torians, in whose country Ismael was now residing, and of whose A.M. 2484. tribes he may be regarded as the head, and common father. The B.C. 1520. Arabian writers make no mention of his marriage with an Egyptian, but distinctly relate the miracle of the well, which they affirm, for obvious reasons, but with a palpable deviation from the truth, was performed on the very spot where Mecca, the birth-place of Mahomet, now stands. They assert that, at this time, the inhabitants How of Arabia consisted of two classes: an elder, comprising those who peopled had first taken possession of the country, immediately upon the confusion of tongues, and of whose origin they have no certain information, but who are supposed to have been descendants of Ham, comparatively few in number, and of but little consequence; and a class of later date, and much more powerful and numerous, descended from Kohtan, or Joktan, as he is called in the Hebrew scriptures, the son of Heber, and, consequently, fourth in a direct line from Shem or Sem. Kohtan, who had obtained the general sovereignty of Arabia, had two sons, Yaarab and Joram: to the former he allotted the province of Yaman, or Happy Arabia; and to the latter that of Hajaz, or Stony Arabia. The Joramites were

by far the more powerful people of the two; and on the arrival of Ismael, on the coast of the Red sea, were governed by Modad, supposed to be the eighth in direct succession from Joram, and, of course, the thirteenth in direct succession from Sem. Ismael continued in this spot, where, as it has already been observed, the Arabian writers place Hagar's well, till the death of his mother; after which he proceeded, with a numerous retinue, to the northern parts of Arabia, probably to assist his brother Isaac in the interment of his father, as stated Gen. xxv. 9; and on his return to the south, found that the tribe of the Joramites had overrun the country he had so lately quitted, and had actually possessed themselves of the well to which his mother's name had been given. Ismael immediately put in his claim to it; and the dispute was settled by an alliance between the tribes; Ismael marrying Valla, the daughter of Modad, chief of the Joramites, and receiving with her, as a part of her dowry, the well and the territories adjoining; by which marriage, according to the Arabian writers, and not by the Egyptian alliance, Ismael had the twelve sons which are ascribed to him in a succeeding part of the book of Genesis; and who are there called princes, and are placed each at the head of a distinct town and people, and possessed of a distinct castle. From the abruptness and brevity with which the Hebrew narrative returns to the history of Ismael, we have no information as to the immediate marriage from which the twelve sons proceeded. As polygamy was so common in his æra, it is probable that he had more wives than one; and the very extensive authority which the Bible statement admits him to have possessed in Arabia, the concurrent testimony of the Arabian historians, and the minuteness with which the pedigrees

A.M. 2484. of all Arabian families are preserved from generation to generation, B.C. 1520. and appealed to in their courts of law, leave little or no room to doubt as to the accuracy of the Arabian narrative upon this point. In reality, the success which had accompanied Hagar's journey with Ismael into the Arabian peninsula, seems to have induced all the sons of Abraham, excepting Isaac, to press forward in the same, or a somewhat similar direction; and hence, of his six sons by Keturah, we find, in the names given to different places in the south-eastern parts of this country, constituting Sandy Arabia, or the province of Najd, as it is now called, (that which, in the period before us, was least inhabited,) the radicals of their own names; as Midian, Shuah, Sheba, Seba, or Saba, and Dedan. Hither also advanced the two sons of Lot, the nephew of Abraham, Moab and Ammon, and established themselves still further to the eastward of the same province; while Esau, his grandson, who was also called Edom, pursued a similar track; and, marrying a daughter of Ismael, at this time the head of the entire country, fixed himself on the south of the Dead sea, or lake Asphaltitis; driving away, or extirpating, the Horim, who had previously possessed this track; and giving to it his own name, or the land of Edom, which under the plastic hands of the Greek writers, was afterwards changed to Idumæa.

Face of the country:

customs.

Such, observes Mr. Good, is the country which forms the scene of the present poem, and such is a very brief sketch of its history; a country whose religion, at the time we are now speaking of, must have been that of Abraham, to a very considerable extent; and whose language, from the first, not widely differing from that of Abraham, must have made a considerable approximation towards it, from the successive tides of the Abrahamic race, which, either directly or collaterally, were perpetually pouring into its different parts.

