God to man. BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. JOB (continued). BY THE REV. A. S. AGLEN, M.A., INCUMBENT HIS divine drama has a double action. The main purpose of the poet was to combat the manner in which the theology of his time sought to justify the ways of The current belief on the subject had the merit of being simple and intelligible. It acknowledged only one principle of moral government, that of retributive justice, which was always assumed to be at work, apportioning in this world their due reward to good and evil men. According to this creed the righteous are always blessed with prosperity, while the wicked are always overtaken with ruin. But experience soon supplied matter for perplexing questions. The Book of Job does not stand alone, in the literature of Israel, in the attempt to deal with the difficulty raised by the contradictory facts. Two Psalms especially, xxxvii. and lxxiii., attempt to dissipate the anxious doubts occasioned by the failure of the popular theory. But these deal only with the question of the triumph of ungodly men. The Book of Job takes up the other side, which is surrounded by still more perplexity. Why does the Divine Ruler of the world permit good men to be afflicted? the OF ST. NINIAN'S, ALYTH, N.B. friends, and a reply to each from the hero; (3) chaps. xv.-xxi., the second scene, constructed on the same plan; (4) chaps. xxii.-xxvi., the third scene, in which one actor is silent; two long speeches by Job, who has now put his antagonists to silence, conclude this scene (xxvii.-xxxi.); (5) xxxii.—xxxvii., occupied by a fourth speaker not previously mentioned; this part was not in the original plan of the poem; (6) xxxviii.—xlii. 1—6, Jehovah speaks from the tempest those majestic descriptions of His power, to which Job can only respond in broken accents of penitence and awe; (7) epilogue in prose. 1. THE PROLOGUE (chaps. i., ii.). The first purpose of the author was to present in one person a combination of the most perfect goodness and most complete prosperity that could be conceived, and then, by a quick succession of sudden calamities, to reduce him to the utmost misery. This is done in an epic introduction, which defies attacks on its authenticity, by the fact that without it the poem would not only be incomplete, but unintelligible. All the necessary conditions were exactly satisfied in the person of Job. His greatness and his misfortunes were a tradition1 in the East. His piety and his patience were the theme of Hebrew prophets (Ezek. xiv. 14; James v. 11). epithets, "perfect, upright, fearing God, and eschewing evil." "There is none like him upon earth," was the testimony of Jehovah to Job's righteousness. If such a man should fall into misfortune, plainly the current belief must be in error. Tradition asserted that Job had been overtaken by the worst of calamities. What was the interpretation of a fact so at variance with the orthodox creed ? This forms the main subject of the poem, and supplies one of its two lines of action. By his choice of the dramatic form, the unknown theologian is able to ex- In a few simple and majestic words this model of pose the falsehood and cruelty of the current theory in patriarchal virtue and greatness is introduced. The persons of three able representatives, with a com- traits of his character are brought out in detail in the pleteness that would have been impossible in any other course of the poem (xxix. 11-16; xxxi.), and show how style of composition. But he is enabled to accomplish nearly the standard of even Christian holiness was more. The sufferer who is the victim of these well-approached in the ideal presented by the four splendid meaning persecutions is the hero of a real tragedy, in whose fate are involved questions of universal interest. Can religion be entirely disinterested? Shall men be able to preserve their integrity under affliction which has crushed out not only happiness, but hope and faith? When innocence is of no avail, and justice is withheld, and God, withdrawn in dark impenetrable silence, does not answer even with the merciful summons of death, can a human soul, by maintaining the truth and freedom of its moral consciousness, conquer for itself a truer peace, and out of affliction bring a blessing? To one despairing of this life can there spring up a longing and a hope of another, in which innocence shall at length find its vindication and its reward? These are some of the questions that are answered in the Book of Job. And there are others which are not answered, which the inspired author of this great book could only himself suggest, and which waited for the fuller light of the revelation of Jesus Christ. With marvellous art and profound insight into the mystery of human life, the way is prepared for the discussion of this difficulty. It is necessary that the spectator should be admitted partially into the secrets of the