"8. Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare it unto thee.
"9. Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this?"
Wrought what? Job's disease? No. Some great catastrophe to bird and beast and earth.
You pretend, he says, in effect, ye wise men, that only the wicked have suffered; but it is not so, for aforetime I have seen the honest poor man despised and the villain
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prosperous. And if the sins of men have brought this catastrophe on the earth, go ask the beasts and the birds and the fish and the very face of the suffering earth, what they have done to provoke this wrath. No, it is the work of God, and of God alone, and he gives and will give no reason for it.
"14. Behold, he breaketh down, and it cannot be built up again; he shutteth up a man, and there can be no opening.
"15. Behold, he withholdeth the waters, and they dry up: also, he sendeth them out, and they overturn the earth."
That is to say, the heat of the fire from heaven sucks up the waters until rivers and lakes are dried up: Cacus steals the cows of Hercules; and then again they fall, deluging and overturning the earth, piling it into Mountains in one place, says the Tupi legend, and digging out valleys in another. And God buries men in the caves in which they sought shelter.
"23. He increaseth the nations, and destroyeth them: he enlargeth the nations, and straiteneth them again.