have taken, which at any rate it becomes us to take, with our
knowledge of what gives manhood its true dignity and perfectness.
Obedience to God, self-control and self-culture, the observance of
religious forms, brotherliness and compassion, uprightness and purity
of life, these are Job's excellences. But all circumstances are
favourable, his wealth makes beneficence easy and moves him to
gratitude. His natural disposition is towards piety and generosity; it
is pure joy to him to honour God and help his fellow-men. The life is
beautiful. But imagine it as the unclouded experience of years in a
world where so many are tried with suffering and bereavement, foiled
in their strenuous toil and disappointed in their dearest hopes, and
is it not evident that Job's would tend to become a kind of
dream-life, not deep and strong, but on the surface, a broad stream,
clear, glittering with the reflection of moon and stars or of the blue
heaven, but shallow, gathering no force, scarcely moving towards the
ocean? When a Psalmist says, "Thou hast set our iniquities before
Thee, our secret sins in the light of Thy countenance. For all our
days are passed away in Thy wrath: we bring our years to an end as a
tale that is told," he depicts the common experience of men, a sad
experience, yet needful to the highest wisdom and the noblest faith.
No dreaming is there when the soul is met with sore rebuffs and made
aware of the profound abyss that lies beneath, when the limbs fail on
the steep hills of difficult duty. But a long succession of prosperous
years, immunity from disappointment, loss, and sorrow, lulls the
spirit to repose. Earnestness of heart is not called for, and the
will, however good, is never braced to endurance. Whether by subtle
intention or by an instinctive sense of fitness, the writer has
painted Job as one who with all his virtue and perfectness spent his
life as in a dream and needed to be awakened. He is a Pygmalion's
statue of flawless marble, the face divinely calm and not without a
trace of self-conscious remoteness from the suffering multitudes,
needing the hot blast of misfortune to bring it to life. Or, let us
say, he is a new type of humanity in paradise, an Adam enjoying a
Garden of Eden fenced in from every storm, as yet undiscovered by the
enemy. We are to see the problem of the primitive story of Genesis
revived and wrought out afresh, not on the old lines, but in a way
that makes it real to the race of suffering men. The dream-life of Job
in his time of prosperity corresponds closely with that ignorance of
good and evil which the first pair had in the garden eastward in Eden
while as yet the forbidden tree bore its fruit untouched, undesired,
in the midst of the greenery and flowers.
When did the man Job live? Far back in the patriarchal age, or but a
short time before the author of the book came upon his story and made it
immortal? We may incline to the later date, but it is of no importance.
For us the interest of the book is not antiquarian but humane, the
relation of pain and affliction to the character of man, the righteous
government of God. The life and experiences of Job are idealised so that
the question may be clearly understood; and the writer makes not the
slightest attempt to give his book the colour of remote antiquity.
But we cannot fail to be struck from the outset with the genius shown
in the choice of a life set in the Arabian desert. For breadth of
treatment, for picturesque and poetic effect, for the development of a
drama that was to exhibit the individual soul in its need of God, in
the shadow of deep trouble as well as the sunshine of success, the
scenery is strikingly adapted, far better than if it had been laid in
some village of Israel. Inspiration guided the writer's choice. The
desert alone gave scope for those splendid pictures of nature, those
noble visions of Divine Almightiness, and those sudden and tremendous
changes which make the movement impressive and sublime.
The modern analogue in literature is the philosophic novel. But Job is
far more intense, more operatic, as Ewald says, and the elements are
even simpler. Isolation is secured. Life is bared to its elements. The
personality is entangled in disaster with the least possible machinery
or incident. The dramatising altogether is singularly abstract. And
thus we are enabled to see, as it were, the very thought of the
author, lonely, resolute, appealing, under the widespread Arabian sky
and the Divine infinitude.
III.
_THE OPENING SCENE IN HEAVEN._
CHAP. i. 6-12.
