a phantasmagoria of human struggle and defeat, while it supplies a
note of time and gives a distinct clue to the writer's position as an
Israelite, is remarkable for the faith that survives its apparent
pessimism. Others have surveyed the world and the history of change,
and have protested with their last voice against the cruelty that
seemed to rule. As for any God, they could never trust one whose will
and power were to be found alike in the craft of the deceiver and the
misery of the victim, in the baffling of sincere thought and the
overthrow of the honest with the vile. But Job trusts on. Beneath
every enigma, he looks for reason; beyond every disaster, to a Divine
end. The voices of men have come between him and the voice of the
Supreme. Personal disaster has come between him and his sense of God.
His thought is not free. If it were, he would catch the reconciling
word, his soul would hear the music of eternity. "I would reason with
God." He clings to God-given reason as his instrument of discovery.
* * * * *
Very bold is this whole position, and very reverent also, if you will
think of it; far more honouring to God than any attempt of the friends
who, as Job says, appear to hold the Almighty no better than a petty
chief, so insecure in His position that He must be grateful to any one
who will justify His deeds. "Poor God, with nobody to help Him." Job
uses all his irony in exposing the folly of such a religion, the
impertinence of presenting it to him as a solution and a help. In
short, he tells them, they are pious quacks, and, as he will have none
of them for his part, he thinks God will not either. The author is at
the very heart of religion here. The word of reproof and correction,
the plea for providence must go straight to the reason of man, or it
is of no use. The word of the Lord must be a two-edged sword of truth,
piercing to the dividing asunder even of soul and spirit. That is to
say, into the centre of energy the truth must be driven which kills
the spirit of rebellion, so that the will of man, set free, may come
into conscious and passionate accord with the will of God. But
reconciliation is impossible unless each will deal in the utmost
sincerity with truth, realising the facts of existence, the nature of
the soul and the great necessities of its discipline. To be true in
theology we must not accept what seems to be true, nor speak
forensically, but affirm what we have proved in our own life and
gathered in utmost effort from Scripture and from nature. Men inherit
opinions as they used to inherit garments, or devise them, like
clothes of a new fashion, and from within the folds they speak, not as
men but as priests, what is the right thing according to a received
theory. It will not do. Even of old time a man like the author of Job
turned contemptuously from school-made explanations and sought a
living word. In our age the number of those whose fever can be lulled
with a working theory of religion and a judicious arrangement of the
universe is rapidly becoming small. Theology is being driven to look
the facts of life full in the face. If the world has learned anything
from modern science, it is the habit of rigorous research and the
justification of free inquiry, and the lesson will never be unlearned.
To take one error of theology. All men are concluded equally under God's
wrath and curse; then the proofs of the malediction are found in
trouble, fear and pain. But what comes of this teaching? Out in the
world, with facts forcing themselves on consciousness, the scheme is
found hollow. All are not in trouble and pain. Those who are afflicted
and disappointed are often sincere Christians. A theory of deferred
judgment and happiness is made for escape; it does not, however, in the
least enable one to comprehend how, if pain and trouble be the
consequences of sin, they should not be distributed rightly from the
first. A universal moral order cannot begin in a manner so doubtful, so
very difficult for the wayfaring man to read as he goes. To hold that it
can is to turn religion into an occultism which at every point bewilders
the simple mind. The theory is one which tends to blunt the sense of sin
in those who are prosperous, and to beget that confident Pharisaism
which is the curse of church-life. On the other hand, the "sacrificed
classes," contrasting their own moral character with that of the
frivolous and fleshly rich, are forced to throw over a theology which
binds together sin and suffering, and to deny a God whose equity is so
far to seek. And yet, again, in the recoil from all this men invent
wersh schemes of bland good-will and comfort, which have simply nothing
to do with the facts of life, no basis in the world as we know it, no
sense of the rigour of Divine love. So Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar remain
with us and confuse theology until some think it lost in unreason.
"_But ye are patchers of lies,
Physicians of nought are ye all.
Oh that ye would only keep silence,
And it should be your wisdom._" (_chap. xiii._ 4, 5).
Job sets them down with a current proverb--"Even a fool, when he
holdeth his peace, is counted wise." He begs them to be silent. They
shall now hear his rebuke.
