"Here was a people, whom, after their works, thou shalt see wept over for their lost dominion."And in this palace is the last information respecting lords collected in the dust."Death hath destroyed them and disunited them, and in the dust they have lost what they amassed."Talib goes on with his troops, until they come to a great pillar of black stone, sunk into which, to his armpits, was a mighty creature; "he had two wings and four arms; two of them like those of the sons of Adam, and two like the fore-legs of lions with claws. He had hair upon his head like the tails of horses, and two eyes like two burning coals, and he had a third eye in his forehead, like the eye of the lynx, from which there appeared sparks of fire."He was the imprisoned comet-monster, and these{p. 270}arms and eyes, darting fire, remind us of the description given of the apostate angel in the other legends:###THE AFRITE IN THE PILLAR."He was tall and black; and he was crying out 'Extolled be the perfection of my Lord, who hath appointed me this severe affliction and painful torture until the day of resurrection!'"{p. 271}The party of Talib were stupefied at the sight and retreated in fright. And the wise man, the Sheik Abdelsamad, one of the party, drew near and asked the imprisoned monster his history. And he replied:"I am an Afrite of the genii, and my name is Dahish, the son of Elamash, and I am restrained here by the majesty of God."There belonged to one of the sons of Eblis an idol of red carnelian, of which I was made guardian; and there used to worship it one of the kings of the sea, of illustrious dignity, of great glory, leading, among his troops of the genii, a million warriors who smote with swords before him, and who answered his prayer in cases of difficulty. These genii, who obeyed him, were under my command and authority, following my words when I ordered them: all of them were in rebellion against Solomon the son of David (on both of whom be peace!), and I used to enter the body of the idol, to command them and to forbid them."Solomon sent word to this king of the sea that he must give up the worship of the idol of red carnelian; the king consulted the idol, and this Afrite, speaking through the idol, encouraged the king to refuse. What,--he said to him,--can Solomon do to thee, "when thou art in the midst of this great sea?" And so Solomon came to compel the island-race to worship the true God; he surrounded his island, and filled the land with his troops, assisted by birds and wild beasts, and a dreadful battle followed in the air:"After this they came upon us all together, and we contended with him in a wide tractfor a period of two days; and calamity befell us on the third day, and the decree of God (whose name be exalted!) was executed among us. The first who charged upon Solomon were I and my troops: and I said to my companions, 'Keep in your places in the battle-field while I go forth to them and challengeDimiriat."' (Dimiriat was the Sun, the{p. 272}bright one.) "And lo,he came forth, like a great mountain, his fires flaming and his smoke ascending;and he approached andsmote me with a flaming fire; and his arrow prevailed over my fire. He cried out at mewith a prodigious cry, so that I imagined theheaven had fallenand closed over me, and the mountains shook at his voice.###DAHISH OVERTAKEN BY DIMIRIAT.Then he commanded his companions, and they charged upon us all together: we also charged upon them, and we cried out one to another:the fires rose and the smoke ascended, the hearts of the combatants were almost cleft asunder, and the battle raged. The birds fought in the air, and the wildbeasts in the dust; and I contended with Dimiriat until he wearied me and I wearied him;{p. 273}after which I became weak, and my companions and troops were enervated and my tribes were routed."The birds tore out the eyes of the demons, and cut them in pieces untilthe earth was covered with the fragments, like the trunks of palm-trees. "As for me, I flew from before Dimiriat, but he followed me a journey of three months until he overtook me." And Solomon hollowed out the black pillar, and sealed him in it with his signet, and chained him until the day of resurrection.And Talib and his party go on still farther, and find "the City of Brass," a weird, mysterious, lost city, in a desolate land; silent, and all its people dead; a city once of high civilization, with mighty, brazen walls and vast machinery and great mysteries; a city whose inhabitants had perished suddenly in some great calamity. And on the walls were tablets, and on one of them were inscribed these solemn words:"'Where are the kings and the peoples of the earth? They have quitted that which they have built and peopled. And in the grave they are pledged for their past actions. There, after destruction, they have become putrid corpses. Where are the troops? They repelled not nor profited. And where is that which they collected and boarded? The decree of the Lord of the Thronesurprised them. Neither riches nor refuge saved them from it.'"And they saw the merchants dead in their shops; their skins were dried, and their bones were carious, and they had become