A commentary on the book of Job intended for popular use ...

Introduction To The Book Of Job

To the Book of Job a foremost position is assigned in the Septuagint Version of the Hebrew Scriptures; its claims to a like place in the realm of mind are quite universally recognised. It enters the Hebrew Canon with the face of an alien ; its voice, however, is the voice of the sons of God. Born outside of the Israelitish fold, it is clad in the garb of a noinade ; but its language is true Archaic Hebrew. Its thoughts, experiences, and trials, are representative in their character, and in a greater or less degree have been the common heritage of our race. In a significant sense, it is the experience-book of humanity. No one can read its pages without deep feelings of sympathy, for each one brings to their perusal a kindred experience. The author of the poem, however, no more truly dwells apart upon the mount of song, unapproached by the most gifted geniuses of earth, than does, in like manner, its hero, apart in the valley of humiliation, a sufferer from temptations and discipline which unite to make him from among the Old Testament saints the most conspicuous herald and type of his divine and suffering Master. The hero of the work, and the work itself, answer one to the other in the character of uniqueness, and justify Hitzig in calling Job "a great creation." Its sublime conceptions and massive thoughts form a precious urn at which genius, in every age, has lighted its fires. Carlyle thus acknowledges these obligations: ''A noble book! all mens' book ! Such living likenesses were never since drawn. Sublime sorrow, sublime reconciliation ; oldest choral melody as of the heart of manhood ; so soft and great as the summer midnight, as the world with its suns and stars. There is nothing written, I think, of equal literary merit."

The Problem and Purport of the Work.

The Book may be regarded as a Theodicy — a vindication of the moral government of God in its relations to men. It treats of evil concretely, and sets before us its unfolding through the experience of a man conspicuous for piety. Its key-note is the question, Wherefore is evil? a question which is among the first to perplex, and the last to leave, the mind. Many stalwart minds have subsequently striven for its further solution — among whom the most eminent is Leibnitz, with his theory of Optimism — but have signally failed. The question stands where it stood at the close of this, the first and most elaborate of ancient theodicies. The idea of the work is simple and godlike; it is, to speak to man through man's experiences, making a human life the text — the greatest conceivable sufferings of a righteous being the lesson-leaf, from which shall be elucidated the deeper principles of the divine government. The consideration of the afflictions of the righteous carries with it the

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possibly more impenetrable mystery — the prosperity of the wicked. This mystery comes out in bold relief in the discussion before us ; for the spectacle of a prostrate Job constantly suggests its contrary — that of the triumphant sinner. The author of the work looks boldly into both of these excrescences of evil — the suffering of the righteous and the prosperity of the wicked — and shows that they are consistent with a regime of righteousness, wisdom, and love.

Extreme suffering, exasperated by unsympathetic bitterness of debate, goads the hero of our book to the utterances of passionate doubt, defiant summons of God to judgment, and aspersions upon the divine goodness, which Hengstenberg does not scruple to call blasphemies for which little justification can be offered. The trial lays bare a human heart as nowhere else in the Scriptures. With a like shudder to that with which Dante looked down into depths his own imagination had evoked, do we look into these real seething fires of passion and doubt. At last they burn themselves out, and disclose Job penitent in the ashes, bewailing the vileness and weakness of his nature, and exhibiting the noblest traits of incorruptible integrity. We rejoice in the issue of the trial, for it forever relieves human nature from the aspersion cast upon it by the foe of man, that man serves his God solely as a hireling.

There underlies the discussion an ancient theory of rewards and punishments which antedates the days of Moses, and was common to the ancient world, and, therefore, should hardly have been christened the Mosaic theory: moreover, the book is confessedly written outside of Israel, and there does not appear upon its pages any undisputed reference to Mosaic law (Thorah) or Mosaic institutions. The refutation of this theory of retributive justice, Hirtzel, Umbreit, De Wette, and Renan conceive to be the chief object of the book. On the contrary, the treatment of this topic is but as a side issue, and is not a polemic against any supposed principle of Mosaism. All the speakers agree in the fact that wickedness is punished and virtue rewarded in this world. This furnishes an adequate basis for the dogma of a future adjustment of life's ills, and, resolutely kept before the mind of Job, (xix, 25-27,) eminently contributes to the restoration of complete faith in God. From the moment of the sublime inscription upon the everlasting rock, the heaving fires begin to subside. Throughout the remainder of the debate the chiseled words of undying faith are ever before the eye, like the flag of a beleagured fortress. They occasion little remark on the part of the codisputants, because they could be reached only by the demolition of outlying fortifications. (See note on chapter xx, 4.)

