Here it is difficult not to see that the circumstances of the poet’s age are reflected in his words. The whole Jewish nation became ‘a byword of peoples’ during the exile,^[30] and the mutual sympathy of its members was continually taxed. It was a paradox which never lost its strangeness that a ‘Servant of Jehovah’ should be trampled upon by unbelievers, and the persecutor was rewarded by the silent indignation of all good Jews. That this is the right view is shown by the depression into which Job falls in vv. 11-16, in spite of the elevating passage quoted above.

Bildad’s speech, with its barbed allusions to Job’s sad history, had a twofold effect. First of all it raised the anguish of Job to its highest point, and, secondly, it threw the sufferer back on that great intuition, already reached by him, of a Divine Witness to his integrity in the heavens. It is a misfortune which can scarcely be appraised too highly that the text of the famous declaration in xix. 25-27 is so uncertain. ‘The embarrassment of the English translators,’ remarks Prof. Green, of Princeton,^[31] ‘is shown by the unusual number of italic words, and these of no small importance to the meaning, which are heaped together in these verses.’ It is scarcely greater, however, than that of the ancient versions, and we can hardly doubt that the text used by the Septuagint translator was already at least as corrupt as that which has descended to us from the Massoretic critics.^[32] This would the more easily be the case since, as Prof. Green says again, ‘Job is speaking under strong excitement and in the language of lofty poetry; he uses no superfluous words; he simply indicates his meaning in the most concise manner.’ Without now entering on a philological discussion, we have, I think, to choose between these alternatives, one of which involves emending the text, the other does not. Does Job simply repeat what he has said in xvi. 18, 19 (viz. that God will avenge his blood and make reparation, as it were, for his death by testifying to his innocence), without referring to any consequent pleasure of his own, or does he combine with this the delightful thought expressed in xiv. 13-15 of a conscious renewal of communion with God after death?^[33] 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.^[34]

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.

And I know my redeemer liveth, and last on earth shall he arise; and after my skin, which has been destroyed thus, and out of my flesh [i.e. when my vital spirit shall be separated from my flesh] shall I see God....

Most critics are now agreed that the immediately preceding words (vv. 23, 24) are not an introduction, as if vv. 25-27 composed the rock inscription. Job first of all wishes what he knows to be impossible, and then announces a far better thing of which he is sure. His wish runs thus:

But whatever view we take of the prospect which gladdened the mind of Job, his remaining speeches contain no further reference to it. Henceforth his thoughts appear to dwell less on his own condition, and more on the general question of God’s moral government, and even when the former is spoken of it is without the old bitterness. In his next speech, stirred up by the gross violence of Zophar, Job for the first time meets the assertions of the three friends in this cycle of argument, viz. that the wicked, at any rate, always get their deserts, and, according to Zophar, suddenly and overwhelmingly. He meets them by a direct negative, though in doing so he is as much perturbed as when he proclaimed his own innocence to God’s face. He is familiar now with the thought that the righteous are not always recompensed, but it fills him with horror to think that the Governor of the world even leaves the wicked in undeserved prosperity, as if, in the language of Eliphaz, He could not ‘judge through the thick clouds’ (xxii. 16).

It is not wonderful that the gulf between Job and his friends should only be widened by such a direct contradiction of the orthodox tenet. The friends, indeed, cannot but feel the force of Job’s appeal to experience, as they show by the violence of their invective. But they are neither candid nor, above all, courageous enough to confess the truth; they speak, as the philosopher Kant observes, as if they knew their powerful Client was listening in the background. And so a third cycle of speeches begins (chaps. xxii.-xxxi.), in which the friends grasp the only weapon left them and charge Job directly with being a great sinner. True to his character, however, Eliphaz even here seeks to soften the effect of his accusations by a string of most enticing promises, partly worldly and partly other-worldly in their character, and which in a different context Job would have heartily appreciated (xxii. 21-30).

