chapter i
); good and bad perish together; and the evil one laughs as the scourge (the comet) slays suddenly the innocent ones; the very judges who should have enforced justice are dead, and
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their faces covered with dust and ashes. And if God has not done this terrible deed, who has done it?
And Job rebels against such a state of things
"34. Let him take his _rod away from me_, and let not his fear terrify me.
"35. Then I would speak to him and not fear him but it is not so with me."
What rod--what fear? Surely not the mere physical affliction which is popularly supposed to have constituted Job's chief grievance. Is the "rod" that terrifies Job so that he fears to speak, that great object which cleft the heavens; that curved wolf-jaw of the Goths, one end of which rested on the earth while the other touched the sun? Is it the great sword of Surt?
And here we have another (chap. x) allusion to the "darkness," although in our version it is applied to death:
"21. Before I go whence I shall not return, even to the land of darkness and the shadow of death.
"22. A _land of darkness_ as darkness itself, and of the shadow of death, _without any order_, and _where the light is as darkness_."
Or, as the Douay version has it:
"21. Before I go, and return no more, to _a land that is dark and covered with the mist of death_.
"22. A land of misery and darkness, where the shadow of death, and no order but _everlasting horror dwelleth_."
This is not death; death is a place of peace, "where the wicked ceased from troubling "; this is a description of the chaotic condition of things on the earth outside the cave, "without any order," and where even the feeble light of day is little better than total darkness. Job thinks he might just as well go out into this dreadful world and end it all.
Zophar argues (chap. xi) that all these things have
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come because of the wickedness of the people, and that it is all right:
"10. If he _cut off_ and _shut up_ and _gather together_, who can hinder him?
"11. For he knoweth vain men: he seeth wickedness also; will he not then consider it?
"If he cut off," the commentators say, means literally, "If he pass by as a storm."
That is to say, if he cuts off the people, (kills them by the million,) and shuts up a few in caves, as Job was shut up in prison, gathered together from the storm, how are _you_ going to help it? Hath he not seen the vanity and wickedness of man?
And Zophar tells Job to hope, to pray to God, and that he will yet escape:
"16. Because thou shalt forget thy misery, and remember it _as waters that pass away_.
"17. And thine age shall be clearer than the noonday; thou shalt shine forth, thou shalt be as the morning."
"Thou shalt shine forth" Gesenius renders, "though _now thou art in darkness_ thou shalt presently be as the morning"; that is, the storm will pass and the light return. Umbreit gives it, "Thy darkness shall be as the morning; only the darkness of morning twilight, not nocturnal darkness." That is, Job will return to that dim light which followed the Drift Age.
"18. And thou shalt be secure, because there is hope; yea, _thou shalt dig_ about thee, and thou shalt take thy rest in safety."
That is to say, when the waters pass away, with them shall pass away thy miseries; the sun shall yet return brighter than ever; thou shalt be secure; thou shalt _dig thy way out of these caverns;_ and then take thy rest in
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safety, for the great tempest shall have passed for ever. We are told by the commentators that the words "about thee" are an interpolation.
If this is not the interpretation, for what would Job dig about him? What relation can digging have with the disease which afflicted Job?
But Job refuses to receive this consolation. He refuses to believe that the tower of Siloam fell only on the wickedest men in the city. He refers to his past experience of mankind. He thinks honest poverty is without honor at the hands of successful fraud. He says (chap. xii):
"5. He that is ready to slip with his feet is as a lamp _despised in the thought of him that is at ease_."
But--
"6. The tabernacles of robbers prosper, and they that provoke God are secure; into whose hand God bringeth abundantly."
And he can not see how, if this calamity has come upon men for their sins, that the innocent birds and beasts, and even the fish in the heated and poisoned waters, are perishing:
"7. But ask now the beasts," ("for verily," he has just said, "ye are the men, and wisdom will die with you,") "and _they_ shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and _they_ shall tell thee:
"8. Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare it unto thee.
"9. Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this?"
Wrought what? Job's disease? No. Some great catastrophe to bird and beast and earth.
You pretend, he says, in effect, ye wise men, that only the wicked have suffered; but it is not so, for aforetime I have seen the honest poor man despised and the villain
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prosperous. And if the sins of men have brought this catastrophe on the earth, go ask the beasts and the birds and the fish and the very face of the suffering earth, what they have done to provoke this wrath. No, it is the work of God, and of God alone, and he gives and will give no reason for it.
"14. Behold, he breaketh down, and it cannot be built up again; _he shutteth up a man_, and there can be no opening.
"15. Behold, _he withholdeth the waters, and they dry up:_ also, he sendeth them out, and _they overturn the earth_."
