Chapter III: Preface (2)

The question which frequently exercised the ingenuity of former commentators, whether the poem of Job is the work of one or of many authors, has no longer any actuality. It is absolutely certain that the book, as we find it in the Authorised Version, and even in the best Hebrew manuscripts, is a mosaic put together by a number of writers widely differing in their theological views and separated from each other by whole centuries; and it is equally undoubted that, restored to its original form, it is "a poem round and perfect as a star"--the masterpiece of one of the most gifted artists of his own or any age. To the inquiry where he lived and wrote, numerous tentative replies have been offered but no final answer. To many he is the last of the venerable race of patriarchs, and his verse the sweet, sublime lisping of a childlike nature, disporting itself in the glorious morning of the world.[22]

This, however, is but a pretty fancy, which will not stand the ordeal of scientific criticism, nor even the test of a careful common-sense examination. The broader problems that interest thinking minds of a late and reflective age, the profounder feelings and more ambitious aspirations of manhood and maturity, are writ large in every verse of the poem. The lyre gives out true, full notes, which there is no mistaking. The hero is evidently a travelled cosmopolitan, who has outgrown the narrow prejudices of petty patriotism and national religious creeds to such an extent that he studiously eschews the use of the revealed name of the God of his people, and seems to believe at most in a far-away and incomprehensible divinity who sometimes merges into Fate. In the God of theologians he had no faith. His comforters, who from the uttermost ends of the earth meet together in a most unpatriarchal manner to discuss the higher problems of philosophy, allude to the views in vogue in the patriarchal age as to traditions of bygone days before the influence of foreign invaders had tainted the purity of the national faith; and passages like xii. 17, xv. 19, seem to point to the captivity of the Hebrew people as an accomplished fact. In a word, the strict monotheism of the hero, which at times borders upon half-disguised secularism, has nothing in common with the worship of the patriarchs except the absence of priests and the lack of ceremonies. The language of the poem, flavoured by a strong mixture of Arabic and Aramaic words and phrases, and the frequent use of imagery borrowed from Babylonian mythology, to say nothing of a number of other signs and tokens of a comparatively late age, render the patriarchal hypothesis absolutely untenable.[23] This, at least, is one of the few results of modern research about which there is perfect unanimity among all competent scholars.

If the date of the composition of Job cannot be fixed with any approach to accuracy, there are at least certain broad limits within which it is agreed on all hands that it should be placed. This period is comprised between the prophetic activity of Jeremiah and the second half of the Babylonian Exile. The considerations upon which this opinion is grounded are drawn mainly, if not exclusively, from authentic passages of Job which the author presumably borrowed from other books of the Old Testament. Thus a comparison of the verses in which the hero curses the day of his birth[24] with an identical malediction in Jeremiah (xx. 14-15), and of the respective circumstances in which each was written, leads to the conviction that the borrower was not the prophet whose writings must therefore have been familiar to the poet. This conclusion is confirmed by a somewhat far-fetched but none the less valid argument drawn from the circumstance that Ezekiel,[25] who would probably have known the poem had it existed in his day, obviously never heard of it; for this prophet, broaching the question, apparently for the first time among his countrymen, as to the justice of human suffering, denies point blank that any man endures unmerited pain,[26] and affirms in emphatic terms that to each one shall be meted out reward or punishment according to his works.[27] And this he could hardly have done had he been aware of the fact that the contradictory proposition was vouched for by no less an authority than Jahveh Himself.

Again, it is highly probable, although one would hardly be justified in stating it as an established fact, that certain striking poetic images clothed in the same form of words in Job and in the Second Isaiah,[28] are the coinage of the rich imagination of the latter,[29] from whose writings they must consequently have been taken by the author of Job. If this assumption be correct, and it is considerably strengthened by collateral evidence, we should have no choice but to assign to the composition of the poem a date later than that of the Second Isaiah who wrote between 546 and 535 B.C. The ingenious and learned German critic, Dr. Cornill, holds it to be no less than two or three hundred years younger still, and bases his opinion principally upon the last verse of the last chapter of the Book of Job, where the expression (Job died) "old and full of days," is, in his opinion, borrowed from the Priests' Code. It is, however, needless to analyse this argument, seeing that the verse in question was wanting in the Septuagint[30] version, and must therefore be held to be a later addition.

Another question, once a sure test of orthodoxy, the discussion of which has become equally superfluous to-day, is to what extent the narrative is based upon historical facts. The second council of Constantinople solemnly condemned Theodore, Bishop of Mopsuestia, one of the most enlightened Fathers of the Church, for having advanced the opinion that the story of Job was a pious fiction and the doctrine it embodies irreconcileable with orthodoxy. It would be rash to say what conclusion a council sitting at the end of the nineteenth century would be likely to arrive at. But it would hardly find fault with the majority of contemporary critics who hold that the prologue and epilogue, which are in prose and contain in outline the popular legend of Job, were anterior to the colloquies between the hero and his friends, bear in fact the same relation to the poem that the mediaeval legend of Johan Faustus does to the masterpiece of Goethe. And it was to the popular legend, not to the poem, that Ezekiel alluded in the passage in which he instances Job as the type of the just man. But one must needs be endowed with a strong and child-like faith to accept, in the light of ancient history and modern science, as sober facts the familiar conversation between Jahveh and the Adversary in the council-chamber of heaven, the sudden intervention of the latter in the life of Job, the ease with which he breaks through the chain of causality and bends even the human will to his purpose, the indecent haste with which he overwhelms the just man with a torrent of calamities in the course of one short day, the apparition of Jahveh in a storm-cloud, and many other equally improbable details. Improbability, however, is the main feature of all miracles; and faith need not be dismayed even by the seemingly impossible. In any case where it is hopeless to convince, it is needless to discuss, and if there still be readers to whose appreciation of the poem belief in its historical truth is absolutely indispensable, it would be cruel to seek to spoil or even lessen their enjoyment of one of the most sublime creations known to any literature of the world.

