Proverbs might
be read by Israelites and the belief still retained that God would
prosper Israel alone, at any rate in the end. Now, the man of Uz, the
Arabian sheikh, outside the sacred fraternity of the tribes, is
presented as a fearer of the true God--His trusted witness and servant.
With the freedom of a prophet bringing a new message of the brotherhood
of men our author points us beyond Israel to the desert oasis.
Yes: the creed of Hebraism had ceased to guide thought and lead the
soul to strength. The Hokhma literature of Proverbs, which had become
fashionable in Solomon's time, possessed no dogmatic vigour, fell
often to the level of moral platitude, as the same kind of literature
does with us, and had little help for the soul. The state religion, on
the other hand, both in the Northern and Southern Kingdoms, was
ritualistic, again like ours, clung to the old tribal notion, and
busied itself about the outward more than the inward, the sacrifices
rather than the heart, as Amos and Isaiah clearly indicate. Hokhma of
various kinds, plus energetic ritualism, was falling into practical
uselessness. Those who held the religion as a venerable inheritance
and national talisman did not base their action and hope on it out in
the world. They were beginning to say, "Who knoweth what is good for
man in this life--all the days of his vain life which he spendeth as a
shadow? For who can tell a man what shall be after him under the
sun?" A new theology was certainly needed for the crisis of the time.
The author of the Book of Job found no school possessed of the secret
of strength. But he sought to God, and inspiration came to him. He
found himself in the desert like Elijah, like others long afterwards,
John the Baptist, and especially Saul of Tarsus, whose words we
remember, "Neither went I up to Jerusalem, ... but I went into
Arabia." There he met with a religion not confined by rigid ceremony
as that of the southern tribes, not idolatrous like that of the north,
a religion elementary indeed, but capable of development. And he
became its prophet. He would take the wide world into council. He
would hear Teman and Shuach and Naamah; he would also hear the voice
from the whirlwind, and the swelling sea, and the troubled nations,
and the eager soul. It was a daring dash beyond the ramparts.
Orthodoxy might stand aghast within its fortress. He might appear a
renegade in seeking tidings of God from the heathen, as one might now
who went from a Christian land to learn from the Brahman and the
Buddhist. But he would go nevertheless; and it was his wisdom. He
opened his mind to the sight of fact, and reported what he found, so
that theology might be corrected and made again a handmaid of faith.
He is one of those Scripture writers who vindicate the universality of
the Bible, who show it to be a unique foundation, and forbid the
theory of a closed record or dried-up spring, which is the error of
Bibliolatry. He is a man of his age and of the world, yet in
fellowship with the Eternal Mind.
An exile, let us suppose, of the Northern Kingdom, escaping with his
life from the sword of the Assyrian, the author of our book has taken
his way into the Arabian wilderness and there found the friendship of
some chief and a safe retreat among his people. The desert has become
familiar to him, the sandy wastes and vivid oases, the fierce storms
and affluent sunshine, the animal and vegetable life, the patriarchal
customs and legends of old times. He has travelled through Idumæa, and
seen the desert tombs, on to Midian and its lonely peaks. He has heard
the roll of the Great Sea on the sands of the Shefelah, and seen the
vast tide of the Nile flowing through the verdure of the Delta and
past the pyramids of Memphis. He has wandered through the cities of
Egypt and viewed their teeming life, turning to the use of imagination
and religion all he beheld. With a relish for his own language, yet
enriching it by the words and ideas of other lands, he has practised
himself in the writer's art, and at length, in some hour of burning
memory and revived experience, he has caught at the history of one
who, yonder in a valley of the eastern wilderness, knew the shocks of
time and pain though his heart was right with God; and in the heat of
his spirit the poet-exile makes the story of that life into a drama of
the trial of human faith,--his own endurance and vindication, his own
sorrow and hope.
II.
_THE OPENING SCENE ON EARTH._
CHAP. i. 1-5.
