Job, in saying " Though he slay me, yet will I wait for him," practically says, " Though He slay me, yet will I not try to escape from Him, or evade Him, I will wait for Him. If I am to be slain, it shall be with my face, and not my back, toward Him ; and if I am to fall, I will fall at His feet ! " Was there ever a more daring expression of faith than that ? ^
3. Yet, the words, as usually understood, have an historic claim in their favour which cannot be disputed. Even the Apostles do not spurn the use of the Greek words of the Old Testament, though they do not accord with the proper connexion in the original text, provided they are in accordance with sacred Scripture, and give brief and pregnant expression to a truth taught elsewhere in the Scriptures. Thus it is with this utter- ance, which, understood as the Vulgate understands it, is thoroughly Job-like, and in some measure the final solution of the Book of Job. It is also, according to its most evident meaning, an expression of perfect resignation. We admit that if it is translated : " behold, He will slay me, I hope not," i.e. " I await no other and happier issue," a thought is obtained that also agrees with the context.^
^ Now, as no history is more various than Job's fortune, so is no phrase, no style more ambiguous than that in which Job's history is written; very many words so expressed, very many phrases so conceived, as that they admit a diverse, a contrary sense ; for such an ambiguity in a single word, there is an example in the beginning, in Job's wife ; we know not (from the word itself) whether it be henedicas, or maledicas, whether she said Bless God, and die, or, Curse God : and for such an ambiguity, in an entire sentence, the words of this text are a pregnant and evident
1 D. Davies, The Book of Job, i. 295.
^ F. Delitzsch, Commentary on the Book of Job, i. 214.
40 TRUST INEXTINGUISHABLE
example, for they may be directly and properly thus rendered out of the Hebrew, " Behold he will kill me, I will not hope " ; and this seems to differ much from our reading, " Behold, though he kill me, yet will I trust in him." And therefore to make up that sense, which our translation hath (which is truly the true sense of the place), we must first make this paraphrase, " Behold he will kill me," I make account he will kill me, I look not for life at his hands, his will be done upon me for that ; and then, the rest of the sentence (" I will not hope ") (as we read it in the Hebrew) must be supplied, or rectified rather, with an interrogation, which that language wants, and the translators used to add it, where they see the sense require it : and so reading it with an interroga- tion, the original, and our translation will constitute one and the same thing ; it will be all one sense to say, with the original, " Behold he will kill me (that is, let him kill me), yet shall not I hope in him ? " and to say with our translation, " Behold, though he kill me, yet will I hope in him " : and this sense of the words, both the Chaldee paraphrase, and ?il translations (excepting only the Septuagint) do unanimously establish.^
4. May we take the text both ways ? As Delitzsch says, each translation teaches a good lesson and a scriptural. So perhaps we may — the vindication first and the trust after. They show us, in a striking way, the two sides of one great truth.
Vindication.
1. In order to understand the real sentiment underlying this exclamation we must have a correct conception of the theory of the Divine action in the world common to that age. For let us remember that this is a dramatic poem ; that Job is a real personage in the sense in which Shakespeare's Hamlet is a real personage ; and that the author of the poem is simply putting into his mouth a protest against the sentiments current in his day as formulated by the " friends " who came to condole with him in so extraordinary a fashion. And if the boldness of his self- vindication sounds somewhat too audacious, and, to some, seems to verge even upon the blasphemous, it must be borne in mind
^ Jolin Donne, Works, iv. 539.
JOB XIII. 15 41
that it is the God of the contemporary theologians who is thus challenged, not the Father in Heaven whom our Lord revealed.
The struggle represented for us with so much dramatic power and vividness in this poem is Job's struggle for reconciliation between the God of the theologians of his day and the God of his own heart. And is not this a modern as well as an ancient struggle ? Does not oicr heart often rise within us to resent and repel the representations of Deity that some forms of theology give ? Do we not say to ourselves, " This God cannot be our God for ever and ever " ?