(as I must believe) inserted passages belong to the same circle as the writer of the main part of the book, and are therefore not to be accused of having made 'interpolations.' I need not here distinguish between passages added by the author himself as afterthoughts (or perhaps paralipomena inserted by disciples from his literary remains) and compositions of later poets added to give the poem greater didactic completeness. A passage which does not fall into the plan of the poem is to all intents and purposes the work of another poet. The philosophic Goethe of the second part of Faust is not the passion-tossed Goethe of the first.
All the writers who may be concerned in the production of our book are, however, well worthy of reverent study; they were not only inspired by the Spirit of Israel's holy religion, but in their various styles true poets. In some degree we may apply to Job the lines of Schiller on the Iliad with its different fathers but one only mother—Nature. In fact, Nature, in aspects chiefly familiar, but not therefore less interesting, was an open book to these poets, and 'Look in thine heart and write' was their secret as well as Spenser's for vigorous and effective expression.
I now proceed to give in plain prose the pith and substance of this great poem, which more than any other Old Testatament book needs to be brought near to the mind of a Western student. I would entitle it The Book of the Trial of the Righteous Man, and of the Justification of God.
In its present form the Book of Job consists of five parts—
1. The Prologue, written in prose (ch. i.-ii.), the body of the work in the Hebrew being written in at any rate an approach to metre;[1]
2. The Colloquies between Job and his three friends (ch. iii.-xxxi.);
3. The Discourses of Elihu (ch. xxxii.-xxxvii.);
- ↑ Jerome already saw this. He represents the Book of Job as composed mainly in hexameters with a dactylic and spondaic movement (Præf. in Job). Does he mean double trimeters?
