Leaving the details, and taking the book as a whole, wiiat may be said of Job as to its place in the history of revelation? It can only be rightly understood if it is viewed as a stage in the history of religious thought, an advance upon all that pre- ceded it, a step forward taken at tlie cost of severe sullering and mental conflict, but still only one step in advance. It was given to the author of the poem to see the shallowness and insulliciency of the theory that would make righteousness and pro- sperity, wickedness and calamity, vary directly in proportion to one another, in the present life. It was not given to him to obtain anything more than a pa-ssing glim]iHe into the prospect of a future life, in which the balance might be re<lre.ssed ; in all probability even this phrase is too strong to express the nature of the confidence attained in ch li)^- *". The mystery and the beiiuty of vicarious sullering in the moral and spiritual world were bidden from him. But be had begun to see that,
even as regards the present, pain may be a privilege rather than a punishment ; that the loftiest spirits may have to pass through it as a trial of theii loyalty rather than a chastisement for their trans- gressions ; and that in such a case it behoves them to bear, as the Lord's chosen ones, the burden and the mystery of life, as pregnant with a deep significance certain hereafter to be made known.
it has often been said that Job Ls a type of Christ. The Christian holds that throughout the OT there were hints and foreshadowings of spiritual truth more fully revealed in the NT, and the sullering of the upright man under the earlier dispensation prepared the way for and was in turn explained by the sutt'ering of the only Sinless Man, the Mediator of a new covenant. Mozley says, ' The Crucifixion is the one consummate act of injustice to which all others are but distant approaches.' The Cross of Christ is at the same time the darkest and the brightest spot upon earth, because there is most fully seen tlie meaning of that world-old problem of the sufi'ering of the righteous in an evil world. What appears 'in- iiistice' is intended to be a part of redemption. The author of Job did not clearly see, perhaps never dimly guessed at that mysterious solution of a mystery. But he grappled with the moral dilliculties of his own time like a giant, and left upon record some lessons concerning sullering and its significance, which neither the world nor the Churcii has fully learned yet.
vii. Uatk and Author-ship.— There is little or no external evidence of a trustworthy kind to enable us to determine either author or date. The refer- ence in Ezk 14" cannot be quoted in relation to the Bk. of Job, though it may have a bearing on the historical reality of the man. Jewish tradition as represented in the Talmud {Sola v. 8 ; Buba liat/ira Ion) assigned it to Moses. Writers so recent as Ebrard (1858) and liawlinson (1891) have been found to hold the same jiosition. But the earliest date assigned by the consensus of modern scholarship is the time of Solomon (Delitzsch, Cook, Cox), whUst by far the larger majority of critics place the book somewhere between the 7th and the 4th cent. B.C. For the period after the captivity of the Northern tribes, some- where between Isaiah and Jeremiah, mi>y be quoted the names of Ewald, Kenan, Alerx, Dill- niaiin ; Davidson and Driver would date the book during or shortly after the Exile, the period which Cheyne and Atargoliouth are also inclined to favour. Cornill (Einleitung, p. 241) places the book amongst the very latest canonical OT litera- ture. No author's name except tll.^t of Moses, which is quite out of the question, Inis ever been suggested. Whenever the writer lived, he is for us a great Unknown, and it is perhaps impossible to fix the time of coiiiposition, exce|it by stating the century within which it probably falls. The following is the jirincij>al evidence on the subject furnished by the book itself.
At first sight Job presents a picture of primitive non-Israelitish life. Much that we are accus- tomed to find in other books of OT is conspicuous by its absence. The picture drawn of the life of Job is on the whole faithful to the conditions of patriarchal life. The wealth of the patriarch con- sists in his Hocks and herds (I' and 42'"); such sacrifices a.s are mentioned (1^ 42') are of a primi- tive type, performed by the head of the household as a priest. The age to which .lob finally attains is patriarchal (42'") ; the iiiece of money, .ly'v-p named in 42" is uncoined ami primitive, mentioned elsewhere only in Gn Sa" and Jos 24'^ of .Jacob's purchase from the children of Ilamor; whilst the musical instrumints, fB, i^ij, 3ji;', mentioned in 21'''' 3tJ" are the primitive ones of Gn 4-" 31".
870
JOB, BOOK OF
JOB, BOOK OF
The names of Ood are such as belonged to pntri- arolial times, El and Eloah (occurrini; some fifty times in Job, but rarely in OT ■jencrallv) being the oldest Semitic titles of the Divine fiein-;. Tlie name ' Jehovah,' used in the prolo^rue and epilogue, is not found in the body of the book except once, as if by accident, in 12'-' {compare 'jnt; in 2S'"). In these and other features the colouring appropriate to the circumstances of Job's life is preserved with (jreat fidelity and skill.