his book, and he would have made Job's patience and submission to the divine will more complete and striking than he has done. As little can the design of the book be restricted, as some propose, to the mere setting forth of the conflict and triumph of the godly under affliction. A much profounder lesson and more comprehensive design must be ascribed to the book. The great design of the writer seems to be to show how suffering, permitted by God to fall upon his servants, or sent by Him on them, is intended for their discipline and correction; and how it is only as they recognise God as dealing with them, and see his hand in their trials, that they can patiently bear the affliction, or profit by it. With this in view, the writer first presents to us the patriarch as meekly submitting to sorrow and loss, because he could say, "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." He then shows how, under the pressure of suffering, the patriarch allowed doubts of God's wisdom and love and providential rule to rise up in his mind, and how through these he was betrayed into impatience and murmuring. He then brings in Elihu to point out the disciplinary character of suffering to the righteous, in opposition to the dogma of Job's three friends, that suffering is only, and in every case, retributive and penal. Finally, God himself comes forth to answer Job out of the storm, and to assert the wisdom of his ways and the unfathomableness of his counsels, and to solve Job's doubts, not by any philosophical reasonings, but simply by manifesting himself as revealed in the works of his hands. The patriarch's conflict is now at an end; his pride and obduracy are broken down; he acknowledges his sin and folly in presuming to reply against God; faith in God resumes its place of supremacy within him, and he in humility and resignation submits himself wholly to the Almighty. Faith thus triumphs, and patience has its perfect work. The patriarch sees God, and that is enough. Antecedently to his great trial, he was a pious and God-fearing man; but his piety was not complete; it had to be made perfect through suffering. This was what God designed in permitting the trial to come upon his servant; and this was what, through means of the trial, was attained: "I have heard of thee," exclaims the patriarch, "by the hearing of the ear; but now mine eye seeth thee; wherefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes." This is the sum and conclusion of the whole.

Among the Hebrews it was a common belief that the outward condition and fortunes of men were conditioned by their piety and integrity, so that a man subjected to severe suffering or sore calamity was on that account, without any further question, in danger of being set down as a sinner whom God punished for his sin. To contravert this belief, and to show the real end of affliction, when sent by God on men, is the design of this book. Hence the writer shows that God may permit very sore affliction to come upon one whom He nevertheless regards with favour as a pious and upright man—that it is an error to impute this to any other cause than a purpose on the part of God to make manifest the real goodness of his servants, and at the same time to draw them nearer to himself—that it is gross presumption on the part of men to question the perfect equity and goodness of God, because such afflictions are sent or permitted to come on the righteous, seeing no man is in a condition to penetrate the divine counsels, or estimate the reasons of the divine procedure

that man's duty is to fear God, and do what is right, come what may-and that when a good man under affliction thus maintains his integrity, he is not only thereby rendered more godly, but God will mark his approbation of him by giving him prosperity. The lessons thus taught are rendered all the more impressive from the fact that the book is not written directly from a Jewish point of view. The speakers are all persons belonging to a Gentile race, all consequently living outside the sphere of special divine revelation, and all consequently persons who had to frame their theology and solve their doubts without the help of inspired oracle or seer. The ways of God are thus vindicated on the broad ground of natural religion, and it is shown that reason itself condemns such notions, respecting the purely penal character of suffering, as were too common among the Jews. The book is thus in its own place a preparation for the Gospel, by which no lesson is shown more clearly than that it is by suffering that sin is to be conquered, and the guilty race of man is to be restored.

This view of the design of this book enables us at once to vindicate the genuineness of certain parts of it which have been called in question.