Footnotes:

[22] One of the main grounds for this opinion is the absolute ignorance
of the Mosaic law manifested by the author of Job. The line of
reasoning is that he must have been either a Jew--and in that case
have lived before or simultaneously with Moses--or else an Arab, like
his hero, and have written the work in Arabic, Moses himself probably
doing it into Hebrew. To a Hebrew scholar this sounds as plausible as
would the thesis, to one well versed in Greek, that the Iliad is but
a translation from the Sanscrit. The Talmud makes Job now a
contemporary of David and Solomon, now wholly denies his existence.
Jerome, and some Roman Catholic theologians of to-day, identify the
author of the poem with Moses himself, a view in favour of which not
a shred of argument can be adduced. _Cf._ Loisy, "Le Livre de Job,"
Paris, 1892, p. 37; Reuss, "Hiob.," Braunschweig, 1888, pp. 8 ff.

[23] The subject of the date and place of composition has been treated by
Cornill, "Einleitung in das Alte Testament," 235 fol., by Prof.
Duhm, "The Book of Job" (_cf._ "The New World," June, 1894), and
others. But the most lucid, masterly, and dispassionate discussion of
the subject is to be found in Prof. Cheyne's "Job and Solomon,"
chaps. viii.-xii.

[24] Job A.V. iii. 3-10.

[25] 592-572 B.C.

[26] Ezek. xviii. 2, 3.

[27] _Ibid._ 4-9.

[28] "The Second Isaiah" is the name now usually given to the unknown
author of one of the sublimest books of the Old Testament, viz.,
chaps, xl.-lxvi. of the work commonly attributed to Isaiah. It was
composed most probably between 546 and 535 B.C.

[29] They may be found by referring to the parallel passages given in the
margin of the Authorised Version of Job; for instance, chap. xiv.
One example may suffice: In the Second Isaiah, xl. 6-8, we read
"The Voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is
grass, and all the goodliness thereof _is_ as the flower of the
field: the grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of
the Lord bloweth upon it: surely the people _is_ grass. The grass
withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for
ever." In Job we find the winged word embodied in the verse 2, chap.
xiv. A.V. (strophe cxxi.).

Man that is born of a woman,
Poor in days and rich in trouble;
He cometh forth as a flower and fadeth,
He fleeth like a shadow and abideth not.

[30] For the value of the testimony of the Septuagint, _cf_.
following chapter.

* * * * *

THE TEXT AND ITS RECONSTRUCTION

Our Authorised Version of Job is based upon the text handed down to us in existing Hebrew manuscripts and upon Jerome's Latin translation. None of the manuscripts, the most important of which are those of the Vatican,[31] of Alexandria[32] and of Sinai,[33] go further back than the fourth century A.D. And some of the modifications, made by Jerome in the Latin translation, particularly in chap. xxi. 25-27, into which he introduces the Christian idea of the Resurrection, were not based upon the various readings of the Codices, but inspired by a pious desire to render the work more edifying. As our Hebrew manuscripts are all derived from a single copy which was probably contemporaneous with the reign of the Emperor Hadrian,[34] the words and the corrections of which they reproduce with Chinese scrupulosity, the utmost we can expect from them is to supply us with the text as it existed at that relatively late age.

The comparative indifference that reigned before that time as to the purity of the text of the most important books of the Canon, and the utter carelessness with which down to the first century of the Christian era the manuscripts of the Hagiographa[35] were treated, render it highly probable that long before the reign of Hadrian the poem of Job had undergone many and serious modifications. The ease with which words written with consonants only, many of which resembled each other, were liable to be interchanged, strengthens this probability; while a detailed study of the various manuscripts and translations transforms it into certainty. The parallel passages alone of almost any of the books of the Old Testament yield a rich harvest of divergences.

But involuntary errors of the copyists are insufficient to explain all the bewildering changes which disfigure many of the books of the Sacred Scriptures. The gradual evolution of the Hebrew religion from virtual polytheism to the strictest monotheism seemed peremptorily to call for a corresponding change in the writings in which the revelation underlying it was enshrined. A later stadium of the evolution--which, of course, was never felt to be such--might naturally cause the free and easy views and lax practices which once were orthodox and universal to assume the odious form of heresy and impiety, and a laudable respect for the author of revelation was held to impose the sacred duty of bringing the documentary records of ancient practices into harmony with present theories. This was especially true of the Books of Job and Ecclesiastes, in which not only was the general tone lacking in respect for all that the Jewish community held sacred, but likewise long and eloquent passages directly called in question the truth of revelation and blasphemously criticised the attributes of the Most High.

