Job and Solomon: Or, The Wisdom of the Old Testament

It is not surprising that these strange Meditations should have had great difficulty in penetrating into the Canon. There is sufficient evidence (see the works of Plumptre and W...

The Book of Job is not the earliest monument of Hebrew ‘wisdom,’ but for various reasons will be treated first in order. The perusal of some of the pages introductory to Proverb...

We now begin the consideration of the question, Are there any well-ascertained Græcisms in the language and in the thought of this obviously exceptional book? That there are man...

Passing now from Sirach’s moral statements to those which are concerned with doctrine, an honest critic must admit that the author is here even less progressive. The Messianic h...

As a rule, however, the proverbs relate to ordinary bourgeois life. Religious proverbs occur but rarely.[194] ‘Folly’ too is not so often mentioned as in the first collection, a...

This is widely different, remarks Umbreit,[69] from the question whether Job actually said and did all that is related of him in our book. It is scarcely necessary, he adds, in...

‘The words of Job are ended’ (xxxi. 40_b_), remarks the ancient editor, and amongst the last of these words is an aspiration after a meeting with God. That Job expected such a f...

‘Thou hast kept the good wine until now,’ for ‘good wine’ well describes the glorious little treatise at the head of our Book of Proverbs (i. 7-ix. 18). I do not think it is rig...

The inclusion of Sirach within our range of study, as an appendix and counterpart to the canonical Book of Proverbs, requires no long justification. The so-called ‘Wisdom of Sol...

We have studied the masterpiece of Hebrew wisdom before examining the nature of the intellectual product which the Israelites themselves graced with this title. The Book of Job...

Altogether, it is abundantly clear that we have before us works of art, and not the simple maxims handed down in Israel from father to son. There may sometimes be a traditional...

There are two extreme views on the date of the Book of Proverbs, between which are the theories of the mass of moderate critics. The one is that represented by Keil in his Intro...

We have now arrived at the conclusion of the meditations of our much-tried thinker. It is strongly poetic in colouring; but when we compare it with the grandly simple overture o...

We have seen how large a Christian element penetrates and glorifies the bold questionings of the Book of Job. Whatever be our view on obscure problems of criticism, the characte...

By comparison with Ecclesiastes, the books which we have hitherto been studying may be called easy; at any rate, they have not given rise to equally strange diversities of criti...

A new section begins at x. 16—no ingenuity avails to establish a connection with the preceding verses. We are approaching our goal, and breathe a freer air. From the very first...

The new phase into which the controversy as to the early Christian work on the _Teaching of the Apostles_ has passed excuses me from justifying the importance (in spite of its d...

A detailed exegetical study would alone enable the reader to do justice to the controversies here referred to. But I may at least ask that, even upon the ground of the slender a...

At a (perhaps) considerably later period than the original work (including chap. xxviii.)—symbolised by the youthfulness of Elihu as compared with the four older friends—the pro...

It is not every critic of Ecclesiastes who helps the reader to enjoy the book which is criticised. Too much criticism and too little taste have before now spoiled many excellent...

author of _Job_, the vicissitudes of his mental history. In two points, however—the width of his religious sympathies (which even permits him to borrow from the rich legendary m...

In passing from the book of Ecclesiasticus to that of Ecclesiastes, we are conscious of breathing an entirely different intellectual atmosphere. ‘Seek not out the things that ar...

That the Book of Job is not as deeply penetrated with the spirit of revelation, nor even as distinctly Israelitish a production, as most of the Old Testament writings, requires...

It is not wonderful that the gulf between Job and his friends should only be widened by such a direct contradiction of the orthodox tenet. The friends, indeed, cannot but feel t...

According to Delitzsch, the Song of Solomon is the most difficult book in the Old Testament. If so, Ecclesiastes comes next in order. None of the attempts to discover a logical...

The Book of Job is even less translatable than the Psalter. And why? Because there is more nature in it. ‘He would be a poet,’ says Thoreau, ‘who could impress the winds and str...

In one of the opening verses of the Book of Proverbs (i. 6) three technical names for varieties of proverbs are put together:—(1) _māshāl_, a short, pointed saying with referenc...

We have seen (Chap. VII.) that the unity of authorship of the Book of Job is not beyond dispute, but we shall not at present assume the results of analysis. Let us endeavour to...

Jewish tradition, while admitting a Hezekian or post-Hezekian redaction of the book, assigns the original authorship of Ecclesiastes to Solomon. The Song of Songs it regards as...

Upon entering what Dante in the _De Monarchiâ_ so well calls ‘the forest’ of the canonical proverbs, we are soon struck by differences of age and growth. The central portion of...

The facts on which our argument is based are mainly the passages in _Job_ which refer to ‘sons of Elohim’ (or better, as Davidson, ‘of the Elohim’), to ‘the Satan,’ and to the _...

The three narrow-minded but well-meaning friends have exhausted their arsenal of arguments. Each with his own favourite receipt has tried to cure Job of his miserable illusion,...

At vii. 15 a new section begins, consisting almost entirely of the author’s personal experiences, very loosely connected; it continues as far as ix. 12. A curious passage at the...

Motto: ‘Jedem nämlich wollte ich dienen, der hinlänglich Sinn hat in die grosse Frage tiefer einzugehen, welche das ernste Leben einmal gewiss an Jeden heranbringt, nach der Ger...

The next proverbial anthology (xxv.-xxix.) like its chief predecessor is described in the heading as ‘Proverbs of Solomon.’[183] The social state however presupposed in many of...

Let us now take a general survey of this strange book, regarding it as a record of the conflicting moods and experiences of a thoughtful man of the world. The author is too mode...

hereafter (like xi. 9_b_ xii. 7, 13, 14). I confess that consistency seems to me to require this step; the verse is in fact well fitted to be an antidote to the following verse,...

The sense of proverbs is naturally most difficult to catch when there has been no attempt to group them by subjects. Hence the textual difficulties of so large a part of the ear...

very different course; as a matter of fact, neither Job nor his friends, nor yet Jehovah Himself, refers to this supposed newly-won truth, and the only part of ‘Job’s deepest sa...

It is better to go into the house of mourning than to go into the house of feasting, inasmuch as that is the end of all men, and the living can lay it to his heart (vii. 2).

passed an author’s final revision. The most obvious hypothesis surely is that from chap. iii. onwards we have before us the imperfectly worked-up meditations of an otherwise unk...

It is only in modern times that the Book of Proverbs has been disparaged; the early Christian Fathers considered it to be of much ethico-religious value. Hence the sounding titl...

Let us now resume the thread of Koheleth’s moralising. Violence and oppression were two of the chief evils which struck an attentive observer of Palestinian life. But there were...

We now come to the _dénoûment_ of the story (xlii. 7-17), against which, from the point of view of internal criticism, much were possible to be said. We shall not, however, here...

north, rich in gold (comp. Isa. xiv. 13, and Sayce, _Academy_, Jan. 28, 1882, p. 64), and the myth-derived synonyms for Sheól—Death, Abaddon, and ‘the shadow of death’ (or, deep...

One of the peculiarities of our poet (which I have elsewhere compared with a similar characteristic in Dante) is his willingness to appropriate mythic forms of expression from h...

I cannot go quite so far as Lagarde, who argues from the use of ‘Eloah’ (instead of ‘Elohim’ and ‘Jehovah’) that the doubters have cast off belief in all the supposed various ma...

These verses have been misplaced in the Massoretic text (as Isa. xxxviii. 21, 22). They clearly ought to stand at the end of the chapter. So Kennicott, Eichhorn, Merx, Delitzsch.