In regard to the lines, the principal one is the common pentameter, or blank verse line of English poetry. The Alexandrine comes in much more rarely, and almost always in the second or closing part of a parallelism. In such a position, especially at the end of some impassioned utterance, comes, now and then, the heptameter, or long line of seven feet, used by Bryant in some of his poems, and by Chapman in his translation of Homer. It is equivalent to two lines of our Common Metre, but much more harmonious, on account of its long unsevered movement. As in the first line of the following couplet:

And thou thyself | in ripened age | unto thy grave | shalt come,

As sheaf that in its season to the garner mounts;

the second being an Alexandrine. Mingled with the common blank verse line of five, there comes very frequently one or more of four feet; whilst in the transitions, and in the commencement of some new peculiar strain, there are short lines of three, and occasionally of two feet, or a single dipode. The trimeter not unfrequently makes a very satisfactory close after pentameters:

Higher than Heaven's height! what canst thou do?
Deeper than Sheol's depths! what canst thou know?
Its measurement is longer than the earth,
And broader than the sea.

But what need of this? it may be said. The great thing is to get the idea, however it may be expressed, in English. Attempts at verse must necessarily impair the force and clearness of the thought. To this it may be replied, in the first place, that facility, smoothness in reading, are to be desired, if the sense is not sacrificed, and that the feeling accompanying the thought may be a most important part of the thought itself. In the second place, paradoxical as it may seem to some minds, it may be maintained that the sense is actually made more clear in a rhythmical translation, if properly done, inasmuch as it gives that element of emotion without which the sense, in its essence and entirety, is not truly received. There may, indeed, be an overloading, and an obscuration, arising from too much artificialness; but whether that can be charged upon the present attempt, is left to the judgment of the reader. For fuller reasons in support of a position that may seem so paradoxical, he is referred to the Introduction to the Metrical Version of Ecclesiastes, Vol. X. of the LANGE Series, page 171. The ground taken is that we cannot do justice to poetry unless we read it as poetry,—that is, not simply knowing it to be such in the original, but feeling it to be so as we peruse the translation. Now this cannot easily be done in a rough unrhythmical prose version. The disorder in the dress is constantly interfering with this feeling we wish to have. Thus reading it as prose, in spite of our knowledge of its being poetry, we are constantly expecting the more logical transitions; and when they are not found, it seems all a disconnected and, sometimes, unmeaning rhapsody. A very simple rhythm, if it be smooth, may give the feeling that should accompany, whilst yet keeping as close to the lexical and grammatical sense as any purely prose translation could do. By this simple outward process, the soul of the reader is set in the right direction. The subjective predominates. He gets into the current of thought and feeling, and the purely emotional transitions become not only easy, but natural. When they occur, they are felt to be something we might expect,— and the mind thus prepared, not only apprehends them at once, but sees in them an exquisite emotional appropriateness. Thus the passage is actually better understood from the very fact of its rhythmical form. In this way a verse translation of a poem in another language, with the same number of words, or with a very small difference, may carry the whole sense, that is, both emotion and idea, more surely and more distinctly than any prose version could have done that had been constructed with the utmost regard to lexical accuracy. This may be tested by a comparison which would appeal to every reader's common sense, as well as literary taste. Take Bryant's translation of the Iliad. Its blank verse is not only very smooth, as verse, but remarkably faithful. It is an evidence how near one may bring the English to the Greek, and yet preserve a simple though musical metrical form. Let the effect of this be contrasted, not with the overloaded rhymes of Pope, but with the best prose

translation that could be made, having for its aim the utmost lexical accuracy, and availing itself of every help that could be derived from the study of Eustathius, and of all the scholiasts. Certainly, Bryant carries us farther into the very soul of Homer than any such prose translations could possibly do, even though aided by so complete a scholastic apparatus.

