Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/736

 702 JOB some have thought the passage to be the missing speech of Zopliar. Others, as Hitzig, believe that Job is parodying the ideas of the friends ; while others, like Ewald, consider that he is offering a recantation of his former excesses, and making such a modification as to express correctly his views on evil. None of these opinions is quite satisfactory, though the last probably expresses the view with which the passage was introduced, whether it be original or not. The meaning of ch. xxviii. can only be that &quot; Wisdom,&quot; that is, a theoretical comprehension of providence, is unattainable by man, whose only wisdom is the fear of the Lord or practical piety. But to bring Job to the feeling of this truth was just the purpose of the theophanyand the Divine speeches; and, if Job reached it already through his own reflexion, the theophany becomes an irrelevancy. It is difficult, therefore, to find a place for these two chapters in the original work. The hyrnn on Wisdom is a most exquisite poem, which probably originated separately, and was brought into our book with a purpose similar to that which suggested the speeches of Elihu. Objections have also been raised to the descriptions of leviathan and behemoth (ch. xl. 15-xli). Regarding these it maybe enough to say that in meaning these passages are in perfect harmony with other parts of the Divine words, although there is a breadth and detail in the style unlike the sharp, short, ironical touches, otherwise characteristic of this part of the poem. Date. The age of such a book as Job, dealing only with principles and having no direct references to historical events, can be fixed only approximately. Any conclusion can be reached only by an induction founded on matters which do not afford perfect certainty, such as the compara tive development of certain moral ideas in different ages, the pressing claims of certain problems for solution at particular epochs of the history of Israel, and points of contact with other writings of which the age may with some certainty be determined. It may be said without doubt that the book belongs to the period between David and the return from exile. The Jewish tradition that the book is Mosaic, or the other idea that it is a production of the desert, written in another tongue and translated into Hebrew, wants even a shadow of probability. The book is a genuine outcome of the religious life and thought of Israel, the product of a religious knowledge and experience that was possible among no other people. That the author lays the scene of the poem outside his own nation and in the patriarchal age is a proceeding common to him with other dramatic writers, who find freer play for their principles in a region removed from the present, where they are not hampered .by the obtrusive forms of actual life, but free to mould occurrences into the moral form that their ideas require. It is the opinion of many scholars, e.y., Delitzsch, that the book belongs to the age of Solomon. It cannot be earlier than this age, for Job (ch. vii. 17) travesties the ideas of Ps. viii. in a manner which shows that this hymn was well known. Undoubtedly many of the means and conditions necessary for its production existed in this age. It is a creation of that direction of thought known as the Wisdom, a splendid efflorescence of which distinguished this time, unless history and tradition alike are to be altogether discredited. The cosmopolitanism of Solomon s reign, and the close relations into which Israel then entered with Egypt, the further East, and even the West, may seem reflected in the poem, the author of which had seen many lands and strange peoples, and draws his illustrations from many distant sources. When, however, we compare Job with the literature of the Wisdom, presumably of the Solomonic age and even later, the difference is found to be extreme. Job is not only a creation of the Wisdom ; it is its highest creation. The literature of the Wisdom falls into three periods : the period of principles, referred to above, to which belongs the book of Proverbs ; the period of problems, illustrated by such compositions as Ps. xxxvii., xlix., Ixxiii., and others ; and the period of exhaustion, where a solution of the problems was scarcely sought, and only a modus vivendi in the face of them, through a practical prudence, was aimed at, to which belongs Ecclesiastes. Job has no affinity with the last-named period. But it is almost equally impossible that it can belong to the first. The point of view of this period on the question of evil is that represented by Job s friends, a point of view from which our book signalizes a final departure. On the other hand, the spirit of Job is that which breathes in the psalms referred to and in many other fragments of the Scriptures of the prophetic age. Such problems as burn in the pages of Job the miseries of the just, and the felicity of the ungodly were not likely to force themselves on men s attention in the Solomonic age. In the settled, well- ordered life of Israel in this happy time, the general principles of moral well-being were receiving their most splendid illustration. Only later, when the state began to receive fatal blows from without, and when through revolution and civil discord at home great and unmerited sufferings befell the best citizens in the state, would such problems rise with an urgency that demanded some solution. In some of the psalms which treat of these questions, the &quot;ungodly&quot; oppressor, whose felicity occasions disquietude to the religious mind, is probably the heathen conqueror. But these shorter pieces in all likelihood preceded in time the elaborate treatment to which such problems are sub jected in Job. It is doubtful if there is a trace of such questions in Proverbs, which, however, did not receive its final form till the age of Hezekiah. In one direction the Wisdom receives a higher development in Prov. viii. than it does in Job, but that despair of the attainment by man of any theoretical wisdom at all, which is the burden of Job xxviii., is unheard of even in Prov. i.-ix., which certainly dates from a time long posterior to the Solomonic age. The book of Job probably has behind it some public calamity which forced the question of evil on men s minds with an urgency that could not be resisted. Such a calamity, wide and national, could be nothing less than the dismemberment or subjugation of the state. The question may be difficult to settle whether it was a misfortune befalling the northern kingdom or that of the south. We gain no help here from the book itself, for the author of Job is an Israelite indeed, who belongs to none of its divisions. Somewhere in the troubled period between the early part of the 7th and the early part of the 5th century the poem may have been written. Ewald and many dis tinguished writers on the book support the earlier date, while on the part of living scholars there is rather a growing feeling that the book is later than some of the prophecies of Jeremiah. This question has to be settled largely by a comparison of literary coincidences and allusions. This is a very delicate operation. For, first, owing to the unity of thought and language which pervades Scripture, in which, regarding it for a moment merely as a national literature, it differs from all other national literatures, we are apt to be deceived, and to take mere similarities for literary allusions and quota tions; and, secondly, even when we are sure that there is dependence, it is often uncommonly difficult to decide which is the original source. The reference to Job in Ezek. xiv. 14 may not be to our book, but to the man who was afterwards made the hero of it. The affinities between Job and Isa. xl.-lxvi. are very close. The date of this part of Isaiah is uncertain, but it cannot have received its final form, if it be composite, long before the return. Its affinity with Job is not only literary; the problem is the