CHAPTER XV.

THE BOOK OF JOB FROM A GENERAL AND WESTERN POINT OF VIEW.

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 streams into his service to speak for him.’ They do speak for the poet of _Job_; the ‘still sad music of humanity’ is continually relieved by snatches from the grand symphonies of external nature. And hence the words of _Job_ are ‘so true and natural that they would appear to expand like the buds at the approach of spring.’ It is only a feeble light which the Authorised Version sheds upon this poem; and even the best prose translation must for several reasons be inadequate. Perhaps, though English has no longer its early strength, a true poet might yet achieve some worthy result. Rarely has the attempt been made. George Sandys was said by Richard Baxter to have ‘restored Job to his original glory,’ but he lived before the great era of Semitic studies. The poetical translator of _Job_ must not disdain to consult critical interpreters, and yet by his own unassisted skill could he bring this Eastern masterpiece home to the Western reader? I doubt it. Even more than most imaginative poems the Book of Job needs the help of the painter. It is not surprising therefore that a scholar of Giotto should have detected the pictorial beauties of the story of Job. Though only two of the six Job-frescoes remain entire, the Campo Santo of Pisa will be impoverished when time and the sea-air effect the destruction of these. I know not whether any modern painter besides William Blake has illustrated Job. He, a ‘seer’ born out of due time, understood this wonderful book as no modern before him had done. The student will get more help of a certain kind from the illustrations thus reproduced in the second volume of Gilchrist’s _Life of William Blake_, compared with the sympathetic descriptions by Blake’s biographer (vol. i. pp. 330-333), than from any of the commentaries old or new.

In every respect the poem of _Job_ stands in a class by itself. More than any other book in the Hebrew canon it needs bringing near to the modern reader, untrained as he is in Oriental and especially in Semitic modes of thought and imagination. Such a reader’s first question will probably relate to the poetic form of the book. Is it, for instance, a drama? Theodore of Mopsuestia (died 428) answered in the affirmative, though he was censured for this by the Council of Constantinople. The author of Job, he says, wronged the grand and illustrious story by imitating the manner of the pagan tragedians. ‘Inde et illas plasmationes fecit, in quibus certamen ad Deum fecit diabolus, et voces sicut voluit circumposuit, alias quidem justo, alias vero amicis.’[126]

Bishop Lowth devotes two lectures of his _Sacred Poetry_ to the same question. He replies in the negative, after comparing Job with the two Œdipi of Sophocles (dramas with kindred subjects), on the ground that action is of the essence of a drama and the Book of Job contains not even the simplest action. Afterwards indeed he admits that Job has at least one point in common with a regular drama, viz. the vivid presentation of several distinct characters in a tragic situation. The view that it is an epic, held in recent times by Dr. Mason Good and M. Godet, found favour with one no less than John Milton, who speaks, as he who knows, of ‘that epic form, whereof the two poems of Homer and those other two of Virgil and Tasso are a diffuse, and the Book of Job a brief model.’[127] Something is to be said for this opinion if _Paradise Regained_ be a true epic. Dialogue with the addition of a certain amount of narrative is, roughly speaking, the literary form of the Book of Job as well as of the unequally great English poem, and Coleridge is probably right in representing Milton as indebted to the former for his plan. It is however open to us to doubt not only whether _Paradise Regained_ is a true epic poem, but whether any section of the Book of Job except the Prologue partakes of the nature of an epic. The Prologue certainly does; it is more than a mere introduction to the subsequent speeches; it is an independent poetical narrative,[128] if not a narrative poem; nor is there wanting a strong infusion of that supernatural element which tradition regards as essential to the epic. True, it is a torso, but this does not interfere with its genuinely poetic character: it is, as Milton says, a ‘brief model’ or miniature of an epic poem. The Colloquies on the other hand are as undoubtedly a germinal character-drama, as the Song of Songs is a germinal stage-drama. The work belongs to the same class as Goethe’s _Iphigenie_ and _Tasso_; only there is much more passion in it than in these great but distinctively modern poems. Some one has said that ‘there is no action and reaction between the speakers’ [in the Colloquies]. This is an over-statement. Not only is each speaker consistent with his type of character, but the passionate excitement of Job, and his able though fragmentary confutation of his opponents, do produce an effect upon the latter, do force them to take up a new position, though not indeed to recall their original thesis.[129]

But in order to bring the Book of Job nearer to the modern Western mind, we must not only study it from the point of view of form, but also compare its scope and range with those of the loftiest modern Western poems of similar import; only then shall we discover the points in which it is distinctively ancient, Oriental, Semitic.—The greatest English work of kindred moral and religious import is _Paradise Lost_. Like _Job_, it is a theodicy, though of a more complex character, and aims

... (to) assert eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to man.

