Chapter XV

THE BOOK OF JOB FROM A GENERAL AND WESTERN POINT OF VIEW.

The Book of Job is even less translatable than the Psalter. And why? Because there is more nature in it. ‘He would be a poet,’ says Thoreau, ‘who could impress the winds and streams into his service to speak for him.’ They do speak for the poet of _Job_; the ‘still sad music of humanity’ is continually relieved by snatches from the grand symphonies of external nature. And hence the words of _Job_ are ‘so true and natural that they would appear to expand like the buds at the approach of spring.’ It is only a feeble light which the Authorised Version sheds upon this poem; and even the best prose translation must for several reasons be inadequate. Perhaps, though English has no longer its early strength, a true poet might yet achieve some worthy result. Rarely has the attempt been made. George Sandys was said by Richard Baxter to have ‘restored Job to his original glory,’ but he lived before the great era of Semitic studies. The poetical translator of _Job_ must not disdain to consult critical interpreters, and yet by his own unassisted skill could he bring this Eastern masterpiece home to the Western reader? I doubt it. Even more than most imaginative poems the Book of Job needs the help of the painter. It is not surprising therefore that a scholar of Giotto should have detected the pictorial beauties of the story of Job. Though only two of the six Job-frescoes remain entire, the Campo Santo of Pisa will be impoverished when time and the sea-air effect the destruction of these. I know not whether any modern painter besides William Blake has illustrated Job. He, a ‘seer’ born out of due time, understood this wonderful book as no modern before him had done. The student will get more help of a certain kind from the illustrations thus reproduced in the second volume of Gilchrist’s _Life of William Blake_, compared with the sympathetic descriptions by Blake’s biographer (vol. i. pp. 330-333), than from any of the commentaries old or new.

In every respect the poem of _Job_ stands in a class by itself. More than any other book in the Hebrew canon it needs bringing near to the modern reader, untrained as he is in Oriental and especially in Semitic modes of thought and imagination. Such a reader’s first question will probably relate to the poetic form of the book. Is it, for instance, a drama? Theodore of Mopsuestia (died 428) answered in the affirmative, though he was censured for this by the Council of Constantinople. The author of Job, he says, wronged the grand and illustrious story by imitating the manner of the pagan tragedians. ‘Inde et illas plasmationes fecit, in quibus certamen ad Deum fecit diabolus, et voces sicut voluit circumposuit, alias quidem justo, alias vero amicis.’[126]

Bishop Lowth devotes two lectures of his _Sacred Poetry_ to the same question. He replies in the negative, after comparing Job with the two Œdipi of Sophocles (dramas with kindred subjects), on the ground that action is of the essence of a drama and the Book of Job contains not even the simplest action. Afterwards indeed he admits that Job has at least one point in common with a regular drama, viz. the vivid presentation of several distinct characters in a tragic situation. The view that it is an epic, held in recent times by Dr. Mason Good and M. Godet, found favour with one no less than John Milton, who speaks, as he who knows, of ‘that epic form, whereof the two poems of Homer and those other two of Virgil and Tasso are a diffuse, and the Book of Job a brief model.’[127] Something is to be said for this opinion if _Paradise Regained_ be a true epic. Dialogue with the addition of a certain amount of narrative is, roughly speaking, the literary form of the Book of Job as well as of the unequally great English poem, and Coleridge is probably right in representing Milton as indebted to the former for his plan. It is however open to us to doubt not only whether _Paradise Regained_ is a true epic poem, but whether any section of the Book of Job except the Prologue partakes of the nature of an epic. The Prologue certainly does; it is more than a mere introduction to the subsequent speeches; it is an independent poetical narrative,[128] if not a narrative poem; nor is there wanting a strong infusion of that supernatural element which tradition regards as essential to the epic. True, it is a torso, but this does not interfere with its genuinely poetic character: it is, as Milton says, a ‘brief model’ or miniature of an epic poem. The Colloquies on the other hand are as undoubtedly a germinal character-drama, as the Song of Songs is a germinal stage-drama. The work belongs to the same class as Goethe’s _Iphigenie_ and _Tasso_; only there is much more passion in it than in these great but distinctively modern poems. Some one has said that ‘there is no action and reaction between the speakers’ [in the Colloquies]. This is an over-statement. Not only is each speaker consistent with his type of character, but the passionate excitement of Job, and his able though fragmentary confutation of his opponents, do produce an effect upon the latter, do force them to take up a new position, though not indeed to recall their original thesis.[129]

But in order to bring the Book of Job nearer to the modern Western mind, we must not only study it from the point of view of form, but also compare its scope and range with those of the loftiest modern Western poems of similar import; only then shall we discover the points in which it is distinctively ancient, Oriental, Semitic.—The greatest English work of kindred moral and religious import is _Paradise Lost_. Like _Job_, it is a theodicy, though of a more complex character, and aims

... (to) assert eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to man.

