My God knows best! Then tears may fall:
In his great heart I find my rest;
For he, my God, is over all;
And he is love, and he knows best."
God's argument is burned into Job's mind. How can man, who understands not the visible things of daily recurrence, think to penetrate the meaning of the moral universe, whose ways are hidden, like the caverns of the seas? Not Job, nor any one of those who have spoken, has found the clew to this maze. But Job is impregnable now in his trust in God, as if he were in a fortress whose approaches were guarded by the angels of heaven.
And God spake yet once more; and now a word of rebuke—not argument—to the old men, who trembled near the tent of God's whirlwind: "My wrath is kindled against you: for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath. My servant Job shall pray for you; for him I will accept." And Job, what ails Job now? He thought he was rebuked of God in the Divine argument, and now he knows himself, at a word, vindicated, exalted; honor burnished, and not tarnished; himself, not accused of God, but beloved of him, and praised by him,—and Job is weeping like a little child; and lifting up his face, while the tears rain down his cheeks, his eyes and his heart and his face are like springtime in laughter, and his voice is as the singing of a psalm! For "the Lord turned the captivity of Job."
How great an advent! Beauty this drama has; but beauty belongs to the rivulet and the twilights; but sublimity to the Niagaras, and the oceans, and the human heart, and the words of God. This drama is sublimity's self. Theme, actors, movement, goal, pertinency to the deepest needs of soul and experience, and chiefly, God as protagonist, say that sublimity belongs to this drama as naturally as to the prodigious mountains or to the desert at night. "Surely, God is in this place, and we knew it not."
And Job ends as comedy, though it began as tragedy. Hamlet ends in tragedy. He has lost faith, and his arm is palsied. We hear the musicians of Fortinbras playing a funeral dirge. Hamlet was tragedy because God was not there. When God is near, no tragedy is possible. God is out of Hamlet. Job had closed as Job began, with tragedy dire and utter, but that here a man refused to let go of God. Job believed. He did not understand. He was sore pressed. His tears and his anguish blinded him for an hour; but where he could not see, he groped, and caught
"God's right hand in the darkness,
And was lifted up and strengthened."
And God comes! and Job ends not in funeral dirge, as it began, but in laughter and the smiting of silver cymbals. A good man's life has tragedy, but ends not so. If he die, God is at his bedside, holding his hand; and when he dies, he has good hope and solemn joy; for he shall live again.