any one to attempt to pray when overtaken by a fatal calamity. For how can he feel that 'deep delight' in God which enables a man to pray, with the confidence of being heard, 'in every season' of life, whether prosperous or the reverse? The rest of the speech is substantially a repetition of Zophar's former description of the retribution of the wicked. It was not to be expected that Job should reply to this, and accordingly we find that in continuing his mashal (xxix. 1) he utterly ignores his opponents. But unhappily he is almost as far as ever from a solution of his difficulty. His friends, we may suppose, have left him, and he is at liberty to revive those melancholy memories which are all that remain to him of his prosperity.
In chap. xxix. (a fine specimen of flowing, descriptive Hebrew poetry) Job recalls the honour in which he used to be held, and the beneficent acts which he was enabled to perform. Modesty were out of place, for he is already in the state of 'one turned adrift among the dead' (Ps. lxxxviii. 5). The details remind us of many Arabic elegies in the Hamâsa (e.g. No. 351 in Rückert's adaptation, vol. i., or 97 in Freytag). In chaps. xxx., xxxi. he laments, with the same pathetic self-contemplation, his ruined credit and the terrible progress of his disease. Then, by a somewhat abrupt transition,[1] he enters upon an elaborate profession of his innocence, which has been compared to the solemn repudiation of the forty-two deadly sins by the departed souls of the good in the Egyptian 'Book of the Dead.' The resemblance, however, must not be pressed too far. Job's morality, even if predominantly 'legal,' has a true 'evangelical' tinge. Not merely the act of adultery, but the glance of lust; not merely unjust gain, but the confidence reposed in it by the heart; not merely outward conformity to idol-worship, but the inclination of the heart to false gods, are in his catalogue of sins. His last words are a reiteration of his
- ↑ It seems clear that chap. xxii. was not written as the sequel of chap. xxx. Since, however, it bears such a strong impress of originality, one can only suppose that the author placed it here by an afterthought, and omitted to construct a connecting link with the preceding chapter.
