writer was assailing, the closure of the mind and the stiffening of
thought. One might not unjustly accuse this speaker of neglecting the
moral difference between the profane whose triumph and joy he declares
to be short, and the good man whose career is full of years and
honour. We may almost say that to him outward success is the only mark
of inward grace, and that prosperous hypocrisy would be mistaken by
him for the most beautiful piety. His whole creed about providence and
retribution is such that he is on the way to utter confusion of mind.
Why, he has said to himself that Job is a wicked and false man--Job
whose striking characteristic is outspoken truthfulness, whose
integrity is the pride of his Divine Master. And if Zophar once
accepts it as indisputable that Job is neither good nor sincere, what
will the end be for himself? With more and more assurance he will
judge from a man's prosperity that he is righteous, and from his
afflictions that he is a reprobate. He will twist and torture facts of
life and modes of thought, till the worship of property will become
his real cult, and to him the poor will of necessity seem worthless.
This is just what happened in Israel. It is just what slovenly
interpretation of the Bible and providence has brought many to in our
own time. Side by side with a doctrine of self-sacrifice incredible
and mischievous, there is a doctrine of the earthly reward of
godliness--religion profitable for the life that now is, in the way of
filling the pockets and conducting to eminent seats--an absurd and
hurtful doctrine, for ever being taught in one form if not another,
and applied all along the line of human life. An honest, virtuous man,
is he sure to find a good place in our society? The rich broker or
manufacturer, because he washes, dresses, and has twenty servants to
wait upon him, is he therefore a fine soul? Nobody will say so. Yet
Christianity is so little understood in some quarters, is so much
associated with the error of Zophar, that within the church a score
are of his opinion for one who is in Job's perplexity. Outside, the
proportion is much the same. The moral ideas and philanthropies of our
generation are perverted by the notion that no one is succeeding as a
man unless he is making money and rising in the social scale. So,
independence of mind, freedom, integrity, and the courage by which
they are secured, are made of comparatively little account.
It will be said that if things were rightly ordered, Christian ideas
prevailing in business, in legislation and social intercourse, the best
people would certainly be in the highest places and have the best of
life, and that, meanwhile, the improvement of the world depends on some
approximation to this state of affairs. That is to say, spiritual power
and character must come into visible union with the resources of the
earth and possession of its good things, otherwise there will be no
moral progress. Divine providence, we are told, works after that manner;
and the reasoning is plausible enough to require close attention. There
has always been peril for religion in association with external power
and prestige--and the peril of religion is the peril of progress. Will
spiritual ideas ever urge those whose lives they rule to seek with any
solicitude the gifts of time? Will they not, on the other hand,
increasingly, as they ought, draw the desires of the best away from what
is immediate, earthly, and in all the lower senses personal? To put it
in a word, must not the man of spiritual mind always be a prophet, that
is, a critic of human life in its relations to the present world? Will
there come a time in the history of the race when the criticism of the
prophet shall no longer be needed and his mantle will fall from him?
That can only be when all the Lord's people are prophets, when
everywhere the earthly is counted as nothing in view of the heavenly,
when men will seek continually a new revelation of good, and the
criticism of Christ shall be so acknowledged that no one shall need to
repeat after Him, "How can ye believe which receive honour one of
another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God only?" By heavenly
means alone shall heavenly ends be secured, and the keen pursuit of
earthly good will never bring the race of men into the paradise where
Christ reigns. Outward magnificence is neither a symbol nor an ally of
spiritual power. It hinders instead of aiding the soul in the quest of
what is eternally excellent, touching the sensuous, not the divine, in
man. Christ is still, as in the days of His flesh, utterly indifferent
to the means by which power and distinction are gained in the world. The
spread of His ideas, the manifestation of His Godhead, the coming of His
Kingdom, depend not the least on the countenance of the great and the
impression produced on rude minds by the shows of wealth. The first task
of His gospel everywhere is to correct the barbaric tastes of men; and
the highest and best in a spiritual age will be, as He was, thinkers,
seers of truth, lovers of God and man, lowly in heart and life. These
will express the penetrating criticism that shall move the world.
