The Book of Job a Drama, and yet subjectively true.

The two ideas are perfectly consistent. It may have the dramatic form, the dramatic interest, the dramatic emotion, the dramatic teaching, and yet be substantially a truthful narrative. Making allowance for what are merely matters of language, such as the use of round and double numbers to express things that are beyond statistical estimate, we may believe in the general outward verity, whilst regarding this mode of stating the vastness of Job's possessions, and the suddenness of his calamities, as itself evidence of a subjective truthfulness. It testifies to the deep impression left by the story as explicable only on some basis of actuality consistent with emotional hyperbole, but repelling the thought of artistic skill or frigid invention. It is this subjective truthfulness which is all that is required for a true faith in the divinity of the Holy Scriptures. It includes every thing else of value, and, once firmly held throughout, brings with it the idea of the outward supernatural as not easily separable from such a book, and such a history, lying, as it does, in the midst of such cotemporary human surroundings. We are compelled to take with it a corresponding measure of objective truth, regarded as separate from the necessarily emotional language, or as far as may be demanded for the moral and spiritual impression. In this way, what we have called subjective truthfulness may be very easily defined. It is the perfect honesty of the writer or writers whom God has chosen as the recorders of the great objective events which constitute the revelation He has made to the world. We are only to suppose that they heartily believed the truth of what they wrote, according to its evident intent as historical, dramatic, or allegorical, to be judged of according to the clear marks left upon its style. When we thus believe in the perfect honesty of the writers, we shall find ourselves, if truthful and candid, compelled to believe in a great deal more. Applying this to the Book of Job, we can thus hold that the writer, whoever he may have been, and in whatever age he may have lived, truly believed the substantial historical verity of what his pen has transmitted to us. This subjective truthfulness is unaffected by the steps or media through which such a belief may have come to him. It may have been in one of three ways: the writer may have been an eye-witness; or he may have received it from near cotemporary testimony, in which he fully trusts; or it may have reached him through a tradition, of whose substantial truthfulness he has no doubt. There has thus come to him the substance of the story: a rich and prosperous man suddenly reduced to the extreme of poverty, bereavement, and pain; his sore trial, the treatment of his friends, the prolonged discussions between them, the alleged divine interposition, and the sufferer's restoration to a state of still greater prosperity. Along with this is the idea of a super-earthly nexus of events, originating the providential means by which the trial is brought about, and furnishing a reason for the strange suffering. This revelation of events belonging to the superhuman sphere, and the modes by which they may be supposed to become known to the human mind, whether as pictorial accommodations, or in any other way, present a question standing by itself. The ground of faith in them, is the same as that of other Scriptural narratives which carry us above the plane of human knowledge. It is enough for one who believes in the Bible as truly a divine book, that they are spiritually and dramatically consistent with the earthly events of the story and the spiritual design to which they furnish the key. On the round numbers we have already remarked. They should disturb no one who is familiar with the style of the Bible. They are simply methods of expressing vastness without regard to statistical accuracy. It may be said, indeed, that the use of units, tens, and hundreds, in such narratives, would have furnished good ground of suspicion, or actually detracted from our perfect trust in this subjective truthfulness of the writer which we rationally regard as beyond every other excellence. The same may be said in respect to the rapid connection of the events. It is a picture giving us the most vivid impression of suddenness, or one trouble coming whilst another is fresh in its effect and remembrance, breaking the victim, as Job says, "with breach upon breach." Human experience confirms this as something not infrequent in the great trials of life, to whatever causation they may be referred. Such a story leads to hyperboles. They may almost be said to be its natural and therefore most truthful language. Their ab