And the author of _Paradise Lost_, though not to be equalled with the founders of Biblical religion, is still distinguished from all modern poets (except Dante and Bunyan) by his singularly intense faith in the operations of the Divine Spirit. That prayer of his, beginning ‘And chiefly Thou, O Spirit,’ and a well-known parallel passage in his _Reason of Church Government_, prove conclusively that he held no contracted views as to the limits of Inspiration. This, in addition to his natural gifts, explains the overpowering impression of reality produced by the visions of Milton, and perhaps in a still greater degree by those of our Puritan prose-poet, John Bunyan. A similar faith in the divine Spirit, but more original and less affected by logical theories, was one great characteristic of the author of _Job_. He felt, like all the religious ‘wise men’ (of whom more presently), that true wisdom was beyond mortal ken, and could only be obtained by an influence from above. In the strength of this confidence he ventured, like Milton, on untrodden paths, and presumed to chronicle, in symbolic form, transactions of the spiritual world. Whether or not he believed in the Satan of the Prologue, as a Sunday School child might, we need not decide; that he used popular beliefs in a wide, symbolic sense, has been pointed out elsewhere. Probably both Milton and he, if questioned on the subject, would have replied in the spirit of those words of our Lord, ‘If ye will receive it,’ and ‘All men cannot receive this saying.’ It is not to be forgotten that the author of _Job_ distinctly places the Satan in a somewhat humorous light, and though Milton is far from doing the same, yet we know from _Comus_ that the conception of a symbol was as familiar to him as to Lord Bacon. Notice, in conclusion, that Milton’s Satan, though unlike the Satan of his predecessor in some points,[130] resembles him in this striking particular, that he is not yet (in spite of Milton’s attempt to represent him as such) the absolutely evil being.

_Faust_ has in some respects a better right to be compared with _Job_ than _Paradise Lost_. Not so much indeed in the Prologue, though Goethe deserves credit for detecting the humorous element in the Hebrew poet’s Satan, an element which he has transferred, though with much exaggeration, to his own Mephistopheles. Neither the Satan nor Mephistopheles (a remote descendant of the Hebrew[131] _mastema_, from the root _satam=satan_) is the Origin of Evil in a personal form,[132] but the Hebrew poet would never have accepted the description in _Faust_ of the peculiar work of the ‘denying spirit.’ But in the body of the poem there is this marked similarity to the Book of Job—that the problem treated of is a purely moral and spiritual one; the hero first loses and then recovers his peace of mind; it is the counterpart in pantheistic humanism of what St. Paul terms working out one’s own salvation. Still there are great and most instructive divergences between the two writers. Observe, first, the complete want of sympathy with positive religion—with the religion from which Faust wanders—on the part of the modern poet. Next, a striking difference in the characteristics of Job and Faust respectively. Faust succumbs to his boundless love of knowledge, alternating with an unbridled sensual lust; Job is on the verge of spiritual ruin through his demand for such an absolute correspondence of circumstances to character as can only be realised in another world. The greatness of Faust lies in his intellect; that of Job (who in chap. xxviii. directly discourages speculation) in his virtue. Hence, finally, Faust requires (even from a pantheistic point of view) to be pardoned, while Job stands so high in the divine favour that others are pardoned on his account.