Equally one-sided and unsatisfying is the view of Schlottman, Hengstenberg, Canon Cook, and A. B. Davidson, who regard the main object of the work to be the test of human virtue by subjecting it to the most fiery temptations ; as well as the theory of Stuhlmann, Hupfeld, Merx, and Rodman, that the book is designed to rebuke all disposition to arraign the purposes and dealings of Providence, and to teach unconditional submission to the divine will. The more gratifying and sublime view of Ewald, that the work proposes the solution of life's ills through the disclosure of immortal life, and the certainty that spirit is eternal, magnifies a secondary consideration into a primary object. To teach these, or doctrines kindred to these as seen in the views of

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others, is not the chief aim of the book ; they are embraced within, and germane to, the broader view accepted and defended by Bunscn (God in History, i, 182) and Hitzig, (Einleitnng, xxiii,) that the book is essentially a theodicy ; but not unfolded, as the latter would maintain, " from the standpoint of the Hebraic religion, on whose outer limits Koheleth plants himself." On the contrary, the Book of Job springs from the heart of the patriarchal religion, which for ages was the only true religion of the world. In common with an Abraham and a Melchisedek, Job was a Gentile, whose soul had been moulded within no narrow limits of Sinai or its local institutions. His awful stragglings with doubt, his wavering but finally triumphant faith in Deity, his solemn appeals to the Godhead for vindication and relief, the forecasting of his soul for an incarnation of a Divine Helper and a future filling out of the present life, belong toman as man, and have in them a universality of need and hope out of which sprang the priesthood whose insignia he bore — an "order," a "similitude," after which finally "ariseth another Priest," the one Great High Priest of our race. (Heb. v, 6; vii, 15.) The Book of Job, more than any other book of the Hebrew Scriptures, is a gospel, and, of all those Scriptures, most strikingly anticipates the mission and teaching of Christ. Under the increased light of modern exegesis it shines more brightly than ever before with precious evangelical doctrine. Its twofold culmination in the sublime inscription of faith and hope, (xix, 25-27,) and in " the heart-power of God " as the infinite solvent of life's ills, (xxxvi, 5,) furnishes a twofold vinculum, binding the promise of the Garden with its fulfilment on the Cross. "The highest and immovable resting-point of Job's faith is that of the Gospel, although without that full recognition of God's eternal love for man which the Gospel brings. Philosophically, it is the ground taken by the German philosophers from Leibnitz to Hegel, though without their dialectic formularization." — Bunsen, ibid., i, 185. Fundamental truths which, after the lapse of ages, Christ "brought into light," ((puriaac, 2 Tim. i, 10,) are here in embryo. This book is an expansion of the primeval promise ; its pages contain the essential features of the revelation first given to man.

The Historical Reality of the Book.

An extreme view has been held by some of the ablest commentators, (Maimonides, Bosenmuller, Hengstenberg, Merx,) that the book has no historic basis. They assign the entire work to the sphere of the imagination, to which belong the parables and the allegories of the Bible. Of such an estimate of Job, it has been observed by Ewald, (pp. 15, 16,) with whom Dillmann agrees, that " the invention of a history from the very commencement, the production from the poet's own brain of a person who is yet said to be historical, is a thing so forced and so remote that it is altogether foreign to the early period of every nation, so that it first takes shape gradually in the latest centuries of an ancient history, and has never come fully and prominently forward till recent times." Against the allegorical hypothesis it may be also urged, that it does not accord with the subsequent scriptural recognitions of Job in Ezek. xiv, 14, 20, James v, 11, in the latter of which it is impossible that an imaginary being should have been set forth by the

Spirit ns an example of patience ; that it is inconsistent with the work itself, for its substratum has the ring which belongs to the real; and that it is alien not only to the age in which such an allegory must have been written, but to any of the periods to which it has been assigned.