*

The round

sence would betray an unemotional state out of harmony with the deep interest of the events believed. They would characterize the style even of an animated eye-witness. Still more might they be expected in one who gives such an account its second transmission; and thus this language of emotion would become its fitting, or, as we might even call it, its truthful vehicle, getting a traditional form which is the strongest evidence of a once vivid actuality, easy to be distinguished from the wild myth, or the more fanciful legend. The same view may be taken of Job's restoration. In itself, it is not an improbable event. numbers here are doubled, but this, too, is matter of language. It is a mode of expressing the fact that the restored prosperity greatly exceeded that of the former state; as in sober descriptive Greek we may have dirháσioç used as only another term for оhνhács, or the multifold. In judging of this truthfulness, it is enough if we can be satisfied of the absence of all invention, or of any thing that looks like literary artifice. There is abundant internal evidence, that the scenes and events recorded were real scenes and real events to the writer, whoever he may have been. He believed the story; he gives the discussions either as he heard them, or as they had been repeated, over and over, in many an ancient consessus. The very modes of transmission show the deep impression it had made, in all the East, as a most veritable as well as most marvellous event. It may be this, and yet as truly a drama, with its heroic action, whether outward or spiritual, and having as much right to the name‡ as any others, so-called, which are inventions, either in whole or in part.

* It is, in fact, this very kind of language, indicating, as it does, the absence of invention, which shows the state of the writer's mind in relation to it, and his firm belief in the substantial truth of the story, whether derived from near witnesses, or from remoter tradition. As we have elsewhere remarked (Note to Lange Gen., p. 319), "there is something in this subjective truthfulness as denoted by wide and rounded statements, which is far more precious to a right faith, than any attempt at objective or scientific accuracy." "All the high hills under the whole heaven," Gen. vii. 19, is evidently the language of a spectator deeply moved by the scene as he beholds it. How much more full of satisfaction is this to a right thinking, than any numerical or geographical settlement of the question about the extent of the flood. In the emotion evidently denoted by such words, there is carried the vivid impression of reality, and this is what we most need. So, too, Acts ii. 5: “And there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews devout men out of every nation under heaven!" We cannot resist the feeling of some most real memorable assemblage, that gave rise to such an impassioned description. It is not at all the style of legend but of deep emotion. A still more remarkable proof of our seeming paradox, is the language of the loving and beloved disciple, John xxi. 23. What a vivid reality must there have been in that character which calls out the seemingly extravagant language: "Not even the world could contain the books that should be written." The comparison is to be taken, not as a measure of outward-fact, but as an expression of devotion, of admiration, of boundless love. In this sense it is no extravagance; the hyperbole wholly disappears. When John wrote that Gospel, the world of sense, with all its images, failed to set forth the excellence of Christ. "Heaven and earth were full of his glory." He must have lived, most objectively lived, who produced such an impression. Inwardly it was the most truthful of utterances. Let us suppose that the statement had been more guardedly made, and instead of the world it had been said: "Hardly a folio volume would have sufficed for the recital of what Jesus had done;" how would it have diminished that real power and truthfulness to which the strongest utterances were inadequate.

The same view may be taken of all parts of the Old Testament, where immense numbers, especially round numbers, are employed; as in the emotional statements of certain great battles with their countless slaughter. The case is different when statistical accuracy enters into the very essence of the account, as in the details of the Tabernacle and of the Levitical sacrifices.

† A difficulty is made from the statement of Job's age at the close of the Book. It comes from adding the number there mentioned (140 years) to his supposed former life, which could hardly have been less than 50 or 60 years, thus making, in all, two hundred years or more. But there is no need of this; the most easy and unforced rendering would take this term, 140 years, as the entire length of his life. He lived till he became 140 years old. This is in harmony with his seeing his children to the fourth generation, or great grand-children, even though born after he was fifty years old. The words "N, “after this," are not in conflict with such a view. It may very easily be rendered: "After this Job lived on, even to the age of 140 years." Such an age is not improbable, even for a later time than the patriarchal. There are examples of such longevity in quite modern times.

