reproach of a long past day for a touching chant in praise of the
grave. If his birth had to be, why could he not have passed at once
into the shades? The lament, though not so passionate, is full of
tragic emotion. The phrases of it have been woven into a modern hymn
and used to express what Christians may feel; but they are pagan in
tone, and meant by the writer to embody the unhopeful thought of the
race. Here is no outlook beyond the inanition of death, the oblivion
and silence of the tomb. It is not the extreme of unfaith, but rather
of weakness and misery.
"_Wherefore hastened the knees to meet me,
And why the breasts that I should suck?
For then, having sunk down, would I repose,
Fallen asleep there would be rest for me.
With kings and councillors of the earth
Who built them solitary piles;
Or with princes who had gold,
Who filled their houses with silver;
Or as a hidden abortion I had not been,
As infants who never saw light.
There the wicked cease from raging,
And there the outworn rest.
Together the prisoners are at ease,
Not hearing the call of the task-master.
Small and great are there the same,
The slave set free from his lord._"
It is beautiful poetry, and the images have a singular charm for the
dejected mind. The chief point, however, for us to notice is the absence
of any thought of judgment. In the dim under-world, hid as beneath heavy
clouds, power and energy are not. Existence has fallen to so low an ebb
that it scarcely matters whether men were good or bad in this life, nor
is it needful to separate them. For the tyrant can do no more harm to
the captive, nor the robber to his victim. The astute councillor is no
better than the slave. It is a kind of existence below the level of
moral judgment, below the level either of fear or joy. From the
peacefulness of this region none are excluded; as there will be no
strength to do good there will be none to do evil. "The small and great
are there the same." The stillness and calm of the dead body deceive the
mind, willing in its wretchedness to be deceived.
When the writer put this chant into the mouth of Job, he had in memory
the pyramids of Egypt and tombs, like those of Petra, carved in the
lonely hills. The contrast is thus made picturesque between the state
of Job lying in loathsome disease and the lot of those who are
gathered to the mighty dead. For whether the rich are buried in their
stately sepulchres, or the body of a slave is hastily covered with
desert sand, all enter into one painless repose. The whole purpose of
the passage is to mark the extremity of hopelessness, the mind
revelling in images of its own decay. We are not meant to rest in that
love of death from which Job vainly seeks comfort. On the contrary, we
are to see him by-and-by roused to interest in life and its issues.
This is no halting-place in the poem, as it often is in human thought.
A great problem of Divine righteousness hangs unsolved. With the death
of the prisoner and the down-trodden slave whose worn-out body is left
a prey to the vulture--with the death of the tyrant whose evil pride
has built a stately tomb for his remains--all is not ended. Peace has
not come. Rather has the unravelling of the tangle to begin. The
All-righteous has to make His inquisition and deal out the justice of
eternity. Modern poetry, however, often repeats in its own way the
old-world dream, mistaking the silence and composure of the dead face
for a spiritual deliverance:--
"The aching craze to live ends, and life glides
Lifeless--to nameless quiet, nameless joy.
Blessed Nirvana, sinless, stirless rest,
That change which never changes."
To Christianity this idea is utterly foreign, yet it mingles with some
religious teaching, and is often to be found in the weaker sorts of
religious fiction and verse.
III. The last portion of Job's address begins with a note of inquiry.
He strikes into eager questioning of heaven and earth regarding his
state. What is he kept alive for? He pursues death with his longing as
one goes into the mountains to seek treasure. And again, his way is
hid; he has no future. God hath hedged him in on this side by losses,
on that by grief; behind a past mocks him, before is a shape which he
follows and yet dreads.
"_Wherefore gives He light to wretched men
Life to the bitter in soul?
Who long for death but no!
Search for it more than for treasures._"
It is indeed a horrible condition, this of the baffled mind to which
nothing remains but its own gnawing thought that finds neither reason
of being nor end of turmoil, that can neither cease to question nor
find answer to inquiries that rack the spirit. There is energy enough,
life enough to feel life a terror, and no more; not enough for any
mastery even of stoical resolve. The power of self-consciousness seems
to be the last injury, a Nessus-shirt, the gift of a strange hate.
