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THE BOOK OF JOB
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A GENTLE CYNIC
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WHEN THE MORNING STARS SANG TOGETHER, AND ALL THE SONS OF GOD SHOUTED FOR JOY.
—Job, 38, 7
of
ITS ORIGIN, GROWTH AND INTERPRETATION
TOGETHER WITH
A NEW TRANSLATION
BASED ON A REVISED TEXT
N
BY
MORRIS JASTROW, JR., PH.D., LL.D,
PROFESSOR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
'A noble book; all men's book"
CARLYLE
PHILADELPHIA & LONDON J.B.LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
1920
COPYRIGHT. 1920. BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
AT THS WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS
PHILADELPHIA. U.S.A.
TO EDGAR FAHS SMITH
SCIENTIST AND ADMINISTRATOR
A TRIBUTE OF ESTEEM AND APPRECIATION
'Let him not boast who puts his armor on. As he who puts it o2, the battle done."
LONGFELLOW.
FOREWORD
WITTY Frenchman once re- marked of the Bible that as a collection it was plus c'elebre que connu. It is in the hope of making a contribution towards having the most celebrated of the books of the Bible better known — and by that I mean a deeper penetration into its real meaning and significance — that I offer a new translation which, based on an entirely revised Hebrew text, will be found to differ materially from the current translations. Preceding the translation and forming the first part of the work, I have given the results of a study of the origin, growth and inter- pretation of the Book of Job, which represents the outcome of many years of devotion to this remarkable production of antiquity, dealing with problems that are as vital and as puzzling to-day as they were two milleniums ago when the book, after an extended process of amplification, reached its final form.
The Book of Job may be said to have suffered from its celebrity. Regarded by universal consent as the literary masterpiece of the Old Testament and, indeed, as one of the masterpieces in world literature, the average person feels himself dispensed by virtue of this admission from reading it, much as Milton's Paradise Lost is universally admired but compara-
FOREWORD
tively little read, except as a task frequently assigned to those whose immaturity prevents them from ap- preciating it. The attitude of the average person to- wards Job seems to be, why read in order to con- firm an opinion which one is ready to take on faith ?
It is perhaps not surprising that Job should be little read, for the English translations of the book — taking their cue from the King James Version of 161 1 — make it a most uninviting and, one is tempted to add, an unprofitable task. As an. English classic the King James Version will, as a matter of course, always retain the distinguished position that it holds, but as a translation it is in need of a much more thorough re- vision than has been given to it either in the Revised Version of 1885 or in the many other English trans- lations that have since been published. The trans- lation of the whole Bible issued by the American Baptist Publication Society in 1913 goes further than others in adopting corrections where the text is mani- festly corrupt, and while this is gratifying it leaves, in the case of the Book of Job, a large number of pas- sages untouched in which the text cannot possibly be correct for the sufficient reason that it gives no sense. Another recent translation of the Old Testament is that published by the American Jewish Publication Society in 1916. It was prepared by a body of com- petent scholars whose authority is unquestioned. In their rendering these translators have endeavored, so far as possible, to preserve the wording of the Author- ized Version, but in many instances they have deviated where, as a result of more recent investiga- tions, a better interpretation of the text as it stands
FOREWORD
could be secured; but the translators have stopped short at this point. As they themselves are at pains to tell us, their aim has been to translate the received text as it stands; that is to say, in the form given to it by the Massoretes, as the Jewish scholars, who at- tached the vowels to the consonantal text are called.1 Only in the very rarest instances have the translators ventured to deviate even by a hair's-breadth from the received text, though no doubt all of the learned translators would be willing to admit that the text is corrupt in a great many instances. As a translation of the received text, the one issued by the American Jewish Publication Society is, therefore, satisfactory; but it is also hopelessly defective, since it deliber- ately ignores the results of modern critical study.
Confining ourselves to the Book of Job, it is no exaggeration to say that barring the two introductory chapters, which tell the story of Job in prose form, and the prose epilogue at the end of the book,2 there are not ten consecutive verses in the Symposium between Job and his friends or in the speeches of Elihu or in the magnificent closing chapters placed as speeches in the mouth of Yahweh, the text of which can be regarded as correct. The text of a poetic composition is more liable to corruption than that of a prose narrative. In the case of the Book of Job we have as an additional factor favorable to corruption the manipulation to which the book was subjected, in the course of the long period elapsing between the
1 In Hebrew, as in Arabic, Syriac and Phoenician, only the consonants are written in inscriptions or manuscripts. When vowels are added, they are in- dicated by diacritical marks placed above or below the consonants.
2 42, 7-17-
9
FOREWORD
first draft and the final form, with a view of making the book more palatable to Jewish orthodoxy. In many instances the textual changes required in order to produce a satisfactory meaning are slight and as obvious as they are slight; but frequently a more radical process is required in order to restore the text to its correct form. Often we can only approxi- mate the correct form, but sufficiently so as to obtain at least a satisfactory view; and occasionally the critical student finds himself baffled and must con- tent himself either with a more or less plausible guess, or admit his inability to solve the puzzling problem as to the precise meaning and original form of a line, phrase or word, or an entire verse. The means at our disposal for correcting the text, and the method to be followed in doing so, are set forth in my study of the book and in the notes attached to the trans- lation. All instances of a deviation from the re- ceived text are noted; and while I have avoided tech- nical discussions, because both the study of the book and the translation are intended primarily for the general reader, I have given sufficient indications in the brief notes to enable scholars, who feel so inclined, to test the justification of the revision to which the text has been subjected.
There is another sense in which the celebrity which the Book of Job acquired has proved to be a real obstacle to a proper understanding of it. A tra- dition gradually grew up around the book, as around most of the books of the Old Testament collection, resulting in a totally unhistorical view of its origin and purpose. The growth of this traditional view
FOREWORD
of Job was in part due to the general lack of a critical spirit in the approach towards Biblical productions until comparatively recent days, and in part to cir- cumstances of a more special character. With the slow evolution of the idea of individual authorship, which proceeded under the influence of the contact with Greek culture after the middle of the fourth cen- tury before this era, the tendency arose to regard the Biblical books as literary units, composed by some individual at some specific time. As a matter of fact, however, with the possible single exception of the Book of Esther, which is a propagandist romance that may not be earlier than 100 B. c., there is not a book of the Old Testament that can be assigned to any individual author, as none represents in its present form a genuine literary unity. Literary unity is not to be found even in so late a book as that of Daniel, written circa 160 B. c., when individual authorship among the Hebrews had already come to the fore, for even in this book it is recognized by scholars that the last chapters are not by the same writer as the one to whom we owe the earlier ones.
The composition of Job, dating in its earliest form from the period before the contact with Greek culture, was produced under the time-honored method, preva- lent throughout the ancient East, of anonymous and composite authorship. The book as we have it is a gradual growth, and in view of this, the traditional attitude towards the book, which regards it as a unit, effectively blocks the way to a genuine understanding and appreciation. On the assumption of literary unity the book is full of most glaring contradictions,
FOREWORD
the most obvious of which is the irreconcilability of the Job of the folktale — a model of piety and of silent resignation to the Divine will — with Job as he is pic- tured in the Symposium, voluble in his denunciation of the Divine injustice under which he languishes. Furthermore, the traditional view that grew up around the book and which assumed that all sections of it were written in the spirit of Jewish orthodoxy is responsible for the many misunderstandings still cur- rent about the Book of Job and which, as long as they persist, will render the reading of it in the ordinary translations a bewildering mental exercise to any- one who approaches it in the spirit in which we take up, let us say, a literary work of our own days. In the current translations we are baffled at every point. We have to ask ourselves certainly at every tenth verse, if not oftener, what does the writer mean ? We come across fine and impressive passages, but if we are the least bit critical, we are also thwarted at fre- quent intervals by the hopeless endeavor to obtain an intelligible view of the sequence of the thought. It is only because we have been so frequently told that the Book of Job is a literary masterpiece that we can read passage after passage which upon analysis can be shown to give no sense. Tradition has a way of warping our critical instinct, and permits us to close our eyes to the inherent difficulties with which the book, on the assumption of its being a unit composition and that the text is correct, teems.
In making the results of the modern study of the book, in which many scholars in many lands have participated, accessible to the general public, it is my
12
FOREWORD
main purpose to present Job, as I have tried to pre- sent "The Words of Koheleth"— "A Gentle Cynic," as I ventured to call the unknown writer who hid his personality behind a nom de plume? — as a human docu- ment. By illuminating the conditions under which the composite production gradually received its present form, its literary excellence will be all the more clearly revealed, as well as the reason for the profound influence that it has exerted in the domain of religious thought.
No modern translator that I know of makes the attempt to distinguish between the original portion of the book and the amplification to which Job, as every literary production in the ancient Orient, was subject. Without such distinction it is entirely hopeless to ob- tain a correct view of the great masterpiece — hopeless indeed to recognize it as a masterpiece. The starting point, therefore, in my study of the origin, growth and interpretation of Job, is a recognition of the separa- tion of the story of Job from the poetical composition in which the two problems suggested by the story, the reason for innocent suffering in the world and for the frequent escape of the wicked from merited punish- ment, are discussed. The story of Job is like the text of a sermon, or like a parable on which a preacher en- larges. The story is the peg upon which is hung the discussion of two vital problems from which we can- not escape, if we look at things in this world as they are. Equally fundamental is the recognition that the poetical composition consists of three distinct strata in which the two problems involved are viewed from
*See A Gentle Cynic, p. 62-71.
13
FOREWORD
totally different angles. The first stratum is the Sym- posium between Job and his three friends (chapters 3- 27), and constitutes the original book. The trend of this stratum is distinctly skeptical. It emanated from a circle of bold and independent thinkers who questioned conventional beliefs. Because of this and because the Symposium ended in an unsatisfactory manner, orthodox circles among the Jews as vitally interested in the problems as unorthodox Jews, took up the book and proceeded to amplify it. As the result of an ex- tended process we have comments and reflections by pious commentators and other additions, as well as a rearrangement of some chapters, and above all, two additional strata represented by the speeches of Elihu (chapters 32-37) and the closing chapters of the book (chapters 38-41) which represent the endeavor of Jew- ish orthodoxy to counteract the influence of the ori- ginal book, and to furnish more satisfactory answers to the questions raised in the Symposium.
It is to the elucidation of the various aspects of these three strata and their relationship to one another that the first part of this work is devoted; and I trust that after a consideration of what has been set forth, the reader will agree with me in the view that in the magnificent nature poems with which the book closes and which from the literary point of view are the fin- est in the composite production, there is suggested as a definite and final answer to the two main problems of Job that simple faith in a mysterious power, whose manifestations are to be seen in the world of inanimate and animate nature, constitutes a resting point for man in the ceaseless search to which he is irresistibly led
FOREWORD
by his own nature to penetrate the mystery surround- ing his life. I am aware that to many, as I suggest at various points in my study, it will seem startling as well as painful, to be asked to lay aside views which have the force of time-honored tradition and to look at the great masterpiece from a new and unaccustomed angle. But I am also in hopes that after carefully considering the justification brought forward for the interpretation and for the new translation, my readers will reach the conclusion that the new Job is a greater masterpiece than the traditional one, because relieved of contradictions and freed from inherent difficulties that persist under the traditional view of the book. Let me not be understood as setting up the extravagant claim of having solved all the difficulties in the book. That were presumptuous indeed. An author unless car- ried away by vanity is always his severest critic. I feel, however, that without exceeding the bounds of proper modesty I may lay claim to having advanced the interpretation of the book to which I have given years of patient study and to which I have become ever more closely attached as I have penetrated deeper into its spirit. That at all events is my hope which, I trust, will not turn out to be a delusion.
In closing this foreword I wish to make special acknowledgment to a modern student of the Old Testament who in my judgment has been more suc- cessful than almost any other scholar of the present or past generation, in freeing the Old Testament of textual errors and in illuminating hundreds of passages in all of the books. Alas that the acknowledgment must take the form of a tribute to his memory. Arnold
is
FOREWORD
B. Ehrlich, whose name is little known beyond the small circle of special workers, passed away a few months ago after a lifetime devoted to research. He left behind him as his monument a comprehensive work in seven volumes which he modestly called "Marginal Notes (Randglossen) to the Hebrew Bible," in which as he passes from book to book he makes his comments and textual suggestions in brief but always striking form, with an unfailing instinct as the fruit of profound learning. Though he spent most of his life in New York, he wrote this comprehensive commen- tary in German, because it was only in Germany that he could find a publisher for a work of this character appealing naturally to a restricted circle. To all stu- dents of the Old Testament, however, these Marginal Notes are an indispensible handbook which every one engaged in the study must have constantly at his side. If I were to have made full acknowledgment to Ehrlich in the notes to my translation, his name would have appeared on every page.
I also wish to make special acknowledgment to my colleague Professor Clarence G. Child, of the Eng- lish Department of the University of Pennsylvania, who was kind enough to go over my rendering very carefully and to make quite a number of valuable suggestions, which I was glad to accept. For the very reason that my rendering deviates so widely from that of the classic Authorized Version, I was the more anxious to have the benefit of Professor Child's expert knowledge and excellent judgment.
To Mr. E. S. Hollo way, of the J. B. Lippincott Co., I am likewise indebted for various helpful sugges-
16
FOREWORD
tions, and more particularly for the very attractive cover design which is his work. As in the case of all my writings I am overwhelmed, on the completion of this particularly difficult task, with gratitude to my wife for her large share in bringing the work nearer to a high standard by her careful supervision and unerr- ing judgment, as well as by her ever sympathetic encouragement of my labors.
Lastly, I regard it as a privilege to be permitted to dedicate the book to a distinguished scientist and administrator whose life, devoted to the highest ideals, furnishes a rare example of unselfishness and of un- tiring industry.
MORRIS JASTROW JR.
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA JUNE, 1920
CONTENTS
PART I
THE ORIGIN, GROWTH AND INTERPRETATION
OF THE BOOK OF JOB CHAPTER PAGE
FOREWORD 7
I THE FOLKTALE OF JOB AND THE BOOK OF JOB
I The Skeptical Spirit in the Original Book of
Job.... ^ ^ 25
II The Origin of the Literary Symposium 30
III The Date of the Symposium 33
IV The Two Jobs 39
V The Friends in the Folktale and in the
Symposium 41
VI The Two Conceptions of God 43
VII The Non-Hebraic Origin of the Story of Job . . 46
VIII Oral Transmission Versus Literary Production 49 IX The Modifications in the Folktale. The Figure
of Satan 52
X "The Sons of God" 56
XI The Four Epilogues to the Book of Job 59
II THE THREE STRATA IN THE BOOK OF JOB
I Collective and Anonymous Authorship 64
II The Original Book of Job and the Supplements
to it 67
III The Third Series of Speeches of Job and His
Friends 70
IV The Two Appendices to the Original Book of Job 74 V The Composite Character of the Speeches of
Elihu 77
19
CONTENTS
VI A Collection of Nature Poems as the Third
Stratum 82
VII The Message of the Nature Poems 86
III CHANGES AND ADDITIONS WITHIN THE ORIGINAL
BOOK OF JOB
I Jewish Orthodoxy Versus Skepticism 88
II Varying Versions of the Hebrew Text 92
III Additions to the Original Book of Job of a
Purely Explanatory Character 97
IV Superfluous Lines 103
IV How A SKEPTICAL BOOK WAS TRANSFORMED INTO A
BULWARK OF ORTHODOXY I Changes in the Original Book of Job Made in
the Interests of Jewish Orthodoxy 109
II Additions by Pious Commentators 112
III The Transformation of Crucial Passages 120
IV Orthodox Sentiments Placed in the Mouth
of Job 130
V The "Search for Wisdom" 135
VI The Virtues of Job 137
VII The Two Appendices as the Coping to the
Structure of Jewish Orthodoxy 140
V THE BOOK OF JOB AS PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE
I The Insoluble Problem 148
II The Religious Strain in the Original Book of
Job 153
III Individualism in Religion 156
IV The Defects in Job's Philosophy 159
V The Attitude Towards the Problem of Evil in
the Speeches of Elihu 162
VI The Solution of the Problem in the Nature
Poems 167
VII The New Doctrine of Retribution in a Future
World 170
20
CONTENTS
VIII The Literary Form of Job. A Symposium not
a Drama 174
IX Zoroastrianism and the Book of Job 181
X Job and Prometheus 185
XI The Message of Job to the Present Age 188
PART II A NEW TRANSLATION OF THE BOOK OF JOB
I THE STORY OF JOB (CHAPTERS i AND 2) 197
II THE SYMPOSIUM BETWEEN JOB AND His FRIENDS
(CHAPTERS 3 TO 21) 206
III A THIRD SERIES OF SPEECHES (CHAPTERS 22 TO
27) 275
IV Two SUPPLEMENTARY SPEECHES OF JOB. (CHAPTERS
29 TO 3 1) 298
V THE SEARCH FOR WISDOM (CHAPTER 28) 310
VI FIRST APPENDIX TO BOOK OF JOB — THE FOUR SPEECHES OF ELIHU WITH THREE INSERTED POEMS (CHAPTERS 32 TO 37) 314
VII SECOND APPENDIX TO THE BOOK OF JOB — A COLLEC- TION OF EIGHT NATURE POEMS (CHAPTERS 38 TO 41) 343
VIII THE FOUR EPILOGUES TO THE BOOK OF JOB 361
(a) Chapter 40, 1-5 (Poetical Epilogue, added to
the first Speech put in the Mouth of Yahweh)
(b) Chapter 40, 6-14 with42, 1-6 (Poetical Epilogue,
combined with an Introduction, and added to the Description of the Hippopotamus and the Crocodile, as the Second Speech put in the Mouth of Yahweh)
(c) 42, 7b~9 (The Prose Epilogue to the Symposium)
(d) 42, 10-17 (The Original Close of the Folktale)
21
PART I
THE ORIGIN, GROWTH AND
INTERPRETATION OF THE
BOOK OF JOB
Poofe of fob
CHAPTER I
THE FOLKTALE OF JOB AND THE BOOK OF JOB
I
THE SKEPTICAL SPIRIT IN THE ORIGINAL BOOK OF JOB
E ambition of the student of Biblical Literature to try his hand at an interpretation of the Book of Job1 appears to be as irresistible as the longing of every actor — even though he begins his career with low comedy — to end as Hamlet. The difficulties with which the book bristles form its challenge, as the intensely hu- man problem with which it deals explains the fas- cination which it has ever exercised on every one who can sympathize — and who can not ? — with the path- etic effort of the human soul to pierce the encompass- ing darkness and mystery of human life. Carlyle calls it "A noble book; all men's book. "2 It makes, in
1 The list of interpretators of Job extends from Theodore of Mopsuestia who in the fifth century of our era endeavored to show that Job is a tragedy after the pattern of the Greek drama, to the year 1918 in which Dr. H. M. Kallen made the same futile attempt. The interpreters include the greater lights and smaller satellites among Biblical scholars from the Jewish commen- tators of the Middle Ages: Ibn Ezra, Kimchi and Rashi, to Ewald, Renan, Dillman, Duhm, Budde, Graetz, Cheyne, Szold, Genung, Delitzsch, Siegfried, Peake, Cox, Barton, Strahan, Blake, Ehrlich, Driver, Gray and Buttenwieser in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
'The Hero as Prophet (Heroes and Hero Worshippers, II).
25
THE BOOK OF JOB
truth, a universal appeal, and this is the more remark- able because there is no other book in the Biblical collection which is so puzzling the moment one en- deavors to penetrate beneath the surface, as there is none in regard to which so many misunderstandings are still current. It may be said without exaggeration that every thing about the book is puzzling. The language is difficult and in many cases almost hope- lessly obscure, the text has come down to us in a very corrupt form, in part due to the obscurity of the language, the arrangement is most complicated, the setting is as strange as it is non- Jewish, and what adds to these difficulties, the entire book has been manipu- lated in the interest of conventional orthodoxy, so that its original import can only be discovered by a most exacting study.
