What rod--what fear? Surely not the mere physical affliction which is popularly supposed to have constituted Job's chief grievance. Is the "rod" that terrifies Job so that he fears to speak, that great object which cleft the heavens; that curved wolf-jaw of the Goths, one end of which rested on the earth while the other touched the sun? Is it the great sword of Surt?
And here we have another (chap. x) allusion to the "darkness," although in our version it is applied to death:
"21. Before I go whence I shall not return, even to the land of darkness and the shadow of death.
"22. A land of darkness as darkness itself, and of the shadow of death, without any order, and where the light is as darkness."
Or, as the Douay version has it:
"21. Before I go, and return no more, to a land that is dark and covered with the mist of death.
"22. A land of misery and darkness, where the shadow of death, and no order but everlasting horror dwelleth."
This is not death; death is a place of peace, "where the wicked ceased from troubling "; this is a description of the chaotic condition of things on the earth outside the cave, "without any order," and where even the feeble light of day is little better than total darkness. Job thinks he might just as well go out into this dreadful world and end it all.
Zophar argues (chap. xi) that all these things have
{p. 293}