Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/734

700 JOB Then, in regard to the position maintained by Job, the extrava gance of his assertions was occasioned greatly by the extreme position of his friends, which left no room for his conscious innocence along with the rectitude of God. Again, the poet s purpose, as the prologue shows, was to teach that afflictions may fall on a man out of all connexion with any offence of his own, and merely as the trial of his righteousness ; and hence he allows Job, as by a true in stinct of the nature of his sufferings, to repudiate all connexion between them and sin in himself. And further, the terrible conflict into which the suspicions of the Satan brought Job could not be exhibited without pushing him to the verge of ungodliness. These are all elements of the poet s art ; but art and nature are one. Under the Old Covenant the sense of sin was less deep than it is now. In the desert, too, men speak boldly of God. Such a creation as Job would be an anomaly in Christianity. But nothing is more false than to judge the poet s creation from our later point of view, and construct a theory of the book according to a more developed sense of sin and a deeper reverence of God than belonged to antiquity. In complete contradiction to the testimony of the book itself, some theorists, as Hengstenberg, have assumed that Job s spiritual pride was just the cause of his afflictions, that this was the root of bitterness in him which must be killed down ere he could become a true saint. The fundamental position of the book is that Job was already a true saint ; this is testified by God Himself, is the radical idea of the author in the prologue, and the very hypothesis of the drama. We might be ready to think that Job s afflictions did not befall him out of all connexion with his own condition of mind, and we might be disposed to find a vindication of God s ways in this. There is no evidence that such an idea was shared by the author of the book. The interpretation of Job has suffered not a little from the righteousness overmuch of its expounders. The writer did not consider that God s ways needed this vindication. The confession of sin which he puts into Job s mouth had reference exclusively to his demeanour under his afflictions. This demeanour may be evidence of the imperfection of his previous religious state. It is evidence of this, of which, however, no evidence was needed, for Job does not claim to be nor is he supposed sinless, but it is no evidence that this imperfection was the cause of his afflictions. These were the trial of his faith, which, maintaining itself in spite of them, and becoming stronger through them, was rewarded with a higher felicity. It is remarkable that the attitude which we imagine it would have been so easy for Job to assume, viz., while holding fast his integrity, to fall back upon the inexplicableness of Providence, of which there are such imposing descriptions in his speeches, is just the attitude which he takes up in ch. xxviii. It is far from certain, however, that this chapter is an integral part of the original book. The other line running through the book, the varying attitude of Job s mind towards heaven, exhibits dramatic action and tragic interest of the highest kind, though the movement is internal. That the exhibition of this struggle in Job s mind was a main point in the author s purpose is seen from the fact that at the end of each of his great trials he notes that Job sinned not, nor ascribed wrong to God (ch. i. 22 ; ii. 10), and from the effect which the divine voice from the whirlwind is made to produce upon him (ch. xl. 3). In the first cycle of debate (ch. iv.-xiv.), Job s mind reaches the deepest limit of estrangement. There he not merely charges God with injustice, but, unable to reconcile His former goodness with His present enmity, he regards the latter as the true expression of the divine mind towards His creatures, and the former, comprising all His infinite creative skill in weaving the delicate organism of human nature and the rich endowments of His providence, but as the means towards exercising His mad and immoral cruelty in the time to come. When the Semitic skin of Job is scratched, we find a modern pessimist beneath. Others in later days have brought the keen sensibility of the human frame and the torture which it endures together, and asked with Job to whom at last all this has .to be referred. Towards the, end of the cycle a star of heavenly light- seems to rise on the horizon ; the thought seizes the sufferer s mind that man might have another life, that God s anger pursuing him to the grave might be sated, and that He might call him out of it to Himself again (ch. xiv. 13). This idea of a resurrection, unfamiliar to Job at first, is one which he is allowed to reach out of the necessities of the moral complications around him, but from the author s manner of using the idea we may judge that it was not unfamiliar to himself. In the second cycle the thought of a future reconciliation with God (for of course he regarded his afflictions as evidence of God s anger) is more firmly grasped. That satisfaction or at least composure which, when we observe calamities that we cannot morally account for, we reach by reflecting that providence is a great scheme moving according to general la-ws, and that it does not always truly reflect the relation of God to the individual, Job reached in the only way possible to a Semitic mind. He drew a distinction between God and God, between an outer God whom events obey, pursuing him in His anger, and an inner God whose heart was with him, who was conscious of his innocence ; and he appeals from God to God, and beseeches God to pledge Himself that he shall receive justice from God (ch. xvi. 19; xvii. 3). And so high at last does this consciousness that God is at one with him rise that he avows his assurance that He will yet appear to do him justice before men, and that he shall see Him with his own eyes, no more estranged but on his side, and for this moment he faints with longing (ch. xix. 25 sq.). 