The land of Uz appears to have been a general name for the great
Syro-Arabian desert. It is described vaguely as lying "east of
Palestine and north of Edom," or as "corresponding to the _Arabia
Deserta_ of classical geography, at all events so much of it as lies
north of the 30th parallel of latitude." In Jer. xxv. 20, among those
to whom the wine-cup of fury is sent, are mentioned "all the mingled
people and all the kings of the land of Uz." But within this wide
region, extending from Damascus to Arabia, from Palestine to Chaldæa,
it seems possible to find a more definite locality for the
dwelling-place of Job. Eliphaz, one of his friends, belonged to Teman,
a district or city of Idumæa. In Lam. iv. 21, the writer, who may have
had the Book of Job before him, says, "Rejoice and be glad, O daughter
of Edom, that dwellest in the land of Uz"; a passage that seems to
indicate a habitable region, not remote from the gorges of Idumæa. It
is necessary also to fix on a district which lay in the way of the
caravans of Sheba and Tema, and was exposed to the attacks of lawless
bands of Chaldæans and Sabeans. At the same time there must have been
a considerable population, abundant pasturage for large flocks of
camels and sheep, and extensive tracts of arable land. Then, the
dwelling of Job lay near a city at the gate of which he sat with
other elders to administer justice. The attention paid to details by
the author of the book warrants us in expecting that all these
conditions may be satisfied.
A tradition which places the home of Job in the Hauran, the land of
Bashan of Scripture, some score of miles from the Sea of Galilee, has
been accepted by Delitzsch. A monastery, there, appears to have been
regarded from early Christian times as authentically connected with
the name of Job. But the tradition has little value in itself, and the
locality scarcely agrees in a single particular with the various
indications found in the course of the book. The Hauran does not
belong to the land of Uz. It was included in the territory of Israel.
Nor can it by any stretch of imagination be supposed to lie in the way
of wandering bands of Sabeans, whose home was in the centre of Arabia.
But the conditions are met--one has no hesitation in saying, fully
met--in a region hitherto unidentified with the dwelling-place of Job,
the valley or oasis of Jauf (Palgrave, _Djowf_), lying in the North
Arabian desert about two hundred miles almost due east from the modern
Maan and the ruins of Petra. Various interesting particulars regarding
this valley and its inhabitants are given by Mr. C. M. Doughty in his
"Travels in Arabia Deserta." But the best description is that by Mr.
Palgrave, who, under the guidance of Bedawin, visited the district in
1862. Travelling from Maan by way of the Wadi Sirhan, after a difficult
and dangerous journey of thirteen days, their track in the last stage
following "endless windings among low hills and stony ledges," brought
them to greener slopes and traces of tillage, and at length "entered a
long and narrow pass, whose precipitous banks shut in the view on
either side." After an hour of tedious marching in terrible heat,
turning a huge pile of crags, they looked down into the Jauf.
"A broad, deep valley, descending ledge after ledge till its innermost
depths are hidden from sight amid far-reaching shelves of reddish
rock, below everywhere studded with tufts of palm groves and
clustering fruit trees in dark green patches, down to the farthest end
of its windings; a large brown mass of irregular masonry crowning a
central hill; beyond, a tall and solitary tower overlooking the
opposite bank of the hollow, and farther down, small round turrets and
flat house-roofs, half buried amid the garden foliage, the whole
plunged in a perpendicular flood of light and heat; such was the first
aspect of the Djowf as we now approached it from the west." The
principal town bears the name of the district, and is composed of
eight villages, once distinct, which have in process of time coalesced
into one. The principal quarter includes the castle, and numbers about
four hundred houses. "The province is a large oval depression, of
sixty or seventy miles long by ten or twelve broad, lying between the
northern desert that separates it from Syria and Euphrates, and the
southern Nefood, or sandy waste." Its fertility is great and is aided
by irrigation, so that the dates and other fruits produced in the Jauf
are famed throughout Arabia. The people "occupy a half-way position
between Bedouins and the inhabitants of the cultivated districts."