The theory now* generally accepted by critics, (with the exception, however, of such scholars as Schultens, Dr. Lee, Carey, Bishop "Wordsworth, Dr. A. Clarke, Tayler Lewis, etc., who maintain the reality of the whole work,) and almost unanimously by recent German commentators, is, that the work unites the historical and the ideal. By these it is regarded as a splendid creation of genius resting upon a foundation of fact. The real and the ideal are so fused together that it is difficult (impossible, say some) to distinguish the one from the other. ' ' The history is not all fact, " says Davidson, ' ' much of it is poetry ; the poetry is not allegory, much of it is fact." — Fairbairn's Bib. Dictionary, i, 919.

The modern theory, if we may rely upon Keil, (Introd. to Old Testament, i, 485, 486,) holds the book to be " an old legend wrought up and sustained throughout with poetic freedom;" and this is the opinion, he says, " of all recent critics and expositors. " Both the theories under consideration certainly belong to comparatively modern times ; for Jewish rabbins, the fathers of the Church, together with the older theologians, held to the strict historical character of the work.

Of the various reasons given for this modern theory we shall be able to consider only the more important : —

1. The artistic and unnatural part assigned to Satan. — With respect to this, it may be sufficient here to reply, that a close examination of the historical accounts of the temptation of Eve, which took place through the serpent, and that, too, in the garden of Eden, will disclose features of striking resemblance to the Satanology of Job. See Excursus I, II, and p. 289.

2. The mechanical look of the round and sacred numbers of the prose portions of the work. — It may be rejoined that round numbers are commonly, indeed almost invariably, used in the Scriptures. Compare 2 Chron. xxxv, 7-9 ; 1 Chron. v, 21 ; Num. xxxi, 32-34, etc. In the first two citations we have multiples similar to those in Job: for instance, exactly ten times as many sheep as bullocks, five times as many sheep as camels, and twenty -five times as many camels as asses, etc. The sacred numbers appear frequently in the statistics of the Bible. Job's 7,000 sheep and seven sons may be paralleled with the 7,000 who did not bow the knee to Baal, (1 Kings xix, 18;) the 7,000 who conquered the Syrians, (1 Kings xx, 15;) and the 7,000 carried captive to Babylon, (2 Kings xxiv, 16.) Comp. 1 Chron. xii, 25 ; xviii, 4 ; xix, 18, etc. For the use of 3,000, see Judges xv, 11; 1 Sam. xiii, 2; xxv, 2, etc. ; and 1 Kings iv, 32, in which mention is made of 3,000 proverbs, which were spoken by Solomon. That the employment of the sacred numbers does not imply artificial structure may be further illustrated in the account of the deluge. Clean beasts were taken into the ark by sevens, the fowls of the air also by sevens ; the pause before the deluge began lasted seven days; the ark rested in the seventh month, and Noah stayed seven days before he sent forth the dove a second time. Three sons with their three wives were saved in the ark; the human race was saved by fours. (Concerning the seven days of mourning with Job, see note on ii, 13.)

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3. The highly artistic structure of the book. — k, The book," it is urged, "falls into three divisions, namely: the prologue, the discourses, and the epilogue. The prologue and epilogue, again, contain each three principal points; and the discourses fall into three divisions — those of Job and his three friends, those of Elihu, and those of Jehovah. The dialogues consist of three courses, and each course consists of thrice two speeches. Finally, in the discourses of Elihu, and in those of Jehovah, we can again distinguish three principal parts." — Roster, ITiob., p. 5. Courtesy — the laws of which nowhere in the world are more perfect than in the East — w T ould require that an opportunity should be given to each of the three speakers, in their order, to make reply to Job. In the plausible analysis just given no estimate is taken of the two " heavenly cabinets ;" the four messengers of misfortune ; the six temptations, (thus Delitzsch ;) the one lamentation ; the one monologue ; the four speeches of Elihu; the two replies of Job to Deity; and the one

divine address to Eliphaz and his friends. Moreover, for the completion of the third triad Job and his three friends are constructed into one, and in the fourth no account is taken of the failure of Zophar.

