"But wisdom—whence shall it come?
And where is the place of understanding?
It is hid from the eyes of all living,
Our ears alone have heard thereof."[67]
These words were uttered before he had obtained the insight which brought resignation in its train. He alludes to them in his last brief discourse.
"I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear,
But now mine eye hath beheld thee;
Therefore I resign and console myself,
Though in dust and ashes."[68]
Professor Bickell puts the matter very lucidly in his short but comprehensive introduction to the poem: "As long as Job, solicitous for his understanding, demanded an explanation of his unutterable suffering, whereby the mysterious, piteous condition of mankind is shadowed forth, his seeking was vain, and he ran the risk of loosing himself in the problems of eternal justice, the worth of upright living, and even the existence of God; for an unjust, ruthless, almighty being is no God. But by means of the theophany—which is to be understood merely as a process in his own heart, and which clearly shows him the impotence of feeble man to unravel the world-enigmas—he attains to insight; not, indeed, of a positive kind such as a knowledge of the ways of God would confer, but negative insight by means of that resignation which flows from excess of pain. It is thus that his own heroic saying is fulfilled about the reaction of unmerited suffering upon the just man."[69]
"But the righteous holds on his way,
And the clean-handed waxeth ever stronger."[70]
Footnotes:
[51] The prologue is contained in chaps. i.-ii.; the epilogue in chap. xlii. 7-17 of our English Bibles.
[52] Strophe xxxv.
[53] Strophe lii.
[54] Psa. viii. 4, 5.