"The profligacy of mankind had provoked the Great Supreme to send a pestilential wind upon the earth. A pure poison descended, every blast was death. At this time the patriarch, distinguished for his integrity, was shut up, together with his select company, in the inclosure with the strong door. Here the just ones were safe from injury. Presently a tempest of fire arose," etc.
{p. 290}
Who can doubt that these widely separated legends refer to the same event and the same patriarch?
Job meditates suicide, just as we have seen in the American legends that hundreds slew themselves under the terror of the time:
"21. For now shall I sleep in the dust; and thou shalt seek me in the morning, but I shall not be."
The Chaldaic version gives us the sixteenth and seventeenth verses of chapter viii as follows:
"The sun is no sooner risen with a burning heat but it withereth the grass, and the flower thereof faileth, and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth, so also shall the rich man fade away in his ways."
And then Job refers to the power of God, seeming to paint the cataclysm (chap. ix):
"5. Which removeth the mountains, and they know not which overturneth them in his anger.
"6. Which shaketh the earth out of her place, and the pillars thereof tremble.