4. The argument we are considering presents a more serious phase in the profound thought of the jyoem, with its highly poetical mode of expression. Such speeches as those of Job and his friends do not belong to debate, though among giant minds. No chance gathering anywhere in the world could have brought together four such minds as these must have been who communed with stricken Job. The parallelisms, the supposed strophic arrangements, the dramatic evolution of a plan wdiich embraces, not only the thought, but the actors themselves, the perfection of skill all the speakers display in the structure and adornment of their discourses, to say nothing of the exquisite dove-tailing of one speech with another, are beyond the power of any extempore address. Such is the purport of this, the most important of the arguments, to which we have endeavoured to give its fullest force. It is to be borne in mind that the Oriental mind is highly poetical. It associates directly and constantly with nature, which with the Oriental never loses its freshness and life. From habitual observation and reflection the mind becomes stored with images and compacted thought. For the preservation of such thought in the form of apothegms, or eyen of long poems, as in the Woltian theory of the Iliad, memory takes the place of books. The Oriental has always been master of the art of improvisation; the Arabs — as Schultens, a competent judge, affirms — have a wonderful facility for extemporaneous effusions in verse. Dr. Kitto. who cites in illustration the Romance of Antar, remarks: "Nothing is more remarkable among the Semitic nations of Western Asia, even at this day, than the readiness of their resources, the prevalence of the poetical imagination and form of expression, and the facility with which the nature of this group of languages allows all high and animated discourse to fall into rhythmical forms of expression; while the language, even of common life ami thought, is replete with poetical sentimeuts and ideas." See further, Kitto's Daily Bib. Illus., in he.

Then, too, there may have been a considerable interval of time between the addresses. From evidences in the work itself, the interview extended through a long period. (See note on chap, xlii, 10.) Seven days of silence preceded its commencement. There are indications which lead some to the opinion that at times the debate was suspended. (See note on xxiii, 2.) With the Oriental, time is of comparatively little moment, even at the present day; of much less value was it when life was measured by the century. These visitors, being men of rank, were masters of their time. It would not be extravagant to suppose that the intervals spoken of may have been devoted to the consideiation and preparation of the reply. Admit so simple a theory as this, and a mountainous difficulty is much lessened, if not removed.

In reply it may be further remarked — 1. That all theories concerning the booh are fraught with embarrassments. — Quite as serious difficulties may be pressed upon those who deny, as upon those who affirm, the strictly historical character of the book. This is evident from the confusion of view among the critics of our age as to where they will drive the ploughshare through the work, separating the real from the ideal. No two agree upon the breadth of historical basis, or upon the invention of the so-called poet or poets, whose task it was to reinvest with Hie the traditions ot the past.

2. That the portions supposed to have been invented are introduced with credentials of truth similar to those which mark the portions generally admitted to be real. — Of the former. the theophany is foremost in significance. No greater strength of asseverance belongs to the opening declaration, " There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job," than to the declaration, "Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind." No indication is given that Jehovah's address to Job is a mere chimera of some unknown poet's brain; no indication that while Job may have uttered the sublime language of resignation in the prologue, (chap, i, 21,) that God did not utter the most wondrous challenge ever given to man, (xl, 7-14.) The epilogue is generally assumed to be true history. What greater reason is there for regarding as true Job's answer, " I know that thou canst do every thing, " (xlii, 2,) than his response in the midst of Jehovah's addresses, "Behold, I am vile; what shall I answer thee?" (xl, 4.) To introduce Jehovah as a speaker in an imaginary colloquy, and to put language into his mouth which he never uttered, is not only without parallel iu the Scriptures, but would have shocked a true Hebrew, and been sufficient to exclude the w r ork from the canon. See page 231.