"The real agony is the silence, the ignorance of the why and the
wherefore, the Sphinx-like imperturbability which meets his prayers."
This struggle for a light that will not come has been expressed by
Matthew Arnold in his "Empedocles on Etna," a poem which may in some
respects be named a modern version of Job:--
"This heart will glow no more; thou art
A living man no more, Empedocles!
Nothing but a devouring flame of thought--
But a naked eternally restless mind....
To the elements it came from
Everything will return--
Our bodies to earth,
Our blood to water,
Heat to fire,
Breath to air.
They were well born,
They will be well entombed--
But mind, but thought--
Where will they find their parent element?
What will receive them, who will call them home?
But we shall still be in them and they in us....
And we shall be unsatisfied as now;
And we shall feel the agony of thirst,
The ineffable longing for the life of life,
Baffled for ever."
Thought yields no result; the outer universe is dumb and impenetrable.
Still Job would revive if a battle for righteousness offered itself to
him. He has never had to fight for God or for his own faith. When the
trumpet call is heard he will respond; but he is not yet aware of
hearing it.
The closing verses have presented considerable difficulty to
interpreters, who on the one hand shrink from the supposition that Job
is going back on his past life of prosperity and finding there the
origin of his fear, and on the other hand see the danger of leaving so
significant a passage without definite meaning. The Revised Version
puts all the verbs of the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth verses into
the present tense, and Dr. A. B. Davidson thinks translation into the
past tense would give a meaning "contrary to the idea of the poem."
Now, a considerable interval had already elapsed from the time of
Job's calamities, even from the beginning of his illness, quite long
enough to allow the growth of anxiety and fear as to the judgment of
the world. Job was not ignorant of the caprice and hardness of men. He
knew how calamity was interpreted; he knew that many who once bowed to
his greatness already heaped scorn upon his fall. May not his fear
have been that his friends from beyond the desert would furnish the
last and in some respects most cutting of his sorrows?
"_I have feared a fear; it has come upon me,
And that which I dread has come to me.
I have not been at ease, nor quiet, nor have I had rest;
Yet trouble has come._"
In his brooding soul, those seven days and nights, fear has deepened
into certainty. He is a man despised. Even for those three his
circumstances have proved too much. Did he imagine for a moment that
their coming might relieve the pressure of his lot and open a way to
the recovery of his place among men? The trouble is deeper than ever;
they have stirred a tempest in his breast.
Note that in his whole agony Job makes no motion towards suicide.
Arnold's Empedocles cries against life, flings out his questions to a
dumb universe, and then plunges into the crater of Etna. Here, as at
other points, the inspiration of the author of our book strikes clear
between stoicism and pessimism, defiance of the world to do its worst
and confession that the struggle is too terrible. The deep sense of
all that is tragic in life, and, with this, the firm persuasion that
nothing is appointed to man but what he is able to bear, together make
the clear Bible note. It may seem that Job's ejaculations differ
little from the cry out of the "City of Dreadful Night,"
"Weary of erring in this desert, Life,
Weary of hoping hopes for ever vain,
Weary of struggling in all sterile strife,
Weary of thought which maketh nothing plain,
I close my eyes and calm my panting breath
And pray to thee, O ever quiet Death,
To come and soothe away my bitter pain."
But the writer of the book knows what is in hand. He has to show how
far faith may be pressed down and bent by the sore burdens of life
without breaking. He has to give us the sense of a soul in the
uttermost depth, that we may understand the sublime argument which
follows, know its importance, and find our own tragedy exhibited, our
own need met, the personal and the universal marching together to an
issue. Suicide is no issue for a life, any more than universal
cataclysm for the evolution of a world. Despair is no refuge. The
inspired writer here sees so far, so clearly, that to mention suicide
would be absurd. The struggle of life cannot be renounced. So much he
knows by a spiritual instinct which anticipates the wisdom of later
times. Were this book a simple record of fact, we have Job in a
position far more trying than that of Saul after his defeat on Gilboa;
but it is an ideal prophetic writing, a Divine poem, and the faith it
is designed to commend saves the man from interfering by any deed of
his with the will of God.