But Job cares not to reply to those charges of Eliphaz; his mind is still too much absorbed in the painful mystery of his own lot and that of all other righteous sufferers. He longs for God to set up his tribunal, so that Job and his fellows might plead their cause (xxiii. 3-7, xxiv. 1). What most of all disturbs him is that he cannot see God—that is cannot detect the operation of that moral God in whom his heart cannot help believing. ‘I may go forward, but he is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive him’ (xxiii. 8). With the ardour of a pessimist he depicts this failure of justice in the darkest colours (chap. xxiv.), and is as powerless as ever to reconcile his deep sense of what God ought to be and must be and the sad realities of life. Upon this Bildad tries to frighten Job into submission by a picture of God’s irresistible power, as exhibited not only in heaven and earth, but even beneath the ocean depths in the realm of the shades (xxv., xxvi. 5-14). Not a very comforting speech, but fine in its way (if Bildad may really be credited with all of it), and the speaker frankly allows its inadequacy.

In a speech, the first which is described as a mashal,^[37] Job demolishes his unoriginal and rhetorical opponent, and with dignity reasserts his innocence (xxvi. 1-4, xxvii. 1-7). He may have said more; if so, it has been lost. But, in fact, all that was argumentative in Bildad’s speech was borrowed from Eliphaz, and though Job had the power (see chaps. ix., xii.), he had not the will to compete with his friends in rhetoric. The only speaker who is left is Zophar, and, as it is unlikely that the poet left one of his triads of speeches imperfect, we may conjecture that xxvii. 8-10, 10-23 belongs to the third speech of Zophar.^[38] Certainly they are most inappropriate in the mouth of Job, being in direct contradiction to all that he has yet said. If so it seems very probable that besides the introductory formula a few opening verses have dropped out of the text. The verses which now stand at the head of the speech transport us to the disputes of those rival schools of which Job and his friends were only the representatives. Hence the use of the plural in ver. 12, of which an earlier instance occurs in the second speech of Bildad (xviii. 2). What Zophar says is in effect this: Job’s condition is desperate, for he is an ‘impious’ or ‘godless’ man. It is too late for 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,^[39] 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 deeply cherished desire for an investigation of his case by Shaddai. With what proud self-possession he imagines himself approaching the Divine Judge! In his hands are the accusations of his friends and his own reply. Holding them forth, he exclaims—

We must here turn back to a passage which forms one of the most admired portions of the Book of Job as it stands—the mashal on Divine Wisdom in chap. xxviii. The first eleven verses are at first sight most inappropriate in this connection. The poet seems to take a delight in working into them all that he knows of the adventurous operations of the miners of his day—probably those carried on for gold in Upper Egypt, and for copper and turquoises in the Sinaitic peninsula (both skilfully introduced by Ebers into his stories of ancient Egypt). How vividly the superiority of reason to instinct is brought out to vary the technical description of the miners’ work in vv. 7, 8.

No earthly treasures lie too deep for human industry; but—here we see the use of the great literary feat (Prov. i.-ix.) which has gone before—‘where can wisdom be found, and where is the place of understanding?’ And then follows that fine passage in which language is strained to the uttermost (with another of those pictorial inventories in which poets delight, vv. 15-19) to convey at once the preciousness and the unattainableness of the higher wisdom. The moral of the whole, however, is not revealed till the last verse.

Thus there is no allusion whatever to Job’s problem, and it is only the present position of the mashal in the Book of Job which suggests a possible relation for it to that problem.

And now, looking at the passage by itself, is it conceivable that it was originally written to stand where it now does? Is it natural that the solemn contents of chap. xxvii. (even if we allow the first seven verses only to be Job’s) should leave Job in a mood for an elaborate poetical study of mining operations, or that after agonising so long over the painful riddles of Divine Providence he should suddenly acquiesce in the narrow limits of human knowledge, soon, however, to relapse into his old inquisitiveness? Is it not, on the other hand, very conceivable (notice the opening word ‘For’) that it was transferred to its present position from some other work? In a didactic poem on Wisdom (i.e. the plan of the universe), similar to Prov. i.-ix., it would be as much in place as the hymn on Wisdom in Prov. viii. To this great work indeed it presents more than one analogy, both in its subject and its recommendation of religious morality (or moral religion) as the branch of wisdom suitable to man. The only difference is that the writer of Job xxviii. expressly says that this is the only wisdom within human ken, whereas the writer of Prov. viii. does not touch on this point. But, whether an extract from a larger work or written as a supplement to the poem of Job, the passage in its present position is evidently intended to have a reference to Job’s problem. The author, or the extractor, regarded the foregoing debates much as Milton regarded those of the fallen angels, who ‘found no end, in wandering mazes lost;’ in short, he could only solve the problem by pronouncing it insoluble.^[41] Verses 11 and 12 of chap. xxvii. have very much the appearance of an artificial bridge inserted by the new author or the extractor.

