purifying and perfecting him. In both respects, the history of Job is a passage from the history of God's own conflict with the evil one, which is the substance of the history of redemption, and ends in the triumph of the divine love. And Gaupp[1] well says: In the book of Job, Satan loses a cause which is intended only as prelude to the greatest of all causes, since judgment is gone forth over the world, and the prince of darkness has been cast forth. Accordingly the church has always recognised in the passion of Job a type of the passion of Jesus Christ. James (Jam 5:11) even compares the patience of Job and the issue of the Lord's sufferings. And according to this indication, it was the custom after the second century to read the book of Job in the churches during passion-week.[2]
The ultimate solution of the problem which this marvellous book sets forth, is then this: the suffering of the righteous, in its deepest cause, is the conflict of the seed of the woman with the seed of the serpent, which ends in the head of the serpent being trampled under foot; it is the type or copy of the suffering of Christ, the Holy God, who has himself borne our sins, and in the constancy of His reconciling love has withstood, even to the final overthrow, the assault of wrath and of the angel of wrath.
The real contents of the book of Job is the mystery of the Cross: the Cross on Golgotha is the solution of the enigma of every cross; and the book of Job is a prophecy of this ultimate solution.
- ↑ Praktische Theologie, ii. 1, S. 488f.
- ↑ Vid., Origen's Opp. t. ii. p. 851: In conventu ecclesiae in diebus sanctis legitur passio Iob, in deibus jejunii, in diebus abstinentiae, in diebus, in quibus tanquam compatiuntur ii qui jejunant et abstinent admirabili illo Iob, in deibus, in quibus in jejunio et abstinentia sanctam Domini nostri Jesu Christi passionem sectamur. Known thus from the public reading in the churches, Job was called among the Syrians, Machbono, the Beloved, the Friend (Ewald, Jahrb. x. 207); and among the Arabs, Es-ssabûr, the patient one.