There are the best of reasons for calling Job a drama, if we do not take the word in too narrow a sense. It has all the essential parts of such a composition: its Prologue, its Dialogue, and its Crisis. It has, moreover, its great deλov, trial or prize. It is the very heart of the Book, possessing even an Epic grandeur of interest. The integrity of Job, the very soul of Job, we may say, is the matter of this test, the subject of this ȧyúv, or strife between God and Satan. To accommodate Homer's language, Iliad xxii. 160, to a far higher theme:

οὐχ ἱερήϊον, οὐδὲ βοείη,

ἀλλὰ περὶ ΨΥΧΗΣ μάρνανται ἀθανάτοιο.

Even if its action were wholly spiritual, it would, none the less, be entitled to the name dramatic. It has, however, as much of outward movement as the Prometheus Vinctus of Eschylus, or the Philoctetes of Sophocles. In the latter, too, the dramatic interest is chiefly in the spiritual strife arising out of intense bodily pain.

Or it may be regarded as purely poetic, in fact as well as in form, with the exception, perhaps, of a few human elements, whether legendary or historical, that may have aided in inspiring the idea of its composition. By those who adopt this view, as is done by some of our most pious as well as learned commentators, it is, of course, held that the Prologue, and the Theophany at the close, belong to the dramatic scenery. As maintained, however, by men like Hengstenberg, Dillmann, and Delitzsch, this theory of poetic invention does not come from any such aversion to the very idea of the supernatural as characterizes the whole Rationalist school. It is not with them the mere shunning of difficulties, or for the sake of making the Book more credible and acceptable as a part of Holy Writ. They think that they discover in the Book itself, in its apparent plan and style, evidence of such dramatic intent. And this does not diminish its value. There is almost every style of writing in the Bible, historical, devotional, ethical, allegorical, and even mythical. God may employ this dramatic mode of representing truth as well as any other. It may be received as we receive the parables of our Saviour. There would be demanded, however, a method of exegesis different from that which would be proper for such books as Genesis and Samuel. Another reason is that they regard this kind of didactic representation as belonging to what they call the Chokma period (the Wisdom or Philosophy period) of Hebrew literature, and, therefore, not to be judged by the same rules that would be applied to the older Scripture. This view of Job as being, in the main, a poetic invention, at least in its superhuman representations, may be regarded as the one now current in the Christian Church. The weight of critical argument may even seem to be in its favor; and yet it may not be amiss to consider what may be said for the older view, and whether there is such a difference, in this respect, between Job and other parts of the Bible.

The Rationalist is repelled by the supernatural everywhere. He has a most irrational, and yet an easily-explained, dislike to the very idea, in whatever part of the Scriptures he may meet with it. Viewing it then as a question wholly by itself, it may well be asked, why the superhuman accounts in Job may not be received just as we receive them in the narrations of Exodus, or of Luke's Gospel, or of the Acts of the Apostles. The question may refer to the supernatural simply when displayed upon earth as visible matter-of-fact, or to superhuman scenes narrated as transpiring in a superhuman sphere. In regard to the latter, it may be said, as we have before hinted, that the difficulties are by no means peculiar to the Book of Job. The question as to the mode of inspiration, or the way in which such superhuman or ante-historical facts become known to the writers, meets us in other parts of the Bible. The same mystery hangs over the first of Genesis. It suggests itself immediately in reading such accounts as that of 2d Chronicles xviii. 18-21, or the recitals of divine messages coming to the prophets. If, however, we are convinced, on general grounds, that the Bible is a divine book in the honest sense of the word, that is, given specially by God for our instruction in a way that other books are not, the minor difficulties vanish. If the Book of Job, or any other book, is truly inspired, and we receive it as such, then may it be trusted that God provides for all such communications, whether by trance vision, by symbolic imagery, or by filling some human mind with the general idea and the accompanying emotion, then leaving it to its own modes of conceiving, as controlled, more or less, by its measure of science, and clothed in its own necessarily imperfect human language. Thus may it be given to us in the Holy Canon as the representative of a superhuman fact, some knowledge of which is demanded as a fact ineffable, or incapable of communication in any other way. To deny the possibility of this is simply the bold irrationality of affirming that there can be no communication between the infinite and the finite mind, or of still more recklessly asserting that there are no superhuman scenes-that between man and God, if there be a God, there is an infinite blank, unoccupied by beings or events, and in which nothing can