From such a view, the Biblical commentator himself, dry as his work generally is, gets a new insight, as it were, by coming into the emotional spirit of the language he is explaining. But all this, it may be said, is interpreting by the imagination; it is letting one's self be led away by a feeling which may, or may not, have come from the passage. There is, indeed, danger of this; but then it may be truly said that a man with no emotion from what he is studying--a man having a mere intellectual interest, or possessed of little or no imagination-can never be a good commentator, or a good translator of Job, or of the Psalms, or of the Hebrew Prophets, or even of Homer. He must certainly fail in what is more essential than any mere grammatical exegesis, most valuable and important as that may be.

Again, there is a great deal of emphasis, and of what may be called emotional or exclamatory power in certain Hebrew words and idioms, which the corresponding words in English, and the nearest English idioms, fail to express. There is needed some interjection, some qualifying particle, which comes in easy and natural when it so comes from the sustained flow of rhythmical feeling instinctively, as it were, selecting the right words. One of the coolest temperament cannot read Job without seeing that there must be in it much of this post-scenic language. It may be a tone, a sigh, a pause of silence, an imploring or a deprecating look, a demonstrative gesture, all of them intimated in the words themselves, or revealed in the answers of the disputants who understand their fullest import, and all making up that life-scene, that unmistakable reality, which is insisted on in the Addenda, Excursus I. and II., pp. 5-6.

It is this consideration to which the translator would appeal as justifying epithets occasionally, though quite rarely, applied by him to Hebrew nouns. In all such cases it will be found that they belong to the emphasis of the passage, and that, without them, the English reader would receive a deficient idea, and certainly a deficient feeling, of the substantives to which they are attached. Thus "visions dire," vii. 14; the epithet is necessary because means more than vision in this place. It is more than the secing: it is the thing seen--a phantom, a spectre. So 777, iv. 13, rendered “vision-seeing trance," is more than any slumber, however deep. Its vision-seeing or clairvoyant nature appears from Gen. ii. 21: Adam's deep sleep; Gen. xv. 12: Abraham's vision-seeing trance; 1 Sam. xx. 12: the sleep that God sent upon Saul. It is used, indeed, of deep slumber generally, but in Job iv. 13 it evidently has this mysterious trance significance which is so unmistakable in the passages referred to. A similar remark applies to those occasional cases where the translator has placed words in brackets, though forming a part of the movement of the line. They denote something quite evidently to be implied, whether as hidden in some emotional particle, or as indicating a thought that has come in during some touching pause of silence, especially in the speeches of Job (see Addenda aforesaid, pa. 6), and which, though unexpressed in words, appears in the coloring it gives to what follows as something well understood by the repliants and all who were spectators of the scene.

A few words in regard to the language and style of the Version. Of the first, it may be said that the aim has been to make it as pure Saxon-English as possible. Words of that kind have ever been preferred. Some very plain and even homely expressions have been used, as having all the more force and pathos by reason of their plainness. Much use has also been made of the poetical element of inversion, but not at all, it is thought, beyond the degree of which the English is capable. It has often seemed to the writer that, throughout the English Bible, the translators might have kept much more of this than appears; as in that beautiful example, Acts iii. 6: "Silver and gold have I none, but what I have, that give I unto thee." In this way, whilst making the Scriptures more impressive, and even more clear, they might have enriched our language with vivid forms of speech, which the very reading of the Bible would, long ere this, have completely naturalized, even had they seemed strange, or semipoetical, in the beginning.

In this matter of style, too, may be mentioned the use of the nominative independent, which is of frequent occurrence in English, especially in animated or poetical English, and is still more marked in the Arabic, where the subject so often stands by itself, as l'inchoatif, to use De Sacy's and the native Arabic technic, whilst the pronoun representing it is expressed or included in the form of the verb. It is also quite common in Hebrew, so that whilst it may be used freely in an English translation of any Hebrew sentence containing subject and predicate (l'énonciatif), it is actually demanded when the subject stands first,--as, for example, xi. 2:

A flood of words, demands it no reply?

Or, again, where it is the object of the verb that is thus treated:

That night! thick darkness seize it.