We must at the outset recognize that the Book of Job in its original form was a skeptical composition — skeptical in the sense of putting a question mark after the fundamental axiom in the teachings of the Hebrew prophets of the ninth and succeeding centuries, that the government of the universe rests on justice. We will see that there is no single author in the modern sense to any part of the book. The group that pro- duced the original book, while not denying the exist- ence of a watchful Creator, is not satisfied with the mere repetition of a pious phrase,
"God's in His heaven, All's right with the world!"
They wish to test the phrase. Anatole France tells us in that charming narrative of his childhood —
26
THE BOOK OF JOB
Le Petit Pierre — in which one suspects that he has used the Goethean device of combining " Wahrheit und Dichtung" — that he declined to follow his mother's suggestion to put an interrogation mark after the title of his earliest composition "What is God," because, as he insisted, he purposed to answer the question. Since then, he tells us, he has changed his mind and is inclined to put a question mark after everything that he writes, thinks or does. The unknown thinker to whom we owe the first draft of the Book of Job is one of the great questioners of antiquity, and those who followed in his wake in enlarging the book often add two interrogation marks to statements that were accepted as a matter of course by the age in which they lived.
The personage of Job is merely an illustration of a man who endured in patience. The folktale is a peg on which to hang the discussion of the problem in- volved in Job 's sufferings. This problem is resolved into the question — Why should the just man suffer? Job is "Everyman," and what happened to him rep- resents merely on a large scale what on a smaller one may be taken as typical of the common human ex- perience. For who has not at some time in his life suffered innocently and felt convinced of his martyr- dom? Even the most fortunate experience disappoint- ments which seem to involve injustice towards them. We are all at some time buffeted by the waves of for- tune, and when we look about us we behold on all sides the sea strewn with the wrecks of human careers, as a result of the merciless fury of the elements aroused to anger through no cause that can be reconciled with the
27
THE BOOK OF JOB
conception of a moral and just Neptune. In the lar- ger field of human history — the fate of nations and countries — cunning, deceit, brute power, oppression of the masses seem to be the forces in control.
"Right forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne."
A "gentle cynic" like Koheleth can deal lightly with a topsy-turvy world in which he sees "a right- eous man who perishes by his righteousness, and there a wicked man rounding out his life in his wickedness. "3 The one who is willing to take things as they come can reach the conclusion that there is "nothing better for a man than to be happy and enjoy himself in his life. "4 Not so the writers in the original Book of Job, who are neither gentle nor cynical. For them the fact that wickedness usurps the place of justice, and "where the righteous should have been, the wicked was "5 con- stitutes the most serious problem of life, since it in- volves the possibility that at the head of the universe stands a blind and cruel fate in place of a loving Father of mankind. The questioner scans the heavens and finds the supposed throne of mercy without an occupant; and the discovery bears heavily on his dis- turbed soul.
This, then, must constitute our point of departure in any endeavor to penetrate into the meaning of the philosophic poem in its earliest form, that its spirit is skeptical. The Book of Job arose out of a circle which was not content with the conventional answer
1 Ecclesiastes 7, 15. 4 Ecclesiastes 3,12. 1 Ecclesiastes 3, 16.
28
THE BOOK OF JOB
to the question why the innocent suffer in this strange world. Hence the manifest sympathy of the writers to whom we owe the Symposium (chapters 3-27) with Job. The three "friends " introduced as participants in the discourse are merely foils to press home the arguments of Job against the assumptions of the pre- vailing orthodoxy. Job is the Alpha and Omega in the situation, the climax and the anti-climax.
But the objection may be interposed, why desig- nate Job as a book that questions the current view that suffering is for a good cause, when we have the speeches of the three companions who in answer to Job's complaints uphold the orthodox point of view? Besides there are the discourses of Elihu (chapters 32- 37) in defence of orthodoxy, and the magnificent series of poems (chapters 38-41), put into the mouth of God Himself. Is not the orthodox point of view trium- phant? Does not Job repent and only after his re- pentance is rewarded for his sufferings by having health, wealth and happiness restored to him? Why not judge the book from this angle ? Such indeed was the prevailing view taken of Job till the advent of modern Biblical criticism, and even among the critical students there are at present some — and in the former generation there were more — who look upon the Book of Job as written for the purpose of vindicating the story of Job, instead of questioning the basis on which that story rests.
If we take the book as it stands in our ordinary Bible translations, there is no escape from the conclu- sion that Job is a powerful argument for the mainte- nance of Jewish orthodoxy of post-exilic days, but the
29
THE BOOK OF JOB
fatal objection to the conclusion is that we cannot take the book as it stands. As we have it, the production is far removed from its original draft. It is not a unit composition, as little as is the Book of Koheleth. It is composite not to the same degree as the Penta- teuch is a gradual growth, but of the same order. It consists of a trunk on which branches have been grafted. In the course of its growth from the first draft to its final form it covers a considerable period, just as the compilation of the five books into which the Psalms are divided stretches over several centuries. It received in the course of its growth large additions the purpose of which was to counteract the tendency of the original draft, precisely as was the purpose of the additions to Koheleth.6
II THE ORIGIN OF THE LITERARY SYMPOSIUM
Now in order to establish this, let us try to make clear to ourselves how a Symposium such as we have in Job7 based on the story of Job may have arisen. We must take as our starting-point not an individual author — for there were no authors in any real sense of the word among the Hebrews till some time after the contact with Greek culture8 — but rather a circle in which the problem suggested by the folktale would form the subject of discussion. Some thinker in such a circle, gifted with insight into human nature and an
8 See the author's A Gentle Cynic, p. 71, seq.
'Consisting at one time of chapters 3-21 only; then enlarged by a third series of speeches, chapters 22-27, with chapters 29-31 to form a supplement to the original book and chapter 28 as a separate insertion. See further p . 67 seq,
8 See A Gentle Cynic, p. 3 1 seq.
30
THE BOOK OF JOB
observer of what was happening in the world around him, raised the question whether such a story as that of Job was a true one, that is, in the sense of represent- ing what would really happen if misfortune should overtake a thoroughly good and virtuous and God- fearing man. Would such a man act in the manner indicated in the folktale, like Job accept the evil in the same spirit as the good and bow his head in silent resig- nation ? The third chapter in which Job begins by cur- sing the day on which he was born, and ends by com- plaining that God will not grant release to those who long for death more than for hidden treasures,
"Who rejoice at the thought of the mound,"
furnishes the answer. "There you have the real Job, " exclaims the thinker. That is the way in which a man who feels keenly the injustice of being made a butt of misfortune would feel. To be deprived of family possessions and station and finally to be tortured with loathsome disease would change the pious and God- fearing man into a violent accuser of the Deity. Throughout the Symposium, Job is represented as protesting against his cruel and unjustifiable treat- ment. He wrings our soul with pity by his bitter out- cries. Those who write the speeches which they put into his mouth visualize for us the sufferings of Job beyond human endurance. Ever and again he breaks out in his anguish and indulges in indictments against Divine injustice that know no bounds.
A second question put by our thinker, who ana- lyzes the story that was repeated from generation to generation, was even more pertinent. What about
31
TEE BOOK OF JOB
God ? What an awful Deity to permit a man " perfect and removed from evil" (i, 2) to be thus wracked on the wheel! The introduction of the scene between Yahweh and Satan only enhances the callousness of the former in heaping misfortunes on an innocent head, just for the satisfaction of winning a wager. What a shocking and immoral story, we can fancy the thinker saying, to tell children and to impress upon their elders. Even if Job had acted as he is represented in the folktale, what is there to be said in justification of God? The good "Sunday School" story is thus transformed under the searching test of those who approach it from a more critical angle, into a most objectionable tale. Its supposed lesson to suffer with- out murmuring is punctured by the two questions thus raised in regard to it, the one of a psychological nature, the other of a theological order. How can one reconcile the conduct of Yahweh in the story with the concep- tion of God taught by the Hebrew prophets of the century and a half preceding the downfall of Jeru- salem (586 B. c.), as a Being ruling the world and the destinies of mankind bylaws of justice, tinctured with mercy? That is the problem as it appeared to the circle within which at some time a thinker arose, who put his two questions and who stimulated his fellow thinkers to discuss the theme involved in what on the surface appeared to be an altogether proper and impressive folktale.
The Symposium in which arguments and counter arguments are exchanged by Job and his friends is the outcome of these discussions. The purpose of the Symposium is not to elaborate the story, but to illumi-
32
THE BOOK OF JOB
nate the religious problem which may, in other words, be briefly defined as the search for the reason of suffer- ing and evil in a world created by a supposedly merciful, just and loving Creator. One must enlarge the pro- blem to one of suffering and evil, for the one implies the other. The counterpart to Job, the innocent suf- ferer, is the wicked man who escapes punishment. Our thinker is unsparing in his search, for no less typical than Job's case of what is happening daily is the con- current instance of the wrongdoer who eludes the fate that is his due. The one who heaps up ill-gotten gain enjoys his wealth without even a twinge of con- science at forcing others to tread the mill, so that he may acquire substance. The tyrant on the throne, the thief who robs his fellow, the murderer who mounts over the prostrate body of his victim, the dishonest dealer who defrauds his customers by false scales, the brutal employer who grinds the faces of the poor — are they not all around us, happy and prosperous while the weak and defenseless perish ? Such is the terrible indictment that we encounter in the utterances put into the mouth of Job. Here is a problem indeed, well worthy of discussion. Where is God while in- nocent suffering and terrible injustice is going on in His world ? Is a solution possible ?
Ill
THE DATE OF THE SYMPOSIUM
The circle in which the problem thus extended into a general discussion of the reason for suffering and evil in the world was tossed to and fro must have
3 33
THE BOOK OF JOB
consisted of bold thinkers who had freed themselves from the shackles of traditional views to plunge fear- lessly into the maelstrom of doubt and rationalism. They knew of the counter arguments that would be brought forward in orthodox circles against the posi- tion taken by Job. In order to illuminate the prob- lem from all sides, the three friends of the folktale are introduced as the representatives of the prevailing orthodoxy, but it is evident throughout the Sympo- sium that although the speeches put into the mouth of Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar are from the literary point of view fully as impressive as those of Job, the sympathy of the writers is on the side of Job. It is only when we come to the four speeches of a fifth per- sonage— Elihu — that we obtain compositions in which the attempt is made to divert our sympathy, but Elihu takes no part in the Symposium proper.
We are led to a post-exilic date for the existence of such a circle of free thinkers, sufficiently bold and advanced to tackle the most perplexing problem that arises when religion passes from the earlier stages in which the chief attribute of the gods is strength, arbitrarily exercised, to the highest level in which ethical motives enter into the conception of the Divine government of the universe. With the appear- ance of the great series of prophets, about the middle of the ninth century, B. c. the Hebrews definitely ad- vance to this level, for the burden of the teachings of Amos, Hosea, Micah and Isaiah is that Yahweh, the national deity of the Hebrews, is a Power " making for righteousness." He does not act arbitrarily, but re- wards or punishes according to the good or bad deeds
34
THE BOOK OF JOB
of his people. The obedience that He exacts is to dictates of justice. He knows no favorites and cannot be bribed by sacrifices or homage to divert just pun- ishment from wrongdoers. The pre-exilic prophets do not stress the universal sway of Yahweh. For them Yahweh is still, or at least primarily, the God of the Hebrews. In this sense the Hebrews are His chosen people, but the corollary that a God of justice and righteousness must be a unifying force, in control of the universe and exercising His sway over all nature and all mankind, was in due time drawn, though it is not until the exilic period that a genuine ethical mono- theism was preached by the successors of the earlier prophets, by Ezekiel, by the anonymous prophets whose utterances are embodied in the second part of Isaiah,9 by Zephaniah and Zechariah.
We must descend well into the fifth century be- fore Judaism, as we know it, became part and parcel of the life of the people. In the Symposium God is viewed as a power of universal scope. There is no longer any trace of the former nationalistic limitations ; and it is just because the doctrine of the prophets in- volved the rule by this universal Power of the des- tinies of mankind by self-imposed laws of righteous- ness and justice, that the problem as to the cause of innocent suffering and unchecked evil in the world becomes real and intense. For religions of the older type, the difficulty did not exist. The gods were ar- bitrary. They could not be held to account. It was man's sole endeavor to keep them in good humor and
9 Chapters 40-66, with some scattered utterances also in the first 35 chapters.
35
THE BOOK OF JOB
favorably disposed by doing what would please them. If despite gifts and homage, the gods were disposed to manifest their anger by sending disease, by catastro- phes and miseries of all kinds, there was nothing to be done but to wait until their displeasure had passed away. The circle from which the Book of Job eman- ated could therefore not have arisen in Palestine, where the book originated, before the fifth century, B. c. and scholars are generally agreed to proceed far into this century for the first draft of our book. The dis- cussions on the vital problem may have gone on orally for some time before the thought rose of giving a written form to them, and we are probably safe in fixing upon 400 B. c. as the approximate date for the Symposium.
The problem of the Book of Job is thus one which directly arises out of the basic doctrine of post-exilic Judaism; and it was inevitable that the question would some time be raised, whether what the prophets taught of the nature of God which the people ac- cepted as guidance in their lives was compatible with the facts of experience. Is there a just and loving Pro- vidence at the helm of the universe ? If so, why does man live in a vale of sorrow? As the Psalmist asks :
"Why standest Thou afar off, O Yahweh, Why hidest Thou Thyself in times of trouble?" (Ps. 10, i).
The questioning spirit arises in the circles of the orthodox and pious quite as much as among those who boldly challenge conventional views, but the sig- nificance of the Symposium consists in the thorough manner in which for the first time the problem is
36
THE BOOK OF JOB
discussed in the light of a particularly significant ex- ample of a contrast between what ought to be in a world that is supposed to be ruled by justice, and what is. Occasionally in other literatures of the ancient East, the problem is touched upon. So, for example, in a remarkable Babylonian poem of a king of Nippur10, who despite his piety is smitten with disease. Tabi- utul-Enlil, as the king is called, is represented as indulging in reflections on the prevalence of suffering in the world.
"I had reached and passed the allotted time of life. Whithersoever I turned — evil upon evil; Misery had increased, justice had disappeared."
But under the limitation of the Babylonian conception of the gods, who although not insensible to justice, yet exercise their power according to their pleasure and in arbitrary fashion, the poem goes no farther than to suggest that the ways of the gods are unfathomable, and that without apparent cause man's fate is subject to constant change.
"What, however, seems good to oneself, to a god is displeasing, What is spurned by oneself finds favor with a god; Who is there that can grasp the will of the gods in heaven? The plan of a god full of power (?) — who can understand it? How can mortals learn the way of a god? He who was alive yesterday is dead to-day. In an instant he is cast into grief, Of a sudden he is crushed. For a moment he sings in joy; In a twinkling he wails like a mourner.
Like opening and closing, their (i. e. mankind's) spirit changes; If they are hungry, they are like corpses;
10 See below, p. 48.
37
THE BOOK OF JOB
Have they had enough, they consider themselves equal to
their god.
If things go well, they prate of mounting to heaven; If they are in distress, they speak of descending into Irkalla.11
In the Upanishads of ancient India, from about the seventh and following centuries,12 the tragedy of life is the constant theme, and the spirit in which life is viewed is preeminently philosophical, but we have sporadic reflections rather than a genuine attempt to get at the core of the problem. In this respect the Symposium of Job is unique. Its philosophy is not academic but intensely human. It brings the prob- lem home to us in a way that betrays its origin in a circle which responded sympathetically to the hard experiences of life from which few escape, a circle that was alive to the consciousness of frequent failure, despite all endeavors to follow the dictates of an ethical code of life and that grasped the bitterness of seeing wrong triumphant while virtue is trampled under foot. The Symposium is all the more remark- able because despite its rebellious tone, its boldness is kept within the limits of an honest search for truth, undertaken in a profoundly serious frame of mind. Its pessimism is free from any tinge of cynicism or friv- olity; its skepticism is never offensive, because it keeps close to intense sympathy for suffering mankind as typified by Job. The Symposium, quite apart from its literary qualities, stands out for these reasons in the world's literature as one of the boldest attempts to attack a problem which to-day, after two thousand years and more, still baffles religious minds.
11 One of the names of the lower world, wherein the dead are huddled. 11 See Macdonnell Sanskrit Literature, page 226.
38
THE BOOK OF JOB
IV THE TWO JOBS
A further condition for a proper understanding of the book that follows from what has just been set forth, is the separation of the story of Job from the philosophical discussion occasioned by the story; and here we touch upon the most significant of misunder- standings in regard to our book which is still widely prevalent. To the average person who has been ac- customed to think of the Book of Job as a unit com- position, written by one person as a book generally is in our days, there is only one Job. In reality there are two, the Job of the story and the Job in the discussions with his three companions. The only connection between the two Jobs is the similarity in the name.
An uncritical tradition is responsible for the con- fusion, for the compilers of the book in its original form did all that lay in their power to distinguish be- tween the two. Even externally the Job of the story is separated from the Job in the discussions. The story of the pious, patient, taciturn Job is told in prose,13 whereas the other Job who is impatient, and re- bellious, voluble in the denunciation of the cruel fate meted out to him, and blasphemous in his charges of injustice against the Creator of the universe in con- trol of the destinies of mankind is made to speak in poetry, as are his friends. Apart from this, the Job
11 Chapters I and 2 and the conclusion of the story (though modified from its original form) chapter 42, 7-17. The distinction is made evident in the Revised Version, as in other modern translations.
39
'THE BOOK OF JOB
who when misfortunes follow upon disasters in close succession exclaims —
"Yahweh has given, and Yahweh has taken, Blessed be the name of Yahweh." (2, 21).
cannot possibly be the same as the one who at the out- set of the Symposium between him and his companions gives vent to his embittered soul in the most vehe- ment terms:
"Perish the day on which I was born, And the night when a male was conceived." (3, 3.)
Can there be a more striking contrast than between the Job in the story who, when called upon by his unsympathetic wife to do away with himself and thus put an end to his sufferings, asks :
"Should we indeed receive the good from God, but the evil we should not receive"? (2, 10.)
and the Job in the discussion, whose piercing cry of despair resounds through the ages :
"Why did I not die at the womb, Come forth from the lap and perish? Why did knees receive me? And why were there breasts to give me suck? " (3,1 1-12.)
One must admire the persistency of the uncritical tradition which thus succeeded in confusing the two Jobs, in the face of the contradiction between the one as not "sinning with his lips, "(2> 10) despite all that he had to endure, and the unbridled blasphemy of the other Job who exclaims to God,
"I will not restrain my mouth; I will give voice to my despair.
40
THE BOOK OF JOB
I prefer strangling of my soul,
Death rather than my pains.
I refuse to live any longer;
Cease, for my days are vanity." (7, II and 15-16.)
Nor does the Job of the discussion stop short of accusing God of deliberate injustice. He goes so far as to suggest that it is God's nature to be cruel, to take pleasure in seeing the innocent suffer:
"If I were in the right, my mouth 14 would condemn me; If I were entirely right, He would twist the verdict.
The guiltless and the wicked He destroys.
If a scourge should suddenly strike one dead,
He would laugh at the death of the innocent." (9, 20-23.)
Can a denial of a merciful Providence go further ? The Job of the story has sublime faith in God's justice, despite all appearances to the contrary. The Job of the discussions conceives of God as strong and power- ful, but as arbitrary and without a sense of justice. Such are the two Jobs, the one as far removed from the other as heaven is from earth —
"Look here, upon this picture, and on this."
THE FRIENDS IN THE FOLKTALE AND IN THE SYMPOSIUM
The contrast between the story and the setting in the discussion extends to the portrayal of the three friends and to the conception of God. In the story, as told in the opening two chapters, the friends are intensely sympathetic. They are shocked at the
M i.e.} my complaints against fate.
