family or clan are presented at the close of the address. He shall not
become rich; that felicity is reserved for the servants of God. No
plentiful produce shall weigh down the branches of his olives and
vines, nor shall he ever rid himself of misfortune. As by a flame or
hot breath from the mouth of God his harvest and himself shall be
carried away. The vanity or mischief he sows shall return to him in
vanity or trouble; and before his time, while life should be still
fresh, the full measure of his reward shall be paid to him. The branch
withered and dry, unripe grapes and the infertile flowers of the olive
falling to the ground point to the want of children or their early
death; for "the company of the godless shall be barren." The tents of
injustice or bribery, left desolate, shall be burned. The only fruit
of the doomed life shall be iniquity.
One hesitates to accuse Eliphaz of inaccuracy. Yet the shedding of the
petals of the olive is not in itself a sign of infertility; and
although this tree, like others, often blossoms without producing
fruit, yet it is the constant emblem of productiveness. The vine,
again, may have shed its unripe grapes in Teman; but usually they
wither. It may be feared that Eliphaz has fallen into the popular
speaker's trick of snatching at illustrations from "something supposed
to be science." His contention is partly sound in its foundation, but
fails like his analogies; and the controversy, when he leaves off, is
advanced not a single step.
XIV.
'_MY WITNESS IN HEAVEN._'
JOB SPEAKS. CHAPS. xvi., xvii.
If it were comforting to be told of misery and misfortune, to hear the
doom of insolent evil-doers described again and again in varying
terms, then Job should have been comforted. But his friends had lost
sight of their errand, and he had to recall them to it.
"_I have heard many such things:
Afflictive comforters are ye all.
Shall vain words have an end?_"
He would have them consider that perpetual harping on one string is but
a sober accomplishment! Returning one after another to the wicked man,
the godless sinner, crafty, froward, sensual, overbearing, and his
certain fate of disaster and extinction, they are at once obstinately
ungracious and to Job's mind pitifully inept. He is indisposed to argue
afresh with them, but he cannot refrain from expressing his sorrow and
indeed his indignation that they have offered him a stone for bread.
Excusing themselves they had blamed him for his indifference to the
"consolations of God." All he had been aware of was their "joining words
together" against him with much shaking of the head. Was that Divine
consolation? Anything, it seemed, was good enough for him, a man under
the stroke of God. Perhaps he is a little unfair to his comforters. They
cannot drop their creed in order to assuage his grief. In a sense it
would have been easy to murmur soothing inanities.
"One writes that 'Other friends remain,'
That 'Loss is common to the race'--
And common is the commonplace,
And vacant chaff well meant for grain.
"That loss is common would not make
My own less bitter, rather more:
Too common! Never morning wore
To evening, but some heart did break."
Even so: the courteous superficial talk of men who said, Friend, you are
only accidentally afflicted; there is no stroke of God in this: wait a
little till the shadows pass, and meanwhile let us cheer you by stories
of old times:--such talk would have served Job even less than the
serious attempt of the friends to settle the problem. It is therefore
with somewhat inconsiderate irony he blames them for not giving what, if
they had offered it, he would have rejected with scorn.
"_I also could speak like you;
If your soul were in my soul's stead,
I could join words together against you,
And shake my head at you;
I could strengthen you with my mouth,
And the solace of my lips should assuage your grief._"
The passage is throughout ironical. No change of tone occurs in verse 5,
as the opening word _But_ in the English version is intended to imply.
Job means, of course, that such consolation as they were offering he
never would have offered them. It would be easy, but abhorrent.
So far in sad sarcasm; and then, the sense of desolation falling too
heavily on his mind for banter or remonstrance, he returns to his
complaint. What is he among men? What is he in himself? What is he
before God? Alone, stricken, the object of fierce assault and galling
reproach. After a pause of sorrowful thought he resumes the attempt to
express his woes, a final protest before his lips are silent in death.
He cannot hope that speaking will relieve his sorrow or mitigate his
pain. He would prefer to bear on
"In all the silent manliness of grief."
