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 CHAPTER VI.

THE EPILOGUE AND ITS MEANING.

We now come to the dénoûment of the story (xlii. 7-17), against which, from the point of view of internal criticism, much were possible to be said. We shall not, however, here dwell upon the inconsistencies between the epilogue on the one hand and the prologue and the speeches on the other. The main point for us to emphasise is the disappointingness of the events of the epilogue regarded as the final outcome of Job's spiritual discipline. Surely the high thoughts which have now and then visited Job's mind, and which, combined with the personal self-revelation of the Creator, must have brought back the sufferer to a state of childlike resignation, stand in inappropriate companionship with a tame and commonplace renewal of mere earthly prosperity. Would it not have been fitter for the hero on whom so much moral training had been lavished to pass with humble but courageous demeanour through the dark valley, at the issue of which he would 'see God'? It is hardly a sufficient answer that a concession was necessary to the prejudices of the unspiritual multitude; for what was the object of the poem, if not to subvert the dominion of a one-sided retribution theory? The solution probably is that Job in the epilogue is a type of suffering, believing, and glorified Israel. Not only the individual believer, not only all the elect spirits of suffering humanity, but the beloved nation of the poet.—Israel, the 'Servant of Jehovah'—must receive a special message of comfort from the great poem. In Isa. lxi. 7 we read that glorified Israel is to 'have double (compensation) instead of its shame;' comp. Zech. ix. 12, Jer. xvi. 14-18. The people of Israel,