Their number is reckoned at about forty thousand, and there can be no
question that the valley has been a seat of population from remote
antiquity. To the other points of identification may be added this,
that in the Wadi Sirhan, not far from the entrance to the Jauf, Mr.
Palgrave passed a poor settlement with the name Oweysit, or Owsit,
which at least suggests the εν χὡρα τη Αυσἱτιδι of the Septuagint, and
the Outz, or Uz, of our text. With population, an ancient city,
fertile fields and ample pasturage in the middle of the desert, the
nearest habitable region to Edom, in the way of caravans, generally
safe from predatory tribes, yet exposed to those from the east and
south that might make long expeditions under pressure of great need,
the valley of the Jauf appears to correspond in every important
particular with the dwelling-place of the man of Uz.
The question whether such a man as Job ever lived has been variously
answered, one Hebrew rabbi, for example, affirming that he was a mere
parable. But Ezekiel names him along with Noah and Daniel, James in
his epistle says, "Ye have heard of the patience of Job"; and the
opening words of this book, "There was a man in the land of Uz," are
distinctly historical. To know, therefore, that a region in the
Arabian desert corresponds so closely with the scene of Job's life is
to be reassured that a true history forms the basis of the poem. The
tradition with which the author began his work probably supplied the
name and dwelling-place of Job, his wealth, piety, and afflictions,
including the visit of his friends, and his restoration after sore
trial from the very gate of despair to faith and prosperity. The rest
comes from the genius of the author of the drama. This is a work of
imagination based on fact. And we do not proceed far till we find,
first ideal touches, then bold flights into a region never opened to
the gaze of mortal eye.
Job is described in the third verse as one of the Children of the East
or Bene-Kedem, a vague expression denoting the settled inhabitants of
the North Arabian desert, in contrast to the wandering Bedawin and the
Sabeans of the South. In Genesis and Judges they are mentioned along
with the Amalekites, to whom they were akin. But the name as used by the
Hebrews probably covered the inhabitants of a large district very little
known. Of the Bene-Kedem Job is described as the greatest. His riches
meant power, and in the course of the frequent alternations of life in
those regions one who had enjoyed unbroken prosperity for many years
would be regarded with veneration not only for his wealth, but for what
it signified--the constant favour of Heaven. He had his settlement near
the city, and was the acknowledged emeer of the valley, taking his place
at the gate as chief judge. How great a chief one might become who added
to his flocks and herds year by year and managed his affairs with
prudence we learn from the history of Abraham; and to the present day,
where the patriarchal mode of living and customs continue, as among the
Kurds of the Persian highland, examples of wealth in sheep and oxen,
camels and asses almost approaching that of Job are sometimes to be met
with. The numbers--seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five
hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred she-asses--are probably intended
simply to represent his greatness. Yet they are not beyond the range of
possibility.
The family of Job--his wife, seven sons, and three daughters--are
about him when the story begins, sharing his prosperity. In perfect
friendliness and idyllic joy the brothers and sisters spend their
lives, the shield of their father's care and religion defending them.
Each of the sons has a day on which he entertains the others, and at
the close of the circle of festivities, whether weekly or once a
year, there is a family sacrifice. The father is solicitous lest his
children, speaking or even thinking irreverently, may have dishonoured
God. For this reason he makes the periodic offering, from time to time
keeping on behalf of his household a day of atonement. The number of
the children is not necessarily ideal, nor is the round of festivals
and sacred observances. Yet the whole picture of happy family life and
unbroken joy begins to lift the narrative into an imaginative light.
So fine a union of youthful enjoyment and fatherly sympathy and
puritanism is seldom approached in this world. The poet has kept out
of his picture the shadows which must have lurked beneath the sunny
surface of life. It is not even suggested that the recurring
sacrifices were required. Job's thoughtfulness is precautionary: "It
may be that my sons have sinned, and renounced God in their hearts."
The children are dear to him, so dear that he would have nothing come
between them and the light of heaven.
