This loyalty of a disciple even in the enemy’s country is made the subject of a sort of boast by Jehovah when the Accuser enters. Postponing for the moment consideration of the character and office of this Satan, we may observe here that the trial which he challenges is merely a test of the sincerity of Job’s allegiance to Jehovah. The Accuser claims that it is all given for value received. These possessions are taken away.
This is but the framework around the philosophical poem in which all theories of the world are personified in grand council.
First of all Job (the Troubled) asks—Why? Orthodoxy answers. (Eliphaz was the son of Esau (Samaël), and his name here means that he was the Accuser in disguise. He, ‘God’s strength,’ stands for the Law. It affirms that God’s ways are just, and consequently afflictions imply previous sin.) Eliphaz repeats the question put by the Accuser in heaven—‘Was not thy fear of God thy hope?’ And he brings Job to the test of prayer, in which he has so long trusted. Eliphaz rests on revelation; he has had a vision; and if his revelation be not true, he challenges Job to disprove it by calling on God to answer him, or else securing the advocacy of some one of the heavenly host. Eliphaz says trouble does not spring out of the dust.
Job’s reply is to man and God—Point out the error! Grant my troubles are divine arrows, what have I done to thee, O watcher of men! Am I a sea-monster—and we imagine Job looking at his wasted limbs—that the Almighty must take precautions and send spies against me?
Then follows Bildad the Shuhite,—that is the ‘contentious,’ one of the descendants of Keturah (Abraham’s concubine), traditionally supposed to be inimical to the legitimate Abrahamic line, and at a later period identified as the Turks. Bildad, with invective rather than argument, charges that Job’s children had been slain for their sins, and otherwise makes a personal application of Eliphaz’s theology.
Job declares that since God is so perfect, no man by such standard could be proved just; that if he could prove himself just, the argument would be settled by the stronger party in his own favour; and therefore, liberated from all temptation to justify himself, he affirms that the innocent and the guilty are dealt with much in the same way. If it is a trial of strength between God and himself, he yields. If it is a matter of reasoning, let the terrors be withdrawn, and he will then be able to answer calmly. For the present, even if he were righteous, he dare not lift up his head to so assert, while the rod is upon him.
Zophar ‘the impudent’ speaks. Here too, probably, is a disguise: he is (says the LXX.) King of the Minæans, that is the Nomades, and his designation ‘the Naamathite,’ of unknown significance, bears a suspicious resemblance to Naamah, a mythologic wife of Samaël and mother of several devils. Zophar is cynical. He laughs at Job for even suggesting the notion of an argument between himself and God, whose wisdom and ways are unsearchable. He (God) sees man’s iniquity even when it looks as if he did not. He is deeper than hell. What can a man do but pray and acknowledge his sinfulness?
But Job, even in his extremity, is healthy-hearted enough to laugh too. He tells his three ‘comforters’ that no doubt Wisdom will die with them. Nevertheless, he has heard similar remarks before, and he is not prepared to renounce his conscience and common-sense on such grounds. And now, indeed, Job rises to a higher strain. He has made up his mind that after what has come upon him, he cares not if more be added, and challenges the universe to name his offence. So long as his transgression is ‘sealed up in a bag,’ he has a right to consider it an invention.[4]
Temanite Orthodoxy is shocked at all this. Eliphaz declares that Job’s assertion that innocent and guilty suffer alike makes the fear of God a vain thing, and discourages prayer. ‘With us are the aged and hoary-headed.’ (Job is a neologist.) Eliphaz paints human nature in Calvinistic colours.
Behold, (God) putteth no trust in his ministering spirits,