The new book of Job

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Class 15 S)4 -l£.

Book * S 5

Copyright^

Preface

As a star of the first magnitude, and of the softest and purest ray serene, the book of Job stands at the zenith of the literary firmament of all time. There, and from thence, it overshines the glow-worm world of modern poetics as far as it excels the brightest in the galaxy of antiquity.

At the least, there is a consensus of opinion among those best qualified to judge of such matters, that of all the great literary works of old which have been preserved to us of the present day, Job is the greatest. "Nothing, I think," says Carlyle, "of equal literary merit has ever been written — so soft and great, like the summer midnight with its stars and suns."

And Froude, the English historian and critic, says in one of his six short lessons on six great subjects, Job beino- one of them: "It is a work of which it is to sav little to call it unequalled of its kind. And some day, perhaps, when it is allowed to stand on its own merits, it will be seen towering up and alone, far above all poetry of the world."

It is also a canon of literary criticism that no really

iv great work in its department ever is,, or can be, immediately and fully apprehended. For a full and clear apprehension of such a work the judgment of posterity, and the verdict of Time are necessary ; and for these the world must wait. We may take in the dimensions of a mole-hill standing close by it ; but we must go back from the base of a lofty mountain to a distance in space proportionate to the bigness of the mountain before we can take in all its own and its relative proportions. It is so with a great book ; the world must wait until it has retired to a distance in time commensurate with the greatness of that book before it can even begin rightly to apprehend it.

Tried by this test alone, Job should still be the greatest of books ; for, being, as it is, one of the oldest books in the world today, it is yet the least rightly understood of them all. And it is so; Job is the Mont Blanc of the Bible, the monarch of all its literary mountains. The ancients never made anything like a systematic survey of its stupendous sides, and the moderns are no nearer its summit than they. Indeed, modern scholarship and criticism, hard, literal, and mechanical in their spirit and method alike, have proven themselves a thousand times over wholly incompetent to deal successfully with the problems of this great, simple, divine book- — so anciently written, and in a style, and by a method, the art and science of which have for ages been lost to the world.

The only correct apprehension of even the general and fundamental character of the work ever had, either anciently or modernly, was that of Ezra, the Jewish Priest, and author of one of the books of the Bible. After the return of his people from the captivity of Babylon, about 538 B. C, Ezra made a new classification of the sacred scriptures then in their possession, and, presumably, after as careful and conscientious a study of the subject as he was capable of giving it, placed Job among the prophets, where it had always rightfully belonged. This golden glimpse of the truth of the whole matter was speedily swallowed up and lost in the general darkness of the time, which was very great ; and the successors in office to the noble, and, so far, illumined priest, soon miscorrected his true classification of the book, and placed it back among the hagiographa.. or simply sacred writings, without farther definition of their special function or scope. There the book remains to this day — "an exquisite gem in the casket of revelation, engraved with symbolical characters throughout, and with nothing literal thereon to mar the consistency of its beauty." No, it is added, nor to interrupt or confuse its orderly and consecutive interpretation from beginning to end on purely symbolical grounds. This fine bit of eulogy was written by its author for the Song of Solomon — than which nothing more beautiful was ever sung or said ; but it also applies so perfectly and admirably to this greater song than Solomon's, that the temptation to quote and so apply it is irresistible.

For Job is a great and flawless gem in the casket of revelation, although as yet mainly unrevealed. It is engraved with symbolical characters throughout, and there is nothing whatever of a literal kind or character upon it or within it. It is purely prophetical in its character, and strictly symbolical its method.

But now the reason why the author of the book of Ezra could say no more of Job than "It is prophecy of some kind," is not far to seek nor hard to find. It was Messianic prophecy — the first event in the fulfillment of which was yet to be, as it has since become, the advent of the Christ, as its foreshadowed Messiah. This event lay yet more than five centuries forward of that time ; there was, therefore, nothing whatever in the world of actual and historic events to correspond to or with the types and shadows of the typical and pro-

VI phetical story; neither would there be any such during all of this long intervening period of time.

And it is in this circumstance that we find the explanation of the reason why the book of Job must necessarily remain a sealed book to all, from the date of its composition down to the time of the coming of him of whom, and of his work in the world, it is air testimony. Then, and not until then, the typical and shadowy characters and events of the story would first begin to clothe and incarnate themselves, as it were, in the flesh and blood of actual and living history.

