In order to bring the Book of Job nearer to the modern Western mind, we must not only study it from the point of view of form, but also consider its theological ideas. An improved theodicy implies an improved theology, for the deeper and truer solutions of the apparent anomalies of Providence repose on deeper and truer conceptions of God.
1. The poet was a strict monotheist; his doctrine of God left no room for any rival deity. He understood, indeed, the spell cast on the imagination by the sun in its splendour, or the moon as it moved, radiant and majestic, across the heavens. The old nature, which in earlier ages poured forth in adoration to the glorious rulers of day and night, was not wholly dead within him, but the faint quiver of response was rigorously suppressed. Apart from this we have no reference to idolatry or to heathen deities. We are reminded of the Second Isaiah as we read the descriptions of God's greatness and wisdom, His power as displayed in nature and in history. Yet they are not in Job part of a sustained polemic against heathenism, but are designed to convince man of his insignificance before God and his incompetence to pass judgment on His ways. Monotheism is so completely the poet's settled belief, that it is everywhere taken for granted and represented as the unquestioned creed of the non-Israelite speakers.
2. The most clearly recognized attribute of God, however, is His power. Job was fascinated by the tremendousness of God's power. As Dr. Davidson says, “the invincible might of his adversary charms his eye, and compels him to gaze and shudder and run over it feature after feature, unable to withdraw his look from it.” In chap. 9, for instance, “this dark incomprehensible Being,” wise in heart, mighty in strength, overturning mountains, eclipsing the sun, causing the hills to shrink away from him, and the earth to shiver with dread, so entrances Job's gaze, that every other attribute, except power and wisdom, is obliterated from his mind. Job recalls the famous Oriental mythus which conceived of heaven and earth as once being under the dominion of Disorder, personified as “the Dragon” and “Rahab”; and the God of order “hewed Rahab in pieces, and pierced the dragon,” compelled him to allow the sun to shine for half the day, and the waters to withdraw from half the land. And when the dragon in the sea endeavours to bring the waters over the boundary-line, or the serpent in the sky endeavours to coil himself round the sun and obscure it again, the God of order frustrates his purpose by His superior power. Job's thoughts run on Leviathan and Rahab. He conceives of God as the one under whom “the helpers of Rahab do stoop,” and he asks: “Am I a sea, or a dragon, that thou settest a watch over me?” And he begs those who know how to rouse Leviathan to cause the monster to obscure the sun on every birthday of his.
3. And what is the effect on Job's mind of this concentrated contemplation of power?
(1) He fancies that God is utterly merciless.-“Thou scarest me with dreams, and terrifiest me through visions.” “I am made to possess months of vanity, and wearisome nights are appointed to me.” “How long wilt thou not look away from me, nor let me alone till I swallow down my spittle?” “He breaketh me with a tempest, and multiplieth my wounds without cause.” “He will not suffer me to take my breath, but filleth me with bitterness.”
(2) The God of Job's morbid imagination is not only unmoved by pity and mercy, but also unmoved by ethical considerations.-He is devoid not only of pity, but also of all moral feeling. Job feels that it is of no use to plead with God, to expostulate with Him, or to reply to Him. The terribleness of God makes him afraid. The overmastering supremacy of a God whose only attributes are, in his regard, power and cleverness awes and crushes him.
(3) Another consequence of the despotic conception of God is that the mere fiat of the Almighty makes right: that right depends solely on the will of the Deity. This is the creed as to Zeus, which presents itself in the Prometheus. “Zeus,” says Owen, “symbolizing lawless power and irresponsible omnipotence, is fittingly represented by his ministers Kratos and Bia, with their appropriate implements of brazen chains, hammers, nails and wedges. The might of Zeus, and that alone, makes the right which he ordains.” Miss Anna Swanwick reduces the words of Æschylus to English metre, when she represents Prometheus as saying:
That Zeus is stern, full well I know,
And by His Might doth measure Right.
Thus the Divine cause of Job's misfortunes has, to his perverted, distorted spiritual vision, taken shape, as a terrible monster, with a malignant eye, which Job cannot elude. He has morbidly assigned to this Being all the attributes which could cause such disasters as his to one so undeserving as he. The God with whom he used to have such delightful fellowship has gradually changed, so that Job can now say of Him: “Mine adversary sharpeneth his eyes upon me.” “He hath gnashed upon me with his teeth.” In chap. 16, Job begins to free himself from the nightmare. This Being, who seems to him so terrible, so malignant, so suspicious, so cruel, cannot be the real, living, and true God. This embodied cause of all his sufferings and wrongs, who oppresses him continually with the crushing sense of His presence, cannot be the real God. Behind this wrathful face and evil eye there must be a God whose aspect is bright and propitious, and whose eye is benignant. “My witness is in heaven,” he cries, “and he that voucheth for me is on high.” “This was a new and wonderful thought,” says Dr. Cox, “that rose like a star on Job's horizon-the thought of ‘a just God and a Saviour,' who is often concealed from men by the God they receive from tradition, or infer from Nature or from the tragedies of human life.” Job appeals no longer from God to men, or from men to God: he appeals from the apparent God to the real God, from the dread Being by whom he fancies himself hostilely persecuted, to the God who “hides himself so wondrously, as if there were no God.” The God who was such a delightful reality to Job in the days of his prosperity had not ceased to be. Unseen, unfelt, unrecognizable, veiled behind mystery and tragedy, He somewhere lives on still. He who once heard his prayers and accepted his offerings observes still his tears and agonies and groans. “My witness is in heaven,” he cries. He who was once the “Sun of my soul” has veiled Himself in clouds of dense darkness, but He is still there, though at present the only indication of His presence is the deepening of the shadows which envelop me.
Nature, as we know and experience it, presents indeed an appalling spectacle, against which everything that is good in us protests. God, so long as He is but half understood, is utterly unpardonable; and no man yet has succeeded in justifying the ways of God to men. But “to understand all is to forgive all”-or rather, it is to enter into a larger view of life, and to discover how much there is in us that needs to be forgiven. This is the wonderful story which was told by the Hebrews so dramatically in their Book of Job; and the phases through which that drama passes might be taken as the completest commentary on the myth of Prometheus which ever has been or can be written.
Men have struggled in vain, and then protested in bitterness, against the waste and the meaninglessness of the human débácle. The only aspect of the powers above them has seemed to many noble spirits that of the sheer cynic. He that sitteth in the heavens must be laughing indeed. In Prometheus the Greek spirit puts up its daring plea for man. It pleads not for pity merely, but for the worth of human nature. The strong gods cannot be justified in oppressing man upon the plea that might is right, and that they may do what they please. The protest of Prometheus, echoed by Browning's protest of Ixion, appeals to the conscience of the world as right; and, kindling a noble Titanism, puts the Divine oppressor in the wrong. Finally, there dawns over the edge of the ominous dark the same hope that Prometheus vaguely hinted to the Greek. To him who has understood the story of Calvary, the ultimate interpretation of all human suffering is Divine love. That which the cross of Prometheus in all its outrageous cruelty yet hints as in a whisper, the Cross of Christ proclaims to the end of time, shouting down the centuries from its blood and pain that God is love, and that in all our affliction He is afflicted.1 [Note: J. Kelman, Among Famous Books, 19.]