We are prepared for the vehement controversy that follows and the
sustained appeal of the sufferer to that Power which has laid upon him
such a weight of agony. When he breaks into passionate cries and seems
to be falling away from all trust, we do not despair of him nor of the
cause he represents. The intensity with which he longs for death is
actually a sign and measure of the strong life that throbs within him,
which yet will be led out into light and freedom and come to peace as
it were in the very clash of revolt.
VII.
_THE THINGS ELIPHAZ HAD SEEN._
ELIPHAZ SPEAKS. CHAPS. iv., v.
The ideas of sin and suffering against which the poem of Job was
written come now dramatically into view. The belief of the three
friends had always been that God, as righteous Governor of human life,
gives felicity in proportion to obedience and appoints trouble in
exact measure of disobedience. Job himself, indeed, must have held the
same creed. We may imagine that while he was prosperous his friends
had often spoken with him on this very point. They had congratulated
him often on the wealth and happiness he enjoyed as an evidence of the
great favour of the Almighty. In conversation they had remarked on
case after case which seemed to prove, beyond the shadow of doubt,
that if men reject God affliction and disaster invariably follow.
Their idea of the scheme of things was very simple, and, on the whole,
it had never come into serious questioning. Of course human justice,
even when rudely administered, and the practice of private revenge
helped to fulfil their theory of Divine government. If any serious
crime was committed, those friendly to the injured person took up his
cause and pursued the wrong-doer to inflict retribution upon him. His
dwelling was perhaps burned and his flocks dispersed, he himself
driven into a kind of exile. The administration of law was rude, yet
the unwritten code of the desert made the evil-doer suffer and allowed
the man of good character to enjoy life if he could. These facts went
to sustain the belief that God was always regulating a man's happiness
by his deserts. And beyond this, apart altogether from what was done
by men, not a few accidents and calamities appeared to show Divine
judgment against wrong. Then, as now, it might be said that avenging
forces lurk in the lightning, the storm, the pestilence, forces which
are directed against transgressors and cannot be evaded. Men would
say, Yes, though one hide his crimes, though he escape for long the
condemnation and punishment of his fellows, yet the hand of God will
find him: and the prediction seemed always to be verified. Perhaps the
stroke did not fall at once. Months might pass; years might pass; but
the time came when they could affirm, Now righteousness has overtaken
the offender; his crime is rewarded; his pride is brought low. And if,
as happened occasionally, the flocks of a man who was in good
reputation died of murrain, and his crops were blighted by the
terrible hot wind of the desert, they could always say, Ah! we did not
know all about him. No doubt if we could look into his private life we
should see why this has befallen. So the barbarians of the island of
Melita, when Paul had been shipwrecked there, seeing a viper fasten on
his hand, said, "No doubt this is a murderer whom, though he hath
escaped from the sea, yet justice suffereth not to live."
Thoughts like these were in the minds of the three friends of Job, very
confounding indeed, for they had never expected to shake their heads
over him. They accordingly deserve credit for true sympathy, inasmuch as
they refrained from saying anything that might hurt him. His grief was
great, and it might be due to remorse. His unparalleled afflictions put
him, as it were, in sanctuary from taunts or even questionings. He has
done wrong, he has not been what we thought him, they said to
themselves, but he is drinking to the bitter dregs a cup of retribution.
But when Job opened his mouth and spoke, their sympathy was dashed with
pious horror. They had never in all their lives heard such words. He
seemed to prove himself far worse than they could have imagined. He
ought to have been meek and submissive. Some flaw there must have been:
what was it? He should have confessed his sin instead of cursing life
and reflecting on God. Their own silent suspicion, indeed, is the chief
cause of his despair; but this they do not understand. Amazed they hear
him; outraged, they take up the challenge he offers. One after another
the three men reason with Job, from almost the same point of view,
suggesting first and then insisting that he should acknowledge fault and
humble himself under the hand of a just and holy God.