Then, after _the first great event of the prophetical story had taken place in the advent of Christ, the world must still wait until a majority of the events foreshadowed therein had occurred, before anything like a complete chain of historic correspondences thereto could be constructed from the beginning to the end thereof.

Meanwhile, it was inevitable that many curious and mostly erroneous speculations should be made on the subject matter of the book by the wise and learned — all based, as they have been, on one fundamental and always fatal error, that of assuming the historic verity of the work to begin with, and then treating it on that false hypothesis. Nothing but error could possibly result from this. They have read this great representative piece of work much as school children read their text books at first, taking that literally which is figurative or representative.

They believe, or profess to believe, that there Avas a man in the land of Uz by the name of Job ; that he had seven sons and three daughters, a vast herd of sheep and cattle, and was the head of a very great household, simply for the school boy reason that it says so in the book. At the same time, they find it very convenient, for themselves,, to practically ignore the fact that the numbers of his sons and daughters, together with those of all of his flocks and herds of domestic animals, and

vii of his friends who come to comfort him of the great calamities which afterward befall him, are all of them well known symbolical numbers of the Bible. This symbolical enumeration of things runs quite through the entire work ; yet these professors of Bible exegesis accept them all as literal numbers, knowing that they are not so, simply because they know not what to do with them as symbolical numbers.

But when it comes to the going forth of Satan from the presence of the Lord, and smiting Job with sore boils from sole to crown, then perforce they own, very unwillingly, that something of the supernatural is indicated ; this, they say, must be a symbolical act of some kind or other, still sticking- for the literal, real person of Job. So Satan smote a literal body with symbolical sores — a feat of Satanic skill and ingenuity which could be parallelled only by sowing literal sores on a symbolical body. And this is the sort of thing throughout, so far as Job is concerned, which they call "critical and expository" comment. Aside from much interesting and valuable information on side issues, there is nothing better than this in any of the standard commentaries on Job, when it comes to elucidation of the text proper, so that one is constrained to think that it is among those things of which Jesus said they are hidden from the wise and prudent, and revealed only to babes.

And now, after many years of that search of the scriptures which Jesus enjoined upon us, saying, as he said, that they testify of him, it is confidently asserted by the writer hereof that the book of Job is a book of one single, sole, and divine idea, and is of a method of construction as single, sole, and divine as its idea. That idea is the Messianic Idea — the most simple, natural, and divine of all ideas. And that method is the method of Spiritual-Natural Correspondence — the most natural, simple, and divine of all methods of construction, whether it may be of a book or a universe.

vm

In this wonderful piece of work which we call the Book of Job, each and every named and described form of man, or bird, or beast, whether great or small, is a chosen form and name of some divine idea of its author and inspirer, who is God. Every related or described fact, event, or phenomenon, is the same. And none of these persons, events, and phenomena ever had existence or occurred in the world of reality, as related and described. But all and singular are chosen and constructed names and forms designed to be representative of real persons, real events, facts and phenomena of the future, yet to be embodied and realized in the Messianic age and the records of Christian history. Hence any and all criticism of this ancient piece of Messianic prophecy which shall be worthy the name, must necessarily resolve itself, first, into a search for the discovery of the whole divine idea of it all. Then, for the meaning and purpose of all its many and several parts, their relation to each other, and to the whole work. The clue to the first, last, and final meaning of it all, is in that saying of the Christ — that the scriptures are they that testify of Him. This clue, well followed out, soon leads to the discoverv that the whole meanino" of the work is Messianic, that it relates to the Christ, yet to come, and to His Avork in the world. Then, what remains is to ascertain how and in what way it testifies of Him. Only, as says M. Antoninus, "Take care that thou makest the inquiry by a sure method." Both a safe and sound governing principle of interpretaion to begin with,, then a sure method of application also, are indispensably necessary to a successful search of this oldest and most mysterious book of the Bible.

With these to gxwern-, guide and direct, the book of Job, from the most mysterious and difficult of books, becomes the simplest book ever written, the easiest book ever read, to read and understand aright. It is simply

IX a foretold story of the Christ, in the form of a story of a patriarch of the olden time, to whom is given the name of Job. This, first of all ; then, of its many seemingly great and marvellous events and phenomena, all are but so many invented and constructed correspondences to the leading events and phenomena of what rs now Christian history. All of the great institutions, enterprises and inventions of To-Day, including in the term the Christian Era, and as affecting Christian civilization, are predicted and foreshadowed under the most apt and excellent images conceivable, in this great, simple, sublime book of Messianic prophecy. And this, in no haphazard way or manner, but systematically and in the regular order of occurrence of the events foreshadowed, and so consecutively and continuously as to leave no room for the charge of mere coincidence which might be made in the case of an isolated correspondence here and there. There is, too evidently for this, a thoroughly correlated system of types and shadows of things to come, which constitute the work a divine science of Representatives, or "Correspondences, as Avell as the greatest poem ever written, and the greatest prophecy ever penned.

