On this hypothesis, these supposed interrogations of Job, are really the most direct assertions that the wicked man is very rarely, if he is ever, punished; whilst some of his language, thus regarded, is so directly in the face of other Scriptures as to give the Rationalist UMBREIT the idea that it was intended for that very purpose: "How seldom are the wicked driven away like chaff before the wind?' as though Job, or the writer of Job, meant to take a position directly in the face of the 1st Psalm." This is UMBREIT'S exegetical wisdom. He actually supposes a polemic intention here with respect to that portion of Scripture: Gegen eine einseitige und lieblose Auslegung dieses Psalms polemisirt recht eigentlich Hiob. UMBREIT, p. 167.

But to come back to the philological argument; all this is answered by turning to the Concordance of Noldius. This particle is given by him as occurring in eleven passages cited. In no single place in the Scripture has it any other meaning than that of how often, how many, how long, &c.-quot! quoties! quanta! There is not a single one in which the rendering how seldom, how rarely, how few, how little (quantula) would not wholly change or completely reverse the sense intended. Ps. lxxviii. 40 is referred to by DELITZSCH and others, but a glance at the passage shows that it is the other way: '," how oft did they rebel against him?" That is, very often, sæpissime. Job xiii. 23 is cited as though

y should be read: “how few are my sins?" but this is felt at once to be out of harmony with the context and the spirit of the appeal. Whatever Job's own opinion may have been as to the number of his sins, the address is evidently made to one who is supposed to regard them as many. This is shown by what every reader must feel, namely, that the substitution there of how few for how many, takes away all the force of the supplication. It is so in other languages. Quot, quoties, quanta, moσákıç, can never be rendered how few or how seldom; for that is a thing we seldom have occasion to ask about, whether the desire be to obtain information, or to express admiration, or wonder. The word for it in Hebrew, should there be occasion, would be by?, with some interrogative or explanatory particle, as Job x. are not my days few ?" (see also Isaiah xxix. 17); or some such kind of language as we have Ps. xxxix. 5, "Make me to know (or let me know) the measure of my days No 77 what it is, how transient, how frail I am.” Another mode is resorted to by making Job's language here to be ironic, but this is so inconsistent with the pathos and dignity of the passage, that it needs no formal answer.

Whatever ingenuity may be shown in such reconciling expositions, it becomes of no avail from the fact that the same supposed difficulty meets us in other places where no device of exegesis can get rid of it. Thus in ch. xxvii., from vers. 13 to 23, there is given by Job a most unmistakable picture of the doom of the wicked, painted in colors surpassing those of Zophar in ch. xx., or of any other one of the disputants: "His children are destroyed by the sword or by famine; his widow shall not weep; he buildeth his house like a moth; terrors take hold on him; a tempest stealeth him away in the night; as by a storm is he hurled out of his place (see Prov. xiv. 32; 1 Sam. xxv. 29); God casts his vengeance upon himmen hiss him out of his place." Very numerous and ingenious have been the attempts to settle the difficulty here, if it be a difficulty. Some would re-arrange the text, so as to give the passage to Zophar, in whose mouth they think it would be more consistent. KENNICOTT would bring in his numerous emendations. For other attempted solutions, see CONANT'S very valuable annotation. ROSENMUELLER solves it in one way; UMBREIT in another; some make it an interpolation, and so on. The perplexity is increased by the way in which each solver (UMBREIT for example) dwells on the wisdom of his own solution, and so complacently eulogizes the genius of this most "skillful dramatic poet," to whom he confidently ascribes it, whilst calling other attempts "Cimmerian darkness," although their authors thought them as wise as his own. EWALD'S view of xxvii. 13-23, although it cannot be accepted as a satisfactory solution on this hypothesis, contains some things worthy of note. "It is the turning-point," he says, "in the development of Job's dark destiny. The removal of the doubts presented demand, as it were, a new and sure beginning. Job begins to feel what an infinite salvation there lies in the consciousness of innocence, how through it he