And the author of _Paradise Lost_, though not to be equalled with the founders of Biblical religion, is still distinguished from all modern poets (except Dante and Bunyan) by his singularly intense faith in the operations of the Divine Spirit. That prayer of his, beginning ‘And chiefly Thou, O Spirit,’ and a well-known parallel passage in his _Reason of Church Government_, prove conclusively that he held no contracted views as to the limits of Inspiration. This, in addition to his natural gifts, explains the overpowering impression of reality produced by the visions of Milton, and perhaps in a still greater degree by those of our Puritan prose-poet, John Bunyan. A similar faith in the divine Spirit, but more original and less affected by logical theories, was one great characteristic of the author of _Job_. He felt, like all the religious ‘wise men’ (of whom more presently), that true wisdom was beyond mortal ken, and could only be obtained by an influence from above. In the strength of this confidence he ventured, like Milton, on untrodden paths, and presumed to chronicle, in symbolic form, transactions of the spiritual world. Whether or not he believed in the Satan of the Prologue, as a Sunday School child might, we need not decide; that he used popular beliefs in a wide, symbolic sense, has been pointed out elsewhere. Probably both Milton and he, if questioned on the subject, would have replied in the spirit of those words of our Lord, ‘If ye will receive it,’ and ‘All men cannot receive this saying.’ It is not to be forgotten that the author of _Job_ distinctly places the Satan in a somewhat humorous light, and though Milton is far from doing the same, yet we know from _Comus_ that the conception of a symbol was as familiar to him as to Lord Bacon. Notice, in conclusion, that Milton’s Satan, though unlike the Satan of his predecessor in some points,[130] resembles him in this striking particular, that he is not yet (in spite of Milton’s attempt to represent him as such) the absolutely evil being.

_Faust_ has in some respects a better right to be compared with _Job_ than _Paradise Lost_. Not so much indeed in the Prologue, though Goethe deserves credit for detecting the humorous element in the Hebrew poet’s Satan, an element which he has transferred, though with much exaggeration, to his own Mephistopheles. Neither the Satan nor Mephistopheles (a remote descendant of the Hebrew[131] _mastema_, from the root _satam=satan_) is the Origin of Evil in a personal form,[132] but the Hebrew poet would never have accepted the description in _Faust_ of the peculiar work of the ‘denying spirit.’ But in the body of the poem there is this marked similarity to the Book of Job—that the problem treated of is a purely moral and spiritual one; the hero first loses and then recovers his peace of mind; it is the counterpart in pantheistic humanism of what St. Paul terms working out one’s own salvation. Still there are great and most instructive divergences between the two writers. Observe, first, the complete want of sympathy with positive religion—with the religion from which Faust wanders—on the part of the modern poet. Next, a striking difference in the characteristics of Job and Faust respectively. Faust succumbs to his boundless love of knowledge, alternating with an unbridled sensual lust; Job is on the verge of spiritual ruin through his demand for such an absolute correspondence of circumstances to character as can only be realised in another world. The greatness of Faust lies in his intellect; that of Job (who in chap. xxviii. directly discourages speculation) in his virtue. Hence, finally, Faust requires (even from a pantheistic point of view) to be pardoned, while Job stands so high in the divine favour that others are pardoned on his account.

A third great poem which deserves to be compared with _Job_ is the _Divina Commedia_. Dante has the same purpose of edification as the author of _Job_ and even of _Faust_, though he has not been able to fuse the didactic and narrative elements with such complete success as Goethe. Nor is he so intensely autobiographical as either Goethe or the author of _Job_; his own story is almost inextricably interlaced with the fictions which he frames as the representative of the human race. He allows us to see that he has had doubts (_Parad._ iv. 129), and that they have yielded to the convincing power of Christianity (_Purgat._