Now, here is the motive of the long controversy which is the main
subject of the poem. And, in tracing it, we are to see Job, although
racked by pain and distraught by grief--sadly at disadvantage because he
seems to be a living example of the truth of their ideas--rousing
himself to the defence of his integrity and contending for that as the
only grip he has of God. Advance after advance is made by the three, who
gradually become more dogmatic as the controversy proceeds. Defence
after defence is made by Job, who is driven to think himself challenged
not only by his friends, but sometimes also by God Himself through them.
Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar agree in the opinion that Job has done
evil and is suffering for it. The language they use and the arguments
they bring forward are much alike. Yet a difference will be found in
their way of speaking, and a vaguely suggested difference of
character. Eliphaz gives us an impression of age and authority. When
Job has ended his complaint, Eliphaz regards him with a disturbed and
offended look. "How pitiful!" he seems to say; but also, "How
dreadful, how unaccountable!" He desires to win Job to a right view of
things by kindly counsel; but he talks pompously, and preaches too
much from the high moral bench. Bildad, again, is a dry and composed
person. He is less the man of experience than of tradition. He does
not speak of discoveries made in the course of his own observation;
but he has stored the sayings of the wise and reflected upon them.
When a thing is cleverly said he is satisfied, and he cannot
understand why his impressive statements should fail to convince and
convert. He is a gentleman, like Eliphaz, and uses courtesy. At first
he refrains from wounding Job's feelings. Yet behind his politeness is
the sense of superior wisdom--the wisdom of ages, and his own. He is
certainly a harder man than Eliphaz. Lastly, Zophar is a blunt man
with a decidedly rough, dictatorial style. He is impatient of the
waste of words on a matter so plain, and prides himself on coming to
the point. It is he who ventures to say definitely: "Know therefore
that God exacteth of thee less than thine iniquity deserveth,"--a
cruel speech from any point of view. He is not so eloquent as Eliphaz,
he has no air of a prophet. Compared with Bildad he is less
argumentative. With all his sympathy--and he, too, is a friend--he
shows an exasperation which he justifies by his zeal for the honour of
God. The differences are delicate, but real, and evident even to our
late criticism. In the author's day the characters would probably seem
more distinctly contrasted than they appear to us. Still, it must be
owned, each holds virtually the same position. One prevailing school
of thought is represented and in each figure attacked.
It is not difficult to imagine three speakers differing far more from
each other. For example, instead of Bildad we might have had a Persian
full of the Zoroastrian ideas of two great powers, the Good Spirit,
Ahuramazda, and the Evil Spirit, Ahriman. Such a one might have
maintained that Job had given himself to the Evil Spirit, or that his
revolt against providence would bring him under that destructive power
and work his ruin. And then, instead of Zophar, one might have been
set forward who maintained that good and evil make no difference, that
all things come alike to all, that there is no God who cares for
righteousness among men; assailing Job's faith in a more dangerous
way. But the writer has no such view of making a striking drama. His
circle of vision is deliberately chosen. It is only what might appear
to be true he allows his characters to advance. One hears the
breathings of the same dogmatism in the three voices. All is said for
the ordinary belief that can be said. And three different men reason
with Job that it may be understood how popular, how deeply rooted is
the notion which the whole book is meant to criticise and disprove.
The dramatising is vague, not at all of our sharp, modern kind like
that of Ibsen, throwing each figure into vivid contrast with every
other. All the author's concern is to give full play to the theory
which holds the ground and to show its incompatibility with the facts
of human life, so that it may perish of its own hollowness.
Nevertheless the first address to Job is eloquent and poetically
beautiful. No rude arguer is Eliphaz but one of the golden-mouthed,
mistaken in creed but not in heart, a man whom Job might well cherish
as a friend.
