Certain redistributions of the speeches seem to be necessary. Ch. xxvi. is conceived in a temper thoroughly unlike that of Job at this stage, while it closely resembles that of xxv. As ch. xxv. would be an unusually short speech, it is probable that xxv. and xxvi. should both be given to Bildad. That there is something wrong is plain from the fresh introduction to xxvii. 1 (cf. xxix. 1), a phenomenon which does not elsewhere occur and which, if xxvi. is Job's, should be unnecessary. Again in xxvii. 7-23 Job turns completely round upon his own position and adopts that of the friends. It has been said that he "forgets himself sufficiently in ch. xxvii. to deliver a discourse which would have been suitable in the mouth of one of the friends." Surely such an explanation is as impossible as it is psychologically unnatural: in all probability vv. 7-23 ought to be given to Zophar—the more probably as xxvii. 13 is very like xx. 19, which is Zophar's. This would have the further advantage of accounting for the fresh introduction to xxix. (especially if we allow xxviii. to be a later addition).
Probably xxxi. 38-40, which constitute, at least to an Occidental taste, an anticlimax in their present position, should be placed after v. 32, and xl. 3-5 (followed by xlii. 2-6) after xl. 6-14.
The date of the book of Job is not easy to determine. Ch. xii. 17 shows a knowledge of the dethronement of kings and the exile of priests and nobles which compels a date at any rate later than the fall of the northern kingdom (721 B.C.) more probably also of the southern. The reference in Ezekiel, xiv. 14, 20, to Job should not be pressed, as it involves only a knowledge of the man, not necessarily of any book, still less of our book. Nor can much be made of the parody of Psalm viii. 4 in Job vii. 17, as we have no means of fixing precisely the date of the psalm. Job's lament and curse in ch. iii. are strikingly similar to Jeremiah xx. 14-18, and there can be little doubt that the priority lies on the side of the prophet. Jeremiah was in no mood for quotation, his words are brief and abrupt. The book of Job is a highly artistic poem, and it is much more probable that Job iii. is an elaboration of the passionate words of Jeremiah than that Jeremiah adapted in his sorrow the longer lament of Job. This circumstance would bring us down to a time, at the earliest, very near the exile.
At this point it has to be noted that the discussion of the moral problem in the book of Job is in advance of Jeremiah or Ezekiel. Against the explanation that the children's teeth are set on edge because their fathers have eaten sour grapes, Ezekiel has nothing to offer but a rather mechanical doctrine of strict retribution (ch. xviii.). The book of Job represents a further stage, when that doctrine was seen to be untenable; and the whole question is again boldly raised and still more boldly discussed. This would carry the date below Ezekiel. As the problem in Job is individual, and only indirectly, if at all, a national one—"there was a man in the land of Uz"—the book cannot be earlier than the exile.
But further, there is an unmistakable similarity between the temper of this book and that of the pious in the time of Malachi. "Every one that doeth evil is good in the sight of Jehovah, and He delighteth in them. Where is the God of justice?" Malachi ii. 17. We might fancy we heard the voice of Job; and almost more plainly in Malachi iii. 14, "It is vain to serve God, and what profit is it that we have kept His ordinance?" Equally striking is the similarity between the dialectic temper in Job and Malachi. Everywhere in Malachi occur the phrases, "Ye have said, yet ye say," etc. Good men have not only raised the problem of the moral order, as Habakkuk and Jeremiah had done: they are formally discussing it—exactly the phenomenon which we have in Job and do not have in pre-exilic times. If it be asked why, in that case, there is no trace of influence of Deutero-Isaiah's solution, the answer is that, in any case, that solution stands without serious influence on the subsequent development of religious thought in the Old Testament.
