speech of Bildad stands out in its strength and subtlety and, no less,
in its cruel rigour quite distinct among those addressed to Job. It is
the most trenchant attack the sufferer has to bear. The law of
retribution is stated in a hard collected tone which seems to leave no
room for doubt. The force that overbears and kills is presented rather
as fate or destiny than as moral government. No attempt is made to
describe the character of the man on whom punishment falls. We hear
nothing of proud defiance or the crime of settling in habitations
under the Divine curse. Bildad ventures no definitions that may not
fit Job's case. He labels a man godless, and then, with a dogged
relish, follows his entanglement in the net of disaster. All he says
is general, abstract; nevertheless, the whole of it is calculated to
pierce the armour of Job's supposed presumption. It is not to be borne
longer that against all wisdom and certainty this man, plainly set
among the objects of wrath, should go on defending himself as if the
judgment of men and God went for nothing.
With singular inconsistency the wicked man is spoken of as one who for
some time prospers in the world. He has a settlement from which he is
ejected, a family that perishes, a name of some repute which he loses.
Bildad begins by admitting what he afterwards denies, that a man of evil
life may have success. It is indeed only for a time, and perhaps the
idea is that he becomes wicked as he becomes rich and strong. Yet if the
effect of prosperity is to make a man proud and cruel and so bring him
at once into snares and pitfalls according to a rigorous natural
law--how then can worldly success be the reward of virtue? Bildad is
nearer the mark with description than with reasoning. It is as though he
said to Job, Doubtless you were a good man once; you were my friend and
a servant of God; but I very much fear that prosperity has done you
harm. It is clear that, as a godless man, you are now driven from light
into darkness, that fear and death wait for you. The speaker does not
see that he is overturning his own scheme of world-rule.
There is bitterness here, the personal feeling of one who has a view
to enforce. Does the man before him think he is of such account that
the Almighty will intervene to become surety for him and justify his
self-righteousness? It is necessary that Job shall not even seem to
get the best of the argument. No bystander shall say his novel
heresies appear to have a colour of truth. The speaker is accordingly
very unlike what he was in his first address. The show of politeness
and friendship is laid aside. We see the temper of a mind fed on
traditional views of truth, bound in the fetters of self-satisfied
incompetence. In his admirable exposition of this part of the book
Dr. Cox cites various Arabic proverbs of long standing which are
embodied, one way or other, in Bildad's speech. It is a cold creed
which builds on this wisdom of the world. He who can use grim sayings
against others is apt to think himself superior to their frailties, in
no danger of the penalties he threatens. And the speech of Bildad is
irritating just because everything is omitted which might give a hinge
or loop to Job's criticism.
Nowhere is the skill of the author better shown than in making these
protagonists of Job say false things plausibly and effectively. His
resources are marvellous. After the first circle of speeches the lines
of opposition to Job marked out by the tenor of the controversy might
seem to admit no more or very little fresh argument. Yet this address
is as graphic and picturesque as those before it. The full strength of
the opposition is thrown into those sentences piling threat on threat
with such apparent truth. The reason is that the crisis approaches. By
Bildad's attack the sufferer is to be roused to his loftiest
effort,--that prophetic word which is in one sense the _raison d'être_
of the book. One may say the work done here is for all time. The
manifesto of humanity against rabbinism, of the plain man's faith
against hard theology, is set beside the most specious arguments for a
rule dividing men into good and bad, simply as they appear to be happy
or unfortunate.
Bildad opens the attack by charging Job with hunting for words--an
accusation of a general kind apparently referring to the strong
expressions he had used in describing his sufferings at the hand of
God and from the criticism of men. He then calls Job to understand
his own errors, that he may be in a position to receive the truth.
Perverting and exaggerating the language of Job, he demands why the
friends should be counted as beasts and unclean, and why they should
be so branded by a man who was in revolt against providence.
"_Why are we counted as beasts,
As unclean even in your sight?
Thou that tearest thyself in thine anger--
For thy sake shall the earth be forsaken,
And the rock be moved from its place?_"
Ewald's interpretation here brings out the force of the questions.
