(16: 19. 13: 7- -12. 27: 7—10); and this hope rises on one occasion (19: 25,) to such a certainty, that he declares in the language of a conviction which nought can destroy, that God will not, God cannot, allow him to die, without having, at least, -even though the enigma should not be explained, -borne witness before all the world to his unjustly questioned innocence. — And, even though, after such lucid moments, all may again become as dark as before, in him and around him, and the gloomy forms of doubt and despondency, nay, though even entire disbelief in a justice that governs the world, overcome him anew, he is enabled, at last, to struggle forth into freedom; faith finally obtains the mastery, and, in its exercise, he flees to the conception of that higher Wisdom which is inscrutable to man, which has ruled the world from the beginning, but to fathom whose depths is not granted to the human understanding. There, then, in those concealed depths, and not in his guiltiness, should his would-be-wise friends seek for the cause of his misfortune; but be convinced, that they, as little as he, are able to reach the bottom of those depths. - At last Jehovah actually appears, rebuking the presumption and folly of Job for wishing to dispute with Him respecting the government of the world, and to contest the justice therein administered. Two long discourses in which He exposes to the view of Job the entire greatness and majesty of His operations and government in nature, bring him to the mortifying confession of the weakness and folly of all human knowledge in respect to superior things, and of the incomprehensibility of the divine omnipotence and wisdom; to the avowal that he will never again allow himself to contend with God, and to a recantation of the grounds of his complaint. Finally, Jehovah decides between the friends and Job, assigning error to the former and truth to the latter, as well as delivering him from his sufferings, and compensating him richly for all that he had lost in property, domestic happiness, and years of life. 2. Doctrine and Object of the Book. First of all, it cannot be doubted that the author would prove, by an ocular demonstration, in the case of Job's undeserved sufferings, the weakness and untenableness of the ancient Mosaic doctrine of retribution [rather, a misinterpretation of it]. In this view, the book is closely connected with Ps. xxxvii. and lxiii. While these Psalmists [David and Asaph], however, perceiving indeed the impossibility of establishing that doctrine by an appeal to experience, held to it, notwithstanding, as true in itself, our author deprives it of one point of support after another. Should it be represented to him, in order to 1850.] Doctrine of the Book. 147 account for the misfortune of one esteemed righteous, that he has sinned in secret, so that God alone is aware of his sins (11: 7-12), or should it be said, that his sufferings are meant only to discipline him, and will continue only so long as will suffice to effect their object, the production of repentance and reformation, when so much the greater happiness will ensue as a recompense (5: 17 seq. 11:13 seq.); then can Job adduce, in opposition to such assertions, as well the witness of his good conscience as the feeling of sorrows daily multiplying and the certain prospect of approaching death, and not less the experience (21:25 et al.) that righteous men die without having obtained the reward of their righteousness. And, further, he even points to the experience which proves the contrary (for example, 12: 6. 21: 6 seq. ch. xxiv.), when, in order to maintain the position that the wicked are unhappy, it is asserted by his friends, that though many of them do, to be sure, enjoy happiness, it does not endure (8: 11 seq. 18: 5 seq. et al.), or that they are, if indeed outwardly, not inwardly happy, since they tremble continually in dread of punishment (15: 20 seq.) And when, in the end, the frequent occurrence of the very opposite of their assertions cannot be denied by the friends, and they betake themselves to the position, that the divine punishment is at least executed upon the children of the wicked; it is responded, on the other hand, that that is neither justice, nor a punishment of the wicked themselves (21: 19—21).1 But the poet will not merely overturn an untenable doctrine; he will establish a tenable in its place. If one is compelled to reject that strong doctrine of retribution, there are only two ways open which it is possible to follow the one, which lies nearer (because with the rejection of the doctrine of retribution, the justice of God is called in question), is the way of unbelief, indifferentism; the other, which lies