his spirit free to descend into Hades; and in Hades might he not find a justice denied to him here, and see the hope which was as yet invisible? In any case he will at least find rest from the fret and turmoil of a hungry and divided heart; after life's fitful fever sleeping well. Canon Cook gives a fine rendering of Verse 16, which I should like to adopt. He translates it thus: "Will the bars of Hades fall? And will there altogether be rest in the grave?" But this, I think, is a stronger expression of Job's surmise that rest and deliverance await him in the world to come than his words will yet bear. All we can be sure of is that his thoughts were tending in that direction; and that, if it were God's will, he was content to wait till he descended into Hades for that vindication of his integrity for which he nevertheless so passionately longed. As we look back over the whole of this Reply we must admit, I think, that it marks a great advance. The drama is evidently moving on toward its catastrophe. Job has grasped truths of which he can never henceforth wholly lose hold, truths which are likely to lead him on to conclusions still wider and more definite than any he has yet reached. 'Tis a strange experience through which we have seen him pass, and yet not an experience wholly strange to the more thoughtful spirits of our own time. And if I have a little lingered over it and insisted on it, it is because, in all probability, many of us have passed through a similar experience. The traditional and theologic God of our earlier years has long since grown incredible to us. We could not believe in the hard and austere Master, the angry and pre-scientific God, whom our fathers worshipped. We have had to grope, often in great doubt and misery, after some higher and more satisfying conception of the Divine Ruler of men. Happy are we if, from the abyss of doubt or from the depths of some divine despair, we, like Job, have seen and climbed the altar-stairs which slope through darkness up to the only wise and true God, our Father and Witness, our Surety and Friend. 3. BILDAD TO JOB. CHAPTER XVIII. I HAVE already described Bildad1 as a man of less originality and more "temper" than Eliphaz. "A much lesser man every way, with a much more contracted range of thought and sympathy, he deals in proverbs and citations, and takes a severer and more personal tone." That description of him is fully borne out, as indeed it was in part suggested by, the Speech he now delivers. Throughout it he does but copy and reproduce, in colours still more glowing and austere, the terrible and impressive picture of the wicked man and his doom which Eliphaz had drawn in Chapter xv. Like Eliphaz, he depicts the sinner as wandering for his brief day amid snares, haunted by the terrors of an evil conscience, and then sinking into a premature and dishonourable tomb. Not only does he take his motif from Eliphaz; he imitates his very manner, reproduces some of his very touches. If Eliphaz condemns the sinner for dwelling in houses "ordained to be ruins," doomed to desolation by the curse of God, Bildad describes his home as under the selfsame doom (Verses 14 and 15), as consumed by "brimstone," like the cities of the Plain. If Eliphaz gives us a long chain of citations from the Arab "fathers," Bildad repairs for wisdom and authority to the selfsame source this brief Chapter containing at least a dozen allusions to the gathered and priceless wisdom of the Arabian sages. When he quits this ancient and moss-grown fountain, his habit of citation still clings to him, and he quotes three or four sentences from Job himself, wresting them to his own purpose as he quotes them, and once at least he snatches a few words that will serve his turn from Eliphaz. Nay, so profoundly is his mind imbued with this proverbial lore, so deeply is it tinctured with the element it has long wrought in, that even when he is most himself his own style is polished, sententious, concise-the true chokmah style; so that he makes proverbs when he cites none. 1 See page 55. 2 See Commentary on Verses 4, 5, 6, 7, 12, 13, 15, 17, 20. And as for his severity, if Zophar is now and then more blunt and passionate, there is nothing in the whole Poem more severe than Bildad's veiled allusions to Job's character and condition. They are the more severe because of the art which veils them under "a rich drapery of diversified figures," which lingers over them to polish and elaborate and give them a keener edge. That some of the strokes in his portrait of the wicked man are taken from the person and history of Job is beyond doubt. What, for instance, can "that firstborn of death" (Verses 13, 14), who is to hand him over to "the king of terrors," be but that most cruel and fatal of diseases, the elephantiasis, by which the limbs of Job's body were being devoured? And how can we fail to see in the "brimstone" of Verse 15 an allusion to the fire which, falling from heaven, had burned up the flocks of Job and the young men who kept them? Who is the tree of Verse 16, if not Job, whose branches, the children now