Gauged by the narrow standards of the Jewish community,[36] some of Job's most sublime outbursts of poetic passion must have seemed as impious to his contemporaries as to the theologians of our own country the "blasphemies" hurled by Byron's Lucifer against the "Everlasting Tyrant." There can be no doubt that it is to the feeling of holy horror which his plain speaking aroused in the minds of the strait-laced Jews of 2400 years ago that we have to ascribe the principal and most disfiguring changes which the poem underwent at the hands of well-meaning censors. It is quite possible even now to point out, by the help of a few disjointed fragments still preserved, the position, and to divine the sense, of certain spiritful and defiant passages which, in the interest of "religion and morals," were remorselessly suppressed, to indicate others which were split up and transposed, and to distinguish many prolix discourses, feeble or powerful word-pictures and trite commonplaces which were deliberately inserted later on, for the sole purpose of toning down the most audacious piece of rationalistic philosophy which has ever yet been clothed in the music of sublime verse.

The disastrous results of these corrections which were made at various times and by different persons is writ large in the present text of Job as we find it in the Hebrew manuscripts and our Authorised Version, which offer us in many places a jumble of disjointed fragments, incoherent, irrelevant or self-contradictory.

In addition to common sense aided by cautious text criticism which enables us to recognise interpolations, to correct copyists' errors and occasionally even to determine the place and the tendency of expunged passages, the means at our disposal for the restoration of the poem are principally two: The laws of Hebrew poetry (parallelism and metre) on the one hand, and a comparison of the Hebrew text with the ancient Greek translation of the Septuagint,[37] on the other. A judicious use of these helps which are recognised as such even by the most conservative Christians, who condemn without hearing the tried methods and least doubtful conclusions of biblical criticism, enables one to accomplish all that is now possible towards restoring the poem of Job to its original form.

The nature and the laws of Hebrew metre, the discovery of which is indissolubly associated with the name of Prof. Bickell,[38] are identical with those of Syriac poetry. The unit is the line, the syllables of which are numbered and accentuated, the line most frequent containing seven syllables with iambic rhythm. Accentuated syllables alternate regularly with unaccentuated, whereby the penultimate has the accent; and the poetic accent always coincides with the grammatical, as in Syriac poetry and in the Greek verse of early Christian times, the structure of which was copied from the Syriac. Compare for instance the following:

[Greek:
Hae parthenos saemeron
Ton epouranion tiktei,
Kai hae gae to spaelaion
To aprosito parechei.]

with a strophe from Job:

Shamáti khéllä rábbot:
Menáchme 'amal koól' khem,
Hakeç ledíberé rooch?
Ma-yámriç'khá, ki táhnä?

The second characteristic of Hebrew poetry, which is occasionally to be found even in prose, is that repetition of the same thought in a slightly modified form which is commonly known as parallelism. Thus, in the poem of Job the second line of the strophe expresses an idea very closely resembling that embodied in the first; and the third and fourth run parallel in like manner. For instance, Eliphaz, expounding the traditional teaching that the wicked man is punished in this life, says:

"His offshoot shall wither before his time,
And his branch shall not be green;
He shall shake off his unripe grape, like the vine,
And shall shed his flower, like the olive."

The second important aid to emendation is a careful comparison of the Hebrew text with the Greek translation known as the Septuagint (LXX.), which, undertaken and completed in Alexandria between the beginning of the third and the close of the second century B.C., offers the first recorded instance of an entire national literature being rendered into a foreign tongue. The extrinsic value of this work is obvious from the fact that it enables us to construct a text which is centuries older than that of which all our Hebrew manuscripts are servile copies, and is over a thousand years more ancient than the very oldest Hebrew codices now extant.[39] Not indeed that the poem of Job had undergone no changes between the time of its composition and the second century B.C. On the contrary, some of the most important interpolations had already been inserted[40] and various excisions and transpositions made before the translator first took the work in hand. But at least the ground is cleared considerably, seeing that no less than four hundred verses which we now read in all our present Bibles, Hebrew and vernacular, were tacked on to the poem at a date subsequent to the Greek translation and therefore found no place in that version. These additions may, on the faith of the Septuagint, be struck out with all the less hesitation that both metre and parallelism confirm with their weighty testimony the trustworthy evidence of the orthodox translation that the strophes in question are insertions of a later date.