A third great poem which deserves to be compared with _Job_ is the _Divina Commedia_. Dante has the same purpose of edification as the author of _Job_ and even of _Faust_, though he has not been able to fuse the didactic and narrative elements with such complete success as Goethe. Nor is he so intensely autobiographical as either Goethe or the author of _Job_; his own story is almost inextricably interlaced with the fictions which he frames as the representative of the human race. He allows us to see that he has had doubts (_Parad._ iv. 129), and that they have yielded to the convincing power of Christianity (_Purgat._ iii. 34-39), but it was not a part of his plan to disclose, like the author of _Job_, the vicissitudes of his mental history. In two points, however—the width of his religious sympathies (which even permits him to borrow from the rich legendary material of heathendom[133]) and the morning freshness of his descriptions of nature—he comes nearer to the author of _Job_ than either Goethe or Milton, while in the absoluteness and fervour of his faith Milton is in modern times his only rival.

The preceding comparison will, it is hoped, leave the reader with a sense of our great literary as well as religious debt to the author of _Job_. His gifts were varied, but in one department his originality is nothing less than Homeric; his Colloquies are the fountain-head from which the great river of philosophic poetry took its origin. He is the first of those poet-theologians from whom we English have learned so much, and who are all the more impressive as teachers because the truths which they teach are steeped in emotion, and have for their background a comprehensive view of the complex and many-coloured universe.

Footnote 126:

Migne, _Synes. et Theod._, col. 698. Comp. Kihn, _Theodor von
Mopsuestia_, p. 68 &c.

Footnote 127:

_The Reason of Church Government_, Book II.

Footnote 128:

Comp. Bateson Wright, _The Book of Job_, pp. 29-31.

Footnote 129:

Bunsen observes, not badly, ‘Hiob ist ein semitisches Drama aus der
Zeit der Gefangenschaft. Das Dramatische windet sich aber erst aus dem
Epos heraus, ohne eine selbstständige Gestalt zu gewinnen.’ _Gott in
der Geschichte_, i. 291.

Footnote 130:

Compare Satan after his overthrow with Tasso’s Soldan (_Gerus. Lib._,
c. ix., st. 98.)

Footnote 131:

Mr. Sutherland Edwards (_Fortnightly Review_, Nov. 1885, p. 687)
states that Hebrew etymologies have proved failures. But the steps of
the change from _mastema_ to Mephistopheles are all proved, beginning
with the name Mastiphat, for the prince of the demons, in the
chronographers Syncellus and Georg. Cedrenus (comp. Μαστιφαάτ =
Mastema in the Book of Jubilees). Comp. Diez, _Roman. Wörterbuch_, i.
pp. xxv., xxvi.

Footnote 132:

Turner and Morshead, _Faust_ (1882), pp. 307-8.

Footnote 133:

On the parallel phenomena in Job, see Chap. IX.

NOTE ON JOB AND THE MODERN POETS.

Job, like Spenser, should be the poet of poets; but though Goethe has imitated him in royal fashion, and here and there other poets such as Dante may offer allusions, yet Milton is the only poet who seems to have absorbed Job. _Paradise Regained_ is in both form and contents a free imitation of the Book of Job, the story of which is described in i. 368-370, 424-6, iii. 64-67. The following are the principal allusions in _Paradise Lost_:—i. 63, comp. Job x. 22; ii. 266, comp. Job iv. 16; ii. 603, comp. Job xxiv. 19 Vulg.; iv. 999, comp. Job xxviii. 25; vii. 253-4 (Hymn on the Nativity, st. 12), comp. Job xxxviii. 4-7; vii. 373-5, comp. Job xxxviii. 31; vii. 102, comp. Job xxxviii. 5. Shelley, too, is said to have delighted in Job; I must leave others to trace this in his works. I conclude with Thomas Carlyle. The words—‘Was Man with his Experience present at the Creation, then, to see how it all went on? System of Nature! To the wisest man, wide as is his vision, Nature remains of quite _infinite_ depth, of quite infinite expansion’[134]—are at once a paraphrase of the questions of Eliphaz, ‘Art thou the first man that was born?... Didst thou hearken in the council of Eloah?’ (xv. 7, 8), and a suggestive statement of the problem of _Job_ as a challenge to limited human ‘experience’ to prove its capacity for criticising God’s ways.

Footnote 134:

_Sartor Resartus_ (‘Natural Supernaturalism’).

NOTE ON THE TEXT OF JOB.

