Lange Commentary

Lange Commentary - Job

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Lange Commentary - Job

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INTRODUCTION

§ 1. NAME AND CONTENTS OF THE BOOK

THE name which our Book has borne from antiquity, and without any variation whatever on the part of the sources by which it has been transmitted, is that of its principal hero—Job [Hebrew àִéּåֹá , Germ. Hiob, of which, however, Dr. Zöckler remarks that it less accurately represents the Heb. than the form Job (Ijob, Ijjob)]. This name is no free poetic invention of the author, but without doubt a proper name assigned to him by primitive tradition, the name of a particular person belonging to the history or the legend. The supposition that it was the product of poetic fiction on the part of the author is contradicted by the circumstance that the book nowhere contains any allusion to the signification of the name, notwithstanding that the religious and ethical tendency of the book, and especially its aim, which is rightly to explain and to justify the suffering which overtakes innocence, would have furnished abundant occasion for such allusions. It is to be sure a question how the name is to be etymologically explained; whether, with most expositors, ancient and modern, we form it after the Hebrew, in which case àִéּåֹá would seem to be a passive participle from àָéַá (Exo_23:22), and to signify accordingly “the assailed, persecuted one,” or with some of the moderns, we base it on the Arabic verb ùׁåּá=àåּá , with the signification, “he who turns around, who repents, who returns to God.” But whichever of these two significations, which are equally admissible, may be the original one, the poet would have had opportunity enough to introduce some reference to it if it had lain at all within his plan to make such allusions, or even if a moralizing nomenclature had belonged to the circle of his vision and to his individual poetic style. For in the other names of his book as well, whether of persons, or of countries, or of races, he abstains wholly from all such attempts at etymological characterization. Whence it is sufficiently apparent that the name of the hero, which has given name to the entire book, has its origin in a concrete historical tradition.

The Theme and Contents of the book are briefly as follows:

Ch. 1–2: The Prologue, or the Historical Introduction to the poem. Job, an inhabitant of the land of Uz, noted for his piety, riches and position, being accused before God by Satan, is, in accordance with the divine decree, subjected to a severe trial. A series of sudden calamities robs him in a very short time of his possessions, his children, and his health, and in an instant plunges him, afflicted with the most terrible species of leprosy, elephantiasis, from the height of earthly prosperity into the deepest misery. He endures this visitation, however, with wonderful equanimity; and even when his wife, overcome by doubt, urges him to renounce God, he allows no blasphemous, nor even an impatient word to pass from his lips.—Three friends of Job, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar, who come to visit him from sympathy, are so powerfully affected at the sight of his misery, that for seven days and nights they sit down with the sorely afflicted man in silence, without giving him a word of comfort.

Ch. 3–31: The Dialogue, or the dialectic discussion of the problem. Job, having at last himself broken the long silence by a violent outburst, beginning with a curse on the day of his birth (Job 3 : Theme, or immediate occasion of the dialogue) there springs up a long colloquy between him and his three visitors in respect to the question whether his suffering is unmerited, or whether it has come upon him as the just punishment of his sins. The friends maintain the latter; they defend the position that God never imposes suffering otherwise than by way of retribution for particular moral offenses and transgressions of His law; and they accordingly urge on the sorely afflicted man in a tone now of milder, now of more violent accusation, the necessity of knowing himself and turning to God in true penitence. Job, on the contrary, finds no connection whatever between his suffering and his guilt, declares himself to be conscious of no sin at all by which he could have incurred such calamity; he even goes so far as to utter violent, almost desperate accusations against God, in that he doubts His justice, and represents himself as innocently persecuted by Him. Presently, however, he rises to a state of greater calmness and composure, when, supported by the consciousness of his innocence, and at the same time humbly submitting himself beneath the inscrutable dispensations of the wise and just God, he declares his purpose faithfully and reverently to cleave to Him, while he none the less expresses his yearning hope for a manifestation of God, in which, as he distinctly anticipates, He will bring to light his innocence, and restore him out of his misery.—The colloquy runs through three series of discourses (Ch. 4–14; Ch. 15–21; Ch. 22–31), which exhibit in each successive stage a heightening of the conflict between the friends as his accusers, and Job as he replies to them one by one. Especially do the discourses in which Eliphaz arraigns Job, which open each new Act [or Series], indicate an advance in the direction of more and more direct assaults on the personal character of the sufferer, and stronger suspicions of his innocence. The discourses of Bildad and Zophar are in each instance shorter than those of Eliphaz. In the third series of discourses (Ch. 22. seq.) Zophar no longer takes part in the colloquy; but Job, having forcibly repelled the assaults of Eliphaz and Bildad (Ch. 23, 24, and Ch. 26–28), proceeds in a kind of appended monologue (Ch. 29–31), elaborately contrasting with an apologetic purpose his former and present condition, continually asserting his innocence in the most emphatic language, and expressing his firm confidence in the final interposition of God for his vindication; and thus he holds the field victorious over all the assaults of his adversaries.

Ch. 32–37: The discourses of Elihu, or the attempt to settle the controversy by means of human wisdom.—A fourth opponent of Job now makes his appearance, Elihu, inferior to the former three in age, but not in wisdom and eloquence. He seeks to show that Job in his vindication was guilty of great one-sidedness in totally repudiating any guilt on his part, and in casting doubt on God’s justice by representing himself as cruelly tormented and persecuted without cause. He censures the polemic of the friends against Job as inadequate and inconsequential, recognizes him as the victor, who has reduced them to silence; but having done this, he controverts his right to utter accusations and doubts against God’s justice, seeks to glorify this cardinal attribute of God by showing that He, moved not by anger, but by love, often decrees suffering for His human children with a view to chasten and purify them, and admonishes him to submit reverently and humbly under all dispensations of the Most High, whose wondrous power and majesty he most vividly describes and extols at the end of his discourse.

