according to the limited view of the prophets, was bound indissolubly to the Holy Land. The only promise, therefore, which would be consolatory for suffering Israel, the only possible sign of God's restored favour, was a material one including fresh 'children' and many flocks and herds (Isa. liv. 1, lx. 7). Observe in this connection the phrase, xlii. 10, 'Jehovah turned the fortunes of Job' (others, as A. V., 'turned the captivity of Job')—the phrase so well known in passages relating to Israel (e.g. Ps. xiv. 7, Joel iii. 1).
The explanation is perhaps adequate. Some, however, will be haunted by a doubt whether the author of the prologue would not have thrown more energy and enthusiasm into the closing narrative. An early reader, probably of Pharisaic leanings, felt the poverty of the epilogue,[1] and sought to remedy it by the following addition in the Septuagint: 'And Job died, old and full of days; and it is written that he will rise again with those whom the Lord raiseth.'[2] The remainder of the Septuagint appendix testifies only to the love of the later Jews for amplifying Biblical notices (see Chap. VII.) Our own poet painter has also amplified the details of the epilogue, but in how different a way! (Gilchrist's Life of Blake, i. 332-3).
- ↑ Other readers, however, found no difficulty in the close of the story; to such St. James addresses himself in the words, 'Ye have heard of the endurance of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord' (James v. 11), i.e. the blessed end vouchsafed by the Lord to Job. It was also, no doubt, such a reader who composed the beautiful romance of Tobit, to show that, however tried, the righteous man is at last delivered by his God.
- ↑ Those rabbis who in later times held this view appear to have assumed that Job was of the Israelitish race (Frankl in Grätz's Monatsschrift, 1872, p. 311).