"_On behalf of God will ye speak wrong?
And for Him will ye speak deceit?
Will ye be partisans for Him?
Or for God will ye contend?_"
Job finds them guilty of speaking falsely as special pleaders for God in
two respects. They insist that he has offended God, but they cannot
point to one sin which he has committed. On the other hand, they affirm
positively that God will restore prosperity if confession is made. But
in this too they play the part of advocates without warrant. They show
great presumption in daring to pledge the Almighty to a course in
accordance with their idea of justice. The issue might be what they
predict; it might not. They are venturing on ground to which their
knowledge does not extend. They think their presumption justified
because it is for religion's sake. Job administers a sound rebuke, and
it extends to our own time. Special pleaders for God's sovereign and
unconditional right and for His illimitable good-nature, alike have
warning here. What justification have men in affirming that God will
work out His problems in detail according to their views? He has given
to us the power to apprehend the great principles of His working. He has
revealed much in nature, providence, and Scripture, and in Christ; but
there is the "hiding of His power," "His path is in the mighty waters,
and His judgments are not known." Christ has said, "It is not for you to
know times and seasons which the Father hath set within His own
authority." There are certainties of our consciousness, facts of the
world and of revelation from which we can argue. Where these confirm, we
may dogmatise, and the dogma will strike home. But no piety, no desire
to vindicate the Almighty or to convict and convert the sinner, can
justify any man in passing beyond the certainty which God has given him
to that unknown which lies far above human ken.
"_He will surely correct you
If in secret ye are partial.
Shall not His majesty terrify you,
And His dread fall upon you?_" (_chap. xiii._ 10, 11).
The Book of Job, while it brands insincerity and loose reasoning,
justifies all honest and reverent research. Here, as in the teaching of
our Lord, the real heretic is he who is false to his own reason and
conscience, to the truth of things as God gives him to apprehend it,
who, in short, makes believe to any extent in the sphere of religion.
And it is upon this man the terror of the Divine majesty is to fall.
We saw how Bildad established himself on the wisdom of the ancients.
Recalling this, Job flings contempt on his traditional sayings.
"_Your remembrances are proverbs of ashes,
Your defences, defences of dust._"
Did they mean to smite him with those proverbs as with stones? They
were ashes. Did they intrench themselves from the assaults of reason
behind old suppositions? Their ramparts were mere dust. Once more he
bids them hold their peace, and let him alone that he may speak out
all that is in his mind. It is, he knows, at the hazard of his life he
goes forward; but he will. The case in which he is can have no remedy
excepting by an appeal to God, and that final appeal he will make.
Now the proper beginning of this appeal is in the twenty-third verse,
with the words: "How many are mine iniquities and my sins?" But before
Job reaches it he expresses his sense of the danger and difficulty
under which he lies, interweaving with the statement of these a
marvellous confidence in the result of what he is about to do.
Referring to the declarations of his friends as to the danger that yet
threatens if he will not confess sin, he uses a proverbial expression
for hazard of life.
"_Why do I take my flesh in my teeth,
And put my life in my hand?_"
Why do I incur this danger, do you say? Never mind. It is not your
affair. For bare existence I care nothing. To escape with mere
consciousness for a while is no object to me, as I now am. With my
life in my hand I hasten to God.
"_Lo! He will slay me: I will not delay--
Yet my ways will I maintain before Him_" (_chap. xiii._ 15).
The old Version here, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him," is
inaccurate. Still it is not far from expressing the brave purpose of
the man--prostrate before God, yet resolved to cling to the justice of
the case as he apprehends it, assured that this will not only be
excused by God, but will bring about his acquittal or salvation. To
grovel in the dust, confessing himself a miserable sinner more than
worthy of all the sufferings he has undergone, while in his heart he
has the consciousness of being upright and faithful--this would not
commend him to the Judge of all the earth. It would be a mockery of
truth and righteousness, therefore of God Himself. On the other hand,
to maintain his integrity which God gave him, to go on maintaining it
at the hazard of all, is his only course, his only safety.
