Job with freshness and power by one of the masters of theology, by no
means covers the whole ground of Divine action. The righteous man is
called and enabled to trust the righteousness of God; the good man is
brought to confide in that Divine goodness which is the source of his
own. But the evil-doer remains unconstrained by grace, unmoved by
sacrifice. We have learned a broader theology, a more strenuous yet a
more gracious doctrine of the Divine sovereignty. The induction by
which we arrive at the law is wider than nature, wider than the
providence that reveals infinite wisdom, universal equity and care.
Rightly did a great Puritan theologian take his stand on the
conviction of God as the one power in heaven and earth and hell;
rightly did he hold to the idea of Divine will as the one sustaining
energy of all energies. But he failed just where the author of Job
failed long before: he did not fully see the correlative principle of
sovereign grace. The revelation of God in Christ, our Sacrifice and
Redeemer, vindicates with respect to the sinful as well as the
obedient the Divine act of creation. It shows the Maker assuming
responsibility for the fallen, seeking and saving the lost; it shows
one magnificent sweep of evolution which starts from the manifestation
of God in creation and returns through Christ to the Father, laden
with the manifold immortal gains of creative and redeeming power.
FOOTNOTE:
[10] "Modern Painters," vol. iii., p. 307.
EPILOGUE.
XXIX.
_EPILOGUE._
CHAP. xlii. 7-17.
After the argument of the Divine voice from the storm the epilogue is
a surprise, and many have doubted whether it is in line with the rest
of the work. Did Job need these multitudes of camels and sheep to
supplement his new faith and his reconciliation to the Almighty will?
Is there not something incongruous in the large award of temporal
good, and even something unnecessary in the renewed honour among men?
To us it seems that a good man will be satisfied with the favour and
fellowship of a loving God. Yet, assuming that the conclusion is a
part of the history on which the poem was founded, we can justify the
blaze of splendour that bursts on Job after sorrow, instruction and
reconciliation.
Life only can reward life. That great principle was rudely shadowed
forth in the old belief that God protects His servants even to a green
old age. The poet of our book clearly apprehended the principle; it
inspired his noblest flights. Up to the closing moment Job has lived
strongly, alike in the mundane and the moral region. How is he to find
continued life? The author's power could not pass the limits of the
natural in order to promise a reward. Not yet was it possible, even
for a great thinker, to affirm that continued fellowship with Eloah,
that continued intellectual and spiritual energy which we name eternal
life. A vision of it had come to him; he had seen the day of the Lord
afar off, but dimly, by moments. To carry a life into it was beyond
his power. Sheol made nothing perfect; and beyond Sheol no prophet eye
had ever travelled.
There was nothing for it, then, but to use the history as it stood,
adding symbolic touches, and show the restored life in development on
earth, more powerful than ever, more esteemed, more richly endowed for
good action. In one point the symbolism is very significant. Priestly
office and power are given to Job; his sacrifice and intercession
mediate between the friends who traduced him and Eloah who hears His
faithful servant's prayer. The epilogue, as a parable of the reward of
faithfulness, has deep and abiding truth. Wider opportunity of
service, more cordial esteem and affection, the highest office that
man can bear, these are the reward of Job; and with the terms of the
symbolism we shall not quarrel who have heard the Lord say: "Well
done, thou good servant, because thou wast found faithful in a very
little, have thou authority over ten cities!"
Another indication of purpose must not be overlooked. It may be said
that Job's renewal in soul should have been enough for him, that he
might have spent humbly what remained of life, at peace with men, in
submission to God. But our author was animated by the Hebrew
realism, that healthy belief in life as the gift of God, which kept
him always clear on the one hand of Greek fatalism, on the other of
Oriental asceticism. This strong faith in life might well lead him
into the details of sons and daughters, grandchildren and
great-grandchildren, flocks, tribute, and years of honour. Nor did he
care at the end though any one said that after all the Adversary was
right. He had to show expanding life as Gods recompense of
faithfulness. Satan has long ago disappeared from the drama; and in
any case the epilogue is chiefly a parable. It is, however, a parable
involving, as our Lord's parables always involve, the sound view of
man's existence, neither that of Prometheus on the rock nor of the
grim anchorite in the Egyptian cave.
