savourless words of Eliphaz, his "solemn and impertinent prosing."
This, however, would break the continuity of the thought. Another view
makes the reference to be to Job's afflictions, which he is supposed
to compare to insipid and loathsome food. But it seems quite unnatural
to take this as the meaning. Such pain and grief and loss as he had
undergone were certainly not like the white of an egg. But he has
already spoken wildly, unreasonably, and he now feels himself to be on
the point of breaking out afresh in similar impatient language. Now,
the wild ass does not complain when it has grass, nor the ox when it
has fodder; so, if his mind were supplied with necessary explanations
of the sore troubles he is enduring, he would not be impatient, he
would not complain. His soul hungers to know the reasons of the
calamities that darken his life. Nothing that has been said helps him.
Every suggestion presented to his mind is either trifling and vain,
without the salt of wisdom, like the white of an egg, or offensive,
disagreeable. Ruthlessly sincere, he will not pretend to be satisfied
when he is not. His soul refuses to touch the offered explanations and
reasons. Verily, they are like mouldy bread to him. It is his own
impatience, his loud cries and inquiries, he desires to account for;
he does not attack Eliphaz with sarcasm, but defends himself.
At this point there is a brief halt in the speech. As if after a
pause, due to a sharp sting of pain, Job exclaims: "Oh that God would
please to destroy me!" He had felt the paroxysm approaching; he had
endeavoured to restrain himself, but the torture drives him, as
before, to cry for death. Again and again in the course of his
speeches sudden turns of this kind occur, points at which the dramatic
feeling of the writer comes out. He will have us remember the terrible
disease and keep continually in mind the setting of the thoughts. Job
had roused himself in beginning his reply, and, for a little,
eagerness had overcome pain. But now he falls back, mastered by cruel
sickness which appears to be unto death. Then he speaks:--
"_Oh that I might have my request,
That God would give me the thing I long for,
Even that God would be pleased to crush me,
That He would loose His hand and tear me off;
And I should yet have comfort,
I should even exult amidst unsparing pain,
For I have not denied the words of the Holy One._"
The longing for death which now returns on Job is not so passionate as
before; but his cry is quite as urgent and unqualified. As we have
already seen, no motion towards suicide is at any point of the drama
attributed to him. He does not, like Shakespeare's Hamlet, whose
position is in some respects very similar, question with himself,
"Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?"
Nor may we say that Job is deterred from the act of self-destruction
by Hamlet's thought, "The dread of something after death" that
"makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of."
Job has the fear and faith of God still, and not even the pressure of
"unsparing pain" can move him to take into his own hands the ending of
that torment God bids him bear. He is too pious even to dream of it. A
true Oriental, with strong belief that the will of God must be done, he
could die without a murmur, in more than stoical courage; but a suicide
he cannot be. And indeed the Bible, telling us for the most part of men
of healthy mind, has few suicides to record. Saul, Zimri, Ahithophel,
Judas, break away thus from dishonour and doom; but these are all who,
in impatience and cowardice, turn against God's decree of life.
Here, then, the strong religious feeling of the writer obliges him to
reject that which the poets of the world have used to give the strongest
effect to their work. From the Greek dramatists, through Shakespeare to
Browning, the drama is full of that quarrel with life which flies to
suicide. In this great play, as we may well call it, of Semitic faith
and genius, the ideas are masterly, the hold of universal truth is
sublime. Perhaps the author was not fully aware of all he suggests, but
he feels that suicide serves no end: it settles nothing; and his problem
must be settled. Suicide is an attempt at evasion in a sphere where
evasion is impossible. God and the soul have a controversy together, and
the controversy must be worked out to an issue.
Job has not cursed God nor denied his words. With this clear
conscience he is not afraid to die; yet, to keep it, he must wait on
the decision of the Almighty--that it would please God to crush him,
or tear him off like a branch from the tree of life. The prospect of
death, if it were granted by God, would revive him for the last moment
of endurance. He would leap up to meet the stroke, God's stroke, the
pledge that God was kind to him after all.
"Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,
Yet the strong man must go:
For the journey is done and the summit attained,
And the barriers fall,
Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained,
The reward of it all....
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore,
And bade me creep past."