Ch. 38–42: The Divine decision, or God’s judgment in respect to the contending parties, together with the historical epilogue, or closing act. The exhibitions of one-sidedness, which characterize this attempt of a human arbiter to mediate in the controversy, serve to set forth in its proper light the appearance of God on the scene, the way for which has now been sufficiently prepared. Jehovah appears, and in a powerful discourse addressed to Job out of a storm shows (Job 38-41) that it is folly to doubt His wisdom and justice in ruling the destinies of men on earth, and for this reason, that to the man who utters such doubt not even the simplest, commonest processes in the external life of nature are clear and comprehensible, at the same time that in those processes those Divine attributes are supremely and most gloriously revealed. With this exposition, which is directed more especially against Job, is connected the condemnation of the three friends on account of their shortsighted, harsh, unfriendly view of the relation in which he stood to the Divine righteousness. Still more emphatic is the condemnation which follows in the final scene of the whole, which is introduced by Job’s penitential confession of his sin (Job 42), this condemnation being pronounced first of all formally and directly by requiring of them a definite explation of their offense, and by God’s declaration that He graciously accepted Job’s intercession in their behalf, and then circumstantially in the fact that Job’s prosperity, dignity and honor are restored, and that his earthly possessions are given back to him two-fold. The problem of the book thus seems to meet with a solution that is sufficiently profound, and the sufferings of the pious Job are an example and a demonstration of the existence of sufferings which are essentially designed to prove, test, purify and establish, the innocence of the righteous ones on whom they fall.

Note.—The orthography Hiob, first introduced by Luther in his German translation, was intended simply to hinder the word from being pronounced with a consonantal J (comp. Hebr. éåֹá , Gen_46:13), and to indicate the presence of an aspirate at the beginning of the dissyllable. But inasmuch as this à at the beginning of the word does not according to our notions constitute an audible breathing, and since it serves rather to make more prominent that internal consonantal Yodh-sound, which the Daghesh in the second radical expresses, the word is, with Ewald, Dillmann, and other moderns, to be written Ijob [Engl. Iyob]. (The form Ijjob [or lyyob] would involve a needless hardening of that consonant.1 Yodh, as well as a useless pleonasm, such as would be e.g. the rendering of ãָּðִéֵּàì by Daniyyel.) We come near enough, however, to the Hebrew sound of the name if we adhere to the Ἰþâ of the Greek and the Job of the Latin Bible, with a correct pronunciation of the initial sound.—As respects the etymology of àִéåֹá , the attempt of the 70 to identify this name and its dependents with that of the Edomite prince éåֹáָá , a grandson of Esau (Gen_36:33), may be set aside as etymologically impossible and historically undemonstrable (comp. § 2). The two explanations given above in the text are the only ones that deserve more minute minute consideration. Of those the second, which finds the basis of the word in the Arab. àåּá , “to turn” (of which the Heb. àָéַá is only a dialectic variation) might seem to deserve the preference for the following reasons: 1. Because in any case Job’s final turning, conversion to God, constituted an original characteristic feature of Job’s conduct and destiny. 2. A specifically Hebrew etymon of the name seems to be less in harmony with the position and ethnographical peculiarities of the land of UZ. 3. The form àִéּåֹá , from àָéַá , “to treat hostilely,” judging by the analogy of most such formations as follow ÷ִèּåֹì , should have not a passive, but an active sense (comp Ewald, Lehrb. § 155, c). 4. Finally, such a form, if in fact expressing the passive meaning, “the assailed, persecuted one,” seems to express the thought too indefinitely, because the essential thought that the hostile treatment was “from God” is not also expressed. Influenced by these arguments, Kromayer, J. D. Michaelis, Bertholdt, Eichhorn, Rosenmüller among the older commentators, Ewald, Delitzsch, Dillmann, etc., among the latest, have preferred to explain the name after the Arabic, partly with a reference to the Koran, in which (Sur. 38, ver. 40) the Job of the Old Testament history is introduced by the designation “the returning, the repentant” one. The passage referred to, however, scarcely suffices to establish this explanation beyond question, for; (a) That passage of the Koran (vers. 16 and 29) applies the same predicate—“ the one turning, or changing himself”—to David and Solomon. (b) The suffering which the hero of our book endures seems far more characteristic of him than the final change which takes place in him. (c) The notion of “being assailed, persecuted,” assigned to àִéּåֹá , does not need to be supplemented by the clause—“on the part of God”—seeing that the sufferings of our hero proceeded in no small degree from the hostility of men, and most of all from that of his best friends. (d) That the language of UZ, the land of Job’s nativity, was predominantly Arabic, is by no means an established fact, but is on the contrary at variance with the decidedly Hebrew cast of the other proper names in the book, and especially those of the three daughters of Job (Job_42:14). (e) The use of words in the form ÷ִèּåֹì in Hebrew with a passive signification is supported by some weighty examples, especially éִìּåֹã , “born.” It will be seen accordingly that there is a series of strong arguments to justify the explanation of the word in accordance with the Hebrew etymology, as explained by Gesenius, Fürst, de Wette, Umbreit, Hirzel’, Heiligstedt, Hävernick, Davidson (Introduction, Vol. II., p. 174) [Hengstenberg, Noyes, A. B. Davidson, Carey, Schlottmann, Wordsworth, Rodwell], etc. The theory that the name is fictitious, and intentionally denotes a purely allegorical character is disproved by either one of the two definitions in question, and still more by the considerations to be adduced in the sequel in favor of the historical reality of the principal persons and facts of the narrative.

