Page:Job and Solomon (1887).djvu/212

 observant eye the strife of classes. What bitter sighs must have prompted a saying like this (xiii. 2, 3)—

A burden that is too heavy for thee take not up, and have no fellowship with one that is stronger and richer than thyself: For what fellowship hath the kettle with the earthen pot? this will smite, and that will be broken. The rich man doth wrong, and he snorteth with anger, the poor man is wronged, and he entreateth withal.

And again (xiii. 18)—

What peace hath the hyæna with the dog? and what peace hath the rich man with the poor?

He is painfully conscious of the deserved humiliation of his country, and the only reason which he can urge why God should interpose is the assured prophetic word (xxxvi. 15, 16 = 20, 21). Elsewhere he ascribes all the evil of his time to the neglect of the Law (xli. 8), which, by a strong hyperbole, he almost identifies with personified Divine Wisdom (xxiv. 23; see above on Prov. viii.) Not however without a noble introduction leading up to and justifying this identification. In the true māshāl-style he describes how Wisdom wandered through the world seeking a restingplace,—

Then the Creator of all gave me a commandment, and he that made me caused my tent to rest, and said, Let thy dwelling be in Jacob, and thine inheritance in Israel (xxiv. 8).

And after a series of wondrous images, all glorifying the Wisdom enthroned in Jerusalem, he declares—

All this [is made good in] the book of the covenant of the Most High God, the Law which Moses commanded us as a heritage unto the congregations of Jacob (xxiv. 23).

This remarkable chapter deserves to be studied by itself; it is most carefully composed in 72 [Greek: stichoi]. Lowth and Wessely have with unequal success retranslated it into Hebrew. I