41
THE BOOK OF JOB
appearance of Job; they are so deeply moved by the misfortunes that have overwhelmed him and by the sufferings that he endures as to be incapable of speech. Their sympathy is expressed by their silence. But note the contrast when we come to the Symposium. Their sympathy changes to harshness in a steadily ascending scale. Eliphaz, the first to speak, begins, to be sure, in an apologetic strain, excusing himself as it were for venturing to offer a suggestion to Job as to the cause of his suffering, but only to advance to a rebuke that is none the less stinging for being put in the form of a question :
"Can man be more righteous than God? Can a man be purer than his Maker?" (4, 17.)
The implication is clear, and with subtle skill Eliphaz advances to a more direct charge that Job must have committed some great wrong which brought on his hard fate.
"I have seen the foolish take root; But his habitation of a sudden is swept away. His sons far from salvation, And crushed, with none to save [them]." (5, 3-4.)
Eliphaz uses the milder term "foolish," but he means "wicked;" and he wishes to leave no doubt in Job's mind that his only hope is to confess his guilt and to throw himself on the mercy of God.
If Eliphaz in his first speech is somewhat re- strained, not so Bildad and Zophar, who introduce their arguments with sharp invectives, and whose ex- ample is followed by Eliphaz in his subsequent speeches. There is no trace of friendly sympathy in Bildad's greeting:
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THE BOOK OF JOB
"How long wilt thou babble thus? Thy words are a mighty wind." (8, i.)
and there is downright hostility in Zophar's opening taunt :
"Should one full of words remain unanswered? Should a babbler be acquitted?" (n, I.)
The friends in the story of Job become the ac- cusers in the discussion. One after the other declares that Job — in flagrant contradiction to the assumption throughout the story — is a wicked sinner whose pun- ishment is merited because of his unrepentant nature, which manifests itself in the charges of injustice that he hurls against the Almighty as the cause of his ills and woes. We almost lose sight of the main discus- sion in the great variety of the taunts, rebukes and charges brought by the three companions against Job.
There are also two conceptions of God. The Yahweh of the story is a different being from the Elohim 15 in the discussions. Yahweh is proud of Job's piety and has supreme confidence that His "servant Job" will endure the test to which he is put
15 Elohim, varying with El, is a generic designation like our "God" or "Deity," in contrast to Yahweh, the name of the old national deity of the Hebrews. So personal was the name Yahweh that it became customary to avoid the pronunciation and to substitute for it "Adonai" meaning "Master," "Lord." The substitute was not due to the holiness of the name Yahweh, as the later tradition assumed, but on the contrary to its distasteful association with a deity limited in scope to one people and restricted in jurisdiction to the territory controlled by that people. The later documents in the Pentateuchal compilation use "Elohim," i.e., Deity, which is impersonal, just as we might to-day prefer "Almighty" to the term "God," because of the strong implication of personality in the current use of God. See further the note to the translation of chapter 12, 9.
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THE BOOK OF JOB
at the instigation of Satan. Yahweh boasts of Job as one might take pride in a fine achievement.
"Hast thou observed my servant Job? There is none like him in the earth — pious and upright."
"There's a fine fellow," Yahweh says to Satan. See what a splendid creature I have made of him ! One is tempted to say that the dialogue between Yahweh and Satan has a touch of bonhomie in it that is in re- freshing contrast to the severe and forbidding pic- ture we receive of the Deity in the philosophical poem. Goethe in the prologue to Faust, based on the two introductory chapters of Job, has caught this spirit in the scene between the Almighty and Mephis- topheles, though he has also intensified it by a thorough modernization of the scene itself. 16
The use of a generic designation of the Deity like Elohim to avoid the personal quality involved in the more specific name Yahweh — is intentional; and similarly, El, Eloah and Shaddai are employed as synonyms of Elohim, because they conjure up the picture of a Being of universal scope and power whom one approaches in awe, and whose decision once made is unchangeable. The God portrayed by the friends is stern and unbending, while for Job He becomes a cold tyrant, indifferent to appeals for mercy even when they come from those whose lips are clean and whose hearts are pure.
How, then, are we to account for the two Jobs, the two varying portrayals of the three companions and the two conceptions of God ? It is only necessary
16 Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe under date of January, 1825.
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THE BOOK OF JOB
to put the question in order to show the obviousness of the answer that the story of Job is independent of the philosophical poem; and if independent also older. Three passages in Ezekiel 17 come to our aid in estab- lishing the existence in early days of a current tradi- tion about a man of great piety whose name was Job. The prophet, in order to drive home his doctrine that, on the one hand, God does not punish His people without cause, and that, on the other, punishment for wrongs and crimes cannot be averted by the ex- istence of some righteous members of the community — as in the case of Abraham's plea to save Sodom, and Gomorrah for the sake of the few righteous in the multitude of sinners, — declares that even if such men as Noah, Daniel and Job were living in the midst of the sinful nation, their virtues would only secure their own deliverance from the four scourges — the sword, famine, evil beasts and pestilence— decreed for Jerusalem. The juxtaposition with Noah and Daniel shows that Job, like these two men, had come to be regarded as a model and type of piety and human excellence. Ezekiel, is anterior to the Book of Job, as he is by four centuries earlier than the Book of Daniel, in which the traditional Daniel is utilized as a medium for encouraging pious Jews, suffering under the tyranny of Antiochus Epiphanes (175-164 B. c.), to remain steadfast in their faith. 18 The tradition about Job survives, however, the composition of the book which is called by his name, for in the Epistle of
17 Ezekiel 14, 14; 16, 18 and 20.
a That this is the aim of the various sections into which the Book of Daniel may be divided is now the generally accepted view of scholars. See e.g., Driver, Commentary on Daniel, p. Ixv seq.
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<THE BOOK OF JOB
James (5, n), Job is incidentally referred to as an ex- ample of piety and patience. As late as the days of Theodore of Mopsuestia, (died c. 428 A. D.) whom, we have already had occasion to mention,19 the story of the patient Job who becomes in the popular concep- tion a holy prophet was still current in a form which suggests to Theodore that the author of the Book of Job had taken some undue liberties with the original tale. The Arabs have preserved traditions about Job,20 which point to the growth of the popular tale even after it had been given a literary form among the Hebrews. We are, therefore, justified in concluding that from an early age, Job had become a popular figure among the Hebrews. In accordance with the ten- dency of folktales the story received additions from time to time, and it also shared the fate of popular tales in being carried from one people to another.
VII
THE NON-HEBRAIC ORIGIN OF THE STORY OF JOB
It does not follow that the tale of the pious man who became the prototype for the virtuous man not to be moved from his position by any misfortunes that might sweep over him originated among the He- brews. Indeed, the name Job — for which there is no satisfactory Hebrew etymology and which we do not encounter elsewhere in the Old Testament — points to a foreign origin; and if, as we may properly assume, the statement in the prologue to the Book of Job that
19 Above, p. 25.
*° In the "Stories of the Prophets" by Thala'abi (d. 1035 A.D.). A trans- lation by Prof. D. B. Macdonald will be found in the American Journal of Semitic Languages, Vol. 14, pp. 145-161.
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THE BOOK OF JOB
he lived in the land of Uz, which lies to the east of Palestine, was part of the popular tale as it circulated among the Hebrews, it becomes even more definite that Job was not a Hebrew, as little as the three com- panions were Hebrews.21 The entire setting of the story is in fact non-Hebraic. Job is described as "greater than any of the sons of the East, " (i, 3) in a manner to suggest that he belongs to that vague re- gion known as " East, " but without any suggestion of a connection with the "sons of Israel"; and it is rather surprising that in the adaptation of the tale to the purposes of the discussion, which we must per- force assume, a more Hebraic atmosphere should not have been given to it. In the dialogue between God and Satan, the specific Hebraic name Yahweh is in- troduced, but Job himself is represented as using the general name Elohim, (i, 5 and 2, 10) as is also his wife (2, 9.) It is only in his pious submission to the Divine will, that the name Yahweh is introduced in what is probably a quotation from a "Yahweh" prayer. That such a touch as Job himself bringing sacrifices without the mediation of a priest, as de- manded by the Pentateuchal codes, should have been retained in the adaptation may be taken as a further proof of the unconscious influence exerted by the non- Hebraic origin of the tale — an influence strong enough to have kept out of it any reference to specific He- braic rites or customs.22
21 Shown by the names and by the statement of their homes in parts of Arabia. See the note to the translation of 2, 1 1.
22 The term used for sacrifices is the most general that could have been selected. The annual festival that brings Job's family together (i, 4-5) is simi- larly of a most general character — without any warrant in any of the Penta- teuchal codes.
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THE BOOK OF JOB
We are thus led to the conclusion that the story of Job was a tale that became current in ancient Palestine and wandered, as tales do from place to place, subject to modification as it passed down the ages, altered to some extent in its adaptation to dif- ferent localities, but retaining enough traces of its origin to preserve its distinctive character as a gen- eral illustration of the spirit in which misfortunes and sufferings should be received and endured. The story of a pious man who maintains his firm faith and his simple piety under most distressing circumstances, who bore all trials in patience was what we would nowadays call a good "Sunday School" tale — one that might be told with profit to encourage the young and to edify their elders. Tales of this character are common enough in antiquity. The "good man" is a type in folktales as common as is his counterpart — the "bad man." It is not surprising, therefore, to encounter "Jobs" elsewhere, as, for example, in India where we have the tale of an "upright king" who loses his possessions and sells his boy, his wife and finally himself in order to carry on his works of charity, and to whom all is restored in the end because he had endured the burdens of misfortunes in pa- tience and without complaint.23
Similarly, in the story of the pious king of Nippur above referred to,24 who, like Job, is smitten with sore disease and is finally restored to health through the intervention of the gods, there are analogies with
43 Maive Stokes, Indian Fairy Tales, Calcutta, 1879, pp. 68-72.
MPage 37. See an article by the writer, "A Babylonian Job," in the Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 25, pp. 125-191 and Barton, Archeology of the Bible, pp. 392-97.
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THE BOOK OF JOB
the philosophical discussions in Job that are most suggestive, but even such literary analogies furnish no warrant for assuming a direct influence from the outside on our Biblical book. The problem suggested by the sufferings of Job is a perfectly natural one, so that if we find it discussed elsewhere it would merely point to a stage of intellectual development in which people — or at least the choice spirits — were no longer entirely satisfied with the conventional view that sufferings are due to sin.
VIII
ORAL TRANSMISSION VERSUS LITERARY PRODUCTION
It is not necessary to assume that a definite literary form was given to the tale among the He- brews before it was incorporated into the Book of Job, though, on the other hand, one cannot dogmatically assert that this could not have been the case. Stories in the ancient East, as to a large extent still in the East of today, are recited, not read. Our specifically Western attitude towards mental productivity can hardly conceive of literature except as embodied in a definite written form, whereas until the East came under the influence of the West through contact with Greek civilization in the second half of the fourth century B. c., the oral transmission without a definite literary form was the regular mould of literature to which the written form, if it existed at all, was en- tirely secondary and incidental — memoranda to serve as a prop in the further oral transmission. Under such
4 49
THE BOOK OF JOB
conditions a story or even a book might have existed for ages before it received what we would call a book form. One of the chief reasons why the modern critical study of the Bible aroused such hostility when its results began to be disseminated among the lay public and why it is still eyed with suspicion in many circles, is because we thoughtlessly — almost un- consciously— apply our modern and Western con- ceptions of literary composition to an age to which they do not apply. As I have pointed out elsewhere,25 we can hardly conceive of a book without a title and an author, whereas these two features are precisely the ones which are lacking in ancient compositions until we reach the age of Greek literature, which may 4be said to have invented the author.
The written form, when it arose in the ancient Orient, was not due to the promptings of the literary instinct, or to an ambition on the part of certain individuals to be known as authors, but purely as a preservative method to prevent tales and traditions that no longer enjoyed a full spontaneous existence among the people from perishing or from being dis- torted. Writing begins when genuine production comes to an end. As long as a tale retained its full popularity, as long as a tradition formed, as it were, part and parcel of the life of the people there was no urgent necessity to give the tale or tradition a written form. It lived in the minds and the hearts of the people. And so with the exhortations of a prophet, with the decisions of a lawgiver, or even with the
n A Gentle Cynic, pp. 31-41.
5°
THE BOOK OF JOB
prayers of a Psalmist, giving expression to emotions shared by the entire group. There was no occasion for the definite written form until with the advent of a new age with new interests and new problems, the tale no longer made its appeal, the tradition was no longer living, the exhortation was in danger of be- coming a memory, the law needed reinforcement, and the prayer through the development of the cult was embodied into a fixed ritual.
It is also immaterial whether such a man as Job ever existed, just as it is of no consequence whether there was such a man as Noah or Daniel. A rabbi of the Talmudic age, 26 betraying a critical spirit which is quite exceptional, declares in one place that Job is a product of popular fancy; and it is at all events clear that he as well as Noah and Daniel, as likewise Abra- ham, became a mere type of steadfast piety, just as to a later age David and Solomon, despite the historical character of much — though far from everything — that is told of them become types, David of the pious king to whom an unhistorical tradition subsequently ascribed the Psalms, and Solomon of the wise king to whom Biblical productions embodying the wisdom of the age were assigned.27 This tendency to trans- form traditional or historical personages into types is a by-product of the spirit peculiar to the ancient East, which only gradually reaches the point where the individual stands out in sharp outline from his surroundings.
24 Talmud Babli, Baba Bathra 15s.
27 See further on this "A Gentle Cynic" p. 52 seq.
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THE BOOK OF JOB
IX
THE MODIFICATIONS IN THE FOLKTALE THE FIGURE OF SATAN
We are now prepared to face the question, whether we have the story of Job entirely in its original form in the prologue, or whether there are some features which are due to its adaptation to the purpose of a philosophical discussion! The story being of non- Jewish origin, as has been made probable, the intro- duction of the name Yahweh in the prologue is obviously a natural consequence of its adoption by the Hebrews. The scene in heaven in which likewise the name of Yahweh is used with, however, the attend- ants or ministers of Yahweh spoken of as the bene Elohim " Sons of God, " does not strike one as a pop- ular feature. Particularly through the introduction of the figure of Satan does the scene receive a theo- logical admixture that reflects a more sophisticated age than the one in which the story arose. One can in fact cut out the scene in heaven without detri- ment to the essence of the story, and some scholars see in the scene an interpolation subsequent to the completion of the book. This, however, is most un- likely. For not only is the dramatic effect of the tale heightened by the test to which Job is put by the agreement between God and Satan, but the intent to show that Job is really innocent and is condemned to suffering by a deliberate and quite arbitrary decision of Yahweh is in accord with the main theme of the Symposium that sufferings in this world are not always due to just causes, that the Divine power which controls the destinies of nature and of mankind
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THE BOOK OF JOB
does not work under the inflexible law of ethical standards.
We conclude, then, that the dialogues in heaven between Yahweh and Satan represent modifications of the folktale that may represent the contribution of those to whom we owe the thought of making the story the vehicle of a discussion of human suffering. There is a certain callousness in the readiness with which Yahweh is willing to accede to the suggestion of Satan to put Job to the test, that betokens the questioning spirit. The popular tale everywhere is marked by naivete; it is free from self-consciousness, and above all it is without a skeptical taint. Even a touch of skepticism would vitiate the flavor of the tale. It would discountenance its single import, to show how a pious and good man would act under the blows of misfortune. The folktale of Job starts from the common experience of changeable fate in the fortunes of men. Its lesson is that man must endure patiently and in resignation, and must not be swerved from the line of righteous conduct by life's hard experiences. The naivete of both the tale and its lesson disappears the moment we are told that the sufferings of Job are due to a wager. The mystery of suffering which is its chief claim to popular attention is dissolved.
The figure of Satan, as he appears in the prologue, arrests our attention. The term connotes an "ad- versary, " and it is not infrequently used in the Old Testament for a human "opponent" 28 as the abstract term derived from it, sitnah, means "hostility."29
28 e.g., a number of times to designate adversaries of Solomon, I Kings, ii, 14. 23-25.
29 A late terra occurring in the memoirs of Ezra (4, 6).
S3
THE BOOK OF JOB
The Satan in the story of Job is an evil spirit, but of a different character from the demons and jinns, the mischievous sprites of popular belief, to which the Hebrews in common with all people of anti- quity— and for that matter of modern times — clung, whose presence in the human body manifested itself as disease, and to whom also the minor ills and the many accidents of life were ascribed. Such demons were supposed to act at the behest of the gods, or they were under the control of human sor- cerers and witches. Satan in the prologue to Job is a semi-divine being, placed on a par with the "Sons of God," though occupying an independent position. He has not yet advanced to the position of the "ac- cuser" as which he appears in Zechariah, (3, 1-2) but he is on the road to assuming the general role of an enemy of man — the one who tempts man towards evil. The development of the conception stops short in the Old Testament as the one to whom evil thoughts are ascribed in an age which found it distasteful to as- sociate such a rule with God himself. The comparison of II Sam. 24, I with the parallel passage I Chron. 21, I is instructive in this respect. In the earlier compila- tion it is God's anger enkindled against Israel that is set down as inducing David to sin by planning a census of the people, whereas by the time that Chron- icles came to be compiled — in the third century B. c. — such an explanation was regarded as not in accord with the conception of a spiritual Power at the head of the universe. God is replaced by Satan, acting apparently independently. It is not, however, till New Testament times that Satan becomes the full-
54
THE BOOK OF JOB
fledged tempter, assuming the guise of a serpent in the famous third chapter of Genesis, which becomes the basis of St. Paul's Christology.
In the scene of the heavenly court, as depicted in the Book of Job, there is not as yet any inherent opposition between God as the source of good, and Satan as the cause of evil, such as we encounter in Zoroastrianism where the control of the destinies of the universe is divided between Ahuramazda, the good power, and Ahriman, the evil one. 30 In the passage quoted from the prophet Zechariah and which belongs to the Persian period of Hebrew history, i. <?., after the sixth century, scholars are inclined to re- cognize the influence of Persian dualism, but hardly in the person of Satan as depicted in the prologue to Job, unless it be the personification of the figure as a semi-independent being. For, be it noted, Satan can- not afflict Job without the express permission of Yah- weh, and he must keep the affliction heaped upon Job within the bounds assigned by Yahweh (i, 12; 2, 6). He is, as the name Satan indicates, still essentially an "adversary." He is a cynic who belittles the char- acter of man, and his cynical attitude towards human virtues is admirably and adroitly displayed in the two opening chapters. Instead of sharing the universal admiration for Job, he suggests that Job is worldly- wise in being a model of goodness and piety. It pays him to be virtuous. We can picture him asking with a shrug of the shoulder :
"Is Job God-fearing for nought?" (i, 9.)
10 See the section on "Zoroastrianism and the Book of Job" below in chapter V.
55
THE BOOK OF JOB
Why should he not be good, since God is so good to him? When Job endures the first test of losing his wealth, his family and his household, Satan still questions the sincerity of Job, and with aggravated cynicism suggests that the pious man is so wrapt up in selfishness that he will endure every loss as long as it does not touch his own life. "There is a skin beneath the skin" — (2, 4). Only the outer epidermis has been touched by the misfortunes that have come to Job. Prick the inner skin — the man himself — and see what happens? "All that a man has will he give for his life. " The subtlety of Satan, as here portrayed, is sufficient to show that the scene is not part of a genuine folktale, but the product of a more advanced age, intent upon giving the story a special turn.
