Job renews his desire to speak with God. He renews also his request for death; and yet death, the passing of life like a shadow, is to him most pathetic, although the pathos in his case had never been sharpened by the loss of a hope in immortality. “His sons come to honour, and he knoweth it not; and they are brought low, but he perceiveth it not of them. But his flesh upon him shall have pain, and his soul within him shall mourn.” He is shut out from all sympathy with the joys and the sorrows of the children whom he has so much loved. He lies cold and dead, when they are exulting in love, in marriage, in well-deserved gratulations from their fellows. He is cold and dead, when they are in complicated difficulty or distress from which he could save them!
The three friends, having each said what they had to say, and Job having answered, begin again, Eliphaz taking the lead as before. His position is unaltered. How should it be altered? It is not possible for a man committed, as Eliphaz and his companions are committed, to alter, whatever the facts may be, and the same argument returns with little variation. Eliphaz condemns Job because his talk can do no good. Always has this been urged against those who, with no thought of consequences, cannot but utter that which is in them; and it is held to be especially pertinent against the man who, like Job, challenges the constitution under which he lives, and “has no remedy to propose.” It is incredible to Eliphaz that there should be anything in Job’s case which had not been anticipated. “Art thou the first man that was born? Hast thou heard the secret of God?” This was supposed to be conclusive in Job’s day, and has been thought to be conclusive ever since.
Although there must necessarily be a certain monotony in the continuous counter-statements of Job, there is not a single dead repetition. For example, in this second answer to Eliphaz, Job, after the retort that he, too, “could heap up words” if he pleased, adds “my purposes are broken off, even the thoughts of my heart.” Happy is the man, no matter what his lot may be otherwise, who sees some tolerable realisation of the design he has set before him in his youth or in his earlier manhood. Many there are who, through no fault of theirs, know nothing but mischance and defeat. Either sudden calamity overturns in tumbling ruins all that they had painfully toiled to build, and success forever afterwards is irrecoverable; or, what is most frequent, each day brings its own special hindrance, in the shape of ill-health, failure of power, or poverty, and a fatal net is woven over the limbs preventing all activity. The youth with his dreams wakes up some morning, and finds himself fifty years old with not one solitary achievement, with nothing properly learned, with nothing properly done, with an existence consumed in mean, miserable, squalid cares, and his goal henceforth is the grave in which to hide himself ashamed.
Bildad’s second response travels over the old ground. “The light of the wicked shall be put out, and the spark of his fire shall not shine,” etc. etc., and Job reiterates that all this is nothing but clatter. “Know now that God hath overthrown me, and hath compassed me with His net. Behold, I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard: I cry aloud, but there is no judgment. He hath fenced up my way that I cannot pass, and He hath set darkness in my paths.” Into the much-disputed question of the meaning of the famous verses at the end of the 19th chapter, which have been so generally supposed to refer to the resurrection, I cannot enter. I do not know what they mean, and it is a pity that commentators, where there is no certain light, cannot say there is none, but feel themselves compelled to give an interpretation. I will only go so far as to admit that if there is any allusion to future life here, much of what goes before and comes after is obscured. We are at a loss to know why Job should have dwelt upon the finality of death if he had immortality before him. It is inconsistent with the thought that he was about to go “whence he should not return,” and it destroys the parallel between the flower, which revives at the scent of water, and man who “giveth up the ghost, and where is he?”—man who “lieth down and riseth not: till the heavens be no more they shall not awake nor be raised out of their sleep.” It is curious, too, that Job’s friends do not allude to the doctrine, as one would think they would certainly do, at least after having seen Job’s reliance upon it. Zophar’s speech in the 20th chapter does not refer to it. He contents himself with the affirmation that in this life the avenger of the wicked will appear: “The increase of his house shall depart—shall flow away in the day of his wrath. This is the portion of a wicked man from God, and the heritage appointed unto him by God.”
As the action of the poem proceeds, Job becomes more and more direct. “Mark me,” says he in the 21st chapter, “and be astonished, and lay your hand upon your mouth. Even when