With the presentation of the scene in heaven, the genius, the pious
daring, and fine moral insight of the writer at once appear--in one
word, his inspiration. From the first we feel a sure yet deeply
reverent touch, a spirit composed in its high resolve. The thinking is
keen, but entirely without strain. In no mere flash did the over-world
disclose itself and those decrees that shape man's destiny. There is
constructive imagination. Wherever the idea of the heavenly council
was found, whether in the vision Micaiah narrated to Jehoshaphat and
Ahab, or in the great vision of Isaiah, it certainly was not unsought.
Through the author's own study and art the inspiration came that made
the picture what it is. The calm sovereignty of God, not tyrannical
but most sympathetic, is presented with simple felicity. It was the
distinction of Hebrew prophets to speak of the Almighty with a
confidence which bordered on familiarity yet never lost the grace of
profound reverence; and here we find that trait of serious naïveté.
The writer ventures on the scene he paints with no consciousness of
daring nor the least air of difficult endeavour, but quietly, as one
who has the thought of the Divine government of human affairs
constantly before his mind and glories in the majestic wisdom of God
and His friendliness to men. In a single touch the King is shown, and
before Him the hierarchies and powers of the invisible world in their
responsibility to His rule. Centuries of religious culture are behind
the words, and also many years of private meditation and philosophic
thought. To this man, because he gave himself to the highest
discipline, revelations came, uplifting, broad, and deep.
In contrast to the Almighty we have the figure of the Adversary, or
Satan, depicted with sufficient clearness, notably coherent,
representing a phase of being not imaginary but actual. He is not, as
the Satan of later times came to be, the head of a kingdom peopled with
evil spirits, a nether world separated from the abode of the heavenly
angels by a broad, impassable gulf. He has no distinctive hideousness,
nor is he painted as in any sense independent, although the evil bent of
his nature is made plain, and he ventures to dispute the judgment of the
Most High. This conception of the Adversary need not be set in
opposition to those which afterwards appear in Scripture as if truth
must lie entirely there or here. But we cannot help contrasting the
Satan of the Book of Job with the grotesque, gigantic, awful, or
despicable fallen angels of the world's poetry. Not that the mark of
genius is wanting in these; but they reflect the powers of this world
and the accompaniments of malignant human despotism. The author of Job,
on the contrary, moved little by earthly state and grandeur, whether
good or evil, solely occupied with the Divine sovereignty, never dreams
of one who could maintain the slightest shadow of authority in
opposition to God. He cannot trifle with his idea of the Almighty in the
way of representing a rival to Him; nor can he degrade a subject so
serious as that of human faith and well-being by painting with any
touch of levity a superhuman adversary of men.
Dante in his _Inferno_ attempts the portraiture of the monarch of
hell:--
"That emperor who sways
The realm of sorrow, at mid-breast from the ice
Stood forth; and I in stature, am more like
A giant than the giants are to his arms....
... If he were beautiful
As he is hideous now, and yet did dare
To scowl upon his Maker, well from him
May all our misery flow."
The enormous size of this figure is matched by its hideousness; the
misery of the arch-fiend, for all its horror, is grotesque:
"At six eyes he wept; the tears
Adown three faces rolled in bloody foam."
Passing to Milton, we find sublimity in his pictures of the fallen
legions, and it culminates in the vision of their king:--
"Above them all the archangel; but his face
Deep scars of thunder had intrenched, and care
Sat on his faded cheek, but under brows
Of dauntless courage, and considerate pride
Waiting revenge: cruel his eye, but cast
Signs of remorse and passion, to behold
The fellows of his crime, ...
Millions of spirits for his fault amerced
Of heaven, and from eternal splendours flung
For his revolt."
The picture is magnificent. It has, however, little justification from
Scripture. Even in the Book of Revelation we see a kind of contempt of
the Adversary where an angel from heaven with a great chain in his
hand lays hold on the dragon, that old serpent which is the devil, and
Satan, and binds him a thousand years. Milton has painted his Satan
largely, as not altogether unfit to take arms against the Omnipotent,
grown gigantic, even sublime, in the course of much theological
speculation that had its source far back in Chaldæan and Iranian
myths. Perhaps, too, the sympathies of the poet, playing about the
fortunes of fallen royalty, may have unconsciously coloured the vision
which he saw and drew with such marvellous power, dipping his pencil
"in the hues of earthquake and eclipse."