3. That the fusion theory makes requisitions which are hardly in keeping with the general theory of a divine revelation. — It confessedly makes of the author what may be called a trimmer. The most recent German writers virtually acknowledge this. The circumstances of the history are assumed to have taken place some eight, ten, or twelve centuries before the book called Job was written. The task the author takes upon himself is, to make the work conform to the life, customs, and manners of such a remote period ; from within Israel to w r rite outside of Israel ; himself breathing the spirit of Judaism, to prevent the intrusion of its spirit, its laws, and its institutions. He must avoid all historical events of the intervening centuries, guard against anachronisms, of which even so skilful a writer as Sir Walter Scott was guilty when he also planted the scene of his work in a distant age. To such an extent was this spirit of watchfulness carried, that, according to Ewald, (page 57,) the w 7 ord Jehovah was eschewed in the debate, in the wide

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ranee of illustrations, drawn from nature and art, there is not one which has not been subjected to a strict ordeal. German commentators dwell upon the exquisite skill with which the poet has discharged his task. (Dillmanu, xxi, xxii ; Zschokke, xvi; Zockler, page 234.) Canon Cook justly observes, (Speaker 's Com., p. 9,) "It should be borne in mind that no ancient writer ever succeeded in reproducing the manners of a past age, or in avoiding allusion to those of his own; this is true even of the Greek dramatists, and, indeed, of writers of every country and age before the eighteenth century. The attempt was not even made. To use M. Renan's words, ' antiquity had not an idea of what w T e call local colouring.' " Renan plants himself against the German idea, and denies that " at a remote epoch a Hebrew should have entertained the singular idea of composing a patriarchal poem, and displayed such perfection in the design that his work does not strike a single discordant note, nor in a single place betray the artificial system which has presided over its composition." — Etude, etc., xviii, xix.

4. That the arguments which have been considered fail, in that they ignore or deny for the Booh of Job a possible substratum of the miraculous. — They are really akin to the reasoning of Hengstenberg, (Kitto, Cyc, ii, 608:) "God's speaking out of the clouds would be a miracle, without an object corresponding to its magnitude, and having a merely personal reference, while all the other miracles of the Old Testament are in connexion with the theocratical government, and occur in the midst, and for the benefit of, the people of God." This citation loses its force when once it is admitted that one Gentile, (Job,) as well as another Gentile, (Abraham, Gen. xii, 1,) might be visited with a message of mercy, and that God might address the one upon the clearing up of a storm, or from out of the whirlwind even, as properly as the other through "a horror of great darkness." Gen. xv, 12. The fact that the book is in the canon gives it the same rights, immunities, and laws with the rest of the Bible. The same general principles are to be employed in its interpretation. Certainly, there is nothing more questionable in the exact doubling of the sheep, camels, oxen, and she-asses, than in the feeding of a multitude with '-'seven loaves and the fishes," and the final taking up of exactly seven baskets full. If the latter is accounted for on the ground that it was miraculous, why may not the former? If the historical reality of the work is affected by the exact correspondence in the former case, why not in the latter in the reproduction of the sacred number, seven? As worthy an occasion exists for the miraculous in the doubling of Job's possessions as in the multiplying of the bread. (See note on chap, xlii, 12.) No less enlarged lessons of faith, hope, and charity may be gathered from the piety of Job, outside of "the theocratical government," "for the benefit of the people of God," than from the miraculous calling of Abraham into "connexion with the theocratical government."

The leading features of the book of Job find a parallel in early Bible history: its doctrine of Satanology in that of the garden; the trial of Job in that of Abraham; and the theophany in those made to the patriarchs, and even that to an Egyptian king, Abimelech. The author of the following work holds the hook of Job to be strictly historical. The great debate, he conceives, took place as described ; its arguments and illustrations were substantially as they have been transmitted to us ; but whether in poetical form may still be an open question. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the author of the Book of Job may have listened to the discussion, and been assisted in its transcription by the same eternal Spirit who in after ages brought to the remembrance of the evangelists the words of Christ. John xiy, 26.

The Name and Residence of Job, and the Age in which he Lived.