Other similar features of style, in respect to which pains have been taken, might be mentioned, were it not for the fear of making this Introduction too long. There need only be a reference to the pauses and notes of silence introduced in some places, especially in Job's hesitating and panting speeches,--as the whole subject is fully discussed in the Addenda, pp. 178, 179, to which the reader is directed.

To the text of the Version there have been added in the margin quite full exegetical notes. These have been intended to explain, not only every departure from the Common English Version, but also every thing in the Version offered that might seem to demand elucidation for the reader, besides a careful presentment of those difficult passages on which all commentators have dwelt, more or less. In this part of the work the author has taken pains to avail himself of the best helps. The old Versions (Greek, Latin, and Syriac) have continually been consulted, the Targum, the Jewish Commentary of RASCHI, the old Commentators as their opinions are given in POOLE's Synopsis, the best of the more modern, such as LUD. DE DIEU, SCHULTENS, UMBREIT, EWALD, DILLMANN, DELITZSCH, SCHLOTTMANN, PAREAU, MERX, DAVIDSON, GOOD, ROSENMUELLER, BARNES, NOYES, together with CONANT and our own ZōCKLER, who are not the least among them. More or less consulted have been other German commentators, such as HEILIGSTEDT, VAIHINGER, HIRZEL, et al. Important aid has also been derived from the French Version of RENAN. To these may be added that immense work, CARYL on Job, in two very large folio volumes. (1650.) This quaint old Puritan Commentator has not been appreciated as he deserves. Equal in Biblical learning to the most learned of an age abounding in such men as USHER, POCOCK, LIGHTFOOT, BOCHART, he excells them all in that spiritual discernment which makes him especially serviceable to those who would obtain the deepest acquaintance with this Book of Job. It is to him not a work of art, not a drama, not a fiction in any sense, but a divinely given case of religious experience. His critical as well as practical remarks are all penetrated with this idea, giving him an insight, even into Hebrew words and idioms, which the learning that lacks such a conviction so often fails to supply.

The translator, moreover, does not hesitate to say that after giving these valuable helps all due attention, he has not wholly rejected his own independent judgment. Often has it been yielded in deference to superior authority and further study. In other cases, however, it is maintained, though always, he thinks, with a becoming diffidence.

The whole is submitted to the reader with the hope that it may be regarded as making some contribution to our Biblical Literature.

T. L

RHYTHMICAL VERSION

OF THE

BOOK OF JOB.

CHAPTER I.

1

There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. This man was pure 2 and just, one who feared God and shunned evil. There were born to him seven 3 sons and three daughters. His wealth was seven thousand sheep and goats, and three thousand camels, and five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she asses, and a very great household of servants. And this man was great above all the Sons of the East.

4 Now his sons used' to hold a feast, each one of them at his own house, and on his own day; and they sent invitations to their sisters to eat and drink with them. 5 And it was the way of Job when these festival days came round, that he sent and purified them. To this end he rose early in the morning, and offered burnt-offerings according to the number of them all; for it was a saying of Job: it may be that my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts. Thus did Job continually.

4 Ver. 5. It was a saying of Job. The general aspect of the passage demands the frequentative sense for

He אָמַר בְּלִבּוֹ) or it may be rendered he thought ; אמר

1 Ver. 4. Used to hold., went and made. has frequently in Hebrew the force of an auxiliary verb, giving to the verb that follows it the sense of constant or habitual action. Comp. Gen. xxvi 13; Judges iv. 24; 1 Samuel ii. 26; Gen. viii. 3, and many other plac s. We have a similar idiom in common English: He went and said.

2 Ver. 5. And it was the way of Job. “And it came to pass" will not do for the rendering of " here, since that would denote only a single event.