"THE SONS OF GOD"
But, it may be objected, do not the "Sons of God," occurring in the scene that describes the Divine court, grouped around God, point to a primitive con- ception ? Assuredly, for the phrase must be brought into connection with the strange semi-mythological tale in the sixth chapter of Genesis, where as part of the general conception of the universe the " Sons of God " are portrayed as attracted by the beauty of the daughters of men, and by commingling with them, pro- ducing a brood of giants. The story was originally told to explain the tradition, so common among peoples of antiquity, of a once mightier race that disappeared. Its original purpose was not derogatory either to man-
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THE BOOK OF JOB
kind or to the Divine beings who thus helped to pro- duce the giants of old. To the stern moralist, however, who puts his own interpretation on the popular tra- dition of a destructive deluge — originally a nature myth to symbolize the annual change from the dry to the wet season — the giants become a band of wicked tyrants whose superhuman strength is traced to an unnatural and therefore immoral union between gods and men. To him the union with the " Sons of God," is rape committed on the daughters of men. The writer in Genesis uses the primitive conception of "Sons of God" to point the moral of the tale, and similarly, the one to whom we owe the pro- logue in Job inserts in the scene the old conception of "Sons of God," — which must have been parti- cularly distasteful to the strict monotheist — be- cause it added picturesqueness and heightened the dramatic effect of the dialogue between God and Satan, taking place in an assemblage of all the semi- divine beings gathered like courtiers around the Divine throne.
It is, of course, possible that in some version of the popular tale of Job, the praises of Job's piety were celebrated by a chorus of minor gods or semi-divine beings in illustration of the exceptional position which he had acquired through his blameless and happy life. The popular fancy would naturally ascribe Job's good fortune to the favor of the Deity as a reward for his piety. It is, therefore, conceivable that some popular "reciter" — as in the modern Arabic world we still encounter such story-tellers, adding new touches to the adventures of the popular hero Antar, or to some
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THE BOOK OF JOB
scene from the Thousand and One Nights 31 — should have introduced an incident which the writer of the prologue further embellished with traits that are dis- tinctly not of popular origin. It is foolish to be dog- matic on such suppositions which in the nature of things can neither be established nor disproved, though we may go so far as to place the probability on the side of the hypothesis that the tale was popularly expanded to include a scene in which the "Sons of God" joined Yahweh in singing the praises of Job. The point is of comparatively little importance as against the main conclusion that in its present form the scene between God and Satan serves a purpose foreign to the entire spirit of the original tale. That story, however much it may have been embellished by touches to heighten the effect, must have retained its simplicity by laying the sole stress on the char- acter of Job as supremely good, on the rewards granted to him because of his piety, and on the va- riety and severity of his subsequent sufferings which he bore in model patience. Details in the description of Job's goodness as exemplified in his life and of the variety of his possessions may have been added end- lessly, but all such variations and embellishments would keep to the main purpose and trend of the folk- tale. The wager between God and Satan robs the story of its flavor, by affording an explanation of Job's sufferings, whereas the feature of the story which gives it its charm is that Job suffers without any apparent cause. He seeks for no explanation of his sufferings.
11 See the interesting chapters on modern reciters in the East, in Lane, Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, Vol. I, chapters viii-x.
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He takes evil as he receives good, because of his su- preme faith and because of the firmness of his char- acter that remains unaffected by the changing winds of fortune. He is like a mighty oak that gratefully raises its head to receive the sunshine and that bends to the storm without being moved from its place. The folk spirit would have instinctively rejected the sug- gestion that Job's fate was merely prompted by a cynical suspicion that Job's goodness was calculated selfishness, and that Yahweh in order to prove that He was right and Satan wrong was willing to impose cruel sufferings on an innocent man. Cut out the dialogue and substitute for it, if you will, a scene in heaven with the Sons of God joining Yahweh in prais- ing Job, somewhat like the fancy embodied in one of the Rabbinical legends 32 in which the good Angels sing the praises of creation and urge God to create man despite the failings that he will show, whereas others less kindly disposed urge that he be not created, and you have a much finer story from the folktale point of view as well as a truer one. For the purpose, however, of the philosophical discussion, the dialogue between Yahweh and Satan is not without signifi- cance, for it anticipates as has been suggested one of the main thoughts of the Symposium that the Divine will does not always act from deep set motives of right
and justice.
XI
THE FOUR EPILOGUES TO THE BOOK OF JOB
But, how stands the case with the three friends who come to comfort Job and end by rebuking him?
n See Ginzburg, Legends of the Jews I, pp. 52-54.
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THE BOOK OF JOB
The names of the three and the districts from which they come vouch for their forming part of the original tale. They hear of his sad fate and hasten to his side to help him bear his heavy burden, but when they see him writhing in pain, words fail them.
"Then they sat down with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, without speaking a word to him, because they saw how very great was his pain." (2, 13.)
There you have the folktale in its genuine form — charming in its simplicity and impressive by its naivete. It is inconceivable that such sympathizers, feeling Job's grief as though it were their own, could under any provocation become "sorry comforters" (16, 2) as Job in the course of the discussion calls them, just as the high intellectual plane of the philosophical dis- cussions is entirely beyond the reach of the simple- minded friends portrayed in the prologue. If in the folktale any discussions were introduced after the seven days of silence — and this was possibly the case in one of the versions that floated about — we may feel quite certain that, true to their original role, the three friends endeavored to encourage Job to retain his patience in the assurance that God will listen to his entreaties and have pity on his sad condition. The atmosphere of simple, child-like faith and of calm sweetness must have been retained in the folktale and, therefore, we may assert with considerable confidence that the epilogue of the story (42, 7-17), as told (in prose like the prologue) at the close of the philosophical book, has been modified to make it accord with the purpose of the discussion super- imposed on the story itself.
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THE BOOK OF JOB
In its present form, the epilogue makes Yahweh manifest his displeasure with the three friends, for they did not speak "What was proper as my servant Job did. " (42, 7.) They are directed to bring burnt offerings as an atonement and Job is to intercede in their behalf so as to prevent their just punishment from being meted out to them. Such a conclusion presupposes the discussions between Job and his com- panions, and moreover points to the triumph of Job and to the discomfiture of the three participants in the Symposium. It reflects the point of view of those who entirely sympathized with the situation unfolded in the course of the Symposium by the speeches of Job; it is, therefore, in direct contradiction to the words — in poetic form — put into the mouth of Job (42, 6), just before the prose conclusion :
"Therefore, I recall and repent, In utter worthlessness. " 33
Similarly, the other draft of Job's final words (40, 4-5), likewise poetical in form:
"I am entirely unworthy to answer Thee; My hand I lay upon my mouth. Once I have spoken, but never again; Twice, but now no more,"
is entirely out of keeping with what must have been the original close of the story, which we clearly have in 42, 10-17, beginning
"And Yahweh turned the fortune of Job, and Yahweh restored everything to Job in double amount."
33 See for this translation of the phrase "dust and ashes" the note t& 42, 6.
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Such further details as the rejoicing of the entire fam- ily of the patient sufferer at the happy ending, the congratulatory gifts 34 and the praise of the beauty of Job's daughters show that in these verses we are again dealing with the naive folktale. In the prose conclusion we must, therefore, separate 42, 7-9, which belongs to the Symposium from 42, 10-17, which is the original conclusion to the folktale, describing how all ended happily because the pious man endured in faith and in silent resignation to the Divine will. We thus have no less than four conclusions to the book, two in prose (i) 42, 10-17, (2) 42> 7*9 an<^ two in poetic form (3) 40, 1-14 35 and (4) 42, 1-6.
But the further contradiction involved between the prose conclusion (42, 7-9) added by those who re- garded Job as justified in his argument against his friends, and the two poetical epilogues in which Job is clearly portrayed as in the wrong and, therefore, repenting in deep humility and in consciousness of his guilt, needs to be explained.
The attempts of commentators to reconcile these opposite points of view involve them in subtleties that border on sophistry. Surely, the humbled and repent- ant Job cannot be also described as the one who spoke what was "proper." (42, 7) Nor can the compan- ions who rebuke Job for his charges of injustice pre- ferred against God be held up as "having kindled Yahweh's anger," since their rebukes are reinforced
14 Namely, the piece of money and the golden ring (42, n), reflecting some ancient custom of bestowing congratulatory gifts upon recovery from disease.
14 See the notes to the translation which will show that an "Introduction" has been combined with this epilogue.
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by God himself when He is introduced in the closing chapters :
"Who is this that darkens counsel, By words without knowledge?" (38, 2.)
not to speak of the interposed speeches of Elihu (chapters 32-37), which are likewise intended to dis- prove Job's contentions and to hold him up to scorn for his audacity.
There is only one way out of the difficulty, to wit, to regard the varying conclusions of the story as independent of one another. The one in which Job is represented as being justified while his friends are re- buked was added to the Symposium in its original form, the two in which Job confesses that he was wrong belong to the Book of Job in a form amplified to controvert the aim of the older book. This process of amplification, involving many hands and extending over a considerable period, found its crowning point in the addition of the two poetical prologues to the two prose ones.
This leads us directly to the composite character of the present Book of Job.
CHAPTER II THE THREE STRATA IN THE BOOK OF JOB
I COLLECTIVE AND ANONYMOUS AUTHORSHIP
What has been said in regard to the gradual man- ner in which the folktale of Job took on a literary form and was transformed in this process to adapt itself as a prologue to the discussion of the philosophi- cal problem applies to the Symposium (chapters 3-27) with its supplements (chapters 28 to 3 1), as to the two appendices (a), the speeches of Elihu (chapters 32-37), and (b) the speeches placed in the mouth of Yahweh (chapter 38-41). These natural divisions into which the Book of Job falls represent the three main strata of the literary masterpiece. The evidence is over- whelming that these three divisions are not the pro- duction of one mind or of one time; and to those who followed what was set forth in detail in a previous publication 36 as to the profound difference between literary composition in ancient times and in our days, it will no longer come as a surprise to be told that books produced in the ancient Orient do not come down to us in their original form, but enlarged, modified and not infrequently distorted through additions and changes of all kinds — actual supplements, comments,
16 See the author's "A Gentle Cynic" pp. 71-101 the reading of which sections is essential to an understanding of the view here taken of the composition of the Book of Job.
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answers to views set forth and even intentional changes to controvert unconventional or otherwise objec- tionable views. The spoken word in the ancient Orient enjoyed greater authority than the written one. What a man said was apt to be orally transmitted with considerable care, but when something was written down it became, as it were, public property and could be augmented and modified ad libitum, without any realization that such a process trespassed upon the prerogatives of the one who gave to a liter- ary production its first draft. Instead of individual authorship we have composite and anonymous pro- duction. The difference between ancient Oriental and modern Western literary composition may be summed up in the statement that with us the fin- ished book begins its life, whereas in the ancient Orient the final form of a composition represents a dead book — one that had ceased to arouse sufficient interest to warrant further additions being made to it. It is significant as illustrating the persistence of the Oriental conception of literary composition that despite the late date, c. 90 A. D., when the canon of the Old Testament was definitely fixed, the Book of Job as well as Lamentations and Ruth and even still later productions like Daniel (c. 165 B. c.) and Esther — perhaps as late as 100 B. c. — have come down to us without any author's name attached. When we find authors named as in the headings to Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs and to most of the Psalms — though by no means to all 37 — it is due to very late editorship, at a time
37 See further on this "A Gentle Cynic" p. 57, note 22. 5 65
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when anonymous and collective authorship had yielded under the influence of the Greek conception of indi- vidual authorship to the disposition to seek for an author to compositions that had after a longer or shorter literary process received their definite and final form. 88 The Talmud, in a passage 89 embodying a list of "traditional" authors for Biblical books, names Moses as the author of Job. It is led to do so apparently because Job is described as a patriarch, and therefore belonging to the patriarchal period portrayed in the Book of Genesis. Since Genesis as part of the Pentateuch was of Mosaic origin, ac- cording to the Rabbinical tradition, the Book of Job was likewise assigned to Moses. The fanciful character of the assumption appears to have been recognized even by those who put it forward, for it did not acquire sufficient force to lead to the name of Moses being attached as a heading to the book, which plunges at once in medias res by the statement :
"There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job."
The anonymity of the book thus preserved lightensthe task of the investigator in his endeavor to distinguish the three strata to be discerned in the gradual growth of the book.
18 See A Gentle Cynic, pp. 52 seq., for the details of this "traditional authorship" which ascribed the Pentateuch to Moses, the Books of Joshua and Samuel to the individuals whose names they bore, the Books of Kings and Lamentations to Jeremiah, the prophetical books to those whose utterances they contained, despite the fact that the pre-exilic prophets did not write but merely spoke.
18 Talmud Babli, Baba Bathra 15".
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II
THE ORIGINAL BOOK OF JOB AND THE SUPPLEMENTS TO IT
The final editors of the Book of Job have curiously enough preserved the proof that the book at one time terminated with the thirty-first chapter, where we actually read :
"The words of Job are ended."
Now, to be sure, exegetes bent upon maintaining the assumption of unity in the composition of the book, explain these words as referring to the close of the speeches of Job, but apart from the fact that there would be no special reason for mentioning this, Job is actually introduced again as speaking in 40, 3-4 and a second time in 42, i-6.40 Taking the words as they stand, they are clearly as definite as our "finis, " which we place at the end of a composition. The "Words of Job" would constitute an appropriate title for the book, corresponding to the heading " The Words of Koheleth " as the title of Ecclesiastes. Moreover, the editorial comment at the beginning of chapter 32,
"And these three men ceased answering Job"
bears out the obvious interpretation that the book closed at one time with Job's insistence (31, 35-37) upon the justice of his case against God.41
40 On these two epilogues, see above, p. 61 stg.
u Forming originally the close of Job's answer to Bildad's third speech. See the note to chapter 25, I. Verses 38-40 of chapter 31 are misplaced; they belong after 31, 12. See further in the translation of this 3ist chapter.
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"O that there were some one to hear me ! Here is my brief — let Shaddai refute me. Aye, I will lift it on my shoulder; I will wear it as my crown. With steady gait, I will confront him; [And] as a prince approach Him."
Could there be a more effective close than this defiant speech, throwing down the challenge to God as Job's final answer to the arguments of his companions and to their endeavor to force him to confess wrongs that he did not commit? What more was there to be said? No wonder that an editor added that the three friends had no answer to make, and we may go a step further and suggest that in place of the statement that the three friends had nothing more to say,
"because he was justified in his eyes"
the text originally read "in their eyes."42 This would accord with the entire tenor of the discussions, for they reveal throughout — barring additions made in the interests of orthodoxy — the sympathy of the editor with Job.
But even in this older book we can distinguish traces of a gradual growth. Look at chapters 29-31, put as speeches into the mouth of Job, and, apart from their inordinate length, they will be seen to be of a totally different character from any of the preceding eight speeches, for in all of these Job, after answering the rebukes of his friends, complains of his sufferings and brings forward the injustice and cruelty of the fate meted out to him. In all he protests his innocence
tt So the Greek and Syriac translations actually read, as well as some Hebrew manuscripts.
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and hurls charges at God in bold defiance, or in reply to the false pictures drawn by his friends of the pun- ishment of the wicked, he argues that in this world the wicked are generally happy, while it is the innocent and virtuous who suffer. In these three chapters, however, Job does not argue at all. He does not re- fer to his friends nor to their contentions or rebukes, and he merely refers to his present condition 43 by way of contrast to his former state. In all of the previous speeches the position of Job before misfortunes over- whelmed him is assumed on the basis of the folktale. Not only his happiness but his superior wealth and rank "greater than any of the sons of the East" (i, 3) is part and parcel of the story. What need, there- fore, for Job to dwell as he does in those chapters upon the distinction that he once enjoyed, how all honored and stood in awe of him, how when he spoke the nobles remained silent, how the poor, the orphan and the widow blessed him?
The three chapters are entirely out of harmony with the other speeches, and to clinch the argument that they are supplemental to the book in its older form, we have an entirely different kind of heading: "And Job again took up his speech" u
instead of the conventional:
"And Job in answer said"
which marks the speeches from chapters 3 to 26. Chapters 29-3 1 represent, as a matter of fact two sup-
43 30, 26-31. The other section (30, 16-24) in which he gives voice to his sufferings, is in the style of the earlier speeches and belongs after 27, 6. See below in the notes to the rearrangement of chapters 25-31.
44 29, I. Repeated from here at 27, i where it is not in place. See on the word used for "speech" the note to the passage in the translation.
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plemental speeches of Job, added by someone or by various writers, who wished to try their hand in put- ting speeches of a different character into the mouth of Job.
A further proof that chapters 29-31 are supple- mentary is to be found in the circumstance that they follow upon chapter 28, which is clearly an addition to the original book, since its contents have no connect- tion whatsoever with the theme of the Symposium. The chapter is indeed one of the most impressive bits of literature in the entire Old Testament collection, but it is an entirely independent composition setting forth man's vain search for wisdom. Some editor came across it and fortunately preserved it for us by at- taching it to the original Book of Job. Its purpose is to show that wisdom is with God and not accessible to man.
Ill
THE THIRD SERIES OF SPEECHES OF JOB AND HIS FRIENDS
We thus have four chapters which are supple- mental to the original book, but even with these lopped off we have not reached the original core. Chapters 3 to 21 contain two series of speeches (a) chapters 3-14 and (b) chapters 15-21. In each series we have the three friends replying to Job, who in turn replies to each of his friends; and since Job inaugurates the Symposium, we have seven speeches by the great sufferer and two each by the three friends — thirteen in all. The third series begins with chapter 22. Ac- cording to the present arrangement, there is a speech
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of Eliphaz chapter 22, an answer by Job chapters 23-24, a short speech by Bildad chapter 25, and a sup- posed reply by Job extending over two chapters 26-27. Zophar's third speech and Job's reply are missing. Apparently, then, the third series is incomplete. But a closer examination 45 reveals that we actually have a portion of Bildad's third speech (namely, 26, 5-14) and Zophar's third speech (27, 7-23 and 30, 2-8) put into the mouth of Job. This rearrangement was made by later editors with the intention of assigning to Job orthodox sentiments such as would naturally emanate from Bildad and Zophar.
It was hoped that in this way the unfavorable im- pression made by Job's earlier speeches, so objection- able from the orthodox point of view, might be re- moved. Accepting the proper arrangement of chap- ters 25-27, the third series becomes almost complete, for all that is now lacking is Job's reply to Zophar. Perhaps there was no reply, or it was suppressed and its place taken by the supplementary chapters 29-31, added by those who were bent on having Job bring his discourses to a conclusion by a more conciliatory tone than could have been the case in his reply to Zophar.
The book in its older form thus consists of the prologue and the two series of speeches to which sub- sequently was added (i) a third series of speeches — these 27 chapters forming the original Book of Job (2) an entirely independent chapter on the search for wisdom (chapter 28) and (3) the supplemental speeches of Job (chapters 29-31) which would complete
46 See further below and in the notes to the translation of chapters 25-31.
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THE BOOK OF JOB
the third series, though in a spirit entirely out of keep- ing with chapters 3-27.
The question will naturally be raised whether we should not go further and reduce the first draft of the Book of Job to the prologue and to a single series of speeches of which the second series would be an imitation and amplification produced at a subsequent date. The question is not irrelevant, for in fact all the arguments of the friends and the counter argu- ments of Job are presented in the first series comprising chapters 3-14. Contrary to the still current view there is no progressive development of the theme of the Symposium; there are merely variations on a few melo- dies. The literary superiority of the book lies, next to its superb style and its splendid poetry, precisely in the skillful manner in which these variations are handled. The arguments are in reality few in number. They may be reduced to four on the part of the three friends.
(i) That God is just, (2) that Job must have committed some wrong, (3) that when suffering comes, one must throw one's self upon the mercy of God, (4) that the wicked may flourish for a while, but always in the end meet their doom. Job has only four counter arguments to bring forward: (i) that, as the popular story shows, he was not wicked but on the contrary supremely virtuous and pious, (2) that God is arbi- trary, (3) that one cannot bring one's case before God without thereby already impugning Divine justice, (4) that the wicked are not punished.
