In the twenty-fourth chapter Job turns aside from the charge brought by Zophar against him, and points to what cannot be disputed, the success of the wandering savage tribes, which must have made such a figure in the domestic history of the time. They, says Job, go on their desperate way unrebuked, and die as the others die. “Drought and heat consume the snow waters; so doth the grave those which have sinned.” These are they “who are wet with the showers of the mountains, and embrace the rock for want of a shelter.”
The controversy has now been fully developed. Bildad mumbles in half-a-dozen weak words, what is nothing to the point, that man in God’s sight must be unclean. His short monologue sounds rather as a meditation meant for himself, the only refuge he could find from the difficulty which pressed upon him. Zophar, who ought to have spoken again, is silent. The victory remains with Job, and he sums up his case.
First of all, though, he competes as it were with Bildad in his account of the Almighty. It is as if Job said—I also know Him and what He is. “Hast thou plentifully declared the thing as it is?” and then he describes God as hanging the earth upon nothing, as the Maker of the constellations, and yet these are but the very fringe of His doings; “what a mere whisper of Him do we hear! but the thunder of His power who shall understand?” He holds fast, too, by his integrity. Nothing that his friends have urged will convince him against his own clear conscience. He remains to them in an utterly unconverted and even horribly profane state of mind—“My heart is not ashamed for one of my days.” He casts up his accounts, and refuses to allow any sin, actual or imputed, open or secret. The rest of the 27th chapter is a mystery which is insoluble. It stands in Job’s name, but it is an admission of everything which he had before denied. “This is the portion of a wicked man with God, and the heritage of oppressors, which they shall receive of the Almighty. If his children be multiplied, it is for the sword; and his offspring shall not be satisfied with bread.” In the 21st chapter Job had urged on this very point, “Let his own eyes”—the eyes of the wrongdoer himself—“see his destruction.” Again in the 21st chapter, “Their seed is established in their sight with them, and their offspring before their eyes.” In the 27th chapter “terrors take hold on him as waters, a tempest stealeth him away in the night.” In the 21st chapter “their houses are safe from fear … they spend their days in wealth, and in a moment go down to the grave. Therefore they say unto God, Depart from us.” Whether in the 27th chapter there is a remnant of a speech by Zophar, from whom one is due, or whether it is an interpolation devised to save Job’s orthodoxy, I have no means of determining, but that it is unintelligible is certain, and the only thing to be done with it is to pass it by. The 28th chapter is not free from difficulty, and both the 27th and 28th are rendered doubly suspicious by the commencement of the 29th. “Moreover, Job continued his parable and said,” the sequel being a reversion to the old pang so authentic and so familiar. “Oh that I were as in months past.” But the 28th chapter is so exquisite, that even if it does not help the development of the poem, or is inharmonious with it, it cannot be neglected. It is a passionate personification of Wisdom, and the desire for her is almost sensuous in its intensity. “It cannot be gotten for gold, neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof. It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sapphire.” This is the wisdom by which the world was framed; by which the winds and waters were measured “when He made a decree for the rain, and a way for the lightning of the thunder.” This very same wisdom it is which is the fear of the Lord. “Unto man he said, Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.” It is wisdom in both cases—the same wisdom. It is not going beyond the text to say that this is what it teaches. What we call morality is no separate science. It is the science by which a decree was made for the rain and a way for the lightning of the thunder. These immortal words should not be narrowed down to the poverty-stricken conclusion that the sum-total of all wisdom is conformity to half-a-dozen plain rules, and that the divine ambition of man is to be limited within the bounds of departing from evil. Rather do we discover in these words the