Finally, it is related that a company of seekers after curiosities in some of the secluded corners of the old and remote East have lately discovered there certain house or temple lamps of a very quaint and curious design. These lamps consist of a central jet, or ring of jets, which is surrounded by a bowl of some transparent material. This bowl, or globe, is covered with symbolical figures of some kind over its outer surface. These characters cannot be traced in any light outside of the bowl, but appear as a confused cloud upon its surface, having no intelligible meaning or design.

But once let the lamp be filled and lighted within, and instantly all of these obscure characters come out in clear and beautiful relief, and can now be traced out and deciphered as to their purport and design. Such a piece of work, in its way, is this old book — beautiful and wonderful of all the world of books,, and which is called THE BOOK OF JOB, and is the Book of Jesus, the Christ in its chosen form and guise. It is a spherical work in the all around fullness and compass of its object and scope, which are to set forth the character and mission of the Christ to come, and also to give a panoramic view of the leading events and institutions of the Messianic age, or the Christian era. It is therefore, and necessarily, engraved with symbolical characters throughout which necessarily contain an immensity of meaning within a wonderfully small space ; for a work of such breadth and compass as this, to have been composed by any other method than that of a series of powerfully compacted formulas with much in a little for each and every one of them, would have required a book larger than all the books of the Bible in one book.

Then again, these symbolical characters, of which this work is wholly made up, cannot be deciphered in any merely outward light of learning' and scholarship ; as witness the many commentaries written by the learned and wise in the wisdom of the world, upon it, the book, and all of them leaving it where they found it, in as deep and profound a mystery as ever before. But let it be lighted up by the indwelling, divine and Messianic idea of it all, and these hitherto mysterious and unintelligible characters are all filled with that inner light, and become easily intelligible to even the most ordinary understanding. And henceforth it is only a question of patient and continued search, in the light of that all-illumining idea, and by the sure method of correspondence, when every one of even the wise and learned, if they will, may solve all of the deep and dark problems of this, once the most mysterious of books.

Meanwhile, in view of all their many frantic and always futile efforts so to do, we are constrained to cry with Scotland's brightest bard :

XI

"What's a' the learning o' your schools? Your Hebrew names for horns an' stools? What, Sirs, your grammars?

This is not for airy depreciation of the value of learning, as an aid to the teaching of the Spirit of Truth, but only as a substitute therefor, and as the main reliance for the search of the scriptures. And now, standing as it were, on the earth below, and gazing upward to where this ancient and heaven-swung lamp of Messianic prophecy has hung for ages, shedding its pure and hallowed light down on a long unwitting world, one might no better voice his aspirations thitherward for further and fuller light therefrom, than in the quaintly worded prayer of pious old Herrick :

"Oh, that I might find how thy lights combine, And the configurations of their glorie— - Not only how each verse doth shine, -- But all the constellations of the storie."

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Chapter VI. The Flocks and Herds of Job — A Messianic Service Table 49

The Sheep of Job — Sheep of the Shepherd of Men 49

The Camels of Job 1 — Camels of the Caravan of Christ. ... 51

The Oxen of Job — Yoke Fellows in Christ 54

The She Asses of Job — Gross Burden Bearers of the Lord ?6

The Whirlwind Finished, With Description of the Leviathan. (Job xli.) 484

Chapter XLVIL The Epilogue. (Job xlii.) 523

xvi

Chapter I. Origin And Authorship Of The Work Humanly Considered

"Whence are thy beams, O sun, Through whom thy everlasting light." — Ossian.

Although the question, Who wrote the Book of Job ? must always remain of secondary importance to the question, Who can interpret it? or What does it mean? still, the former is a question which can never lose its fascination to the admirers and lovers of this old book, beautiful and wonderful of all the world. And could we know when, where, under what circumstances, and especially by whom, it was written, each and every smallest item of such information would be a pearl of knowledge, and above all price.

