A.M. 2484. quence of which is, in the first place, the anger, indignation, and B.C. 1520. contumacy of Job, and afterwards his composure, submission, and

It does not answer the

chief difficulty

He supposes

the author.

penitence. The design of the poem is, therefore, to teach men that having a due respect to the corruption, infirmity, and ignorance of human nature, as well as to the infinite wisdom and majesty of God, they are to reject all confidence in their own strength, in their own righteousness, and to preserve, on all occasions, an unwavering and unsullied faith, and to submit, with becoming reverence, to his decrees."

To this view of the subject there can be no objection: but the great question before us is not touched by it; for it gives no answer to the inquiry, whence comes it that a poem so completely isolated and exotic should have found its way into the sacred volume of the Jewish nation? That this people, who, in every other point, have shown the utmost degree of jealousy concerning whatever is strictly their own; who in all ages, and under all trials, adhered inflexibly to their own customs, their own manners, their own ritual, their own creed; who were in every respect a peculiar people, separate from the world around them, which they looked down upon with a feeling of superiority, should have consented to wander from the boundary of their own history, and the pale of their own church, for the instructive lesson which the book of Job is designed to teach? and to draw an example of the instability of all human happiness, and of the importance of placing an implicit trust in the great Arbiter of the Universe, and of submitting with a becoming reverence to his decrees, from the life of a stranger, rather than from one of their own tribes, who might easily have been selected for the purpose?

To this view of Dr. Lowth, respecting the subject of the poem, Job himself we will here stop to add, that he inclines to favour the opinion of those who suppose Job himself, or some contemporary, to be its author; that this distinguished character was a real personage, who flourished before Moses, and, from the length of his days, was probably contemporary with the patriarchs; that the poem itself, though not a regular drama, as being without regular plot or dialogue, is nevertheless of a dramatic cast, and approaches very near the form of the more perfect dramas of the Greek school; and that the exordium and the conclusion are distinct from the poem itself, and of a prosaic and lower style.

Michaelis.

He supposes

Professor Michaelis, in the notes he has added to Dr. Lowth's work, published at Gottingen, deduces a somewhat different moral, and forms a totally different opinion of the hero of the piece. 66 I little doubt," he says, feel very "that the subject of the poem is it allegorical. altogether fabulous, and designed to teach us that the rewards of virtue being in another state, it is very possible for the good to suffer afflictions in this life; but that, when it so happens, it is permitted by Providence for the wisest reasons, though they may not be obvious to human eyes.-For my own part, I cannot conceive

that the sanctity, the dignity, or the utility of this book will be in A.M. 2484. the least affected, though we should suppose no such person as B.c. 1520. Job had ever existed. If moral precepts, conveyed in the garb of fabulous narrations, allure the hearers by the pleasure they afford; if they strike the mind more forcibly, are more easily understood, and better retained, than abstract sentiments, I see no reason why this mode of writing should be deemed unworthy of inspiration. On the contrary, indeed, we find it made use of by Christ himself; nor does it at all derogate from his force as a moral teacher, that the good Samaritan, the rich man and Lazarus, &c., were not real persons. It is surely more becoming to consider the exordium, in which Satan appears as the accuser of Job, rather in the light of a fable than of a true narrative. It is surely incredible that such a conversation ever took place between the Almighty and Satan, who is supposed to return with news from the terrestrial regions. Indeed, the commentators who have undertaken to vindicate this part of the book, have done it with so much asperity, that they seem conscious of the difficulty under which it labours. Nor will it suffice to answer as some temperate and rational commentator, like Dr. Lowth, probably will, and, indeed, as he himself hints, that the great outline of the fact only is true; and that the exordium is set off with some poetical ornaments, among which is to be accounted the conversation between God and Satan. For on this very conversation, the whole plot is founded, and the whole story and catastrophe depend."

Michaelis, however, is not the only critic who has regarded the entire subject of this poem as more or less fabulous. Spinoza thought Spinoza. so formerly; and bishop Warburton, a biblical interpreter of very Warburton. different pretensions, in more recent times: the last of whom contemplated the entire work, and hence the exordium and termination, as well as the body of the piece, as an allegorical drama, founded, however, on genuine history, and written by Ezra, or Esdras, for the consolation of the Jews, after their return from the Babylonian captivity into their own country; when they were about to experience various reverses of fortune from the hands of Providence.

regarded as

person.