But as yet the appeal he has made to God remains unanswered, for aught
he knows unheard. It appears therefore his duty to his own reputation
and his faith that he endeavour yet again to break the obstinate
doubts of his integrity which still estrange from him those who were
his friends. He uses indeed language that will not commend his case
but tend to confirm every suspicion. Were he wise in the world's way
he would refrain from repeating his complaint against God. Rather
would he speak of his misery as a simple fact of experience and strive
to argue himself into submission. This line he has not taken and never
takes. It is present to his own mind that the hand of God is against
him. Whether men will join him by-and-by in an appeal from God to God
he cannot tell. But once more all that he sees or seems to see he
will declare. Every step may bring him into more painful isolation,
yet he will proclaim his wrong.
"_Certainly, now, He hath wearied me out.
Thou hast made desolate my company;
Thou hast taken hold of me,
And it is a witness against me;
And my leanness riseth up against me
Bearing witness to my face._"
He is exhausted; he has come to the last stage. The circle of his
family and friends in which he once stood enjoying the love and esteem
of all--where is it now? That hold of life is gone. Then, as if in
sheer malice, God has plucked health from him, and doing so, left a
charge of unworthiness. By the sore disease the Divine hand grasps
him, keeps him down. The emaciation of his body bears witness against
him as an object of wrath. Yes; God is his enemy, and how terrible an
enemy! He is like a savage lion that tears with his teeth and glares
as if in act to devour. With God, men also, in their degree, persecute
and assail him. People from the city have come out to gaze upon him.
Word has gone round that he is being crushed by the Almighty for proud
defiance and blasphemy. Men who once trembled before him have smitten
him upon the cheek reproachfully. They gather in groups to jeer at
him. He is delivered into their hands.
But it is God, not men, of whose strange work he has most bitterly to
speak. Words almost fail him to express what his Almighty Foe has done.
"_I was at ease, and He brake me asunder;
Yea he hath taken me by the neck
And dashed me to pieces:
He hath also set me as His butt,
His arrows compass me round about,
He cleaveth my reins asunder and spareth not,
He poureth my gall on the ground;
He breaketh me with breach upon breach,
He runneth upon me like a giant._"
Figure after figure expresses the sense of persecution by one full of
resource who cannot be resisted. Job declares himself to be physically
bruised and broken. The stings and sores of his disease are like arrows
shot from every side that rankle in his flesh. He is like a fortress
beleaguered and stormed by some irresistible enemy. His strength humbled
to the dust, his eyes foul with weeping, the eyelids swollen so that he
cannot see, he lies abased and helpless, stricken to the very heart. But
not in the chastened mood of one who has done evil and is now brought to
contrite submission. That is as far from him as ever. The whole account
is of persecution, undeserved. He suffers, but protests still that there
is no violence in his hands, also his prayer is pure. Let neither God
nor man think he is concealing sin and making appeal craftily. Sincere
he is in every word.
* * * * *
At this point, where Job's impassioned language might be expected to
lead to a fresh outburst against heaven and earth, one of the most
dramatic turns in the thought of the sufferer brings it suddenly to a
minor harmony with the creation and the Creator. His excitement is
intense. Spiritual eagerness approaches the highest point. He invokes
the earth to help him and the mountain echoes. He protests that his
claim of integrity has its witness and must be acknowledged.
For this new and most pathetic effort to reach a benignant fidelity in
God which all his cries have not yet stirred, the former speeches have
made preparation. Rising from the thought that it was all one to God
whether he lived or died since the perfect and the wicked are alike
destroyed, bewailing the want of a daysman between him and the Most
High, Job in the tenth chapter touched the thought that his Maker
could not despise the work of His own hands. Again, in chapter xiv.,
the possibility of redemption from Sheol gladdened him for a little.
Now, under the shadow of imminent death, he abandons the hope of
deliverance from the under-world. Immediately, if at all, his
vindication must come. And it exists, written on the breast of earth,
open to the heavens, somewhere in clear words before the Highest. Not
vainly did the speaker in his days of past felicity serve God with all
his heart. The God he then worshipped heard his prayers, accepted his
offerings, made him glad with a friendship that was no empty dream.
