Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/732

 698 JOB ch. xv.-xxi.; ch. xxii.-xxxi.), although in the last cycle the third speaker Zophar fails to answer, and Job, having driven his opponents from the field, carries his reply through a series of discourses in which he dwells in pathetic words upon his early prosperity, contrasting with it his present misery and humiliation, and ends with a solemn repudiation of all the offences that had been insinuated or might be suggested against him, and a challenge to God to appear and put His hand to the charge which He had against him and for which He afflicted him. 3. A youthful bystander named Elihu, the representative of a younger generation, who had been a silent observer of the debate, intervenes and expresses his dissatisfaction with the manner in which both Job and his friends had conducted the cause, and offers what is in some respects a new solution of the question (ch. xxxii.-xxxvii.). 4. In answer to Job s repeated demands that God would appear and solve the riddle of his life, the Lord answers Job out of the whirlwind. The Divine speaker does not condescend to refer to Job s individual problem, but in a series of ironical interrogations asks him, as he thinks himself capable of fathoming all things, to expound the mysteries of the origin and subsistence of the world, the phenomena of the atmosphere, the instincts of the creatures that inhabit the desert, and, as he judges God s conduct of the world amiss, invites him to seize the reins himself and gird him with the Divine thunder and quell the rebellious forces of evil in the universe (ch. xxxviii.-xlii. 6). Job is humbled and abashed, and lays his hand upon his mouth, and repents his hasty words in dust and ashes. No solution of his problem is vouchsafed ; but God Himself effects that which neither the man s own thoughts of God nor the representa tions of the friends could accomplish : he heard of Him with the hearing of the ear without effect, but now his eye saw Him. This is the profoundest religious deep in the book. 5. The epilogue, also in prose, ch. xlii. 7-17, describes Job s restoration to a prosperity double that of his former estate, his family felicity, and long life. Design. With the exception of the episode of Elihu, the connexion of which with the original form of the poem may be doubtful, all these five parts are essential elements of the work as it came from the hand of the first author, although some parts of the second and fourth divisions may have been expanded by later writers. The idea of the composition is not to be derived from any single element of the book, as from the prologue, but from the teaching and movement of the whole piece. Job is unquestionably the hero of the work, and in the ideas which he expresses and the history which he passes through combined we may assume that we find the author himself speaking and teaching. The discussion of the question of suffering between Job and his friends occupies two-thirds of the book, or, if the space occupied by Elihu be not considered, nearly three-fourths, and in the direction which the author causes this discussion to take we may see revealed the main didactic purpose of the book. When the three friends, the representatives of former theories of providence, are reduced to silence and driven off the ground by Job, we may be certain that it was the author s purpose to discredit the ideas which they represent. Job himself offers no positive contribution to the doctrine of evil ; his position is negative, and merely antagonistic to that of the friends. But this negative position victorio.usly maintained by him has the effect of clearing the ground, and the author himself supplies in the prologue the positive truth, when he com municates the real explanation of his hero s calamities, and teaches that they were a trial of his righteousness. It was therefore the author s purpose in his work to widen men s views of the providence of God and set before them a new view of suffering. This may be considered the first &quot;Teat object of the book. This purpose, however, was in all probability no mere theoretical one, but subordinate to some .wider practical design. No Hebrew writer is merely a poet or a thinker. He is always a teacher. He has men before him in their relations to God. And it is not usually men in their individual relations, but as members of the family of Israel, the people of God. It is consequently scarcely to be doubted that the book has a national scope. The author considered his new truth regarding the meaning of affliction as of national interest, and to be the truth needful for the heart of his people in their circumstances. But the teaching of the book is only half its contents. It contains also a history deep and inexplicable affliction, a great moral struggle, and a victory. The author meant his new truth to inspire new conduct, new faith, and new hopes. In Job s sufferings, undeserved and inexplicable to him, yet capable of an explanation most consistent with the goodness and faithfulness of God, and casting honour upon his faithful servants; in his despair bordering on unbelief, at last overcome ; and in the happy issue of his afflictions- in all this Israel may see itself, and from the sight take courage, and forecast its own history. Job, however, is not to be considered Israel, the righteous servant of the Lord, under a feigned name ; he is no mere parable (though such a view is found as early as the Talmud) ; he and his history have both elements of reality in them. It is these elements of reality common to him with Israel in affliction, common even to him with humanity as a whole., confined within the straitened limits set by its own ignorance, wounded to death by the mysterious sorrows of life, tortured by the uncertainty whether its cry finds an entrance into God s ear, alarmed and paralysed by the irreconcilable discrepancies which it seems to discover between its necessary thoughts of Him and its experience of Him in His providence, and faint with longing that it might come into His place, and behold Him, not girt with His majesty, but in human form, as one looketh upon his fellow, it is these elements of truth that make the history of Job instructive to Israel in the times of affliction when it was set before them, and to men in all ages. It would probably be a mistake, however, to imagine that the author con sciously stepped outside the limits of his nation, and assumed a human position antagonistic to it. The chords he touches vibrate through all humanity ; but this is because Israel is the kernel of humanity, and because from Israel s heart the deepest music of mankind is heard, whether of pathos or of joy. Two threads requiring to be followed, therefore, run through the book, the one the discussion of the problem of evil between Job and his friends, arid the other the varying attitude of Job s mind towards heaven, the first being subordinate to the second. Both Job and his friends advance to the discussion of his sufferings and of the problem of evil, ignorant of the true cause of his calamities, Job strong in his sense of innocence, and the friends armed with their theory of the righteousness of God, who giveth to every man according to his works. With fine psychological instinct the poet lets Job altogether lose his self-control first when his three friends, the men his fellows, came to visit him. His bereavements and the acute anguish of his malady he bore with a steady courage, and the direct instigations to godle.ssness of the woman, his wife, he repelled with severity and resignation. But when men, his equals and the old associates of his happiness, came to see him, and when he read in their looks and in their seven days silence the depth of his own misery, his self-command deserted him, and he broke out into a cry of despair, cursing his day and crying for death (ch. iii. ). Job had Somewhat misinterpreted the demeanour of his friends. It was not all pity that it expressed. Along with their pity they had also brought their theology with them, and they trusted to heal Job s malady with this. Till a few days ago Job would have agreed with them on the sovereign virtues of this remedy. But he had learned through a higher teaching, the events of God s providence, that it was no more a specific in his case. His violent impatience, how ever, under his afflictions and his covert attacks upon the divine rectitude only served to confirm the view of his sufferings which their theory of evil had already suggested to his friends. And thus