הקיפוּ

3 Ver. 5. Came round. On account of the Hiphil form some would make sons the subject, giving it a permissive sense, as Conant does: They let the feast days go round. There are examples, however, of Hiphil verbs u ed intransitively, and it may here have the sense of Kal. Isaiah xxix., although the Kal, in its primary ilea, seems to have a very different significance namely, that of cutting, as in Isaiah x. 34; Job xix. The incongruity of the apparently intransitive Hiphil would probably disappear if we knew the exact connection between the primary and secondary senses of the root. We may still give it something of a Hiphil rendering, and yet keep for the subject: When the days had made their round-their end or section. Or it may borrow its sense from the unused root whence Ps. xix. 7, a circuit, or occursus, kaTávτnua, a meeting, as the Vulgate and LXX. have it in that place.

קיף

T

said in his heart, Gen. xvii. 17: Pa. xiv 1); or it may be thus taken without the ellipsis, like onuì in Homer.

5 Ver. 5. And cursed God. This is the old rendering of the Syriac (173), favored by the LXX. κaxà évevőnoav пρòs Tòv eòv), a'thongh the VULGATE renders it benedirerunt, which Luther follows. JUNIUS and TREMELLIUS, maledixerint, although in the other place, i. 9, they very inconsistently render it benedicendo. Aside from the strong demands of the context, the argument for the older rendering is found in the analogy of languages. The primary verbal sense of (whatever may be the order of its connection with the noun sense of, the knee) is to pray. Hence, in Piel to bless, to pray for good, or, as here, for evil, that is, to curse (the English word itself, according to Web ster, having had a good orizin in cross-to pray evil in the name, or with the sign, of the cross). In like manner, the corresponding verbs, both in Greek and Latin, apaoua, precor (the latter with the same radical letters as the He brew verb, PRK, BRK) have, also, the two senses of prayer and malediction, although the bad sense, from the greater cursing tendency of the Greeks, is so much more frequent than in Hebrew. So also KαTEνxоuat, joined with apάoμal, Escu. Sept. Theb. 633

οἷας γ' ἀρᾶται καὶ κατεύχεται τύχας.

Hence ȧpàs ápâobat, found frequently (or some similar

Now it was the day when the Sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord; and Satan (the Adversary or the Accuser") came also among them. And the Lord said to Satan, Whence comest thou? And Satan answered the Lord and 8 said: From going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and down in it. And the Lord said to Satan: Hast thou observed my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a man pure and just, fearing God and shunning evil?

phrase) in the dramatic poets, may have the benedictory or Kings xxi. 10), the faithful Syriac renders it cursed ( the maledictory sense. The former is the more ancient (as). Profanity of some kind, some evil speaking, careless we have it HERODOTUS i. 132, ȧpâσtai ȧyabá, and just above or presumptuous speaking about God (mala dictio) would be in the same section, KαTEÚɣETαi ev yiveσdai), the latter the the sin the young men would be most likely to fall into more common. It is true, that they generally have an when heated by wine; and this was the very thing that object expressed, or a substantive noun, like apà apǹ, which made Job so solicitous about them, even as he was ever soseems to determine their application; but then there is the licitous for the honor of God whom "he feared." It shows, same peculiarity about the noun itself. Thus apa more too, how justly he was entitled to the character given to commonly means a curse; but it has also the older sense of him as one who not only feared God, but shunned evilblessing or prayer; as in HERODOTUS vi. 63; àρηv éпоýσaνто everything that had the appearance of evil, or that might παῖδα γενέσθαι, " they made a prayer that he might have a lead to it. See his own description of the highest human son;" and therefore he was called Demaratus, "the people- wisdom, xxviii. 28. See also the remarks on this touching prayed-for" king. If the context helps to determine which recital of his God-fearing, paternal solicitude, ExCURSUS sense is to be given to the Greek verbs, there may be said to iv., p. be the same demand of the context in such passages as these in Job and in 1 Kings xxi. 10. At all events, the facility with which these verbs are used in this double way furnishes an argument for those who hold to a similar tendency in Hebrew. It might, perhaps, be thought that, in some of the verbs referred to, the imprecatory force came from the compounded preposition, as in καταράομαι κατεύχομαι, imprecor. The preposition, however, only gives direction to the action of the verb, and may be consistent with either sense-blessings upon, or curses at.