has been delivered in the most extreme peril, and now, with the great gain of a noble experience, and of inward strength acquired, stands on the threshold of a new time. This consciousness, so hardly won, has a retroactive effect upon his view of the dark side of life, giving him a stand-point whence he may see how much there must be in the world and in God that is now incomprehensible, and that, though the wicked may seem to prosper, and the pious to suffer, yet is there an eternal order of development, in which innocence shall not be without its fruit, nor guilt go unpunished. Thus the doubts, not wholly set aside, but made more easy to bear, and deprived of their power to hurt, retire into the back-ground. Job has clearly expressed the yearning anticipations of his soul, and given utterance to the purest and highest truths, thereby gaining a full triumph, and taking the victor's place in the contest. For he gives up nothing of his fundamental idea; since in reference to the whole matter in controversy, he returns to his first position, where he stands like a rock, maintaining his innocence against every assault." EWALD, Das Buch Ijob, 2d Ed., pa. 245. This is very well said; but it contains some things far-fetched, however ingenious. It makes Job too logical. It strives too much after a doctrinal consistency, and yet in what is said about the new-acquired consciousness and the taking of new stand-points, there is something which may be claimed as substantially in harmony with what we have here endeavored to set forth, namely: that the emotional in Job, the musing, introspective temperament which is taken up with its own revolving exercises, and thinks little of outward consistency, is predominant in all he says-thereby presenting that striking contrast between his speeches and those of the friends, which cannot be too much insisted on in the interpretation of the Book. To sum up, it may be said, that in such passages as have occasioned this comment, Job is evidently affected by three influences-outward influences we might call them in partial distinction from the inward state on which we have been dwelling. He perceives the falsehood of the strong pictures of the wicked man's misfortunes in this world, which the friends present as exceptionless and universal. He feels keenly, too, the injustice of their indirect application to himself; and all this sets him on the opposite tack, as we may say. After proceeding some distance in this direction, there comes in that higher consciousness of which EWALD speaks, modifying the description and even turning it the other way. That he does not perceive, and therefore makes no open provision against the logical or rhetorical jar, comes from the musing, pausing, introspective, outwardly unconscious, inwardly selfconscious, mode of thought and speech, so characteristic of him, or from the fact that a good deal of the time he is talking to God, to whom his logical consistency is of no consequence, or to himself, by whom all its defects are consciously supplied. This admitted, the absence of connection is accounted for, and, instead of being surprised at it, we are led to expect what may be called the emotional, rather than the logical, transitions.

A third reason for the seeming inconsistency of Job is of a lower kind, but still consistent with purity and integrity of character. The friends seem to assume towards him a higher moral position in picturing the wicked man's ruin. Job's desire to repel this false assumption of didactic superiority is a right one. It leads him, however, after he has sufficiently denied what was fallacious in their too one-sided descriptions, to take the other course by way of showing that he understands the case as well as they do that he has not been an inattentive or obtuse observer of human life, and that, if he chooses, he can even go beyond them in all such picturings. It is a feeling similar to that which leads him to take down the lofty-talking Bildad, when expatiating, as the latter does in chap. xxv., upon the greatness of the divine works, as though he would give Job a lesson here. The one whom he thus assumes to teach properly replies, by showing that he too has thought upon these things, that he too can talk in this strain, should it be necessary, and even outdo him in such an oratorical effort. To see this, compare chapters xxv. and xxvi.

In general, however, Job's thoughts and words are from his inner world. He cares little for logical consistency, because less than they is he thinking of an audience, or of an antagonist-unless it be that seeming antagonism or divine estrangement over which he is ever mourning. It is over the tumultuous, volcanic flood of his own thoughts, he is constantly brooding, and bringing them out to light. This he does in that irregular, broken

way of which we find so many unmistakable examples, leading to the conclusion that in a proper consideration of this dramatic feature, there is found, not only a solution of every seeming hiatus, but also very much of the true impressiveness of this sublime production. It is from this, too, as may be said again, that we get a conviction of the objective reality of the whole action, which no talk about artistical and dramatic skill can set aside.

EXCURSUS III.

,OR DIES IRARUM יוֹם עֲבָרוֹת ON THE

CHAP. XXI. 30.

TO THE DAY OF DOOM THE WICKED MAN IS KEPT;

TO THE DAY OF MIGHTY WRATH ARE THEY BROUGHT FORTH.