These few arguments are all introduced in the first series, and the one or the other of them is elabo-
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rated in the six speeches of the second series. So, for example, Eliphaz in his second speech (15, 7-16) enlarges upon the impossibility of penetrating to the essence of things, which Bildad (n, 7-9) had already emphasized. The second speech of Eliphaz even contains a quotation from the first.48 Bildad in his second speech (chapter 18) sets forth at length the pun- ishment in store for the wicked which was already sug- gested more briefly in his first speech (chapter 8, 1 1- 20), as well as by Zophar (n, 20). Job brings for- ward his strongest argument that one cannot carry one's case before God in the speech replying to Bildad (chapters 9-10), and he repeats it in the speeches of the second series (e. g., 16, 20-21 and 19,6-11). In his reply to Bildad (9, 20-24) ne suggests that God is callous to merit, that the innocent and wicked are treated alike, aye, that
"The earth is given into the hand of the wicked."
It is, therefore, merely an elaboration of the thought, when in a speech in the second series (chapter 21) he launches into a most detailed picture of this topsy- turvy world in which the wicked grow fat, are not troubled with remorse and escape even when a general calamity ensues.
For all that, we have no decisive data to warrant us in saying that a Book of Job once existed with only one series of speeches. A group of writers might easily be led to indulge in variations upon a single theme; and the circumstance that the second series is entirely in the style of the first is another reason for assuming that
" Cf. 15, 14-15 with 4, 17-18.
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the elaboration and even the repetition of the argu- ments and counter arguments were part of the Book of Job in its earliest form. There is just enough inde- pendence in the manner of treating the theme and of presenting the arguments to warrant us in asserting that, despite the general similarity of the speeches to one another, the second series forms an integral part of the oldest written draft so far as we can trace it; far more so than is the case in the third series of speeches which betrays in various ways its supple- mental character, though not to the extent of modi- fying the thesis that chapters 3-27 form a harmonious whole and represent the original Symposium in its completed form.
IV
THE TWO APPENDICES TO THE ORIGINAL BOOK
OF JOB
Now, how can we be so certain that the first twenty-seven chapters of the book with the prose epilogue 42, 7-9 form an original Book of Job? Look at the second division of the book in its present form, which consists of chap- ters 32-37, containing the speeches of Elihu. We are transported at once to an entirely different scene, with a different environment and a different atmosphere. The Symposium is at an end, as the in- troduction to the speeches of Elihu specifically tells us. The three friends had nothing more to say. A new character appears on the scene who, in contrast to Job and his three friends, bears a Hebrew name. His father's name Barachel is also Hebraic, and he is rep-
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resented as a descendant of one of the Hebrew clans.47 The four separate discourses into which the six chapters may be divided are of an entirely different character from the speeches in the Symposium. Elihu approaches the problem from a different angle, though one can also see some borrowings from the Symposium proper, 48 due perhaps to later editors who wished to connect these chapters with the original book. The two arguments urged by Elihu are (a) that God warns man of his fate by dreams and visions and also by chastisement and that (b) whether one is wicked or righteous, one neither takes anything from God nor gives anything to him. Clearly, the purpose of these six chapters is to complement the Symposium, by suggesting other points of view from which the problem might be attacked.
The language also in these supplementary chap- ters is different, though this point must not be stressed, because there was a conscious imitation on the part of later amplifiers of the book of the style adopted in the earlier sections. Here again the absence of dis- tinctly individual authorship favors the rise of a large number of amplifiers of a book, interested in the prob- lem and expressing schools of thought rather than individual points of view, men who by deliberate imitation could write much in the same style as their predecessors. Such a collection as the Psalms, the
47 He is called "the Buzite of the family of Ram." The prophet Ezekiel's father bears the name of Buzi (Ez. i, 3), and Ram is the name of a Judean clan (Ruth 4, 19).
48 '•£•> 34. 3 is taken from 12, n; 35, 5 from 22, 12 and harks back also to 7, 20. Besides, in 33, 9-10; 34, 5-6 and 35, 2-3 he quotes utterances of Job in the original book.
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THE BOOK OF JOB
work of many hands and yet in which so many Psalms bear a close resemblance to one another, furnishes an illustration of how much great literature can be steadily produced by this process of imitation on the part of those who belong to the same school of religious thought, and who live in the same con- genial atmosphere. The same applies to the Prov- erbs, showing an apparent unity through the influence of the factor of collective and imitative author- ship. The restraint upon imitation in our days of literary production, marked by the intense desire to express one's own personality, acts as a deterrent in producing literature of a certain even grade.
The speeches of Elihu are followed by a second appendix, consisting of chapters 38 to 41 and pur- porting to be speeches addressed by Yahweh to Job. In reality these four chapters constitute a series of nature poems intended to illustrate the manifestations of the Divine will in the creation of the world, in the move- ments in the heavens, and in the phenomena of the rain and snow. From such subjects the little anthol- ogy passes on to a description of animal life, il- lustrative again of God's forethought in providing for his creation, while the powerful beasts introduced in the poems, such as the hippopotamus and the croco- dile, suggest by contrast man's insignificant stature and his physical weakness. The problem that forms the central theme in the original Book of Job is not touched upon; and if it were not for the attachment of this magnificent series of poems to the Book of Job, no reader would for* a moment have associated the poems with the theme suggested by Job's experience.
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THE BOOK OF JOB
Moreover, in the case of these four chapters the cri- terion of language can be used with even greater assurance than in the case of the speeches of Elihu to reinforce the view of the independent origin of this collection of nature poems. The style deviates en- tirely from that of the Symposium. Chapters 38 to 41, therefore, constitute the third stratum of the book. The present Book of Job is therefore not only a composite production but one of gradual growth; and this gradual growth is to be further discerned within each division. We have seen that the original Book of Job is not of one piece, and we must now test the thesis for the discourses of Elihu and for the anthology of nature poems.
V
THE COMPOSITE CHARACTER OF THE SPEECHES
OF ELIHU
The four speeches of Elihu represent the en- deavors of orthodox circles to find a satisfactory solu- tion for the problem which in the Symposium the friends gave up as hopeless, with a confession that "Job was justified in their eyes. " 49 A glance at their arrangement (chapters 32-37) shows their composite character. Chapter 32 is taken up entirely with a series of introductions, and it is not until chapter 33 that we reach the first speech. We first have five edi- torial introductory notes (32, 1-5) then another introduction with a separate heading (32, 6-10), followed by a second introduction (32, 11-17) which
49 See above, p. 68.
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THE BOOK OF JOB
repeats the substance of the preceding one, after which a third introduction — in an ironical vein (32, 18-22) — is added which brings us to the close of the chapter. Evidently some one has put together a series of drafts of introductions which he came across, and true to the Oriental mode of literary composition, attached them as the preliminary material to the speeches themselves. Now the existence of a series of drafts of intro- ductions80 of itself points to various independent speeches, just as the presence of four epilogues to the book furnishes testimony to the composite character of the book to which they are attached. This supposition is confirmed when we come to the speeches them- selves. We note in the first place that the first and third speeches (chapters 33 and 35) are addressed to Job, whereas the second speech (chapter 34) is ad- dressed to "wise men" in general with Job referred to in the third person (34, 5, 7; 35, 36), and the fourth speech is clearly supplemental, for as indicated by the introduction (36, 2) it is not addressed to any one in particular. It is the work of some one who felt, as he said, that " there were still things to be said for God " and proceeds to set forth his defense of the orthodox doctrine as to the cause and meaning of human suffer- ing. The writer of this speech is not as original in his thought as he perhaps fancied, for he takes up the argument of the first speech which emphasizes suf- fering as a warning to man against slipping into a wrong path, but gives the thought a new turn by laying the
60 We have still another draft of an introduction (33, 31-33) which an editor inserted at the end of the first speech, or which he intended as an alternate introduction to the second speech.
THE BOOK OF JOB
stress on suffering as a discipline (36, 10) as well as a warning. In this chapter, moreover, we have as a further proof of both its supplemental and composite character, the insertion of a separate and most im- pressive little poem, descriptive of God's majesty as seen in a storm. 51 One must read this splendid description in full and separate it from its present environment to appreciate its beauty. The purpose of this poem, which takes us still further away from the theme of the book, is to pave the way for the second large appendix — the nature and animal poems forming the third stratum of the book. The inser- tion thus appears to have been made by some one who already had this second appendix (chapters 38-41) be- fore him and who, finding the poem, dovetailed it into a supplemental speech, put into the mouth of Elihu. We have a similar case of the dovetailing of an independent composition into a speech of Elihu in the 34th chapter — forming the second speech of Elihu. This speech, as already suggested, steps entirely out of the frame of the others by being addressed to "wise men" and not to Job, who is spoken of in the third person. Surely if all four speeches were written by one and the same individual, there would be no reason for such a strange and unnecessary deviation. In the middle of the 34th chapter (v. 16) we suddenly en- counter a new heading and strangely enough with an abrupt change from an address in the plural to one in the singular,
"If there be understanding, hear this."
81 36, 24 to 37, 13 and verses 21-22 as the close of the poem. See the translation of the poem after chapter 36.
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An entirely new subject is introduced. Up to this point the writer is concerned with repeating the ar- gument, so familiar to us from the Symposium, that God is not wicked, that it is "far from Shaddai to commit iniquity" (v. 10), that He requites man ac- cording to his deeds, with the supplementary thought that man is dependent upon the favor of God, as the whole earth is in His sole charge. Without any pre- monition, a totally different theme is now taken up — the punishment of unworthy rulers. This poem, which is clearly again an independent composition, is inserted into the chapter 62 because some editor thought it appropriate to the general theme. As a matter of fact its departure from the central theme is so complete as to be a disturbing factor, though we should be grateful to the one who thought of preserving the little poem, which is also valuable as an illustration of how far those were willing to go who placed the attribute of absolute and impartial justice as the primary quality of Divine government. God is no respecter of persons.
"He says to a King, 'Thou worthless one,' 'Thou wicked one' to nobles. He pays no regard to princes, And favors not rich against poor. For all in a moment die; In the middle of the night are shaken off."
(34, 18-20.)
But all this has no bearing on the central theme, except as a further rebuke to Job who questions the justice of God. This method of dovetailing two com-
0 Verses 16-20 and 24-27 with v. 30 as a summary. See the translation of this inserted poem after the fourth speech of Elihu.
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THE BOOK OF JOB
positions into one another seems strange and irrele- vant, but one must bear in mind that it is the com- mon procedure in Biblical books. It is the regular method followed by the compilers of the Pentateuch, who when they find two versions of a story — as of the Deluge and of many incidents in the lives of the pa- triarchs— combine them, even at the risk of thus put- ting contradictory details together. Similarly in the historical books proper — Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings — various originally independent compositions are dovetailed into one another. The editor or com- piler who inserted the two poems in chapters 34 and 36, therefore, follows the traditional method to fit in the independent compositions as best he could by distributing the single verses in sections through the chapter, so as to give at least a semblance of unity to each of the speeches.
Again, chapter 35 consisting of only sixteen verses, is clearly a draft of some speech which attempts to answer the assertions of Job in 9, 21 and 7, 20. The former passage is quoted almost verbatim in 35, 2; the latter in 35, 3. The writer taking up Job's com- plaint that even if he had sinned, he has not injured God,
"What have I done to Thee, guardian of man? Why hast Thou made me a mark?" (7, 20.)
argues that in truth when men do wrong, they do not injure God, as little as when they are virtuous they benefit God.
The conclusion that our writer draws is that since righteousness or wrongdoing affects only mortals, God should not be held responsible for sufferings
6 81
THE BOOK OF JOB
which are due to the actions of man. The point urged in the third speech evades the problem by relieving God of responsibility for wickedness in His world. The one who wrote the first speech could never have thought of introducing an argument so little in keeping with his entire attitude towards the problem. We see, therefore, that the four speeches are separate compositions, each representing an en- deavor to find a solution that might save the day for orthodoxy.
VI
A COLLECTION OF NATURE POEMS AS THE THIRD
STRATUM
Is it possible to establish for chapters 38-41 — the speeches put into the mouth of Yahweh — the the- sis which we have seen to apply to the four speeches of Elihu, to wit, that they consist of a series of independent compositions, representing various attempts to describe the manifestation of the Divine in the universe, which is the theme throughout ? To this question an affirmative answer can be given with an assurance derived from the repetitions to be found within these chapters and from the abrupt transitions from one theme to the other. We have in the first place two large divisions, (i) chapters 38 and 39 with its separate conclusion, 40, 1-5 and (2) chapter 40, 6 to the end of chapter 41 with its con- clusion 42, 1-6. That the second division is supple- mentary to the first and presumably by a different author follows from the repetition of the challenge to Job :
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THE BOOK OF JOB
"Gird up thy loins like a warrior, That I may ask thee to tell me." (38, 3.)
which is found again with a slightly different wording at the beginning of the second speech 40, 7. The sepa- rate editorial headings (38, I and 40, 6) to each of the two divisions,
"Then Yahweh answered Job as follows"
with the words "out of the storm" added because of the description of the storm in chapter 37 63 are, there- fore, justified. Within the first division we have (i) The Paean of Creation (38, 4-18), (2) The Phenomena of the Heavens (38, 19-38), after which there is an ab- rupt transition to a different theme — the manifesta- tion of Divine power in the animal world, which is viewed from two angles, (a) the strength shown by certain animals which makes them superior to any attempt on the part of man to tame them and (b) the provision made for animals by God, and which like- wise lies beyond human comprehension.
Now it would, of course, be carrying the analysis too far to divide up the two broad divisions into which the four chapters fall into as many subdivisions as the subjects of the poems. While it may well be that the animal poems, treating eleven different animals (38, 39 — 39, 30), are not by one writer, yet they are all of the same general character with the single exception of the poem on the ostrich and stork (39, 13-18) which is not in question form as are the others, and in other respects deviates from the style of the other animal poems. This little section does not emphasize God's provi-
B See above, p. 79.
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THE BOOK OF JOB
dence as do the poems on the lion, raven, mountain goat, wild ox and horse, but on the contrary stresses the cruel and senseless habits of the ostrich and stork in deserting her young, because "God has deprived her of wisdom." On the other hand, the description of the hippopotamus (40, 15-24) is clearly of a totally different character than the other animal poems, and so is likewise the very detailed description of the crocodile (40, 25-41, 26). 54 Both poems are to be re- garded as further endeavors on the part of writers to illustrate the general theme of God's power as seen in the animal world. In these poems on the hippopota- mus and the crocodile it is the huge size and strength that is emphasized. The circumstance that the description of these two largest and most powerful of all huge beasts are put forward as a second speech in the mouth of Yahweh is a further proof of their supple- mentary character. A compiler in the ancient Oriental manner would have no hesitation in thus putting together a series of poems, each of independent origin, though all presumably emanating from some common circle of writers who strove to emulate one another in describing the glories and marvels of inanimate nature and of the animal world. The description of the hippopotamus, consisting of ten verses, is a single composition, but the much longer poem on the crocodile consisting of 34 verses is just as clearly a combination of three separate compositions.55 Of
64 Or according to the enumeration in the AV and RV (following the example of the Greek text which begins chapter 41 with the description of the crocodile) 41, 1-34.
"The first extending from 40, 25 to 41, 4 (or 41, 1-12 according to the enumeration in the AV and RV), the second from 41, 5-13 (or 41, 13-21) and the third from 41, 14-26 (or 41, 22-34).
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THE BOOK OF JOB
these three poems, the second is sharply separated from the first by the reflection (41, 1-4 or 41, 9-12) added as a summary to the description of the over- whelming strength of the crocodile, while we are justified in making a second break at 41, 13, (or 41, 2i)because in what follows we have in part a repeti- tion of what has already been said in the two pre- ceding poems.56
What we have, therefore, in this second appendix is an anthology of nature and animal poems, which may well represent a selection from an extensive lit- erature of this character that was produced in Pal- estine during the three or four centuries before this era. I say a selection, for there is no reason to sup- pose that our editor, who attached chapters 38 to 41 to the Book of Job exhausted the material of this char- acter at his disposal. There are sections within many of the Psalms that impress one as extracts from just such poems of which we have specimens in our third stratum. Some of these nature poems embodied in the Psalms, like 18, 8-16; 29, 3-9; 77, 17-20 are mar- vellous descriptions of storms or of violent upheavals, based on the earlier conception of Yahweh as a storm- god, and are probably older than any of the nature poems in Job as well as cruder in their symbolism. Others like Psalms 19, 2-7 and 93, 3-4, attached to a glorification of the law, breathe the same spirit as the chapters in Job. In some, like 8, 4-9; 65, 1014 and 97, 2-6 there is the same delicate association of na- ture's way with God's forethought as in our little
"41, 15-16 express the same thought as 41, 7-9; 41, 18-21 suggest 40, 31; and 41, 22-23 recall 41, 10-12.
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THE BOOK OF JOB
anthology, while such a Psalm as the icxfth, em- bracing the various aspects of creation and of God's witnesses to the Divine in phenomena on earth and in the heavens, and in the waters, might just as well have been attached to the Book of Job as to have been placed among the Psalms. Conversely, except for the fact that they are put into the mouth of Yahweh by editors who in this way connected them with the Book of Job, we might just as well call these four
chapters Psalms.
VII
THE MESSAGE OF THE NATURE POEMS
These additional four chapters are even more ex- traneous to the theme of the original Book of Job than are the discourses of Elihu. To the obvious question, what have these magnificent poems to do with Job's complaints and his arguments to show that there is injustice and innocent suffering in the world, the only reasonable answer is — nothing at all. Couched in question form, they ask whether man can perform the marvels of Nature which bear the stamp of Divine power? It is only in the editorial intro- duction (38, 1-3 which is repeated 40, 6-7) 67 and in the two epilogues that Job is introduced. There is no reference to him or to his sufferings or to his argu- ments in any of these poems. The questions are just as effective if we assume them to have been addressed to man in general.
ITThe second verse of chapter 38:
"Who is he that darkens counsel
By words without knowledge"
has accidentally been inserted as a reflection in the wrong place, 42, 33. It should have been placed after 40, 6. See note 65 in the translation of the second epilogue.
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THE BOOK OF JOB
The purpose in adding this precious anthology to the Symposium was clearly to direct the attention of the reader to the majesty and power of the universal Creator, so as further to counteract the baneful im- plications of the Symposium itself. The nature poems were intended to preach the lesson of a becoming humility in the face of the overpowering achievements of the Almighty, but it is inconceivable that the same group of writers who, sympathizing with Job, declare that in his vehement denunciations of the cruelty of his fate and in his serious indictments against the arbitrariness of the Divine will, Job spoke what was "proper" (42, 7), could also represent Job as con- fessing his audacity in uttering that which he did not "understand" (42, 3b). To accuse a writer of thus blowing hot and cold at the same time is to deprive him of all claim to serious consideration. One need only state the proposition thus baldly to clinch the conclusion that the nature poems represent a later amplification of the book conceived in a totally dif- ferent spirit from that which pervades the Symposium.
Job had repeatedly complained that he was un- able to appeal directly to God, that the mere thought of bringing his case before God would be regarded as involving an impious charge against God. Very well, say those who collected these nature poems, we will show you what God would say to you. He would silence you by the demonstration of His boundless power in contrast to your insignificance; He would crush your haughty spirit and compel you to bow humbly to His superior, aye, to His infinite majesty.