According to Eliphaz there was but one way for a sufferer. If Job
would bow humbly in acknowledgment of guilt, and seek God in
penitence, then recovery would come; the hand that smote would heal
and set him on high; all the joy and vigour of life would be renewed,
and after another long course of prosperity, he should come to his
grave at last as a shock of corn is carried home in its season.
Recalling this glib promise, Job puts it from him as altogether
incongruous with his state. He is a leper; he is _dying_.
"_What is my strength that I should wait,
And what my term that I should be patient?
Is my strength the strength of stones?
Is my flesh brass?
Is not my help within me gone,
And energy quite driven from me?_"
Why, his condition is hopeless. What can he look for but death? Speak
to him of a new term; it was adding mockery to despair. But he would
die still true to God, and therefore he seeks the end of conflict. If
he were to live on he could not be sure of himself, especially when,
with failing strength, he had to endure the nausea and stings of
disease. As yet he can face death as a chief should.
* * * * *
The second part of the address begins at the fourteenth verse of chap.
vi. Here Job rouses himself anew, and this time to assail his friends.
The language of their spokesman had been addressed to him from a
height of assumed moral superiority, and this had stirred in Job a
resentment quite natural. No doubt the three friends showed
friendliness. He could not forget the long journey they had made to
bring him comfort. But when he bethought him how in his prosperity he
had often entertained these men, held high discourse with them on the
ways of God, opened his heart and showed them all his life, he
marvelled that now they could fail of the thing he most
wanted--understanding. The knowledge they had of him should have made
suspicion impossible, for they had the testimony of his whole life.
The author is not unfair to his champions of orthodoxy. They fail
where all such have a way of failing. If their victim in the poem
presses on to stinging sarcasm and at last oversteps the bounds of
fair criticism, one need not wonder. He is not intended as a type of
the meek, self-depreciating person who lets slander pass without a
protest. If they have treated him badly, he will tell them to their
faces what he thinks. Their want of justice might cause a weak man to
slip and lose himself.
"_Pity from his friend is due to the despairing,
Lest he forsake the fear of the Almighty:
But my brethren have deceived as a torrent,
Like the streams of the ravine, that pass away,
That become blackish with ice,
In which the snow is dissolved.
What time they wax warm they vanish,
When it is hot they are dried up out of their place.
The caravans turn aside,
They go up into the desert and are perishing.
The caravans of Tema look out,
The merchants of Sheba hope for them.
They were ashamed because they had trusted,
They came up to them and blushed.
Even so, now are ye nought._"
The poetical genius of the writer overflows here. The allegory is
beautiful, the wit keen, the knowledge abundant; yet, in a sense, we
have to pardon the interposition. Job is not quite in the mood to
represent his disappointment by such an elaborate picture. He would
naturally seek a sharper mode of expression. Still, the passage must
not be judged by our modern dramatic rules. This is the earliest
example of the philosophic story, and elaborate word-pictures are part
of the literature of the piece. We accept the pleasure of following a
description which Job must be supposed to have painted in melancholy
humour.
The scene is in the desert, several days' journey from the Jauf, that
valley already identified as the region in which Job lived. Beyond the
Nefood to the west towers the Jebel Tobeyk, a high ridge covered in
winter with deep snow, the melting of which fills the ravines with
roaring streams. Caravans are coming across the desert from Tema,
which lies seven days' journey to the south of the Jauf, and from
Sheba still farther in the same direction. They are on the march in
early summer and, falling short of water, turn aside westward to one
of the ravines where a stream is expected to be still flowing. But,
alas for the vain hope! In the wadi is nothing but stones and dry
sand, mocking the thirst of man and beast. Even so, says Job to his
friends, ye are treacherous; ye are nothing. I looked for the
refreshing water of sympathy, but ye are empty ravines, dry sand. In
my days of prosperity you gushed with friendliness. Now, when I
thirst, ye have not even pity. "Ye see a terror, and are afraid." I am
terribly stricken. You fear that if you sympathised with me, you might
provoke the anger of God.
