It is the sublimest of all affirmations of the rights of conscience. Job is confident of the success of his plea: ‘This also (guarantees) victory to me, that an impious man cannot come before him’ (xiii. 16) with such a good conscience. Thus virtue has an intrinsic value for Job, superior to that of prosperity or even life: moral victory would more than compensate for physical failure. He indulges the thought that God may personally take part in the argument (xiii. 20-22), and in anticipation of this he sums up the chief points of his intended speech (xiii. 23-xiv. 22), such as, ‘How many[[24]] are my sins,’ and ‘Why chase dry stubble?’ (xiii. 23, 25). Sad complaints of the melancholy lot of mankind follow, reminding us again that Job, like Dante in his pilgrimage, is not only an individual but a representative.

Man that is born of woman,

short-lived and full of unrest,

comes up as a flower and fades,

flies as a shadow and continues not.

And upon such an one keepest thou thine eye open,

and me dost thou bring into judgment with thee! (xiv. 1-3.)

Hard enough is the natural fate of man; why make it harder by exceptional severity? An early reader misunderstood this, and thought to strengthen Job’s appeal by a reference (in ver. 4) to one of the commonplaces of Eliphaz (iv. 17-21). But ver. 5 shows that the idea which fills the mind of Job is the shortness of human life.[[25]] A tree, when cut down according to the rules still current in Syria,[[26]] displays a marvellous vitality; but man is only like the falling leaves of a tree (xiii. 25), or (the figure preferred here) like the canals of Egypt when the dykes and reservoirs are not properly kept up (xiv. 11; comp. Isaiah xix. 5, 6). If it were God’s will to ‘hide’ Job in dark Sheól for a time, and then to recall him to the light, how gladly would he ‘wait’ there, like a soldier on guard (comp. vii. 1), till his ‘relief’ came (xiv. 14)!—a fascinating thought, on which, baseless though he considers it, Job cannot forbear to dwell. And the beauty of the passage is that the happiness of restoration to conscious life consists for Job in the renewal of loving communion between himself and his God (xiv. 15). Alas! the dim light of Sheól darkens the glorious vision and sends Job back into despair.

CHAPTER II.
THE SECOND CYCLE OF SPEECHES.
(CHAPS. XV.-XXI.)

The three narrow-minded but well-meaning friends have exhausted their arsenal of arguments. Each with his own favourite receipt has tried to cure Job of his miserable illusion, and failed. Now begins a new cycle of speeches, in which our sympathy is still more with Job than before. His replies to the three friends ought to have shown them the incompleteness of their argument and the necessity of discovering some way of reconciling the elements of truth on both sides. They can teach him nothing, but the facts of spiritual experience which he has expounded ought to have taught them much. But all that they have learned is the impossibility of bringing Job to self-humiliation by dwelling upon the Divine attributes. No doubt their excuse lies in the irreverence of their friend’s manner and expressions. It is a part of the tragedy of Job that the advice which was meant for practical sympathy only resulted in separating Job for a time both from God and from his friends. The narrow views of the latter drove Job to irreverence, and his irreverence deprived him of the lingering respect of his friends and seemed to himself at times to cut off the slender chance of a reconciliation with God. From this point onwards the friends cease to offer their supposed ‘Divine consolations’ (xv. 11)—such as the gracious purpose of God’s ways and the corrective object of affliction (v. 8-27)—and content themselves with frightening Job by lurid pictures of the wicked man’s fate, leading up, in the third cycle of speeches, to a direct accusation of Job as a wicked man himself. And yet, strange to say, as the tone of the friends becomes harsher and more cutting, Job meets their vituperation with growing calmness and dignity. Disappointed in his friends, he clings with convulsive energy to that never quite surrendered postulate of his consciousness a God who owns the moral claims of a creature on the Creator. Remarkable indeed is the first distinct expression of this faith of the heart, of which an antiquated orthodoxy sought to deprive him. He has just listened to the personalities, the cruel assumptions, and the shallow commonplaces of Eliphaz (who treats Job as an arrogant pretender and a self-convicted blaspheming sinner), and with a few words of utter contempt he turns his back on his ‘tormenting[[27]] comforters’ (xvi. 2). (Soon, however, he will appeal to them for sympathy; so strong is human nature! See xix. 21.) Left to his own melancholy thoughts, he repeats the sad details of his misery and of God’s hostility (and again we feel that the poet thinks of suffering humanity in general[[28]]), and reasserts his innocence in language afterwards used of the suffering Servant of Jehovah (xvi. 17; comp. Isaiah liii. 9). Then in the highest excitement he demands vengeance for his blood. But who is the avenger of blood but God (xix. 25; comp. Ps. ix. 12)—the very Foe who is bringing him to death? And hence the strange but welcome thought that behind the God of pitiless force and undiscriminating severity there must be a God who recognises and returns the love of His servants, or, in the fine words of the Korán, ‘that there is no refuge from God but unto Him.’[[29]] ‘Even now,’ as he lies on the rubbish-heap—