Divine Ruler. He must be furnished with a 1 The question of Job's historical existence is not necessary to the right understanding of the Book of Job. There have been some who held the whole work to be fictitious-a long parable liko in kind to that of Dives and Lazarus. Others have understood it as entirely and literally historic. The truth probably lies between the two. The book is a poem founded on the facts preserved in the traditional accounts of Job, who belonged probably to the patriarchal age. The LXX., in the appendix before quoted. identifies him with Jobah, prince of Edom, mentioned in Gen. xxxvi. But this appendix is of very doubtful authority. The name fetching it from an Arabic root, makes it "he that repents"). Job, Iyob, appears to mean the afflicted one" (Ewald, however, 33. Was the earlier name changed to suit the lot of the sufferer? reason for the affliction of the sufferer, which he himself, if he could perceive it, would acknowledge to be sufficient. Without this his sense of right would be too keenly stung to enable him to follow the course of the poem. The necessary motive is supplied by Satan, the accusing angel, who, fresh from his self-chosen task of roaming earth in search of sin, fronts God in heaven itself with calumnies against His purest creatures and detraction of His most tried saints.' It is indeed a devilish suggestion, one too gross for human mind to invent, that all virtue is assumed, and piety itself but a selfish policy to cheat God. Doth Job serve God for nought?" 66 66 Than that such a miserable suspicion should continue to exist in heaven or hell, better that not one only but all good men be stricken down with sudden ruin. The blows that rained on Job and left him a broken and desolate man, and the loathsome disease which tired even the affection of his wife, and turned it into tho bitterest of temptations, would have had their purpose had this only been recorded, that Job sinned not with his lips." For the devil had predicted blasphemy and renunciation. "He will renounce thee to thy face." But his falsehood recoiled on himself, for not only was Satan silenced, not afterwards to appear in the poem, but his fiendish spite produced those wonderful words of resignation which seem to descend from the clime of some eternal calm, and have been the strength and support of thousands of sorrowing souls. "We have received good at the hands of God, and shall we not also receive evil?" "Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." Thus is the integrity of the sufferer proved sincere. Job sitting on his ash-heap an utterly miserable man, the symbol of woe for all time, has already, and not for himself alone, disarmed the enemy of mankind of one of his most deadly 1 The poetic interest as well as profound meaning of the scenes in heaven has caught the imagination of some of the greatest in modern literature. It powerfully impressed Byron. Shelley meditated a tragedy on Job. Goethe in Faust, Bailey in Festus, have actually imitated this scene, and by their attempt have only thrown into bolder relief its incomparable grandeur and simplicity. 2 This disease is interpreted to be elephantiasis. Among its symptoms, which are in the course of the poem accurately and painfully described (see vii, 5-15; xvi. 8; xxx. 17, sq.), was that of fetid breath. This is mentioned in the one allusion to Job's wife put into his own lips (xix. 17). The words used by her, "Curse [i.e., renounce, or leave] God, and die," may have been spoken in wish to see an end of his sufferings. The LXX., however, exteuds her words, and gives them a tone of selfish querulousness. 3 It is worth mentioning only as an instance of the monstrous conjectures allowed themselves by expositors, that Elihu has been regarded as Satan come back in disguise "as au angel of light." Perhaps the wish in xxxiv. 36 would have been more appropriate on a fiend's lips. 4 "Reports spread among the mounted tribes of the Arabian desert with the rapidity of telegraphic despatches." picture of true friendship, true sympathy. "Now when Job's three friends heard of all this evil that was come upon him, they came every one from his own place; Eliphaz3 the Temanite, and Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite; for they had made an appointment together to come to mourn with him and to comfort him. And when they lifted up their eyes afar off, and knew him not, they lifted up their voice and wept; and they rent every one his mantle, and sprinkled dust upon their head toward heaven. So they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him: for they saw that his grief was very great.” When the long silence was at length broken, it was by that piercing cry in which the sufferer, his forced composure at last overcome, "cursed the day of his birth," and called for death and nothingness to end his cruel grief. "Let the day perish wherein I was born, And the night