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CHAPTER III
CHANGES AND ADDITIONS WITHIN THE ORIGINAL BOOK OF JOB
I JEWISH ORTHODOXY VERSUS SKEPTICISM
The Book of Job thus enlarged by the four speeches of Elihu and the poems placed in the mouth of the Deity Himself would naturally serve to counter- balance the skeptical trend of the original book. By their very length these two appendices would pro- foundly impress the reader, in an uncritical age, which would fail to separate the earlier from the later strata. The confession of Job at the conclusion of each of the two speeches of Yahweh of his unworthi- ness, 68 setting forth his repentance for his audacious utterances in the original portion of the book would suffice to remove the impression made by these utterances and quiet the soul of the pious simple- minded reader. For the irreconcilable contrast be- tween the patient and submissive Job of the story and the impatient and rebellious Job of the Symposium, such a reader would find the explanation ready at hand, that under trying circumstances even such a model of piety as Job might forget himself and be prompted to sin by complaining of his bitter fate. He could by way of confirmation point to such Psalms
68 At the close of the first series of poems, 40, 3-5 and at the close of the poems on the hippopotamus and crocodile 42, 3. 5-6.
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'THE BOOK OF JOB
as the 22nd, beginning with a cry of anguish from a distressed soul,
"My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me, And art far from my help at the words of my cry?"
or to the 88th, wholly taken up with complaint, not unlike the manner of Job,
"Thou hast laid me in the nethermost pit; In the darkest place in the deep. Thy wrath presses hard upon me, And all thy waves afflict me. Thou hast removed my acquaintances from me, And hast made me an abomination unto them. I am shut in, I cannot come forth."
And since in the Psalms such outbursts are followed or counterbalanced by expressions of faith abiding in the midst of despair:
"In Thee did our Fathers trust; They trusted and Thou didst deliver them. Unto Thee they cried and were set free; In Thee did they trust, and were not put to shame." (22, 5-6.)
the analogy with the Book of Job would be complete. For all that some doubts must have remained in the minds of more inquiring readers, whether the spirit of the Symposium, clearly revealing the author's sympathy with Job's outbursts as well as with his arguments, could be reconciled with the tone of the speeches of Elihu and with the implications of the im- pressive nature poems. Job's charges against God in permitting the innocent to suffer in this world would remain in all their force. They were too serious to be dismissed by a mere glorification of the marvels of Nature. The picture drawn by Job of the happiness and security of the wicked (chapters 21 and 24) was
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THE BOOK OF JOB
too severe an indictment to be set aside by an irrele- vant emphasis on the doctrine of punishment as a test of one's faith and as a warning to return to God. How could Job's despair at being unable to find God despite his earnest search (9, n, and 23, 8-9) be reconciled with teachings that emphasized that "God is near to all who call upon Him" (Psalm 145, 18). Supplements and appendices alone could not save the book from being regarded as an essentially unsatis- factory work. To make the task of converting an unorthodox production into a bulwark of faith, it was necessary to attack the original book as well. By additions here and there, by pious comments inserted at appropriate places, by enlarging upon the counter arguments presented by the three friends of Job, by giving a turn to some of Job's utterances different from the one that he had in mind, and also by the more radical procedure of putting utterances into Job's mouth which would have a meaning only if spoken by one of the friends, since they directly con- tradict the fundamental position assumed by Job — such means had to be employed in order to give a flavor of orthodoxy also to the original book. This flavor, while strong enough to satisfy an age not ac- customed to too critical a scrutiny and which still lacked a complete sense of personal authorship in a com- position, was however not strong enough to endure the test of the critical method in the study of the Old Tes- tament that set in at the close of the eighteenth century and that reached its climax in our own days. Before passing on to some illustrations of the additions and insertions in the original book and of
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THE BOOK OF JOB
other attempts to modify its tone and character, a word of warning is in place, lest we misconceive the spirit in which this deliberate endeavor to save the reader from the skepticism of the book was under- taken. There was on the part of pious commentators no intention to deceive. Nothing was farther from the minds of those who felt free to give any turn that they pleased to a literary production that was regarded as common property. In the ancient Orient plagiarism belongs to the virtues, and the quotation mark had not yet been discovered. The modifications that a book underwent were an indication of the interest it had aroused. Moreover, the character of the revi- sion to which a literary production in the ancient Orient was subject would vary according to the point of view of the individual or the circle that would be attracted to the task. A book like the original Job would have its sympathizers and its opponents; and we can trace in the insertions and in the additions the work of both classes of commentators or amplifiers as they might be called, while at times one may recog- nize the purely literary desire to try one's hand at improving a speech of Job's or of one of his friends. Again, in many cases the desire to make an utterance clearer leads to the addition of an explanatory gloss or phrase. There were no footnotes in ancient codices, and where the margin was used for variants, com- ments, explanations and additions, the next copyist who came along might embody all these modifications in the text, leaving it to the reader, if he felt so in- clined, to differentiate between the original and the supplementary matter. The study of an ancient
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THE BOOK OF JOB
literary production thus assumes a very complicated aspect, and it has been one of the chief tasks of mod- ern Bible study to develop a critical method for dis- tinguishing the various strata in the case of a Biblical book, to trace the dovetailing of originally indepen- dent documents in the compilation of traditions and historical narratives, to show in the case of the Pentateuchal Codes and of the historical books their gradual expansion, to separate original material from later supplements in the collections of the utterances of the prophets, and to follow the growth of more purely literary productions like Proverbs, Psalms, Ecclesiastes and Job, in all their ramifications. For the Book of Ecclesiastes I have shown 69 how by ad- ditions through pious commentators, anxious to fur- nish the antidote to Koheleth's cynicism, and by the insertions of ethical maxims and popular sayings as a further means of weakening the effect of unorthodox teachings, a different turn was given to the original book. In the case of the much larger Book of Job the process of growth and modifications is far more intri- cate, and it will not be possible, without exhausting the patience of the general reader to do more than offer a number of illustrations of the manner in which the original Book of Job was modified throughout.
A comparison of the Hebrew text with the vari- ous Greek translations made of it is more than suffi-
89 A Gentle Cynic, p. 29.
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THE BOOK OF JOB
cient to show that there was no fixed original as late as the second century B. c. when the oldest of these translations, commonly known as the Septuagint, appears to have been made. According to the Church Father Origen (185-254 A. D.) who compiled a com- parative table of the variations in no less than six versions, 60 the Septuagint recension was about one- sixth shorter than our present Hebrew text, which means that instead of 1070 verses or about 2200 lines, it contained only about 890 verses or about 1830 lines. The missing portions were supplied chiefly from a version made by Theodotion towards the end of the second century A. D. Origen distinguished these additions by an asterisk and there are some codi- ces in which these asterisks still appear, though in most codices of the Greek translation the additions have been incorporated into the text without any distinguishing mark.61
As a further witness to the existence of a trans- lation of Job differing considerably from the Hebrew text, we have a version made during the second cen- tury A. D. from Greek into the Sahidic dialect 62 and which was found in the Library of the Museum Borg- hianum in Rome in 1883 and published in iSSQ.63 This version actually contains about 40x3 lines less than the full text. It confirms, therefore, the exis-
60 The standard edition of what is preserved of Origen's comprehensive work is by Frederick Field, Origenis Htxaplorum qua supersunt (2 vols., Oxford, 1875).
61 See for details Budde's introduction to his commentary on Job, 2nd edition, p. Ivii seq.
62 Sahidic is a dialect of Coptic, which was spoken in Upper Egypt.
63 By A Ciasca, Sacrorum Bibliorum Fragmenta Copto-Sahidica Musei Borgiani.
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THE BOOK OF JOB
tence at one time of a much shorter Book of Job than our present one. To be sure, there are many scholars who are inclined to explain the omissions in the original Greek translation on the assumption that the translator in many cases intentionally abbreviated the Hebrew original, and in others omitted lines which he did not understand. The former supposi- tion is most unlikely in view of the sacred character of the books of the Old Testament, which would deter a translator from taking such liberties with the model before him. He might, if not in sympathy with the original purport of the book, be tempted to add to it but not to curtail it. Furthermore, it is noticeable that the omissions in the Sahidic version become more numerous as we proceed from the first series to the second and third series of speeches. In chapters 3 to 6 (Job's first speech, the answer of Eliphaz and part of Job's reply) there are no omis- sions; in chapters 7 to n (conclusion of Job's reply, the first speech of Bildad, Job's reply and Zophar's first speech) only eleven lines are omitted, whereas in Job's reply (chapters 12 to 14), we find as many as 17 lines left out. The obvious conclusion is not that the translator grew tired of his task and pro- ceeded to curtail, but that only a portion of the Symposium had as yet reached its final stage, that additions continued to be made even to the first series of speeches, and that still greater liberties con- tinued to be taken with the later series and with the supplements and appendices to the book.
Nor is it at all plausible, as some scholars assume, that omissions in the original Greek translation were
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'THE BOOK OF JOB
due to the difficulties of the original text which the translator evaded by the simple method of leaving them untranslated. That was not the disposition of ancient translators, who would be disposed to make a guess at a translation rather than to omit anything of what was before them. Throughout the Old Testa- ment the Greek version varies considerably from the Hebrew original; in some of the books more, in some less. These variations in thousands of instances rest upon a different text which can frequently be recon- structed. The difference of one letter or at times a different vocalization of the consonantal framework of the Hebrew original often accounts for the varying translation, though in a larger number of cases a more radical variation in the text must be assumed, while in many hundreds of instances the Greek translation represents a guess in order to get some meaning out of a difficult or a corrupt text. It does not, of course, follow that the reading upon which the Greek version rests is more acceptable than the Hebrew text, though this is very often the case, but the variant reading is under all circumstances an important witness to the absence of a standardized text of the Old Testament as late as the second century B. c. It is a sufficient answer to the assumption that omissions in the original Greek translation are due to evasions of difficulties to point out that the omissions occur as frequently — if not more so — in passages in which the Hebrew text is perfectly clear as in such cases where difficulties exist. Furthermore, in the older Greek versions as in that of Theodotion, there are not only omis- sions but also numerous additions not found in the
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TEE BOOK OF JOB
Hebrew Text, which confirm the position here taken of the incompleteness of the book until close to the threshold of our era and perhaps indeed beyond this limit.
It is interesting as well as significant to note in this connection that even after a standard Hebrew text of the Old Testament had been established, at the end of the first century A. D., the Jewish Church did not object to its expansion on the part of those who made a rendering of the collection into the cur- rent Aramaic speech 64 so that the uneducated classes might also share in the benefits of the sacred col- lection. The Aramaic rendering, known as the Tar- gum,65 is a combination of a translation with ampli- fying comments not distinguished from the text. Often the amplification is limited to a few words, but very frequently it is extended to a little homily on the text. It was customary for the expounder first to read a verse in Hebrew and then to give an Aramaic rendering which might be literal, but which would also furnish him with the occasion to expand it at will. The point to be born in mind is that in this expansion no separation was made between text and comment. The expansion of the text led in the course of time to the elaboration of Biblical traditions and narratives which developed into an extensive Midrashic litera- ture embodying further legends entwined around the patriarchs and around such types as Moses, Aaron,
"Hebrew ceased to be the current speech in Palestine after the sixth century B.C. and was gradually replaced by Aramaic which had spread also through Mesopotamia and Syria.
"Meaning "translation" or perhaps more accurately "interpretation." The underlying stem is the same as in dragoman, i.e., targeman.
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Joshua, Samuel, Elijah, David and Solomon. 6* Biblical books thus became the starting-point of a literature that is the outcome of a process of con- tinuous expansion of an original text by comments, variants, additions, illustrations and the like.
Ill
Perhaps we can best approach our task of show- ing the method followed in making the original Book of Job more palatable to orthodox tastes by some il- lustrations of additions made with an explanatory purpose, or which represent variant readings em- bodied into the original text instead of being relegated to footnotes as we would do in the case of a modern text. From these we can then pass on to additions and modifications introduced with the specific purpose of toning down some particularly objectionable utter- ance or of giving a different turn to Job's thought.
Even in the prose prologue we find evidence of the hand of commentators engaged in making additions to the text. In chapter 2, I the phrase "to gather around Yahweh" appears twice. The repetition is unnecessary and is not found in the original Greek version or in some of the later ones. The addition was made by some commentator who wished to emphasize
88 A large collection of these Legends of the Jews in English translation was made by Dr. L. Ginsburg and published by the American Jewish Publica- tion Society (Legends of the Jews, 4 volumes, Philadelphia, 1909-13).
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that Satan came with the "Sons of God," and not alone, that he was at God's service and not an inde- pendent being. Again towards the close of the chap- ter, the words "toward heaven" are added to the statement that the three friends as a sign of grief at Job's distress "tore their upper garments and sprin- kled dust over their heads." This was done in order to explain that the dust after being placed on the head was thrown into the air, though it is doubtful whether this explanation is correct. The words are again missing in the Greek version.
Of a different character but pointing to an in- tentional change in the text is the substitution of "bless" for "curse" in no less than four places in the prologue (i, 5 and n ; 2, 5 and 9) in order to avoid a word of ill omen, as in English "darned" came into use in place of "damned." To a sensitive age it seemed objectionable to find Job saying in a sacred book that his sons may have "cursed" God (i, 5) or Satan intimating that Job might "curse God" (i, n and 2, 5) or even that Job's unsympathetic wife should call upon her husband to "curse God and die. " In all these cases the word "bless" was substituted with intent. 67 In the prose epilogue (42, 7-17) there are likewise late additions, partly to add picturesque touches and in part with a more serious intent. So e. g. is the closing statement (42, 17)
"So Job died, old and full of days" which is missing in the original Greek version. In re-
" The Church Father Ambrosian already recognized that the avoidance of the word "curse" was intentional.
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turn, the Greek version of Theodotion has a long sup- plementary notice 68 about Job and his friends which is not in the Hebrew text.
When we come to the Symposium, we have a valu- able index for detecting comments and variants in the practically uniform character of the stanza of four lines 69 and a further index in the length of each line — with three beats in each line — for while to be sure there is no absolute uniformity, yet when we find an inordinately long line, we may properly sus- pect some addition as a comment or gloss.70 Let us take up these two points. Without entering into details of Hebrew poetry which would carry us too far, 71 there is general agreement among scholars that the two striking features of this poetry are the parellelismus membrorum, i. e., an agreement in thought with some progression in the thought, dividing a stanza into two halves and within each stanza an agreement in regard to the number of beats in corresponding lines. There is no rhyme in Hebrew poetry but there is rhythm which rests upon an equal number of beats, irrespective of the number of syl- lables beyond certain limits, which would obviously interfere with the regularity of the beats. When, therefore, we find a disproportion between two lines that form the first or second half of a stanza, we are
88 See below at the close of the translation for this supplementary state- ment which is very elaborate and clearly based on a Hebrew or Aramaic original.
69 See Duhm's discussion, Hiob, p. 17.
70 Occasionally we find snorter lines with two beats and frequently long lines with four beats, but in all such cases the variation raises a suspicion whether the line in question is not defective, or whether the superfluous word or words belong to the original text.
71 See for a general survey, G. B. Gray, Forms of Hebrew Poetry (London, I9I5)-
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justified in suspecting some addition. So, e. g., in 7, 9 which reads
"The cloud dissolves and is gone; So the one who goes down to Sheol does not come up."
The second line in the original Hebrew is halting be- cause of its length. If we remove the word "Sheol," this difficulty disappears and the poetic quality is im- proved. Some commentator added "Sheol" to indi- cate what was meant. In 10, 12 the word "life" does not accord with the verb used which is literally "made. " The combination is un-Hebraic. The line is improved in its proportions by making it read : "Grace Thou didst grant me"
and by regarding "life" as a comment or gloss. Not infrequently the excess word or phrase in a line has been inserted as a comment or gloss into the wrong place, which suggests that it may originally have been placed on the margin of a scroll, and then misplaced by a copyist who wished to embody the comment in the text. An example of such a misplaced gloss is to be found in 5, 4 where the words "in the gate" (in Hebrew one word) are clearly out of place. The two lines should read:
"His sons far from salvation, And crushed, with none to save them."
Transpose the phrase "in the gate" to the first line of the preceding distich,
"I have seen the foolish take root in the gate"
and you get a comment that is reasonable, the phrase "in the gate" being idiomatically used for the place where people gather. A still clearer case of an entire
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line forming a variant and inserted at the wrong place is to be found 15, 30,
"He shall not escape from the darkness."
A glance shows that it does not fit in with the context, neither with what precedes nor with what follows. If, however, one transfers it to v. 22, the first half of which reads:
"He has no hope to escape from darkness,"
we have an intelligible variant, which some commen- tator presumably placed on the margin of his copy and which a copyist inserted at the wrong place. Again 17, 12 is a distich that interrupts the context. It is omitted in the original Greek version, and can best be explained as consisting of two glosses,
(a) "Night they change to day"
(&) "Light is preferable to darkness"
added by way of comment to 18, 5-6, beginning: "Surely, the light of the wicked is put out"
The first gloss is intended to suggest that the wicked ply their trade at night, and the second is to furnish the reason for the emphasis on light, spark and lamp in 1 8, 5-6. Such comments need not necessarily re- veal the true explanation; and in this case the com- mentator mistakes the force of the metaphors, by tak- ing them too literally. In the same way 22, 8 which properly translated reads:
"The man of might — to him is the earth; And the exalted dwells therein,"
interrupts Eliphaz's accusations against Job that he refused charity to the poor (v. 7) and neglected widows
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and orphans (v. 9). The distich clearly belongs to Job's indictment of injustice in the world with which chapter 21 is taken up. It would be appropriate after 21, 31. The two lines impress one as a popular saying which some reader added on the margin of his copy, and which thence crept into another copy prepared by some scribe.
We have quite a number of such maxims intro- duced into Job, just as many were interspersed throughout Ecclesiastes by later manipulators of the text. At times they are appropriate, but often they interrupt the context in a somewhat unfortunate manner.
So in Eliphaz's first speech (chapter 4) we have a popular maxim introduced in v. 10:
"The lion may roar and the fierce one howl, But the teeth of the young lions are broken."
with the following verse added by way of amplification :
"The old lion perishes for lack of prey, And the whelps of the lioness are scattered."
The two verses do not stand in close relation to what precedes, and appear to have been inserted by some commentator as an illustration of one's reaping what one sows (v. 8b). Chapter 17, 5 which should be translated as follows:
"Among friends one divides one's fortune, While one's own sons languish"
is evidently a popular saying to illustrate a foolish kind of generosity, which, to be sure, is not particu- larly appropriate at its present place. The first half is missing in the original Greek version, which in-
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creases the suspicion of its being a later insertion — perhaps again at an entirely wrong place. A clear case of a popular saying is 20, 16:
"He who sucks the poison of asps, The tongue of the viper shall kill him,"
It was suggested by the reference to " gall of asps " in v. 14, though the maxim has no bearing on the argu- ment that ill-gotten gain will not endure. Again, it is to be noted that in the original Greek version only a part of the verse is found.
Referring the reader to the translation for fur- ther examples of such introduced sayings as well as little comments and glosses — of which there are sev- eral hundred scattered throughout the original book and the supplements — let us take up a few examples of superfluous lines added to the conventional stanza of four lines, and which will be found to be either an amplification of the text or must be regarded as a variant line, either orally transmitted or taken over from some codex.
IV SUPERFLUOUS LINES
In Eliphaz's first speech, we encounter a super- fluous line, 4, 19 where
"Whose foundation is in the dust"
is evidently a comment to "clay houses" in the line reading:
"How much more in those who live in clay houses."
In the same speech the fifth verse of chapter 5 has occasioned endless difficulties to modern exegetes.
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If we remove the superfluous line (5, 5b) we obtain a distich
"What they gather, the hungry eat; And the thirsty (?) drain their substance,"
while the additional line by a textual change gives us "Gathering it into granaries"
as a comment to the verse.
In Job's reply to Eliphaz we find in 6, 4 a super- fluous line,
"Whose poison drains my spirit," which is an explanation to
"The arrows of Shaddai are within me."