farther off, and, because it leads to no result satisfactory to the understanding, the more difficult and the less trodden, the way of faith. To exercise this faith in all cases in which the moral government of the world appears, to human view, to be destroyed, and when the sense of justice feels itself violated, whether by some grievous misfortune which happens to the pious man, or by some undeserved blessing which the godless enjoys; to renounce all claims to that higher wisdom whose works lie before man in the wonders of nature, recognizable also in the moral world, as there so here, by a knowledge of the laws by which it acts, but to be satisfied with the certainty of its existence, and, on the other hand, to refrain from all murmuring against God and his providences, As to how far 27: 13-23 and Job's indemnification in the epilogue are to be harmonized with the object proposed, see in the sequel. -this is the positive doctrine which the poet will establish in the room of that negative. It is contained partly in Job's speech in ch. xxviii; partly in the two discourses of Jehovah, xxxviii and 42: 16; expressed nowhere, indeed, formally in set phrase, but it is left to the reader to draw the proper inference from the opposition of the human to the divine wisdom, and from the descriptions of the wonderful works of divine power and wisdom, while the poet only briefly hints (28: 28. 38: 2. 40: 2, 4, 5. 42: 2, 3, 6) what application he desires to have made. This speech of Job's has been charged with being destructive of the design of the whole, because an anticipation of the discourse of Jehovah, but not justly, for, since Job himself succeeds, at last, after a long wandering in the realm of unbelief and of doubt, in fleeing to that conception of the inscrutable depths of the divine wisdom, there is declared, by that fact, as lying in the will and the power of man, the possibility of a final victory, to be obtained only by hard struggles, over those internal enemies, - in opposition to the delusion that whoever has been once seized by them, is irrecoverably lost, and must become subject to internal compulsion. But the discourses of God have as their object the confirmation of the opinion forced from Job, as alone true and alone fitted for man to believe, and the exhibition of its indispensable necessity to them in the more convincing light. It follows, however, spontaneously, as well from the confutation of the ancient doctrine of retribution as from the declaration of faith in the government of a superior wisdom, that the poet thinks sufferings without guilt, possible; and the proving of this possibility, which is also declared by the divine vindication of Job in the Epilogue, is an advance which positive knowledge makes in the book. The author, moreover, discovers in the Prologue what he supposes may possibly be the object of such sufferings,-the testing of the firmness of virtue; but he gives this thought no farther development in the poem itself, since it is not his design to open a way for speculation but rather to exclude it, as leading to no good effect. 3. Unity of the Book. Justly in some measure, and in some measure unjustly, have several larger and smaller divisions of the book been considered interpolations. The discourses of Elihu, alone (ch. xxxii and xxxviii), are rightly so considered, the proof of which is given in the Commentary; unjustly, The proof of the interpolation of Elihu's discourses is stated as follows in the Commentary. It is introduced here to give completeness to the Article. — Truns. 1. They destroy the connection between Job's last speech and the discourse of Jehovah, ch. xxxviii. The beginning of Jehovah's discourse necessarily presupposes 1850.] Elihu's Discourses. 149 on the other hand, 1) the Prologue and the Epilogue, ch. i, ii, 42: 7-17; 2) the Section, 27: 7-23. xxviii; 3) the Description of the hippopotamus and crocodile, 40: 15 and 41: 34. that Job had spoken immediately before, cf. obs. on 38: 2, and the broken-off conclusion of the discourses of Job 31: 38-40, can only be explained on the supposi tion that Job, while engaged in the course of his speech, is interrupted by Jehovah. 2. They not only enfeeble the discourse of Jehovah, since they anticipate (ch. xxxvi, xxxvii) the reference (contained in ch. xxxviii and xli) to God's power and wisdom, but they render it almost superfluous, since they give the solution of the proposed enigma by the means of knowledge; while the discourse of Jehovah requires unqualified submission to his omnipotence and concealed wisdom. Why this requirement, if man knows that sufferings are the means of moral improvement, as they are here, in ch. xxxiii and xxxvi, represented? "It is," as De Wette on the passage has appropriately remarked, "the same as though one, after giving a clear knowledge of a matter, should then require one not to understand, but to believe." This objection however does not, by any means, apply to the reference to the secrets of the divine wisdom, already anticipated by Job in ch. xxvii and xxviii. 