THE EPILOGUE AND ITS MEANING.
We now come to the _dénoûment_ of the story (xlii. 7-17), against which,
from the point of view of internal criticism, much were possible to be
said. We shall not, however, here dwell upon the inconsistencies between
the epilogue on the one hand and the prologue and the speeches on the
other. The main point for us to emphasise is the disappointingness of
the events of the epilogue regarded as the final outcome of Job’s
spiritual discipline. Surely the high thoughts which have now and then
visited Job’s mind, and which, combined with the personal
self-revelation of the Creator, must have brought back the sufferer to a
state of childlike resignation, stand in inappropriate companionship
with a tame and commonplace renewal of mere earthly prosperity. Would it
not have been fitter for the hero on whom so much moral training had
been lavished to pass with humble but courageous demeanour through the
dark valley, at the issue of which he would ‘see God’? It is hardly a
sufficient answer that a concession was necessary to the prejudices of
the unspiritual multitude; for what was the object of the poem, if not
to subvert the dominion of a one-sided retribution theory? The solution
probably is that Job in the epilogue is a type of suffering, believing,
and glorified Israel. Not only the individual believer, not only all the
elect spirits of suffering humanity, but the beloved nation of the
poet.—Israel, the ‘Servant of Jehovah’—must receive a special message of
comfort from the great poem. In Isa. lxi. 7 we read that glorified
Israel is to ‘have double (compensation) instead of its shame;’ comp.
Zech. ix. 12, Jer. xvi. 14-18. The people of Israel, according to the
limited view of the prophets, was bound indissolubly to the Holy Land.
The only promise, therefore, which would be consolatory for suffering
Israel, the only possible sign of God’s restored favour, was a material
one including fresh ‘children’ and many flocks and herds (Isa. liv. 1,
lx. 7). Observe in this connection the phrase, xlii. 10, ‘Jehovah turned
the fortunes of Job’ (others, as A. V., ‘turned the captivity of
Job’)—the phrase so well known in passages relating to Israel (e.g. Ps.
xiv. 7, Joel iii. 1).
The explanation is perhaps adequate. Some, however, will be haunted by a
doubt whether the author of the prologue would not have thrown more
energy and enthusiasm into the closing narrative. An early reader,
probably of Pharisaic leanings, felt the poverty of the epilogue,[67]
and sought to remedy it by the following addition in the Septuagint:
‘And Job died, old and full of days; and it is written that he will rise
again with those whom the Lord raiseth.’[68] The remainder of the
Septuagint appendix testifies only to the love of the later Jews for
amplifying Biblical notices (see Chap. VII.) Our own poet painter has
also amplified the details of the epilogue, but in how different a way!
(Gilchrist’s _Life of Blake_, i. 332-3).
Footnote 67:
Other readers, however, found no difficulty in the close of the story;
to such St. James addresses himself in the words, ‘Ye have heard of
the endurance of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord’ (James v.
11), i.e. the blessed end vouchsafed by the Lord to Job. It was also,
no doubt, such a reader who composed the beautiful romance of Tobit,
to show that, however tried, the righteous man is at last delivered by
his God.
Footnote 68:
Those rabbis who in later times held this view appear to have assumed
that Job was of the Israelitish race (Frankl in Grätz’s
_Monatsschrift_, 1872, p. 311).