An instance of a superfluous line suggested by a par- allel passage occurs 13, 27 where
"Thou keepest guard over all my ways" is taken over from 33, 1 1, just as in 7, 1 1 "I will speak in the anguish of my spirit"
occurs again 10, I 72 and is evidently there taken over from our passage.
In chapter 24, we have a superfluous line in each of four successive verses (12-15). The close of v. 12 which should be rendered
"But God does not hear (their) prayer"
is a gloss on the part of a reader or commentator who sympathized with Job's argument. At the end of v. 13 the line
"They do not know its ways"
71 Except that a synonym "soul" is used for spirit. 104
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is a comment (reminding one of Ps. 2, 2) or a variant line to the second half:
"They sit not in its paths. In v. 14
"He kills the poor and the needy"
is a comment to the first half of the distich, and again in v. 15, the superfluous line
"Saying, no eye sees me," is an explanatory comment to
"The eye of the adulterer waits for the daylight?" These examples justify us in removing the large number of superfluous lines, scattered throughout the original Book of Job, as well as through the supple- ment and appendices and to regard them as comments or variants. By thus restoring the four line stanza, 73 we obtain a uniform poetic form, with a resultant greater force in many cases where the superfluous line makes the style turgid.
As a final proof of the liberties taken with the text in expanding it by comments, variants and glosses, we may instance the many cases in which an entire verse or several verses appear to be later insertions, with a view of clarifying the thought or for other reasons amplifying it. A few illustrations will suf- fice. The fourth verse of chapter 8, reading
"If thy children had sinned against Him, He would give them up because of their transgression"
73 First consistently carried out by Bickell, Das Buck Hiob (Vienna 1894), though on the basis of a metric theory which does not commend itself. Duhm (Hiob, p. 17) likewise assumes a four-line stanza throughout and Beer (Text des Buches ffiob, p. viii) inclines towards this view, as does Gray (Amer- ican Journal of Semitic Languages, vol. 36, p. 95), though the latter assumes some exceptions.
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is an interruption of the context, and moreover prosaic in form. Verse 3 reading:
"Does God pervert judgment? Does Shaddai pervert right?"
joins directly to v. 5, promising God's grace if only Job would seek out God and provided he were really pure and upright. The inserted verse is the reflection of some reader who thought to answer the question asked in v. 3, by suggesting that since Job would ex- pect his children to be punished in case they had sinned — why should that not be the explanation in his case?
Similarly, in chapter 13, verse 10 reading: "He would surely rebuke you, if you secretly showed favor"
is an inserted answer in prose form to the question asked in v. 9 and which is continued in v. 1 1, Again in chapter 14, verse n, reading:
"Waters drain the sea, And the stream dries up"
interrupts the context and may be regarded as a re- flection inserted by some reader or commentator, on the inevitableness of death as set forth in verses 10 and 12. It appears to be a quotation from Isaiah 19, 5. In chapter 22, verse 24 is missing in the original Greek version which confirms the suspicion that
"Gold ore will be regarded as dust, And Ophir 74 gold as the rock of the valleys."
is a later insertion which interprets the metaphor in v. 25 literally:
"Shaddai will be thy gold mine, And silver in superabundance to thee."
74 Name of the region whence specially fine gold was procured. 106
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The aggregate of these additions is considerable. By removing superfluous lines, briefer comments and glosses, the text is reduced by several hundred verses, so that we can now understand how a version of the Hebrew text should have existed in the second century B. c. so much shorter than our present one and from which the first Greek translation was made. How foolish in view of this to make a fetish of the author- ized Hebrew text as finally fixed by the Jewish church, and to regard it as an infringement on the sanctity of Biblical books to apply the canons of textual criticism to Job or to any other book of the sacred collection.
As a matter of fact, quite apart from the evidence brought forward to prove the liberties taken both with the original book and with the supplements and appendices by readers or commentators, the Hebrew text of Job teems with all kinds of errors due to care- less or ignorant copyists. In many cases the correct text can be restored, often through the substitution of a single letter for a wrong one. At times the Greek version helps us to detect the errors of Hebrew copy- ists, just as in return the Hebrew text occasionally permits us to recognize an error made by a Greek copyist. Often — very often indeed — a more radical procedure is necessary to enable us to restore the text at least approximately to what it must have been, and sometimes we must confess ourselves baffled by a hopeless corruption — hopeless beyond recovery except through the employment of an arbitrary method which the best Biblical scholarship has never counte- nanced. It is impossible to penetrate the meaning of
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hundreds upon hundreds of passages in the Book of Job without resorting to a critical method in the study of the text. Our English versions which aim to translate the book as it stands are the proof for this assertion. Excluding the prologue and epilogue, it is rare to find ten consecutive verses which can be re- garded as correct renderings, and not infrequently more than half of the verses in a chapter in the ordinary translation stand in need of greater or smaller revision in order to reproduce what once stood in the original. The need, therefore, of an entirely revised translation, based upon a critical study with a utilization of the results reached by other scholars who have toiled over the Book of Job, is too obvious to require further justification. This need becomes even more obvious when we turn to additions made to the original book in the interest of Jewish ortho- doxy, in the hope of converting a skeptical work into a support for conventional views against which the writers of Job in its original form entered a protest.
CHAPTER IV
HOW A SKEPTICAL BOOK WAS TRANSFORMED INTO A BULWARK OF ORTHODOXY
We haye already had occasion to point out how the word "bless" was substituted for "curse" in four places in the prologue, because to the final editors it seemed objectionable even to suggest that any one should "curse" God. The same spirit prompted pious commentators to change the third person "He" when it referred to God to "I," in order to tone down a too audacious challenge on the part of Job. So at the close of chapter 9, the ordinary translation :
"For I am not so with myself"
is meaningless and stands in no connection with the preceding line in which Job says that if God would only remove His rod and not startle him by terror — meaning his sufferings —
"I would declare without fear of Him"
Now if in the following line we change the "I" to "He" and take the word translated "so" in the sense of "fair" or "just" which is obviously meant here,75
75 First suggested by Ehrlich (Randglossen 6, p. 220). The Hebrew word is ken which means "just," though the same two consonants also form an adverb "so."
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we obtain at once a proper parallel and a logical continuation of the thought:
"That He is not fair to me."
In the same chapter, the bold challenge of Job in the iQth verse was toned down by changing "Him" to "me" and by a different vocalization of the final root, so as to make the line read :
"And if of justice, who will appoint me a time?"
The line as it stands is meaningless. Job in his bitter revolt against his fate says that he is willing to admit God's superior strength, but what he asks is justice. The distich should read:
"If it is a test of strength — He is surely superior, But if it is [a question of] justice — who can arraign Him? 76
The two lines emphasize the dilemma which is the theme of chapter 9 that no one can bring a suit against God, because God is the judge before whom the suit would have to be brought.
Similarly, as already pointed out, the reading at the beginning of chapter 32 that Job regarded him- self as justified in "his own eyes" is an intentional change, so as to avoid the implication that Job had completely triumphed by answering his friends. The Greek version shows that the original reading was that
"Job was justified in their eyes." Such an assertion which would put an end to all
76 The Greek and Syriac versions preserve the original reading "Him."
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THE BOOK OF JOB
further discussion could not be tolerated, and so by a slight change the final verdict in favor of Job was changed into a rebuke for his conceit, none the less severe for being put in an indirect manner. It is with the same intent of increasing the severity of Zophar's rebuke to Job because he regards himself as innocent that prompted a pious commentator to change what Zophar said to Job;
"Thou art pure in thine eyes." (n, 4.) into a direct assertion on the part of Job: " I am pure in His eyes " 77
implying that God knew that Job was innocent but was wilfully cruel toward him.
By way of contrast to a change made with such intent, we have instances of others that might be char- acterized as introduced ad majorem gloriam Dei. So, for example, in the description of the strength of the crocodile, a pious reader thought that it would heigh- ten the effect to change the obviously correct reading:
"Who could stand up against him? Who could attack him and come out whole?" (41, 2.) n
into a reference to God's superior power by reading in both lines "me" for "him." A glance at the con- text suffices to show that the change entirely spoils the climax to the stirring and impressive description of the huge beast against whom no one can stand up.
77 i.e., in God's eyes. So the Greek version. We might also retain "Thine eyes" (with a capital T) and refer it to God. So the translation of the American Jewish Publication Society.
78 Or 41, 10 according to the enumeration in the AV and RV.
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The Greek version, as usual in the case of such inten- tional changes, preserves the correct reading.79
II
ADDITIONS BY PIOUS COMMENTATORS As long as Job confined himself to complaints, as he does in his first two speeches, pious commentators allowed them to pass, bitter though those complaints were. Nor did they feel prompted to intervene "when Job, enlarging upon his theme, generalizes on the hard fate of man which he pathetically describes as service like that of a hireling thirsting for the even- ing shade (7, 1-2) when he will be released from his task, but when in his third speech, (chapters 9-10) he reaches his main argument that one who feels himself to be suffering without just cause cannot bring his case before God for investigation without by so doing offending the Deity by the implied sus- picion of injustice, the pious commentators felt that it was time to step in. Job, in reply to the insistence of Eliphaz on God's power, admits this and proceeds to give illustrations of the destructive and terrifying manifestation of Divine power — how God overturns mountains in His wrath and shakes the earth, hides the sun and seals up the stars (9, 2-7). In this same strain he continues,
"He goes by me without my seeing Him; He passes on without my knowing." (9, II.)
but just before this, two verses are inserted to give a different turn to Job's thought by emphasizing, as
78 Not infrequently, however, one of the later Greek versions itself tries to tone down the unorthodox utterances of Job by giving them a different turn. Example will be found in the notes to 9, 21 and n, 3.
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Eliphaz does, the marvels of God that are majestic without being destructive or terrifying. Clearly verses 8-10 of this ninth chapter reading:
" Who by Himself stretches out the heavens, And treads their heights, Who makes the Aldebaran, and Orion, The Pleiades and the constellations of the South. Who does great things past finding out, And wonders without number,"
are a later insertion, introduced with intent to make Job speak as Eliphaz has done. If any further proof were needed, it would be found in the last distich which is a quotation from Eliphaz's speech (5, 9). In this fourth speech (chapters 12-14), the extra- ordinary length of which raises the suspicion that it has been amplified, Job begins by bringing forth his charge that the wicked prosper while the innocent are laughed to scorn. Such is also the burden of his four following speeches by the side of the ever- recurring complaint of his sad plight. This affords the pious commentators the desired opportunity to intersperse their orthodox reflections, so as to take off as it were the sharp edge of the severe indictment of Divine justice. So in 12, 6 after Job has declared that
"The tents of the robbers prosper, And there is security for those who provoke God"
Our pious commentator adds:
"Whom God holds in His power."
Job continues and says that the beasts, the birds of heaven and what crawls on the earth and the fish 8 113
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of the sea know that all nature is a struggle in which one fails to see justice at work,
"Who does not know all these things?" Knows what? To the assurance:
"That the hand of Yahweh has done this, Our pious commentator adds :
"In whose hand is the soul of every living being and the breath of all mankind." (12, 10.)
The prose form reveals the insertion, the evident intent of which is to give Job's thought a different direction from the one towards which it was moving. The introduction of the name Yahweh, which is not used in the poetic discussions, is a further proof that some other hand than that of the original compiler has been at work. The following verse (12, n):
"Cannot the ear test words And the palate taste for itself?"
is a quotation from Elihu's second speech (34, 3), merely changed into a question form, while v. 12 reading:
["Not] with grey beards is wisdom, Nor understanding with the aged."
was suggested by another utterance of Elihu (32, 9). Furthermore, verse 13
"With Him is wisdom and might; With Him is counsel and intelligence."
is a reflection that clearly betrays the same pious commentator who added verse 10. Omitting these verses, we find v. 14 forming the continuation to the question:
"Who does not know all these things?" "4
THE BOOK OF JOB
Job recurs (w. 14-25) to his admission that God is powerful, but powerful in destroying and terrifying. We may likewise suspect the hand of the ortho- dox amplifier in the last verse (v. 25) of the chapter:
" So that they grope in the darkness without light, And He makes them stagger like a drunken man."
Our pious commentator is thinking of the overthrow of worthless guides of the people, and therefore pictures them like the wicked stumbling in the dark- ness that surrounds them. Job, however, has in mind merely the terrifying manifestation of God's power in setting aside earthly rulers, no matter how high their station. Nobles, princes, judges, priests — are all swept away whenever God chooses to do so. He is supreme — that is Job's thought. But is His superior- ity exercised with justice ? That is the question which torments the writers in the original Book of Job.
Removing these numerous additions the length of the chapter is reduced by almost one-half. The process of amplification is continued in the following two chapters (13-14.) Job, reflecting on the brevity of life and its fullness of care, says :
"Man is born of woman, Few of days and full of trouble, He comes forth like a flower and withers; Fleeing as a disappearing shadow." (14, 1-2.)
He then asks :
"Hast Thou, indeed, considered this, In bringing him to judgment?"
The pious commentator (verse 4), conscious of man's sinful nature, answers by the reflection,
" Can one bring clean out of unclean ? Not one" "5
THE BOOK OF JOB
i.e., the unrepentant sinner who is none other than Job himself ever remains unclean and cannot expect to be pardoned for his misdoings.
Consistent with what we have seen to be the practice of the pious commentators, Job is permitted in his fifth speech (chapters 16-17) to rebuke his friends, to recall his sufferings and to pass on to a description of the hostile forces arrayed against him — all without interruption. Only when towards the close of chapter 16, he reaches a climax of bitterness in appealing to the earth not to allow his blood to be shed in vain,
"Earth, do not cover up my blood,80 That there be no occasion for my outcry."
a pious commentator intervenes to give the assurance; "Even now my witness is in heaven.81 (16, 19.)
How could Job in one and the same breath complain of Divine injustice, and then declare his faith in a heavenly witness. So far from God vouching for him, Job implies in the verses immediately following that his appeals are not heard:
"On high my thoughts are my intercessors; To God my eye makes the appeal; That mortal may secure justice from God, As between a man and his fellow." (16, 20-21.)
— but all to no avail. God is callous to the cry of anguish. It is precisely in order to counterbalance the extreme bitterness of such outbursts that a pious reflection about the "witness in heaven" is inserted.
80 The covering up of the blood means concealing the crime. See the note to the passage.
81 See further in the notes to the translation of 16, 19-20.
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In chapter 17, our pious commentator has another opportunity of adding a reflection (v. 9) :
"The righteous clings to his way," And the clean of hand increases in strength."
to counterbalance Job's ironical exclamation that the "upright must rejoice" at his having become a by- word of the people and that "the innocent will be aroused against the impious" — meaning himself. What bitter irony! Job speaks of himself as "im- pious," knowing that this is what those who do not understand him think. His awful fate will cause rejoicing among the godly, because he is looked upon as a sinner. Could rebellion against the Divine order of things go further? No wonder that the pious commentator felt called upon to step in.
In Job's seventh speech (chapter 21) he replies to the second series of speeches of the three friends who have tried to outdo one another in portraying the fate that overtakes the wicked. The burden of these speeches is that though the evildoers may seem to flourish for a while, inevitable punishment through God's wrath overtakes them. Says Eliphaz (15, 20) :
"All his days the wicked is in terror, And the number of his years are limited."
Says Bildad (18, 17-18):
"His remembrance shall perish from the earth; And nowhere will there be a memorial of him. They shall drive him from light into darkness; And out of the earth they shall chase him."
Says Zophar (20, 27) :
"The heavens shall reveal his iniquity, And the earth shall rise up against him."
117
Job's patience — or rather what is left of it — is exhausted by this three-fold repetition of an utterly false account of what really happens in this world. With a violence surpassing all previous utterances Job proceeds to paint a true picture of the world in which we live.
"When I think of it, I am dismayed, And horror takes hold of me. Why do the wicked flourish, Grow old and even wax mighty?" (21, 6-7.)
That is the keynote to the chapter, which rings the changes on the theme that happiness and success crown the activities of those who ride roughshod over all ethical restraints in seeking their goal.
The indictment becomes terrible as Job describes the merriment that abounds in the homes of the wicked, how everything goes well, how all ventures succeed, how they pass their lives without any thought of God, how they are spared when calamity overtakes others, and how, when satiated with happi- ness, they sink quietly into the grave, the bier is followed by a large concourse of mourners.
"The clods of the valley seem sweet to him, As the whole population draws after him. How then can you comfort me with vanity, Since your arguments are a tissue of falsehood? "(21, 33.)
What can the pious commentator do in the face of such an indictment? He tones down the bitterness of the chapter by two pious reflections. When Job portrays the indifference of the wicked to the com- mands of God,
"To God they say, 'Away from us; We desire not the knowledge of Thy ways.'" (21, 14.)
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our commentator, wishing us to conclude that Job speaks thus (v. 16), adds:
"Ah, there is no happiness in their hand; The counsel of the wicked be far from me."
The reflection would be in place if one of the friends had made it, and we actually find the second line inserted in a speech of Eliphaz (22, i8b), but Job whose whole point is that the wicked are happy could not so flagrantly contradict himself. Again, when Job rises to the height of bitterness in answering the contention of his friends that even if the wicked is not punished in his lifetime, his sons are made to suffer. What does he care, asks Job, what happens to others as long as he escapes.
"Let Him (i.e., God) requite him that he may know it. ******
What is his concern in his house after him,
When the number of his months is completed?" (21, 19-21.)
This audacity was too much for our pious commen- tator who therefore adds:
"Shall one presume to teach God, Him who judges on high?" (21, 22.)
These examples will suffice to show how through- out the original book the attempt was made to weaken the skeptical trend by insertions and reflections that in an uncritical age would not fail to make their appeal. The insertions would counterbalance the genuine passages in which Job passed beyond all bounds in the vehemence of his charges against God and in the denunciation of the cruel fate that so often overtakes those who have led virtuous and pious lives. One could point to these pious exclama-
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tions, thus liberally interspersed throughout the speeches of Job, in reply to those who might have been troubled by the large number of sentiments expressed by Job that were anything but pious. The rebellious and impatient Job, according to this ex- planation, represents a passing mood; the true Job is revealed in the pious utterances; and so the contradictions between evident insertions and the genuine passages were allowed to stand until the advent of modern criticism.
A traditional interpretation of the original Book of Job thus arose that made it consistent with the genuine Jewish orthodoxy as taught in the speeches of Elihu and in the collection of nature poems; and tradition as it grows apace is apt to warp the criti- cal instinct to such an extent that after the lapse of time even manifest contradictions fail to arrest one's attention.
Ill
THE TRANSFORMATION OF CRUCIAL PASSAGES
Comments and variants and changes tending to tone down objectionable utterances did not exhaust the resources of those who were bent on showing that the Job of the Symposium was as patient and as God-fearing as the Job of the popular tale. Pious commentators, in addition to adding their reflections which came to be looked upon as integral parts of Job's speeches, did not hesitate to go a step further and by apparently innocent changes in the text itself before it became rigidly fixed, succeeded in giving to crucial passages an entirely different mean-
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THE BOOK OF JOB
ing from the one originally intended. Let us take up as illustrations the two most famous passages in the Book of Job, still popularly regarded as proving the staunch piety of the central figure in the Sym- posium. The first of these occurs in the thirteenth chapter and is familiar to everyone in the traditional rendering:
"Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." (13, 15.)
Modern scholarship has shown that the verse must be translated:
"Aye, though He slay me, I tremble not," 82
as the following line, furnishing the parallel required by poetry, conclusively proves;
" For all that, I will maintain His ^ course to His face."
The correct translation is adopted by the Revised Version and by all modern translators with a single exception.84 Now how did the erroneous translation arise? Simply by a marginal reading "Him" in the Hebrew text in place of "not," 85 and by taking the word "tremble" (or possibly "hope") through a different vocalization to mean "trust." There can be no doubt that the marginal reading "Him" is an intentional change made by some commentator after the text had been fixed. Convinced that the Book
82 Or possibly, "I have no hope." The translation of the American Baptist Publication Society renders: "Behold, he will slay me, I may not hope." See the note to the passage in the translation.