Somewhere his Divine Friend lives still, observes still his tears and
agonies and cries. Those enemies about him taunting him with sins he
never committed, this horrible malady bearing him down into
death;--God knows of these, knows them to be cruel and undeserved. He
cries to that God, Eloah of the Elohim, Higher than the highest.
"_O Earth, cover not my blood,
And let my cry have no resting-place!
Even now, lo! my witness is in heaven,
And He that voucheth for me is on high.
My friends scorn me:
Mine eye sheds tears unto God--
That he would right a man against God,
And a son of man against his friend._"
Now--in the present stage of being, before those years expire that
lead him to the grave--Job entreats the vindication which exists in
the records of heaven. As a son of man he pleads, not as one who has
any peculiar claim, but simply as a creature of the Almighty; and he
pleads for the first time with tears. The fact that earth, too, is
besought to help him must not be overlooked. There is a touch of wide
and wistful emotion, a sense that Eloah must regard the witness of His
world. The thought has its colour from a very old feeling; it takes us
back to primæval faith, and the dumb longing before faith.
Is there in any sense a deeper depth in the faithfulness of God, a
higher heaven, more difficult to penetrate, of Divine benignity? Job
is making a bold effort to break that barrier we have already found to
exist in Hebrew thought between God as revealed by nature and
providence and God as vindicator of the individual life. The man has
that in his own heart which vouches for his life, though calamity and
disease impeach him. And in the heart of God also there must be a
witness to His faithful servant, although, meanwhile, something
interferes with the testimony God could bear. Job's appeal is to the
sun beyond the rolling clouds to shine. It is there; God is faithful
and true. It will shine. But let it shine _now_! Human life is brief
and delay will be disastrous. Pathetic cry--a struggle against what in
ordinary life is the inexorable. How many have gone the way whence
they shall not return, unheard apparently, unvindicated, hidden in
calumny and shame! And yet Job was right. The Maker has regard to the
work of His hands.
The philosophy of Job's appeal is this, that beneath all seeming discord
there is one clear note. The universe is one and belongs to One, from
the highest heaven to the deepest pit. Nature, providence,--what are
they but the veil behind which the One Supreme is hidden, the veil
God's own hands have wrought? We see the Divine in the folds of the
veil, the marvellous pictures of the arras. Yet behind is He who weaves
the changing forms, iridescent with colours of heaven, dark with
unutterable mystery. Man is now in the shadow of the veil, now in the
light of it, self-pitying, exultant, in despair, in ecstasy. He would
pass the barrier. It will not yield at his will. It is no veil now, but
a wall of adamant. Yet faith on this side answers to truth beyond; of
this the soul is assured. The cry is for God to unravel the enigmas of
His own providence, to unfold the principle of His discipline, to make
clear what is perplexing to the mind and conscience of His thinking,
suffering creature. None but He who weaves the web can withdraw it, and
let the light of eternity shine on the tangles of time. From God the
Concealer to God the Revealer, from God who hides Himself to God who is
Light, in whom is no darkness at all, we appeal. To pray on--that is
man's high privilege, man's spiritual life.
So the passage we have read is a splendid utterance of the wayworn
travelling soul conscious of sublime possibilities,--shall we not say,
certainties? Job is God-inspired in his cry, not profane, not mad, but
prophetic. For God is a bold dealer with men, and He likes bold sons.
The impeachment we almost shuddered to hear is not abominable to Him
because it is the truth of a soul. The claim that God is man's witness
is the true courage of faith: it is sincere, and it is justified.
The demand for immediate vindication still urged is inseparable from
the circumstances.
"_For when a few years are come
I shall go the way whence I shall not return.
My spirit is consumed, my days extinct;
The grave is ready for me.
Surely there are mockeries with me
And mine eyes lodgeth in their provocation.
Provide a pledge now; be surely for me with Thyself.