1. The prologue and epilogue have by some been pronounced additions of a later age. This is urged chiefly on the ground that in them the Supreme Being is called Jehovah, while in the body of the

work He is invariably called Elohim, God. But this only illustrates the care and accuracy of the writer, who, when he writes in his own name as a historian, being a Hebrew, uses of God the name by which He had revealed himself to his own people; but when he gives discourses professedly uttered by Gentiles, he refrains from putting into their mouths a name which they as Gentiles would not think of using; and so far does he carry this, that even in the prologue, when he reports the words of Job to his wife, he represents him as using the term Elohim, and not Jehovah. It has been supposed also that between i. 19, and xix. 17 (which should be rendered, "My breath is repulsive to my wife, and my evil savour to the sons of my womb "), there is a discrepancy such as can be accounted for only on the supposition that the two parts of the book in which these occur were written by different authors. But even if we reject the suggestion adopted by the LXX., that the sons of Job mentioned in the latter passage were sons of concubines, who did not share in the calamity which destroyed the sons he had by his wife; and the suggestion, accepted by Gesenius, Umbreit, Delitzsch, and others, that by "sons of my womb," in xix. 17, Job means his uterine brothers, just as in iii. 10 he uses the phrase "my womb" for the womb of his mother whence he himself came; and the suggestion approved of by Hirzel, Heiligstedt, Hahn, and Ewald, that by "sons" here are intended "grandsons," the children of Job's sons, who did not perish with their fathers;—even if none of these be accepted, and the apparent discrepancy be allowed to remain, it will hardly be regarded as adequate to sustain the conclusion which has been built on it, when it is remembered that, as in chap. xix., Job is not supposed to be dealing in statistics, but uttering highly impassioned poetry, he might, for the sake of heightening the picture of his humiliation and misery, introduce the idea of his sons shrinking from the evil savour which his disease caused to proceed from him, without meaning to say that this actually happened. There is nothing, therefore, to constrain us to regard the prologue and epilogue as having been furnished by another pen than that to which the rest of the book is due; and if what has been suggested as to the main design of the book be correct, it must be evident that these never could have been dispensed with. Without the prologue the drift of the subsequent part of the book could not be perceived, and without the epilogue

the great lesson of the book would remain only imperfectly illustrated.

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2. Objection has also been taken to the section, xxxii.-xxxvii., containing the discourses of Elihu. These, it is said, interrupt the general tenor of the book, and are shown to be an interpolation-(1), by their disconnecting the statement with which chap. xxxviii. begins, Then the Lord answered Job," &c., from that with which chap. xxxi. concludes, "The words of Job are ended," and with which the other is evidently in continuity; and, (2), by the fact that Elihu is nowhere else referred to, nor any notice taken of his discourses. But these reasons are easily disposed of if the design of the book be kept in view. To that the discourse of Elihu is essential; for, as we have seen, it contains the reply, on natural grounds, to what Job's friends had advanced as to the retributive character of his sufferings, and prepares the way for the vindication of Himself and his ways, which God is introduced as making preparatory to the winding-up of the whole argument. So far from interrupting the general tenor of the book, the discourses of Elihu supply that, without which the theme of the book would have been defectively handled, and its great lesson imperfectly presented. That the section, xxxii.-xxxvii., disconnects xxxviii. I from xxxi. 40, is undoubted, for it comes in between these two passages; but it no more breaks the continuity of the whole than the continuity of a debate is broken by first one speaker and then another replying to the same preceding speaker. As for the absence of any reference elsewhere in the book to Elihu and his speeches, that is readily accounted for by the part which Elihu plays, as avowedly an interlocutor who comes in to set the other speakers right, and to adjudicate in the matter which they are discussing. He could not be referred to before he speaks, for he is intentionally brought in as one who spontaneously intrudes upon the discussion; and there was no occasion to refer to him afterwards, because he had not sinned as Job's three friends had sinned, by saying that which was not right concerning God.

Accepting the book in its integrity as we have it in the canon, we have next to inquire as to its authorship, and the place and time of its composition.