But the value of the Septuagint depends upon its greater or less immunity from those disfiguring changes which render the Hebrew text incomprehensible and from which few ancient works are wholly free. And unfortunately no such immunity can be claimed for it. What happened to the original text likewise befell the Greek translation. Desirous of putting an end to the disputes between Jews and Christians as to the respective merits of the two, a proselyte from Ephesus, Theodotion by name, undertook to do the Bible into Greek anew somewhere between 180-192 A.D. The basis of his work was the Septuagint, of which he changed nothing that in his opinion could stand; but at the same time he consulted the Hebrew manuscripts and vainly endeavoured to effect a compromise between the two. Among other innovations, he inserted in his translation the four hundred interpolated verses which, having been added to the Hebrew text after it had been first rendered into Greek, could not possibly have formed part of the Septuagint version. Later on (232-254 A.D.) Origen, anxious to throw light upon the cause of the divergences between existing translations and the original text, and to provide the means of judging of the respective merits of these, undertook one of those wearisome works of industry, which later on constituted a special feature of the activity of the Benedictine monks. The result of his researches was embodied in the Hexapla--a book containing, in six parallel columns, the original text in Hebrew and in Greek letters, the Greek translation by Aquila, another by Symmachus, the text of the Septuagint edited by himself, and Theodotion's version. Now Origen, acting upon the gratuitous assumption that the passages wanting in the Septuagint had formed part of the original Book of Job and had been omitted by the translators solely because they failed to understand their meaning, took them from Theodotion and incorporated them in his edition of the Septuagint as it appeared in the Hexapla, merely distinguishing them by means of asterisks. Unfortunately, in the course of time these distinctive marks disappeared partially or wholly, thus depriving the old Greek translation of its inestimable value as an aid to text criticism; and there remained but five manuscripts in which they were to some extent preserved.[41]

Until recently it was generally taken for granted by Biblical scholars that there were no codices extant in the world but these five, which contained data of a nature to enable us to reconstruct the text of the Septuagint. And the assistance given by these manuscripts was dubious at best, for they included the misleading additions incorporated in the text by Origen, merely marking them with asterisks, which were not only insufficient in number, but oftentimes wrongly distributed. No one ventured to hope that there was still extant a version from which the spurious verses were rigorously excluded. And the discovery of such a text by my friend, Prof. Bickell, marks a new epoch in the history of Biblical criticism.

One day that distinguished scholar, while sauntering about Monte Pincio with the late Coptic Bishop, Agapios Bsciai, was informed by this dignitary that he had found and transcribed a wretched codex of the Saidic[42] Version of Job in the Library of the Propaganda. Hearing that numerous passages were wanting in the newly discovered codex, Prof. Bickell at once conjectured that this "defective" version might possibly prove to be a translation of the original Septuagint text without the later additions; and having studied it at the bishop's house saw his surmise changed to certainty; the text was indeed that of the original Septuagint without the disfiguring additions inserted by Origen. The late Prof. Lagarde of Göttingen then applied for, and received, permission to edit this precious find; but owing to the desire conceived later on by Pope Leo XIII. that an undertaking of such importance should be carried out by an ecclesiastic of the Roman Catholic Church, Lagarde's hopes were dashed at the eleventh hour, and Monsignor Ciasca, to whom the task was confided, accomplished all that can reasonably be expected from pious zeal and patient industry.

The Saidic version, therefore, as embodying a purer and more ancient text of the Book of Job than any we had heretofore possessed, is one of the most serviceable of the instruments employed in restoring the poem to its primitive form.[43] It frequently enables us to eliminate passages which formerly rendered the author's meaning absolutely incomprehensible, and at other times replaces obscure with intelligible readings which, while differing from those of the Massoretic manuscripts, are obviously the more ancient.

Footnotes:

[31] Fourth century A.D.

[32] Fifth century A.D.

[33] Fourth century A.D.

[34] A.D. 117-138.

[35] The Hagiographa--or, as the Hebrews term them, _Ketubim_--include
Job, Proverbs, the Psalms, the Canticle of Canticles, Ruth, the
Lamentations, Koheleth, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and
Chronicles.

[36] As distinguished from the pre-exilian people. Before the Captivity
the Israelites lived the political life of all independent nations.
After the Exile they were but a religious community--a Church. It was
for this Church that the "Mosaic" legislation of the Priests' Code
was written and the ancient historical records retouched.

[37] Completed probably in the second century B.C.

[38] Ewald and others had conjectured long before that the colloquies of
Job were in verse, but their attempts to reduce them to strophes
were of a nature to weaken rather than confirm the theory. That
the strophes consisted of four lines is a discovery of Prof.
Bickell's. At first listened to with scepticism, it is now accepted
by some of the leading critics of Germany, and received with favour
by such English scholars as Prof. Cheyne.

[39] St. Paul in his quotations from the Old Testament usually follows
the Septuagint. But the poem of Job he quotes from a lost version,
some traces of which are to be found in the works of Clement of
Alexandria.

[40] "Inserted" is the strongest term that can be applied to editors who
lived in a time when to foist one's own elucubrations upon a
deceased genius was a work of piety deserving praise. Some of the
acts which were virtues in Job's days have assumed a very different
aspect in ours; but good intentions are always at a premium, and the
Jewish interpolators were animated by the best.

[41] Two Greek, two Latin, and one Syriac.

[42] Also called the Thebaic Version.

[43] As a translation it is a poor performance.

* * * * *

INTERPOLATIONS

Having thus briefly sketched the instruments by means of which the reconstruction of the poem of Job was undertaken, it may not be amiss to illustrate the manner in which they are employed in the light of a few examples. To begin with the structure of the metre. In the Authorised Version we find (chap. xii. 12) the words: "With the ancient is wisdom, and in length of days understanding." This in Hebrew is

Bishíshim chókhma
Veórekh yámim t'búna.