That is to say, the heat of the fire from heaven sucks up the waters until rivers and lakes are dried up: Cacus steals the cows of Hercules; and then again they fall, deluging and overturning the earth, piling it into Mountains in one place, says the Tupi legend, and digging out valleys in another. And God buries men in the caves in which they sought shelter.
"23. He increaseth the nations, _and destroyeth them:_ he enlargeth the nations, and straiteneth them again.
"24. He taketh away the heart of the chief of the people of the earth, and causeth them to wander _in a wilderness where there is no way_.
"25. _They grope in the dark without light, and he maketh them to stagger like a drunken man_."
More darkness, more groping in the dark, more of that staggering like drunken men, described in the American legends:
"Lo, mine eye," says Job, (xiii, 1,) "_hath seen all this, mine ear hath heard_ and understood it. What ye know, the same do I know also."
We have all seen it, says Job, and now you would come here with your platitudes about God sending all this to punish the wicked:
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"4. But ye are forgers of lies, ye are all physicians of no value."
Honest Job is disgusted, and denounces his counselors with Carlylean vigor:
"11. Shall not his excellency make you afraid? _and his dread fall upon you?_
"12. Your remembrances are like unto _ashes_, your bodies to bodies of _clay_.
"13. Hold your peace, let me alone, that I may speak, and let come on me what will.
"14. Wherefore do I take my flesh in my teeth, and put my life in mine hand?
"15. Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him."
In other words, I don't think this thing is right, and, though I tear my flesh with my teeth, and contemplate suicide, and though I may be slain for speaking, yet I will speak out, and maintain that God ought not to have done this thing; he ought not to have sent this horrible affliction on the earth--this fire from heaven, which burned up my cattle; this whirlwind which slew my children; this sand of the sea; this rush of floods; this darkness in noonday in which mankind grope helplessly; these arrows, this poison, this rush of waters, this sweeping away of mountains.
"If I hold my tongue," says Job, "I shall give up the ghost!"
Job believes--
"The grief that will not speak, Whispers the o'erfraught heart, and bids it break."
"As _the waters fail from the sea_," says Job, (xiv, 11,) and the flood _decayeth and drieth up:_
"12. So man _lieth down, and riseth not:_ till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep.
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13. O that thou wouldest _hide me_ in the grave, that thou wouldest keep me secret, _until thy wrath be past_, that thou wouldest appoint me a set time, and _remember me!_"
What does this mean? When in history have the waters failed from the sea? Job believes in the immortality of the soul (xix, 26): "Though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God." Can these words then be of general application, and mean that those who lie down and rise not shall not awake for ever? No; he is simply telling that when the conflagration came and dried up the seas, it slaughtered the people by the million; they fell and perished, never to live again; and he calls on God to hide him in a grave, a tomb, a cavern--until the day of his wrath be past, and then to remember him, to come for him, to let him out.
"20. My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, and _I am escaped with the skin of my teeth_."
Escaped from what? From his physical disease? No; he carried that with him.
But Zophar insists that there is a special providence in all these things, and that only the wicked have perished (chap. xx):
"5. The triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment."
"7. Yet he shall perish for ever like his own dung: they which have seen him shall say, Where is be?"
16. He shall suck the _poison of asps: the viper's tongue shall slay him_."
How?
"23. When he is about to fill his belly, _God shall cast the fury of his wrath upon him_, and shall RAIN IT UPON him, while he is eating.
"24. He shall flee from the iron weapon, and the bow of steel shall strike him through.
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"25. It is drawn and cometh out of the body; yea, the glittering sword" (the comet?) "cometh out of his gall: _terrors are upon him_.
"26. _All darkness shall be hid in his secret places: a fire not blown shall consume him_. . . .
"27. The heavens _shall reveal his iniquity;_ and _the earth shall rise up against him_.
"28. The increase of his house shall depart, and his goods shall _flow away_ in the day of his wrath."
What does all this mean? While the rich man, (necessarily a wicked man,) is eating his dinner, God shall rain upon him a consuming fire, a fire not blown by man; he shall be pierced by the arrows of God, the earth shall quake under his feet, the heavens shall blaze forth his iniquity; the darkness shall be hid, shall disappear, in the glare of the conflagration; and his substance shall flow away in the floods of God's wrath.
Job answers him in powerful language, maintaining from past experience his position that the wicked ones do not suffer in this life any more than the virtuous (chap. xxi):
"Their houses are safe from fear, neither is the rod of God upon them. Their bull gendereth, and faileth not; their cow calveth, and casteth not her calf. They send forth their little ones like a flock, and their children dance. They spend their days in wealth, and _in a moment go down to the grave_. Therefore they say unto God, Depart from us; for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways."