* * * * *
Zophar discourses of one who is openly unjust and rapacious. He is
candid enough to admit that, for a time, the schemes and daring of the
wicked may succeed, but affirms that, though his head may "reach to
the clouds," it is only that he may be cast down.
"_Knowest thou not this from of old,
Since man was placed upon earth,
That the triumphing of the wicked is short,
And the joy of the godless but for a moment?
Though his excellency ascend to heaven,
And his head reach to the clouds,
Yet he shall perish for ever like his own dung:
They who saw him shall say, Where is he?
Like a dream he shall flee, no more to be found,
Yea, he shall be chased away like a night-vision._"
As a certainty, based on facts quite evident since the beginning of
human history, Zophar presents anew the overthrow of the evil-doer. He
is sure that the wicked does not keep his prosperity through a long
life. Such a thing has never occurred in the range of human
experience. The godless man is allowed, no doubt, to lift himself up
for a time; but his day is short. Indeed he is great for a moment
only, and that in appearance. He never actually possesses the good
things of earth, but only seems to possess them. Then in the hour of
judgment he passes like a dream and perishes for ever. The affirmation
is precisely that which has been made again and again; and with some
curiosity we scan the words of Zophar to learn what addition he makes
to the scheme so often pressed.
Sooth to say, there is no reasoning, nothing but affirmation. He
discusses no doubtful case, enters into no careful discrimination of the
virtuous who enjoy from the godless who perish, makes no attempt to
explain the temporary success granted to the wicked. The man he
describes is one who has acquired wealth by unlawful means, who conceals
his wickedness, rolling it like a sweet morsel under his tongue. We are
told further that he has oppressed and neglected the poor and violently
taken away a house, and he has so behaved himself that all the miserable
watch for his downfall with hungry eyes. But these charges, virtually
of avarice, rapacity, and inhumanity, are far from definite, far from
categorical. Not without reason would any man have so bad a reputation,
and if deserved it would ensure the combination against him of all
right-minded people. But men may be evil-hearted and inhuman who are not
rapacious; they may be vile and yet not given to avarice. And Zophar's
account of the ruin of the profane, though he makes it a Divine act,
pictures the rising of society against one whose conduct is no longer
endurable--a robber chief, the tyrant of a valley. His argument fails in
this, that though the history of the proud evil-doer's destruction were
perfectly true to fact, it would apply to a very few only amongst the
population,--one in ten thousand,--leaving the justice of Divine
providence in greater doubt than ever, because the avarice and
selfishness of smaller men are not shown to have corresponding
punishment, are not indeed so much as considered. Zophar describes one
whose bold and flagrant iniquity rouses the resentment of those not
particularly honest themselves, not religious, nor even humane, but
merely aware of their own danger from his violent rapacity. A man,
however, may be avaricious who is not strong, may have the will to prey
on others but not the power. The real distinction, therefore, of
Zophar's criminal is his success in doing what many of those he
oppresses and despoils would do if they were able, and the picturesque
passage leaves no deep moral impression. We read it and seem to feel
that the overthrow of this evil-doer is one of the rare and happy
instances of poetical justice which sometimes occur in real life, but
not so frequently as to make a man draw back in the act of oppressing a
poor dependant or robbing a helpless widow.
In an sincerity Zophar speaks, with righteous indignation against the
man whose ruin he paints, persuaded that he is following, step for
step, the march of Divine judgment. His eye kindles, his voice rings
with poetic exultation.
"_He hath swallowed down riches; he shall vomit them again:
God shall cast them out of his belly.
He shall suck the poison of asps;
The viper's tongue shall slay him.
He shall not look upon the rivers,
The flowing streams of honey and butter.
That which he toiled for shall he restore,
And shall not swallow it down;
Not according to the wealth he has gotten
Shall he have enjoyment....