Generally speaking, however, the learned have regarded the Job illustrious hero of this extraordinary poem in the light of a real generally character; though, as we have already hinted at, they have differed a real greatly concerning the writer to whom we are indebted for it. Schultens asserts it to be not incredible, that all the characters introduced into the poem are real, and that the controversy consists of the very words they made use of at the time; and, in support of this remark, refers to the wonderful facility the Arabians possess of composing extempore verses. Spanheim contends, that the whole book is genuine history, and that the words of which it consists were originally Arabic, and written down in Arabic characters, before the time of Moses, on private tablets, by Job himself, and his friends, after the joyful termination of his afflictions; each

A.M. 2484. assisting the other in recalling to mind the words they had made B.C. 1520. use of, and thus furnishing an instructive lesson to future ages.

Dr. Stock's Job.

Ascribes

this book to Ezra.

Proofs.

This Arabic archetype he conceives to have been afterwards copied most faithfully into Hebrew by some later writer, who flourished a little before or about the time of Solomon, and who wrote his translation, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, giving it the form of the tragic drama in which it has descended to our own days. In consequence of which, Grotius had ventured to ascribe the production to Solomon himself.

In the year 1805, Dr. Stock, bishop of Killala, the learned translator of Isaiah, published an English version of this poem, with a preface, in which he inclines to a much later æra than that of Solomon, and is more disposed to coincide with Bishop Warburton, in ascribing it to Ezra. To arrive at this opinion, however, he has found it necessary to abandon, as spurious, the two concluding verses of the common text, which seem to carry it to a much higher origin. His argument is as follows:- "The sacred critics in general," says he, have been apt to ascribe to the book of Job an origin that loses itself in the shades of the remotest antiquity. The opinion, I believe, rested at first on the very sandy foundation of what is stated in the two concluding verses of the work, which ascribe to its hero a longevity that belonged only to the generations not far distant from the flood. Of the authenticity of those verses, I think I have shown in my note on them, that we have every reason to be suspicious. But if it were ever so difficult to ascertain the portion of time when the patriarch lived, it may not be impossible, from internal marks in the poem itself, to conjecture with tolerable certainty the æra of its author. This is what I have attempted to execute.-Allusions to events recorded in the five books of Moses are to be found in this poem, chap. xx. 20, compared with Num. xi. 33, 34; chap. xxvi. 5, compared with Gen. vi. 4, 7, 11; chap. xxxiv. 20, compared with Exod. xii. 19; chap. xxxi. 33, compared with Gen. iii. 8, 12; and I shall hardly be expected to prove that the author of the poem derived his knowledge of those events from a history of so much notoriety as that of Moses, rather than from oral, or any other tradition. Facts are not usually referred to before the history recording them has had time to obtain currency. The inference is clear; the writer of Job was junior to the Hebrew legislator, and junior, it is likely, by some time. A similar mode of reasoning, upon a comparison of chap. xxxiii. 23, with 2 Sam. xxiv. 16; 1 Chron. xxi. 15; will, if I mistake not greatly, bring down the date of our poem below the time of King David. Lastly, chap. xii. 17, to the end, seems to point to the circumstances preceding and attending the Babylonish captivity; and chap. xxxvi. 8, 12, has an appearance of alluding to the various fortunes of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, 2 Kings xxiv. 12; xxv. 27. Notes of time these, which, though not so manifest as the fore-mentioned, may deserve attention; since

they add strength to the sentiment of those learned men, who have A.M. 2484. been inclined to give the honour of this celebrated composition to B.C. 1520. Ezra."

the

poem.

Contrary to the opinion of Schultens, Lowth, and the greater Considers number of critics and translators, Dr. Stock considers the exordium exordium a and conclusion to be as much parts of the poem, and as clearly part of the possessed of a metrical arrangement in the Hebrew, as any of the rest: and he concurs with Scott, who has favoured the world with Scott's opinion. an elegant rhyme version, but who rejects the exordium and conclusion from the poetical part of the original, although he has very singularly put them into rhyme in his own translation, in thinking that the moral may be best collected from the speech of the Almighty towards the close of the composition. "The design, says the learned prelate who adopts Mr. Scott's words, "of this appearance of the Almighty, is not to vindicate the injured character of his servant Job. Neither is the design of this speech to decide the controversy, in the dialogue, about the ways of providence; for the decision of that dispute was not intended by the poem, but was reserved for the subsequent history. The scope of the speech is to humble Job; and to teach others, by his example, to acquiesce implicitly in the disposals of God, from an unbounded confidence in his wisdom, equity, and goodness. This surely is an end worthy of the interposition of the Deity-dignus vindice nodus."

