(d) As to the doctrine of retribution, we find Proverbs occupying exactly the same standpoint as the Psalmists (see above, p. 726°), viz. founding on the postulate that virtue and ungodliness must receive on earth a precisely equivalent requital (Q21f 1025 1121 31 139 21 144 94° ete.). Nowhere is there a trace to prove that the authors of Proverbs had felt the least difficulty in making this postu- late. But that this very problem had exercised the devotees of Hokhmah profoundly and persist- ently is shown by the book which must undoubtedly be described as the ripest fruit of this whole move- ment, as it is in general one of the sublimest monuments of the religion of Israel, and even of the pre-Christian literature of the world.
2, The Book of Job.—(a) Of the critical questions
* To the same category of ‘rules for life,’ tinged with a utili- tarian complexion, belongs the repeated and extremely insistent warning against becoming surety for others (61f. 1718 2016 2226f.), as also against sloth (66 and frequently).
RELIGION OF ISRAEL
that gather round the Book of Job one only need be taken into account for our purposes—the ques- tion touching the genuineness of the speeches of Elihu (chs. 32-37), which break the connexion be- tween ch. 31 and ch. 38 in an unintelligible fashion, and suddenly introduce a speaker who is quite un- known both to the Prologue and to the Epilogue of the poem. We shall have to state briefly at the close our reasons for holding his observations to be an incontestably later addition. The theory, at present well-nigh dominant (owing to the commen- taries of Duhm and Budde), that in the Prologue and Epilogue we have an older popular writing, in which the author of the main part has inserted the speeches of Job, of his friends, and of Jahweh, is one to which the present writer is unable to sub- scribe, believing as he does that the Prologue and Epilogue were written by the same hand as the rest (though, of course, as Ezk 14149 demands, in dependence on an old and familiar tradition).* As to the date of the book, not only its angelology, which presents similarities to that of Daniel, but also linguistic reasons, compel us to bring it down to the later post-exilic period. That its conception of God (especially in regard to the creation and government of the world, ch. 38 ff. and elsewhere) stands on the loftiest height of OT beliefs, needs no proof.t And as to its ethics, passages like 291, and, above all, 31%, with their truly evan- celical idea of morality, have hardly a parallel in the OT.
(6) As regards the angelology, the novel element lies less in the réle played by the Satan (15 21#-) than in some other expressions. The Satan here is distinguishable from his counterpart in Zechariah (cf. above, p. 709°) at most by this, that, while not yet the calumniator of the pious man, he still excites suspicion against him. He still belongs to the béné ’Elohim, who stand around Jahweh as His servants (1° 2!; in 387 they are named alongside of the morning-stars, which are to be conceived as personified), and he is absolutely bound to the will of God. But there is plainly in him a strain of malice, a joy in the fall of the godly. So far we have here a further development of the idea of the Satan as found in Zec 31. 1 Ch 211—an instructive parallel to 2S 24!—is the first passage where the Satan has become a being dualistically hostile to God. The further expansion of the idea, as pre- supposed in NT, belongs to the department of the Apocrypha (cf., especially, Wis 274).
Peculiar to the Book of Job is the idea of inter- ceding angels (51 33°), as also that of angels of death (33). The description of the angels as holy (15+) is no more here than elsewhere meant to em- phasize their moral perfection, as is clear from this very passage, which (like 418) makes the angels subject to error and sin.
(c) In view of the ever renewed attempt to draw from 19": indications of the sudden flaming up of the hope of resurrection or immortality, emphasis must never cease to be laid on this fact ; the view set forth in Job in regard to Sh2ol—its cheerless darkness, the complete isolation of its inmates from the upper world, and the impossibility of return from it (7% 107% 1410". 21. 1622 216 30?3)_is uniformly the same throughout the whole poem. With such an idea, however, the hope of immortality would be in insoluble contradiction. The expectation to which expression is given in Job 19", accordingly, relates to this life, and this is expressly confirmed by the clear reference back from 42° to 192”.
* Cf. on this point Karl Kautzsch, Das sogenannte Volksbuch ene Hiob und der Ursprung von Hiob 1. 2. 417-17, Tiibingen, 1900.
+ Of the particular mythological allusions (38 to the Levi- athan, 915 to the helpers of Rahab, 2612 to Rahab, 2918 to the poems the same view must be taken as of those in the
salms.
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(d) The problem to the solution of which this sublime poem is devoted is simply, How is the suffering, nay the sore and hopeless suffering, of a notoriously good man compatible with the Justice of God?; and, conversely, How is it compatible with the justice of God that notoriously godless men enjoy to the end of life an absolutely un- troubled happiness? These became burning ques- tions once men had learned to distinguish the weal and woe of the individual from that of the nation, and to face the actual facts of the in- dividual life.