1 After this expression of faith Job s mind remains calm, though he ends by firmly charging God with perverting his right, and demanding to know the cause of his afflictions (ch. xxvii. 2 sq. ; xxxi. 35, where render, Oh, that I had the indictment which mine adversary has written). In answer to this demand the Divine voice answers Job out of the tempest Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? The word "counsel" intimates to Job that God does not act without a design, large and beyond the comprehension of man ; and to impress this is the purpose of the Divine speeches. The speaker does not enter into Job s particular cause ; there is not a word tending to unravel his riddle ; his mind is drawn away to the wisdom and majesty of God Himself. His own words and those of his friends are but re-echoed, but it is God Him self who now utters them. Job is in immediate nearness to the majesty of heaven, wise, unfathomable, ironical over the littleness of man, and he is abased ; God Himself effects what neither the man s own thoughts of God nor the representations of his friends could accomplish, though by the same means. The religious insight of the writer sounds here the profoundest deeps of truth, Integrity. Doubts whether particular portions of the present book belonged to the original form of it have been raised by many. Half a century ago De Wette expressed himself as follows : " It appears to us that the present book of Job has not all flowed from one pen. As many books of the Old Testament have been several times written over, so has this also " (Ersch and Gruber, Encyk., sect, ii., vol. viii.). The judgment formed by De Wette has been adhered to more or less by most of those who have studied the book. Questions regarding the unity of such books as this are difficult to settle ; there is not unanimity among scholars regarding the idea of the book, and con sequently they differ as to what parts are in harmony or conflict with unity ; and it is dangerous to apply modern ideas of literary composition and artistic unity to the works 1 This remarkable passage reads thus: ll But I know that my re deemer liveth, and afterwards he shall arise upon the dust, and after my skin, even this body is destroyed, without my flesh shall I see God ; whom, I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not as a stranger; my reins icithin me are consumed with longing." The redeemer who liveth and shall arise or stand upon the earth is God whom he shall see with his own eyes, on his side. The course of exegesis was greatly influenced by the translation of Jerome who, departing from the Itala, rendered : "In novissimo die de terra sur- recturus sum . . . et rursum circumdabor pelle mea et in carne mea videbo deum meum." The only point now in question is whether (a) Job looks for this, manifestation of God to him while he is still alive, or (b) after death, and therefore in the sense of a spiritual vision and union with God in another life ; that is, whether the words "destroyed" and "without my flesh" are to be taken relatively only, of the extremest effects of his disease iipon him, or literally, of the separation of the body in death. A third view which assumes that the words rendered "without my flesh," which run literally, "out of my flesh," mean looking out from my flesh, that is, clothed with a new body, and finds the idea of resurrection repeated, perhaps imports more into the language than it will fairly bear. In favour of (b) may be adduced the persistent refusal of Job throughout to entertain the idea of a restoration in this life ; the word " afterwards "; and perhaps the analogy of other passages where the same situation appears, as Ps. xlix. and Ixxiii., although the actual denouement of the tragedy sup ports (a). The difference between the two senses is not important, when the Old Testament view of immortality is considered. To the Hebrew the life beyond was not what it is to us, a freedom from sin and sorrow and admission to an immediate divine fellowship not attainable here. To him the life beyond was at best a prolongation of the life here ; all he desired was that his fellowship with God here should not be interrupted in death, and that Sheol, the place into whi"h deceased persons descended and remained, cut off from all life with God, might be overleapt. On this account the theory of Ewald, which throws the centre of gravity of the book into this passage in ch. xix., considering its purpose to be to teach that the riddles of this life shall be solved and its inequalities corrected in a future life, appears one-sided. The point of the passage does not lie in any distinction which it draws between this life and a future life ; it lies in the assur ance which Job expresses that God, who even now knows his innocence, will vindicate it in the future, and that, though estranged now, He will at last take him to His heart.