At a (perhaps) considerably later period than the original work (including chap. xxviii.)—symbolised by the youthfulness of Elihu as compared with the four older friends—the problem of the sufferings of the innocent still beset the minds of the wise men, the attempt of the three friends to ‘justify the ways of God’ to the intellect having proved, as the wise men thought, a too manifest failure (xxxii. 2, 3). One of their number therefore invented a fourth friend, Elihu (or is this the name of the author himself?^[42]), who is described as having been a listener during the preceding debates, and who reduces Job to silence. It is noteworthy that the sudden introduction of Elihu required the insertion of a fresh narrative passage (xxxii. 1-6) as a supplement to the original prologue.

I assume, as the reader will observe, the one assured result of the criticism of Job. To those who follow me in this, the speeches of Elihu will, I think, gain greatly in interest. They mark out a time when, partly through the teaching of history, partly through a deeper inward experience, and partly through the reading of the poem of Job, the old difficulties of faith were no longer so acutely felt. Two courses were open to the Epigoni of that age—either to force Job to say what, as it seemed, he ought to have said (this, however, was not so easy as in the case of Ecclesiastes), or to insert fresh speeches in the style of the original, separating the corn from the chaff in the pleadings of the three friends, and adding whatever a more advanced religious thought suggested to the writer. In forms of expression, however, it must be admitted that Elihu does not shine. (True, he does not profess to comfort Job.) For offensiveness the two following verses are not easily matched:

A ‘vulgar braggart’ he may not be from an Oriental point of view, nor is he ‘the prototype of the Bachelor in Faust;’ but that he is too positive and dogmatic, and much overrates his own powers, is certain. He represents the dogmatism of a purified orthodoxy, which thinks too much of its minute advances (‘one perfect in knowledge is with thee,’ xxxvi. 4).

Elihu distributes his matter (of which he says that he is ‘full,’ xxxii. 18-20) over four speeches. His themes in the first three are: 1, the ground and object of suffering (chaps. xxxii., xxxiii.); 2, the righteousness of God (chap. xxxiv.); and 3, the use of religion (chap. xxxv.), all of which are treated in relation to the questionable or erroneous utterances of Job. Then, in his last and longest effort, Elihu unrolls before Job a picture of the government of God, in its beneficence and righteousness as well as its omnipotence, in the hope of moving Job to self-humiliation (chaps. xxxvi., xxxvii.) Let us remember again that Elihu represents the debates of the ‘wise men’ of the post-regal period, who were conscious of being in some sense ‘inspired’ like their prophetic predecessors (xxxii. 8, xxxvi. 4; Ecclus. xxiv. 32-34, l. 28, 29), so that we cannot believe that the bizarre impression made by Elihu on some Western critics was intended by the original author. That his portrait suggests certain grave infirmities, may be granted; but these are the failings of the circle to which the author belongs: the self-commendation of Elihu in his exordium is hardly excessive from an Oriental point of view, or would at any rate be justifiable in a more original thinker. Indeed, he only commends himself in order to excuse the unusual step of criticising the proceedings of men so much older than himself. After what he thinks sufficient excuse has been offered, Elihu takes up Job’s fundamental error, self-righteousness, but prepares the way by examining Job’s assertion (xix. 7, xxx. 20) that God took no heed of his complaints.

To this Elihu replies that it is a man’s own fault if he cannot hear the Divine voice. For God is constantly speaking to man, if man would only regard it (‘revelation,’ then, is not confined to a class or a succession). Two means of communication are specially mentioned—nightly dreams and visions, and severe sickness. The object of both is to divert men from courses of action which can only lead to destruction. At this point a remarkable intimation is given. In order to produce conversion, and so to ‘redeem a man from going down to the pit,’ a special angelic agency is necessary—that of a ‘mediator’ or ‘interpreter’ (Targ. p’raqlītā; comp. παράκλητος, John xiv. 16, 26), whose office it is to ‘show unto man his rightness’ (i.e. how to conform his life to the right standard, xxxiii. 23).

