1. Page [3].—Pfleiderer, in the spirit of Lagarde, accounts for the Pauline view of the atonement by the ‘stereotyped legal Jewish’ doctrine of the atoning merit of the death of holy men (Hibbert Lectures, pp. 60-62). But was not this idea familiar and in some sense presumably real to Jesus? And why speak of a ‘stereotyped’ formula? Examples of a self-devotion designed to ‘merit’ good for the community, or even for an individual, abound in Judaism.
2. Page [7], note 2.—The word Kenotic is conveniently descriptive of a theory, and does not bind one who uses it to any particular expositon of the difficult Greek of Phil. ii. 7. I need not decide, therefore, whether we should render ἐν μορφῃ Θεοῦ בדמות חאלהים with Delitzsch, or בדמות אלהים with Salkinson. To the names of eminent exegetes mentioned on page [7], add that of Godet.
3. Page [21] (on Job vi. 25).—Kleinert (Theol. Studien u. Kritiken, 1886, pp. 285-86) improves the parallelism by translating ‘Wie so gar nicht verletzend sind Worte der Rechtschaffenheit, aber wie so gar nichts rügt die Rechtsrüge von euch.’ He thinks that מה here, as occasionally elsewhere, and mā often in Arabic, has the sense of ‘not’ (see Ewald, Lehrbuch, § 325b); comp. ix. 2, xvi. 6, xxxi. 1, and the characteristic בַּמָּה ‘how seldom,’ xxi. 19. Without entering into his doubtful justification of ‘verletzend,’ it is possible to render ‘How far from grievous are straightforward speeches, but how little is proved by the reproof from you!’
4. Pages [33]-35 (Job xix. 25-27).—First, as to the sense of Goel (A.V. and R.V. ‘redeemer’). The sense seems determined by xvi, 18 (see above, p. [31]). It is vengeance for his blood that Job demands, and hence in xix. 29 he warns his false friends to beware of the sword of divine justice. The ‘friends’ have identified themselves with that unjust Deity against whom Job appeals to the ‘witness in heaven’ (xvi. 20)—the moral God of whom he has a dim but growing intuition. The whole plan of the book, as Kleinert remarks, calls for a definite legal meaning. But as no direct reference to Job’s blood occurs in xix. 25-27, ‘my vindicator’ will be a sufficiently exact rendering (as in Isa. xliv. 6). I cannot however follow Kleinert in his recognition of the hope of immortality in this passage.
Next as to the text. Bickell’s recension of it, when pointed in the ordinary manner, is as follows:—
וַאֲנִי יָדַעְתִּי גֹּאֲלִי חָי 25
יְאַחֲרוֹן עָל־עָפָר יָקוּם ׃
וְאַחַר עֵרִִי נִקְּפָּה זֹאת 26
וּמִשּׁדַּי אֶחֱזֶה אֵלֶּה ׃
אֲשֶׁר אֲנִי אֶחֱזֶה־לִּי 27