lost to him, had already been lopped off, and whose root, his own wasted existence, was even now being dried up? And, again, who is he whose wealth, offspring, name, and memory are to be destroyed from the face of the earth as a warning to posterity (Verses 17-20), if not still Job, on whom that dreadful doom had already in great part fallen ? Under his dismal and forbidding picture, as if his meaning were not plain enough already, Bildad writes, "This is the doom of him that knoweth not God,”—implying that now and henceforth he regards Job as one to whom the Almighty was unknown. We have, it is true, to elicit these allusions; but, when once they have been pointed out, no one fails to recognize them, or doubts that Bildad is "confronting" Job" with selfcomparisons." And when we remember that Job was the friend of Bildad, when we recall the horrible pain and shame and misery with which he was overwhelmed, we cannot but say of one who could look on his agony with "no compunctious visitings of nature," who could assail him in his utmost misery with reproach on reproach, and who could even pause to point and polish and barb his reproaches, that they might inflict a sharper and more dangerous wound, that, like Macbeth, "he wants the natural touch;" for, obviously, he loves his wit and his proverbs more than his friend. I have said1 that in this Second Colloquy all the Friends are harder and more bitter than in the First; and that is quite as true of Bildad as it is of Eliphaz, as we may see by comparing this Speech with his previous one. In Chapter viii., as in this Chapter, he begins by complaining of the length and wildness of Job's utterances, as was not unnatural perhaps in a man who was himself studious of brevity and a sententious neatness. In that he paints the character and fate of the wicked in the most approved colours of Egyptian antiquity, as in this he paints them in colours drawn from Arabian antiquity. But there the resemblance ends. For his first speech is full of relenting, full of pressing invitations to Job to repent, full of assurances that God would yet be his Friend and Deliverer; and it closes with the cheerful and kindly affirmation that, because God would not "spurn the perfect, nor take evildoers by the hand," Job's mouth should yet be filled with laughter and his lips with song, while his enemies, clothed with shame, should utterly perish from the earth. But, now, instead of setting forth the justice of God, he simply threatens Job with his vengeance; instead of inviting him to repentance and amendment, he offers him no prospect of escape; instead of assuming that Job is "among the perfect," he denounces him as one who knows not God, and whom God and man will combine to "hunt out of the world." In fine, he here predicts for Job himself the very doom and end which in his first speech he had assigned to the enemies of Job. There are two other, but minor, peculiarities in Bildad's carefully composed oration which need to be indicated. We might almost call it "the Net speech," in order to distinguish it from others; for in Verses 7-10 we have one of those simple feats of skill of which I have already pointed out several— simple to us, and yet so wonderful and delightful to men to whom the literary art is comparatively new. There is probably an allusion to "nets" and "toils," and kindred methods of snaring game, in the very first words Bildad utters. But in these Verses the Poet brings together all, or nearly all, the Hebrew names for the various kinds of nets and traps, just as in Chapter iv. Verses 10, 11, he collects all 1 See pages 181, 182. the Hebrew names for the lion, just as in Chapter x. Verses 21, 22, he collects most of the Hebrew words for darkness, within the narrow compass of a single sentence. The other peculiarity in this Speech is that, though Bildad is addressing Job only, he addresses him in the plural, not in the singular, opening even with the question, "How long will you hunt for words?" not, "How long wilt thou?" And this is a peculiarity which has given rise to much discussion, and to some differences of opinion. The real motive for it I take to be that Bildad is here sarcastically replying to a sarcasm of Job's, and rebutting a claim which Job had advanced by ironically admitting it. Job had gibed (Chap. xii. 2) at the pretension of the Friends to speak in the name of the human race, and as though they held a monopoly of wisdom. He had also identified himself (Chap. xvii. 8, 9) with the upright and pure-handed throughout all the world. Bildad had taken both the gibe and the claim amiss; and therefore he now uses the plural instead of the singular, as though he were addressing in Job the whole body with whom Job had identified himself, and to rebuke him for having puffed himself up until he had mistaken himself for the whole company of the righteous. CHAPTER XVIII. 1.-Then answered Bildad the Shuchite and said: 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. How long will you hunt for words? The light shall darken in his tent, And his own counsel shall cast him down ; |