1. Shadowy Contacts with History:
The questions who was the personal author of the Book of Job, and what was its age, are at best only a matter of conjecture; and my revised conjecture, arrived at since I wrote my Epic of the Inner Life, must go for what it is worth. It seems to me much better to regard a story so homogeneous and interrelated as in the main the composition of one mind than to distribute it, as some critics do, among various authors, supplementers, and editors. As to its age, there is so little identifiable contact with political or ecclesiastical history that its composition has been ascribed to many periods, from the time of Abraham to late in post-exilic times. The fact that its scene is laid in the patriarchal past and in a land outside of Palestine indicates the author's design to dissociate it from contemporary events and conditions; such contact with these as exist, therefore, must be read between the lines. The book does not hold with full consistency to patriarchal conditions. Job's friends appeal with the complacency of wisdom-prospered men to the ancient tenure of the land (15:19); and yet, as Job complains, the heartless greed of the landholding class in removing landmarks and oppressing the poor (24:2-12) connotes the prevalence of such outrages as were denounced by Isaiah and Micah before the Assyrian crisis. Such evils would not decrease under Manasseh and Jehoiakim, and might well be portrayed in reminiscence by an exilic writer. On the top of this consideration may be cited the most definite reference to a historical event that the book contains: the passage Job 12:17-25, which vividly describes, by an eyewitness ("Lo, mine eye hath seen all this," Job 13:1), a wholesale deportation and humiliation of eminent persons, just like that told of Jehoiachin and his court in 2Ki 24:13-15. To my mind this is illuminative for the age of the book. It seems to have been written by one who saw the Chaldean deportation of 587 BC. May I be suffered to carry the suggestion a step farther? It will be remembered that the chief personage of that deportation was for 37 years a state prisoner in Babylon, at the end of which time he was "taken from durance and judgment" (compare Isa 53:8 the King James Version) and lived thenceforth honored with kings (2Ki 25:27-30 = Jer 52:31-34). I take him to have been the original of the individualized Servant of Yahweh described and describing himself in Second Isa. In one of his self-descriptions he says that Yahweh has given him "the tongue of them that are taught" (Isa 50:4); in another that Yahweh has made his "mouth like a sharp sword" and himself "a polished shaft" (Isa 49:2). What he said or wrote is of course unidentifiable; but it is certain that in some cultural way he was a hidden power for good to his people. What if this Book of Job were a prison-made book, like Pilgrim's Progress and Don Quixote, but as much greater as the experience that underlay it was more momentous? I do not see but this suggestion is as probable as any that have been made; and some expressions of the book become thereby very striking, as for instance, the reference to prisoners (Isa 3:18-19), to the servant longing for release (Isa 7:2), the general sense of being despised, the several references to Job as "my servant Job" (Isa 1:8; 2:3; 42:7-8), the description of his restoration as a turned captivity, and his successful intercession for the friends (Isa 42:10; compare Isa 53:12). I would merely suggest the idea, however, not press it.
2. Place in Biblical Literature:
If the Book of Job is a product of the time of Jehoiachin's imprisonment, it is in worthy and congenial literary company. Isaiah, fostering the faith of a new-born spiritual "remnant," had gathered the elements of that sublime vision (Isa 1:1) of Israel's mission among the nations which a later hand was even now, four generations after, working to supplement and finish, in a prophecy (Isa 40:1-31 through Isa 66:1-24) which, as all recognize, constitutes the closest parallel in spirited idea to our book. Seers, priests and singers had long busied themselves with the literary treasures of the past; drawing out of dusty archives and putting into popular idiom the ancient laws and counsels of Moses (Deuteronomy; see under JOSIAH); Collecting and adapting the old Davidic psalms and composing new ones, as Hezekiah's reorganization of the worship required. Ezekiel was at Tel Abib planning for the reconstruction of the temple, and perhaps by his use of the name "Job" veiling a cryptic reference (Eze 14:14,20). The affiliations of the Book of Job, however, were more specifically, with the wisdom literature; and long before this the "men of Hezekiah" (Pr 25:1) had gathered their aftermath of the Solomonic proverbs, to supplement the maxims which had been the educative pabulum of the people (see under PROVERBS,THE BOOK OF ). It was with the care and principle of this diffused instruction, now the most popular vein of literature, that the Book of Job concerned itself. That had become apparent as soon as the maxims were coordinated in an anthology, and an introduction to the collection had been composed, extolling Wisdom as the guide and savior of life. To a spiritually-minded thinker with the Hebrew genius for religion the motivation of Wisdom must sooner or later come. With its values should be apprehended also its unguarded points and tendencies. It was exposed to the one-sided drift of all popular things. In an age when revision and deeper insight were the literary order of the day, Wisdom would come in with the other strains of literature for purification and maturing; and there was not wanting an experience, the basis of an almost unbelievable report (compare Isa 53:1) to give depth and poignancy to Job's personal story of suffering and integrity.
