chapter xxvi

, v. 13, where, speaking of God, it is said:

"His spirit hath adorned the heavens, and his artful hand brought forth the winding serpent."

Or, as the King James version has it:

"By his spirit he hath garnished the heavens; his hand hath formed the crooked serpent."

By this serpent some of the commentators understand "a constellation, the devil, the leviathan." In the Septuagint he is called "the apostate dragon."

The Lord sarcastically asks Job:

"21. Canst thou put a ring in his nose, or bore through his jaw with a buckle?

"22. Will he make many supplications to thee, or speak soft words to thee?

"23. Will he make a covenant with thee, and wilt thou take him to be a servant for ever?

"24. Shalt thou play with him as with a bird, or tie him up for thy handmaids?

"25. Shall friends" (Septuagint, "the nations") cut him in pieces, shall merchants" (Septuagint, "the generation of the Phœnicians") "divide him?" . . (chap. xli, v. 1. Douay version.)

"I will not stir him up, like one that is cruel; for who can resist my" (his?) "countenance," or, "who shall stand against me" (him?) "and live?" . . .

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"4. Who can discover the face of his garment? or who can go into the midst of his mouth?

"5. Who can open the doors of his face? his teeth are terrible round about.

"6. His body is like _molten shields_, shut close up, the scales pressing upon one another.

"7. One is joined to another, and not so much as any air can come between them.

"8. They stick one to another, and they hold one another fast, and shall not be separated.

"9. His sneezing is like the _shining of fire_, and his eyes like the eyelids of the morning." (Syriac, "His look is brilliant." Arabic, "The apples of his eyes are fiery, and his eyes are like the brightness of the morning.")

10. _Out of his mouth go forth lamps, like torches of lighted fire_."

Compare these "sneezings" or "neesings" of the King James version, and these "lamps like torches of lighted lire," with the appearance of Donati's great comet in 1858:

"On the 16th of September two diverging streams of light shot out from the nucleus across the coma, and, having separated to about the extent of its diameter, they turned back abruptly and streamed out in the tail. _Luminous substance_ could be distinctly seen _rushing out from the nucleus_, and then flowing back into the tail. M. Rosa described the streams of light as resembling _long hair brushed upward from the forehead_, and then allowed to fall back on each side of the head."[1]

"11. _Out of his nostrils goeth forth smoke_, like that of a pot heated and boiling." (King James's version has it, "as out of a seething pot or caldron.")

"12. His breath _kindleth coals, and a flame cometh forth out of his mouth_.

"13. In his neck strength shall dwell, and want goeth before his face." (Septuagint, "_Destruction runs before him_.")

[1. "Edinburgh Review," October, 1874, p. 208.]

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"14. The members of his flesh cleave one to another; he shall send lightnings against him, and they shall not be carried to another place." (Sym., "His flesh being cast for him as in a foundry," (molten,) "is immovable.")

"15. His heart shall be as hard as a stone, and as firm as a smith's anvil." (Septuagint, "He hath stood immovable as an anvil.")

"16. When he shall raise him up, _the angels shall fear_, and being affrighted shall purify themselves."

Could such language properly be applied, even by the wildest stretch of poetic fancy, to a whale or a crocodile, or any other monster of the deep? What earthly creature could terrify the angels in heaven? What earthly creature has ever breathed fire?

"17. When a sword shall lay at him, it shall not be able to hold, nor a spear, nor a breast-plate.

"18. For he shall esteem iron as straw, and brass as rotten wood.

"19. The archer shall not put him to flight, the stones of the sling are to him like stubble.

"20. As stubble will he esteem the hammer, and he will laugh him to scorn who shaketh the spear."

We are reminded of the great gods of Asgard, who stood forth and fought the monster with sword and spear and hammer, and who fell dead before him; and of the American legends, where the demi-gods in vain hurled their darts and arrows at him, and fell pierced by the rebounding weapons.