§ 2. THE HISTORICAL MATERIAL OF THE BOOK

From the above exhibition of the contents and course of thought in the book it is clear that it is no mere fiction, as has been frequently maintained from early times (first by R. Resh Lakish in the Ta’mud, Baba bathra, fol. 15:1; then by Maimonides, Salmasius, Le Clerc, J. D. Michaelis, Dathe, Bertholdt, Bernstein, Augusti, Bruno Bauer [Reuss, Merx], etc.), This theory, that the material of the narrative had its origin in the author’s imagination, is disproved by the following considerations, in addition to the concrete historical character which attaches to the name Job, as well as to the names of the other chief personages of the story.—1. The fact that the country where the scene of the action is laid, the land of UZ, did not stand in close connection with Israel, and that no other reason can well be assigned for the choice of this particular country than the fact of its having been already designated by a definite historical tradition; especially seeing that a purely fictitious investiture corresponding to the spirit and character of the action, which, while it is not indeed theocratic, is nevertheless intensely religious and specifically monotheistic, would have much more naturally suggested some Israelitish locality. 2. The fact that it must have been important for the author to illustrate the lofty truth to be demonstrated by an example, the historical reality of which could not have been denied by his contemporaries; or, in other words, that a purely parabolical dress would have been very ill-suited to the religious and didactic purpose by which he was governed. 3. The fact that the setting forth of pure invention as actual history would be, according to the correct observation of Ewald and Dillmann, “entirely foreign to the spirit of early antiquity, and moreover entirely superfluous in view of the great abundance of legends, which were then accessible.” 4. Finally, the mention of Job, along with Noah and Daniel in the book of Ezekiel (Eze_14:14-20); a mention which by no means rests solely on the text of our book, but which assuredly proceeds from the desire to name three characters in the circle of sacred history famed for their wisdom and piety (comp. my Bearbeitung des Proph. Daniel, p. 11 seq.), and which accordingly is a direct attestation to the historical reality of the person of our hero, a proof which, on account of the pre-exilic antiquity of the prophecies of Ezekiel, is stronger than that furnished by the later allusions to the history of Job in the Book of Tobit (Tobit 2:12, 15), and in the Epistle of James (Jam_5:11).

These arguments for the historical verity of the narrative are indeed far from sufficient to prove that in every particular it is to be regarded as veritable history, and that this book is accordingly to be taken altogether out of the class of the poetical products of the Old Testament Literature, and to be assigned to the class of historical books. This crude opinion, ruthlessly destructive as it is of the poetic character of the book, has found defenders from the time of the Alexandrian translators, whose attempt at identifying Job with Jobab (Gen_36:33), the son of Zerah, and the grandson of Esau (see the Appendix to Job_42:17, at the end of Comm’y.: ðñïûðῆñ÷åí äὲ ôὸ ὄíïìá áὐôïῦ ἸùâÜâ . Ἠí äὲ ὁ ðáôὴñ áὐôïῦ ÆáñÝè , ê . ô . ë .). rests on that sort of an exaggerated historical view of the historic material of the book. So according to all appearance Josephus (c. Apion. I. 8); and so in like manner many Rabbis, and Church Fathers, and more particularly in modern times the orthodox Reformed of the 16th and 17th Centuries, as e.g., Fr. Spanheim, whose Historia Jobi (Opp. T. II., p. 1703) took the ground that only by maintaining the historical reality of the contents of the book can the author be vindicated against the charge of a fraudulent invention (in historia sit, fraus scriptoris); also the celebrated orientalist Alb. Schultens, in Leyden, who endeavored to show that the book is a true narrative, relating a colloquy of ancient Eastern sages in the poetic improvisatory style of the Arabian tales. The principal reasons which may be urged against this extreme historical theory are the following: 1. The plan and purpose of the whole book, which on the one side resembles a drama, on the other a philosophical dialogue (comp. § 3). 2. The scene in heaven with which the story begins (Job_1:6 seq.), which like the theophany in Job 5:38 seq., could be regarded as historic only in the sense of a history characterized by strong idealization. 3. The poetic completeness of the discourses, which, notwithstanding all that may be alleged respecting their affinity to the proverbial discourses which the Arabian sages improvised in poetic form, with those e.g. found in the celebrated Consessus of the Hariri, bear nevertheless the impress of an earnest, not to say laborious artistic effort, and of which Luther without doubt said truly in his Table-Talk: “People do not talk that way in temptation.” 4. The poetic transparency and intentional regularity of the relations and facts which are described, as shown by comparing the introductory verses of the prologue with the concluding verses of the epilogue. (Observe in particular the exact doubling of Job’s former possessions in cattle, according to Job_42:12, as also the round numbers in the same passage, and in Vers. 13 and 16). 5. The sublime profundity of the religious and ethical problem treated of in the book, and the impressive power of the truths brought forward to aid in its solution; and in general the ideal beauty of the whole, which cannot possibly be explained apart from the reflective and artistically creative activity of a poetic genius endowed in unusual measure by the Spirit of God.

We are left accordingly to that view which has of late met with such wide, and indeed almost exclusive acceptance, which assumes along with a historic kernel, a free poetic treatment by the author of the material derived from the ancient legend, a treatment which invests such material with great depth and beauty. It is precisely the view which Luther expressed in his Table-Talk: “I hold that the book of Job is a true history, which was afterwards put into a poem; and that what is here said happened to a man, although not precisely according to the words which are here recorded.” And modern writers (Jahn, Döderlein, Eichhorn, Rosenmüller, Umbreit, Vaihinger, Ewald, Hirzel, Dillmann, Delitzsch, Davidson [Schlottmann, Canon Cook in Smith’s Bib. Dict., and in Bible (Speaker’s) Commentary; McClintock & Strong’s Cyclopædia, Art. “Job;” Princeton Review, Vol. XXIX., p. 284], etc., have discussed this view, and argued in favor of it at length. Just where the historical kernel ceases, and the poetic vesture begins, it would be impossible precisely to define. This difficulty is especially due to the fact that the material which served the poet for his creative use was not history in the strict sense of the word, but history which had passed through the channels of legendary tradition, and also to the fact that there were no variations of the legend, of equal value and approximating a like antiquity with that which lies at the basis of our book. All that can with much probability be assumed to be true is that along with the person, the abode, and the surroundings of Job, the fact of the sudden overthrow of his prosperity and of his pious constancy in adversity had been transmitted to the poet by the legend. Still further, the nature of the calamities which had overtaken him, and particularly of his bodily suffering, may well have been a part of the historical tradition. So correctly Ewald, Heiligstedt, Hirzel, Hävernick, etc., against Hahn, Hengstenberg, Schlottmann, Davidson and others, who needlessly think that the poet represents his hero as afflicted with elephantiasis for the simple reason that of all the diseases known to him this was the most horrible and loathsome. Had there been any variation in the ancient tradition respecting the nature and characteristics of Job’s disease, such an opinion might be regarded as having more definite support. But in view of the fact that we have only one source of information, it cannot be doubted that the nature of the disease from which the pious patriarch suffered is also to be taken, as a part of the original tradition.