"_This also shall be my salvation,
For a godless man shall not live before Him._"
The fine moral instinct of Job, giving courage to his theology,
declares that God demands "truth in the inward parts" and truth in
speech--that man "consists in truth"--that "if he betrays truth he
betrays himself," which is a crime against his Maker. No man is so
much in danger of separating himself from God and losing everything as
he who acts or speaks against conviction.
Job has declared his hazard, that he is lying helpless before Almighty
Power which may in a moment crush him. He has also expressed his faith,
that approaching God in the courage of truth he will not be rejected,
that absolute sincerity will alone give him a claim on the Infinitely
True. Now turning to his friends as if in new defiance, he says:--
"_Hear diligently my speech,
And my explanation with your ears.
Behold now, I have ordered my cause;
I know that I shall be justified.
Who is he that will contend with me?
For then would I hold my peace and expire._"
That is to say, he has reviewed his life once more, he has considered
all possibilities of transgression, and yet his contention remains. So
much does he build upon his claim on God that, if any one could now
convict him, his heart would fail, life would no more be worth living;
the foundation of hope destroyed, conflict would be at an end.
But with his plea to God still in view he expresses once more his
sense of the disadvantage under which he lies. The pressure of the
Divine hand is upon him still, a sore enervating terror which bears
upon his soul. Would God but give him respite for a little from the
pain and the fear, then he would be ready either to answer the summons
of the Judge or make his own demand for vindication.
* * * * *
We may suppose an interval of release from pain or at least a pause of
expectancy, and then, in verse twenty-third, Job begins his cry. The
language is less vehement than we have heard. It has more of the
pathos of weak human life. He is one with that race of thinking,
feeling, suffering creatures who are tossed about on the waves of
existence, driven before the winds of change like autumn leaves. It is
the plea of human feebleness and mortality we hear, and then, as the
"still sad music" touches the lowest note of wailing, there mingles
with it the strain of hope.
"_How many are mine iniquities and sins?
Make me to know my transgression and my sin._"
We are not to understand here that Job confesses great transgressions,
nor, contrariwise, that he denies infirmity and error in himself.
There are no doubt failures of his youth which remain in memory, sins
of desire, errors of ignorance, mistakes in conduct such as the best
men fall into. These he does not deny. But righteousness and happiness
have been represented as a profit and loss account, and therefore Job
wishes to hear from God a statement in exact form of all he has done
amiss or failed to do, so that he may be able to see the relation
between fault and suffering, his faults and his sufferings, if such
relation there be. It appears that God is counting him an enemy (ver.
24). He would like to have the reason for that. So far as he knows
himself he has sought to obey and honour the Almighty. Certainly there
has never been in his heart any conscious desire to resist the will of
Eloah. Is it then for transgressions unwittingly committed that he now
suffers--for sins he did not intend or know of? God is just. It is
surely a part of His justice to make a sufferer aware why such
terrible afflictions befal him.
And then--is it worth while for the Almighty to be so hard on a poor
weak mortal?
"_Wilt thou scare a driven leaf--
Wilt thou pursue the dry stubble--
That thou writest bitter judgments against me,
And makest me to possess the faults of my youth,
And puttest my feet in the stocks,
And watchest all my paths,
And drawest a line about the soles of my feet--
One who as a rotten thing is consuming,
As a garment that is moth-eaten?_"
The sense of rigid restraint and pitiable decay was perhaps never
expressed with so fit and vivid imagery. So far it is personal. Then
begins a general lamentation regarding the sad fleeting life of man.
His own prosperity, which passed as a dream, has become to Job a type
of the brief vain existence of the race tried at every moment by
inexorable Divine judgment; and the low mournful words of the Arabian
chief have echoed ever since in the language of sorrow and loss.
"_Man that is born of woman,
Of few days is he and full of trouble.
Like the flower he springs up and withers;
Like a shadow he flees and stays not.
Is it on such a one Thou hast fixed Thine eye?
Bringest Thou me into Thy judgment?
Oh that the clean might come out of the unclean!
But there is not one._"
Human frailty is both of the body and of the soul; and it is
universal. The nativity of men forbids their purity. Well does God
know the weakness of His creatures; and why then does He expect of
them, if indeed He expects, a pureness that can stand the test of His
searching? Job cannot be free from the common infirmity of mortals. He
is born of woman. But why then is he chased with inquiry, haunted and
scared by a righteousness he cannot satisfy? Should not the Great God
be forbearing with a man?