We must pause here, however, to consider the bearings of this. It seems to show us, first, that inspired minds (see above) were already beginning to refine and elevate the popular notions of the spiritual world. That there were two classes of spirits, the one favourable, the other adverse to man, had long been the belief of the Israelites and their neighbours.^[45] The author of the speeches of Elihu now introduces one of them among the symbols of a higher stage of religion. In antithesis to the ‘destroyers’^[46] (ver. 22) he implies that God has thousands of angels (the ‘mediator’ is ‘one among a thousand’), whose business it is to save sinners from destruction by leading them to repentance. Such is the φιλανθρωπία, the friendliness to man, of the angelic world, without which indeed, according to Elihu, the purpose of sickness would be unobserved and a fatal issue inevitable. To students of Christianity, however, it has a deeper interest, if the concluding words, ‘I have found a ransom,’ be a part of the Old Testament foundation of the doctrine of redemption through Christ. This, however, is questionable, and even its possibility is not recognised by the latest orthodox commentator.^[47] In his second speech Elihu returns to the main question of Job’s attitude towards God. He begins by imputing to Job language which he had never used, and which from its extreme irreverence Job would certainly have disowned (xxxiv. 5, 9), and maintains that God never acts unjustly, but rewards every man according to his deeds. There is nothing in his treatment of this theme which requires comment except its vagueness and generality, to which, were the speech an integral part of the poem, Job would certainly have taken exception.

The subject of the third speech is handled with more originality. Job had really complained that afflicted persons such as himself appealed to God in vain (xxiv. 12, xxx. 20). Elihu replies to this (xxxv. 9-13) that such persons merely cried from physical pain, and did not really pray. The fourth and last speech, in which he dismisses controversy and expresses his own sublime ideas of the Creator, has the most poetical interest. At the very outset the solemnity of his language prepares the reader to expect something great, and the expectation is not altogether disappointed. ‘God,’ he says, ‘is mighty, but despiseth not any’ (xxxvi. 5); He has given proof of this by the trials with which He visits His servants when they have fallen into sin. Might and mercy are the principal attributes of God. The verses in which Elihu applies this doctrine to Job’s case are ambiguous and perhaps corrupt, but it appears as if Elihu regarded Job as in danger of missing the disciplinary object of his sufferings. It is in the second part of his speech (xxxvi. 26-xxxvii. 24) that Elihu displays his greatest rhetorical power, and though by no means equal to the speeches of Jehovah, which it appears to imitate, the vividness of its descriptions has obtained the admiration of no less competent a judge than Alexander von Humboldt. The moral is intended to be that, instead of criticising God, Job should humble himself in devout awe at the combined splendour and mystery of the creation.

It is tempting to regard the sketch of the storm in xxxvi. 29-xxxvii. 5 and the appeals which Elihu makes to Job as preparatory to the appearance of Jehovah in xxxviii. 1. ‘While Elihu is speaking,’ says Mr. Turner, ‘the clouds gather, a storm darkens the heavens and sweeps across the landscape, and the thunder utters its voice ... out of the whirlwind that passes by Jehovah speaks.’^[48] So too Dr. Cox thinks that Job’s invisible Opponent ‘opens His mouth and answers him out of the tempest which Elihu has so graphically described.’^[49] In fact in xxxviii. 1 we may equally well render ‘the tempest’ (i.e. that lately mentioned) and ‘a tempest.’ The objection is (1) that the storm does not come into the close of Elihu’s speech, as it ought to do, and (2) that in His very first words Jehovah distinctly implies that the last speaker was one who ‘darkened counsel by words without knowledge’ (xxxviii. 3).

Such are the contributions of Elihu, which gain considerably when considered as a little treatise in themselves. It is, indeed, a strange freak of fancy to regard Elihu as representing the poet himself.^[50] Neither æsthetically nor theologically do they reach the same high mark as the remainder of the book. ‘The style of Elihu,’ as M. Renan remarks, ‘is cold, heavy, pretentious. The author loses himself in long descriptions without vivacity.... His language is obscure and presents peculiar difficulties. In the other parts of the poem the obscurity comes from our ignorance and our scanty means of comprehending these ancient documents; here the obscurity comes from the style itself, from its bizarrerie and affectation.’^[51] Theologically it is difficult to discover any important point (but see Chap. XII., below, on Elihu) in which, in spite of his sharp censure of the friends, he distinctly passes beyond them. His arguments have been so largely anticipated by the three friends that, on the whole, we may perhaps best regard chaps. xxxii.-xxxix. as a first theological criticism on the contents of the original work. From this point of view it is interesting that the idea of affliction as correction, which had already occurred to Eliphaz, acquired in the course of years a much deeper hold on thinking minds (see xxxiii. 19-30, xxxvi. 8-10). There is one feature of the earlier speeches which is not imitated by Elihu, and that is the long and terrifying descriptions in each of the three original colloquies of the fate of the impious man, and one of the most considerate of Elihu’s Western critics^[52] thinks it possible that Elihu, who says in one place—

considered no calamity whatever as penal in the first instance.

