Sensible of the weight of this argument, others, as Eichhorn, took a medium course, and assumed that the author was a Hebrew, though he did not live among his countrj'men, but in Arabia. •' The earlier Hebrew his- tory," they say, "is unknown to the autlior, who is igno- rant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In portraying na- ture, also, he proves himself always familiar with Arabia, while he is silent respecting the characteristics of Pales- tine. With Egypt he must have been well acquainted, which can be accounted for better by supposing him to have lived in Arabia than in Palestme." Hitzig and Hirzel accordmgly, among the latest writers, hold that the writer was an Egyptian. Wetzstein and Delitzsch say that he was a native of the Hauran. The occasional use of the name Jehovah, however, appears to imply a Later date than the Exode, and the absence of allusion to the events of Jewish history, it has been thought, may be accounted for by the peculiar line of argument (from natural religion) pursued in the book, as in Eccle- siastcs. It has further been suggested that the author, without directly mentioning the Pentateuch, frequently alludes to portions of it, as in iii, 4, to Gen. i, 3 ; in iv, 19, and xxxiii, 6, to Moses's accomit of the creation of man ; in V, 14, to Dent, xxxii, 32 ; in xxiv, 11, to Deut, xxv, 4. Moreover, history saj^s nothing of the Israelites having permanently taken up their residence in the land of Arabia, so as to allow the supposition of the above or- igin of the book of Job by a Hebrew thus isolated from Palestine ; nor will most of the arguments adduced to prove the acquaintance (and therefore neighborhood) of the author with Egypt bear a close examination. Thus it is a mistake to suppose that the description of the M'orking of mines in ch. xxviii must necessarily have reference to Egypt ; Phoenicia, Arabia, and Edom afford- ed much better materials. That the author must have known the Egyptian mausolea rests on an erroneous in- terpretation of iii, 14, which may also be said of the as- sertion that xxix, 18, refers to the Egj'ptian mythus of the phoenix. Casting aside these arbitrarily assumed Egyptian references, we have only tlie following : Our author knows the Egyptian vessels of bulrushes, ix, 26 ; the Nile-grass, viii, 12, the Nile-horse (Behemoth) and the crocodile (Leviathan), xi, 15 ; xli, 1. Now, as these things belong to the more prominent peculiarities of a neighboring country, they must have been known to everj' educated Israelite : the vessels of bulrushes are mentioned also in Isa. xviii, 2, Neither are we disposed to adopt the compromising view of Stickel, who assumes that the author wrote his book in the Israelitish territory indeed, but close to the frontier, in the far south-east of Palestine. That the author had there the materials for his descriptions, comparisons, and imagerj' set better be- fore his eyes than an>"\vhere else, is true, for there he had an opportimity of observing mines, caravans, drying up of brooks, etc. But this is not sufKcient proof of the author having Uved permanently in that remote part of Palestme, and of having there written his book : he was not a mere copyist of nature, but a poet of considerable eminence, endowed with the power of vividly represent- ing things absent from him.
I 2. As to the age of the author of this book, we meet with three opinions : («.) Tliat he lived before Moses, I or was, at least, his contemiiorary, (i.) That he lived in the time of Solomon, or in the centuries next follow- ing—the opinion of Hahn, Schlottmann (Berl. 1857), and Delitzsch. (c.) That he Uved shortly before, or during, or even after the Babylonian exUe. Against this last view (adopted by Le Clerc among earlier interpreters, and among modern expositors by Bernstein, Gcsenius, Umbreit, and De Wette) it is conclusively objected, (1.) That the book is referred to in the Old Testament itself (Ezek. xiv, 14-20) as well known before the Chalda'an exile. Others, with less plausibility, urge what they deem imitations of various sentiments and even pas- sages of Job in the ante-exilian prophets, e. g. Jer, xx, 14, comp, with Job iii (see Kiiper, Jeremias hhrorum sa- crorum interpres atque vindex, p. 164 sq,) ; Lam, ii, 16, comp. Job xvi, 13 ; Lam, iii, 7, 9, comp. Job xix, 8 ; Isa. xl, 2, comp. Job i (and x, 17 ; xiv, 14) ; Isa. li, 9, comp. Job xxvi, 13 ; Isa. xix, 5, comp. Job xiv, 11 ; Psa, cvii, 42, comp. Job v, 16, (2.) The absence oi' i/iose Chalda- isms in Job which occur in books written about the time of the captivity, (3.) The poetical character of the book, which is wholly different from the decUning style of the later period.
The most complete statement of the reasons in sup- port of the opinion that the book of Job was written between the age of Moses and the Exile may be found in Eichters essay, De ^£tafe Jobi dejinienda, reprinted in Itosenmliller's edition of Lowth's PralecHones de Po- esi iSiicra J/< braorum, in which he maintains that ii; was written in the age of Solomon, Most of these rea- sons, indeed, are either not conclusive at all, or not quite cogent. Thus it is an arbitrary assumption, proved by modern researches to be erroneous, that the art of WTit- ing was unknown previous to the age of Moses, The assertion, too, that the marks of cultivation and refine- ment observable in our book belonged to a later age rests on no historical ground. Further, it cannot be said that for such an early time the language is too smooth and neat, smce in no Shemitic dialect is it pos- sible to trace a progressive improvement. The evident correspondence also between our book and the Proverbs and Psalms is not a point proving with resistless force that they were all written at the same time. Nor is it altogether of such a kind that the authors of the Proverbs and Psalms (comp. especially Psa. xxxix, 13, with Job vii, 19; xiv, 6; x, 20, 21; vii, 8, 21, in the Hebrew Bible), can be exactly said to have copied our book ; but it may be accomited for by their all belong- ing to the same class of writings, by the very great uni- formity and accordance of religious conceptions and sentiments expressed in the Old Testament, and by the j stability of its religious character. The striking coin- cidence, in particular, observable between the eulogy of "wisdom" contained in Job xxviii and the numerous similar didactic strains found in the writuigs of Solo- mon (comp. especially Prov. iii, iv), may be accounted for by the above supposition that this chapter was add- ed by a later hand than the author of the rest of the book, or at least as a sequel to the traditional part of the poem.