1. Three wealthy friends of Job, who lived far apart from each other, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, heard of Job's disaster, and they made an appointment to visit him and to comfort him. Apparently they had heard of his losses, but did not expect to find him so terribly afflicted. When they saw him, they lifted up their voices and wept, rent their mantles, sprinkled dust on their heads, and sat in silence for seven days-custom requiring that visitors should not be the first to speak. Those seven days were full of busy thoughts.
However ye might err in after speech,
The mute expression of that voiceless woe
Whereby ye sought your sympathy to show
With him of Uz, doth eloquently preach-
Teaching a lesson it were well to teach
Some comforters, of utterance less slow,
Prone to believe that they more promptly know
Grief's mighty depths and by their words can reach.
Seven days and nights, in stillness as profound
As that of chaos, patiently ye sate
By the heartstricken and the desolate:
And though your sympathy might fail to sound
The fathomless depth of his dark spirit's wound,
Not less your silence was sublimely great.1 [Note: Francis Quarles.]
2. Let us understand how the misery of their friend affected them. Here was unparalleled misery experienced by a man of unparalleled piety! They came with the best intentions, wishful to comfort him, and yet their sympathy was chilled by a rigid creed which obliged them to associate suffering and sin. They were bewildered. Their creed had, in the person of Job, received a rude shock. Here was a man whom they had always honoured and revered for his piety, before whose utterances they had “refrained talking and laid their hand on their mouth.” They were in a strait betwixt two: should they trust their faith or their friend? Their creed said: “Suffering implies past sin. Great suffering implies great sin.” A pious psalmist of the same school of thought had said: “I have been young, and now am old; yet have I never seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.” Until now they could have borne the same testimony; but here was a man in abject poverty who had in their esteem stood at the very summit of moral worth. Was it possible that he had been a hypocrite? or had God been unfaithful? It never occurred to them that perhaps they had misinterpreted God's method of government. They never for one moment distrusted their creed. It was so simple, and easy of application. “A righteous God doeth righteously!” “A righteous King only punishes men who deserve it.” That was all. God is active everywhere; and in all things He does His will. Whatever happens is God's immediate action. He rewards every man, here and now, according to his deeds. If God be righteous, He must reward the righteous. He cannot righteously afflict good men-for long, at all events. The spectacle of Job's sufferings reduced them to a terrible dilemma: either God is unrighteous or Job is not good.
The writer represents the three friends, not as a weaker person would have represented them, as foolish, obstinate bigots, but as wise, humane, and almost great men, who, at the outset at least, are animated only by the kindest feelings, and speak what they have to say with the most earnest conviction that it is true. Job is vehement, desperate, reckless. His language is the wild, natural outpouring of suffering. The friends, true to the eternal nature of man, are grave, solemn, and indignant, preaching their half truth, and mistaken only in supposing that it is the whole; speaking, as all such persons would speak and still do speak, in defending what they consider sacred truth against the assaults of folly and scepticism.1 [Note: J. A. Froude, Short Studies on Great Subjects, i. 301.]
3. Job cast wistful glances towards his friends. To his horror, he saw the look of pity and kindliness gradually fading away. Their faces darken into inquiry, and inquiry deepens into suspicion. “Can it be that they doubt my integrity?” Job asks himself. “Can it be that they apply to me their grim creed? Suspect me of being a sinner, a hypocrite?” It is but too true. The faces of the three grow hard. They would rather distrust their friend than distrust their creed. Their creed says, “He must have been a hypocrite, for such suffering implies great sin”; and at the thought of that, friendship begins to fly away. To be doubted by those whom he most loved, to be suspected when he looked for sympathy, is more than Job can endure. His faith reels. When he loses faith in goodness, he loses faith in God. He breaks forth bitterly into cursing, lamentation, and woe.
Few men have had a genius for friendship equal to Professor Edward Freeman's. The names of those he cared for were continually on his lips, and their lives in his thoughts; their misfortunes touched him like his own; he was always ready to defend them, always ready to give any aid they needed. No differences of opinion affected his regard. Sensitive as he was to criticism, he received their censure on any part of his work without offence. The need he felt for knowing how they fared and for sharing his thoughts with them expressed itself in the enormous correspondence, not of business, but of pure affection, which he kept up with his many friends, and which forms, for his letters were so racy that many of them were preserved, the fullest record of his life.1 [Note: J. Bryce, Studies in Contemporary Biography, 290.]
4. But let us look at the three friends separately.
(1) Eliphaz.-Eliphaz was probably the oldest of the three, for in the East great respect was paid to age, and he always speaks first. He was decidedly the wisest and the best of them-a more original thinker, a more gentlemanly controversialist, and a more sympathetic, or rather a less unsympathetic, friend. He had something of “the vision and the faculty divine.” He had heard voices and talked with spirits from the unseen world; and it is on this experience that he bases his argument.