The writer's finest things came to him by flashes. When he reached the
close of his book he was not able to make a tragedy and leave his
readers rapt above the world. No pre-Christian thinker could have
bound together the gleams of truth in a vision of the spirit's undying
nature and immortal youth. But Job must find restored power and
energy; and the close had to come, as it does, in the time sphere. We
can bear to see a soul go forth naked, driven, tormented; we can bear
to see the great good life pass from the scaffold or the fire, because
we see God meeting it in the heaven. But we have seen Christ.
A third point is that for dramatic completeness the action had to
bring Job to full acquittal in view of his friends. Nothing less will
satisfy the sense of poetic justice which rules the whole work.
Finally, a biographical reminiscence may have given colour to the
epilogue. If, as we have supposed, the author was once a man of
substance and power in Israel, and, reduced to poverty in the time of
the Assyrian conquest, found himself an exile in Arabia--the wistful
sense of impotence in the world must have touched all his thinking.
Perhaps he could not expect for himself renewed power and place; perhaps
he had regretfully to confess a want of faithfulness in his own past.
All the more might he incline to bring his great work to a close with a
testimony to the worth and design of the earthly gifts of God, the
temporal life which He appoints to man, that present discipline most
graciously adapted to our present powers and yet full of preparation for
a higher evolution, the life not seen, eternal in the heavens.
INDEX
Abraham faith of, 27.
Accadian psalms, 3.
Acquittal, Job expects, 285.
Agnostic, 117.
Amiel quoted, 88, 288.
Amos, chap. iv. 4, 44.
Angel-interpreter, 351.
Argument, the reconciling, 392.
Arnold, Matthew, quoted, 95.
Assize, the Great, 292.
Astrology, neglected, 317.
Author, his greatness, 6;
lives in the poem, 7;
member of Northern Kingdom, 15;
in the desert, 17;
inspiration of, 32;
paints his own trials, 68;
his brave truthfulness, 224;
his prophetic insight, 303.
Bene-Kedem, 23.
Bible, universality of, 17.
Bigot, the, 244.
Bildad, character of, 102;
his first speech, 135;
his second speech, 215;
his bitterness, 216;
his third speech, 298.
Boethius quoted, 288.
Book of Job, a poem of the soul, 3;
precursors of, 3;
poetical art of, 5;
date of, 6;
autobiographical, 7, 411;
style of, 8;
problem of, 11;
personality in, 12;
place in canon, 27;
main controversy of, 101;
inspiration of, 122;
logic of, 295;
prepares for Christ, 265, 404.
Bunyan quoted, 144.
Bushnell, H., quoted, 259.
Carlyle, T., quoted, 68, 223.
Catholic theologian, 135.
Chaldæans, 65.
Chaos, no moral, 273.
Christ, sacrifice of, 62;
mediation of, 121;
his preaching, 276;
Redeemer, 242, 404;
preparation for, 265.
Church, the Jewish, 14.
Church, complaints against, 264;
its duty, 295.
Cliff in the desert, 231.
Consolation, 80.
Corporate sympathy, 230.
Creed of Job's friends, 155.
Criticism of first author, 346.
Dante, 60.
Davidson, Dr. A. B., 11, 96, 311, 333.
Davidson, Dr. S., 6.
Death, finality of, 187.
Deism and positivism, 365.
Delay of the Almighty, 269.
Dogmatism, 136.
Doughty, Mr. C. M., 20.
Dualism, 166.
Duty, keep close to, 88.
Edwards, Jonathan, quoted, 274.
Egyptian "Book of the Dead," 212.
Elihu, who was he? 343;
inspiration claimed by, 342.
Eliphaz, character of, 102;
his first speech, 99;
vision of, 106;
apparently right, 113;
his religion, 114;
his second speech, 187;
a pure Temanite, 189;
jealous for God, 191;
his third speech, 269.
Eloah, the righteous, 232;
and the work of His hands, 233;
opening Sheol, 233.
Emerson, R. W., quoted, 257.
Eschatology, rose-water, 55.
"Everlasting Yea," 67.
Evolution, spiritual, 58;
of religion, 180;
physical, completes nothing, 241;
reveals Divine wisdom, 318.
Ewald, H., 11, 15.
Failure of old world, 280.
Fairbairn, Dr. A. M., 57.
Faith, and happiness, 45;
three barriers of, 235.
False judgments, 86.
Fate of the wicked, 219.
Festus quoted, 290.
Finality and progress, 193.
Funeral in the desert, 264.
God, no despot, 149;
seems to persecute, 176, 204;
and nature, 301.
Godliness, earthly reward of, 245.
Goël, the, 234.
Happiness and faith, 45.
Hauran, 20.