In respect to the age of Job, many conjectures have been indulged in since that gloss of the Septuagint which represented him as a contemporary of the sons of Jacob, or rather of Joseph, and thus as belonging to the pre-Mosaic period. In accordance with that intimation, he has been assigned to the period intervening between the age of Joseph and that of Moses (Chrysostom, Carpzovins, Lightfoot [Carey, Lee], etc.; or still later as an early contemporary of Moses (Kennicott, Remarks on Select Passages of Scripture, p. 152) [Wordsworth]; or even to the pre-Abrahamic period (e.g. Hales, Analysis of Sacred Chronology, II. 53 seq., where an attempt is made, on the basis of astronomic computations, to determine the year 2130 B. C., or 818 after the flood, as the time of Job’s affliction and trial of his constancy); or finally he has been assigned to the post-patriarchal and post-Mosaic age, as a contemporary of the Judges, or of Solomon, or of Nebuchadnezzar, or of Ezra, etc. (comp. below § 5, the remarks on the time when the book was composed). It is evident that most of these attempts at determining the time, and especially those which presuppose the absolute historical reality of the material, without any legendary or poetic drapery, are altogether arbitrary. It may be urged, however, in general that the following reasons make it probable that Job lived and suffered in the time of the patriarchs, and consequently before Moses:

1. The extreme age, extending far beyond one hundred and forty years, to which he lived, according to Job_42:16.

2. The mention of the gold coin, ÷ְùִׂéèָä (Job_42:11), with which we are made acquainted through the histories of Jacob and Joshua (Gen_33:19; Jos_24:32), which is the only coin anywhere mentioned in the book, and which is accordingly a witness to the probability that it belongs to the patriarchal age.

3. The mention of the musical instruments, òåּâָá , flute, ëִּðּåֹø , guitar, and úֹּó , tymbal (Job_21:12; Job_30:31), the only instruments recognized in Genesis (Gen_4:21; Gen_31:27), which accordingly are of the most ancient sort.

4. The mention—which also carries us back into the age of Genesis—of writing on stone, by means of an iron stylus, or chisel (Job_19:23 seq.); along with which, indeed in the same passage, and in Job_31:35, mention is also made of writing on parchment or in a book ( ëúá áñôø ), a mode of writing, however, which indisputably belongs to the pre-Mosaic age, as a glance at the monuments of Ancient Egypt will show.

5. The act of Job in officiating as priest in the family circle, offering an atoning sacrifice (Job_1:5), which reminds us decidedly of the same act on the part of Noah (Gen_8:20), and of Jacob (Gen_35:2; comp. on the other side Exo_19:10; Num_11:18; Jos_7:13).

6. The number seven, which was so characteristic of the worship of antiquity, and which appears in the bullocks and rams offered by Job (comp. Job_42:8 with Num_23:1; also Gen_7:2 seq; Gen_8:19 seq., etc.).

7. The reference, characteristic of the religious physiognomy of the pre Mosaic age, to the idolatrous adoration of the sun and moon, and to the worship of the stars, or Sabaism (see Job_31:26; and comp. Deu_4:19; Deu_17:3).

These are the arguments which are usually urged to prove that Job was a contemporary of the pre-Mosaic patriarchs. Granting that some of them, particularly those cited under 6 and 7, are of less force, and are equally applicable to a later period, they yield in the main a considerable degree of probability that the time fixed on above is approximately correct. An approximate estimate, however, is all that can be reached by such an investigation into the age of a point of history wrapped in the mist of a poetic legend, Comp. still further our remarks on the concluding verses of the Epilogue, Job_42:12-17, where additional traces may be found of Job’s having belonged to the patriarchal age.

§ 3. THE POETIC ART-FORM OF THE BOOK

The task which lay before the author as respects the artistic treatment of his material, was essentially two fold. First he was to put his material in narrative form, in a style of poetic description, elevating and transfiguring the concrete historic fact into the ideal truth of transactions of eternal significance. Next he was to discuss reflectively the problem which constitutes the religious and ethical kernel of these transactions, touching the possibility and the divinely ordained purpose of unmerited suffering on the part of men. The first part of his task he accomplishes in the sections of prose narrative, the, Prologue and the Epilogue, which open and close the book. The second part receives the author’s attention in the discourses of the book, which are far more extensive and elaborate, which in form and language are thoroughly poetic, and in which alone direct expression is given to that which is obviously the scope and purpose of the work as a whole—the discourses, to wit, of Job, of his three friends, of Elihu, and also of Jehovah, who personally appears to give to the conflict its final solution. These discourses exhibit to the last detail a high degree of elaboration and poetic art. The opening discourse by Job in Job 3, which contains the theme of the discussion, belongs to the preparatory part of the book, in which the foundations of the problem are laid down, in connection with the introductory information conveyed by the Prologue concerning the events which befel Job, and the supra-mundane occasions of the same as consisting in God’s permissive agency and Satan’s agency as tempter (chs. 1, 2). The discourses of Job’s three friends, or rather opponents, together with the replies which the object of their attacks makes to each one individually (Job 4-28), carry on the entanglement of the conflict to be described. This consists in a three-fold series of unjust accusations of Job, proceeding from the standpoint of an external and one-sided conception of the legal doctrine of retribution, corresponding to which we have a series of arguments by Job, which are not less one-sided, which in part are violently passionate and morally unsound, in which he asserts his innocence, and casts suspicions on the justice of God’s ways. Job himself prepares the way for the final solution of the conflict in the exhibition which he makes of genuine theocratic piety in the monologue appended to the three acts of the colloquy, where he appears as one who has been brought back to a more thoughtful appreciation of his condition, and for that same reason as triumphing over the reproaches of his three friends (Job 29-31; comp. above p. 6). The solution receives its completion indeed only in the three following stages of the conclusion; the first of which is signalized by the appearance of Elihu, who exhibits the utmost that human wisdom can contribute by way of answer to the difficult questions which arise in respect to the significance of the sufferings of the innocent (Job 32-37); the second by the long address of Jehovah to Job which sets forth the adjudication of the point in controversy in accordance with the divine point of view, the argument here being general in its character (Job 38-41); the third finally by the concrete actual decision rendered between the contending parties by the distribution of punishment and reward to the one and the other respectively (Job 42).