Well worthy of attention as to its origin and first establishment, the country of Arabia is equally worthy of attention in its present state. It offers a most extraordinary intermixture of barren sands and fruitful and flowery landscapes, whose sweet exhilarating odours not unfrequently spread their fragrance along the whole line of the learning and Arabian gulf, from Babelmandel to Suez. It was perhaps earliest in possession of the most important arts and sciences, and especially those which relate to manufactures and commerce. It first cultivated poetry and eloquence with critical attention, and taught these refinements to Persia, as Persia afterwards taught them to other parts of Asia. The general habits, language, and even political forms of government which it possessed in the time of Ismael, it possesses, with little variation, in the present day. Many of its tribes are capable of tracing their pedigree as high as the beginning of the Christian æra; and those of the Koreish, the most honourable and sacred of the whole, with unimpeachable accuracy, to Adnan, generally supposed to be the ninth in a direct line from Ismael, and, with some diversity of reckoning, to Ismael himself; from whom

there seems little doubt, in consequence of the scrupulosity with a.m. 2484. which these pedigrees have been compared and handed down, B.C. 1520 both by tradition and written records, that Mahomet himself was descended, in the same direct line, from male to male, and from eldest son to eldest son. The natives, even to the present hour, are peculiarly sagacious, intelligent, and courageous. Without ever having been subdued by foreign invasion, they have themselves given religion and laws to half Asia and Africa, and to a great part of Europe: and when all the rest of the world was buried in a long night of barbarism, the Arabian caliphs protected and fostered the arts and sciences with almost unrivalled magnificence in the different courts of Bagdat, Spain, Africa, and Egypt.

Uz.

The immediate district of Arabia, to which the poem, entitled Job, District of directs our attention, is the land of Uz, which Bochart, Spanheim, and the writers of the Universal History, have placed in Sandy Arabia, a position which our author shows very distinctly, can by no means be reconciled with the geography of the Old Testament, which is uniform in placing the land of Uz, or the Ausitis (AoITIS) of the Septuagint, in Stony Arabia, on the south-western coast of the Lake Asphaltitis, or the Dead sea, in a line between Egypt and Philistia, surrounded by Kedar, Teman, and Midian, all of them districts of Stony Arabia; and, as though to set every remaining doubt completely at rest, situated in Idumæa, or the land of Edom or Esau, (of whose position there can be no question,) and comprising so large a part of it, that Idumæa, and Ausitis, or the land of Uz, and the land of Edom, were convertible terms, and equally employed to import the same region. In effect, nothing is clearer than that all the persons introduced into the poem in question, were Idumæans, dwelling in Idumæa; or in other words, Edomite Arabs. These characters are Job himself, of the land of Uz; Eliphaz, of Teman, a district of as much repute as Uz; and, upon the joint testimony of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, and Obadiah, a part, and principal part of Idumæa. Bildad, of Shuah, always mentioned in conjunction with Sheba and Dedan, the first of which was probably named after one of the brothers of Joktan or Kohtan, and the two last from two of his sons, all of them being uniformly placed in the vicinity of Idumæa; Zophar, of Naama, a city importing pleasantness, which is also stated by Joshua to have been situated in Idumæa, and to have lain in a southern direction towards its coast, on the shores of the Red sea; and Elihu, of Buz, which, as the name of a place, occurs only once in sacred writ, but is there mentioned in conjunction with Teman and Dedan, and hence, necessarily, like themselves, a border city upon Ausitis, Uz, or Idumæa.

ment of the

We cannot enter into the detail of the argument made use of by Scope and Mr. Good, in fixing the precise SCENE OF THE POEM before us; but rangehaving successfully established his point, he next proceeds to give a poem. very interesting account of its sCOPE AND ARRANGEMENT.

A.M. 2484.

The subject proposed by the writer of the poem, he observes, is B.C. 1520. the trial and triumph of the integrity of Job; a character of whose origin no certain documents have descended to us, but who, at the period in question, was chief magistrate, or emir, as we should style him in the present day, of the city of Uz, powerful and prosperous beyond all the sons of the east, and whose virtue and piety were as eminently distinguished as his rank. There are some critics, however, he continues, and of great distinction for learning and religion, who, in opposition, to all the biographical works which impersonate and individualize the venerable patriarch and his companions, contend that the poem, as well in its characters as its structure, is fabulous. Such especially is the opinion of Professor Michaelis, whose chief arguments are derived from the nature of the exordium, in which Satan appears as the accuser of Job; from the temptations and sufferings permitted by the Great Governor of the World to befall an upright character; from the roundness of the numbers by which the patriarch's possessions are described, as seven thousand, three thousand, one thousand, and five hundred; and from the years he is said to have lived after his recovery from disease.

