That the Book of Job is not as deeply penetrated with the spirit of revelation, nor even as distinctly Israelitish a production, as most of the Old Testament writings, requires no argument. May we venture to go further, and infer from various phenomena that, not merely the artistic form of the māshāl, but the thoughts and even the language of Job came in a greater or less degree from a foreign source? The question has been answered in the affirmative (as in the case of the words of Agur in Prov. xxx., and those of Lemuel in chap. xxxi.) by some early as well as some more modern writers. This view has been supposed to be implied in the Greek postscript to the Septuagint version[[115]] (strongly redolent of Jewish Midrash), which contains the statement, οὗτος ἑρμηνεύεται ἐκ τῆς Συριακῆς βίβλου, but though Origen appears so to have understood,[[116]] it is more probable that οὗτος merely refers to the postscript (Zunz; Frankl). Ibn Ezra, however, on independent grounds does express the opinion (commenting on Job ii. 11) that the Book of Job is a translation; he ascribes to the translator the words in xxxviii. 1 containing the sacred name Jehovah. The increased study of Arabic in the 17th century led several theologians of eminence to the same conclusion. Spanheim, for instance, thought that Job and his friends wrote down the history and the colloquies in Arabic, after the happy turn in the fortunes of the sufferer, and that some inspired Israelitish writer, in the age of Solomon, gave this work a Hebrew dress. Albert Schultens, in the preface to his Liber Jobi (1737), is at the pains to discuss this theory, which he rejects on two main grounds, (1) the disparagement to our magnificent Book of Job involved in calling it a translation, and (2) that in those primitive and, according to him, pre-Mosaic times, the Hebrew and Arabic languages cannot have been so different (!) as Spanheim from his point of view imagines. Elsewhere he expresses his own opinion shortly thus,[[117]] ‘Linguam quâ liber Jobi conscriptus est, genuinum illius temporis Arabismum esse.’ He actually imagines that Job and his friends extemporised the Colloquies we have before us, referring to the amazing faculty of improvisation still possessed by the Arabs—a view scarcely worthier than that of Spanheim, for, as Martineau remarks in another connection, Who ever improvised a great poem or a great sermon? Both these great scholars have fallen into the error of confounding the poet with his hero and the use of poetic and didactic fiction with deliberate fraud. One cannot be severe upon this error, for it has survived among ourselves in Prof. S. Lee’s great work (1837), where our Book of Job is actually traced back through Jethro to Job himself. The only form however in which a critic of our day could discuss the question mentioned above would be this, Is it in some degree probable that the author of Job was a Hebrew who had passed some time with the Arabic- and Aramaic-speaking peoples bordering on the land of Israel?

On grounds independent of Eichhorn and Dean Plumptre, the former of whom combines his theory with that of a pre-Mosaic, and the latter with that of a Solomonic date of Job, I think that we may venture to reply in the affirmative. These grounds have reference (1) to the ideas of Job, (2) to its vocabulary.

(1) I am well aware that the argument from the ideas of Job cannot claim a strong degree of cogency. It is possible to account for the conceptions of the author from the natural progress of the (divinely-guided) moral and religious history of Israel, and those who believe (I do not myself) that Psalms xvii., xxxvii., xlix., lxxiii., are Palestinian works of earlier date than Job will have a ready argument in favour of a purely native origin of the latter book. Still it seems to me that we can still better account for the author’s point of view by supposing that he was in sympathy with an intellectual movement going on outside Israel. The doctrine of retribution in the present life, which he finds inadequate, is common to the friends and to the religion which has in all ages been that of the genuine Arab—the so-called dīn Ibrāhīm (or ‘religion of Abraham’). The Eloah and the Shaddai of Job are the irresponsible Allah who has all power in heaven and on earth, and before whom, when mysteries occur in human life which the retribution-doctrine cannot solve, the Arab and every true Moslem bows his head with settled, sad resignation. The morality alike of the dīn Ibrāhīm, and of the religion of Mohammed (who professed to restore it in its purity), is faulty precisely as the religion of the three friends (and originally of Job himself) is faulty. The same conflict which arose in the heart of Job arose in the midst of the Moslem world. I refer to the dispute between the claimants of orthodoxy and the sect of the Mo’tazilites (8th and 9th centuries); the latter, who were worsted in the strife, viewed God as the absolutely Good, the former as a despotic and revengeful tyrant.[[118]] May not this conflict have been foreshadowed at an earlier time? Is not the difficulty which led to it a constantly recurring one, so soon as reflection acquires a certain degree of maturity? It may well have been felt among the Jews, especially in the decline of the state, but it must also have been felt among their neighbours, and freedom of speech has always, in historical times, been an Arab characteristic. Putting aside the anachronism of placing Job in the patriarchal age, does not the poet himself appear to hint that it was so felt by the names and tribal origins of the speakers in the great religious discussion?