There was nothing left that he devoured not;
Therefore his prosperity shall not abide.
In his richest abundance he shall be in straits;
The hand of every miserable one shall come upon him.
When he is about to fill his belly
God shall cast the fury of His wrath upon him
And rain upon him his food._"
He has succeeded for a time, concealing or fortifying himself among
the mountains. He has store of silver and gold and garments taken by
violence, of cattle and sheep captured in the plain. But the district
is roused. Little by little he is driven back into the uninhabited
desert. His supplies are cut off and he is brought to extremity. His
food becomes to him as the gall of asps. With all his ill-gotten
wealth he is in straits, for he is hunted from place to place. Not for
him now the luxury of the green oasis and the coolness of flowing
streams. He is an outlaw, in constant danger of discovery. His
children wander to places where they are not known and beg for bread.
Reduced to abject fear, he restores the goods he had taken by
violence, trying to buy off the enmity of his pursuers. Then come the
last skirmish, the clash of weapons, ignominious death.
"_He shall flee from the iron weapon,
And the bow of brass shall pierce him through.
He draweth it forth; it cometh out of his body:
Yea, the glittering shaft cometh out of his gall.
Terrors are upon him,
All darkness is laid up for his treasures;
A fire not blown shall consume him,
It shall devour him that is left in his tent.
The heaven shall reveal his iniquity,
And the earth shall rise against him.
The increase of his house shall depart,
Be washed away in the day of His wrath.
This is the lot of a wicked man from God,
And the heritage appointed to him by God._"
Vain is resistance when he is brought to bay by his enemies. A moment
of overwhelming terror, and he is gone. His tent blazes up and is
consumed, as if the breath of God made hot the avenging flame. Within
it his wife and children perish. Heaven seems to have called for his
destruction and earth to have obeyed the summons. So the craft and
strength of the free-booter, living on the flocks and harvests of
industrious people, are measured vainly against the indignation of
God, who has ordained the doom of wickedness.
A powerful word-picture. Yet if Zophar and the rest taught such a
doctrine of retribution, and, put to it, could find no other; if they
were in the way of saying, "This is the lot of a wicked man from God,"
how far away must Divine judgment have seemed from ordinary life,
from the falsehoods daily spoken, the hard words and blows dealt to
the slave, the jealousies and selfishnesses of the harem. Under the
pretext of showing the righteous Judge, Zophar makes it impossible, or
next to impossible, to realise His presence and authority. Men must be
stirred up on God's behalf or His judicial anger will not be felt.
It is however when we apply the picture to the case of Job that we see
its falsehood. Against the facts of his career Zophar's account of
Divine judgment stands out as flat heresy, a foul slander charged on
the providence of God. For he means that Job wore in his own
settlement the hypocritical dress of piety and benevolence and must
have elsewhere made brigandage his trade, that his servants who died
by the sword of Chaldæans and Sabeans and the fire of heaven had been
his army of rievers, that the cause of his ruin was heaven's
intolerance and earth's detestation of so vile a life. Zophar
describes poetic justice, and reasons back from it to Job. Now it
becomes flagrant injustice against God and man. We cannot argue from
what sometimes is to what must be. Although Zophar had taken in hand
to convict one really and unmistakably a miscreant, truth alone would
have served the cause of righteousness. But he assumes, conjectures,
and is immeasurably unjust and cruel to his friend.
XVIII.
_ARE THE WAYS OF THE LORD EQUAL?_
JOB SPEAKS. CHAP. xxi.
With less of personal distress and a more collected mind than before
Job begins a reply to Zophar. His brave hope of vindication has
fortified his soul and is not without effect upon his bodily state.
The quietness of tone in this final address of the second colloquy
contrasts with his former agitation and the growing eagerness of the
friends to convict him of wrong. True, he has still to speak of facts
of human life troublous and inscrutable. Where they lie he must look,
and terror seizes him, as if he moved on the edge of chaos. It is,
however, no longer his own controversy with God that disquiets him.