The first line therefore has five instead of seven syllables and is consequently defective; something must have fallen out. This conclusion, based upon the laws of the metre, is fully borne out by a study of the context; for it is enough to read Job's reply from the beginning to see that he could not have set himself to prove, as he is here made to do, that God is as wise as man; his contention really being that man's knowledge is ignorance compared with the wisdom of the Being who governs the universe. For he is arguing against the traditionalists who assert that justice is the essential characteristic of the conduct of the world, a thesis refuted by almost everything we see and hear around us. Bildad besought his sorely tried friend to learn of bygone generations and to view things through their eyes. "Shall they not teach thee?" he asks (viii. 10), to which Job's reply is an emphatic negative: "There is _no_ wisdom with the ancient, nor understanding in length of days." To agree with his "friend" would be to throw up his case, and this the Authorised Version makes him do. God alone is endowed with wisdom; but is He likewise good? To this question His government of the universe alone can furnish an answer. There must evidently then have been a negative particle in the text which a copyist, shocked at the seemingly rash assertion, expunged. If now we add the words "for not" the metre is in order and the sense perfect:

Ki én bishíshim chókhma
Veórekh yámim t'búna.

Take another instance. The first part of v. 14, chap. xiv. is rendered in our version as follows: "If a man die shall he live again?" and the translation would be faithful enough if the Hebrew word were _hayichyä_, as our MSS. testify, but as an interrogation would destroy the parallelism of the strophe, it is evident that the syllable _ha_, which in Hebrew consists of one and not two letters, is an interpolation, and the word should be _yichyä_ and the strophe (composed of v. 13 and 14a).

"Oh, that thou wouldst hide me in the grave!
That thou wouldst secrete me till thy wrath be passed!
That thou wouldst appoint me a set time, and remember me!
If so be man could die and yet live on."

Again starting from the recognised principle that the entire poem is composed on a regular plan and consists exclusively of four-line strophes, it is obvious that all the tristichs in chapters xxiv. and xxx. must be struck out. The circumstances that their contents are as irrelevant to the context as would be a number of stanzas of "The Ancient Mariner" if introduced into "Paradise Lost," that in form they are wholly different from the strophes of the poem of Job, and that there is obviously a sudden break in the text of the latter just when heterodoxy merges into blasphemy, have forced critics to the conclusion--about which there is hardly any difference of opinion--that these tristichs are extracts from a very different work, which were inserted to fill up the void created by orthodox theologians of a later date.[44]

Besides the four hundred verses which must be excluded on the ground that they are wanting in the Septuagint Version, and were therefore added to the text at a comparatively recent period,[45] the long-winded discourse of Elihu[46] must be struck out, most of which was composed before the book was first translated into Greek. Common sense, unaided by any critical apparatus, suffices to mark this tedious monologue as an interpolation. The poet knew nothing of him who is supposed to have uttered it. In the prologue in prose where all the actors in this psychological drama are enumerated and described, Elihu is not once alluded to; and in the epilogue, where all the debaters are named and censured, he alone is absolutely ignored. Nay, it is evident that when Jahveh's discourse was written, the poet had no suspicion of the existence of this fourth friend; for at the conclusion of the "fourth friend's" pretentious speech, composed of scraps borrowed from those of the other actors in the drama, Jahveh addressed all present in a form of words which implies that not Elihu but Job was the last speaker, and had only that instant terminated his reply. This fact alone should be conclusive. But it is confirmed by other weighty considerations which leave no place for doubt: Thus, Elihu's style is _toto coelo_ different from that of the other parts of the poem: artificial, vague, rambling, prosaic, and strongly coloured by Aramaic idioms, while his doctrinal peculiarities, particularly his mention of interceding angels, while they coincide with those of the New Testament, are absolutely unknown to Job and his friends. Moreover, if Elihu had indeed formed one of the _dramatis personae_ of the original work, the _rôle_ he would and should have assumed is not dubious; he must be the wise man according to the author's own heart. This he is or nothing. And yet, if he were really this, we should have the curious spectacle of the poet developing at great length an idea which runs directly counter to the fundamental conception underlying the entire work. For Elihu declares Job's sufferings to be a just punishment for his sins; whereas the poet and Jahveh Himself proclaim him to be the type of the just man, and describe his misery as a short, unmerited and exceptional probation. Evidently then Elihu is the elaborate production of some second-rate writer and first-class theologian awkwardly wedged into the poem perhaps a century or more after it had been composed, and certainly before the work was first translated into Greek.

The confusion introduced into the text by this insertion is bewildering in the extreme; and yet the result is but a typical specimen of the inextricable tangle which was produced by the systematic endeavours of later and pious editors to reduce the poem to the proper level of orthodoxy. Another instance is to be found in Job's reply to the third discourse of Bildad: in two passages of this discourse the hero completely and deliberately gives away the case which he had been theretofore so warmly defending, and accepts--to reject it later on as a matter of course--the doctrine of retribution.[47] Now, on the one hand, if we remove these verses, Job's speech becomes perfectly coherent and logical, and the description of wisdom falls naturally into its right place; but, on the other hand, we have no reason whatever to call their authenticity in question and to strike them out. The solution of this difficulty is that Zophar who, in our versions, speaks but twice, really spoke three times, like each of his three colleagues, and that the verses in question were uttered by him, and not by Job. His discourse was intentionally split up into two portions, and incorporated in a speech delivered by Job, in order to represent the hero as an advocate of the dogma of retribution.