And here we seem to have a description (chap. xvi, Douay ver.) of Job's contact with the comet:
"9. A false speaker riseth up against my face, contradicting me."
That is, Job had always proclaimed the goodness of God, and here comes something altogether evil.
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"10. He hath gathered together his fury against me; and threatening me he hath _gnashed with his teeth upon me:_ my enemy hath beheld me _with terrible_ eyes."
"14. He has compassed me _round about with his lances_, he hath wounded my loins, he hath not spared, he hath poured out my bowels on the earth.
"15. He hath torn me with _wound upon wound_, he hath rushed in upon me _like a giant_."
"20. For behold _my witness is in heaven_, and he that knoweth my conscience is on high."
It is impossible to understand this as referring to a skin-disease, or even to the contradictions of Job's companions, Zophar, Bildad, etc.
Something rose up against Job that comes upon him with fury, gnashes his teeth on him, glares at him with terrible eyes, surrounds him with lances, wounds him in every part, and rushes upon him like a giant; and the witness of the truth of Job's statement is there in the heavens.
Eliphaz returns to the charge. He rebukes Job and charges him with many sins and oppressions (chap. xxii):
"10. Therefore snares are around about thee, and _sudden fear troubleth thee;_
"11. _Or darkness, that thou canst not see; and abundance of waters cover thee_."
"13. And thou sayest, How doth God know? Can he judge _through the dark cloud?_
"14. _Thick clouds are a covering to him_, that he seeth not and he walketh in the circuit of heaven.
15. Hast thou marked the old way which wicked men have trodden?
"16. Which were cut down out of time, _whose foundation was overflown with a flood?_"
"20. Whereas our substance is not cut down, but _the remnant of them the fire consumeth_."
"24. He shall give for earth _flint_, and for flint _torrents of gold_." (Douay ver.)
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What is the meaning of all this? And why this association of the flint-stones, referred to in so many legends; and the gold believed to have fallen from heaven in torrents, is it not all wonderful and inexplicable upon any other theory than that which I suggest?
"30. He shall deliver _the island of the innocent_: and it is delivered by the pureness of thine "(Job's) "hands."
What does this mean? Where was "the island of the innocent"? What was the way which the wicked, who did not live on "the island of the innocent," had trodden, but which was swept away in the flood as the bridge Bifrost was destroyed, in the Gothic legends, by the forces of Muspelheim?
And Job replies again (chap. xxiii):
"16. For God maketh my heart soft, and the Almighty troubleth me:
"17. _Because I was not cut off before the darkness_, neither hath he covered the darkness from my face."
That is to say, why did I not die before this great calamity fell on the earth, and before I saw it?
Job continues (chap. xxvi):
"5. Dead things are formed from _under the waters_, and the inhabitants thereof.
"6. _Hell is naked before him, and destruction hath no covering_.
The commentators tell us that the words, "dead things are formed under the waters," mean literally, "the souls of the dead tremble from under the waters."
In all lands the home of the dead was, as I have shown elsewhere,[1] beyond the waters: and just as we have seen in Ovid that Phaëton's conflagration burst open the earth
[1. "Atlantis," 359, 421, etc.]
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and disturbed the inhabitants of Tartarus; and in Hesiod's narrative that the ghosts trembled around Pluto in his dread dominion; so here hell is laid bare by the great catastrophe, and the souls of the dead in the drowned Flood-land, beneath the waters, tremble.
Surely, all these legends are fragments of one and the same great story.
"7. He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing.
"8. _He bindeth up the waters in his thick clouds; and the cloud is not rent under them_."
The clouds do not break with this unparalleled load of moisture.
"9. _He holdeth back the face of his throne_, and _spreadeth his cloud upon it_.
"10. He hath compassed the waters with bounds, _until the day and night come to an end_.
"11. The pillars of heaven _tremble_, and are astonished at his reproof.
"12. He divideth the sea with his power, and by his understanding he smiteth through the proud." ("By his wisdom _he has struck the proud_ one."--Douay ver.)
"13. By his spirit he hath garnished the heavens his hand hath _formed the crooked serpent_." ("His artful hand brought forth the winding serpent."--Douay ver.)
What is the meaning of all this? The dead under the waters tremble; hell is naked, in the blazing heat, and destruction is uncovered; the north, the cold, descends on the world; the waters are bound up in thick clouds; the face of God's throne, the sun, is bidden by the clouds spread upon it; darkness has come, day and night are all one; the earth trembles; he has lighted up the heavens with the fiery comet, shaped like a crooked serpent, but he has struck him as Indra struck Vritra.