examples to him who would be admonished."Everywhere were the dead, "lying upon skins, and appearing almost as if they would speak."Their death seems to have been due to a long period of terrible heat and drought.On a couch was a damsel more beautiful than all the daughters of Adam; she was embalmed, so as to preserve all her charms. Her eyes were of glass, filled with quick{p. 274}silver, which seemed to follow the beholder's every motion. Near her was a tablet of gold, on which was inscribed:"In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful.... the Lord of lords, the Cause of causes; the Everlasting, the Eternal. . . . Where are the kings of the regions of the earth" Where are the Amalekites? Where are the mighty monarchs? The mansions are void of their presence, and they have quitted their families and homes. Where are the kings of the foreigners and the Arabs? They have all died and become rotten bones. Where are the lords of high degree? They have all died. Where are Korah and Haman? Where is Sheddad, the son of Add? Where are Canaan and Pharaoh? God hathcut them off, and it is he who cutteth short the lives of mankind, and he hath made the mansions to be void for their presence. . . . I am Tadmor, the daughter of the king of the Amalekites, of those who ruled the countries with equity: I possessed what none of the kings possessed," (i. e., in extent of dominion,) "and ruled with justice, and acted impartially toward my subjects; I gave and bestowed; and I lived a longtime in the enjoyment of happiness and an easy life, and emancipated both female and male slaves. Thus I did untilthe summoner of death came, and disasters occurred before me. And the cause was this:Seven yearsin succession came upon us,during which no water descended on us from heaven, nor did any grass grow for us on the face of the earth. So we ate what food we had in our dwellings, and after that we fell upon the beasts and ate, and there remained nothing. Upon this, therefore, I caused the wealth to be brought, and meted it with a measure, and sent it, by trusty men, who went about with it throughall regions, not leaving unvisited a single large city, to seek for some food.But they found it not, and they returned to us with the wealth after a long absence. So, thereupon we exposed to view our riches and our treasures, locked the gates of the fortresses in our city, and submitted ourselves to the decrees of our Lord; and thus we all died, as thou beholdest, and left what we had built and what we had treasured."{p. 275}And this strange tale has relations to all the other legends.Here we have the great demon, darting fire, blazing, smoking, the destructive one; the rebel against the good God. He is overthrown by the bright-shining one, Dimiriat, the same as the Dev-Mrityu of the Hindoos; he and his forces are cut to pieces, and scattered over the land, and he, after being chased for months through space, is captured and chained. Associated with all this is a people of the Bronze Age--a highly civilized people; a people living on an island in the Western Sea, who perished by a calamity which came on them suddenly; "a summoner of death" came and brought disasters; and then followed a long period of terrible heat and drought, in which not they alone, but all nations and cities, were starved by the drying up of the earth. The demon had devoured the cows-the clouds; like Cacus, he had dragged them backward into his den, and no Hercules, no Indra, had arisen to hurl the electric bolt that was to kill the heat, restore the clouds, and bring upon the parched earth the grateful rain. And so this Bronze-Age race spread out their useless treasures to the sun, and, despite their miseries, they praise the God of gods, the Cause of causes, the merciful, the compassionate, and lie down to die.And in the evil-one, captured and chained and sealed by Solomon, we seem to have the same thing prefigured in Revelation, xx, 2:"2. And he laid hold on the dragon, the old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years."3. And he cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should no more seduce the nations."{p. 276}CHAPTER XII.THE BOOK OF JOB.WE are told in the Bible (Job, i, 16)--"While he [Job] was yet speaking, there came also another, and said,The fire of God is fallen from heavenand hath burned up the sheep, and the servants, andconsumed them, and I only am escaped alone to tell thee."And in verse 18 we are told--"While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, Thy sons and thy daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother's house:"19. And behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, and they are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee."We have here the record of a great convulsion. Fire fell from heaven; the fire of God. It was not lightning, for it killed the seven thousand sheep, (see chap. i, 3,) belonging to Job, and all his shepherds; and not only killed but consumed them--burned them up. A fire falling from heaven great enough to kill seven thousand sheep must have been an extensive conflagration, extending over a large area of country. And it seems to