which said, There is a man conceived. And let not God brighten it from above, * * * * Because it shut not up the doors of my mother's womb, In this wild and passionate outburst of feeling it is important to mark that there is no approach to the impiety which Satan hoped to provoke. The language of the sufferer is reckless and vehement, but it comes from the depths of a single and simple heart. As yet there is not even a complaint of injustice, not a ques tion of the providence which has allowed the affliction. Existence indeed has become inexpressibly miserable, and for a time the active trust, once habitual to this pious soul, is paralysed. Sick in body and sick in mind, his one wish is for death to come to end the weary scene of monotonous never-ending pain that robs him of thought and rest, and even of hope. "No more safety, no more rest, no more peace, Everything has now been most skilfully prepared for 5 The character of each of these comes out with clearness and dramatic truth in the poem. In rank they were, of course, chiefs like Job himself, principal scheiks or emirs of large tribes. The LXX. calls Eliphaz and Zophar βασιλεῖς, Bildad τύραννος, The name Eliphaz is ono of the points connecting the poem with Idumæa (Gen. xxxvi. 10, 11). Teman, his tribe or country, was the name of part of Arabia Petræa. Shuah is the name of a son of Abraham and Keturah (Gen. xxv. 2), and perhaps connects him with the same region. Of Zophar or Naama nothing is known. 6 In the A. V., " mourning;" margin, "leviathan." The allusion is to the constellation of the Dragon, which, according to the mythology of Eastern nations, stands ready to devour the sun and moon. "Those who curse the day" are magicians who know how, by incantations, to change days into dies infasti. Job prays, not that the memory of the day may be lost, but that the day itself may be blotted from the course of time. In the transla tions given in this paper, the English version has been carefully compared with those of Lee, Delitzsch, and Renan. 7 Cf. "Ah, woe! ah, woe! pain, pain ever, for ever." (Shelley, Prom. Unbound.) the entry of the three friends. Full as they were of the doctrines which they think it religious to impress on Job, they could not well be the first to break the silence. But his wild words supply a reason for addressing him. Eliphaz, who speaks first in each dialogue, is evidently the oldest of the three, as he is the most dignified, the calmest, and the most considerate. He is the only one whose words convey sympathy with the pain they inflict. He comes forward under a sense of duty and with an apology. "If we attempt a word, we shall grieve you perhaps ; Nor could anything be more appropriate than the endeavour to recall the sufferer to the memory of the truths whose efficiency he had himself proved in administering consolations to others, when "He upheld the falling, And strengthened the feeble knees. So Eliphaz covers his approach to the statement of the position which in common with the others he takes up, and even when he comes to it all is vague, impersonal, indirect. He appeals to Job's own memory to tell him of any case where a righteous man had been cut off, or an innocent man had perished. As to the other side of the doctrine, that the wicked invariably meet with retribution, he contrives to give his statement of it a greater air of indirectness by reference to the mysterious vision which had revealed to him the infirmity of human nature. At the close, in describing the blessings which penitence may secure, he allows himself to indicate Job more directly: "In thy place I would turn unto God, And address myself to the Almighty." The note touched so gently by Eliphaz is struck by each of the others in turn, always with increasing peremptoriness and decision, as Job, so far from accepting their interpretation of what had befallen him, hurls it from him in anger and disdain. Bildad, who throughout unites brevity with a quick and vigorous imagination, comes at once to the attack without a word of sympathy or solace. He asks abruptly the question whether God could pervert judgment or do injustice (viii. 3)—an admirable question for a calm philosophical discussion, but cruel when thrown in the face of one who was harassed and wrung by torture which seemed so mysterious and undeserved. It is true he glances by Job to fix the whole blame on his children (viii. 4). And this father, with his heart aching in its desolation, had watched with such pious care the morals of his house, had expiated so religiously the possible sins of his sons and daughters (i. 5) ! As Eliphaz had appealed to a vision, so Bildad calls to the aid of his argument the wise proverbs of the ancients, and sketches the inevitable fate of the wicked in a number of most striking and beautiful similes drawn from the experiences of Egypt and the desert lands of the East (viii. 6-19). His general conclusion, summed