(For name, see page 14 ; for residence, see page 13.) The time in which Job lived. — Most critics of the present age unite in ascribing to Job a very remote antiquity. According to the greater number (Lowth, Umbreit, Zockler, Lee, Carey, etc.) he lived, oris represented as living, in patriarchal times; others (as Wordsworth,) make him a contemporary of Moses. Some few assign him to the age of Solomon, and some, even to the times of Ezra. That Job lived in patriarchal times, at least prior to the age of Moses, may be argued in general from the resemblance of the customs and manners portrayed in the book to those appearing in Genesis. Also the names, the lineage, and the countries of all the personages mentioned in the work link themselves with the times of the patriarchs. (See notes on chap, i, 1 ; ii, 11 ; and xxxii, 2.) Great length of life is assumed to be characteristic of the Jobean period. (Chap, xv, 10 ; note on xlii, 16.) Job's riches, like those of Abraham, lay in his flocks and herds, and were in other respects similar. (See note i, 3.) The sacrifices consisted of burnt offerings, which the head of the family offered rather than an oflicial priest : (see notes on i, 5, and xlii, 8 :) the musical instruments, and even the money mentioned, are the same as those of the patriarchal age: (see notes xxi, 12, and xlii, 11:) the mode of writing and sculpture spoken of are, unquestionably, pre-Mosaic: (note,xix,23:) and the idolatry incidentally alluded to is the most ancient of idolatries, and yet at that time seems to have been an innovation, since it was liable to punishment. (Note on xxxi, 26, 27.) Without further specification of particulars, a very remote period may be argued from the admission of the book into the canon. Reasoning from a human standpoint, this could hardly have taken place unless Job had lived prior to the law. The rigid exclusiveness of the Mosaical dispensation would not have brooked the idea that after its establishment any human being could attain to the piety of Job outside of the Mosaic fold. The Jew would need no enlightenment to see that a co-existing religion, capable of producing such fruit, rich and ripe with the divine approval, practically questioned the necessity of liturgical religion, nay, the very being of Mosaism itself. And just as readily would he admit that a religion which produced an Abraham and a Melchisedek might culminate in a Job. See Carey, Commentary on Job, p. 16.

The Time when the Book of Job was Written.

The eras fixed upon by leading scholars for the production of the Book of Job, are (1) the Babylonish exile; (2) the Assyrian invasion; (3) the Daviclic-Solomonic age — the so-called Augustan age of Hebrew literature; (4) the Mosaic; and (5) the Patriarchal. To the first of these periods, (about 588 B.C..) notwithstanding it has the strong endorsement of Gesenius, Umbreit, and De Wette, it may be objected that the book is cited by Bible writers who livid anterior to the

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period of captivity ; that the works of that age are marked by a class of Chaldaisms from which Job is free; and stamped by lt a rigid Mosaism, and an exalted devotion and patriotism," (Kenan,) which would be incompatible with a book like that of Job. In the language of Eichhorn, kk Let him who is fit for such researches only read a writing tainted with Aramaisms, and next the Book of Job ; they will be found as diverging as east and west." But so little is so late a period as this worthy of serious consideration, that Kenan affirms that there is not now a single Hebraist who does not place the composition of the work at least a hundred years before the Captivity. (Etude, xxxvii.)

Ewald, Merx, and Hitzig, find in the catastrophe which befell Israel (720 B.C.) the calamitous soil out of which sprang Job, a national work for the consolation of stricken Israel. Renan makes the author a contemporary of Amos, Hosea, and Isaiah, towards 770 B. C. The strongest arguments for this period (that of the Assyrian invasion) are also made use of in favour of the Solomonic era of authorship, an era preferred by Schlottmann, Keil, Delitzsch, and Davidson. They are substantially twofold — the points of coincidence between Job and the writers of their respective periods, and its philosophico character. With one class of critics a late period is assigned for the author because he borrows his thoughts from preceding or contemporary writers ; with another class of critics an earlier period is found because later writers borrowed from him. Wondrous criticism to accomplish such diverse results!