3. There is no mention made of Elihu, either in the Prologue, which is preparatory to the whole drama, and introduces by name the persons who are to appear therein; or in the Epilogue, which announces unto those who have appeared in the drama, Job and his three friends, the divine decision: This latter is the more remarkable since, as Elihu's discourse is founded on the same supposition as those of the three, that Job suffers on account of his guilt, the same reproof which was bestowed (42: 7) upon them should be bestowed upon him. 4. A peculiar use of language distinguishes these discourses from the rest of the book, with which whatever that is peculiar may be found in the discourses of the others cannot, in any manner, be compared. Not only has the language (as is admitted by Umbreit, who defends the genuineness of these speeches, Introd. to his Com. p. 2) a strong dramatic coloring, but Elihu uses uniformly certain expressions, forms, and modes of speech, for which, just as uniformly, and without distinction as regards the different speakers, other expressions are found in the rest of the book, which indicate not merely a difference of parts ( Umbreit), but a difference of authors. Cf. obs. on 32: 3, 6. 33: 18, 19, 25. 34: 13, 19, 25, 32. 35: 9, 14. 36: 2, 19, 31. On other linguistic peculiarities of these discourses, cf. obs. on 32: 8. 33: 6, 9, 10, 16, 18, 28, 30. 34: 8, 12, 37. 36: 19, 22. 5) Correspondences in the rest of the book excite the suspicion that parts of them are copied; such is evidently the case as respects the whole division 36: 28 and 37: 18, which is first touched upon in the discourse of Jehovah, ch. xxxviii seq., and also as regards many details in thought and expression, cf. on 33: 7, 15. 34: 3, 7. 36: 25. 37: 4, 10, 22. To these are to be added, 6. various single circumstances, which have weight with the critic chiefly on account of their coincidence with the other arguments; as, a) the isolated situation of these discourses; they receive no reply from Job; the accusations of the three Job had refuted as often as they were repeated, but against Elihu, who does not less accuse him, he does not defend himself, but bears with the accusation. b) In these discourses alone, Job is addressed by name, 33: 1, 31. 37: 4. c) The remarkable contrast which is observable between the prolix and tedious introduction of Elihu, as a character, 32: 2-6, and the simple announcement of the three, 2:11. The genuineness of these discourses has been disputed by Eichhorn, Introd. to O. T. Vol. V. § 644. b.; Stuhlmann, Transl. of the Book of Job, p. 20 seq.; Bern 1. Against the genuineness of the Prologue and Epilogue it is urged (by Hasse, Conjectures on the Book of Job in the Magazine for Oriental Biblical Literature, 1. 162 ss., Stuhlmann Translation of the Book of stein, in Keil and Tschirner's Analecta, Vol. I. pt. 3. p. 133 seq.; De Wette, Introd. to O. T. § 287, and in the Encyc. of Ersch and Gruber, art. JOB; Ewald, Commentary, p. 296 seq.; defended, on the other hand, (not, however, against all the objections here adduced, in particular not against 1. and 2.; against 4 very unsatisfactorily); by Scharius, Commentary, I. p. lx.; Staudlin, Contrib. to the Philos. and Hist. of Religion and Ethics, II. p. 133 seq.; Bertholdt, Introd. to the Writings of the O. T. and N. T. p. 2185; Jahn, Introd. to O. T. p. 776; Rosenmüller, Commentary on ch. xxxii; Umbreit, Introd. to his Commentary, p. xxv. Arnheim, in his Commentary, tacitly takes their genuineness for granted. [In opposition to Hirzel's objections, the following arguments, among others, seem to be conclusive. 1. All this Hirzel's first objection] rests at last on an incorrect application to the words 38: 2, of the grammatical remark that the participle denotes the continuance of action, “ and in connection with other propositions, a condition continuing during another action." Ewald § 350. The certainly expresses here the continuous darkening, by Job, of the divine counsel, but the words do not affirm that God interposed and spoke during that darkening process; the interruption begins with ch. xxxviii; if the interruption had taken place while Job was speaking, the ,Since the question . אִיּוֹב (הָיהָ) מַקְשִׁיךְ וגו וַיַּעַן יְהוָה sentence would have been vs. 1, forms a new, independent proposition, consequently the connection of several |