83 Text has "my" — likewise an intentional change, to diminish the auda- city of the challenge.
84 The translation issued by the American Jewish Publication Society retains the traditional, but entirely untenable rendering.
85 Involving a very slight change, both words having the same sound in Hebrew. See the note to the passage.
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of Job as it stood was a unit and determined to make it a defense of orthodox Judaism, he could not recon- cile himself to the thought that Job could give utter- ance to such a defiant challenge, as
"Though He slay me, I tremble not."
That was going too far. The pious, patient, model Job could not have said that, and so he was made to say the very contrary that he would retain his faith in God, even though God should decide to put him to death — innocently. This intentional but unwar- ranted change is an interesting illustration of the difficulties felt by the later Jewish theologians in giving to Job an orthodox character, even after pious commentators and the amplifiers of the book had done their work. They therefore continued the process of changing the spirit of Job's speeches as best they could. After the text had been fixed by the Jewish rabbis of the first century A.D., no further additions were permitted, but codices still differed somewhat in their readings, and therefore the rabbis felt free to introduce marginal readings of their own, when they felt that in doing so they could obtain a reading more satisfactory to them. When marginal readings failed, a twist could be given by a subtle exegesis to passages in which the text was corrupt — perhaps, indeed, in some cases intentionally corrupted, so as to obscure the objec- tionable original.
A single passage, thus given an entirely different interpretation from the one intended by the author, would not fail of effect; and, particularly a verse that
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could by its striking admission of profound faith serve to counterbalance many other utterances cal- culated to arouse suspicion of Job's faith. What could be stronger than the assertion
"Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him?"
A Job who could say that in the midst of his sufferings was, forsooth, the model of piety, as he is pictured in the popular tale. Accordingly, up to our own days this famous passage occurs to the average Bible reader as characteristic of Job. The beauty and simplicity of the verse has stuck in the popular mind; and even the critic must feel a pang of regret at being forced to point out its incorrectness. Job ought to have said it, but unfortunately he said just the contrary, that though God crushes his life, yet he will maintain his innocence without fear — "I trust in Him" was a sentiment appropriate to the meek Job of the folktale, but not to the rebellious character in the Symposium.
If we assume that the verse in its original form was regarded as a bold challenge, we can understand why a pious commentator felt it necessary to insert, as a further means of removing the unfavorable impression, the following verse, revealed as an inser- tion by its prose form:
"Aye, this will be my salvation that the impious will not come before Him." (13, 16.)
That is precisely what Job in his defiant mood could not and would not say.
Our second illustration of an intentional distor- tion of a crucial passage is the utterance of Job which
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THE BOOK OF JOB
has become the most famous of all in the entire book (19, 25-27). According to the view still current, the sufferer voices his firm faith :
"I know that my Redeemer liveth"
and goes on to express his belief that he will yet be justified — according to the older traditional inter- pretation— "in the flesh" in a future world when he will see God for himself, or according to a later though also orthodox view "out of the flesh."
The entire passage has occasioned endless diffi- culties to exegetes, particularly v. 26, which, as it stands, is syntactically almost impossible.86 The ordinary translation :
"And when after my skin this is destroyed, Then without my flesh shall I see God " 87
cannot be correct, for the thought of a meeting with God after this earthly life is over is entirely contrary to the belief of Job as set forth in his speeches. In his very first speech (chapter 3), in which he expresses the wish that he had never been born, he speaks of Sheol as the general gathering place where all dis- tinctions of rank disappear and where inactivity reigns. There is not the slightest suggestion of any thought of retribution or justification. When in subsequent speeches Job longs for death, it is as a release from his sufferings. He sighs for the "place of no return" (7, 8), where he will be safely hidden —
M See the commentaries of Budde, Duhm and Barton for details which are too technical to be introduced at this point.
17 So the rendering in the translation of the American Jewish Publication Society, follpwing the AV.
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even from God. Throughout the speeches 88 Job's point of view, as is also that of Koheleth writing about two centuries later, is the older general Semitic conception of continuing consciousness after death, but minus all activity and without any punishment for wrongs done in this world or compensation for endured suiferings. If, therefore, such a doctrine is put forth in the 26th verse of chapter 19, it is only because the text has been manipulated in such a way by pious commentators as to permit of such an interpretation under the sway of an ungrammati- cal exegesis. The comparison of the Hebrew text with the Greek version of this verse bears out this contention.89 The Hebrew of v. 26 begins with "after my skin" (or "under my skin," which is preferable), but the Greek version omits "after." To maintain that this phrase means "after death" either within one's skin or out of one's skin is quite impossible. Nor can the following words be rendered "this is destroyed," for the sufficient reason that in the Hebrew text subject (sing.) and verb (plural) do not agree. We must take the context as our point of departure for a correct interpretation. Job has asked his tormentors :
"Why do you pursue me like a stag " 90
since he is so worn with disease that his flesh would not suffice for a meal. Realizing that his friends are utterly lacking in sympathy, he exclaims that if
88 See especially the passage 14, 7-12.
89 See the full discussion of the point in Beer, Text des Buches Hiob, pp. 124-126.
90 For this reading instead of "God," see the note to the passage.
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only his words were hewn into the rock, like an in- scription that would remain for all times, he would be certain that a defender would arise some day. It is in this sense that he uses the old Semitic term god as the one on whom the obligation rests to seek redress for a wrong done to a kinsman.91 The got I is the avenger, the justifier the vindicator — the redeemer, if you choose, but in the literal sense as the one who redeems a wrong committed. A human "redeemer" is meant,92 one who will act as a justifier or better still as a "defender," which would be the modern term corresponding closest to the ancient one. What Job therefore says is :
"Oh that my words could be inscribed,93 Graven for all times in the rock! M Then I would know that my defender will arise, Even though he should rise up in the distant future."
This being the thought demanded by the context, what follows must be in accord with this hope.
We owe to Ehrlich 95 the suggestion that v. 26 embodies the lament that unfortunately Job alone knows of his sufferings. They are inscribed merely on his person,
"Under my skin this (i.f., the record of his sufferings) is indited."
91 See further the note on the word, in the translation of the chapter.
92 Credit should be given to a Jewish commentator Saadia, living in the ninth century A.D., who recognized that redeemer could not refer to God, but his is a single voice.
91 A commentator paraphrases this by adding "Oh that one might inscribe in a book," to point out that recording on a soft material like papyrus or skin had taken the place of the earlier incision on a hard substance like stone, metal or rock.
MA glossator adds prosaically "and with an iron stylus and lead." See further for the justification of my translation, the notes to 19, 23-29.
9* Randglossen, 6, p. 257.
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He alone sees the evidence of his tortures which are hidden from others. He will be forgotten and his sufferings with him. Therefore, he adds: "And within my flesh do I see these [words] 96
The following verse (v. 27) appears to be an amplifi- cation, added by some commentator who felt the obscurity of the passage;
"I alone can see it (i.e., the record of tortures) for myself; Mine eyes see it, but not another's."
In justification of this interpretation, that Job is here referring to his sufferings and not to any sight of God after death, we have another comment added ;
"My reins are consumed within me" 97
which is merely another way of saying that he alone is conscious of all that he is forced to endure. His friends are estranged from him. They are blind to his condition. They have no understanding for his state of mind. He alone sees the record of his endur- ance, written clearly on his own person — in the emaciated form and in the features distorted with pain . The loneliness in his grief adds to the poignancy of his martyrdom. That is the thought which the author wishes to bring out in a passage that has been completely distorted by a deliberate endeavor to twist its meaning, both before the text became fixed and even after this period. The passage in the inter- pretation given to it by a false exegesis has become crucial for the traditional interpretation of the Book
*6 Which he would like to have inscribed on a rock so that all may see the record for all times.
97 If we follow the traditional translation, this line remains suspended in the air.
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of Job. The utterance in the mouth of Job " I know that my Redeemer liveth" outweighs the impression made by his bitter complaints. By the side of the equally erroneous rendering "Though He slay me, yet -will I trust in Him" and the assertion "Even now my witness is in heaven," Job's faith in his justification in a future life — for that also was read into this passage — appeared to be established beyond all question. HoWever utterances that seemed to contradict these assurances of a pious and trusting soul were to be explained, here were three utterances whose testimony seemed to be unimpeachable. In this way the Job of the Symposium was brought into accord with the Job of the folktale. Both Jobs endured the test. Both remained pious and God- fearing under the severest trials ever imposed upon man. The cause of Jewish orthodoxy was saved. For an uncritical age the three passages sufficed to win the day for the doctrine of Divine government as taught by the prophets, and which became the corner stone of post-exilic Judaism.
It is not a pleasant task for the critic thus to hold up as erroneous passages in the original book which have not only made their way into the Church and Synagogue service, but which by their beauty and impressiveness have been a source of consolation to countless myriads these two milleniums, sustaining them in sorrow and helping them to bear the ills and burdens of life. The critic must forego popularity. He lays himself open to the suspicion of being wilfully destructive of hallowed traditions and of long-exist- ing conventions. If he is serious minded — and the
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THE BOOK OF JOB
critic is not genuine unless he feels the responsibility of his task — he may himself share the regret of thus being forced to abandon an interpretation of the Book of Job to which in common with his non-critical fellows he had clung. He must console himself by the deeper penetration that he gains into the spirit of Biblical literature and the clearer view of the evolu- tion of religious thought and practice among the Hebrews from lowly beginnings to an advanced stage — a stage higher than that reached by any other people of antiquity and which culminated in a tem- porary climax in the commingling of Hebrew and Greek spirituality in early Christianity.
Applying this to the original Book of Job, is there not a decided compensation for the abandon- ment of the traditional view of significant passages that have always been associated with the popular conception of the book, in the recognition that the main aim of the writers of the remarkable Symposium was precisely to depict this struggle involved in the attempt to penetrate the mystery by which we are surrounded — the mystery of all mysteries, life itself with its burdens and sorrows that seem to be the heritage of mankind? The writers shrink from the task of solving the mystery, which they frankly regard to be beyond human reach, but they wish to arouse our sympathy for the distressed soul, for the sufferer who typifies for them man universal, wring- ing his hands in anguish and crying — why and how long? Why — this burden of sorrow too heavy to be born? How long this torture, imposed for no good apparent reason ? Job's case is of general application,
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THE BOOK OF JOB
just because it is an extreme instance. The problem of human suffering is intensified by the example of a really pious and God-fearing man doomed to pain and misery. The original Book of Job as a consistent expression of the questioning spirit is a greater mas- terpiece than Job as an awkward combination of contradictory points of view, brought about through the conscious endeavor to change the original drift of the book.
IV
ORTHODOX SENTIMENTS PLACED IN THE MOUTH
OF JOB
We now approach the boldest stroke on the part of those who aimed to convert the original Book of Job into a support for the orthodox point of view. The confusion existing in the third series of speeches (chapters 25 to 31) to which attention has been called 98 has long been recognized by scholars. Vari- ous explanations have from time to time been brought forward to account for the brief speech of Bildad (chapter 25) consisting of only six verses, and the long utterances of Job, covering the remaining six chapters. The absence of any third speech of Zophar had also been noticed, but only a few even of modern scholars" have recognized the need of a radical method in
98 Above, p. 71. See the details in the notes to the translation of Chap- ters 25-31.
" Barton is among those who have realized the need of a radical rear- rangement of the chapters in question. (Journal of Biblical Literature, vol. 30, pp. 66-77) though I differ from his restoration in some important points. Sieg- fried in his critical text of the Book of Job (ed. Haupt, Leipzig, 1893) gives a correct reconstruction of chapters 25-26 but fails to reconstruct Zophar's speech and introduces rather arbitrary transposition of verses within chapter 29, instead of recognizing that 29, 21-25 ls an independent fragment which has been inserted into Job's first supplementary speech. He also fails to recognize that 30, 16-24 is part of Job's reply to Bildad and that 31, 35-37 must represent the close of this reply, or possibly the close of Job's missing reply to Zophar.
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getting order out of a seemingly hopeless chaos. Referring the reader to the translation for the re- arrangement of these chapters, it is sufficient for our purposes here to recall once more that the six chapters (22 to 27), represent further discussions of the problem that emanate from the same circle which produced the first two series of speeches.
Chapters 22 to 24, containing a speech of Eliphaz and Job's reply, add nothing to the arguments already presented by both sides, except the direct charge of lack of charity and mercy levelled at Job and for which his sufferings, it is claimed, are a just retri- bution. The absurdity of Eliphaz saying to Job:
"Surely, thy wickedness must be great, And there can be no end to thy iniquities." (22, 5.)
is so patent that one can only explain the introduction as deliberate, in order to put a weapon into the hands of Job which he wields with force in his reply. Eliphaz then once more unrolls the false picture of the punish- ment of the wicked (verses 15-20) and, again as in previous speeches, calls upon Job to return to God and all will be well. Job in reply (chapter 23) once more brings forth his plea that he cannot bring his case before God, adding with special emphasis that he cannot find God, no matter how intensely he searches for Him. In chapter 24, he sets forth in detail all the crimes committed by the wicked. In powerful language, he describes the oppression and misery of the poor, forced to go about naked, drenched by the rain and clinging to rocks for shelter, as the result of the ruthlessness against which they are
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powerless. All this is clearly an amplification of what Job has already dwelt upon in chapter 21. There is no reply in these two chapters to Eliphaz and it is, therefore, evident that the speech of Eliphaz is, as already suggested, another draft of the argument of this speaker put forth in previous speeches, while Job's speech is similarly an imitation and amplifica- tion of former utterances — likewise an independent draft by some hand which tried to set forth what Job might have said.
Suddenly, however, we find Job speaking as the friends do. Instead of picturing the success of the wiles of the wicked as he did in chapter 21, we find him foretelling their doom. Beginning with v. 18 of chapter 24 in which a pious commentator inserts the reflection:
"Their portion is cursed in the earth." we find Job telling us of the wicked (v. 20) :
"The womb forgets him; Worms feed (?) on him. He is no longer remembered; Iniquity is crushed like a tree,"
and again v. 24:
They are exalted for a while and brought low; And as the tips of the grain they wither."
Such reflections, entirely contradicting what Job had previously said, are interspersed in this supple- mentary speech with the deliberate intent of taking off the edge of the skepticism and cynicism in Job's utterances. The closing verse of the chapter:
"If it is not so, who will prove me to be a liar, And nullify my speech?"
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would only be in place if Job were denouncing the success of the wicked. This verse clinches the argu- ment in favor of v. i8b, 20 and 24 as insertions by a pious commentator.
But those interested in toning down the skepti- cal implications in Job's speeches did not stop short here in their endeavor to change the original character of the book. In chapter 27, some one was bold enough to place a more detailed description (27, 7-23) of the awful doom in store for the evildoer into the mouth of Job. It is manifestly inconceivable that the Job who speaks so bitterly in chapter 22 of the way in which evildoers escape the consequences of their deeds should now say of the wicked:
"Though he heap up silver as dust, And provide garments as clay; He may provide, but the righteous will put on,
And the innocent shall divide the silver. ******
He lies down rich, but it will not endure;
He opens his eyes, and it is gone.
Terrors overtake him by day;
The tempest removes him by night." (27, 16-20.)
Job is actually represented as quoting from a speech of Zophar (20, 29) :
"Such is the portion of the wicked from God, And the heritage of the oppressors from Shaddai." (27, 13.)
What has happened? Clearly, a portion of a third speech of Zophar — in imitation of his second one — has been deliberately added to 27, 1-6 which is a genuine utterance of Job, protesting his innocence and which is entirely out of keeping with 27, 7-23. Not content with this, some other commentator,
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intent upon representing Job as God-fearing and acknowledging the merciful providence of God, took a piece of Bildad's third speech 26, 5-14, detached it from its connection (25, 1-6) and tacked it on to the introduction of Job's answer to Bildad (26, i-4.)100 There is no connection whatsoever between Job's rebuke of his friends (26, 1-4) and the sudden transi- tion to the power and providence of God (26, 5~H) beginning:
"The shades below are in terror; The waters and their inhabitants"
and ending with :
"These are but the outskirts of his ways, And a mere whisper that penetrates to us."
It is claimed by some scholars that this confusion between Job's utterances and those of his friends is accidental, due to a confusion of separate leaves of a codex. This can hardly be, for it is difficult to see how it could happen accidentally that by such con- fusion only orthodox sentiments should have been put into the mouth of Job. At all events, exegetes permitted the confusion to remain to the threshold of modern Biblical study, and even at the present time there are defenders of the present arrangement who point to it in their desperate effort to prove that the original Book of Job ended in an orthodox strain. Our modern translators of the Bible have done nothing to enlighten the lay reader as to the real situation. Translations of the Book of Job continue
100 This answer of Job thus consists of 26, 1-4, followed by 27, 2-6 and 30, 16-24, with 31, 35-37 as the probable conclusion.
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to be printed in strict obedience to the indications of the Hebrew text, and the reader is left to solve the enigma as best he can, how Job can say one thing in one place and directly contradict himself in another. Surely, respect for the Bible is not increased by thus hiding the truth.
V THE "SEARCH FOR WISDOM"
The natural upshot, however, of the manifest confusion was to strengthen the case for Job's ortho- doxy. The pious commentators and editors secured the triumph for which they yearned, but at the ex- pense of eschewing criticism and of producing a work full of contradictions. The same spirit of saving the book for orthodoxy which prompted the in- sertion of pious reflections to counterbalance Job 's audacious charges and indictments, which led to the distortion of passages from their original mean- ing and which prompted later editors deliberately to remove sections from speeches of one of the friends and give them to Job, also superinduced the insertion of chapter 28 — the "Search for Wisdom" which is without any connection whatsoever with the Symposium, and without any bearings on the argu- ments of the friends of Job. Superb in its diction and of the highest dtder of literary excellence, this descrip- tion of the search for wisdom which is hidden from man betrays the same point of view as that found in the first nine chapters of Proverbs, constituting the first main division of this book.101 It reflects a highly
101 Though not the oldest section. See Toy, Critical and Exegetical Com- mentary on the Book of Proverbs, p. xviii seq.
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intellectual age in which knowledge was exalted above all other possessions, but an age which had already begun to experience the disappointment due to the impossibility of solving through knowledge the mys- tery by which man is surrounded.
The writer of this chapter (or possibly some later amplifier) 102 agrees with Proverbs in placing wisdom above all treasures, but he is an agnostic when it comes to securing wisdom.
"Wisdom whence cometh she?"
rings as a refrain through the chapter. The answer to the question is impressive but discouraging.
"God knows the way to her; And He knows her place." (28,23.)
God — but not man. And then in a passage of unsur- passed eloquence, which likewise finds a parallel in Proverbs 8, 22-30, the writer exclaims that when God created the world;
"When He gave a weight for the wind, And measured out the waters; When He assigned a law for the rain, And a path for the thunderbolt; He saw her and proclaimed her; Established her, aye, singled her out." (28, 25-27.)
Our author furnishes, as it were, a commentary to the original Book of Job by suggesting the reason for the unsatisfactory conclusion which the author of Job reaches. Wisdom is with God — not with man! How, then, can man hope to understand the ways of God ? Orthodox circles, ignoring the agnostic
"Verses 15-19 of the chapter may be later additions taken over from Proverbs 3, 14-15; 8, n and 18-19. See the notes to the translation.
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THE BOOK OF JOB
implications of the chapter, would welcome this pro- duction as a strong support for their cause. They would be only too eager to have Job confess that man cannot by human wisdom penetrate the secrets of God's universe, created by Him through His wisdom which God alone can "proclaim and single out." It was, therefore, an editor acting in the interest of orthodoxy who attached this splendid bit of litera- ture at the close of the supplemental third series of