up in an antithetical verse, combines an accusation and a threat: "No, God does not cast away the innocent, He does not stretch out his hand to help the evil-doers." Zophar, the youngest and most violent of the three, who sometimes descends even to coarseness in his tone (xi. 12; cf. xx. 7), does not advance the controversy a step. His speech contains a fine passage on the mysterious greatness of God, and the impuissance of man. But he only reiterates in a new form, and with forcible illustrations, the common position that retributive justice alone is a sufficient principle to account for all phenomena of the moral world. He appears indeed very desirous of Job's penitence and restitution, but, like Bildad, he closes an appeal which, if made under other conditions, might have been very effectual, with the implied condemnation : "But the eyes of the wicked shall fail, And refuge shall be closed to them; Their hope is worth only a dying man's breath." God cannot act unjustly. The friends were right to maintain that fundamental truth, without which it would be impossible to conceive of a moral order. But they should have left room for the doubt whether justice alone is a sufficient explanation of all the facts which make up the experience of life. At least, they might have made allowance for one too tortured to think with perfect calmness. They need not have been so hasty to impute evil. Friendship should have kept them from condemning him for a few hasty and passionate words; nay, should have clung to him in all extremes, even had he been proved guilty of the greatest impiety. "To him that is afflicted grief should be shown of his friends, Even though he has abandoned the fear of the Almighty." Job felt this break in their sympathy, and felt it keenly. The disappointment shows itself repeatedly in the course of his speeches, and lends them much of their bitterness and fierceness of tone. A little confi. dence in his innocence would have helped him to bear his pain and win back something of his shattered faith. With sympathy, even silent sympathy, he might have discovered for himself where the creed in which he too had been educated was imperfect and incomplete. For he too had been taught to see the hand of God in outward dispensations. But now that he feels from the bottom of his heart that he is a sore contradiction of what he had learnt to believe, the repetition of the old half-truths only exasperates him to fierce defiance, and tends to shatter all his former faith into fragments. 66 'And thus, whatever of calmness and endurance Job alone, on his ash-heap, might have conquered for himself, is all scattered away; and as the strong gusts of passion sweep to and fro across his heart, he pours him. self out in wild fitful music, so beautiful because so true; not answering them or their speeches, but now flinging them from him in scorn, now appealing to their mercy or turning indignantly to God; now praying for death; now in perplexity, doubting whether, in some mystic way he cannot understand, he may not perhaps after all really have sinned (vii. 20), and praying to be shown his fault; and then staggering further into the darkness, and breaking out into upbraidings of the Power which has become so dreadful an enigma to him. 'Thou enquirest after my iniquity, thou searchest after my sin, and thou knowest that I am not wicked. Why didst thou bring me forth out of the womb? Oh, that I had given up the ghost, and no eye had seen me. Cease, let me alone. It is but a little while that I have to live. Let me alone, that I may take comfort a little before I go, whence I shall not return, to the land of darkness and the shadow of death.' In what other poem in the world is there pathos deep as this? With experience so stern as his, it was not for Job to be calm and self-possessed, and delicate in his words. He speaks not what he knows, but what he feels; and without fear the writer allows him to throw out his passion, all genuine as it rises, not overmuch caring how nice ears might be offended, but contented to be true to the real emotion of a genuine human heart.” 1 In this passionate music are struck two or three dominant chords which persist and prevail to the end of the whole sad strain. In the first place, Job never lets go the consistent profession of his real innocence. It is the more important to remark this, because the translation of our English Bible sometimes represents the speaker as utterly inconsistent with himself.? Beneath his desire for death was something more than the longing for rest from pain. He wants to pass away before his will and reason, overmastered by suffering, have consented to any sin. "Oh, that it would please God to destroy me! That He would let loose His hand and cut me off! That I might have at least this consolation, This joy in the sufferings that He heaps upon me, That I have not violated the words of the Holy One." (vi. 