"Does this madman who complained that God's wrath tore him, but who,
on the contrary, sufficiently betrays his own bad conscience by
tearing himself in his anger, really demand that on his account, that
he may be justified, the earth shall be made desolate (since really,
if God Himself should pervert justice, order, and peace, the blessings
of the happy occupation of the earth could not subsist)? Does he also
hope that what is firmest, the Divine order of the world, should be
removed from its place? Oh, the fool, who in his own perversity and
confusion rebels against the everlasting order of the universe!" All
is settled from time immemorial by the laws of providence. Without
more discussion Bildad reaffirms what the unchangeable decree, as he
knows it, certainly is.
"_Nevertheless the light of the wicked shall be put out,
And the gleam of his fire shall not shine.
The light shall fade in his tent,
And his lamp over him shall be put out,
The steps of his strength shall be straitened,
And his own counsel shall cast him down.
For into a net his own feet urge him,
And he walketh over the toils.
A snare seizeth him by the heel,
And a noose holdeth him fast:
In the ground its loop is hidden,
And its mesh in the path._"
By reiteration, by a play on words the fact as it appears to Bildad is
made very clear--that for the wicked man the world is full of perils,
deliberately prepared as snares for wild animals are set by the
hunter. The general proposition is that the light of his prosperity is
an accident. It shall soon be put out and his home be given to
desolation. This comes to pass first by a restraint put on his
movements. The sense of some inimical power observing him, pursuing
him, compels him to move carefully and no longer with the free stride
of security. Then in the narrow range to which he is confined he is
caught again and again by the snares and meshes set for him by
invisible hands. His best devices for his own safety bring him into
peril. In the open country and in the narrow path alike he is seized
and held fast. More and more closely the adverse power confines him,
bearing upon his freedom and his life till his superstitious fears are
kindled. Terrors confound him now on every side and suddenly presented
startle him to his feet. This once strong man becomes weak; he who had
abundance knows what it is to hunger. And death is now plainly in his
cup. Destruction, a hateful figure, is constantly at his side,
appearing as disease which attacks the body. It is leprosy, the very
disease Job is suffering.
"_It devoureth the members of his skin,
Devoureth his members, even the firstborn of death.
He is plucked from the tent of his confidence,
And he is brought to the king of terrors._"
The personification of death here is natural, and many parallels to
the figure are easily found. Horror of death is a mark of strong
healthy life, especially among those who see beyond only some dark
Sheol of dreary hopeless existence. The "firstborn of death" is the
frightful black leprosy, and it has that figurative name as possessing
more than other diseases that power to corrupt the body which death
itself fully exercises.
This cold prediction of the death of the godless from the very malady
that has attacked Job is cruel indeed, especially from the lips of one
who formerly promised health and felicity in this world as the result
of penitence. We may say that Bildad has found it his duty to preach
the terrors of God, and the duty appears congenial to him, for he
describes with insistence and ornament the end of the godless. But he
should have deferred this terrible homily till he had clear proof of
Job's wickedness. Bildad says things in the zeal of his spirit against
the godless which he will afterwards bitterly regret.
Having brought the victim of destiny to the grave, the speaker has yet
more to say. There were consequences that extended beyond a man's own
suffering and extinction. His family, his name, all that was desired
of remembrance in this world would be denied to the evil-doer. In the
universe, as Bildad sees it, there is no room for repentance or hope
even to the children of the man against whom the decree of fate has
gone forth.
"_They shall dwell in his tent that are none of his:
Brimstone shall be showered on his habitation;
His roots shall be dried up beneath,
And above his branches shall wither;
His memory shall perish from the land,
And he shall have no name in the earth--
It shall be driven from light into darkness,
And chased out of the world._"
The habitation of the sinner shall either pass into the hand of utter
strangers or be covered with brimstone and made accursed. The roots of
his family or clan, those who still survive of an older generation,
and the branches above--children or grandchildren, as in verse
19--shall wither away. So his memory shall perish, alike in the land
where he dwelt and abroad in other regions. His name shall go into
oblivion, chased with aversion and disgust out of the world. Such,
says Bildad, is the fate of the wicked. Job saw fit to speak of men
being astonished at the vindication he was to enjoy when God appeared
for him. But the surprise would be of a different kind. At the utter
destruction of the wicked man and his seed, his homestead and memory,
they of the west would be astonished and they of the east affrighted.
