Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/735

JOB 701 of antiquity and of the East. The problem raised in the book of Job has certainly received frequent treatment in the Old Testament ; and there is no likelihood that all efforts in this direction have been preserved to us. It is probable that the book of Job was but a great effort amidst or after many smaller. It is scarcely to be supposed that one with such poetic and literary power as the author of chap, iii.-xxxi., xxxviii.-xli. would embody the work of any other writer in his own. If there be elements in the book which must be pronounced foreign, they have been inserted in the work of the author by a later hand. It is not unlikely either in itself or when the history of other books is considered that our present book may, in addition to the great work of the original author, contain some fragments of the thoughts of other religious minds upon the same question, and that these, instead of being loosely appended, have been fitted into the mechanism of the first work. Some of these fragments may have originated at first quite independently of our book, while others may be expansions and insertions that never existed separately. At the same time it is scarcely safe to throw out any portion of the book merely because it seems to us out of harmony with the unity of the main part of the poem, or unless several distinct lines of consideration conspire to point it out as an extraneous element. The arguments that have been used against the originality of the prologue as, that it is written in prose, that the name Jehovah appears in it, that sacrifice is referred to, and that there are inconsistencies between it and the body of the book are of little weight. There must have been some introduction to the poem explaining the circumstances of Job, otherwise the poetical dispute would have been unintelligible, for it is improbable that the story of Job was so familiar that a poem in which he and his friends figured as they do here would have been understood. And there is no trace of any other prologue or introduction having ever existed. The prologue, too, is an essential element of the work, containing the author s positive contribution to the doctrine of suffering, for which the discussion in the poem prepares the way. The intermix ture of prose and poetry is common in Oriental works containing similar discussions ; the reference to sacrifice is to primitive not to Mosaic sacrifice ; and the author, while using the name Jehovah freely himself, puts the patriarchal Divine names into the mouth of Job and his friends because they belonged, to the patriarchal age and to a country outside of Israel. That the observance of this rule had a certain awkwardness for the writer perhaps appears from his allowing the name Jehovah to slip in once or twice (xii. 9, comp. xxviii. 28) in familiar phrases in the body of the poem. The discrepancies, such as Job s references to his children as still alive (xix. 17, the interpretation is doubtful), and to his servants, are trivial, and even if real imply nothing in a book admittedly poetical and not history. The objections to the epilogue are equally unimportant, as that the Satan is not mentioned in it, and that Job s restoration is in conflict with the idea of the poem that earthly felicity does not follow righteousness, and undoes its teaching. The epilogue confirms the teaching of the poem when it gives the Divine sanction to Job s doctrine regarding God in opposition to that of the friends (xlii. 7). And it is certainly not the intention of the poem to teach that earthly felicity does not follow righteousness, but to . correct the exclusiveness with which the friends of Job maintained that principle. The Satan is introduced in the prologue, exercising his function as minister of God in heaven ; but it is to misinterpret the doctrine of evil in the Old Testament wholly to assign to the Satan any such personal importance or independence of power as that he should be called before the curtain to receive the hisses that accompany his own discomfiture. The Satan, though he here appears with the beginnings of a malevolent will of his own, is but the instrument of the trying, sifting providence of God. His work was to try ; that done he disappears, his personality being too slightly important to have any place in the result. Much graver are the suspicions that attach to the speeches of Elihu. It is the opinion of most of those who have studied the book carefully that this part does not, belong to the original cast of it, but has been introduced at a considerably later time. The piece is one of the most interesting parts of the book ; both the person and the thoughts of Elihu are marked by a strong individuality. This individuality has indeed been very diversely estimated. The ancients for the most part passed a very severe judg ment on Elihu : he is a buffoon, or a boastful youth whose shallow intermeddling is only to be explained by the fewness of his years, the incarnation of folly, or even the Satan himself gone a-mumming. Some moderns on the other hand have regarded him as the incarnation of the voice of God or even of God Himself. The main objections that may be urged against the connexion of the episode of Elihu with the original book are that the prologue and epilogue know nothing of him ; that on the cause of Job s afflictions he occupies virtually the same position as the friends ; that his speeches destroy the dramatic effect of the Divine manifestation by introducing a lengthened break between Job s challenge and the answer of God ; that the language and style of the piece are marked by an excessive mannerism, too great to have been created by the author of the rest of the poem, even when introducing an interlocutor out of the ranks of the bystanders, and of another race ; that the allusions to the rest of the book are so minute as to betray a reader rather than a hearer ; and that the views regarding sin, and especially the scandal given to the author by the irreverence of Job, indicate a religious advance which marks a later age. The position taken by Elihu is almost that of a critic of the book. Regarding the origin of afflictions he is at one with the friends, although he dwells more on the general sinfulness of man than on actual sins, and his reprobation of Job s position is even greater than theirs. His anger was kindled against Job because he made himself righteous before God, and against his friends because they found no answer so as to condemn Job. His whole object is to refute Job s charge of injustice against heaven. What is novel in Elihu, there fore, is not his position but entirely his arguments. These do not lack cogency, but betray a kind of thought different from that of the friends. Injustice in God, he argues, can only arise from selfishness in Him ; but the very existence of creation implies unselfish love on God s part, for if He thought only of Himself, He would cease actively to uphold creation, and it would fall into death. Again, without justice mere earthly rule is impossible ; how then is injustice conceivable in Him who rules over all 1 It is probable that the original author found his three interlocutors a sufficient medium for expressing all that he desired to say, and that this new speaker is the creation of another. To a devout and thoughtful reader of the original book, belonging perhaps to a more reverential age, it appeared that the language and bearing of Job had scarcely been sufficiently reprobated by the original speakers, and that the religious reason, apart from any theophany, could suggest arguments sufficient to condemn such demeanour on the part of any man. It is more difficult to come to a decision in regard to some other portions of the book, particularly ch. xxvii. 7-xxviii. In the latter part of ch. xxvii. Job seems to go over to the camp of his opponents, and expresses sentiments in complete contradiction to his former views. Hence