‘The words of Job are ended’ (xxxi. 40b), remarks the ancient editor, and amongst the last of these words is an aspiration after a meeting with God. That Job expected such a favour in this life is in the highest degree improbable, whatever view be taken of xix. 25-27. It is true, he sometimes did almost regard a theophany as possible, though he feared it might be granted under conditions which would make it the reverse of a boon (ix. 3, 15, 33-35; xiii. 21, 22). He wished for a fair investigation of his character, and he craved that God would not appear in too awful a form. It seems at first sight as if Jehovah, casting hard questions at Job out of the tempest, and ignoring both the friends’ indictment and Job’s defence (xxxi. 35-37), were realising Job’s worst fears and acting as his enemy. The friends had already sought to humble Job by pointing him to the power and wisdom and goodness of God, and Job had proved conclusively that he was no stranger to these high thoughts. Is the poet consistent with himself, first, in introducing Jehovah at all, and, secondly, in making Him overpower Job by a series of sharp, ironical questions? Several answers may be given if we wish to defend the unity of the poem. Job himself (it may be said) has not continued at the same high level of faith as in xix. 25-27 (assuming Prof. Davidson’s view of the passage); he needs the appearance of Jehovah more than he did then. As to the course attributed in xxxviii. 1 to Jehovah, this too (the poet may have felt in adding these speeches) was really the best for Job. Jehovah might no doubt have declared Job to be in the right as against his friends. He might next have soothed the sufferer’s mind by revealing the reason why his trials were permitted (we know this from the Prologue). But this would not have been for Job’s spiritual welfare: there was one lesson he needed to learn or to relearn, one grace of character he needed to gain or to regain—namely, devout and trustful humility towards God. In the heat of debate and under the pressure of pain Job’s old religious habit of mind had certainly been weakened—not destroyed, but weakened—and a strong remedy was necessary if he was not to carry his distracted feelings to the grave. And so, as a first joyful surprise, came the theophany: to ‘see’ God before death must have been a joyful surprise; and if the questioning cast him down, yet it was only to raise him up in the strength of self-distrust. The object of these orations of Jehovah is not to communicate intellectual light, but to give a stronger tone to Job’s whole nature. He had long known God to be strong and wise and good, but more as a lesson learned than as personal experience (xlii. 5). And the means first adopted to convey this life-giving ‘sight’ is not without a touch of that humour which we noticed in the Prologue. Job, who was so full of questions, now has the tables turned upon him. He is put through a catechism which admits of but one very humbling answer, each question being attached to a wonderfully vivid description of some animal or phenomenon. For descriptive power the first speech of Jehovah, at any rate, is without a parallel. The author, as Prof. Davidson remarks, ‘knew the great law that sublimity is necessarily also simplicity.’ It is true he does but give us isolated features of the natural world: no single scene is represented in its totality. But this is in accordance with the Hebrew genius, to which nature appears, not in her own simple beauty, but bathed in an atmosphere of emotion. The emotion which here animates the poet is mainly a religious one; it is the love of God, and of God’s works for the sake of their Maker. He wishes to cure the murmuring spirits of his own day by giving them wider views of external nature and its mysteries, so wondrously varied and so full of Divine wisdom and goodness. He has this great advantage in doing so, that they, like himself (and Job), are theists; they are not of those who say in their heart, ‘There is no God,’ but of the ‘Zion’ who complains, ‘Jehovah has forsaken me, and my Lord has forgotten me’ (Isaiah xlix. 14). And the remedy which he applies is the same as that of the Babylonian-Jewish prophet, a wider study of the ways of God. Job had said, ‘I would tell Him the number of my steps;’ Jehovah replies by showing him, in a series of questions, not irritating but persuasive, the footprints of His own larger self-manifestation.