have been accompanied by a great wind--a cyclone--which killed all Job's sons and daughters.Has the book of Job anything to do with that great event which we have been discussing? Did it originate out of it? Let us see.In the first place it is, I believe, conceded by the foremost{p. 277}scholars that the book of Job is not a Hebrew work; it was not written by Moses; it far antedates even the time of Abraham.That very high orthodox authority, George Smith, F. S. A., in his work shows that--"Everything relating to this patriarch has been violently controverted. His country; the age in which he lived; the author of the book that bears his name; have all been fruitful themes of discord, and, as if to confound confusion, these disputants are interrupted by others, who would maintain that no such person ever existed; that the whole tale is a poetic fiction, an allegory!"[1]Job lived to be two hundred years old, or, according to the Septuagint, four hundred. This great age relegates him to the era of the antediluvians, or their immediate descendants, among whom such extreme ages were said to have been common.C. S. Bryant says:"Job is in the purest Hebrew. The author uses only the wordElohimfor the name of God. The compiler or reviser of the work, Moses, or whoever he was, employed at the heads of chapters and in the introductory and concluding portions the name ofJehovah; but all the verses whereJehovahoccurs, in Job, are later interpolations in a very old poem, written at a time when the Semitic race had no other name for God butElohim; before Moses obtained the elements of the new name from Egypt."[2]Hale says:"The cardinal constellations of spring and autumn, in Job's time, wereChimaandChesil, or Taurus and Scorpio, of which the principal stars are Aldebaran, the Bull's Eye, and Antare, the Scorpion's Heart. Knowing, therefore, the longitudes of these stars at present, the interval[1. "The Patriarchal Age," vol. i, p. 351.2. MS. letter to the author, from C. S. Bryant, St. Paul, Minnesota.]{p. 278}of time from thence to the assumed date of Job's trial will give the difference of these longitudes, and ascertain their positions then with respect to the vernal and equinoctial points of intersection of the equinoctial and ecliptic; according to the usual rate of the precession of the equinoxes, one degree in seventy-one years and a half."[1]A careful calculation, based on these principles, has proved that this period was 2338 B. C. According to the Septuagint, in the opinion of George Smith, Job lived, or the book of Job was written, from 2650 B. C. to 2250 B. C. Or the events described may have occurred 25,740 years before that date.It appears, therefore, that the book of Job was written, even according to the calculations of the orthodox, long before the time of Abraham, the founder of the Jewish nation, and hence could not have been the work of Moses or any other Hebrew. Mr. Smith thinks that it was producedsoon after the Flood, by an Arabian. He finds in it many proofs of great antiquity. He sees in it (xxxi, 26, 28) proof that in Job's time idolatry was an offense under the laws, and punishable as such; and he is satisfied that all the parties to the great dialogue were free from the taint of idolatry. Mr. Smith says:"The Babylonians, Chaldeans, Egyptians, Canaanites, Midianites, Ethiopians of Abyssinia, Syrians, and other contemporary nations, had sunk into gross idolatry long before the time of Moses."The Arabians were an important branch of the great Atlantean stock; they derived their descent from the people of Add."And to this day the Arabians declare thatthe father of Job was the founder of the great Arabian people."[2][1. Hale's "Chronology," vol. ii, p. 55.2. Smith's "Sacred Annals," vol. i, p. 360.]{p. 279}Again, the same author says:"Job acted as high-priest in his own family; and, minute as are the descriptions of the different classes and usages of society in this book, we have not the slightest allusion to the existence of any priests or specially appointed ministers of religion,a fact which shows the extreme antiquity of the period, as priests were, in all probability, first appointed about the time of Abraham, and became general soon after."[1]He might have added that priests were known among the Egyptians and Babylonians and Phœnicians from the very beginning of their history.Dr. Magee says:"If, in short, there be on the whole, that genuine air of the antique which those distinguished scholars, Schultens, Lowth, and Michaelis, affirm in every respect to pervade the work, we can scarcely hesitate to pronounce, with Lowth and Sherlock, thatthe book of Job is the oldest in the world now extant."[2]Moreover, it is evident that this ancient hero, although he probably lived before Babylon and Assyria, before Troy was known, before Greece had a name, nevertheless dwelt in the midst of a high civilization."The various arts, the most recondite sciences, the most remarkable productions of earth, in respect of animals, vegetables, and minerals, the classified arrangement of the stars of heaven, are all noticed."Not only did Job's people possess an alphabet, but books were written, characters were engraved; and some have even gone so far as to claim that the art of printing was known, because Job says, "Would that my words were printed in a book!"