According to the views here expressed, it may seem doubtful with which of the varieties of poetry familiar and current among ourselves this book should be classified; for it evidently exhibits characteristics which belong to several. In its Prologue and Epilogue we find the objective description and the childlike naïveté in narrative which distinguish the epic style. Not a few parts of the discourses have a lyric, and in particular an elegiac tone. In its special object and its general scope, it is indisputably didactic. But it is as a drama, more especially a drama pre-eminently earnest in tone and pervaded by a religious philosophy as to its contents, as a tragedy of religious philosophy, that it exhibits itself at first sight to him who regards its plan as a whole and its arrangement, the division of its principal dialogue into three acts or movements, the increase of the entanglement toward the end, and the purely dramatic solution by the appearance and judicial intervention of God Himself. No wonder therefore that the attempt has been made to subject the poem in a one-sided and exclusive manner to one or another of these classifications. It has been viewed as an epic poem by Stuss (De Epopœia Jobæa, Commentatt, III:, Goth., 1753), Lichtenstein (Num liber Jobi cum Odyssea Homeri comparari possit, Helmst., 1773), Ilgen (Jobi antiquissimi carminis hebraici natura atque virtus, Lips., 1789), Augusti [Einleitung ins A. Test., p. 268), Good (Version of Job, Introductory Dissertation, sect. 2), etc. Its lyric character has been specially emphasized by Stuhlmann, Keil (the former of whom calls it a “religious poem,” the latter a “lyric aphoristic poem”), and several others; while J. D. Michaelis (who in his Prolegomena zum Hiob endeavors with unusual zeal to exhibit the practical utility of the doctrinal contents of this “moral poem”), Herder (who calls it the “most ancient and exalted didactic poem of all nations”), and others, look at it chiefly in the light of a didactic poem; so also Diedrich (Das B. Hiob kurz erklärt, etc., Leipzig, 1858), who calls it a “parable” (against which see Vilmar, Past.-theolog. Blatt., Vol. XI, p. 59 seq.) The book was already recognized as a drama by Luther, who after his homely striking fashion says of it: “It is just like what you see in a play;” and by Leibnitz, whom it strikes as being a musical drama, as being indeed altogether operatic (comp. Schmidt’s Zeitschr.f. Geschichte, 1847, for May, p. 436); so also Brentius, Joh. Gerhard, Beza, Mercier, Cocceius, and others, who have spoken of it as a “tragedy,” and have undertaken to compare with it those works of Æschylus and Sophocles, which describe conflicts similar to those of our book carried on by suffering heroes against the dark powers of destiny, or against the wrath of the gods (thus recently A. Vogel in the Inaugural Dissertation: Quid de fato senserint Judæi et Grœci, Jobo et Sophocli Philoctete probatur, Gryphisw. 1869, in which an interesting parallel is drawn between Job and Philoctetes). Most moderns also recognize this dramatic character, especially Umbreit (Introd. to his Commy., p. 33:), Ewald who calls it “the divine drama of the ancient Hebrews” (Dichter des A. Bundes, III: p. 56), Hupfeld (Deutsche Zeitschr.f. christliche Wissenschaft, 1850, No. 35 seq.), Davidson (Introduction to the O. T., II., p. 179), Delitzsch (Art. “Job” in Herzog’s Realencykl. VI, p. 123 [and Commy. I., p. 15 seq. See also Schlottmann, p. 40 seq.; A. B. Davidson, I, p. 16 seq.; Lowth, Lectures XXXII.—XXXIV.; Dillmann, Introd. to Commy., p. 21; Froude, Westminster Review, 1853, reprinted in Short Studies on Great Subjects, p. 228 seq.]). The objections urged to this view by G. Baur (Das B. Hiob und Dante’s Göttl Komödie, eine Parallele, in the Studd u Kritiken, 1856, Part. III.) are valid only in so far as they deny that the poem was intended for actual scenic representation, and thus justify the use of the word drama only in the wider sense, that of an epico-dramatic poem, of the same class with Dante’s masterpiece. In this more general sense, however, it deserves beyond question, and with scarcely less right than the Song of Solomon, to be called a drama; especially seeing that it introduces characters which are clearly defined and sharply discriminated, and consistently maintains their several individualities down to the final absolute adjudication by God. Even the attempt to exhibit in detail the principal scenes or acts of this epic or didactic religious drama, which Deliizsch has made (I., p. 15), cannot be condemned, so far at least as the principle is concerned. That writer, agreeing substantially with the arrangement and partition of the poem, which we have given above, distinguishes eight parts, or acts of the dramatic action, as follows:

1. Chap. 1–3: The opening [Anknüpfung, which may also be rendered: The tying of the knot].

2. Chap. 4–14: The first course of the controversy; or the entanglement beginning.

3. Chap. 15–21: The second course of the controversy; or the entanglement increasing.

4. Chap. 22–26: The third course of the controversy; or the entanglement at its height.

5. Chap. 27–31: The transition from the entanglement to the unravelment (from the äÝóéò to the ëýóéò ): Job’s monologues.

6. Chap. 32–37: The completion of the transition from the äÝóéò to the ëýóéò ; the discourses of Elihu.

7. Chap. 38–42:6: The unravelment in the consciousness.

8. Chap. 42:7–17: The unravelment in outward reality.

In this enumeration of eight acts too little prominence is given to the threefold division on which the author unmistakably founds his arrangement of the book, and that intentionally, a division which is observable not only in the three movements of the colloquy between Job and his friends, but also in the threefold groups of discourses which follow, to wit, those of Job, of Elihu, and of Jehovah (on this triadic arrangement of the poem comp. Baur, l. c., p. 642 seq.). [“The ruling number three is most visible in all its parts. (1) The whole book falls into three sections: Prologue, Poem, Epilogue. (2) The poem strictly, also into three parts: Job and the Friends, Elihu, God. (3) The discussion between Job and the friends again into three cycles. (4) Each cycle falls into three pairs: Eliphaz and Job, Bildad and Job, Zophar and Job; only in the last cycle Zophar fails to appear, and Job speaks twice. (5) Job sustains three temptations. (6) Elihu makes three speeches. (7) And, finally, very many of the speeches fall into three strophes.” A. B. Davidson.—To which add that in the interim between the controversy with the friends, and the appearance of Elihu, Job utters three monologues]. For this reason it is more correct to regard the two epic narrative sections, the Prologue and Epilogue (1 and 8 according to Delitzsch), as standing outside of the partition of the poem proper, and forming, as it were, only its outer frames. We shall then have for the dramatic kernel of the whole (chap. 3–41) six scenes or acts, the same number which Delitzsch has assumed for the Canticles (see Vol. X of the Old Testament Series in this Comm’y., p. 6, of Introd. to Cant.). Comp. below, § 11, the more detailed outline of the contents.