Proofs that it is founded on real history, in oppositionto

of Michaelis.

It may perhaps be thought, says our author, to demand a more subjugating force than is lodged in these arguments, to transmute into fable what has uniformly been regarded as fact, both in Europe the opinion and Asia, for perhaps upwards of four thousand years; which appears to have descended as fact, in a regular stream of belief, in the very country which forms the scene of the history, from the supposed time of its occurrence to the present day; the chief character in which, is represented as having had an actual existence, and is often associated with real characters, as Noah, Abraham, Ismael, Isaac, Jacob, and Solomon, in various parts of the book which is there held most sacred, and which, so far as it is derived from national history, or tradition, is entitled to minute attention; and (which should seem long since to have settled the question definitively) a character which, precisely in the same manner, is associated with real characters in the authoritative pages of the Old and New Testaments.

In reply to Michaelis's remark, that "it is altogether incredible that such a conversation ever took place between the Almighty and Satan, who is supposed to return with news from the terrestrial regions," our author forcibly inquires, "but why should such a conversation be supposed incredible?" The attempt at wit in this passage is somewhat out of place; for the interrogation of the Almighty, "Hast thou fixed thy view upon my servant Job, a perfect and upright MAN?" instead of aiming at the acquisition of news, is intended as a severe and most appropriate sarcasm upon the fallen spirit. "Hast THOU, who, with superior faculties, and a more comprehensive knowledge of my will, hast not continued perfect and upright, fixed thy view upon a subordinate being, far

weaker, and less informed, than thyself, who has continued so?" A.M. 2484. The attendance of the apostate at the tribunal of the Almighty, is B.C. 1520. plainly designed to show us that good and evil angels are equally amenable to him, and equally subject to his authority; a doctrine common to every part of the Jewish and Christian scriptures, and, except in the mythology of the Parsees, recognised by, perhaps, every ancient system of religion whatever. The part assigned to Satan in the present poem, is that expressly assigned to him in the case of Adam and Eve, in the garden of Eden, and of our Saviour in the wilderness; and which is assigned to him generally, in regard to mankind at large, by all the evangelists and apostles whose writings have reached us, both in their strictest historical narratives, and closest argumentative inductions. And hence the argument which should induce us to regard the present passage as fabulous, should induce us to regard all others in the same light which are imbued with the same doctrine; a view of the subject which would sweep into nothingness a much larger portion of the Bible, than Michaelis would choose to part with.

The other arguments, continues our author, are comparatively of small moment. We want not fable to tell us that good and upright men may occasionally become the victims of accumulated calamities; for it is a living fact which, in the mystery of Providence, is perpetually occurring in every country; while as to the roundness of the numbers by which the patriarch's possessions are described, nothing could have been more ungraceful or superfluous than for the poet to have descended to units, had even the literal numeration demanded it and although he is stated to have lived a hundred and forty years after his restoration to prosperity, and in an æra in which the duration of man did not perhaps, much exceed that of the present day, it should be recollected, that in his person, as well as in his property, he was specially gifted by the Almighty; that, from various passages, he seems to have been younger than all the interlocutors, except Elihu, and much younger than one or two of them; that his longevity is particularly remarked, as though of more than usual extent; and that, even in the present age of the world, we have well-authenticated instances of persons having lived, in different parts of the globe, to the age of a hundred and fifty, a hundred and sixty, and even a hundred and seventy years. It is * not necessary for the historical truth of the book of Job, that its language should be a direct transcript of that actually employed by the different characters introduced into it: for in such case we should scarcely have a single book of real history in the world. The Iliad, the Shah Nameh, and the Lusiad, must at once drop all pretensions to such a description; and even the pages of Sallust and Cæsar, of Rollin and Hume, must stand upon very questionable authority. It is enough that the real sentiment be given, and the general style copied; and this, in truth, is all that is aimed at, not