This splendid regal arch-fiend has no kinship with the Satan of the Book
of Job; and, on the other hand, the Mephistopheles of the "Faust,"
although bearing an outward resemblance to him, is, for a quite
different reason, essentially unlike. Obviously Goethe's picture of a
cynical devil gaily perverting and damning a human mind is based on the
Book of Job. The "Prologue in Heaven," in which he first appears, is an
imitation of the passage before us. But while the vulgarity and
insolence of Mephistopheles are in contrast to the demeanour of the
Adversary in presence of Jehovah, the real distinction lies in the kind
of power ascribed to the one and the other. Mephistopheles is a cunning
tempter. He receives permission to mislead if he can, and not only
places his victim in circumstances fitted to ruin his virtue, but plies
him with arguments intended to prove that evil is good, that to be pure
is to be a fool. No such power of evil suggestion is given to the
Adversary of Job. His action extends only to the outward events by which
the trial of faith is brought about. Cynical he is and bent on working
evil, but not by low cunning and sophistry. He has no access to the
mind. While it cannot be said that Goethe has descended beneath the
level of possibility, since a contemporary and friend of his own,
Schopenhauer, might almost have sat for the portrait of Mephistopheles,
the realism in Job befits the age of the writer and the serious purpose
he had in view. Faust is a work of genius and art, and succeeds in its
degree. The author of Job succeeds in a far higher sense, by the charm
of simple sincerity and the strength of Divine inspiration, keeping the
play of supernatural agency beyond human vision, making the Satan a mere
instrument of the Divine purpose, in no sense free or intellectually
powerful.
The scene opens with a gathering of the "sons of the Elohim" in
presence of their King. Professor Cheyne thinks that these are
"supernatural Titanic beings who had once been at strife with Jehovah,
but who now at stated times paid him their enforced homage"; and this
he illustrates by reference to Chap. xxi. 22 and Chap. xxv. 2. But the
question in the one passage, "Shall any teach God knowledge? seeing He
judgeth those that are high" [רמִימ, the heights of heaven,
highnesses], and the affirmation in the other, "He maketh peace in His
high places," can scarcely be held to prove the supposition. The
ordinary view that they are heavenly powers or angels, willing
servants not unwilling vassals of Jehovah, is probably correct. They
have come together at an appointed time to give account of their
doings and to receive commands, and among them the Satan or Adversary
presents himself, one distinguished from all the rest by the name he
bears and the character and function it implies. There is no hint that
he is out of place, that he has impudently forced his way into the
audience chamber. Rather does it appear that he, like the rest, has to
give his account. The question "Whence comest thou?" expresses no
rebuke. It is addressed to the Satan as to the others. We see,
therefore, that this "Adversary," to whomsoever he is opposed, is not
a being excluded from communication with God, engaged in a princely
revolt. When the reply is put into his mouth that he has been "going
to and fro in the earth, and pacing up and down in it," the impression
conveyed is that a certain task of observing men, perhaps watching for
their misdeeds, has been assumed by him. He appears a spirit of
restless and acute inquiry into men's lives and motives, with a keen
eye for the weaknesses of humanity and a fancy quick to imagine evil.
Evidently we have here a personification of the doubting,
misbelieving, misreading spirit which, in our day, we limit to men and
call pessimism. Now Koheleth gives so finished an expression to this
temper that we can hardly be wrong in going back some distance of time
for its growth; and the state of Israel before the northern captivity
was a soil in which every kind of bitter seed might spring up. The
author of Job may well have drawn from more than one cynic of his day
when he set his mocking figure in the blaze of the celestial court.