It must not of course be forgotten in this connection that our book is an essentially oriental poem, exhibiting only an incomplete and partial analogy to the various forms of poetic art produced by the classic nations of the West. Draw if you will a parallel, reaching to the minutest detail, between the most famous products of the ancient, and of the modern occidental drama; look on the idea of a hero struggling with the divine destiny as pre-eminently Æschylean or Sophoclean; compare the Prologue, with its predominance of narrative, and the presence of the dialogue as only a partial element, with the prologues of Euripides, which also form “epic introductions” to the accompanying dramas; be it that the description of the celestial council in this Prologue anticipates the famous “Prologue in Heaven” of Goethe’s Faust; or be it that in another sense, in that namely which concerns the representation of spiritual conflicts and physical movements as themes of dramatic art, we should be justified in comparing it rather with the Iphigenia and Tasso of our greatest poet, and in saying with Delitzsch that, as in those poems, “the deficiency of external action is compensated by the richness and precision with which the characters are drawn:”—it must not be forgotten after all that the book is an intellectual creation, the conception and the elaboration of which are thoroughly oriental; that it is the work of one of those profoundly religious sages, endowed with an imagination mighty and lofty in its scope, and with pre-eminent poetic genius, in which the whole East, whether Shemitic or Perso-Indian, so remarkably abounds. If accordingly we are to seek analogies with which to compare the poem as to its idea, character, and plan, we must put in the front Arabic and Hindû poems, such as on the one side the Consessus of the celebrated Makama-poet Hariri, already referred to, which at least exhibits a noteworthy parallel to the dialogue form of the middle divisions of our book (comp. Umbreit, p. XXXI.), and on the other side the ancient Hindu narrative of the sufferer Hariçtschandra, sorely tempted and tried by Çiva, which in its oldest and simplest, as yet undramatized form may be found in the Aitareya-Brâhmana, VII. 18, and in the Bhâgavat-Purâana, IX. 7, 6, but which in its complete artistic development in the form of a religous drama is found only in much more recent sources, as e.g. in the Markandeya,—and Padma-Purâna (out of Sec. 8–10 of our chronology), as also in modern Hindû popular dramas, which are still regarded with favor. It is indeed a nearer line of comparison to seek for parallels in the religious and poetic literature of the Old Testament people of God. And here we find on the one side Solomon’s Song of Songs, which presents itself as a drama, artistically correct, elaborate, and harmoniously complete; on the other side the Solomonic Book of Proverbs, which presents itself as a pearl-like string of numerous ethical and religious apothegms, arranged in part at least in the form of a dramatic dialogue. As to its didactic contents and purpose, our book resembles more the latter of these writings, as to form and composition the former. Nevertheless the profound earnestness of its fundamental thought and of its didactic purpose necessitates important deviations in form and diction from the Song of Solomon, the only representative of a scriptural drama which can be considered along with it. For while the plan of the latter is melo-dramatic, and its principal affinities seem to be with the erotic lyrics of the classic nationalities, Job, especially in view of the narrative character of the prologue and epilogue, bears the stamp of an epic drama, and in its lyric element resembles most closely the elegiac poetry of the Greeks. Comp. the General Introduction to the Solomonic Literature of Wisdom, Vol. X. of this series, p. 12.

Furthermore in respect of its external poetic structure, and especially of the verse and strophe-structure of its discourses, the book may be most nearly compared with the Proverbs and the Song of Solomon. In these its poetic parts it consists throughout of short verses mostly of two members; each member contains on an average not more than three to four words. This structure is carried out with the most rigid consistency and great skill through all the discourses, so that in many respects we are reminded of the five-feet iambic lines of the modern drama, and we can understand, or at all events we are inclined to excuse the remark which Jerome once made, although as to the main point it is certainly erroneous, that the book is written in versus hexametri (Prœfat. in Job, T. IX., Opp. p. 1100; comp. my book on Jerome, p. 347).—It cannot escape the sharp observer, moreover, that a greater or less number of single verses everywhere group themselves together in strophes or stanzas, which coincide with the logical arrangement, or sub-divisions of the thought; and that this strophic division is carried out with tolerable regularity throughout all the discourses. Here and there this strophic structure is indicated even by external signs, e.g. in chap. 3, where the second and third strophes alike begin with ìָîָä ; in Job 30, where three strophes, of eight stichs each, are severally introduced by åְòַúָּä ; in Job_36:22-33, where three series of thoughts in succession begin with äֵï , each forming an eight-line strophe, etc. The Masoretes have as in the Psalms and Proverbs used a peculiar system of accentuation to indicate both the divisions of stichs and verses, and also this strophe arrangement throughout the entire poetical sections of the book (i.e., from Job_3:2 to Job_42:6). This accentuation, however, which rests on the tradition of the synagogue, important as we must adjudge it to be for the rhythmical adjustment of the composition, and in connection therewith for the exegetical interpretation of these section, does not nevertheless exclude all doubt in respect to these divisions of thought and of verse in detail. For the authors of the masoretic system of accentuation themselves did not always possess a clear and accurate insight into the strophe-structure, as is shown by the fact that they have almost everywhere erroneously applied their [poetic] accentuation to the prose passages which have occasionally found their way into the poetic sections. The later tradition accordingly has quite generally “the notation-value only of the prose or rhetorical accents, not that of the metrical or political.” For which reason the more recent commentators differ both in respect to the question whether attempts to restore the strophe-structure are at all permissble, and also in respect to the bounds to be assigned to particular strophes. Stickel and Delitzsch, e.g., assume a constant change of the strophic structure, similar to that which obtains in the lyric poems of the Book of Psalms, and, as a consequence, a somewhat marked inequality in the extent of particular strophes, which are built now of four stichs, now of eight, now of six, or of any greater number of lines. Schlottmann, Köster, Ewald, Vaihinger, and Dillmann, on the contrary maintain that the structure of the strophes is, at least in general, equal and regular, and would determine the law of their construction more in accordance with the Mâshâl-poetry of the Proverbs, than with the lyrical rhythm of the Psalter. In the accompanying translation and explanation of the poem we shall follow in the main the principles which guide the latter class of commentators, for the reason that their greater simplicity seems to us to be pre-eminently in agreement with the character of the poem, which in particular passages indeed is lyrical, but which is predominantly gnomic and didactic (of the Mâshâl genus). Here and there however, and particularly in the discourses of Elihu, the strophic structure of which is in many places wont to be incorrectly rendered, we shall feel constrained to give the preference to the divisions of Stickel and Delitzsch.