We may say, too, on the ground of the same authorities, that its historical truth, be it more or less, does not at all stand in the way of its dramatic character. Some degree of such historical truth, real or supposed, is, in fact, demanded by it. All the Greek tragedies are so constructed on old narratives believed to be real; such as those of the Trojan and Argonautic ages. It needed something of the kind to inspire them; so that while a few, like the Perse of EscHYLUS, are almost wholly historical, none are pure fictions.

take place that may, in any way, affect the course of the human history either collective or individual. Some such general view in regard to modes of revealing may be rationally adopted by one who regards the book of Job as true and inspired—that is, in some way given by God as other books are not. If uninspired, if a mere human production, then this Book of Job has for us simply an archaic interest, like the early Arabian songs, or some Carmen Moallakat written in golden letters, and suspended in the temple at Mecca. If no higher view can be taken of it than this, then, surely, the vast amount of comment bestowed upon it, by Rationalists as well as by believers, has been far beyond its deserts. The immense labor might have been better devoted to other and more useful purposes.

The Supernatural in Job not to be Rejected.

A rejection of the book on the ground of its supernatural and superhuman origin is simply in accordance with the procedure of the Rationalists everywhere. They even think it too much for its poetry, unless regarded as fiction throughout, or without any nucleus of truth, however dim and legendary. Thus, in defiance of such passages as Isaiah vi. 1-4, Umbreit asserts that the Old Testament recognizes no theophanies after the times of Moses. In Job, therefore, it was a pure poetic fiction, hardly admissible unless the action and the scenery are dramatically assigned to the Patriarchal period. And so he asks with an expression of contempt for any one who might even imagine the contrary: "Wenn die ganze Sache Dichtung war, was war denn die Gotteserscheinung im Sturme? Wahrheit?" It is not, however, the degree of outward splendor in the theophany, or the magnitude of the sense marvel, as we may call it, that makes the difficulty for this class of interpreters. The objection is to any idea of God in the world as a manifest causation, whether it be in "the whisper," or in "the thunder of his power" (Job xxvi. 14). They are haunted by the thought of their dislike to the miraculous in any sense, or of any divinely-caused deviation from the course that things would otherwise take, whether in nature or in history. And yet they must reject the most undeniable facts, or admit marvels greater, in truth, than any that may be styled physical miracles-strange deviations from the general course of things in the moral and spiritual human, that, to a thoughtful contemplation, are more inexplicable than any analogous departures or irregularities, seemingly, in nature. Such an anomalous spiritual phenomenon is the very position of this old book of Job, or this old "poem," lying, as it does, in the literature of the ancient heathen world. Let the serious yet intelligent reader fix his mind upon the cotemporary theologies and mythologies. A little to the south-west lies Egypt, so lauded now for its ancient culture, and its alleged longæval supremacy in what is called civilization, or the peculiar condition of "the higher man,"-Egypt, so well known then as the land of crocodile and serpent worship, of the grossest animal superstition, of the most debasing, Godforgetting worldliness. Not far to the east, or just beyond the Indus, are the monstrous forms of Nature worship, as exhibited in the strangest combinations of mystic, pantheistic, and polytheistic ideas. To the Mediterranean west, yet still within the Shemitic knowledge, are the myriad fancies of the Greek mythology, with its Bacchanalian festivals, its worship not only destitute of moral power, but the cherisher everywhere of impure ideas―æsthetic, it is true, famed for its ideas of the beautiful in art, yet most unclean. Almost in contact with it lies the Dagon idolatry, or fish worship, of the Philistines and the Phoenicians. To the north, on the Euphrates, the weird Chaldæan and Babylonian superstitions, as we learn from the dark phantoms of them that haunt us in reading the book of Daniel. Right below it, on the south, the Sabæan idolatry, or star worship, which had infected the primitive monotheism of the Shemitic Joktanites. There is no need of going farther in such a summary. Everywhere was there the rapid verifying of Paul's words (Rom. i. 21-28), setting forth the ways in which men destroy for themselves the pure knowledge of a personal God. Now think of this book of Job in the midst of such surroundings-the transparent purity of its religious ideas yielding in no respect to the loftiest of modern conceptions, the marvellously sublime representations it makes of the divine personality, omnipotence, infinity, unsearchableness, wisdom, grace and holiness-in a word, its distinguishing theism jealous even of the admiration of the heavenly bodies, the "sun in its splendor, the moon walking in brightness," lest it might