As logical as many another scheme since offered to the world, a moral
scheme also, this of Bildad is at once determined and incoherent. He
has no doubt, no hesitation in presenting it. Were he the moral
governor, there would be no mercy for sinners who refused to be
convicted of sin in his way and according to his law of judgment. He
would lay snares for them, hunt them down, snatch at every argument
against them. In his view that is the only way to overcome
unregenerate hearts and convince them of guilt. In order to save a man
he would destroy him. To make him penitent and holy he would attack
his whole right to live. Of the humane temper Bildad has almost none.
XVI.
"_MY REDEEMER LIVETH._"
JOB SPEAKS. CHAP. xix.
With simple strong art sustained by exuberant eloquence the author has
now thrown his hero upon our sympathies, blending a strain of
expectancy with tender emotion. In shame and pain, sick almost to
death, baffled in his attempts to overcome the seeming indifference of
Heaven, the sufferer lies broken and dejected. Bildad's last address
describing the fate of the godless man has been deliberately planned
to strike at Job under cover of a general statement of the method of
retribution. The pictures of one seized by the "firstborn of death,"
of the lightless and desolate habitation, the withered branches and
decaying remembrance of the wicked, are plainly designed to reflect
Job's present state and forecast his coming doom. At first the effect
is almost overwhelming. The judgment of men is turned backward and
like the forces of nature and providence has become relentless. The
united pressure on a mind weakened by the body's malady goes far to
induce despair. Meanwhile the sufferer must endure the burden not only
of his personal calamities and the alienation of all human
friendships, but also of a false opinion with which he has to grapple
as much for the sake of mankind as for his own. He represents the
seekers after the true God and true religion in an age of darkness,
aware of doubts other men do not admit, labouring after a hope of
which the world feels no need. The immeasurable weight this lays on
the soul is to many unknown. Some few there are, as Carlyle says, and
Job appears one of them, who "have to realise a worship for
themselves, or live unworshipping. In dim forecastings, wrestles
within them the 'Divine Idea of the World,' yet will nowhere visibly
reveal itself. The Godlike has vanished from the world; and they, by
the strong cry of their soul's agony, like true wonder-workers, must
again evoke its presence.... The doom of the Old has long been
pronounced, and irrevocable; the Old has passed away; but, alas, the
New appears not in its stead, the Time is still in pangs of travail
with the New. Man has walked by the light of conflagrations and amid
the sound of falling cities; and now there is darkness, and long
watching till it be morning. The voice of the faithful can but
exclaim: 'As yet struggles the twelfth hour of the night: birds of
darkness are on the wing, spectres uproar, the dead walk, the living
dream. Thou, Eternal Providence, wilt cause the day to dawn.'"
As in the twelfth hour of the night, the voices of men sounding hollow
and strange to him, the author of the Book of Job found himself.
Current ideas about God would have stifled his thought if he had not
realised his danger and the world's danger and thrown himself forward,
breaking through, even with defiance and passion, to make a way for
reason to the daylight of God. Limiting and darkening statements he
took up as they were presented to him over and over again; he tracked
them to their sources in ignorance, pedantry, hardness of temper. He
insisted that the one thing for a man is resolute clearness of mind,
openness to the teaching of God, to the correction of the Almighty, to
that truth of the whole world which alone corresponds to faith.