[1. Smith's "Sacred Annals," p. 364.2. Magee "On the Atonement," vol. ii, p. 84.]{p. 280}The literary excellence of the work is of the highest order. Lowth says:"The antiquary, or the critic, who has been at the pains to trace the history of the Grecian drama from its first weak and imperfect efforts, and has carefully observed its tardy progress to perfection, will scarcely, I think, without astonishment, contemplate a poem produced so many ages before, so elegant in its design, so regular in its structure, so animated, so affecting, so near to the true dramatic model; while, on the contrary, the united wisdom of Greece, after ages of study, was not able to produce anything approaching to perfection in this walk of poetry before the time of Æschylus."[1]Smith says:"The debate rises high above earthly things; the way and will and providential dealings of God are investigated. All this is done with the greatest propriety, with the most consummate skill; and, notwithstanding the expression of some erroneous opinions, all is under the influence of a devout and sanctified temper of mind."[2]Has this most ancient, wonderful, and lofty work, breathing the spirit of primeval times, its origin lost in the night of ages, testifying to a high civilization and a higher moral development, has it anything to do with that event which lay far beyond the Flood?If it is a drama of Atlantean times, it must have passed through many hands, through many ages, through many tongues, before it reached the Israelites. We may expect its original meaning, therefore, to appear through it only like the light through clouds; we may expect that later generations would modify it with local names and allusions; we may expect that they would even strike out parts whose meaning they failed to understand, and[1. "Hebrew Poetry," lecture xxxiii.2. "Sacred Annals," vol. i, p. 365.]{p. 281}interpolate others. It is believed that the opening and closing parts are additions made in a subsequent age. If they could not comprehend how the fire from heaven and the whirlwind could have so utterly destroyed Job's sheep, servants, property, and family, they would bring in those desert accessories, Sabæan and Chaldean robbers, to carry away the camels and the oxen.What is the meaning of the whole poem?God gives over the government of the world for a time to Satan, to work his devilish will upon Job. Did not God do this very thing when he permitted the comet to strike the earth? Satan in Arabic means a serpent. "Going to and fro" means in the Arabic in "the heat of haste "; Umbreit translates it, "froma flight over the earth."Job may mean a man, a tribe, or a whole nation.From a condition of great prosperity Job is stricken down, in an instant, to the utmost depths of poverty and distress; and the chief agency is "fire from heaven" and great wind-storms.Does this typify the fate of the world when the great catastrophe occurred? Does the debate between Job and his three visitors represent the discussion which took place in the hearts of the miserable remnants of mankind, as they lay hid in caverns, touching God, his power, his goodness, his justice; and whether or not this world-appalling calamity was the result of the sins of the people or otherwise?Let us see what glimpses of these things we can find in the text of the book.When Job's afflictions fall upon him he curses his day--the day, as commonly understood, wherein he was born. But how can one curse a past period of time and ask the darkness to cover it?{p. 282}The original text is probably a reference to the events that werethentranspiring:"Let that daybe turned into darkness; let not God regard it from above; andlet not the light shine upon it. Let darkness and theshadow of death cover it;let a mist overspread it, and let it be wrapped up in bitterness.Let a darksome whirlwindseize upon that night. . . . Let them curse it who curse the clay, who areready to raise up a leviathan."[1]De Dieu says it should read, "And thou, leviathan, rouse up." "Let a mist overspread it"; literally, "let a gathered mass of dark clouds cover it.""The Fathers generally understand the devil to be meant by the leviathan."We shall see that it means the fiery dragon, the comet:"Let the stars be darkenedwith the mist thereof;let itexpect light and not see it, nor the rising of the dawning of the day."[2]In other words, Job is not imprecating future evils on a past time--an impossibility, an absurdity: he is describing the events then transpiring--the whirlwind, the darkness, the mist, the day that does not come, and the leviathan, the demon, the comet.Job seems to regret that he has escaped with his life:"For now," he says, "should I have lain still and been quiet," (if I had not fled) "I should have slept: then had I been at rest, with kings and counsellors of the earth, which built desolate places for themselves; or with princes that had gold, who filled their houses with silver."