Another example of obviously intentional transposition occurs in chap. xl. where two verses are introduced as one of Job's replies to God, so as to allow of the latter delivering a second speech and utilising therein a fine description of the hippopotamus and the crocodile. Lastly, it needs little critical acumen to perceive that the scraps of dialogue attributed to Jahveh in the Hebrew text and Authorised Version are, in so far as they can claim to be regarded as authentic, but fragments of a single discourse. It would be preposterous to hold a poet or even an average poetaster responsible for the muddle made by the negligence of copyists and the zeal of interpolators who sought thus awkwardly to improve the author's theology at the cost of his poetry. But it is enough to consider the elements of this particular question for a moment to perceive that there can be but one solution. Jahveh makes a long and crushing reply to Job, gradually merges into fine descriptive but irrelevant poetry, and then suddenly calls for a rejoinder. The hero, humbled to the dust, exclaims[48] that he is vile and conscious of his impotence, and will lay his hand upon his mouth and open his lips no more. Here the matter should end, for Job has confessed himself vanquished. But no, Jahveh, instead of being touched by this meek avowal and self-humiliation, must needs address the human worm as if he had turned against his Creator, and asks such misplaced questions as "Hast thou an arm like God?" As a matter of fact, Jahveh, whose apparition is but a poetic symbol of the sudden flash of light which illumined the mind of the despairing hero, spoke but once. For Job, one glimpse through the veil was enough, one rapid glance at the realm where all is dark, and deep lies

"under deep unknown,
And height above unknown height."

Footnotes:

[44] Chap. xxiv. 5-8, 10-24 and chap. xxx. 3-7 take the place of Job's
blasphemous complaint about the unjust government of the world.

[45] For the benefit of readers who shrink from making any alteration in
the Bible, and who are mostly unaware that innumerable and
wide-reaching changes were effected in it by the negligence or
design of scribes, theologians, and others, it may be well to point
out that none of the changes rendered necessary by the reconstruction
of the Books of Job and Ecclesiastes in any way affects whatever
degree of inspiration they feel disposed to attribute to the Bible as
a whole, or to the interpolations in particular. The point of view of
the critic, if by no means identical with that of the pious
worshipper, need not to clash with it. An interpolation may be--and
as we here see very often is--much more orthodox than an original
text, and the more recent its origin the greater the chances that it
will be so.

[46] xxxii.-xxxvii. In the Septuagint Version Elihu's discourse occupies
but little more than half the number of verses to be found in the
Hebrew manuscript and in the Authorised Version.

[47] xxvii. 8-10, 14-23.

[48] xl. 4-5.

* * * * *

JOB'S THEOLOGICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPTIONS

Although the main object of the poet is to present in a clear, comprehensive and palpable form the sphinx riddle of human existence, his work abounds nevertheless in a variety of interesting data, which throw considerable light upon the philosophical and theological theories in vogue among the thoughtful spirits of the Jewish community. Their "natural philosophy" offers little that is likely to interest and nothing of a nature to instruct the well-informed reader of to-day. But the mythological concreteness and palpitating vitality of all its elements profoundly impress us, less because of the curious standard they supply by which to gauge the intellectual level of that age than as the symbols chosen by the poet to express the identity and nothingness of all things living and inanimate. Before God, all creatures think, reason, speak, like man, because all are equal to him and he is but a breath. The stars, which are relatives of the Satan and of God's own children, wax enthusiastic and shout for joy; the lightning hearkens to the voice of its Creator and, flashing athwart the heavens, announces its presence. The sun is in continual danger of being devoured by a rapacious monster upon whom a watch has to be set; and all things live and move in the same way and by exactly the same force that dwells and acts in man with whom they are one in essence; and he himself is but a flower that sprouts, fades and dies.[49] Death is the end of man and beast and flower and grass alike; and after death comes dismal darkness. There is no difference among them. Man is no more and no less than all the rest. _Sheol_, or the realm of the dead, is a murky, silent and dreary abode, the shadowy inmates of which are as if they were not, unconscious as infants "which never saw the light."

This state, which is not perhaps absolutely equivalent to complete annihilation, is yet identical with that of "an hidden untimely birth." Translated into the language of philosophy this somewhat vague notion might be expressed as follows: All things, past, present and to come, which flit as unreal shadows on the wall of time and space, are manifestations of the one sole force which is everlasting and omnipresent. They are not parts of a whole which is one and divisible: all that we see and know of them in life is nothing; and after death they are what they were before--identical with the one.

"One life through all the immense creation runs,
One spirit is the moon's, the sea's, the sun's;
All forms in the air that fly, on the earth that creep,
And the unknown nameless creatures of the deep--
Each breathing thing obeys one mind's control,
And in all substance is a single soul."