Believing that the ultimate satisfying object of faith will disclose
itself at last to every pure seeker, each in his degree, he began his
quest and courageously pursued it, never allowing hope to wander where
reason dared not follow, checking himself on the very brink of
alluring speculation by a deliberate _reconnaissance_ of the facts of
life and the limitations of knowledge. Nowhere more clearly than in
this speech of Job does the courageous truthfulness of the author show
itself. He seems to find his oracle, and then with a sigh return to
the path of sober reality because as yet verification of the sublime
idea is beyond his power. The vision appears and is fixed in a vivid
picture--marking the highest flight of his inspiration--that those who
follow may have it before them, to be examined, tried, perhaps
approved in the long run. But for himself, or at any rate for his
hero, one who has to find his faith through the natural world and its
revelations of Divine faithfulness, the bounds within which absolute
certainty existed for the human mind at that time are accepted
unflinchingly. The hope remains; but assurance is sought on a lower
level, where the Divine order visible in the universe sheds light on
the moral life of man.
That inspiration should thus work within bounds, conscious of itself,
yet restrained by human ignorance, may be questioned. The apprehension
of transcendent truth not yet proved by argument, the authoritative
statement of such truth for the guidance and confirmation of faith,
lastly, complete independence of ordinary criticism--are not these the
functions and qualities of inspiration? And yet, here, the inspired
man, with insight fresh and marvellous, declines to allow his hero or
any thinker repose in the very hope which is the chief fruit of his
inspiration, leaving it as something thrown out, requiring to be
tested and verified; and meanwhile he takes his stand as a prophet on
those nearer, in a sense more common, yet withal sustaining principles
that are within the range of the ordinary mind. Such we shall find to
be the explanation of the speeches of the Almighty and their absolute
silence regarding the future redemption. Such also may be said to be
the reason of the epilogue, apparently so inconsistent with the scope
of the poem. On firm ground the writer takes his stand--ground which
no thinker of his time could declare to be hollow. The thorough
saneness of his mind, shown in this final decision, gives all the more
life to the flashes of prediction and the Divine intuitions which leap
out of the dark sky hanging low over the suffering man.
* * * * *
The speech of Bildad in chap. xviii., under cover of an account of
invariable law was really a dream of special providence. He believed
that the Divine King, who, as Christ teaches, "maketh His sun to rise on
the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust,"
really singles out the wicked for peculiar treatment corresponding to
their iniquity. It is in one sense the sign of vigorous faith to
attribute action of this kind to God, and Job himself in his repeated
appeals to the unseen Vindicator shows the same conception of
providence. Should not One intent on righteousness break through the
barriers of ordinary law when doubt is cast on His equity and care?
Pardonable to Job, whose case is altogether exceptional, the notion is
one the author sees it necessary to hold in check. There is no Theophany
of the kind Job desires. On the contrary his very craving for special
intervention adds to his anxiety. Because it is not granted he affirms
that God has perverted his right; and when at last the voice of the
Almighty is heard, it is to recall the doubter from his personal desires
to the contemplation of the vast universe as revealing a wide and wise
fidelity. This undernote of the author's purpose, while it serves to
guide us in the interpretation of Job's complaints, is not allowed to
rise into the dominant. Yet it rebukes those who think the great Divine
laws have not been framed to meet their case, who rest their faith not
on what God does always and is in Himself, but on what they believe He
does sometimes and especially for them. The thoughts of the Lord are
very deep. Our lives float upon them like skiffs upon an unfathomable
ocean of power and fatherly care.
Of the treatment he receives from men Job complains, yet not because
they are the means of his overthrow.
"_How long will ye vex my soul
And crush me utterly with sayings?
These ten times have ye reproached me;
Ye are not ashamed that ye condemn me.
And be it verily that I have erred,
Mine error remaineth to myself.
Will ye, indeed, exult against me
And reproach me with my disgrace?
Know now that God hath wronged me
And compassed me about with His net._"
Why should his friends be so persistent in charging him with offence? He
has not wronged them. If he has erred, he himself is the sufferer. It is
not for them to take part against him. Their exultation is of a kind
they have no right to indulge, for they have not brought him to the
misery in which he lies. Bildad spoke of the snare in which the wicked
is caught. His tone in that passage could not have been more complacent
if he himself claimed the honour of bringing retribution on the godless.
