[1. "Hebrew Poetry," lecture xxxiii.
2. "Sacred Annals," vol. i, p. 365.]
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interpolate others. It is believed that the opening and closing parts are additions made in a subsequent age. If they could not comprehend how the fire from heaven and the whirlwind could have so utterly destroyed Job's sheep, servants, property, and family, they would bring in those desert accessories, Sabæan and Chaldean robbers, to carry away the camels and the oxen.
What is the meaning of the whole poem?
God gives over the government of the world for a time to Satan, to work his devilish will upon Job. Did not God do this very thing when he permitted the comet to strike the earth? Satan in Arabic means a serpent. "Going to and fro" means in the Arabic in "the heat of haste "; Umbreit translates it, "from a flight over the earth."
Job may mean a man, a tribe, or a whole nation.
From a condition of great prosperity Job is stricken down, in an instant, to the utmost depths of poverty and distress; and the chief agency is "fire from heaven" and great wind-storms.
Does this typify the fate of the world when the great catastrophe occurred? Does the debate between Job and his three visitors represent the discussion which took place in the hearts of the miserable remnants of mankind, as they lay hid in caverns, touching God, his power, his goodness, his justice; and whether or not this world-appalling calamity was the result of the sins of the people or otherwise?
Let us see what glimpses of these things we can find in the text of the book.