Read Ebook: Job and Solomon: Or The Wisdom of the Old Testament by Cheyne T K Thomas Kelly

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Ebook has 1328 lines and 119938 words, and 27 pages

Am I the sea or the sea monster, that thou settest a watch over me?

It is an allusion to a myth, based on the continual 'war in heaven' between light and darkness, which we have in these lines. Job asks if he is the leviathan of that upper ocean above which dwells the invisible God . He describes Jehovah as being jealous and thinking it of importance to subdue Job's wild nature, lest he should thwart the Divine purposes. But here, again, Job rises above himself; the sorrows of all innocent sufferers are as present to him as his own; nay, more, he bears them as a part of his own; he represents mankind with God. In a bitter parody of Ps. viii. 5 he exclaims--

What is frail man that Thou treatest him as a great one and settest Thy mind upon him; that Thou scrutinisest him every morning, and art every moment testing him?

It is only now and then that Job expresses this feeling of sympathetic union with the human race. Generally his secret thought translates itself into a self-consciousness which seems morbidly extravagant on any other view of the poem. The descriptions of his physical pains, however, are true to the facts of the disease called elephantiasis, from which he may be supposed to have suffered. His cry for death is justified by his condition--'death rather than my pains' . He has no respite from his agony; 'nights of misery,' he says, 'have been allotted to me' , probably because his pains were more severe in the night . How can it be worth while, he asks, thus to persecute him? Even if Eliphaz be right, and Job has been a sinner, yet how can this affect the Most High?

if I have sinned, what do I unto thee, O thou watcher of men?

What bitter irony again! He admits a vigilance in God, but only the vigilance of 'espionage' , not that of friendly guardianship; God only aims at procuring a long catalogue of punishable sins. Why not forgive those sins and relieve Himself from a troublesome task? Soon it will be too late: a pathetic touch revealing a latent belief in God's mercy which no calamity could destroy.

Thus to the blurred vision of the agonised sufferer the moral God whom he used to worship has been transformed into an unreasoning, unpitying Force. Bildad is shocked at this. 'Can God pervert judgment'? In his short speech he reaffirms the doctrine of proportionate retribution, and exhorts Job to 'seek earnestly unto God' , thus clearly implying that Job is being punished for his sins. Instead of basing his doctrine on revelation, Bildad supports the side of it relative to the wicked by an appeal to the common consent of mankind previously to the present generation . This common consent, this traditional wisdom, is embodied in proverbial 'dark sayings,' as, for instance--

Can the papyrus grow up without marsh? can the Nile reed shoot up without water? While yet in its verdure, uncut, it withers before any grass. So fares it with all that forget God, and the hope of the impious shall perish .

It is interesting to see at how early a date the argument in favour of Theism was rested to some extent on tradition. 'We are of yesterday, and know nothing,' says Bildad, 'because our days on earth are a shadow' , whereas the wisdom of the past is centuries old, and has a stability to which Job's novelties cannot pretend. But Job at least is better than his theories, so Eliphaz and Bildad are still charitable enough to believe, and the closing words of the speech of Bildad clear up any possible doubt with regard to his opinion of erring but still whole-hearted Job.

Those that hate thee shalt be clothed with shame, and the tent of the wicked shall be no more .

But Job has much to say in reply. He ironically admits the truth of the saying, 'How can man be righteous with God?' but the sense in which he applies the words is very different from that given to them by his friends. Of course God is righteous , because He is so mighty that no one, however innocent, could plead successfully before Him. This thought suggests a noble description of the stupendous displays of God's might in nature . The verse with which it closes is adopted from Eliphaz, in whose first speech to Job it forms the text of a quiet picture of God's everyday miracles of benevolence to man . Where Eliphaz sees power, wisdom, and love, Job can see only a force which is terrible in proportion to its wisdom. The predominant quality in this idol of Job's imagination is not love, but anger--capricious, inexorable anger, which long ago 'the helpers of Rahab' experienced to their cost . Job himself is in collision with this force; and how should he venture to defend himself? The tortures he endured would force from him an avowal of untruths . If only God were a man, or if there were an umpire whose authority would be recognised on both sides, how gladly would Job submit his case to adjudication! But, alas! God stands over against him with His rod . Bildad had said, 'God will not cast away a perfect man' . But Job's experience is, 'He destroys the perfect and the wicked' . Thus Job has many fellow-sufferers, and one good effect of his trial is that it has opened his eyes to the religious bearings of facts which he had long known but not before now seriously pondered.

At last a milder spirit comes upon the sufferer. He has been in the habit of communion with God, and cannot bear to be condemned without knowing the cause . How, he enquires, can God have the heart to torture that which has cost Him so much thought ? A man is not a common potter's vessel, but framed with elaborate skill.

Thy hands fashioned and prepared me; afterwards dost thou turn and destroy me? Remember now that as clay thou didst prepare me, and dost thou turn me into dust again? Life and favour dost thou grant me, and thine oversight guarded my spirit .

God appeared to be kind then; but, since God sees the end from the beginning, it is too clear that He must have done all this simply in order to mature a perfect human sacrifice to His own cruel self-will. Job's milder spirit has evidently fled. He repeats his wish that he had never lived , and only craves a few brighter moments before he departs to the land of darkness .