The Divine Speaker is introduced by the poet thus:

A storm was the usual accompaniment of a Divine appearance: there was no intention of crushing Job with terror. In Blake’s thirteenth drawing Job (and his wife!) are represented kneeling and listening, with countenances expressive of thankfulness; in his fourteenth, Job and his four friends kneel rapt and ecstatic, while the ‘sons of God,’ sweet, vital, heavenly forms, are shouting for joy. In fact, the speeches of Jehovah contain, not accusations (except in xxxviii. 2), but remonstrances, and, though the form of these is chilling to Job’s self-love, yet the glorious visions which they evoke are healing to every sorrow of the mind. The text of the speeches is unfortunately not in perfect order. For instance, there are four verses which have, no one can tell how, been deposited in the description of behemoth (xli. 9-12, A. V.) but which most probably at one time or another opened the first speech of Jehovah. Perhaps the author himself removed them, feeling them to be too depressing for Job to hear; or perhaps it was purely by accident that they were transferred, and Merx and Bickell have done well to replace them in their corrected editions of Job between xxxi. 37 and xxxviii. 1. As corrected by the former they run thus:—

We must regard this as a soliloquy, after which, directly addressing Job, Jehovah upbraids the ‘mighty speaker’ with having shut himself out by his ‘blind clamour’ from a view of the Divine plan of his life.

To gain that ‘knowledge’ which will ‘make darkness light before him,’ Job must enrich his conception of God. Those striking pictures already referred to have no lower aim than to display the great All-wise God, and the irony of the catechising is only designed to bring home the more forcibly to Job human littleness and ignorance. Modern readers, however, cannot help turning aside to admire the genius of the poet and his sympathetic interest in nature. His scientific ideas may be crude; but he observes as a poet, and not as a naturalist. Earth, sea, and sky successively enchain him, and we can hardly doubt that the natural philosophy of the Chaldæans was superficially at least known to him.^[53] In his childlike curiosity and willingness to tell us everything he reminds us of the poet of the Commedia.

‘The laws of heaven!’ Can we refuse to observe the first beginnings of a conception of the cosmos, remembering other passages of the Wisdom Literature in which the great world plan is distinctly referred to? Without denying a pre-Exile, native Hebrew tendency (comp. Job xxxviii. 33 with Jer. xxxi. 35, 36) may we not suppose that the physical theology of Babylonia had a large part in determining the form of this conception? Notice the reference to the influence of the sky upon the earth, and especially the Hebraised Babylonian phrase Mazzaroth (i.e. mazarati,^[57] plural of mazarta, a watch), the watches or stations of the moon which marked the progress of the month. But it is not so much the intellectual curiosity manifest in these verses which we would dwell upon now as the poetic vigour of the gallery of zoology, and, we must add, the faith which pervades it, reminding us of a Bedouin prayer quoted by Major Palmer, ‘O Thou who providest for the blind hyæna, provide for me!’ Ten (or nine) specimens of animal life are given—the lion and (perhaps) the raven,^[58] the wild goat and the hind, the wild ass, the wild ox,^[59] the ostrich, the war horse, the hawk and the eagle. It is to this portion that the student must turn who would fain know the highest attainments of the Hebrew genius in pure poetry, such as Milton would have recognised as poetry. The delighted wonder with which the writer enters into the habits of the animals, and the light and graceful movement of the verse, make the ten descriptions referred to an ever-attractive theme, I will not say for the translator, but for the interpreter. They are ideal, as the Greek sculptures are ideal, and need the pen of that poet-student, faint hints of whose coming have been given us in Herder and Rückert. The finest of them, of course, is that of one of the animals most nearly related in Arabia to man (in Arabia, but not in Judæa), the horse.

The terrible element in animal instincts seems indeed to fascinate the mind of our poet; he closes his gallery with a sketch of the cruel instincts of the glorious eagle. We are reminded, perhaps, of the lines of a poet painter inspired by Job—

And now we might almost think that the object of the theophany has been attained. Never more will Job presume to litigate with Shaddai, or measure the doings of God by his puny intellect. He has learned the lesson expressed in Dante’s line—

but also that higher lesson, so boldly expressed by the same poet, that in all God’s works, without exception, three attributes are seen united—

He is silenced, indeed, but only as with the poet of Paradise—