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sive systematization of religion in the temple cultus, or possibly his contact with Hellenism had raised in his mind misgivings and questionings which his traditional belief failed to allay or answer. Nevertheless, if the book is to be treated as a unity, it must be said to end with a religious solution of the problem of human life. Its notion of duty is the fear of God and obedience to a will supposed to be known. So far the book recognizes a special divine revelation vouchsafed to Israel.

But the most striking proof of the universalist standpoint of the Wisdom literature is to be found. in the nature of the problems discussed in it: the worth of life, the reality of God's providential government, above all the meaning and purpose of suffering. Hence is derived a certain catholicity of tone in these books which has often attracted attention. Thomas Carlyle speaks of the book of Job as 'a noble bookall men's book,' and Professor Froude comments on its remarkable freedom from nationalistic elements. 'The life, the manners, the customs,' he observes, ‘are of all varieties and places. Egypt with its river and its pyramids is there; the description of mining points to Phoenicia; the settled life in cities, the nomad Arabs, the wandering caravans, the heat of the tropics and the ice of the north-all are foreign to Canaan, speaking of foreign things and foreign people. if in the very form of the poem to teach us that it is no story of a single thing which happened once, but that it belongs to humanity itself and is the drama of the trial of man','

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There is no doubt a national reference in the narrative of Job. The book contained teaching

1 Short Studies, &c., vol. i. pp. 296, 297. In view of the freedom of the book of Job from specially Hebrew characteristics, and specially the fact that it illustrates the action of divine grace outside the pale of the covenant people, Bishop Wordsworth observes that 'The reception of the book into the Hebrew canon was a generous and large-hearted act of genuine sympathy and comprehensive liberality and love. It was like a kiss of peace given by Israel to its brother the Gentile world' (Commentary on the Bible, Introd. to the Book of Job, p. vi).

peculiarly adapted for Israel during the period of its humiliation and suffering in a strange land. It may be regarded as 'a new reading' of Hebrew history. For the hero seems both in his circumstances and in the tone of his thought to represent the afflicted remnant of Israel, which appears to have had a history marked by severe trials, borne with great constancy of faith; and some have supposed that Job's wife, who appears as a temptress endeavouring to seduce Job from his allegiance to God, represents the multitude of Jews who apostatized or lapsed into indifference under the stress of trial and persecution. In any case there is a certain idealistic character in the sufferings that fall upon Job, which cannot fail to suggest a connexion between them and the calamities threatened in the book of Deuteronony in the event of Israel's disobedience to the divine warnings1; moreover, as has already been pointed out, the figure of Job corresponds with the ideal sufferer of Isaiah lii and liii. Accordingly we may discern in the epilogue of the book a word of consolation for the true Israel: a promise of glorification after suffering patiently endured 2. The writer very probably intended his fellow-Israelites to see in Job's history a representation of their own misfortunes, and to trace in the issue of them a forecast of their own future restoration. We may also discern a corrective intention in the book of Job. The form of the picture was probably designed to act as an antidote to the temper of self-righteousness, and to expose the deficiencies of the current notion of retribution. But it is in its contribution to the Messianic idea that the special importance of the book seems to lie. In one of his essays Dr. Mozley has pointed out that the book of Job virtually stands in an 'interpretative' relation to the general body of

1 Cp. Deut. xxviii. 27, 35 with Job ii. 7.

2 Isa. Ixi. 7 speaks of Israel as receiving double; cp. Job xlii. 12. See also Isa. liv. 1; lx. 7; and cp. Job xlii. 10 with Ezek. xxxvi. 10 foll.

Messianic prophecy. If the Jew with his growing expectation of a brilliant, prosperous, and victorious Messiah was ever to accept a Messiah who should lead a life of sorrow and abasement, and ultimately be crucified between two thieves, 'it was necessary that he should be somewhere taught that virtue was not always rewarded here, and that therefore no argument could be drawn from affliction and ignominy against the person who suffered it.' This function. is evidently fulfilled not only by isolated passages in prophecy, but by an entire book in which the lesson is enforced, the book of Job1. To those who like Job's three friends pertinaciously insisted on an invariable connexion between suffering and sin, the cross could not fail to be a stumbling-block 2.