Hebrew thought, limitations of, 164;
realism, 410.
Hokhma, 9, 16.
Human frailty, 177.
Idealism, 65, 79.
Idolatry, 333.
Idumæa, religion of, 25.
Individualism of psalms, 13.
Inherited opinions, 169.
Inquiry and reverence, 389.
Inspiration, of author, 32, 33;
within limits, 224, 384, 387;
claimed by Elihu, 342.
Irresistible power, 141.
Isaiah compared with Job, 10.
Jauf, 20.
Jehovah, servant of, 15.
Jewel in the lotus, 364.
Jewish Church, 14.
Job, a real man, 22;
religion of, 24;
character of, 28;
early prosperity of, 29;
dream-life of, 30;
when he lived, 31;
trials of, 63;
type of righteous sufferer, 67;
his integrity, 72;
his faith, 74;
his wife, 75;
his friends, 78;
curses his day, 89;
praises death, 92;
rebuked for scepticism, 154;
prophetic, 208;
idealised, 337;
made priest, 410.
Justice, of man no refuge, 86;
in every matter, 237;
physical argument for, 238.
Kings, their favour, 357, 369.
Kinship with Eloah, 181.
Knowledge not the main thing, 390.
Koheleth, 38.
Letters and theology, 4.
Life, is it for enjoyment? 52;
meaning of, in the Gospels, 61;
as vigour, 260;
principle of man's, 382;
rewards life, 409.
Materialism, 54.
Mediator, desire for a, 147.
Mephistopheles, 36.
_Mezbele_, 72.
Microcosm and macrocosm, 402.
Mill, J. S., quoted, 256.
Mining, 314.
Modern science, 165.
Natural religion, 25;
source of, 178;
ends with a sigh, 290.
Nature and God, 166, 287, 301.
Necessity, 130.
Obedience, reward of, 42.
Ode cited by Elihu, 370.
Oriental, society, ideas of, 50;
life, contrasts of, 72;
character, 131.
Orthodoxy uncorrupted, 197.
Pain, not evil, 52-5;
and imprudence, 59;
mystery of, 120.
Paley quoted, 53.
Palgrave, W. G., quoted, 20.
Personality, 12.
Pessimism, 38.
Pharisee and Sadducee, germs of, 377.
Phœnix, 324.
Piety, daring, 133.
Pity of it, the, 229.
"Positive evil," 77.
Poverty of spirit, 196.
Precursors of Job, 3.
Primitive religion of Semites, 180.
Probation, 47.
Problem, of the book, 11;
universal, 403.
Prophet, the, a critic, 246.
Proverbs, chaps. iii., viii., 9.
Providence, enigma of, 207;
special, 225.
Psalms, individualism in, 12.
Punishment of sin, 59.
Rabbi, the, 368.
Real and ideal, 152.
Religion, decay of, 16;
evolution of, 180.
Renan quoted, 399.
Revelation, 117.
Righteousness, man not saved by, 388.
Ruskin, J., quoted, 372, 374, 396.
Sabeans, 65.
Sacrifice of Christ, 62.
Sacrificed classes, 170.
Satan, 34;
Dante's, 35;
Milton's, 35;
power of, 36;
challenged by the Almighty, 40;
his question, 42;
disappears, 71.
Scepticism, 41, 140.
Schopenhauer, 37, 39.
Semites, primitive religion of, 180.
Servant of Jehovah, 15.
Sheol, life in, 183;
no hope in, 211;
no penalty in, 255.
Sin, punishment of, 59;
does it bring suffering? 157.
Sincerity of mind, 169.
Skin for skin, 69.
Smith, Dr. Robertson, 43.
Social, meliorism, 46;
tyranny, 331.
Sons of the Elohim, 37.
Soulless human beings, 70.
Special pleading for God, 171.
Spencer, H., 52.
Spiritual evolution, 58.
Suicide, 97, 124.
Teman, 15.
Theology and letters, 4;
new beginning in, 15.
Theosophy, 39.
Total depravity, 195.
Trouble, wherefore? 282.
Universal problem, 403.
Uz, 19.
Wisdom, of the past, 138, 192;
quest of, 313.
Woman's life, 75.
Worldly prosperity offered to Job, 137, 159.
Zophar, his character, 102;
his first speech, 154;
no mere echo, 161;
his second speech, 243;
his third speech, 309.
Transciber's Notes:
Obvious punctuation and spelling errors have been fixed throughout.
Inconsistent hyphenation is as in the original text.