For the religion of Job, sincere and deep, disclosing itself in these
offerings to the Most High, is, above his fatherly affection and
sympathy, the distinction with which the poet shows him invested. He
is a fearer of the One Living and True God, the Supremely Holy. In the
course of the drama the speeches of Job often go back on his
faithfulness to the Most High; and we can see that he served his
fellow-men justly and generously because he believed in a Just and
Generous God. Around him were worshippers of the sun and moon, whose
adoration he had been invited to share. But he never joined in it,
even by kissing his hand when the splendid lights of heaven moved with
seeming Divine majesty across the sky. For him there was but One God,
unseen yet ever present, to whom, as the Giver of all, he did not fail
to offer thanksgiving and prayer with deepening faith. In his worship
of this God the old order of sacrifice had its place, simple,
unceremonious. Head of the clan, he was the priest by natural right,
and offered sheep or bullock that there might be atonement, or
maintenance of fellowship with the Friendly Power who ruled the world.
His religion may be called a nature religion of the finest
type--reverence, faith, love, freedom. There is no formal doctrine
beyond what is implied in the names Eloah, the Lofty One, Shaddai,
Almighty, and in those simple customs of prayer, confession, and
sacrifice in which all believers agreed. Of the law of Moses, the
promises to Abraham, and those prophetical revelations by which the
covenant of God was assured to the Hebrew people Job knows nothing.
His is a real religion, capable of sustaining the soul of man in
righteousness, a religion that can save; but it is a religion learned
from the voices of earth and sky and sea, and from human experience
through the inspiration of the devout obedient heart. The author makes
no attempt to reproduce the beliefs of patriarchal times as described
in Genesis, but with a sincere and sympathetic touch he shows what a
fearer of God in the Arabian desert might be. Job is such a man as he
may have personally known.
In the region of Idumæa the faith of the Most High was held in
remarkable purity by learned men, who formed a religious caste or
school of wide reputation; and Teman, the home of Eliphaz, appears to
have been the centre of the cultus. "Is wisdom no more in Teman?"
cries Jeremiah. "Is counsel perished from the prudent? Is their wisdom
(hokhma) vanished?" And Obadiah makes a similar reference: "Shall I
not in that day, saith the Lord, destroy the wise men out of Edom, and
understanding out of the mount of Esau?" In Isaiah the darkened wisdom
of some time of trouble and perplexity is reflected in the "burden of
Dumah," that is, Idumæa: "One calleth unto me out of Seir," as if with
the hope of clearer light on Divine providence, "Watchman, what of the
night? Watchman, what of the night?" And the answer is an oracle in
irony, almost enigma: "The morning cometh, and also the night. If ye
will inquire, inquire; turn, come." Not for those who dwelt in
shadowed Dumah was the clear light of Hebrew prophecy. But the wisdom
or hokhma of Edom and its understanding were nevertheless of the kind
in Proverbs and elsewhere constantly associated with true religion and
represented as almost identical with it. And we may feel assured that
when the Book of Job was written there was good ground for ascribing
to sages of Teman and Uz an elevated faith.
For a Hebrew like the author of Job to lay aside for a time the thought
of his country's traditions, the law and the prophets, the covenant of
Sinai, the sanctuary, and the altar of witness, and return in writing
his poem to the primitive faith which his forefathers grasped when they
renounced the idolatry of Chaldæa was after all no grave abandonment of
privilege. The beliefs of Teman, sincerely held, were better than the
degenerate religion of Israel against which Amos testified. Had not that
prophet even pointed the way when he cried in Jehovah's name--"Seek not
Bethel, nor enter into Gilgal, and pass not to Beersheba.... Seek Him
that maketh the Pleiades and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into
the morning, and maketh the day dark with night; that calleth for the
waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth;
Jehovah is His name"? Israel after apostasy may have needed to begin
afresh, and to seek on the basis of the primal faith a new atonement
with the Almighty. At all events there were many around, not less the
subjects of God and beloved by Him, who stood in doubt amidst the
troubles of life and the ruin of earthly hopes. Teman and Uz were in the
dominion of the heavenly King. To correct and confirm their faith would
be to help the faith of Israel also and give the true religion of God
fresh power against idolatry and superstition.