From this point he turns upon them with reproach. Had he asked them
for anything, gifts out of their herds or treasure, aid in recovering
his property? They knew he had requested no such service. But again
and again Eliphaz had made the suggestion that he was suffering as a
wrong-doer. Would they tell him then, straightforwardly, how and when
he had transgressed? "How forcible are words of uprightness," words
that go right to a point; but as for their reproving, what did it come
to? They had caught at his complaint. Men of experience should know
that the talk of a desperate man is for the wind, to be blown away and
forgotten, not to be laid hold of captiously. And here from sarcasm he
passes to invective. Their temper, he tells them, is so hard and
unfeeling that they are fit to cast lots over the orphan and bargain
over a friend. They would be guilty even of selling for a slave a poor
fatherless child cast on their charity. "Be pleased to look on me," he
cries; "I surely will not lie to your face. Return, let not wrong be
done. Go back over my life. Let there be no unfairness. Still is my
cause just." They were bound to admit that he was as able to
distinguish right from wrong as they were. If that were not granted,
then his whole life went for nothing, and their friendship also.
In this vivid eager expostulation there is at least much of human
nature. It abounds in natural touches common to all time and in shrewd
ironic perception. The sarcasms of Job bear not only upon his
friends, but also upon our lives. The words of men who are sorely
tossed with trouble, aye even their deeds, are to be judged with full
allowance for circumstances. A man driven back inch by inch in a fight
with the world, irritated by defeat, thwarted in his plans, missing
his calculations, how easy is it to criticise him from the standpoint
of a successful career, high repute, a good balance at the banker's!
The hasty words of one who is in sore distress, due possibly to his
own ignorance and carelessness, how easy to reckon them against him,
find in them abundant proof that he is an unbeliever and a knave, and
so pass on to offer in the temple the Pharisee's prayer! But, easy and
natural, it is base. The author of our poem does well to lay the lash
of his inspired scorn upon such a temper. He who stores in memory the
quick words of a sufferer and brings them up by and by to prove him
deserving of all his troubles, such a man would cast lots over the
orphan. It is no unfair charge. Oh for humane feeling, gentle truth,
self-searching fear of falsehood! It is so easy to be hard and pious.
* * * * *
Beginning another strophe Job turns from his friends, from would-be
wise assertions and innuendoes, to find, if he can, a philosophy of
human life, then to reflect once more in sorrow on his state, and
finally to wrestle in urgent entreaty with the Most High. The seventh
chapter, in which we trace this line of thought, increases in pathos
as it proceeds and rises to the climax of a most daring demand which
is not blasphemous because it is entirely frank, profoundly earnest.
The friends of Job have wondered at his sufferings. He himself has
tried to find the reason of them. Now he seeks it again in a survey of
man's life:--
"_Hath not man war service on earth?
And as the days of an hireling are not his?_"
The thought of necessity is coming over Job, that man is not his own
master; that a Power he cannot resist appoints his task, whether of
action or endurance, to fight in the hot battle or to suffer wearily.
And there is truth in the conception; only it is a truth which is
inspiring or depressing as the ultimate Power is found in noble
character or mindless force. In the time of prosperity this thought of
an inexorable decree would have caused no perplexity to Job, and his
judgment would have been that the Irresistible is wise and kind. But
now, because the shadow has fallen, all appears in gloomy colour, and
man's life a bitter servitude. As a slave, panting for the shade,
longing to have his work over, Job considers man. During months of
vanity and nights of weariness he waits, long nights made dreary with
pain, through the slow hours of which he tosses to and fro in misery.
His flesh is clothed with worms and an earthy crust, his skin hardens
and breaks out. His days are flimsier than a web (ver. 6), and draw to a
close without hope. The wretchedness masters him, and he cries to God.
"_O remember, a breath is my life;
Never again will mine eye see good._"
Does the Almighty consider how little time is left to him? Surely a
gleam might break before all grows dark! Out of sight he will be soon,
yea, out of the sight of God Himself, like a cloud that melts away.
His place will be down in Sheol, the region of mere existence, not of
life, where a man's being dissolves in shadows and dreams. God must
know this is coming to Job. Yet in anguish, ere he die, he will
remonstrate with his Maker: "I will not curb my mouth, I will make my
complaint in the bitterness of my soul."