9, 10.) And so, when from his intense realisation of the awful power of God, he recoils back from the hope of an answer from one so self-sustained and arbitrary "If I had called and He had answered me, I would not believe that He had heard my voice: And multiplied my wounds without cause; But filleth me with bitterness;" though he is driven to say "Were I innocent, He would declare me guilty," In contrast to the view of Providence which the friends with such wearisome reiteration parade as the adequate explanation of all the facts of existence, Job, conscious of the contradiction in his own case, refers everything to an arbitrary omnipotence which governs the world without regard to innocence or guilt, and disdains to give account of His deeds to creatures so mean as man: "The earth is given into the hand of the wicked; He covereth the faces of the judges thereof. If it is not He, who then is He?" (ix. 24; cf. ver. 19.) And yet he has not let go his trust in God as a God of truth. When in a hasty moment, under the influence of his bitter disappointment in them, he becomes unjust to his friends, and interprets as falsehood of heart what was only error of understanding, he confidently appeals to the God who "is no accepter of persons," and will be the first to confound those who think to do Him service by unfairness and untruth (xiii. 8—11). It is this "belief in unbelief" which constitutes the strength of Job, and leads him through all his perilous wanderings of doubt at last to the higher trust and purer faith. Even now he turns from man and throws himself on God. He learns that even in the exercise of arbitrary power the Divine Being would respect his sincerity, and in some dim way he sees in this a hope of salvation : : "This, moreover, shall turn to my salvation, For a hypocrite dare not appear before Him." (xiii. 16.) And so, as his old conception of God's character becomes more and more insufficient and unsatisfactory, so that with this God above him there is no hope but the hope of death, no comfort but in the eternal silence of the tomb, there begins to shape itself before him, as yet confused, indistinct, and far-off, another God of too pure eyes to behold evil, and awful in grandeur and power, but with something akin to the human in His heart, something sympathetic with the struggles and weaknesses of the creatures that He made. What if he could not yet think of this new tenderness in connection with his earthly lot, but only caught at the conjecture that beyond the grave (if men who die could live again) God would" have a desire for the work of His hands ?" (xiv. 14, 15.) Yet the mere presentiment indicates the he is yet true to his own conscience, and exclaims, in guiding hand which was leading the sufferer on to tones that are sublime though defiant— "Yes, I am innocent; life is nothing to me; I care no more to live." 4 (ix. 21.) 1 Froude, Short Studies on Great Subjects, 201. 2 See, e.g., vii. 20, where "I have sinned," should be "If I have sinned.' In xiv. 17, the word rendered "transgression" should be "condemnation." There is great difficulty in translating Job, arising from the fact that in Hebrew the same words are employed for moral evil and physical suffering. 3 A. V., "I have not concealed the words of the Holy One," though sufficiently correct, does not bring out the meaning. 4 This rendering is also adopted by Ewald. Delitzsch, however, translates, "Whether I am innocent, I know not myself," which is not in accordance with the context or consistent with Job's other utterances. Cf. x. 7, "Thou knowest that I am not wicked." truth. His perception of his relation with his Maker was becoming clearer. A new and better faith was taking the place of the old." 5 Before passing on to the next division there are some passages in this which need explanation. "How long wilt thou keep thine eyes fixed on me? Wilt thou refuse me a moment to swallow down my spittle?" (vii. 19.) This is an Arabian proverb, answering to our expression, "A breathing while." "For vain man would be wise, Though man be born like a wild ass's colt." (xi. 12 in A. V.) This is a curious passage, and has been a great difficulty to 66 66 GEOGRAPHY OF THE BIBLE. PALESTINE. BY MAJOR WILSON, R.E. IV. THE DEAD SEA. HE Dead Sea, to use its modern and more familiar name, is usually called in the Bible the "Salt Sea," but is also styled the 'Sea of the Plain," or Arabah; the "East Sea;" and once, in 2 Esdras v. 7, the "Sodomitish Sea." To the writers of the Talmud it was known as the "Sea of Sodom and the " Sea of Salt;" to Josephus as the Asphaltic" and "Sodomitic" Lake; and it is now called by the Bedawin “Bahr Lut," the Sea of Lot. The title "Dead Sea" appears not to have been used by Jewish writers, but it was current in the country when Jerome wrote, and it is also found in the writings of Pausanias and Galen : this name probably originated in the very general