"_Since his days are determined,
The number of his moons with Thee,
And Thou hast set him bounds not to be passed;
Look Thou away from him, that he may rest,
At least fulfil as a hireling his day._"
Man's life being so short, his death so sure and soon, seeing he is
like a hireling in the world, might he not be allowed a little rest?
might he not, as one who has fulfilled his day's work, be let go for a
little repose ere he die? That certain death, it weighs upon him now,
pressing down his thought.
"_For even a tree hath hope;
If it be hewn down it will sprout anew,
The young shoot thereof will not fail.
If in the earth its root wax old,
Or in the ground its stock should die,
Yet at the scent of water it will spring,
And shoot forth boughs like a new plant.
But a man: he dies and is cut off;
Yea, when men die, they are gone.
Ebbs away the water from the sea,
And the stream decays and dries:
So when men have lain down they rise not;
Till the heavens vanish they never awake,
Nor are they roused from their sleep._"
No arguments, no promises can break this deep gloom and silence into
which the life of man passes. Once Job had sought death; now a desire
has grown within him, and with it recoil from Sheol. To meet God, to
obtain his own justification and the clearing of Divine righteousness,
to have the problem of life explained--the hope of this makes life
precious. Is he to lie down and rise no more while the skies endure? Is
no voice to reach him from the heavenly justice he has always confided
in? The very thought is confounding. If he were now to desire death it
would mean that he had given up all faith, that justice, truth, and even
the Divine name of Eloah had ceased to have any value for him.
* * * * *
We are to behold the rise of a new hope, like a star in the firmament
of his thought. Whence does it spring?
The religion of the Book of Job, as already shown, is, in respect of
form, a natural religion; that is to say, the ideas are not derived
from the Hebrew Scriptures. The writer does not refer to the
legislation of Moses and the great words of prophets. The expression
"As the Lord said unto Moses" does not occur in this book, nor any
equivalent. It is through nature and the human consciousness that the
religious beliefs of the poem appear to have come into shape. Yet two
facts are to be kept fully in view.
The first is that even a natural religion must not be supposed to be a
thing of man's invention, with no origin further than his dreams. We
must not declare all religious ideas outside those of Israel to be
mere fictions of the human fancy or happy guesses at truth. The
religion of Teman may have owed some of its great thoughts to Israel.
But, apart from that, a basis of Divine revelation is always laid
wherever men think and live. In every land the heart of man has borne
witness to God. Reverent thought, dwelling on justice, truth, mercy,
and all virtues found in the range of experience and consciousness,
came through them to the idea of God. Every one who made an induction
as to the Great Unseen Being, his mind open to the facts of nature and
his own moral constitution, was in a sense a prophet. As far as they
went, the reality and value of religious ideas, so reached, are
acknowledged by Bible writers themselves. "The invisible things of God
from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived
through the things that are made, even His everlasting power and
divinity." God has always been revealing Himself to men.
"Natural religion" we say: and yet, since God is always revealing
Himself and has made all men more or less capable of apprehending the
revelation, even the natural is supernatural. Take the religion of
Egypt, or of Chaldæa, or of Persia. You may contrast any one of these
with the religion of Israel; you may call the one natural, the other
revealed. But the Persian speaking of the Great Good Spirit or the
Chaldæan worshipping a supreme Lord must have had some kind of
revelation; and his sense of it, not clear indeed, far enough below
that of Moses or Isaiah, was yet a forth-reaching towards the same
light as now shines for us.
Next we must keep it in view that Job does not appear as a thinker
building on himself alone, depending on his own religious experience.
Centuries and ages of thought are behind these beliefs which are
ascribed to him, even the ideas which seem to start up freshly as the
result of original discovery. Imagine a man thinking for himself about
Divine things in that far-away Arabian past. His mind, to begin with, is
not a blank. His father has instructed him. There is a faith that has
come down from many generations. He has found words in use which hold in
them religious ideas, discoveries, perceptions of Divine reality, caught
and fixed ages before. When he learned language the products of
evolution, not only psychical, but intellectual and spiritual, became
his. Eloah, the lofty one, the righteousness of Eloah, the word of
Eloah, Eloah as Creator, as Watcher of men, Eloah as wise, unsearchable
in wisdom, as strong, infinitely mighty,--these are ideas he has not
struck out for himself, but inherited. Clearly then a new thought,
springing from these, comes as a supernatural communication and has
behind it ages of spiritual evolution. It is new, but has its root in
the old; it is natural, but originates in the over-nature.
