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dead, which forms the boundary of the course of this world, in existence. The book of Job, however, shows us how, from the conflict concerning the mystery of this present life, faith struggled forth towards a future solution. The hope which Job expresses is not one prevailing in his age - not one that has come to him from tradition - not one embracing mankind, or even only the righteous in general. All the above objections would be really applicable, if it were evident here that Job was acquainted with the doctrine of a beholding of God after death, which should recompense the pious for the sufferings of this present time. But such is not the case. The hope expressed is not a finished and believingly appropriating hope; on the contrary, it is a hope which is first conceived and begotten under the pressure of divinely decreed sufferings, which make him appear to be a transgressor, and of human accusations which charge him with transgression. It is impossible for him to suppose that God should remain, as now, so hostilely turned from him, without ever again acknowledging him. The truth must at last break through the false appearance, and wrath again give place to love. That it should take place after his death, is only the extreme which his faith assigns to it.
If we place ourselves on the standpoint of the poet, he certainly here gives utterance to a confession, to which, as the book of Proverbs also shows, the Salomonic Chokma began to rise in the course of believing thought; but also on the part of the Chokma, this confession was primarily only a theologoumenon, and was first in the course of centuries made sure under the combined agency of the progressive perception of the revelation and facts connected with redemption; and it is first of all in the New Testament, by the descent to Hades and the ascension to heaven of the Prince of Life, that it became a fully decided and well-defined element of the church's creed. If, however, we place ourselves on the