The book which returned thus to the religion of Teman found an
honourable place in the roll of sacred Scriptures. Although the canon
was fixed by Hebrews at a time when the narrowness of the post-exilic
age drew toward Pharisaism, and the law and the temple were regarded
with veneration far greater than in the time of Solomon, room was made
for this book of broad human sympathy and free faith. It is a mark at
once of the wisdom of the earlier rabbis and their judgment regarding
the essentials of religion. To Israel, as St. Paul afterwards said,
belonged "the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving
of the law, and the service of God, and the promises." But he too shows
the same disposition as the author of our poem to return on the
primitive and fundamental--the justification of Abraham by his faith,
the promise made to him, and the covenant that extended to his family:
"They which be of faith, the same are sons of Abraham"; "They which be
of faith are blessed with the faithful Abraham"; "Not through the law
was the promise to Abraham or to his seed"; "That the blessing of
Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ." A greater
than St. Paul has shown us how to use the Old Testament, and we have
perhaps misunderstood the intent with which our Lord carried the minds
of men back to Abraham and Moses and the prophets. He gave a religion to
the whole world. Was it not then the spiritual dignity, the religious
breadth of the Israelite fathers, their sublime certainty of God, their
glow and largeness of faith for which Christ went back to them? Did He
not for these find them preparers of His own way?
From the religion of Job we pass to consider his character described
in the words, "That man was perfect and upright, and one that feared
God, and eschewed evil." The use of four strong expressions,
cumulatively forming a picture of the highest possible worth and
piety, must be held to point to an ideal life. The epithet _perfect_
is applied to Noah, and once and again in the Psalms to the
disposition of the good. Generally, however, it refers rather to the
scheme or plan by which conduct is ordered than to the fulfilment in
actual life; and a suggestive parallel may be found in the
"perfection" or "entire sanctification" of modern dogma. The word
means _complete_, built up all round so that no gaps are to be seen in
the character. We are asked to think of Job as a man whose
uprightness, goodness, and fidelity towards man were unimpeachable,
who was also towards God reverent, obedient, grateful, wearing his
religion as a white garment of unsullied virtue. Then is it meant that
he had no infirmity of will or soul, that in him for once humanity
stood absolutely free from defect? Scarcely. The perfect man in this
sense, with all moral excellences and without weakness, would as
little have served the purpose of the writer as one marred by any
gross or deforming fault. The course of the poem shows that Job was
not free from errors of temper and infirmities of will. He who is
proverbially known as the most patient failed in patience when the
bitter cup of reproach had to be drained. But undoubtedly the writer
exalts the virtue of his hero to the highest range, a plane above the
actual. In order to set the problem of the book in a clear light such
purity of soul and earnest dutifulness had to be assumed as would by
every reckoning deserve the rewards of God, the "Well done, good and
faithful servant; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."
The years of Job have passed hitherto in unbroken prosperity. He has
long enjoyed the bounty of providence, his children about him, his
increasing flocks of sheep and camels, oxen and asses feeding in
abundant pastures. The stroke of bereavement has not fallen since his
father and mother died in ripe old age. The dreadful simoom has spared
his flocks, the wandering Bedawin have passed them by. An honoured
chief, he rules in wisdom and righteousness, ever mindful of the
Divine hand by which he is blessed, earning for himself the trust of
the poor and the gratitude of the afflicted. Enjoying unbounded
respect in his own country, he is known beyond the desert to a circle
of friends who admire him as a man and honour him as a servant of God.
His steps are washed with butter, and the rock pours him out rivers of
oil. The lamp of God shines upon his head, and by His light he walks
through darkness. His root is spread out to the waters, and the dew
lies all night upon his branch.