Now the primitive religion of the Semites, the race to which Job
belonged, to which also the Hebrews belonged, has been of late carefully
studied; and with regard to it certain things have been established that
bear on the new hope we are to find struck out by the Man of Uz.
In the early morning of religious thought among those Semites it was
universally believed that the members of a family or tribe, united by
blood-relationship to each other, were also related in the same way to
their God. He was their father, the invisible head and source of their
community, on whom they had a claim so long as they pleased him. His
interest in them was secured by the sacrificial meal which he was
invited and believed to share with them. If he had been offended, the
sacrificial offering was the means of recovering his favour; and
communion with him in those meals and sacrifices was the inheritance
of all who claimed the kinship of that clan or tribe. With the
clearing of spiritual vision this belief took a new form in the minds
of the more thoughtful. The idea of communion remained and the
necessity of it to the life of the worshipper was felt even more
strongly when the kinship of the God with his subject family was, for
the few at least, no longer an affair of physical descent and
blood-relationship, but of spiritual origin and attachment. And when
faith rose from the tribal god to the idea of the Heaven-Father, the
one Creator and King, communion with Him was felt to be in the highest
sense a vital necessity. Here is found the religion of Job. A main
element of it was communion with Eloah, an ethical kinship with Him,
no arbitrary or merely physical relation, but of the spirit. That is
to say, Job has at the heart of his creed the truth as to man's
origin and nature. The author of the book is a Hebrew; his own faith
is that of the people from whom we have the Book of Genesis; but he
treats here of man's relation to God from the ethnic side, such as may
be taken now by a reasoner treating of spiritual evolution.
Communion with Eloah had been Job's life, and with it had been
associated his many years of wealth, dignity, and influence. Lest his
children should fall from it and lose their most precious inheritance,
he used to bring the periodical offerings. But at length his own
communion was interrupted. The sense of being at one with Eloah, if
not lost, became dull and faint. It is for the restoration of his very
life--not as we might think of religious feeling, but of actual spirit
energy--he is now concerned. It is this that underlies his desire for
God to speak with him, his demand for an opportunity of pleading his
cause. Some might expect that he would ask his friends to offer
sacrifice on his behalf. But he makes no such request. The crisis has
come in a region higher than sacrifice, where observances are of no
use. Thought only can reach it; the discovery of reconciling truth
alone can satisfy. Sacrifices which for the old world sustained the
relation with God could no more for Job restore the intimacy of the
spiritual Lord. With a passion for this fellowship keener than ever,
since he now more distinctly realises what it is, a fear blends in the
heart of the man. Death will be upon him soon. Severed from God he
will fall away into the privation of that world where is neither
praise nor service, knowledge nor device. Yet the truth which lies at
the heart of his religion does not yield. Leaning all upon it, he
finds it strong, elastic. He sees at least a possibility of
reconciliation; for how can the way back to God ever be quite closed?
What difficulty there was in his effort we know. To the common thought
of the time when this book was written, say that of Hezekiah, the
state of the dead was not extinction indeed, but an existence of
extreme tenuity and feebleness. In Sheol there was nothing active. The
hollow ghost of the man was conceived of as neither hoping nor
fearing, neither originating nor receiving impressions. Yet Job dares
to anticipate that even in Sheol a set time of remembrance will be
ordained for him and he shall hear the thrilling call of God. As it
approaches this climax the poem flashes and glows with prophetic fire.
"_Oh that Thou would'st hide me in Sheol,
That Thou would'st keep me secret until Thy wrath be past,
That Thou would'st appoint a set time, and remember me!
If a (strong) man die, shall he live?
All the days of my appointed time would I wait
Till my release came.
Thou would'st call, I would answer Thee;
Thou would'st have a desire to the work of Thy hands._"