Striking indeed is the remonstrance that follows. A struggle against
that belief in grim fate which has so injured Oriental character gives
vehemence to his appeal; for God must not be lost. His mind is
represented as going abroad to find in nature what is most
ungovernable and may be supposed to require most surveillance and
restraint. By change after change, stroke after stroke, his power has
been curbed; till at last, in abject impotence, he lies, a wreck upon
the wayside. Nor is he allowed the last solace of nature _in
extremis_; he is not unconscious; he cannot sleep away his misery. By
night tormenting dreams haunt him, and visions make as it were a
terrible wall against him. He exists on sufferance, perpetually
chafed. With all this in his consciousness, he asks,--
"_Am I a sea, or a sea-monster,
That thou keepest watch over me?_"
In a daring figure he imagines the Most High who sets a bound to the sea
exercising the same restraint over him, or barring his way as if he were
some huge monster of the deep. A certain grim humour characterises the
picture. His friends have denounced his impetuosity. Is it as fierce in
God's sight? Can his rage be so wild? Strange indeed is the restraint
put on one conscious of having sought to serve God and his age. In
self-pity, with an inward sense of the absurdity of the notion, he
fancies the Almighty fencing his squalid couch with the horrible dreams
and spectres of delirium, barring his way as if he were a raging flood.
"I loathe life," he cries; "I would not live always. Let me alone, for
my days are a vapour." Do not pain me and hem me in with Thy terrors
that allow no freedom, no hope, nothing but a weary sense of impotence.
And then his expostulation becomes even bolder.
"What is man," asks a psalmist, "that Thou art mindful of him, and the
son of man, that Thou visitest him?" With amazement God's thought of so
puny and insignificant a being is observed. But Job, marking in like
manner the littleness of man, turns the question in another way:--
"_What is man that Thou magnifiest him,
And settest Thine heart upon him?
That Thou visitest him every morning,
And triest him every moment?_"
Has the Almighty no greater thing to engage Him that He presses hard on
the slight personality of man? Might he not be let alone for a little?
Might the watchful eye not be turned away from him even for a moment?
And finally, coming to the supposition that he may have transgressed
and brought himself under the judgment of the Most High, he even dares
to ask why that should be:--
"_Have I sinned? Yet what have I done unto Thee,
O Thou Watcher of men?
Why hast Thou set me as Thy butt,
So that I am a burden to myself?
And why wilt Thou not pardon my transgression,
And cause my sin to pass away?_"
How can his sin have injured God? Far above man the Almighty dwells
and reigns. No shock of human revolt can affect His throne. Strange is
it that a man, even if he has committed some fault or neglected some
duty, should be like a block of wood or stone before the feet of the
Most High, till bruised and broken he cares no more for existence. If
iniquity has been done, cannot the Great God forgive it, pass it by?
That would be more like the Great God. Yes; soon Job would be down in
the dust of death. The Almighty would find then that he had gone too
far. "Thou shalt seek me, but I shall not be."
More daring words were never put by a pious man into the mouth of one
represented as pious; and the whole passage shows how daring piety may
be. The inspired writer of this book knows God too well, honours Him
too profoundly to be afraid. The Eternal Father does not watch keenly
for the offences of the creatures He has made. May a man not be frank
with God and say out what is in his heart? Surely he may. But he must
be entirely earnest. No one playing with life, with duty, with truth,
or with doubt may expostulate thus with his Maker.
There is indeed an aspect of our little life in which sin may appear too
pitiful, too impotent for God to search out. "As for man, his days are
as grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth." Only when we see
that infinite Justice is involved in the minute infractions of justice,
that it must redress the iniquity done by feeble hands and vindicate the
ideal we crave for yet so often infringe; only when we see this and
realise therewith the greatness of our being, made for justice and the
ideal, for moral conflict and victory; only, in short, when we know
responsibility, do we stand aghast at sin and comprehend the meaning of
judgment. Job is learning here the wisdom and holiness of God which
stand correlative to His grace and our responsibility. By way of trial
and pain and these sore battles with doubt he is entering into the
fulness of the heritage of spiritual knowledge and power.
IX.
_VENTURESOME THEOLOGY._
BILDAD SPEAKS. CHAP. viii.