For the time he is able to leave that to the day of revelation. But
seeing a vaster field in which righteousness must be revealed, he
compels himself, as it were, to face the difficulties which are
encountered in that survey. The friends have throughout the colloquy
presented in varying pictures the offensiveness of the wicked man and
his sure destruction. Job, extending his view over the field they have
professed to search, sees the facts in another light. While his
statement is in the way of a direct negative to Zophar's theory, he
has to point out what seems dreadful injustice in the providence of
God. He is not however, drawn anew into the tone of revolt.
The opening words are as usual expostulatory, but with a ring of
vigour. Job sets the arguments of his friends aside and the only
demand he makes now is for their attention.
"_Hear diligently my speech,
And let that be your consolations.
Suffer me that I may speak;
And after I have spoken, mock on.
As for me, is my complaint of man?
And why should I not be impatient?_"
What he has said hitherto has had little effect upon them; what he is to
say may have none. But he will speak; and afterwards, if Zophar finds
that he can maintain his theory, why, he must keep to it and mock on. At
present the speaker is in the mood of disdaining false judgment. He
quite understands the conclusion come to by the friends. They have
succeeded in wounding him time after time. But what presses upon his
mind is the state of the world as it really is. Another impatience than
of human falsehood urges him to speak. He has returned upon the riddle
of life he gave Zophar to read--why the tents of robbers prosper and
they that provoke God are secure (chap. xii. 6). Suppose the three let
him alone for a while and consider the question largely, in its whole
scope. They shall consider it, for, certainly, the robber chief may be
seen here and there in full swing of success, with his children about
him, gaily enjoying the fruit of sin, and as fearless as if the Almighty
were his special protector. Here is something that needs clearing up. Is
it not enough to make a strong man shake?
"_Mark me, and be astonished,
And lay the hand upon the mouth.
Even while I remember I am troubled,
And trembling taketh hold of my flesh--
Wherefore do the wicked live,
Become old, yea, wax mighty in power?
Their seed is settled with them in their sight,
And their offspring before their eyes;
Their houses are in peace, without fear,
And the rod of God is not upon them....
They send forth their little ones like a flock,
And their children dance;
They sing to the timbrel and lute,
And rejoice at the sound of the pipe.
They spend their days in ease,
And in a moment go down to Sheol.
Yet they said to God, Depart from us,
For we desire not to know Thy ways.
What is Shaddai that we should serve Him?
And what profit should we have if we pray unto Him?_"
Contrast the picture here with those which Bildad and Zophar
painted--and where lies the truth? Sufficiently on Job's side to make
one who is profoundly interested in the question of Divine
righteousness stand appalled. There was an error of judgment
inseparable from that early stage of human education in which vigour
and the gains of vigour counted for more than goodness and the gains
of goodness, and this error clouding the thought of Job made him
tremble for his faith. Is nature God's? Does God arrange the affairs
of this world? Why then, under His rule, can the godless have
enjoyment, and those who deride the Almighty feast on the fat things
of His earth? Job has sent into the future a single penetrating look.
He has seen the possibility of vindication, but not the certainty of
retribution. The underworld into which the evil-doer descends in a
moment, without protracted misery, appears to Job no hell of torment.
It is a region of reduced, incomplete existence, not of penalty. The
very clearness with which he saw vindication for himself, that is,
for the good man, makes it needful to see the wrong-doer judged and
openly condemned. Where then shall this be done? The writer, with all
his genius, could only throw one vivid gleam beyond the present. He
could not frame a new idea of Sheol, nor, passing its cloud confines,
reach the thought of personality continuing in acute sensations either
of joy or pain. The ungodly ought to feel the heavy hand of Divine
justice in the present state of being. But he does not. Nature makes
room for him and his children, for their gay dances and life-long
hilarity. Heaven does not frown. "The wicked live, become old, yea,
wax mighty in power; their houses are in peace, without fear."