An ancient opinion is that the author of the book was Moses, while some ascribe to it a still greater antiquity. The addition to the book in the LXX. makes it a translation from the Aramaic; and this has given occasion to the opinion that Moses found it in

that language, and rendered it into Hebrew. Others regard it as a translation from the Arabic, the language, as they allege, having an Arabic colouring. But for none of these allegations can any satisfactory evidence be produced. The work is undoubtedly the production of a Hebrew, as is proved, not only by the pervading spirit and sentiment of the book, but also by such an incidental allusion as that in xl. 23, where the "Jordan" is adduced as an example of a great stream; and though the scene is laid in the patriarchal age, and the writer has throughout been true to the requirements of this supposition, even to the extent of using archaic phraseology, there is nothing in that to compel us to believe that it was composed by a contemporary of the patriarchs, while there is much in the book that clearly betokens that it was produced in an age later than that of Moses. The artistic finish of the composition, the reflective character of the poetry, which often assumes a gnomic form, the knowledge displayed of a condition of political and social life, such as the pre-Mosaic time could hardly have furnished (comp. xii. 17-21; xv. 28; xxix. 7—10), and such a representation as that in chap. xxviii., where wisdom is celebrated as the divine worldruling and illuminating principle, all lead to the conclusion that to a later age than that of Moses must be assigned the composition of the book. The mention also of the gold of Ophir (xxii. 24; xxviii. 16), and of pearls and other precious stones (xxviii. 16—19), favours this conclusion; and at the same time suggests the age of Solomon, when these costly products came to be generally known among the Hebrews (1 Kings v. 13; vii. 13 ff.; x. 11 ff.; Prov. iii. 15; viii. 11; xx. 15; xxxi. 10; Song iii. 9, 10; iv. 3, 13, 14, &c.), as the time when, probably, this book was written. This supposition is confirmed by the affinity of tone and style and sentiment between this book and the known productions of that flourishing age of Hebrew literature. It evidently belongs to the same class as the Book of Proverbs, works devoted to moral reflection and religious speculation; and its style closely resembles that of the Song of Songs. "The book," says Delitzsch," bears throughout the creative cast of that Solomonic age, an age of knowledge and of art, of thoughtful penetration into the depths of the religion of revelation, and of the intelligent development of traditional forms of art,-that unparalleled age in which literature attained a glorious eminence analogous to that to which the kingdom of promise had been raised."

That the book cannot be placed much later than this age is rendered certain by the manifest quotations from it in the prophets. (Compare Amos v. 8 with Job ix. 9; Isa. xix. 5 with Job xiv. 11; Isa. xix. 14 with Job xii. 24, 25; Jer. xx. 14-18 with Job iii. 3 ff. .; Lam. iii. 7, 9 with Job xix. 8.) That it belongs to this age is rendered highly probable by the occurrence of expressions and phrases in it identical with some in the Proverbs of Solomon. (Compare Prov. viii. 25 with Job xv. 7; Prov. xiii. 9; xx. 20 with Job xxi. 17; Prov. iii. 15 with Job xxviii. 18.) The acquaintance with objects of natural history, also, which the author displays is in keeping with the supposition that he was a contemporary of that monarch who "spake of trees from the cedar-tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall; of beasts also and of fowls, and of creeping things and of fishes" (1 Kings iv. 33).

Of the various kinds of poetry, there is hardly one to which the Book of Job has not by some writer been ascribed. To none of them, however, does it properly and exclusively belong. It is not an epic poem like the Iliad, the Æneid, or Paradise Lost; it is not a collection of lyrical poems like the Psalter, nor of gnomes like the Book of Proverbs, nor of moral reflection like Ecclesiastes; it is not an allegory, as some of the Rabbins and certain moderns have supposed; nor is it a drama after the model of works intended for the stage, as Luther suggests. It has, however, a certain dramatic character. It is divided into different acts, each of which contains several scenes; and the characters of the different speakers are well defined and accurately sustained throughout. It bears to the Divina Commedia of Dante a closer analogy, perhaps, than to any other production of Western literature; and in view of this Ewald has very aptly called it the "divine drama of the ancient Hebrews."

In form the poetry of this book resembles that of the Proverbs and the Song of Songs. It consists of short, and, for the most part, bi-membered verses; and in some parts of it an arrangement into strophes may be traced, as, e.g., in chap. iii., where the "why" with which verse II and verse 20 begin marks the commencement of the second and third strophes; and chap. xxx., where three strophes of eight verses each are indicated by the commencing words, "And now." As a composition, the book must take a place among the great poems of the world.