"21. _The beams of the sun shall be under him_," (in the King James version it is, "SHARP STONES _are under him_"--the gravel, the falling _débris_,) "and _he shall strew gold under him like mire_." (The King James version says, "_he spreadeth sharp-pointed things upon the mire_.")

To what whale or crocodile can these words be applied? When did they ever shed gold or stones? And

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in this, again, we have more references to gold falling from heaven:

"22. He shall make the deep sea to boil like a pot, and shall make it as when ointments boil." (The Septuagint says, "He deems the sea as a vase of ointment, and the Tartarus of the abyss like a prisoner.")

"23. _A path shall shine after him_; he shall esteem the deep as growing old." (The King James version says, "One would think the deep to be hoary.")

1124. _There is no power upon earth that can be compared with him_, who was made to fear no one.

"25. He beholdeth every _high thing_; he is king over all the children of pride." (Chaldaic, "of all the sons of the mountains.")

Now, when we take this description, with all that has preceded it, it seems to me beyond question that this was one of the crooked serpents with which God had adorned the heavens: this was the monster with blazing bead, casting out jets of light, breathing volumes of smoke, molten, shining, brilliant, irresistible, against whom men hurled their weapons in vain; for destruction went before him: he cast down stones and pointed things upon the mire, the clay; the sea boils with his excessive heat; he threatens heaven itself; the angels tremble, and he beholds all high places. This is he whose rain of fire killed Job's sheep and shepherds; whose chaotic winds killed Job's children; whose wrath fell upon and consumed the rich men at their tables; who made the habitations of kings "desolate places"; who spared only in part "the island of the innocent," where the remnant of humanity, descending by ropes, hid themselves in deep, narrow-mouthed caves in the mountains. This is he who dried up the rivers and absorbed or evaporated a great part of the water of the ocean, to subsequently cast it down in great floods of snow and rain, to cover the north with ice;

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while the darkened world rolled on for a long night of blackness underneath its dense canopy of clouds.

If this be not the true interpretation of Job, who, let me ask, can explain all these allusions to harmonize with the established order of nature? And if this interpretation be the true one, then have we indeed penetrated back through all the ages, through mighty lapses of time, until, on the plain of some most ancient civilized land, we listen, perchance, at some temple-door, to this grand justification of the ways of God to man; this religious drama, this poetical sermon, wrought out of the traditions of the people and priests, touching the greatest calamity which ever tried the hearts and tested the faith of man.

And if this interpretation be true, with how much reverential care should we consider these ancient records embraced in the Bible!

The scientist picks up a fragment of stone--the fool would fling it away with a laugh,--but the philosopher sees in it the genesis of a world; from it he can piece out the detailed history of ages; he finds in it, perchance, a fossil of the oldest organism, the first traces of that awful leap from matter to spirit, from dead earth to endless life; that marvel of marvels, that miracle of all miracles, by which dust and water and air live, breathe, think, reason, and cast their thoughts abroad through time and space and eternity.

And so, stumbling through these texts, falling over mistranslations and misconceptions, pushing aside the accumulated dust of centuried errors, we lay our hands upon a fossil that lived and breathed when time was new: we are carried back to ages not only before the flood, but to ages that were old when the flood came upon the earth.

Here Job lives once more: the fossil breathes and palpitates;-hidden from the fire of heaven, deep in his cavern;

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covered with burns and bruises from the falling _débris_ of the comet, surrounded by his trembling fellow-refugees, while chaos rules without and hope has fled the earth, we hear Job, bold, defiant, unshrinking, pouring forth the protest of the human heart against the cruelty of nature; appealing from God's awful deed to the sense of God's eternal justice.

We go out and look at the gravel-heap--worn, rounded, ancient, but silent,--the stones lie before us. They have no voice. We turn to this volume, and here is their voice, here is their story; here we have the very thoughts men thought-men like ourselves, but sorely tried--when that gravel was falling upon a desolated world.

And all this buried, unrecognized, in the sacred book of a race and a religion.

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