THE BOOK OF JOB
The writer of the following article is not a stranger to the pages of THE MACCABÆAN. In the year 1912 he contributed an article on "Modern Jewish Education." In 1910 he contributed an article entitled "Jacob and Esan," where, in a semi-humorous way, he described the vicissitudes of the Jewish race.
The essay which follows is the result of many years of long, painstaking and independent study and research. Briefly and lucidly written as it is, the essay will not fail to be of unusual interest to the general reader, while the close student of the Bible will find the writer's theory, which makes the much disputed Chapter XXXII of the Book of Job an integral part of the last speech of Job, worthy of impartial consideration, to say the least.—Ed.
The book of Job is considered by many, one of the few great books of the literatures of the world. It is certainly the most remarkable among the books of the O!d Testament, if not the greatest of them a.l.
There has never been a lack of expounders and critics of this book; and poets and thinkers of every age have ever found new interest in discussing it; for it is a book that refuses to grow old. Its subject is as old, or as young, as the human soul, as the questions which man asks himself about his own self and about his powers, and about the right ways of conduct.
A truly Hebraic poet and thinker is the author of "Job." Not the mere action and interaction of cosmic forces attracts his attention and excites his admiration; not the storm and stress incidental to cosmic life per se is the subject of his attention and admiration; he goes beyond all that. Beyond the visible universe, beyond every changing matter he sees a Fower, a Unity, a Deity all-pervading, all-enlightening.
And in that power he sees the source of moral light, of wisdom, of moral perfection. And it is the moral perfection which his heart craves, and his intellect strives to compass. It is the moral equilibrium which he seeks in all life, cosmic and human. Thus, his problem is the problem of Righteousness, the problem of the moral basis of human life and conduct.
But while putting his supreme trust in the righteousness of the World-Power, he is firm, nay, zealous, in the defence of the rationality of his own thinking. He knows that his God will not rob him of the right
of thinking independently, according to the light vouchsafed him. And our poet came to set a light before his fellow beings, to teach men true freedom of thought, to breathe courage into the human heart, and to free us from the vice of blind submission in all its forms.
As a poet the author of "Job" speaks to us in the language of pictures and parables. He gives us the experiences and struggles of a human soul, a soul that is put into a body of flesh and blood.
For the author of “Job” is not a theologian in the guise of a poet; he is a poet of the realistic cast of mind; he is more akin to a Shakespeare than to a Milton.
Let us now come nearer to the book itself.
The general reader who is acquainted with the text of the Book of Job cannst fail to notice that the two opening chapters and most of the last chapter are written in the prose-narrative style; while the bulk of the book is composed in the peculiar metre of biblical verse. (I)
(1) The distinguishing feature of that style is the so-called parallelism of sentences. Unlike modern verse where the rhythm is produced by the sound of measured syllables, the Hebrew poetic verse has the rythm of thought, or idea. That is, the thought expressed in one line is dit- ferently expressed, modified, or augmented in the next line The grammatical compaotness of Bibilical Hebrew results in a diction at once crisp, forceful and epigramatice And in the original Hebrew—every verse falls on the ear like the stroke of a bell; and every sucessive stroke augments or modifies the effect