Volume II
The Book of Job.
With John Brown’s marginal references, notes and reflections · Vol. II, p. 939
By whom the book of Job was written is uncertain, and conjecture is useless. It is, for the substance of it, a true history of real facts. Job is represented as really existent as Noah or Daniel, Eze. 14. 14, 20; and as a patient sufferer who obtained a joyful deliverance, Ja. 5. 11. It is an ancient history. The length of Job's life; the rare use of the divine name of Jehovah, and frequent use of Shaddai, or Almighty and All-sufficient; the remarkable remains of religion in the land of Uz and the places about; the mentioning of no other idolatry but that of worshipping the sun and moon; the never making any plain allusion to the dividing of the Red Sea, or to the appearance of God to the Israelites in the wilderness, which lay at no great distance from the land of Uz; strongly tempt one to think that Job's distress might be about the time when Moses lived in the land of Midian, or perhaps a hundred years before. We have here, (1) The history of Job's sufferings and his remarkable patience under them, issuing in a sad mixture of human weakness in his cursing the day of his birth, ch. i. ii. iii. (2) A hot dispute between him and Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, his friends, Whether remarkable judgments be certain tokens of the wickedness of those upon whom they are inflicted? The aim of Job is to bewail his own affliction, complain of its weight, justify himself from gross wickedness or hypocrisy, and prove that wicked men often prosper in this world while the godly are exposed to manifold calamities. The scope of his friends is to prove that no good man is subjected to extraordinary calamities, but that the most wicked men ordinarily are; and hence to condemn Job as a hypocrite, because of his uncommon troubles, iv.-xxxi. (3) A decision of the dispute; by Elihu, then by Jehovah. The aim of Elihu is to leave Job's state undetermined, or even to admit it to be good; and only to charge him with his misbehaviour under his trouble, as too arrogant and self-justifying, especially when he had to do with a God of infinite sovereignty, greatness, power, wisdom, and justice. The scope of Jehovah's speech is to convince Job of his meanness, and of his own infinite power, greatness, and extensive influence; and thereby lead him into a sense of his iniquity in insisting so much upon his own justification, and complaining so unguardedly of the providence of God:—and at last he justifies him, in opposition to his three friends, in his character and sentiments, xxxii.-xlii. (4) The whole issues in Job's great honour and redoubled prosperity, xlii. In this book we have at once a most noted encouragement to patience, and a system of the most ancient believers' apprehensions and faith concerning the wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and sovereignty of God; and concerning his works of creation and providence; concerning the original and actual corruption of mankind; concerning redemption by Christ and the usefulness of good works; and, in fine, concerning the resurrection of the dead and eternal life. [The age of the book of Job is a subject of deep interest to the biblical scholar. We have no direct evidence bearing upon it. Jewish tradition assigns to it a very high antiquity. The critic, however, must depend for his arguments mainly on the character of the book itself—on its language and style; on the manners and customs it portrays; and on its reference to, or silence regarding, the great facts and personages of sacred history. All are agreed that the language of the book is of the oldest type found in the Bible. It has certain peculiarities. It has a closer affinity to the Arabic than any other of the inspired writings, arising from the close connection of Job with the nomads of the Arabian desert. There are besides many Aramaic words and phrases in it; but these are of an archaic form, entirely different from those found in the later Hebrew writings. The style of the book—its terse, rugged, and highly poetic language—resembles portions of the book of Genesis, the song of Deborah, and the Proverbs of Solomon, and is characteristic of a primitive and imaginative people. 'The language,' says a recent writer, 'belongs altogether to a period when thought was slow, but profound and intensely concentrated; when the weighty and oracular sayings of the wise were wont to be engraved upon rocks with a pen of iron and in characters of molten lead. It is truly a lapidary style, such as was natural only in an age when writing, though known, was rarely used, before language had acquired clearness, fluency, and flexibility, but lost much of its freshness and native force.' The manners and customs so clearly developed are those of a simple and primitive people. The vast flocks and herds, the semi-nomad, semi-agricultural mode of life, the profuse hospitality, the sudden and sweeping reverses of fortune, are all characteristic of the earliest patriarchal age. The nearest approaches to them are in the histories of Abraham at Beersheba and Laban in Mesopotamia. This book affords a very graphic and full picture of the manners and customs, domestic, social, and political, of the period. Yet there is no straining in it—no aiming at effect; all is easy, natural, simple, affording clear proof that the writer was personally familiar with the scenes he depicted. The free, vigorous, and wild simplicity of the life portrayed in the book of Job bears the stamp of a hoar antiquity; and the style of the narrative shows that the author must have been contemporary with the events. Another consideration leads to the same conclusion. The book is silent regarding the Mosaic law. Its peculiar enactments and institutions, which gave a tone and distinctive character to all the subsequent literature of the Jewish nation, were manifestly unknown to the author of this book, as well as to all the actors introduced into it. The book is silent too regarding the Egyptian bondage, the exodus, the wilderness journey, and the entrance into Canaan. This silence can only be accounted for by the supposition that the date of the book was anterior to those events. 'The sanctions and penalties of the law, if known, could scarcely have been passed over by the opponents of Job, while the deliverance of Israel and the overthrow of the Egyptians supplied exactly the examples which they required to silence the complaints and answer the arguments of Job.' The forms of law, the system of worship, the illustrations and allusions of the book are those of the patriarchal age. Everything therefore in this book tends to show that it 'stands apart from all other productions of the Hebrews, belongs to a different epoch, and, in accordance with the surest canons of criticism, to an earlier age.' P.]