belief, which has survived even to our own day, that the waters of the lake covered the doomed Cities of the Plain, and were of such a deadly character that no bird could fly over them; that the shores were desolate and barren, and that the scenery was gloomy and forbidding. Recent investigation has completely disposed of these erroneous impressions, which possibly arose from the fact that at the northern end of the lake, the part most frequently visited by travellers, there is a dreary waste of mud without the slightest trace of vegetation. Our knowledge of the "Dead Sea" and its shores is derived, for the most part, from the boat expeditions of Lieutenant Lynch, of the American Navy, in 1848, and of the Duc de Luynes in 1864; and from the land journeys of Seetzen, Robinson, De Sauley, Captain Warren, R.E., and others. abruptly from the water's edge, leaving no margin, except at those points where small deltas have been formed at the mouths of the larger ravines that discharge their waters into the lake. The northern end, bordered by the plain of Jericho, is somewhat rounded, and at the southern end the shore is for some two or three miles perfectly flat and but slightly raised above the surface of the water; beyond this it is shut in by the salt mountain of Jebel Usdum and the rising ground that separates the waters of the lake from those of the Red Sea. The extraordinary depression of the surface of the lake, 1,292 feet below the level of the Mediterranean, according to the line of levels run across the country in 1865 by the Royal Engineers, together with the absence of any outlet for its waters, render it the most remarkable body of water in the world; and its great depth, 1,308 feet at the deepest point, is equally worthy of notice. The total depression of the bed of the lake is thus 2,600 feet, almost the same as the elevation of the Mount of Olives above the Mediterranean. The level of the lake varies as much as from ten to fifteen feet at different seasons of the year, rising when the melting snows and winter rains are brought down by the Jordan and by the smaller streams running directly to the lake from the mountains on the east and west, and falling during the long dry summer, when the supply of water is not sufficient to meet the enormous amount of evaporation constantly going on under the fierce rays of a Syrian sun. The water of the Dead Sea is clear and bright, but, owing to the large quantities of various salts held in solution, it is intensely salt, and has a nauseous bitter taste. The specific gravity, 1228, distilled water being 1000, and the Mediterranean 1025, is greater than that of any known water, and to this may be attributed the extreme buoyancy noticed by so many travellers. This peculiarity was well known to ancient writers. Aristotle relates that if men or animals were thrown bound into the lake they would not sink; Seneca says that bricks would float in it; and Josephus, B. J. iv. 8, § 4, tells us that when Vespasian went to see the Dead Sea, "he commanded that some who could not swim, should have their hands tied behind them, and be thrown into the deep, when it so happened that they all swam as if wind had forced them upwards." So buoyant is the water, that it is difficult to keep the feet down when (2) "Thereby even the fool would be born again to intelligence, swimming, and there is a constant tendency to roll over The Dead Sea occupies the deepest portion of the great depression of the Jordan valley; it is oblong in form, the longest dimension being almost due north and south; and its width is nearly uniform, except near the southern end, where a long low peninsula, the Lisan, stretches out for some distance from the eastern shore, and divides its waters into two unequal portions. The lake has a length of forty-six miles, and an average width of ten miles; on either side the mountain-ranges run parallel to each other, and on the east they rise expositors. The choice seems to lie between three explana tions: or (1) "For before an empty head gaineth understanding, A wild ass would become a man.' (Delitzsch.) And the young ass would become a reasonable creature." (3) "But man is furnished with an empty head (i.e., receives And man is born as a wild ass's colt" (i.e., as stupid and The preceding verses dwell on the penetration and certainty of the Divine insight into character and consequent discipline. (1) and (3) present man in contrast as stupid and undiscerning. In (2) the verse is taken as expressing the result of the Divine discipline. when striking out. Sinking is almost an impossibility, for the body floats without the slightest exertion; and with a gentle movement of the hand to prevent turning over, a sitting posture can be retained with perfect ease for any length of time. Unless the body is well rubbed after bathing, a saline crust is soon formed by the rapid evaporation, and the water leaves a greasy feeling |