[Merx has propounded in his Introduction (p. LXXV. seq.) an ingenious and elaborate theory of the syllabic and strophic structure of Hebrew poetry, which claims for that poetry, especially in its lyric and musical forms, a degree of regularity and symmetry far higher than is usually attributed to it. He finds the true law of its form to be the number of syllables in the stich, of line, the norm being eight syllables to the stich, and the strophes being composed of an equal number of stichs, or of a number symmetrically alternating. Without denying all merit to theory, or that its author has in not a few instances used it with striking results, it is certain that the sweeping application which he has made of it to the Book of Job, necessitates or invites the most arbitrary treatment of the text, by the assumption of lacunœ or interpolations, simply at the demand of the rhetorical structure. Assuredly in Hebrew, as in all Oriental poetry, where “the thought lords it over the form,” a far greater degree of liberty and elasticity must be accorded to the form than this theory presupposes.—E.].

Note 1.—In respect to the artistic beauty and completeness of the poetic sections, and especially in respect to the skilfulness shown in the dramatic evolution and delineation of character, comp. Delitzsch I., p. 16 seq.: “Satan, Job’s wife, the hero himself, the three friends,—everywhere diversified and minute description. The poet manifests, also, dramatic skill in other directions. He has laid out the controversial colloquy with a masterly hand, making the heart of the reader gradually averse to the friends, and in the same degree winning it towards Job. He makes the friends all through give utterance to the most glorious truths, which however, in the application to the case before them, turn out to be untrue. And although the whole of the representation serves one great idea, it is still not represented by any of the persons brought forward, and it by no one expressly uttered. Every person is, as it were, the consonant letter to the word of this idea; it is throughout the whole book taken up with the realization of itself; at the end it first comes forth as the resulting product of the whole. Job himself is not less a tragic hero than the Œdipus of the two tragedies of Sophocles. What is there an inevitable fate, expressed by the oracle, is in the book of Job the decree of Jehovah, over whom is no controlling power, decreed in the assembly of angels. As a painful puzzle the lot of affliction comes down on Job. At the beginning he is the victor of an easy battle, until the friends’ exhortations to repentance are added to suffering, which in itself is incomprehensible, and make it still harder to be understood. He is thereby involved in a hard conflict, in which at one time, full of arrogant self-confidence, he exalts himself heavenward; at another time sinks to the ground in desponding sadness.

“The God, however, against which he fights, is but a phantom, which the temptation has presented to his beclouded eye, instead of the true God; and this phantom is in no way different from the inexorable fate of the Greek tragedy. As in that the hero seeks to maintain his inward freedom against the secret power which crushes him with an iron arm; so Job maintains his innocence against this God, who has devoted him to destruction as an offender. But in the midst of this terrific conflict with the God of the present, this creation of the temptation, Job’s faith gropes after the God of the future, to whom he is ever driven nearer the more mercilessly the enemies pursue him. At length Jehovah really appears, but not at Job’s impetuous summons. He appears only after Job has made a beginning of humble self-concession, in order to complete the work begun, by condescendingly going forth to meet him. Jehovah appears, and the Fury vanishes. The dualism, which the Greek tragedy leaves unabolished, is here reconciled. Human freedom does not succumb; but it becomes evident that not an absolute arbitrary power, but divine wisdom, whose inmost impulse is love, moulds human destiny.”—

Dillmann expresses himself similarly in respect to the surpassing skill shown in the dramatic development, and the fine as well as sharp individualization of character (p. xxi.seq.). He also groups together with these qualities the magnificent power of description, and splendor of diction which characterize this book: “In freshness and power of poetic perception and sensibility, in wealth and splendor of imagery, in inexhaustible fulness of ideas, in fineness of psychological insight and observation of nature, in the faculty of picturing the most manifold movements of the world of nature and of humanity, in the ability to reproduce the same thing appareled in a form that is ever new, in the art of modulating the tone and complexion of the speakers, according to their various moods, of adapting himself equally to sorrow and lamentation, to anger and passion, to scorn and bitterness, to yearning and hope, to rest and contentment, in the art of setting forth with peculiar impressiveness the majesty, dignity, power, and clearness of God, when He speaks, and finally in mastery of language, in beauty, weight, and terseness of expression, this poet may be put on an equality with the best models of all ages. His work is artistically wrought down to its every detail. Each of the four discourses of the book is a masterpiece of itself, and full of fine relations to the rest,” etc.—Comp. also Ewald, p. 54 seq.; Vaihinger, p. 15 seq.; Schlottmann, p. 40 seq.; 44 seq.; 54 seq.; 66 seq. [A. B. Davidson, 23. seq.; Merx, 17 seq., 47. seq; Lowth, Lecture 34; Renan, Etude, etc., p. 61. seq.; Princeton Rev., Vol. 29: p. 325].

