Closely akin to this is the question whether the author of 'Job' intended to represent his hero, not as an individual, but as a type of the righteous in atUiction. Does imaginative treatment extend so far that the name of an historical personage is merely used to embody teaching concerning national calamities and the way to meet them? Cheyne adopts the view of Chateaubriand, that ' Job is a type of righteous men in affliction ' (see his Job and Solomon, p. 65, and the essay in Proph. of Isaiah, ii. 235-244), adding, that ' the common view that the hero of the poem of Job is simply an individual must, it is clear, be aban- doned.' This can only be established if emphasis upon the word 'simply' is maintained. A purely allegorical view of the poem leads to questionalile and sometimes fantastic exegesis. And there is nc
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Bufficient warrant for supposing that the modem dramatic mode of treatinj; sucli a theme, the his- torical element being so I'ar minimized as to be hardly discernible, and a purely imaginative treat- ment of a religious subject adopted, was likely to have been used by a Jew at any period to which this book has been assigned. It seems most satis- factory to say, with such writers as Fairbaim ( '.'itij of God, p. 146), that ' tlie national reposes on the personal sense,' and with A. U. Davidson, '/hat 'Job is scarcely to be considered Israel, under a leigned name. He is not Israel, though Israel may see itself and its history retiected in liim. It is the elements of reality in Job's history common to him with Israel in aflliction, common even to him with humanity as a whole ... it is these elements of truth that make the history of Job instructive to the people of Israel in the times of allliction when it was set before them, and to men in all ages' (see his Job, Introd. pp. xxvi, xxvii).
The chief reasons which incline us to this view of the poem lie, in truth, upon the surface. The references in Ezk 14" and J a 5" suggest that .lob was an actual person, known to tradition. The ^VTiter of the book convej's the impression that he is dealing with actual history, and his teaching would lose much of its force ii it wore supposed that the whole story lay in the mere cloudland of imagination. A majority of writers, however, include the word dramrttic, Lr t->«ie form or other, in their characterizaiion of the j"oeia. Theodore of Jlopsuestia employed the epitlier In the 4th cent., and in modem times Ewald, ITupfeld, and Daviilson use the word drama to describe the book. Delitzsch styles it a drama not emancipated from the lyric element, reminding us that a drama need not be scenic in its character. Volck, after Nol- deke, delines Job as ' a didactic poem, in dialogue form, with dramatic development.' Milton de- scribed it as an epic, and Godet follows in the same direction. Cheyne calls it a ' germinal char- acter drama,' and compares Goethe's ' Iphigenia ' and 'Tasso.' Driver says, 'It is of the nature of a drama, and may be termed a dramatic poem. Its j^irincipal parts are constructed in the form of a dialogue, and the action which it represents passes through the successive stages of entangle- ment, development, and solution. The action is, however, largely internal and mental, the succes- sive scenes exhibiting the varyin<; moods of a great soul 8tru<:gling with the mysteries of fate, rather than trying external situations' [Introd. to O.T. Lit." p. 411). If any technical definition of form is to be given, that ot Volck, quoted alx)ve, appears to be the best, or the shorter phrase 'dramatic poem' might be admitted, for a drama in the usual sense of the word the book certainly is not. The name 'IjTical' or ' didactic-lj'rical' (G. Baur, Stud, und Krit. 185(5, p. 582) is misleading in its a.ssociations. 15ut it is probably a mistake to attempt to stretch this highly original ]ioem upon a Procni.stes' bed, in order to make it lit in with later systems of cla-ssification. ' Soul is form, and doth tlie body make.' The author of Job had certain materials to use, and he kept certain religious objects in view a.s he wrote ; he possessed a poetic genius of remarkable constructive power, and his thoughts were guided by the Divine Spirit. Under these circumstances he ])roduced, not a drama, nor a didactic poem, nor any composition of conventional form or shape, but — the l!k. of Job, which is a law to itself, and which has in- fluenced .subsequent writers whose names stand among the highest in literature, yet who, by general consent, are, merely from the literary (loint of view, outsoared and outshone by their trrmit prototype.
The intimate structure of the poem can beat be understood in connexion witli tiie general subject of tlie poetrj' of the OT (see POETRT). It may, however, be well to say that the ultimate element in Job, as in all Heli. poetry, is the couplet or distich, consisting of two parallel clauses, the length of each line being determined, not by the laws of regular metre, but bj' the beat of an irregular but musical rhythm. The single stones of which the i«)etical structure is composed mav l^ triplet* or quatrains instead ot couplets, but these larger 'or smaller unit« arc combined so oa to form a strophe (the ' panigraph ' of prose), and laws, \vhich are none the less efTective because informal and instinctively obeyed, determine the varying lengths of the line, the varying character of the parallelism, and the varying struc- ture of the strophe. An analysis of Job's lameni in ch- 3, or of any of the speeches, would illustrate in detail what can here be stated only in outline. It may be remarked, however, that the skill of the poet is especially conspicuous in the success with which he employs throughout a long poem a form of composition which is chiefly suited to the gnomic wisdom of