But apart from all reference to the particular circumstances of Israel, the book of Job has a catholic aspect and function, in that it discusses a problem which in one form or another is the problem of the universe-the mystery of pain. The Hebrew tendency to individualize Israel's national experience, so familiar a phenomenon in many of the Psalms as well as in Job, falls in with the entire movement of man's moral education as described in the Old Testament. The sorrows of the nation led to deeper reflection on the function of pain in the life of the individual. Suffering was gradually recognized as a necessary element in the evolution of higher life. What the Christian learns from the example of his Saviour, the devout Jew was taught to discover in the collective experience of his people. It was a difficult lesson. It came into collision,' says Schultz, 'with everything which a superficial faith was wont to regard as most certain. When Israel was first brought face to face with the idea that suffering might fall upon a saint without being deserved as a punishment, it was only after a hard struggle, and many 1 See Mozley, Essays, vol. ii. pp. 227 foll. 2 Cp. Luke xiii. 2; John ix. 2, 34.

a bitter trial that it succeeded in making this thought its own 1.' The book of Job bears witness to the truth of this remark; and it might be added that an historical example of the agony which accompanied the gradual dissolution of the traditional idea of suffering is to be found in the experience of Jeremiah. Almost startling is the expostulation of the afflicted prophet: I sat not in the assembly of the mockers, nor rejoiced; I sat alone because of thy hand, for thou hast filled me with indignation. Why is my pain perpetual, and my wound incurable, which refuseth to be healed? wilt thou be altogether unto me as a liar, and as waters that fail? It was only by a discipline which involved the righteous in the calamities brought upon themselves by sinners that a new conception of suffering could be awakened. It had to be recognized that pain might have an educational function in the personal life of the soul: that it was the necessary condition of spiritual power, that it equipped men for the task of raising, blessing, and saving their fellows, that it imparted new gifts of character, and heightened the faculty of moral intuition, that it was in short a necessary element in the personal religious life.

It is not fanciful to discern a somewhat similar line of teaching in the book of Ecclesiastes. Into its origin and character it is needless to enter particularly. It is certain, however, that it belongs to a time when Hellenistic influences had deeply penetrated the higher thought of Israel 3. It is also generally agreed that the book is in some sense an autobiography— perhaps a record of the conflicting moods and experiences of a child of Israel who had travelled far and observed much, had perhaps utterly lost and then painfully recovered, at least in a rudimentary form, the faith of his childhood. A more detailed examination of this book seems likely at the present time to

1 Old Testament Theology, vol. i. p. 319.

2 Jer. xv. 17, 18.

3 The date of the book seems to be not much earlier than 200 B. C. See Cornill, Einleitung in das A. T. p. 252.

be fruitful. In the past it has certainly provoked curiously different estimates. Luther, for instance, calls it 'a noble book which it were well worth while for all men to read with great carefulness every day.' On the other hand, a modern German critic declares that the end of all the preacher's admonitions is recommending ease and enjoyment of life.' And while Cornill compares the writer to Thersites, and another critic describes the book as 'the work of a morose Hebrew philosopher, composed when he was in a dismal mood and in places thoroughly tedious,' M. Renan has described it as 'livre charmant! le seul livre aimable qui ait été composé par un juif'.' Perhaps the more common impression formed of Ecclesiastes is that expressed by von Hartmann. The book, he says, is 'the breviary of the most modern materialism.'

Now considering the probable date of its composition and the place which it holds in the canon, we are probably right in considering that the main lesson of the book relates to the mystery of pain. But first we should notice the fact that it has a place in the literature of Israel because it has a theological or redemptive significance.

It is not inaccurate to describe the book of Ecclesiastes as a divine comment on the life and thought of the Gentile world. Consider St. Paul's description of that world as it lay open to his experienced and penetrating gaze. Its leading characteristic was vanity, aimlessness,-a life in which no faculty was directed aright, in which all labour seemed profitless and mean, all unselfish effort valueless, all worship emptied of satisfaction or hope. The Gentiles walked in the vanity of their mind2; and St. Paul bids his Ephesian converts remember what and where they had been: Gentiles in the flesh, with

1 L'Antichrist, p. 101 (quoted by Cheyne, Job and Solomon, p. 242). Cp. the same writer's L'Ecclésiaste, p. 24.

2 Eph. iv. 17. Cp. Rom. i. 21.

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