Who is there that will strike hands with me?_"
Moving towards the under-world, the fire of his spirit burning low
because of his disease, his body preparing its own grave, the bystanders
flouting him with mockeries under a sense of which his eyes remain
closed in weary endurance, he has need for one to undertake for him, to
give him a pledge of redemption. But who is there excepting God to whom
he can appeal? What other friend is left? Who else would be surety for
one so forlorn? Against disease and fate, against the seeming wreck of
hope and life, will not God Himself stand up for His servant? As for the
men his friends, his enemies, the Divine suretyship for Job will recoil
upon them and their cruel taunts. Their hearts are "hid from
understanding," unable to grasp the truth of the case; "Therefore Thou
shalt not exalt them"--that is, Thou shalt bring them low. Yes, when God
redeems His pledge, declares openly that He has undertaken for His
servant, the proverb shall be fulfilled--"He that giveth his fellows for
a prey, even the eyes of his children shall fail." It is a proverb of
the old way of thinking and carries a kind of imprecation. Job forgets
himself in using it. Yet how, otherwise, is the justice of God to be
invoked against those who pervert judgment and will not receive the
sincere defence of a dying man?
"_I am even made a byeword of the populace;
I am become one in whose face they spit:
Mine eye also fails by reason of sorrow._"
This is apparently parenthetical--and then Job returns to the result of
the intervention of his Divine Friend. One reason why God should become
his surety is the pitiable state he is in. But another reason is the new
impetus that will be given to religion, the awakening of good men out of
their despondency, the reassurance of those who are pure in heart, the
growth of spiritual strength in the faithful and true. A fresh light
thrown on providence shall indeed startle and revive the world.
"_Upright men shall be amazed at this,
And the innocent shall rouse himself against the godless.
And the righteous shall keep his way,
And he that hath clean hands wax stronger and stronger._"
With this hope, that his life is to be rescued from darkness and the
faith of the good re-established by the fulfilment of God's suretyship,
Job comforts himself for a little--but only for a little, a moment of
strength, during which he has courage to dismiss his friends:--
"_But as for you all, turn ye, and go;
For I shall not find a wise man among you._"
They have forfeited all claim to his attention. Their continued
discussion of the ways of God will only aggravate his pain. Let them
take their departure then and leave him in peace.
The final passage of the speech referring to a hope present to Job's
mind has been variously interpreted. It is generally supposed that the
reference is to the promise held out by the friends that repentance
will bring him relief from trouble and new prosperity. But this is
long ago dismissed. It seems clear that _my hope_, an expression twice
used, cannot refer to one pressed upon Job but never accepted. It must
denote either the hope that God would after Job's death lay aside His
anger and forgive, or the hope that God would strike hands with him
and undertake his case against all adverse forces and circumstances.
If this be the meaning, the course of thought in the last strophe,
from verse 11 onward, is the following,--Life is running to a low ebb
with me, all I had once in my heart to do is arrested, brought to an
end; so gloomy are my thoughts that they set night for day, the light
is near unto darkness. If I wait till death come and Sheol be my
habitation and my body is given to corruption, where then shall my
hope of vindication be? As for the fulfilment of my trust in God, who
shall see it? The effort once made to maintain hope even in the face
of death is not forgotten. But he questions now whether it has the
least ground in fact. The sense of bodily decay masters his brave
prevision of a deliverance from Sheol. His mind needs yet another
strain put upon it before it shall rise to the magnificent
assertion--Without my flesh I shall see God. The tides of trust ebb
and flow. There is here a low ebb. The next advance will mark the
springtide of resolute belief.
"_If I wait till Sheol is my house;
Till I have spread my couch in darkness:
If I shall have said to corruption, My father art thou,
To the worm, My mother and my sister--
Where then were my hope?
As for my hope, who shall see it?
It shall go down to the bars of Sheol,
When once there is rest in the dust._"
How strenuous is the thought that has to fight with the grave and
corruption! The body in its emaciation and decay, doomed to be the
prey of worms, appears to drag with it into the nether darkness the
eager life of the spirit. Those who have the Christian outlook to
another life may measure by the oppression Job has to endure the value
of that revelation of immortality which is the gift of Christ.