To Eliphaz the whole duty of man is fear of God and unconditional submission. And what is the worst of all sins? Anger and insurrection against God. And what is the only wisdom? To lay one's cause before God, to allow oneself to be instructed by Him, and not to disdain His chastisement. He who does this will be delivered out of all his distresses, for God is compassionate to the humble. The conception of religion which Eliphaz holds is not that of ancient Israel, for the early religion knew no such slavish submission, no such contempt of the worth of man. This conception transfers to the Lord of all lords that despotic notion of rulership which the Jews learned after the destruction of their independence. It is not without imposing power and influence. It has become the fundamental thought of the Semitic world-religion of Islam, but it oppresses the free motions of the soul, the honourable courage of the clear conscience, the aspiration after elevation of the spiritual personality, and makes man a flatterer of God or a fatalist. The true humility springs up only from the soul of a moral self-consciousness; never was any one more lowly in heart than He who said of Himself, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.”
(2) Bildad.-Bildad and Zophar are younger than Eliphaz. Bildad appeals neither to visions nor to his own discoveries; he holds by experience and the teaching of the fathers, for “we are but of yesterday, and know nothing.” His homely wisdom instructs Job that the impious man may flourish for a time, but some day he must suddenly perish like a plant without water. So it happened to Job's children, but he himself, since he was not entirely condemned, may yet hope for a complete restoration, in case he is pure and honourable and turns in prayer to God, who does not reject the righteous. This is the doctrine of Divine recompense which was prevalent after Deuteronomy.
What Bildad lacks in dignity he gains in directness. His theory of God's dealings with good and evil men is exactly that of the former speaker; but his strong point is that that theory is proved beyond cavil by the experience and opinions of former generations. He is a choice specimen of the traditional theologian. He lays down the dogmas of orthodoxy with the self-confident air of one who thinks it sufficient to quote a creed to prove a doctrine. The authority of fathers and grandfathers is unimpeachable; their fixed opinions are the rules of truth. Traditional theology is cheap; it costs no sweat of brow or toil of brain. Moreover, its hallowed and hoary platitudes are easy of application. They are like precedents in law, offering a short, easy, and authoritative method of settling causes. Bildad had these precedents ready on his tongue-tip, in troops and battalions. He is a well-known figure in modern theology. His tribe is still extant and numerous. “Doth God pervert justice?” Thy children may have deserved their fate. But, “if thou wert pure and upright; surely now God would awake for thee, and make the habitation of thy righteousness prosperous.” “God will not cast away a perfect man, neither will he uphold the evil-doers.” No need to dispute plain truths like these. Ask antiquity. Consult the creed.
(3) Zophar.-Zophar relies neither upon revelations nor upon experience; he appeals to the light which every sound human understanding has. This light shows us, above all, that human knowledge cannot measure itself with the Divine. Zophar feels that Job, with his penetrating cry, “Wherefore,” seeks to influence the Deity in a way that is as foolish as unnatural for him. If man were as omnipresent as God, man could follow Him in His works. God has His reasons in His actions, for He knows everything and perceives even the sins which a man, especially so rebellious a man as Job, does not see.
Zophar is neither a thinker nor a scholar. He is an ignorant and vulgar bigot. He could hardly say when or how his opinions first came into his head; he has never asked himself why he believed anything. The fact that his ideas are his own is their all-sufficient justification. A man so pleased with himself is naturally very hard upon others. Accordingly, we find Zophar more cruel in his treatment of Job than either of the other two.
5. It is not their accusations that provoke the anger of Job so much as their vacant platitudes, their superficial maxims, their sorry attempts to solve new problems by obsolete methods, their blind pedantic orthodoxy. Surely, were they not bemused with a theology out of touch with life, they would catch the ring of sincerity in his voice, and brush aside the unworthy thought of secret sin adequate to so terrible a punishment. Their arguments fill him with scorn and irritation, but their unkindness wounds him to the quick. He had counted on their sympathy, but had been disappointed, as caravans perish from thirst, since the streams they had reckoned on are dry. At times he even appeals to their pity: “Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends; for the hand of God hath touched me.” But more often he crumples them with his scorn, and renews his contention with God.
Goethe was thwarted alike by external circumstances and by his own temperament, and there came occasions when he was disposed to accept failure as his wisest choice. In two poems of this period he gives expression to this mood. In the one, Adler und Taube, a young eagle is wounded by a fowler, but after three days recovers, though with disabled wings. Two doves alight near the spot, and one of them addresses soothing words to the crippled king of the birds. “Thou art in sorrow,” he coos; “be of good courage, friend! hast thou not here all that peaceful bliss requires?… O friend, true happiness is content, and everywhere content has enough.” “O wise one,” spoke the eagle, and, moved to deep earnest, sinks more deeply into himself: “O wisdom! thou speakest like a dove.”1 [Note: P. Hume Brown, The Youth of Goethe, 183.]