From the climax of chap. xix. the speeches of Job seem to fall away
instead of advancing. The author had one brilliant journey into the
unseen, but the peak he reached could not be made a new point of
departure. Knowledge he did not possess was now required. He saw
before him a pathless ocean where no man had shown the way, and
inspiration seems to have failed him. His power lay in remarkably keen
analysis and criticism of known theological positions and in glowing
poetic sense. His inspiration working through these persuaded him that
everywhere God is the Holy and True. It is scarcely to be supposed
that condemnation of the evil could have seemed to him of less
importance than vindication of the good. Our conclusion therefore must
be that a firm advance into the other life was not for genius like
his, nor for human genius at its highest. One more than man must speak
of the great judgment and what lies beyond.
Clearly Job sees the unsolved enigma of the godless man's prosperous
life, states it, and stands trembling. Regarding it what have other
thinkers said? "If the law of all creation were justice," says John
Stuart Mill, "and the Creator omnipotent, then in whatever amount
suffering and happiness might be dispensed to the world, each person's
share of them would be exactly proportioned to that person's good or
evil deeds; no human being would have a worse lot than another without
worse deserts; accident or favouritism would have no part in such a
world, but every human life would be the playing out of a drama
constructed like a perfect moral tale. No one is able to blind himself
to the fact that the world we live in is totally different from this."
Emerson, again, facing this problem, repudiates the doctrine that
judgment is not executed in this world. He affirms that there is a
fallacy in the concession that the bad are successful, that justice is
not done now. "Every ingenuous and aspiring soul," he says, "leaves the
doctrine behind him in his own experience; and all men feel sometimes
the falsehood which they cannot demonstrate." His theory is that there
is balance or compensation everywhere. "Life invests itself with
inevitable conditions, which the unwise seek to dodge, which one and
another brags that he does not know, that they do not touch him;--but
the brag is on his lips, the conditions are in his soul. If he escapes
them in one part, they attack him in another more vital part.... The
ingenuity of man has always been dedicated to the solution of one
problem,--how to detach the sensual sweet, the sensual strong, the
sensual bright, from the moral sweet, the moral deep, the moral fair;
that is, again, to contrive to cut clean off this upper surface so thin
as to leave it bottomless; to get a _one end_, without an _other
end_.... This dividing and detaching is steadily counteracted. Pleasure
is taken out of pleasant things, profit out of profitable things, power
out of strong things, so soon as we seek to separate them from the
whole. We can no more halve things and get the sensual good, by itself,
than we can get an inside that shall have no outside, or a light without
a shadow.... For everything you have missed, you have gained something
else, and for everything you gain you lose something. If the gatherer
gathers too much, nature takes out of the man what she puts into his
chest; swells the estate but kills the owner.... We feel defrauded of
the retribution due to evil acts, because the criminal adheres to his
vice and contumacy, and does not come to a crisis or judgment anywhere
in visible nature. There is no stunning confutation of his nonsense
before men and angels. Has he therefore outwitted the law? Inasmuch as
he carries the malignity and the lie with him, he so far deceases from
nature. In some manner there will be a demonstration of the wrong to the
understanding also; but, should we not see it, this deadly deduction
makes square the account."[3] The argument reaches far beneath that
superficial condemnation of the order of providence which disfigures Mr.
Mill's essay on Nature. So far as it goes, it illuminates the present
stage of human existence. The light, however, is not sufficient, for we
cannot consent to the theory that in an ideal scheme, a perfect or
eternal state, he who would have holiness must sacrifice power, and he
who would be true must be content to be despised. There is, we cannot
doubt, a higher law; for this does not in any sense apply to the life of
God Himself. In the discipline which prepares for liberty, there must be
restraints and limitations, gain--that is, development--by renunciation;
earthly ends must be subordinated to spiritual; sacrifices must be made.
But the present state does not exhaust the possibilities of development
nor close the history of man. There is a kingdom out of which shall be
taken all things that offend. To Emerson's compensations must be added
the compensation of Heaven. Still he lifts the problem out of the deep
darkness which troubled Job.