Not in error, not in unbelief, did a man like Job fight with grim
death, strive to keep it at bay till his character was cleared. There
was no acknowledged doctrine of the future to found upon. Of sheer
necessity each burdened soul had to seek its own Apocalypse. He who
had suffered with bleeding heart a lifelong sacrifice, he who had
striven to free his fellow-slaves and sank at last overborne by
tyrannous power, the brave defeated, the good betrayed, those who
sought through heathen beliefs and those who found in revealed
religion the promises of God--all alike stood in sorrowful ignorance
before inexorable death, beheld the shadows of the under-world and
singly battled for hope amidst the deepening gloom. The sense of the
overwhelming disaster of death to one whose life and religion are
scornfully condemned is not ascribed to Job as a peculiar trial,
rarely mingling with human experience. The writer of the book has
himself felt it and has seen the shadow of it on many a face. "Where,"
as one asks, "were the tears of God as He thrust back into eternal
stillness the hands stretched out to Him in dying faith?"
There was a religion which gave large and elaborate answer to the
questions of mortality. The wide intelligence of the author of Job can
hardly have missed the creed and ceremonial of Egypt; he cannot have
failed to remember its "Book of the Dead." His own work, throughout,
is at once a parallel and a contrast to that old vision of future life
and Divine judgment. It has been affirmed that some of the forms of
expression, especially in the nineteenth chapter, have their source in
the Egyptian scripture, and that the "Book of the Dead" is full of
spiritual aspirations which give it a striking resemblance to the
Book of Job. Now, undoubtedly, the correspondence is remarkable and
will bear examination. The soul comes before Osiris, who holds the
shepherd's crook and the penal scourge. Thoth (or Logos) breathes new
spirit into the embalmed body, and the dead pleads for himself before
the assessors--"Hail to thee, great Lord of Justice. I arrive near
thee. I am one of those consecrated to thee on the earth. I reach the
land of eternity. I rejoin the eternal country. Living is he who
dwelleth in darkness; all his grandeurs live." The dead is in fact not
dead, he is recreated; _the mouth of no worm shall devour him_. At the
close of the "Book of the Dead" it is written, the departed "shall be
among the gods; his flesh and bones shall be healthy as one who is not
dead. He shall shine as a star for ever and ever. He seeth God with
his flesh." The defence of the soul in claiming beatitude is this: "I
have committed no revenge in act or in heart, no excesses in love. I
have injured no one with lies. I have driven away no beggars,
committed no treacheries, caused no tears. I have not taken another's
property, nor ruined another, nor destroyed the laws of righteousness.
I have not aroused contests, nor neglected the Creator of my soul. I
have not disturbed the joy of others. I have not passed by the
oppressed, sinning against my Creator, or the Lord, or the heavenly
powers.... I am pure, pure."[2]
There are many evident resemblances which have been already studied
and would repay further attention; but the questions occur, how far
the author of the Book of Job refused Egyptian influences, and why,
in the face of a solution of his problem apparently thrust upon him
with the authority of ages, he yet exerted himself to find a solution
of his own, meanwhile throwing his hero into the hopelessness of one
to whom death as a physical fact is final, compelled to forego the
expectation of a daysman who should affirm his righteousness before
the Lord of all. The "Book of the Dead" was, for one thing, identified
with polytheism, with idolatry and a priestly system; and a thinker
whose belief was entirely monotheistic, whose mind turned decisively
from ritual, whose interests were widely humane, was not likely to
accept as a revelation the promises of Egyptian priests to their
aristocratic patrons, or to seek light from the mysteries of Isis and
Osiris. Throughout his book our author is advancing to a conclusion
altogether apart from the ideas of Egyptian faith regarding the trust
of the soul. But chiefly his mind seems to have been repelled by the
excessive care given to the dead body, with the consequent
materialising of religion. Life to him meant so much that he needed a
far more spiritual basis for its continuance than could be found in
the preservation of the worn-out frame. With rare and unsurpassed
endeavour he was straining beyond time and sense after a vision of
life in the union of man's spirit with its Maker, and that Divine
constancy in which alone faith could have acceptance and repose. No
thought of maintaining himself in existence by having his body
embalmed is ever expressed by Job. The author seems to scorn that
childish dream of continuance. Death means decay, corruption. This
doom passed on the body the stricken life must endure, and the soul
must stay itself upon the righteousness and grace of God.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] See Renouf's Hibbert Lecture, also "The Unknown God," by C.
Loring Brace.
XV.
_A SCHEME OF WORLD-RULE._
BILDAD SPEAKS. CHAP. xviii.