3. Parallels and Echoes:
In the amazing sureness and vigor. of its message the Book of Job stands out unique and alone; but it is by no means without its lesser parallels in faith and doubt, above which it rises like a mountain above its retinue of foothills. Mention has been made above of a number of Psalms (e.g. 37; 49; 73) which with different degrees of assurance witness to the struggle of faith with the problem of the rampant and successful wicked. Ps 49:1-20, one of the psalms of the sons of Korah, is especially noteworthy, because it expressly employs the popular mashal, that is, the Wisdom vehicle, to convey a corrective lesson about unblest riches, drawing a conclusion not unlike that of Job 27:8-23, though in milder tone. Not less noteworthy also is the note of suffering and its mysteriousness which pervades many of the psalms, especially of Asaph and Heman; Ps 88:1-18 and Ps 102:1-28 might both have been composed with special reference to Hezekiah's sickness and set beside his psalm in Isa 38:1-22, but also they are so fully in the tone of Job's complaint, especially Ps 88:1-18, that Professor Godet, not unplausibly, conjectures that the Book of Job was written by its author Heman. Hezekiah's deadly sickness itself (Isa 38:1-22), which was of a leprous nature, banishing him from the house of God, and which was miraculously healed--an experience regarding which Hezekiah's own writing (Isa 38:10-20) is strikingly in the key of Job's complaint--furnishes the nearest parallel to, or adumbration of, Job's affliction; but also in the accounts of the Servant of Yahweh there are hints of a similar stroke of God's judgment (compare Isa 52:14; 53:3). The passage Job 7:17-18 has been called "a bitter parody" of Ps 8:4; it may be so, but the conditions are in utter contrast, and nothing can be concluded as to which is original and which echo. As to expression, the most remarkable parallel to Job, perhaps, is the passage Jer 20:14-18, in which, like Job, the prophet Jeremiah curses the day of his birth. This curse in Job would naturally be remembered by all readers as one of the most characteristic features of the book; and in like manner the curse in Jer may have stood out in the memory of his disciples, of whom the writer of Job may have been one, and figure in a similar literary situation. Ezekiel's naming of Job along with Noah and Daniel (Eze 14:14,20), as a type of atoning righteousness, is doubly remarkable if the writer of Job was a contemporary; he may have taken the name from a well-known legend, and there may have underlain it a double meaning, known to an inner circle, referring cryptically to one whose real name it might be impolitic to pronounce. Whenever written, the outline and meaning of Job's momentous experience must have won speedily to a permanent place in the universal Hebrew memory; so that centuries afterward James could write to the twelve tribes scattered abroad (Eze 5:11), "Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord."
LITERATURE.
A.B. Davidson, "The Book or Job" (Cambridge Bible for Schools), 1884; A.S. Peake, "Job" (New Century Bible), 1905; S.R. Driver, The Book of Job in the Revised Version, 1906; J. T. Marshall, The Book of Job, 1904; J.F. Genung,. Epic of the Inner Life, 1891; G.G. Bradley, Lectures on Job in Westminster Abbey, 1887; F.C. Cook in The Speaker's Commentary, 1882. Among German writers, A. Dillmann, Hiob erklart, 1891; K. Budde, Das Buch Hiob ubersetzt und erklart, 1896 (see The Expositor T,VIII , iii); B. Duhm, Das Buch Hiob erklart, 1897; G. Beer, Der text des Buches Hiob untersucht, 1897; Gibson, "The Book of Job" (Oxford Commentaries), 1899.
John Franklin Genung