In chap. xxix. (a fine specimen of flowing, descriptive Hebrew poetry) Job recalls the honour in which he used to be held, and the beneficent acts which he was enabled to perform. Modesty were out of place, for he is already in the state of ‘one turned adrift among the dead’ (Ps. lxxxviii. 5). The details remind us of many Arabic elegies in the Hamâsa (e.g. No. 351 in Rückert’s adaptation, vol. i., or 97 in Freytag). In chaps. xxx., xxxi. he laments, with the same pathetic self-contemplation, his ruined credit and the terrible progress of his disease. Then, by a somewhat abrupt transition,[[39]] he enters upon an elaborate profession of his innocence, which has been compared to the solemn repudiation of the forty-two deadly sins by the departed souls of the good in the Egyptian ‘Book of the Dead.’ The resemblance, however, must not be pressed too far. Job’s morality, even if predominantly ‘legal,’ has a true ‘evangelical’ tinge. Not merely the act of adultery, but the glance of lust; not merely unjust gain, but the confidence reposed in it by the heart; not merely outward conformity to idol-worship, but the inclination of the heart to false gods, are in his catalogue of sins. His last words are a reiteration of his deeply cherished desire for an investigation of his case by Shaddai. With what proud self-possession he imagines himself approaching the Divine Judge! In his hands are the accusations of his friends and his own reply. Holding them forth, he exclaims—
Here is my signature—let Shaddai answer me—
and the indictment which mine adversary has written.
Surely upon my shoulder will I carry it,
and bind it as chaplets about me.
The number of my steps will I declare unto him;
as a prince will I come near unto him (xxxi. 35-37).[[40]]
We must here turn back to a passage which forms one of the most admired portions of the Book of Job as it stands—the mashal on Divine Wisdom in chap. xxviii. The first eleven verses are at first sight most inappropriate in this connection. The poet seems to take a delight in working into them all that he knows of the adventurous operations of the miners of his day—probably those carried on for gold in Upper Egypt, and for copper and turquoises in the Sinaitic peninsula (both skilfully introduced by Ebers into his stories of ancient Egypt). How vividly the superiority of reason to instinct is brought out to vary the technical description of the miners’ work in vv. 7, 8.
A path the eagle knows not,
nor has the eye of the vulture scanned it;