That the received text of our Hebrew Bible has a long history behind it, is generally recognised; and few will deny that its worst corruptions arose in the pre-Massoretic and pre-Talmudic periods (comp. _The Prophecies of Isaiah_, vol. ii., Essay vii.) The popularity of the Book of Job may not have been equal to that of many other books, but we have seen reason to suppose that within the circles of the ‘wise men’ it was eagerly studied and imitated. In those early times such popularity was a source of danger to the text, and hasty copyists left their mark on many a corrupt passage. Is there any remedy for this?

Dr. Merx’s book, _Das Gedicht von Hiob_ (1871), has the merits and defects of pioneering works, but his introduction should by all means be studied. Two points in it have to be examined, (1) the relative position given by Merx to the chief ancient versions, and (2) the use which he makes of his own strophic arrangement for detecting interpolations or gaps in the text. More, I think, is to be gained from his discussion of the use of the versions than from his strophic arrangement; and yet before quite so much importance is attached to the text of the Septuagint, ought we not to be surer than we are of the antiquity and of the critical value of the Septuagint _Job_? That version may not be of as recent origin[135] as Grätz would have it, but can hardly be much earlier than the second century B.C. Before this date the text of _Job_ had time to suffer much from the usual causes of corruption. Besides this, there are special reasons for distrusting the literal accuracy of the translator. He seems to have been in his own way an artist, and to have sought to reproduce poetry in poetical language. In this respect his vocabulary differs from that of all the other Septuagint translators; he thinks more of his Greek readers than of his Hebrew original. Had he been more mechanical in his method, the critical value of his work would have been greater. I agree therefore with H. Schultz that even where the Septuagint and the Peshitto are united against the Massoretic reading, the decisive arguments for the reading of the former will be, not the external one of testimony, but the internal one (if so be it exists) of suitableness.

Mr. Bateson Wright goes almost farther than Dr. Merx in his opinion of the corruptness of the received text. His work on _Job_ (1883), however unripe, shows remarkable independence, and contains, among many rash, a few striking emendations. That he does not restrict himself to corrections suggested by the versions, is not in the least a defect; the single drawback to his work is that he has not pondered long enough before writing. Purely conjectural emendation was doubtless often resorted to by the old translators themselves; it was and still is perfectly justified, though to succeed in its use requires a singular combination of caution and boldness which even older critics have not always attained. Special attention is devoted by Mr. Wright to the poetical features of the speeches in _Job_. Dr. Merx had already observed that most of the στίχοι contain eight syllables, to read which, however, it is often needful to dispense with Metheg and with the Chateph vowels, and contract the dual terminations. Mr. Wright, building upon Dr. Merx’s foundation, offers a more elaborate scheme, which cannot be discussed here. It was a misfortune for him that he had not before him the ambitious metrical transliteration of _Job_ by G. Bickell, in his _Carmina Vet. Test. metrice_, of which I would rather say nothing here than too little.

Subsequent editors of the text of _Job_ will have one advantage, which will affect their critical use of the Septuagint. It is well known that the Alexandrine version was largely interpolated from that of Theodotion. The early Septuagint text itself can however now be reconstructed, through a manuscript of the Sahidic or Thebaic version from Upper Egypt. (Comp. Lagarde, _Mittheilungen_, pp. 203-5; Agapios Bsciai, art. in _Moniteur de Rome_, Oct. 26, 1883.) Dr. Merx was well aware of the necessity of expurgating the Septuagint, and would have hailed this much-desired aid in the work (see p. lxxi. of his introduction).

So much must suffice in my present limits on the subject of metre and textual emendation. I need not thus qualify the list which follows of gaps and misplacements of text in our Book of Job. Observe (1) that Bildad’s third speech (chap. xxv.) is too short. Probably, as Mr. Elzas has suggested,[136] the continuation of it has been wrongly placed as xxvi. 5-14; the affinity of this passage to chap. xxv. is obvious. Probably the close of Bildad’s speech is wanting. If so (2), something must have dropped out of Job’s reply, since xxvi. 4 has no connection with xxvii. 2. (3) Zophar’s third speech appears to be wanting, but may really be contained in chap. xxvii. (ver. 8 to end). The student should not fail to observe that xxvii. 13 is a repetition of xx. 29. As the text stands, Job is made to recant his statements in chaps. xxi., xxiv., and to assert that there is (not merely ought to be) a just and exact retribution. The tone, moreover, of xxvii. 9, 10 is not in accordance with Job’s previous speeches. If this view be correct, an introductory formula (‘And Zophar answered and said’) must have fallen out at the beginning of ver. 7, and probably one or more introductory verses.[137] (4) The verses which originally introduced chap. xxviii. must (on account of the causal particle ‘for’ in ver. 1) either have dropped out, or else have been neglected by the person who inserted the chapter in the Book of Job. (5) The passage xxxi. 38-40 has at any rate been misplaced (Delitzsch), and probably, as Merx has pointed out, should be inserted between ver. 32 and ver. 33. Thus verses 35-37 will furnish an appropriate and impressive close to the chapter. (6) xxxvi. 31 should probably go after ver. 28 (not ver. 29, as Dillmann misstates the conjecture); verses 30, 32 have a natural connection (Olshausen). (7) The passage xli. 9-12 destroys the connection, and should probably be placed immediately before chap. xxxviii. 1, as an introductory speech of Jehovah. In that case, we must, with Merx, supply the words, ‘And Jehovah said,’ before ver. 9.