I. The first part of his speech extends to the eleventh verse. With
the respect due to sorrow, putting aside the dismay caused by Job's
wild language, he asks, "If one essay to commune with thee, wilt thou
be grieved?" It seems unpardonable to add to the sufferer's misery by
saying what he has in his mind; and yet--he cannot refrain. "Who can
withhold himself from speaking?" The state of Job is such that there
must be thorough and very serious communication. Eliphaz reminds him
of what he had been--an instructor of the ignorant, one who
strengthened the weak, upheld the falling, confirmed the feeble. Was
he not once so confident of himself, so resolute and helpful that
fainting men found him a bulwark against despair? Should he have
changed so completely? Should one like him take to fruitless wailings
and complaints? "Now it cometh upon thee, and thou faintest; it
toucheth thee, and thou art confounded." Eliphaz does not mean to
taunt. It is in sorrow that he speaks, pointing out the contrast
between what was and is. Where is the strong faith of former days?
There is need for it, and Job ought to have it as his stay. "Is not
thy piety thy confidence? Thy hope, is it not the integrity of thy
ways?" Why does he not look back and take courage? Pious fear of God,
if he allows himself to be guided by it, will not fail to lead him
again into the light.
It is a friendly and sincere effort to make the champion of God serve
himself of his own faith. The undercurrent of doubt is not allowed to
appear. Eliphaz makes it a wonder that Job had dropped his claim on
the Most High; and he proceeds in a tone of expostulation, amazed that
a man who knew the way of the Almighty should fall into the miserable
weakness of the worst evil-doer. Poetically, yet firmly, the idea is
introduced:--
"_Bethink thee now, who ever, being innocent, perished,
And where have the upright been destroyed?
As I have seen, they who plough iniquity
And sow disaster reap the same.
By the wrath of God they perish,
By the storm of His wrath they are undone.
Roaring of the lion, voice of the growling lion,
Teeth of the young lions are broken;
The old lion perisheth for lack of prey,
The whelps of the lioness are scattered._"
First among the things Eliphaz has seen is the fate of those violent
evil-doers who plough iniquity and sow disaster. But Job has not been
like them and therefore has no need to fear the harvest of perdition.
He is among those who are not finally cut off. In the tenth and
eleventh verses the dispersion of a den of lions is the symbol of the
fate of those who are hot in wickedness. As in some cave of the
mountains an old lion and lioness with their whelps dwell securely,
issuing forth at their will to seize the prey and make night dreadful
with their growling, so those evil-doers flourish for a time in
hateful and malignant strength. But as on a sudden the hunters,
finding the lions' retreat, kill and scatter them, young and old, so
the coalition of wicked men is broken up. The rapacity of wild desert
tribes appears to be reflected in the figure here used. Eliphaz may be
referring to some incident which had actually occurred.
II. In the second division of his address he endeavours to bring home to
Job a needed moral lesson by detailing a vision he once had and the
oracle which came with it. The account of the apparition is couched in
stately and impressive language. That chilling sense of fear which
sometimes mingles with our dreams in the dead of night, the sensation of
a presence that cannot be realised, something awful breathing over the
face and making the flesh creep, an imagined voice falling solemnly on
the ear,--all are vividly described. In the recollection of Eliphaz the
circumstances of the vision are very clear, and the finest poetic skill
is used in giving the whole solemn dream full justice and effect.
"_Now a word was secretly brought me,
Mine ear caught the whisper thereof;
In thoughts from visions of the night,
When deep sleep falls upon men,
A terror came on me, and trembling
Which thrilled my bones to the marrow.
Then a breath passed before my face,
The hairs of my body rose erect.
It stood still--its appearance I trace not.
An image is before mine eyes.
There was silence, and I heard a voice--
Shall man beside Eloah be righteous?
Or beside his Maker shall man be clean?_"
We are made to feel here how extraordinary the vision appeared to
Eliphaz, and, at the same time, how far short he comes of the seer's
gift. For what is this apparition? Nothing but a vague creation of the
dreaming mind. And what is the message? No new revelation, no
discovery of an inspired soul. After all, only a fact quite familiar
to pious thought. The dream oracle has been generally supposed to
continue to the end of the chapter. But the question as to the
righteousness of man and his cleanness beside God seems to be the
whole of it, and the rest is Eliphaz's comment or meditation upon it,
his "thoughts from visions of the night."