Satan is the pessimist. He exists, so far as his intent goes, to find
cause against man, and therefore, in effect, against God, as man's
Creator. A shrewd thinker is this Adversary, but narrowed to one line
and that singularly like some modern criticism of religion, the
resemblance holding in this that neither shows any feeling of
responsibility. The Satan sneers away faith and virtue; the modern
countenances both, and so has an excellent reason for pronouncing them
hollow; or he avoids both, and is sure there is nothing but emptiness
where he has not sought. Either way, all is _habēl habalim_--vanity of
vanities. And yet Satan is so held and governed by the Almighty that
he can only strike where permission is given. Evil, as represented by
him, is under the control of Divine wisdom and goodness. He appears as
one to whom the words of Christ "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God,
and Him only shalt thou serve," would bring home a sense neither of
duty nor privilege, but of a sheer necessity, to be contested to the
last. Nevertheless he is a vassal of the Almighty. Here the touch of
the author is firm and true.
So of pessimistic research and philosophy now. We have writers who
follow humanity in all its base movements and know nothing of its
highest. The research of Schopenhauer and even the psychology of
certain modern novelists are mischievous, depraving, for this reason,
if no other, that they evaporate the ideal. They promote generally
that diseased egotism to which judgment and aspiration are alike
unknown. Yet this spirit too serves where it has no dream of serving.
It provokes a healthy opposition, shows a hell from which men recoil,
and creates so deadly ennui that the least gleam of faith becomes
acceptable, and even Theosophy, because it speaks of life, secures the
craving mind. Moreover, the pessimist keeps the church a little
humble, somewhat awake to the error that may underlie its own glory
and the meanness that mingles too often with its piety. A result of
the freedom of the human mind to question and deny, pessimism has its
place in the scheme of things. Hostile and often railing, it is
detestable enough, but needs not alarm those who know that God takes
care of His world.
The challenge which begins the action of the drama--by whom is it
thrown out? By the Almighty. God sets before the Satan a good life:
"Hast thou considered My servant Job? that there is none like him in the
earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth
evil." The source of the whole movement, then, is a defiance of unbelief
by the Divine Friend of men and Lord of all. There is such a thing as
human virtue, and it is the glory of God to be served by it, to have His
power and divinity reflected in man's spiritual vigour and holiness.
Why does the Almighty throw out the challenge and not wait for Satan's
charge? Simply because the trial of virtue must begin with God. This is
the first step in a series of providential dealings fraught with the
most important results, and there is singular wisdom in attributing it
to God. Divine grace is to be seen thrusting back the chaotic falsehoods
that darken the world of thought. They exist; they are known to Him who
rules; and He does not leave humanity to contend with them unaided. In
their keenest trials the faithful are supported by His hand, assured of
victory while they fight His battles. Ignorant pride, like that of the
Adversary, is not slow to enter into debate even with the All-wise.
Satan has the question ready which implies a lie, for his is the voice
of that scepticism which knows no reverence. But the entire action of
the book is in the line of establishing faith and hope. The Adversary is
challenged to do his worst; and man, as God's champion, will have to do
his best,--the world and angels looking on.
And this thought of a Divine purpose to confound the falsehoods of
scepticism answers another inquiry which may readily occur. From the
first the Almighty knows and asserts the virtue of His servant,--that
he is one who fears God and eschews evil. But why, then, does He
condescend to ask of Satan, "Hast thou considered My servant Job?"
Since He has already searched the heart of Job and found it faithful,
He does not need for His own satisfaction to hear Satan's opinion. Nor
are we to suppose that the expression of this Adversary's doubt can
have any real importance. But if we take the Satan as representing all
those who depreciate faith and undermine virtue, the challenge is
explained. Satan is of no account in himself. He will go on cavilling
and suspecting. But for the sake of the race of men, its emancipation
from the miserable suspicions that prey on the heart, the question is
proposed. The drama has its prophetical design; it embodies a
revelation; and in this lies the value of all that is represented.
Satan, we shall find, disappears, and thereafter the human reason is
alone addressed, solely considered. We pass from scene to scene, from
controversy to controversy, and the great problem of man's virtue,
which also involves the honour of God Himself, is wrought out that our
despondency and fear may be cured; that we may never say with
Koheleth, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."