Again, the peculiar boldness of the discussion suggests a post-exilic date. Jeremiah is also very bold, xii. 1, but it is a different type of audacity that expresses itself in the book of Job. Unlike Ecclesiastes in practically everything else, Job is like it in being a sustained and fearless challenge of the phenomena of the moral world. A post-exilic date, and perhaps not a very early one, would seem to be suggested by these phenomena. It is the product not only of an unhappy man, but of an unhappy time, when life is a warfare, vii. 1, and good men are bitter in heart. This date is borne out by the angelology of the book, v. 1, and by its easy use of mythology, iii. 8, xxvi. 5—a mythology which is felt to be completely innocuous, because monotheism is secure beyond the possibility of challenge. It is practically certain that the book falls before Chronicles (circa 300 B.C.) as in 1 Chronicles xxi. 1, Satan is a proper name, whereas in Job the word is still an appellative—he is "the Satan.". Where the evidence is so slender certainty is impossible; but there is a probability that the book may be safely placed somewhere between 450 and 350 B.C. One could conceive it to be, in one sense, a protest against the legalistic conception of religion encouraged by the work of Ezra, and this would admirably fit the date assigned.
SONG OF SONGS
The contents of this book justify the description of it in the title, i. 1, as the "loveliest song"—for that is the meaning of the Hebrew idiom "song of songs." It abounds in poetical gems of the purest ray. It breathes the bracing air of the hill country, and the passionate love of man for woman and woman for man. It is a revelation of the keen Hebrew delight in nature, in her vineyards and pastures, flowers and fruit trees, in her doves and deer and sheep and goats. It is a song tremulous from beginning to end with the passion of love; and this love it depicts in terms never coarse, but often frankly sensuous—so frankly sensuous that in the first century its place in the canon was earnestly contested by Jewish scholars. That place was practically settled in 90 A.D. by the Synod of Jamnia, which settled other similar questions; and about 120 A.D. we find a distinguished rabbi maintaining that "the whole world does not outweigh the day when the Song of Songs was given to Israel; while all the Writings are holy, the song is holiest of all." This extravagant language suggests that the canonicity of the song had been strenuously contested; and it may have been a latent sense of the secular origin of the song that led to the prescription that a Jew must not read it till he was thirty years of age. Its place in the canon was no doubt secured for it by two considerations, (i) its reputed Solomonic authorship, (ii) its allegorical interpretation.
The reception of the book in the Canon led, as Siegfried has said, to the most monstrous creations in the history of interpretation. If it be by Solomon, and therefore a holy book, it must be a celebration of divine love, not of human. So it was argued; and the theme of the book was regarded as the love of Jehovah for Israel. Christian interpreters, following this hint of their Jewish predecessors, applied it to the love of Christ for His church or for the individual soul. The allegorical view of the poem has many parallels in the mystic poetry of the East, and it even finds a slender support in Hosea's comparison of the relation of Jehovah to Israel as a marriage relationship; but taking into account the general nature of the poem, and the tendencies of the Hebrew mind, it may be fairly said that the allegorical interpretation is altogether impossible. Any love poem would be equally capable of such an interpretation.
Another view, first hinted at in a phrase of Origen, is that the book is a drama, a view which has held the field—not without challenge—for over a century. There is much in the language of the song to suggest this: it is obvious, e.g., that there is occasional dialogue, i. 15, 16, ii. 2, 3, but the actual story of the drama was very far from clear. The older view was that it was a story of Solomon's love for a peasant girl, and of his redemption from his impure loves by his affection for her. But as in viii. 11 f. and elsewhere, Solomon is spoken of by way of contrast, room must be made for a third person, the shepherd lover of the peasant maid; and, with much variety of detail, the supporters of the dramatic theory now adhere in general to the view that the poem celebrates the fidelity of a peasant maid who had been captured and brought to Solomon's harem, but who steadily resisted his blandishments and was finally restored to her shepherd lover. The book becomes thus not a triumph of love over lust, but of love over temptation. The story is very pretty; but the objections to it and to the dramatic view of the book are all but insuperable. It must be confessed that, to arrive at such a story at all, a good deal has to be read between the lines, and interpreters usually find what they bring; but the most fatal objection to it is that the text in vi. 12, on which the whole story turns—the maiden's surprise in the orchard by the retinue of the king—is so disjointed and obscure that the attempt to translate it has been abandoned by many competent scholars.