There can be no doubt that it is so; but we have still to ask, as in the preceding moral proposed by Dr. Lowth, how comes it that such a lesson, introduced into the Jewish canon, should be taken from foreign, rather than from Jewish history? and be exemplified by exotic scenery, characters, customs, and even religion? On what ground has the book of Job a claim to be admitted into the sacred books of the Old Testament?

dissertation

work on

For the only answer with which we have been hitherto furnished Mr. Good's to this important question we must turn to Mr. Mason Good's Intro- and ductory Dissertation, prefixed to his distinguished and popular important version of this sublime effusion; which has thrown so new and Job. clear a light, not only upon this point, but upon almost every other connected with it, as to have removed, as we conceive, all the most formidable difficulties that have been supposed to attend the poem ; the "multa loca valde obscura," of Dr. Lowth, "multa quæ vereor ut quisquam mortalium satis intelligat;"—and to concentrate the opinion of most men of learning in the present day, as well on the continent as at home, in the truth and accuracy of his interpretation. On which account we feel ourselves called upon to give as full an analysis of Mr. Good's critical examination of the work as our limits will allow.

of his

This celebrated poem, he observes, is, "in various respects, the Analysis most extraordinary composition of any age or country; and has argument. an equal claim to the attention of the theologian, the scholar, the

A.M. 2484. antiquary, and the zoologist; to the man of taste, of genius, and B.C. 1520. of religion. Amidst the books of the Bible it stands alone; and though its sacred character is sufficiently attested, both by the Jewish and the Christian scriptures, it is isolated in its language, in its manner, and in its matter. Nothing can be purer than its morality, nothing sublimer than its philosophy, nothing simpler than its ritual, nothing more majestic than its creed. Its style is the most figurative imaginable; there is no classical poem of the east that can equal it; yet its plan is as regular, its argument as consecutive, as the most finished compositions of Greece or Rome; and its opening and its close are altogether unrivalled in magnificence. It is full of elevation and grandeur; daring in its conceptions; splendid and forcible in its images; abrupt in its transitions; and, at the same time, occasionally interwoven with touches of the most exquisite and overwhelming tenderness. And, to sum up the whole, if the train of reasoning pursued throughout this dissertation be correct, it is the most ancient of all human records; the only book in existence from which we can derive any thing like A SYSTEMATIC KNOWLEDGE OF PURE PATRIARCHAL RELIGION; and hence that very book which gives completion to the Bible, by adding the dispensation of the earliest ages to those of the law and the gospel by which it was successively superseded."

Scene,
Arabia.

The dissertation then proceeds to inquire, in five distinct sections, into the scene of the poem; its scope, object, and arrangement; its language, and the difficulties attending a translation of it; its author and æra; and the doctrines which it incidentally developes.

The SCENE is placed in Arabia; of the original peopling of which we are favoured with the following account.

Upon the expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael from the family of Abraham, who had long resided on the plains of Mamre, or Hebron, Hagar took the road towards her native country, which was Egypt: but her stock of water failing soon after she had entered the wilderness of Beersheba, it seemed impossible to avoid perishing. She resigned herself to despair, and placing her son under a bush, as she could not endure to be a witness of his death, took an affecting leave of him, and retired to a distance. At this moment "the angel of God called to Hagar out of heaven," and she beheld a well of water close at hand. Being thus miraculously preserved, she continued her journey to the wilderness of Padan, on the borders of the Red sea, and there took up her residence. Her son, in due time, acquired manhood, and greatly distinguished himself as an archer; and his mother chose for him a wife from among her own country-women, the Egyptians. Here the account of Ishmael, or Ismael, as the Arabians call him, breaks off abruptly in the sacred writings, which are chiefly intended as a history of the descendants of Abraham through the line of Isaac; and we are compelled, in order to fill up the chasm, to have recourse to the Arabian his