To the question of the Almighty, Satan replies by another: "Doth Job
fear God for nought?" With a certain air of fairness he points to the
extraordinary felicity enjoyed by the man. "Hast Thou not made an
hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath, on
every side? Thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance
is increased in the land." It is a thought naturally arising in the
mind that very prosperous people have all on the side of their virtue,
and may be less pure and faithful than they seem. Satan adopts this
thought, which is not only blameless, but suggested by what we see of
God's government. He is base and captious in using it, and turns it
with a sneer. Yet on the surface he only hints that God should employ
His own test, and so vindicate His action in making this man so
prosperous. For why should Job show anything but gratitude towards God
when all is done for him that heart can desire? The favourites of
kings, indeed, who are loaded with titles and wealth, sometimes
despise their benefactors, and, being raised to high places, grow
ambitious of one still higher, that of royalty itself. The pampered
servant becomes an arrogant rival, a leader of revolt. Thus too great
bounty is often met with ingratitude. It does not, however, suit the
Adversary to suggest that pride and rebellion of this kind have begun
to show themselves in Job, or will show themselves. He has no ground
for such an accusation, no hope of proving it true. He confines
himself, therefore, to a simpler charge, and in making it implies that
he is only judging this man on general principles and pointing to what
is sure to happen in the case. Yes; he knows men. They are selfish at
bottom. Their religion is selfishness. The blameless human fear is
that much may be due to favourable position. The Satan is sure that
all is due to it.
Now, the singular thing here is the fact that the Adversary's
accusation turns on Job's enjoyment of that outward felicity which the
Hebrews were constantly desiring and hoping for as a reward of
obedience to God. The writer comes thus at once to show the peril of
the belief which had corrupted the popular religion of his time, which
may even have been his own error once, that abundant harvests, safety
from enemies, freedom from pestilence, such material prosperity as
many in Israel had before the great disasters, were to be regarded as
the evidence of accepted piety. Now that the crash has fallen and the
tribes are scattered, those left in Palestine and those carried into
exile alike sunk in poverty and trouble, the author is pointing out
what he himself has come to see, that Israel's conception of religion
had hitherto admitted and may even have gendered a terrible mistake.
Piety might be largely selfishness--was often mingled with it. The
message of the author to his countrymen and to the world is that a
nobler mind must replace the old desire for happiness and plenty, a
better faith the old trust that God would fill the hands that served
Him well. He teaches that, whatever may come, though trouble after
trouble may fall, the great true Friend is to be adored for what He
is, obeyed and loved though the way lies through storm and gloom.
Striking is the thought that, while the prophets Amos and Hosea were
fiercely or plaintively assailing the luxury of Israel and the lives
of the nobles, among those very men who excited their holy wrath may
have been the author of the Book of Job. Dr. Robertson Smith has shown
that from the "gala days" of Jeroboam II. to the fall of Samaria there
were only some thirty years. One who wrote after the Captivity as an
old man may therefore have been in the flush of youth when Amos
prophesied, may have been one of the rich Israelites who lay upon beds
of ivory and stretched themselves upon their couches, and ate lambs
out of the flock and calves out of the midst of the stall, for whose
gain the peasant and the slave were oppressed by stewards and
officers. He may have been one of those on whom the blindness of
prosperity had fallen so that the storm-cloud from the east with its
vivid lightning was not seen, who held it their safety to bring
sacrifices every morning and tithes every three days, to offer a
sacrifice of thanksgiving of that which was leavened, and proclaim
freewill offerings and publish them (Amos iv. 4, 5). The mere
possibility that the author of Job may have had this very time of
prosperity and religious security in his own past and heard Hosea's
trumpet blast of doom is very suggestive, for if so he has learned how
grandly right the prophets were as messengers of God. By the way of
personal sorrow and disaster he has passed to the better faith he
urges on the world. He sees what even the prophets did not fully
comprehend, that desolation might be gain, that in the most sterile
wilderness of life the purest light of religion might shine on the
soul, while the tongue was parched with fatal thirst and the eye
glazed with the film of death. The prophets looked always beyond the
shadows of disaster to a new and better day when the return of a
penitent people to Jehovah should be followed by a restoration of the
blessings they had forfeited--fruitful fields and vineyards, busy and
populous cities, a general distribution of comfort if not of wealth.
Even Amos and Hosea had no clear vision of the prophetic hope the
first exile was to yield out of its darkness to Israel and the world.