(2) As to the Arabisms and Aramaisms of the language of Job (see [Appendix]). Jerome already says that his own translation follows none of the ancients, but reproduces, now the words, now the sense, and now both, ‘ex ipso hebraico arabicoque sermone et interdum syro.’ In the 17th and 18th centuries, De Dieu, Bochart, and above all Schultens made it a first principle in the study of Job to illustrate it from Aramaic and especially Arabic. Schultens even describes the language as not so much Hebrew, as Hebræo-Arabic, and says that it breathes the true and unmixed genius of Arabia. This is every way an exaggeration, and yet, after all reasonable deductions, our poem will stand out from the Old Testament volume by its foreign linguistic affinities. It is not enough to say that the Arabisms and Aramaisms have from the first formed part of the Hebrew vocabulary, and were previously employed only because the subjects of the other books did not call for their use. Unless a more thorough study of Assyrian should prove that the Arabism (for of these I am chiefly thinking) belonged to northern as well as to southern Semitic, it will surely be more natural to suppose that the author of Job replenished his vocabulary from Arabic sources. There is not a little in the phraseology of Job which is still as obscure as in the days of Ibn Ezra, but which receives, or may yet receive, illustration from the stores of written and spoken Arabic.[[119]]

May we not, in short, conjecture that the poem of Job is a grand attempt to renovate and enrich the Hebrew language?[[120]] If so, the experiment can hardly have been made before the great subversion of Hebrew traditions at the Babylonian captivity. Residence in a foreign land produces a marked effect on one’s language. Recollect too that our author was a literary man. Internal evidence converges to show that Job belonged to that great literary movement among the wise men, philosophers, or humanists, to which we shall have to refer Prov. i-ix., the Wisdom of Sirach, and the Book of Ecclesiastes.

Before leaving this subject, let us notice the parallels to descriptions in the speeches of Jehovah in the Arabian poets, who show the same attention to the striking phenomena of earth and sky as the author of these speeches. The Arabian tone and colouring of the descriptions of animals in Job has been already remarked upon by Alfred von Kremer in vol. ii. of his Culturgeschichte des Orients. Is it possible to conceive that those sketches of the wild goat, the wild ass, and the horse, were not written by one who was familiar with the sight? Or that the author had not observed the habits of the ostrich, when he penned his lines on the ostrich’s neglect of her eggs? Or that his interest in astronomy was not deepened by the spectacle of a night-sky in Arabia? Or that personal experience of caravan life did not inspire the touching figure in vi. 15-20? And observation of the mines in the Sinaitic peninsula[[121]] the fine description of xxviii. 1-10? It is possible that some of these passages may be due to other travelled ‘wise men;’ but this only increases the probability that the Hebrew movement was strengthened by contact with similar movements abroad. The ‘wise men’ had certainly travelled far and wide among Arabic-speaking populations, though nowhere perhaps were they so much at home as in Idumæa and its neighbourhood. As M. Derenbourg remarks, ‘Les riantes oasis, au milieu des contrées désolées, environnant la mer Morte, étaient la demeure des sages et des rêveurs. Bien des siècles après l’auteur de Job, les Esséniens et les Thérapeutes se plongeaient là dans la vie contemplative, ou bien ils se livraient à une vie simple, active et dégagée de tout souci mondain. Encore un peu plus tard cette contrée devint probablement le berceau de la kabbale ou du mysticisme juif.’

CHAPTER XIV.
THE BOOK FROM A RELIGIOUS POINT OF VIEW.

Motto: ‘Jedem nämlich wollte ich dienen, der hinlänglich Sinn hat in die grosse Frage tiefer einzugehen, welche das ernste Leben einmal gewiss an Jeden heranbringt, nach der Gerechtigkeit der göttlichen Waltung in den menschlichen Geschicken.’—Stickel (Das Buch Hiob, Einl. S. vi.)

There was a period, not so long since, when a Biblical writing was valued according to its supposed services to orthodox theology. From this point of view, the Book of Job was regarded partly as a typical description of the sufferings of our Saviour,[[122]] partly as a repository of text-proofs of Christian doctrines, which though few in number acquired special importance from the immense antiquity assigned to the poem. We must not, in our reaction from the exclusively theological estimate of the Old Testament, shut our eyes to the significance of each of its parts in the history of the higher religion. The Book of Job is theological, though the theology of its writer, being that of a poet, is less logical than that of an apostle, less definite even than that of a prophet, in so far as the prophet obtained (or seemed to obtain) his convictions by a message or revelation from without. Being a poet, moreover, the writer of Job can even less than a prophet have had clear conceptions of the historical Messiah and His period. Moral and spiritual truths—these were his appointed province, not the secret counsels of God, nor those exceptional facts or truths which orthodoxy still perhaps regards as among the postulates of the faith of the Hebrew prophets. Nor can the hero of the poem be considered a strict and proper type of the Christ, for this reason among others, that Job is to all intents and purposes a creation of the fancy, whether of the unconsciously working fancy of the people, or of the rich and potent imagination of a poet. In what sense, then, may the Book of Job still claim a theological significance, and be allowed to fill a not unimportant place in the Vorgeschichte of Christianity?

I. The hero of the poem (I exclude from consideration the speeches of Elihu[[123]]) is, not indeed a type, but in some sense prophetic of the Christ, inasmuch as the very conception of a righteous man enduring vast calamities, not so much for his own sake as for the world’s, is a bold hypothesis which could only in the Christ be made good. The poet does more than merely personify the invisible Church of righteous and believing sufferers; he idealises this Church in doing so, and this idealising is a venture of faith. Job is an altogether exceptional figure: he is imperfect, no doubt, if viewed as a symbol of the Christ, but this does not diminish the reality and the grandeur of the presentiment which he embodies. To a religious mind, this remarkable creation will always appear stamped by the hand of Providence. Job is not indeed a Saviour, but the imagination of such a figure prepares the way for a Saviour. In the words of Dr. Mozley, ‘If the Jew was to accept a Messiah who was to lead a life of sorrow and abasement, and to be crucified between thieves, it was necessary that it should be somewhere or other distinctly taught that virtue was not always rewarded here, and that therefore no argument could be drawn from affliction and ignominy against the person who suffered it.’[[124]]