Note 2.—Special consideration should be given to the peculiar beauty and loftiness of the poetic art of the book, as these qualities are seen in its descriptions of nature, its physical images and similes, and as they impart to it a mode of perception, thought, and composition characterized by a peculiar primitive power and freshness, an antique, as it were patriarchal simplicity, depth, and pungent power. The Catholic theologian Gügler, a thoughtful pupil of Herder’s, remarks on this peculiarity: “Nature stands everywhere before the soul in its primeval form, touching as it were on chaos. The mountain ranges, the roaring waters, the outstretched heaven, the sun, the constellations,—these are the wonders, surpassing number, which take the feeling by storm. The unveiled abysses, the outspread night, the earth hanging on nothing, the water gathered up in the clouds, the quaking pillars of heaven, the thunder, the lightning shining to the ends of the world,—these are the phenomena, not to be numbered, these are the wonders not to be searched out, which occupy the aroused faculty of thought. Nature in its primitive vastness and depth lies before the wondering struggling heart” (Gügler, Die heil Kunst, III., p. 144).—Comp. Herder (Briefe I., 11): “The outlook which this book furnishes presents itself to me now as the starry heaven, now as the joyous wild tumult of creation, now as humanity’s profoundest wail, from the ash-heap of a prince, among the rocks of the Arabian desert.” Also Joh. Friedr. v. Meyer, who remarks of the book: “Its massive style, its lights and shadows, the enigmatic obscurity of its terse expressions, that largeness of spirit with which it moves forward, compassing worlds and weighing an atom, looking through men, and penetrating the wondrous depths of the Godhead,—this lofty character has at all times made the book an object of deserved reverence.”—Of the latest critics and expositors G. Baur has in particular deemed this peculiarity of thought and representation in the book worthy of attentive consideration in the treatise already cited—Das Buck Hiob und Dante’s Göttl. Komödie. “It would scarcely be an exaggeration,” he says (p 621 seq.) “to affirm that there are in Job as many representations of nature as in all the rest of the Old Testament; from heaven to hell the poet traverses the whole realm of creation. Especially does his gaze delight to rest on the phenomena of heaven; and it is a characteristic fact that in his poem, moving as it does in the sphere of pastoral life, and in the prophecies of the herdsman Amos, may be found the entire Old Testament nomenclature of the stars.… From heaven he turns to the water which is bound up together in the clouds (Job_26:8 seq.), to the hail and snow, which are there prepared (Job_28:22 seq.), to the lightning and thunder (Job_38:25; Job_38:35), and with especial frequency does he speak of the rain-showers, which in that climate are doubly precious and beneficent (Job_5:10; Job_38:25; Job_38:28; Job_38:37 seq.). This brings him to the earth, which hangs upon nothing (Job_26:7); he thinks of the sea, which is shut in with doors (Job_38:8); he remembers with peculiar interest the brook which dries up, and mournfully deceives the hope of the caravans (Job_6:15; Job_14:11); and he goes down to the gates of death (Job_38:17).… The whole splendor of these descriptions is concentrated in chap. 38–41. In a series of incomparably vivid delineations, by means of a few firm masterstrokes, there are produced before us, with all their various peculiarities, the lion, the raven, the gazelle, the wild ass freely roaming, the swift ostrich, the spirited horse, the hawk and eagle, the hippopotamus and crocodile. Even the fabulous phenix is not forgotten (Job_29:18).”—Baur then justly gives prominence to the fact that even a Humboldt has paid his tribute of admiration to our poet’s deep inward sensibility to nature and his talent for description [Cosmos II., pp. 414, 415, Bohn’s Scient. Lib.].

§ 4. IDEA AND AIM OF THE BOOK

In so far as the Book of Job seeks to harmonize the fact that men endure unmerited suffering, or at least suffering which is not directly merited, with the divine justice, it labors at the solution of a problem which falls in the category of the theodicies, i, e. the attempt to justify the presence of sin in a world created by God. It exhibits “the struggle and victory of the new truth, that sufferings are not merely penalties, that they have other causes founded in the divine wisdom; that they may be, to wit, trials and tests, out of which piety should come forth strengthened and purified. It sets forth the doctrine that man, when dark sufferings burst upon him, for which he can find no reason in the sins which he has committed, must not doubt toe righteousness and love of God, which are eternally unchanged, but must rather in humility recognize the imperfection of his own righteousness, which needed such a trial, in order to verify itself and attain to faith” (Hahn). The idea of the poem consists accordingly in the proposition that God in His wisdom decrees for His human children calamities and grievous providences, which are not directly and unqualifiedly the penalties of sin, but in part chastisements for purification, and in part means for proving and testing the sufferers, serving to illustrate and demonstrate their righteousness.

This proposition finds expression in the epico-dramatic development of the history in four stages.

1. The one-sided opinion, derived from a perverted interpretation and application of the Mosaic Law, but predominantly prevalent among the large mass of those who belonged to the Old Covenant, that grievous sufferings are always and without fail a punishment for specific sins, and even that the magnitude of the sufferer’s guilt can be inferred from the magnitude of his calamity;—this opinion being advocated by the three friends of Job, who through their advocacy of it become his opponents, and intensify most bitterly his painful consciousness of unmerited suffering.

2. The simple denial of this proposition, involving the affirmation that even an innocent man may suffer, and that he [Job] in particular is an innocent sufferer, who will yet be surely proved to be such by Jehovah, is defended by Job in his replies to the accusations of the friends.

3. The first half of the correct positive solution of the problem, consisting in the presentation of the chastening and purifying aim of unmerited suffering, is contributed by the discourses of Elihu. They seek in a way which accords with Pro_3:11 (comp. Heb_12:5 seq.) to exhibit the sufferings of the righteous man as chastisements and means of purification, having “the sin of the righteous man indeed for their ground, but having for their motive not God’s wrath, but His love, aiming to refine and to advance the sufferer.”

4. The other half of the positive solution of the problem, consisting in the exhibition of the suffering of the righteous as ordained to prove them and to test their innocence, finds expression in the discourses of Jehovah, in His judicial arbitration between the contending parties, as well as in His actual restoration of Job’s former prosperity. According to this, the profoundest solution, in which the whole scope of the book culminates, and finds its definitive authoritative expression, the afflictions of the innocent are “means of proving and testing, which, like chastisements, find their motive in the love of God. Their object is not, however, the purging away of the sin which may still cling to the righteous man, but, on the contrary, the manifestation and testing of his righteousness” (Delitzach).

The former side of the positive solution, that advanced by Elihu, belongs as yet to the circle of human perceptions and experiences; it represents the highest and the deepest that the wisdom of man on earth, limited to itself, except indeed as it derives aid from the Old Testament revelation of God, can contribute to the answer to be made to the inquiry into the nature and aim [of such sufferings]. The latter side of the solution which finds its expression in the discourses of Jehovah, and the hist