But it is God, says Job, who hath compassed me with His net.
"_Behold, of wrong I cry, but I am not heard;
I cry for help, but there is no judgment._"
Day after day, night after night, pains and fears increase: death
draws nearer. He cannot move out of the net of misery. As one
neglected, outlawed, he has to bear his inexplicable doom, his way
fenced in so that he cannot pass, darkness thrown over his world by
the hand of God.
Plunging thus anew into a statement of his hopeless condition as one
discrowned, dishonoured, a broken man, the speaker has in view all
along the hard human judgment which numbers him with the godless. He
would melt the hearts of his relentless critics by pleading that their
enmity is out of place. If the Almighty is his enemy and has brought
him near to the dust of death, why should men persecute him as God?
Might they not have pity? There is indeed resentment against
providence in his mind; but the anxious craving for human sympathy
reacts on his language and makes it far less fierce and bitter than
in previous speeches. Grief rather than revolt is now his mood.
"_He hath stripped me of my glory
And taken my crown from my head.
He hath broken me down on every side,
Uprooted my hope like a tree.
He hath also kindled his wrath against me
And counted me among His adversaries.
His troops come on together
And cast up their way against me
And encamp around my tent._"
So far the Divine indignation has gone. Will his friends not think of
it? Will they not look upon him with less of hardness and contempt
though he may have sinned? A man in a hostile universe, a feeble man,
stricken with disease, unable to help himself, the heavens frowning
upon him--why should they harden their hearts?
And yet, see how his brethren have dealt with him! Mark how those who
were his friends stand apart, Eliphaz and the rest, behind them others
who once claimed kinship with him. How do they look? Their faces are
clouded. They must be on God's side against Job. Yea, God Himself has
moved them to this.
"_He hath put my brethren far from me,
And my confidants are wholly estranged from me.
My kinsfolk have failed
And my familiar friends have forgotten me.
They that dwell in my house and my maids count me for a stranger;
I am an alien in their sight.
I call my servant and he gives me no answer,
I must entreat him with my mouth.
My breath is offensive to my wife,
And my ill savour to the sons of my body.
Even young children despise me;
If I would arise they speak against me.
My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh,
And I am escaped with the skin of my teeth._"
The picture is one of abject humiliation. He is rejected by all who
once loved him, forced to entreat his servants, become offensive to
his wife and grandsons; jeered at even by children of the place. The
case appears to us unnatural and shows the almost fiendish hardness of
the Oriental world; that is to say, if the account is not coloured for
dramatic purposes. The intention is to represent the extremity of
Job's wretchedness, the lowest depth to which he is reduced. The fire
of his spirit is almost quenched by shame and desolation. He shows the
days of his misery in the strongest shadow in order to compel, if
possible, the sympathy so persistently withheld.
"_Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends,
For the hand of God hath touched me.
Why do ye persecute me as God,
And are not satisfied with my flesh?_"
Now we understand the purpose of the long description of his pain,
both that which God has inflicted and that caused by the alienation
and contempt of men. Into his soul the prediction of Bildad has
entered, that he will share the fate of the wicked whose memory
perishes from the earth, whose name is driven from light into darkness
and chased out of the world. Is it to be so with him? That were indeed
a final disaster. To bring his friends to some sense of what all this
means to him--this is what he struggles after. It is not even the pity
of it that is the chief point, although through that he seeks to gain
his end. But if God is not to interpose, if his last hour is coming
without a sign of heaven's relenting, he would at least have men stand
beside him, take his words to heart, believe them possibly true, hand
down for his memorial the claim he has made of integrity. Surely,
surely he shall not be thought of by the next generation as Job the
proud defiant evil-doer laid low by the judgments of an offended
God--brought to shame as one who deserved to be counted amongst the
offscourings of the earth. It is enough that God has persecuted him,
that God is slaying him--let not men take it upon them to do so to the
last. Before he dies let one at least say, Job, my friend, perhaps you
are sincere, perhaps you are misjudged.