seem to detract from the reverence due to Him "who setteth his glory above the Heavens." What restraining and conserving influence kept it so clean, so rational, so holy, in the very midst of such abounding impurities? If tendencies so universal and so constant may be called nature, then surely must there have been here the manifestation of a divine power. That One above the human sphere should sometimes speak to us, even though it might be in a voice from the cloud, is not a greater marvel for the reason, though it might be more astounding to the sense. For reason, too, has its marvels, and one of them-the greatest of them, perhaps would be such an everlasting silence of the super-human worlds, or that to man-himself a supernatural as well as a rational being-no direct communication should ever come from a higher plane than that of nature.

It is the moral sublime of the book of Job that makes the supernatural—if fair criticism should allow us to regard it as having such an element-all the more easy of belief. With such an accompaniment, it becomes all the more natural-if we may use the seeming paradox --or the more to be looked for in the whole course of things including every movement, moral and spiritual as well as physical. It seems fitting that there should be a theophany in such a drama; and this fittingness would be none the less if we regard the human elements as being, at the same time, an outward historical reality. And so we might say of the supernatural everywhere in the Bible, so different from the wild, grotesque, unmeaning, or monstrous supernatural that meets us in all those "other ancient mythologies" with which the Rationalist is so fond of classing the Hebrew Scriptures. In these other books, these "other mythologies," there is nothing to give significance to the miraculous, whereas throughout our Holy Book, from the opening creative scenes to the apocalyptic closing, it is the great moral and spiritual, the great theological ideas, that make the supernatural events narrated seem its fitting and most reasonable accompaniment. It would be strange, on the other hand, that, in connection with such grand unearthly teaching, the appearance of a super-earthly power, the intervention of a super-earthly mind or voice, should be wholly lacking.

It is thus that we may hold in respect to this Book of Job. Is there internal evidence, as some of the best critics maintain, for regarding it as a divine poem, and the opening and closing events as the appropriate dramatic scenery? Such a view is entirely consistent with a belief in its inspiration, and of its being designed to occupy a high place in the Divine Canon. Aside from such a theory, however, and such alleged internal evidence, or regarded simply in themselves, the supernatural events that appear to be set forth in this book may be received just as we receive similar narrations in other parts of the Bible. What is there in the voice from the storm cloud, or even in the prolonged utterances that follow it, more incredible than the voice from Sinai with its specific law-givings, the voice to Elijah in Horeb, the voices that, in some way, came to the Prophets, the voice from the burning bush, the voice that spake to Paul from the midday sky? Above all, what is there in it more strange or faith-surpassing than what is told us in respect to our Saviour's baptism, when the Heavens opened, and the Spirit descended like a dove, and a voice from the firmament was heard saying: "This is my Beloved Son in whom I am well pleased?" In all these cases the exceeding greatness of the moral sublime throws in the back-ground the physical strangeness. There is a harmony in it which not only favors, but demands assent. Granting the human elements of the story, just as they are narrated, in all their human and natural grandeur, the supernatural, whether voice or appearance, seems but its fitting complement. It is true, that to those who are eye-witnesses of the event, the miracle is the attestation of the doctrine; but for minds that read or contemplate it, the converse also holds: it is the glory of the truth that makes the miracle easy of belief.