The first attempt to meet Job has been made by one who relies on his
own experience and takes pleasure in recounting the things which he
has seen. Bildad of Shuach, on the other hand, is a man who holds to
the wisdom of the fathers and supports himself at all times with their
answers to the questions of life. Vain to him is the reasoning of one
who sees all as through coloured glass, everything of this tint or
that, according to his state or notions for the time being. The
personal impression counts for nothing with Bildad. He finds no
authority there. In him we have the catholic theologian opposing
individualism. Unfortunately he fails in the power most needed, of
distinguishing chaff from grain. Back to antiquity, back to the
fathers, say some; but, although they profess the excellent temper of
reverence, there is no guarantee that they will not select the follies
of the past instead of its wisdom to admire. Everything depends upon
the man, the individual, after all, whether he has an open mind, a
preference if not a passion for great ideas. There are those who go
back to the apostles and find only dogmatism, instead of the glorious
breadth of Divine poetry and hope. Yea, some go to the Light of the
World, and report as their discovery some pragmatical scheme, some
weak arrangement of details, a bondage or a futility. Bildad is not
one of these. He is intelligent and well-informed, an able man, as we
say; but he has no sympathy with new ideas that burst the old
wine-skins of tradition, no sympathy with daring words that throw
doubt on old orthodoxies. You can fancy his pious horror when the rude
hand of Job seemed to rend the sacred garments of established truth.
It would have been like him to turn away and leave to fate and
judgment a man so venturesome.
With the instinct of the highest and noblest thought, utterly removed
from all impiety, the writer has shown his inspiration in leading Job
to a climax of impassioned inquiry as one who wrestles in the
swellings of Jordan with the angel of Jehovah. Now he brings forward
Bildad speaking cold words from a mind quite unable to understand the
crisis. This is a man who firmly believed himself possessed of
authority and insight. When Job added entreaty to entreaty, demand to
demand, Bildad would feel as if his ears were deceiving him, for what
he heard seemed to be an impious assault on the justice of the Most
High, an attempt to convict the Infinitely Righteous of
unrighteousness. He burns to speak; and Job has no sooner sunk down
exhausted than he begins:--
"_How long wilt thou speak these things?
A mighty wind, forsooth, are the words of thy mouth.
God:--will He pervert judgment?
Almighty God:--will He pervert righteousness?
If thy children sinned against Him,
And He cast them away into the hand of their rebellion;
If thou wilt seek unto God,
And unto the Almighty wilt make entreaty;
If spotless and upright thou art,
Surely now He would awake for thee
And make prosperous thy righteous habitation.
So that thy beginning shall prove small
And thy latter end exceedingly great._"
How far wrong Bildad is may be seen in this, that he dangles before
Job the hope of greater worldly prosperity. The children must have
sinned, for they have perished. Yet Job himself may possibly be
innocent. If he is, then a simple entreaty to God will insure His
renewed favour and help. Job is required to seek wealth and greatness
again as a pledge of his own uprightness. But the whole difficulty
lies in the fact that, being upright, he has been plunged into
poverty, desolation, and a living death. He desires to know the
reason of what has occurred. Apart altogether from the restoration of
his prosperity and health, he would know what God means. Bildad does
not see this in the least. Himself a prosperous man, devoted to the
doctrine that opulence is the proof of religious acceptance and
security, he has nothing for Job but the advice to get God to prove
him righteous by giving him back his goods. There is a taunt in
Bildad's speech. He privately believes that there has been sin, and
that only by way of repentance good can come again. Since his friend
is so obstinate let him try to regain his prosperity and fail. Bildad
is lavish in promises, extravagant indeed. He can only be acquitted of
a sinister meaning in his large prediction if we judge that he reckons
God to be under a debt to a faithful servant whom He had unwittingly,
while He was not observing, allowed to be overtaken by disaster.
Next the speaker parades his learning, the wisdom he had gathered from
the past:--
"_Inquire, I pray thee, of the bygone age,
And attend to the research of their fathers.
(For we are but of yesterday and know nothing;
A shadow, indeed, are our days upon the earth)--
Shall not they teach thee and tell thee,
Bring forth words from their heart?_"
The man of to-day is nothing, a poor creature. Only by the proved
wisdom of the long ages can end come to controversy. Let Job listen,
then, and be convinced.