conscious renewal of communion with God after death?[1] The context, it seems to me, is best satisfied by the former alternative. Job's mind is at present occupied with the cruelty, not of God (as when he said, 'O that thou wouldst appoint me a term and then remember me,' xiv. 13), but of his friends. His starting-point is, 'How long will ye (my friends) pain my soul?' &c. (xix. 2.) We may admit that the best solution of Job's problem would be 'the beatific vision' in some early and not clearly defined form of that deep idea; but if Job can say that he not merely dreams but knows this ('I know that . . . I shall see God,' xix. 25, 26), the remainder of the colloquies ought surely to pursue a very different course{**? ;] as a matter of fact, neither Job nor his friends, nor yet Jehovah Himself, refers to this supposed newly-won truth, and the only part of 'Job's deepest saying' which the next speaker fastens upon (xx. 3) is the threatening conclusion (xix. 29). Ewald himself has drawn attention to this, without remarking its adverse bearing on his own interpretation.[2]
Here, side by side, are Dr. A. B. Davidson's and Dr. W. H. Green's translations of the received text of vv. 25-27, and Dr. Bickell's version of his own emended text.
But I know that my redeemer liveth,
and in after time he shall stand upon the dust
and after this my skin is destroyed
and without my flesh I shall see God:
' (The Argument of Job, pp. 204-5).]
- ↑ I agree with Dr. W. H. Green that the third view, which 'conceives Job to be here looking forward, not to a future state, but to the restoration of God's favour and his own deliverance out of all his troubles in the present life,' is to be rejected. I do not follow him in all his reasons, but these two are decisive. 1. Everywhere else Job 'regards himself as on the verge of the grave. . . . Every earthly hope is annulled: every temporal prospect has vanished. He invariably repels the idea, whenever his friends present it to him, of any improvement of his condition in this world as plainly impossible.' 2. 'If he here utters his expectation that God will interfere to reward his piety in the present life, he completely abandons his own position and adopts [that of the friends
- ↑ Job's vindication, thinks Ewald, would be incomplete if at least the spirit of the dead man did not witness it.