It was not likely that Zophar would be more capable of rightly advising Job than his elders. Having had no experience to soften him, he pours out a flood of crude dogmatic commonplaces, and in the complaints wrung from a troubled spirit can see nothing but 'a multitude of words' . Yet he only just misses making an important contribution to the settlement of the problem. He has caught a glimpse of a supernatural wisdom, to which the secrets of all hearts are open:--

But oh that God would speak, and open his lips against thee. and show thee the secrets of wisdom, for wondrous are they in perfection! Canst thou find the depths of God ? canst thou reach to the end of Shaddai? Heights of heaven! what canst thou do? deeper than She?l! what canst thou know?

If Zophar had worked out this idea impartially, he might have given to the discussion a fresh and more profitable turn. He is so taken up with the traditional orthodoxy, however, that he has no room for a deeper view of the problem. His inference is that, in virtue of His perfect knowledge, God can detect sin where man sees none, though that cruellest touch of all with which the Massoretic text burdens the reputation of Zophar is not supported by the more accurate text of the Septuagint, and we should read xi. 6 thus:

and thou shouldest know that God gives unto thee thy deserts for thine iniquity.

But indeed a special revelation ought not to be necessary for Job. His trouble, proceeding as it does from one no less wise than irresistible , ought to dispel his dream of innocence; as Zophar generalises, when God's judgments are abroad--

an empty head wins understanding, and a wild ass's colt is new-born as a man .

We may pass over the brilliant description of prosperity consequent on a true repentance with which the chapter concludes. It fell quite unheeded on the ears of Job, who was more stung by the irritating speech of Zophar than by those of Eliphaz and Bildad.

The taunt conveyed indirectly by Zophar in xi. 12 is exposed in all its futility in the reply of Job. Zophar himself, however, he disdains to argue with; there is the same intolerable assumption of superiority in the speeches of all the three, and this he assails with potent sarcasm.

No doubt ye are mankind, and with you shall wisdom die. I too have understanding like you, and who knows not the like of this?

And now Job refuses to waste any more words on his opponents.

But as for me, to Shaddai would I speak, I crave to reason with God; But ye--are plasterers of lies, patchers of that which is worthless. Your commonplaces are proverbs of ashes; your bulwarks are bulwarks of clay .

He forms a new project, but shudders as he does so, for he feels sure of provoking God thereby to deadly anger. Be it so; a man who has borne till he can bear no longer can even welcome death.

Behold, let him slay me; I can wait no longer; still I will defend my ways to his face .

It is the sublimest of all affirmations of the rights of conscience. Job is confident of the success of his plea: 'This also victory to me, that an impious man cannot come before him' with such a good conscience. Thus virtue has an intrinsic value for Job, superior to that of prosperity or even life: moral victory would more than compensate for physical failure. He indulges the thought that God may personally take part in the argument , and in anticipation of this he sums up the chief points of his intended speech , such as, 'How many are my sins,' and 'Why chase dry stubble?' . Sad complaints of the melancholy lot of mankind follow, reminding us again that Job, like Dante in his pilgrimage, is not only an individual but a representative.

Man that is born of woman, short-lived and full of unrest, comes up as a flower and fades, flies as a shadow and continues not. And upon such an one keepest thou thine eye open, and me dost thou bring into judgment with thee!

Hard enough is the natural fate of man; why make it harder by exceptional severity? An early reader misunderstood this, and thought to strengthen Job's appeal by a reference to one of the commonplaces of Eliphaz . But ver. 5 shows that the idea which fills the mind of Job is the shortness of human life. A tree, when cut down according to the rules still current in Syria, displays a marvellous vitality; but man is only like the falling leaves of a tree , or like the canals of Egypt when the dykes and reservoirs are not properly kept up . If it were God's will to 'hide' Job in dark She?l for a time, and then to recall him to the light, how gladly would he 'wait' there, like a soldier on guard , till his 'relief' came !--a fascinating thought, on which, baseless though he considers it, Job cannot forbear to dwell. And the beauty of the passage is that the happiness of restoration to conscious life consists for Job in the renewal of loving communion between himself and his God . Alas! the dim light of She?l darkens the glorious vision and sends Job back into despair.

Footnote 4:

Jerome already saw this. He represents the Book of Job as composed mainly in hexameters with a dactylic and spondaic movement . Does he mean double trimeters?

Footnote 5:

Footnote 6:

Of the three friends Eliphaz comes from the Edomitish district of Teman, so famous for its wisdom; Bildad from the land of Shuah ; Zophar from Naamah, some unknown district east of the Jordan. How well these notes of place agree with the Aramaic colouring of the book!

Footnote 7:

Bishop Lowth admires the dramatic tact with which the poet makes Job err at first merely by the exaggeration of his complaints, thus inviting censure, which in turn leads to bold misstatements on Job's part.

Footnote 8:

Footnote 9:

Footnote 10:

The translation follows Bickell's text. The correction in line 2 of ver. 16 is from the Septuagint; the transposition in line 4 is suggested by 1 Kings xix. 12.

Footnote 11:

Footnote 12:

Footnote 13:

The following lines develope what Job may be supposed to have had in his mind.

Footnote 14:

Thomson has finely but inaccurately paraphrased this, changing the localities:--

'In Cairo's crowded streets The impatient merchant, wondering, waits in vain, And Mecca saddens at the long delay.'

Footnote 15:

Contrast the touchingly natural expressions of an Arabian poet, translated by R?ckert :--

'Gieng es nicht wie mir vil andern, W?rd' ich's nicht ertragen; Doch wo ich nur will, gibt Antwort Klage meinen Klagen.'

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