For Job's theory of the universe is dynamic and recognises but one force, which is so vague and indefinite that he hesitates to bestow upon it the name of the concrete God of the Jews.[50] There is no multiplicity, no duality, no other substance, no other cause. The One is and does alone. All things are shadowy delusions; He alone is real. We are nothing except in Him. Evil as well as good is His work. The Satan who tortures Job is one of the sons of God to whom special power is exceptionally delegated; but, as a rule, God Himself punishes the just and showers His blessings on the wicked. Everything that happens is the outcome of His will. There is no nature, no causation, no necessary law in the physical world; every event is the embodiment of the one will which is absolutely free, and therefore, neither to be foreseen nor explained.

Like Koheleth, Job seems to hold that intelligence is something secondary not primordial. Man, who is richly endowed with it on earth, knows really nothing, never can know anything, about the origin and reason of things. They are absolutely unknowable. He finds abyss yawning under abyss, height towering above height, and dark mysteries encompass him everlastingly.

"But wisdom--whence shall it come?
And where is the place of understanding?
It is hid from the eyes of all living" (cxxxiv.).

And if there be at most but will-o'-the-wisps on this side of the shadow of Night, there is nought but absolute darkness beyond.

These considerations would seem to offer a very satisfactory explanation of the monotheism of the poet which is far in advance of that of his contemporaries, to whatever age we may assign him. It is a purely philosophical conception which never was and never can be enshrined in a theological dogma, and to seek for its genesis in the evolution of the Jewish religion is far less reasonable than to derive it from the philosophy of the Greeks or the Hindoos.

Job's theory of ethics differs widely from that of his friends and contemporaries, and indeed from that of the bulk of mankind of all times. The Jews believed in fleeting pleasures and pains in this life as the sole recompense for virtue and sin; their modern heirs and successors hope for eternal bliss or fear everlasting suffering in the next. The motives deducible from both creeds are identical, and philosophy connotes them as egotism. Whether the meed I long for or the pain I would shun be transitory or everlasting, the moment my individual well-being becomes the motive of my conduct it is not easy to perceive where morality comes in. And so universally is egotism to be found at the root of what appear to us to be the most generous actions, that the Adversary was right enough in refusing, without conclusive proof, to enrol Job's name in the short list of exceptions. But Job's ethics were many degrees above proof. In no book of the ancient Testament and in no religion or philosophy of the old world, if we except Buddhism, do we find anything to compare with the sublime morality inculcated in the poem that bears his name. It utterly ignores the convenient and profitable virtue known as "duty to one's self" and bases all the other virtues on pity for our fellows, who are not merely our brethren but our very selves. The truly moral man should be able to say with Job:

"I delivered the poor that cried aloud,
And the orphan and him that had none to help him;
And I gladdened the heart of the widow (ccxlvii.).

I became eyes to the blind,
And I was feet unto the lame (ccxlviii.).

If I saw one perish for lack of clothing,
Or any of the poor devoid of covering;
Then surely did his loins bless me,
And he was warmed with the fleece of my sheep (cclxix.).

I have never made gold my hope (cclxxi.).

Never did I rejoice at the ruin of my hater,
Nor exult when misery found him out (cclxxiii.).

Did not he that made me in the womb, make him? (cclxvii.)

Did I not weep for him that was in trouble?" (cclix.).

And having accomplished all this without fear of pain,

"Gaze onward without claim to hope,
Nor, gazing backward, court regret."

This is the only system of morality deserving that much-abused name; it was preached and to a great extent practised in India by the Jainists and the Buddhists, and for the first time in the Old Testament by the author of our poem.

All the ills and sorrows of life, merited and unmerited alike, Job is prepared for. They are the commonplaces of human existence and as inseparable from it as shadow from light. But what he cannot endure is the thought that his good name, the sole comfort left him in his misery, shall be sacrificed to a theological theory which runs counter to every fact of public history and private experience. This is an injustice which seems to strike at the root of all morality, and he passionately attacks all who uphold it, even though God Himself be of the number. For he has unshaken faith in eternal justice as something independent even of the deity. Its manifestations may be imperceptible and incomprehensible to us, but it governs the universe all the same, and faith in this fact was his lodestar when sun and moon had gone out and the aimless tornado raged around and ghastly horrors issued from the womb of Night. The wicked may prosper and the just man die on a dunghill, scorned by all and seemingly forsaken by God Himself, but it is none the less true that sin and suffering, virtue and reward are fruits of the same tree, one and indivisible. They are the manna the taste of which adapts itself to the eater. Job expresses the conviction, which St. Bernard so aptly formulated when he said: "Nought can harm me but myself;" and it is this conviction that nerves and sustains him in his defiant challenge to the Most High and prompts his appeal to eternal justice against even God Himself:

"Will he plead against me with his almighty power?
If not, then not even he would prevail against me.
For a righteous one would dispute with him." (ccxvi.)

But after the theophany, when the truth has dawned upon the mind of the heroic sufferer, he sees that eternal justice needs not even this certificate of its existence, that it can dispense with the most eloquent human advocate, and he waives what he had theretofore held to be his indefeasible right and puts the crown on his system of ethics by enduring his lot in silence.

Peace grounded on knowledge, therefore, is the end of Job's doubts and misgivings. But it is not the knowledge of a reward to come, a presentiment of the joys of heaven, of an everlasting feeding-trough where our hunger and thirst for existence shall be satiated for ever and ever. It is that sobering knowledge which is increase of sorrow. Injustice in the world there is none; if all beings living are liable to pain, and everything animate and inanimate is subject to decay and death, the reason is that suffering and dissolution are the conditions of existence, which is therefore an evil. To desire the one is to wish for or accept the other. This is the conviction which brings peace to the soul of the hero and enables him to exclaim:

"I resign and console myself,
Though in dust and ashes."

