Page:Job and Solomon (1887).djvu/100

 and his age had been modified by hearing of the Persian Ahriman, may be questioned; but a similar supposition cannot be allowed in the case of the author of Job. The Satan of the Prologue is, in theory at least, simply Jehovah's agent, though he certainly betrays a malicious pleasure in his invidious function of trying or sifting the righteous. It is not impossible that the author of the Prologue was the first to use the term Satan in this sense. At any rate, it is a pure Hebrew term, unlike the Ashmedai or Asmodæus of the Book of Tobit. [Ashmedai, in later Judaism, is the head of the Shedim—demons who were never angels of God, just as Sammael is the 'head of all Satans,' i.e. the prince of the fallen angels. Weber, ''System der altsynagog. Palästin. Theologie'', pp. 243-5.]

Next, turning to the mal'akim, observe that the word occurs very rarely in Job, viz. once in the original Colloquies (iv. 18), and once (virtually) in the first speech of Elihu (xxxiii. 23). We find, however, a kindred phrase 'the q'doshim,' or 'holy ones,' i.e. superhuman, heavenly beings, separate from the world of the senses (v. 1, xv. 15), and comparing v. 1 with iv. 18 we cannot doubt that the same class of beings is intended. We nowhere meet with the Mal'ak Yahvè, so familiar to us in certain Old Testament narratives; Elihu's mal'ak mēlīç (xxxiii. 23) is not synonymous with the older expression (see account of Elihu). In fact, the thousands of mal'akim known at the period of the writers of Job have made the one great mal'ak unnecessary, just as, but for the influence of Persian ideas, the multitudinous 'hurtful angels' (Ps. lxxviii. 49) might sooner or later have entirely supplanted the single Satan. And yet even an ordinary mal'ak, when he appears, is more awful than the great mal'ak Yahvè; the angel who appears to Eliphaz (Job iv. 15, 16) is as unrecognisable as the 'face' of Jehovah himself. This is an indication, though but a slight one, of a somewhat advanced age, when the gulf between God and man was more acutely felt, and religious thought was more specially directed to filling it up.

The title 'holy ones' (v. 1) enables us to identify the 'angels'