Footnote 135:

‘A child of the first Christian century,’ Grätz’s _Monatsschrift_, p.
91. Nöldeke dates this version about 150 B.C. (_Gott. gel. Anzeigen_,
1865, p. 575).

Footnote 136:

Elzas, _The Book of Job_ (1872), p. 83; Grätz inclines to a similar
view.

Footnote 137:

A similar view has been propounded by Kennicott, and also more
recently by Grätz (_Monatsschrift_, 1872, p. 247). But Kennicott
regarded chap. xxviii. as Job’s reply to Zophar, while Grätz would
include it in the speech of Zophar.

AIDS TO THE STUDENT.

There are many books and articles of importance besides the commentaries. Among these are Hupfeld, _Commentatio in quosdam Jobeïdos locos_ (1855); Bickell, _De indole ac ratione versionis Alexandrinæ in interpretando libro Iobi_ (1862); G. Baur, ‘Das Buch Hiob und Dante’s Göttliche Comödie,’ _Theol. Studien und Kritiken_ (1856), p. 583 &c. (with which may be grouped Quinet’s splendid chapter, in his early work on religions, entitled Comparaison du scepticisme oriental et du scepticisme occidental’); Seinecke, _Der Grundgedanke des Buches Hiob_ (1863); Froude, ‘The Book of Job,’ _Short Studies_, Series 1 (1867), p. 266 &c.; Reuss, _Das Buch Hiob_ (1869); Plumptre, ‘The Authorship of the Book of Job,’ _Biblical Studies_ (1870), p. 173 &c.; C. Taylor, ‘A Theory of Job xix. 25-27,’ _Journal of Philology_ (1871), pp. 128-152; Godet, ‘Le livre de Job,’ _Etudes bibliques_, prem. partie (1873), p. 185 &c.; Turner, ‘The History of Job, and its Place in the Scheme of Redemption,’ _Studies Biblical and Oriental_ (1876), p. 133 &c.; Grätz, chapter on Job in _Geschichte der Juden_, Bd. iii.; Studer, ‘Ueber die Integrität des Buches Hiob,’ _Jahrbücher für protestant. Theologie_ (1875), p. 688 &c., comp. 1877, p. 540 &c.; Budde, _Beiträge zur Kritik des Buches Hiob_ (1876), reviewed by Smend in _Studien u. Kritiken_ (1878), pp. 153-173; Giesebrecht, _Der Wendepunkt des Buches Hiob_ (1879); Derenbourg, ‘Réflexions détachées sur le livre de Job,’ _Revue des études juives_ (1880), pp. 1-8; Claussen, ‘Das Verhältniss der Lehre des Elihu zu derjenigen der drei Freunde,’ _Zeitschr. f. kirchl. Wissenschaft und Leben_ (1884), pp. 393 &c., 449 &c., 505 &c.; W. H. Green, _The Argument of the Book of Job Unfolded_ (1881); Cheyne, ‘Job and the Second Part of Isaiah,’ _Isaiah_, ii. 259 &c., with which compare the very full essay of Kuenen, Job en de lijdende knecht van Jahveh,’ _Theologisch Tijdschrift_ (1873), p. 492 &c.; Delitzsch, art. ‘Hiob,’ Herzog-Plitt’s _Realencyclopadie_, bd. vi. (1880).

THE BOOK OF PROVERBS.