Footnotes:

[49] Strophe cxxi.

[50] Lagarde seems to have hit the mark when he affirms that the poet's
faith in God reduces itself to a vague belief in the divine.

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ANALYSIS OF THE POEM

The popular legend of Job, which was current among the Hebrews and probably among their Semitic neighbours for centuries before the poem was composed, is embodied in the prologue and epilogue,[51] which are written in prose. The data it contains are utilised by the author for the purpose of clearly stating, not of elucidating, the main problem, and it would be a grave mistake on the part of the reader to attempt to supplement the reasoning of Job's friends by arguments drawn from the details narrated in the legend. Thus, the conversation between Jahveh and the Satan is obviously intended to establish the all-important fact that Job, although not a member of the chosen people, a believer in their priestly dogmas, nor an observer of their religious rites and ceremonies, was none the less a truly just man, the perfect type of the righteous of all times and countries. On the other hand, the circumstances that his sufferings were no more than a probation, and that they were followed by fabulous wealth and intensified happiness, are dismissed by the poet as wholly irrelevant to the question at issue. Nor, considering their purely exceptional character, would they have tended in any degree to solve it. If Job's misery was an ordeal, all unmerited suffering cannot be pressed into the same convenient category. His individual privations and pains may have been compensated for by subsequent plenty and prosperity; but there are other just men who rot on the dunghill and die in despair. The author, therefore, wisely refrained from drawing on the legend more extensively than was absolutely needful for the materials of his poem, and from thus reducing a universal problem to the dimensions of an individual case.

The folk-story of the just man, Job, is conceived in the true spirit of Eastern legendary lore. The colours are laid on with an ungrudging hand. He was not merely well-to-do and contented, he was the happiest mortal who had ever walked the earth in his halcyon days, and the most hopelessly wretched during his probation.

But although wont, as the Preacher recommends, to fill up his cup with the wine of life, "pressing all that it yields of mere vintage," he was anything but an egotist. The broad stream of his sympathy flowed out towards all his fellows, nay, to all things animate and inanimate. The sheep, the lion, the eagle, and the oxen, were his comrades, the fire and the wind his kinsmen. Even for his worst enemies he had no curse, nor did he ever rejoice in their merited misfortunes. So blameless and upright was his living and working, so completely had he eschewed even heart-sins, that he might have carried windows in his breast that all might see what was being done within.

Now, in accordance with the retribution-theory then in fashion--small temporary profits and quick returns--he had amply merited his good fortune, and might have reasonably expected to enjoy it to the close of a long life, which for him was the end of everything. In fact, he had no longer any serious grounds for apprehending the gathering of clouds of misfortune to darken the sunshine of his existence, seeing that he had already attained to a ripe age, was possessed of vast herds of cattle and thousands of camels, was blest with a numerous family, and passed for "the greatest of all the children of the East." But the most specious theological theories are as powerless to guarantee the just man from the blows of adversity as to hinder the worm from finding the blushing rose's "bed of crimson joy"; and whether pain and sorrow be labelled "probation" or "just punishment," they will never cease to figure among the commonplaces of human existence.

At one of the social gatherings of the courtiers of heaven, Jahveh takes occasion to laud the virtue of the just man, Job, whereupon the Satan, who not only understands, but sees through the righteousness of the bulk of mankind, expresses his conviction that it has its roots in mere selfishness. Jahveh then empowers the Adversary to put it to the test by depriving Job of his possessions and his family. On this, the hero's wealth and happiness vanished as suddenly as the smile on the face of an infant, and in a twinkling, so to say, he was changed into a perfect type of human wretchedness.

By one of those extraordinary miracles which are characteristic of Oriental fiction, in the course of a single day Job's four hundred yoke of oxen were seized and carried off by the Sabeans, his seven thousand scattered sheep were sought out and consumed by lightning, his three thousand camels were driven away by Chaldeans, and his sons and daughters killed by the falling of a house. Being but human, Job's soul is harrowed up by grief; but, recognising the emptiness of all things, he endures his lot manfully and without murmur or complaint.

When the sons of God met again in the council chamber of heaven, Jahveh triumphantly inquired of the Adversary what he now thought of Job's virtue and its taproot. But the Satan still clung tenaciously to his low view of the mainspring of the hero's conduct. "Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life. But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will renounce thee to thy face. And the Lord said unto the Adversary: "Behold he is in thine hand; only spare his life." Whereupon he was smitten with the most loathsome disease known in the East, which together with the moral suffering resulting from utter abandonment, besieged him, "even to the gates and inlets of his life." But firm and manful, with strength nurtured by the witness of his own conscience, and the conviction that true virtue is independent of reward, he maintains the citadel unconquered, refusing to open the portals even to Jahveh Himself.

Nothing can subdue Job, not even the bitter fruits of the diabolical refinement of the Adversary who, having permission to slay all the hero's kith and kin, spares his spouse, lest misery should harbour any possibilities unrealised.