But these are all things that are hidden from our ken in the mists of a now far removed period of time; and each succeeding day only adds to the probability that we shall never know them in time. But this we know : that as men do not gather grapes of thorns, nor figs of thistles, neither does God. We may then judge the tree by its fruits ; or somewhat of the workman by his work. What that is, among books, that he was among the writers of books, far and away the greatest of them all.

The questions as to the personality of the author of Job, and of his nativity, have been very learnedly and ably discussed by the schoolmen ; on the first question, ranging from Moses to Ezra, with numerous other names between these two, leaving Moses where his advocates found him, in the lead of all the others, so far as plausibility of the argument goes, with the exception alone of the contention of Swedenborg, which is that it came out of a pre-Israelitish church, anterior to the time of Moses, and the most probable one of all. Concerning the nativity of its author, the argument for either Arabia or Egypt seems equally good. The work has all the old Egyptian passion and genius for symbolism manifest throughout, and in the efflorescence of many of its poetic images, it is clearly Arabic, while all 1 of the allusions to local customs, business and traditions are to those of Arabia.

An Egypto-Arabic book then, this was, in all probability, at first, and its author, either an Arabian or an Egyptian, with the greater likelihood in favor of the latter, many eminent critics to the contrary notwithstanding. In his introduction to his commentary on Job the Rev. Henry Cowles, D. D., says : "This remarkable book, bearing the name of Job, is quite unique in character, unlike any other book of the Bible ... a book therefore which has no analogy with any other one embraced in our Sacred Scriptures." Yet he argues learnedly and long to prove it to have been written by Moses, the confessed author of several books embraced in our Sacred Scriptures. Then further along he says : "All the qualities of authorship apparent in the book are in fullest accord with the known talents and training of Moses, and with the five books which certainly came from his hand."

On the other hand, Froude certainly is right in saying of the book: "Unjewish in form and in fiercest hostility with Judaism, it hovers like a meteor over the old Hebrew literature, in it, but not of it, compelling the acknowledgment of itself by its own internal majesty. . " The question now arises : If this book, so unjewish in form, and in such fierce hostility with Judaism, and though in the Hebrew literature, yet not of it, was written by no Hebrew, but by some unknown Egyptian or Arabian, how came it ever to have been admitted to the Hebrew canon, and so become a recognized part of the Hebrew Bible? We know that it was a fixed and an inflexible rule to admit no writings to the Hebrew canon, other than those of known and accredited prophets of God. And here we quote again from Froude, who says : "How it found its way into the canon, smiting as it does through and through the most deeply seated Jewish prejudices, is the chief difficulty about it now . . ." Further, how came it to be in the Hebrew literature, if although in it, it is yet not of it?

We will answer this last question first. It was found by Moses during his forty years' sojourn in Egypt and was by him translated out of the Egyptian tongue into the Hebrew, and introduced by him to his people as a divine piece of work, and one well worthy of admission to the canon of Sacred Scripture. Then, in addition to the prestige and authority of Moses, all thrown in its behalf, it compelled the acknowledgment of itself by its own internal majesty, as the true word of God. And so, by a relaxation of the rule, very early, before it had become so hard and fixed as afterwards it became, the book was admitted to canonicity, notwithstanding its foreign origin and authorship. And this, in our judg-

4 THE NE^ BOOK OF JOB

ment, is as near as Moses, or any other Hebrew prophet or poet, ever came to being the author of the Bbok of Job. Another thing which makes that theory impracticable is this : At the time when Moses lived there was not left in the world that thorough knowledge and accurate use of the science and art of correspondences which this book shows in its structure and composition throughout. That gneat scholar and student of the Scriptures, Swedenborg, does well, as far as he goes,, in saying of Job that "It is full of correspondences . . .," and very ill, in adding thereto, "But not like the true Word." It is made wholly up of correspondences, and it is the true Word of God.

Great as are the books of Moses, the archaic grandeur of the book of Job is over and above them all, and is something which quite antedates the possibility of its construction at so late a period as when Moses was, let alone the question of its individual authorship. It speaks for itself of a long past golden age, when the thought of God burned in every bush and breathed in every wind that blew ; when every created thing, whether animate or inanimate, was a form and expression of the creative Mind ; when books were written as the universe was wrought — in correspondence to and with its divine idea, and is itself the one sole but imperishable literary relic of that long past golden age that is left in the world today. And why? Because it was the one sole product of that period of time which contained in itself the elements of its own imperishability. In a word, it is the Bible, all in one book.