The more carefully we study the translation of this passage in our English Version, and as given by DR. CONANT, the more clear will it become that it presents the substantial meaning. It agrees with the old versions, VULGATE, SYRIAC and LXX., as it appears in its HEXAPLAR SYRIAC translation. On the same зide is RASCHI, also the best of the old commentators as cited in POOLE'S SYNOPSIS, together with GESENIUS, PAREAU, CONANT, and others of later times. On the other side, is the formidable array of HEILIGSTEDT, UMBREIT, DILLMANN, DELITZSCH, et al. Had the verse stood by itself, we hazard nothing in saying that no other translation than that of E. V. and LUTHER would have been thought of. It is its apparent disagreement with a false hypothesis, that has led to the varied com

ment.

simply means restraint, cohibuit; whether from a thing, or for a purpose, depends upon the preposition, or the context. So 7 simply means brought forth or out; whether from or to, or for what purpose, to be determined in like manner. It may be held back from danger or harm, in which case the preposition, expressed or implied, would seem to be indispensable; or it may mean kept, reserved for, where the preposition would alone give the sense demanded. An example of this, which GESENIUS deems conclusive from its exact similarity to the present passage, is found ch. xxxviii. 23: "which I have reserved," now, "to the time of trouble" (?), "to the day (D) of battle and war." So the other verb : "They are brought forth." How? The context shows. From, to or in? The preposition determines. In Isai. lv. 12 (cited for the later view, but wholly inapplicable), "they are brought forth in peace," ( not ). The unsuitableness of this reference appears from the fact that it would prove too much. The wicked would be not only brought forth from danger “at the day of wrath" (if that can be the meaning of Dr), but they are also brought forth triumphantly-not merely saved, but saved in a striking or processional manner, as though God made them conspicuous objects of His favor. It cannot mean, brought out of trouble; for on the very hypothesis demanded by this mode of exegesis, Job has been setting forth, and is still setting forth their uninterrupted prosperity. It cannot mean "brought out," so as to be spared from death, if "the day of wrath" meant that; for such an idea would involve a contradiction on either hypothesis. Most absurd here is ROSENMUELLER, who interprets it that "in the day of God's wrath the wicked men are brought to the sepulchre by way of deliverance from evils: Die irarum Dei deducuntur ad sepulchrum (ut supra x. 19) malis erepti improbi ;" that is, "they are taken away before the evil," or "from the evil to come." This is the very thing Isaiah says of the righteous, lvii. 1; whilst Job here is made to say, or to approve of saying, just the contrary. The insuperable objection, how

ever, to this rendering lies in the preposition employed for both verbs before D. There is no way of making this mean from, or in, or at. At the day might do sometimes as a rendering of D, where the context strongly demanded it; but here to or for the day gives such a facile sense that it repels every other. For a context precisely similar, see Prov. xvi. 1, , "the wicked man for the day of evil." Compare also Prov. xxi. 31, "a horse for the day of battle;" Isaiah x. 3, "to the day of visitation;" Jer. xii. 3, "devote him to the day of slaughter." Why go away from the plain indication of the preposition, all the more conclusive from the fact that or here, and in all these cases, denotes the scene, the event, rather than time? DILLMANN feels the force of this, and it almost makes him retract the other interpretation, which only a supposed exigentia loci, arising out of a false hypothesis in regard to the whole chapter, leads him to adopt. "It cannot be denied," he says, "that for we should rather expect Dr, whilst seems rather to denote aim and limit, with, xxxviii. 23, and ", x. 19 ('brought forth from the womb to the grave') p, xxi. 32, just below." Comp. Jer. x. 19: "a lamb brought out to the slaughter;" the same Isaiah liii. 7; Hos. x. 7; xii. 2; Ps. xlv. 15.

as

and

לוים

Again, does it look like an idea so traditional and universal that wicked men are specially spared in a day of calamity (whether it refer to general or private judgments), and that in days of God's wrath they are brought forth in processional triumph? Let any one study the Proverbs of Solomon's collecting, the best ethical authority for this purpose, and he will see in what a variety of ways the opposite idea is set forth: "The wicked for the day of evil." How universal the aphorism that, in some way, wickedness will bring ruin upon the wicked. The proverb just referred to is almost in the very language of this passage. Its testimony to the human ethical consciousness would be amply sufficient, if the idea did not meet us everywhere in the so-called Chockma or Hebrew Wisdom. The world's experience, too, is the other way. There are indeed cases of remarkable prosperity attending wicked men, but it is not general, so as to form the subject of an aphorism in traditional ethics. There is no such universality in the fact, to say the least, as the "signs of the way-farers" thus interpreted would give it. Especially would it be out of harmony with the best views we can get of the early Arabian world. From the earliest Eastern poetry, as well as from the Koran, do we derive just the contrary idea. When Mohammed threatens the robber Kafirs, or unbelievers, with the old dogma that wicked prosperity is in danger of a downfall, they are always represented as replying: "Ah, that is just what we and our fathers have been threatened with of old; it is all a fable (a saying) of the ancients." Every scholar is familiar with the Greek doctrine of Nemesis, carried even to the superstitious length of holding that mere prosperity of itself, without crime, was dangerous, or that it indicated some fearful doom to which the prosperous man was reserved. The same eschatological idea, though without time or place, comes forth in the language of the Old Testament: "The wicked shall not stand in the judgment," Ps. i. 5; "The upright shall have dominion over them on the morning" (Ps. xlix. 15), or the great dies retributionis for which the earliest Arabian that we know of uses the same expression.*