How else can these words be interpreted? When
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otherwise did the day and night come to an end? What is the crooked serpent?
Job continues, (chap. xxviii,) and speaks in an enigmatical way, v. 3, of "the _stones_ of darkness, and the shadow of death."
114. The flood breaketh out from the inhabitants; even the waters forgotten of the foot: _they are dried up_, they are gone away from men.
"5. As for the earth, out of it cometh bread: and under it is turned up _as it were fire_."
Maurer and Gesenius translate verse 4 in a way wonderfully in accord with my theory: "The flood breaketh out from the inhabitants," they render, "a shaft, (or gulley-like pit,) is broken open far from the inhabitant, the dweller on the surface of the earth."[1] This is doubtless the pit in which Job was bidden, the narrow-mouthed, bottomless cave, referred to hereafter. And the words, "forgotten of the foot," confirm this view, for the high authorities, just cited, tell us that these words mean literally, "unsupported by the foot THEY HANG BY ROPES IN DESCENDING; they are dried up; they are gone away from men."[2]
Here we have, probably, a picture of Job and his companions descending by ropes into some great cavern, "dried up" by the heat, seeking refuge, far from the habitations of men, in some "deep shaft or gulley-like pit."
And the words, "they are gone away from men," Maurer and Gesenius translate, "far from men they move with uncertain steps--they _stagger_." They are stumbling through the darkness, hurrying to a place of refuge, precisely as narrated in the Central American legends.
[1. Fausset's "Commentaries," vol. iii, p. 66.
2. Ibid.]
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This is according to the King James version, but the Douay version gives it as follows:
"3. He hath set _a time for darkness_, and the _end of all things he considereth_; the stone also that is _in the dark_, and the shadow of death.
"4. The flood _divideth from the people that are on their journey, those whom the foot of the needy man hath forgotten, and those who cannot be come at_.
5. The land out of which bread grew in its place, _hath been overturned with fire_."
That is to say, God has considered whether he would not make an end of all things: he has set a time for darkness; in the dark are the stones; the flood separates the people; those who are escaping are divided by it from those who were forgotten, or who are on the other side of the flood, where they can not be come at. But the land where formerly bread grew, the land of the agricultural people, the civilized land, the plain of Ida where grew the apples, the plain of Vigrid where the great battle took place, _that has been overturned by fire_.
And this land the next verse tells us:
"6. The stones of it are the place of sapphires, and the clods of it" (King James, "dust") "are gold."
We are again reminded of those legends of America and Europe where gold and jewels fell from heaven among the stones. We are reminded of the dragon-guarded hoards of the ancient myths.
The Douay version says:
"9. He" (God) "has stretched out his hand to the _flint_, he hath _overturned mountains from the roots_."
What is the meaning Of FLINT here? And why this recurrence of the word flint, so common in the Central American legends and religions? And when did God in
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the natural order of things overturn mountains by the roots?
And Job (chap. xxx, Douay version) describes the condition of the multitude who had at first mocked him, and the description recalls vividly the Central American pictures of the poor starving wanderers who followed the Drift Age:
"3. Barren with want and hunger, who gnawed in the wilderness, _disfigured with calamity_ and misery.
4. And they ate grass, and _barks of trees_, and the _root of junipers was their food_.
"5. Who snatched up these things out of the valleys, and _when they had found any of them, they ran to them with a cry_.
"6. They dwelt in the _desert places of torrents_, and _in caves of the earth_, or UPON THE GRAVEL."
Is not all this wonderful?
In the King James version, verse 3 reads:
3. For want and famine they were solitary, fleeing into the wilderness, in former time, desolate and waste."
The commentators say that the words, "in former time, desolate and waste," mean literally, "_the yesternight of desolation and waste_."
Job is describing the condition of the people immediately following the catastrophe, not in some remote past.
And again Job says (Douay version, chap. xxx):
"12. . . . My calamities forthwith arose; they have overthrown my feet, and have overwhelmed me with their paths as with waves. . . .
"14. They have rushed in upon me as when a wall is broken, and a gate opened, and have rolled themselves down to my miseries. . . ."
Maurer translates, "as when a wall is broken," "with a shout like the _crash of falling masonry_."
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29. I was the brother of _dragons_ and companion of ostriches.
"30. My _skin is become black_ upon me, and my bones are dried up with the _heat_."
We are reminded of Ovid's statement that the conflagration of Phaëton caused the skin of the Africans to turn black.
In