It is conceded by the critics now, that the first book of Moses, or Genesis, is partly or wholly made up of compilations of very ancient documents found by him in Egypt; and so that the Book of Genesis is of Egyptian origin. We know for ourselves that the Egyptian Bible, as their collection of sacred writings may be called, and older than any part of ours, except the Book of Job, has a Book of Genesis, called "The Beginning." In it the same order of creation is observed as in ours, and ends with giving to man the dominion of all other creatures that God has made, and with the command to him to multiply and replenish the earth. It begins with chaos and darkness upon the face of the deep, and follows this up with the sending forth of "the Holy Light" in the same order as in our book of The Beginning. In short, when we have read this Egyptian book of Genesis we are satisfied that we have found the original source of the Mosaic cosmogony.

And now, if we knew that there was never more than one man in all the world who was capable of writing such a book as this old symbolical book of Job, we should instinctively turn to Egypt, the land of emblems, riddles and symbols, with its yet unsolved riddle of the sphinx of stone sitting in its sand, for the origin and authorship of this mightier sphinx of letters, whose riddle has never yet been read aright. Out of Egypt have I called my Son, is written of the Lord by the prophet Hosea. Why then may not that prophet of his Son, which the author of Job most assuredly is, have also been called out of Egypt?

And if we were asked to name one of the literati of ancient Egypt whose writings at all approximate in sublimity of tone and style to that of the author of Job, his name would be Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus— a king among the Pharaohs before the time of Moses, and author of The Divine Pymander, or Shepherd of Men. Of him Lord Bacon says that he was "of kingly power, priestly illumination, and profound wisdom." This work, so renowned for its spiritual and "priestly illumination," for its deep piety toward God, and for its "kingly power" of expression, is decided by eminent authorities to be authentic, and has been published in

Arabic, Greek, Latin, French and German. And it seems much more likely that the author of The Divine Pymander, or Shepherd of Men, either he or some other one of the Hyksos, or Shepherd Kings, of ancient Egypt should have been the author of this book whose sole subject is the Good Shepherd to come, and to lay down his life for the sheep of his flock, than it is that it was written by any one of the Hebrew prophets. It is not that they did not, all of them, testify of Him; for this they did,, each one in his own peculiar way. But that this book is so thoroughly unique in its character and so utterly unlike any other book of the Bible, as almost or quite to preclude the possibility of it having been written by any of the writers of its other books.

Our only recourse then is in the thought that out of Egypt was this prophet of the Messiah called — as it is the main purpose of this treatise to show that the writer of Job was. For it is simply inconceivable that to only one nation or people was the idea of a great World Redeemer to come ever given. It was given to the Egyptians long before it was given to the Hebrews ; and it should not be thought a strange thing that it may have been first derived to the Hebrews from the Egyptians ; nor that this great and wonderful piece of work which is called the Book of Job may yet be found to have been at the beginning a piece of pure Egyptian symbology, now Hebraized and modified by having passed through the hands of Hebrew translators and editors.

From this we pass on to the consideration of general principles, irrespective of the question of its national or individual origin and authorship, of how this greatest of books extant in the world today first came to be, and was. First of all, it was no epileptic spasm of individual genius, however great and mighty. Like Him of whom it is all testimony in its own chosen way, it was prepared for from the foundation of the world.

Just as "the Gothic cathedral is a blossoming in stone, subdued by the insatiable demand for harmony in man," and dating back to its root, through ages of architectural study and practice, to the rude chippings and carvings of the age of stone, so this mightier cathedral of the Spirit was, in its day, a complete and full consummation of an age of spiritual aspiration and literary endeavor, dating back to the first faint dawning of the Messianic idea of the world. It was then that the first twitterings and pipings of Messianic prophecy began, as the early song-birds of the Spirit "shook the sweet slumber from their wings at morn," and sang, as they were able, of what they felt and saw of the signs of the dawning of the world's great new day. And still, as the slow centuries crept away, and He who was to come to be himself its Light, did not come, the chorus of song, sacred to that deathless theme, swelled higher and higher until there came the One who was to take it up himself alone, and silence and absorb all other singing into his own. Then, all the songs ever sang before of the world's one pure faith, blended together in one great Song of Songs, and all the lights of its one bright hope burned together in one great Light of Lights, and the bright and morning star o!f Messianic prophecy arose on the sky of time, full-orbed, fixed, and forever resplendent in Job.