If, on the other hand, we regard Job's pictures here as of a mixed kind, irregular and impassioned-now setting forth the prosperity of the wicked, all the more strongly from the remembrance of his own misery, and dwelling on certain items (xxi. 11) from the contrast his vivid imagination finds in them to his own forlorn condition-then checking himself and dilating upon the other view, of which he must have known many examples in his own worldly experience-it is not difficult to account for what follows. The very absence of any visible rule in the present state of things, would lead to the thought of some My D", some great judgment-scene, however indeterminable or inconceivable its time and locality. It was this feeling that created the idea, and led to the ethical lore of "the way-passers as the common carriers of the traditions and doctrines of the peoples. The impunity of

• LOKMAN, as quoted in the Kitab 'ulagani; Koss, as cited by SHARASTANI, 437 (CURETON's Ed.), and HARIRI, Seance

wicked men is certainly not one of these world-sayings; and could it be supposed it would be directly in the face of that Vergeltungslehre of which the Rationalist commentators have so much to say, as the universal doctrine of the ancient world.

There may, perhaps, be the understood meaning: reserved, held back from present evils, for the day of 78, the day of the great calamity, and that may also be gotten from RASCHI, and from the servatur of the Vulgate, whether in the sense of preserved or watched for, but this would only the more confirm the idea of the great TN to which such a reserving is preparatory.

According to the common interpretation of xlii. 7, Job is commended for saying of, or concerning, God: what is right (1, firm, constans, consistens). But what a picture of daring irreverence, and of profane scoffing, even, does he present, according to the view some take of this whole chapter! It has three aspects: 1. He is supposed to describe the wicked as enjoying uninterrupted prosperity through the present life, then leaving it without pain, and with no concern for any thing that may come after them, which very unconcern is represented as a portion of their good. 2. In what Job says from ver. 17 and onward, where he seems to qualify the sweeping character of the first assertions, he is only sneering at the language of the friends, repeating it insincerely or in a taunting manner, and thus actually giving a stronger emphasis to his first assertions. 3. Not content with this, he adopts, as the supposed meaning of "the way-passers," that the wicked not only go on with impunity in the common course of life, but that they are specially favored in a time of great calamity, and in the day of wrath (great wrath, wraths, in the plural, which must mean God's wrath) they are brought out in triumph (1, in a procession as it were). And this is done by God! It is not merely an overlooking (as Paul seems to say Acts xvii. 30), a letting men go their ways, but a special favoring of the wicked. He brings them out in a sort of processional pomp, and keeps them from harm in His dies irarum. RENAN here goes beyond all others who take this view:

Au jour fatal, le méchant est épargné,

Au jour de la colère divine, il est soustrait au châtiment,

as though God specially shielded him when the divine vengeance is shown upon the earth. Now add to this Job's assuming to tell God (ver. 19) what He ought to do, according to this interpretation, namely, to "punish the bad man himself in his lifetime, and not let it come on his innocent children, of whose sufferings he has no feeling "-and there is reached the very climax of impiety. He could not, moreover, have gone more directly in the face of his own caution (ver. 22): "shall a man teach God? teach Him who judges the high?” And yet all this comes directly from the mode of interpreting this chapter (xxi.) adopted by DELITZSCH and others.

The extreme Rationalist, MERX, would also represent Job as teaching in this passage, ver. 30, that the wicked are specially favored; but he has a much easier way of doing it. Seeing clearly that the text, as it stands, can only be interpreted of the wicked being brought out for judgment and perdition, he inserts, with his usual recklessness, the negative making it read: "the wicked are not reserved to the day of calamity; they are not brought forth for the day of wrath." That is the way in which he makes them escape, and that is the strange doctrine he thus forces into the mouths of "the way-passers." But in doing this he confirms, in the most decided manner, the other sense for which we contend. It is a confession that it is the only one admissible unless the negative, for which he has no warrant whatever, is inserted. In his note he does not hesitate to charge the Jewish critics, those, worshippers of words and letters, with having, for dogmatic purposes, designedly changed the text.