[3]Job looks out over the whole world, swept bare of its inhabitants, and regrets that he did not stay and bide the[1. Douay version, chapter iii, verses 4-8.2. Ibid., verse 9.3. King James's version, chapter iii, verses 18-15.]{p. 283}pelting of the pitiless storm, as, if he had done so, he would be now lying dead with kings and counselors, who built places for themselves, now made desolate, and with princes who, despite their gold and silver, have perished. Kings and counselors do not build "desolate places" for themselves; they build in the heart of great communities; in the midst of populations: the places may become desolate afterward.Eliphaz the Temanite seems to think that the sufferings of men are due to their sins. He says:Evenas I have seen, they that plough wickedness and sow wickedness, reap the same.By the blast of God they perish, and by the breath of his nostrils are they consumed. The roaring of the lion, and the voice of the fierce lion, and the teeth of the young lions are broken.The old lion perisheth for lack of prey, and the stout lion's whelps are scattered abroad."Certainly, this seems to be a picture of a great event. Here again the fire of God, that consumed Job's sheep and servants, is at work; even the fiercest of the wild beasts are suffering: the old lion dies for want of prey, and its young ones are scattered abroad.Eliphaz continues:"In thoughts, from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth on me,fear came upon me, and trembling, which made all my bones to shake. Then a spiritpassed before my face, the hair of my flesh stood up."A voice spake:"Shall mortal man be more just than God? Shall a man be more pure than his Maker? Behold he put no trust in his servants, and his angels he charged with folly: How much less them that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, which are crushed before the moth.They are destroyed from morning to evening; they perish forever without any regarding it."{p. 284}The moth can crush nothing, therefore Maurer thinks it should read, "crushed like the moth." "They are destroyed," etc.; literally, "they arebroken to pieces in the space of a day."[1]All through the text of Job we have allusions to the catastrophe which had fallen on the earth (chap. v, 3):"I have seen the foolish taking root: but suddenly I," (God,) "cursed his habitation.""4. His children are far from safety," (far from any place of refuge?) "and they arecrushed in the gate, neither is there any to deliver them."5. Whose harvest the hungry eateth up, and taketh it even out of the thorns, and the robber swalloweth up their substance."That is to say, in the general confusion and terror the harvests are devoured, and there is no respect for the rights of property."6. Although afflictioncometh not forth of the dust, neither doth troublespring out of the ground."In the Douay version it reads:"Nothing on earth is done without a cause, and sorrow doth not spring out of the ground" (v, 6).I take this to mean that the affliction which has fallen upon men comes not out of the ground, but from above."7. Yet man is born unto trouble,as the sparks fly upward."In the Hebrew we read for sparks, "sons offlameor burning coal." Maurer and Gesenius say, "As the sons of lightning fly high"; or, "troubles are many and fiery as sparks."[1. Faussett's "Commentary," iii, 40.]{p. 285}"8. I would seek unto God, and unto God would I commit my cause;"9. Which doeth great things and unsearchable; marvellous things without number:10. Whogiveth rain upon the earth, and sendeth waters upon the fields."Rain here signifies the great floods which cover the earth."11. To set upon highthose that be low; that those which mourn may beexalted to safety."That is to say, the poor escape to the high places--to safety--while the great and crafty perish."12. He disappointeth the devices of the crafty, so that their hands can not perform their enterprise."13. He taketh the wise in their own craftiness," (that is, in the very midst of their planning,) "and the counsel of the froward iscarried headlong," (that is, it is instantly overwhelmed)."14. They MEET WITH DARKNESS IN THE DAY-TIME, andgrope in the noonday as in the night." (Chap. v.)Surely all this is extraordinary--the troubles of mankind come from above, not from the earth; the children of the wicked are crushed in the gate, far from places of refuge; the houses of the wicked are "crushed before the moth," those that plow wickedness perish," by the "blast of God's nostrils they are consumed"; the old lion perishes for want of prey, and its whelps are scattered abroad. Eliphaz sees a vision, (the comet,) which "makes his bones to shake, and the hair of his flesh to stand up"; the people "are destroyed from morning to evening"; the cunning find their craft of no avail, but are taken; the counsel of the froward is carried headlong; the poor find safety in high places; and darkness comes in midday, so that the people grope their way;{p. 286}and Job's children, servants, and animals are destroyed by a fire from heaven, and by a great wind.Eliphaz, like the priests in the Aztec legend, thinks he sees in all this the chastening hand of God:"17. Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty:"18. For hemaketh sore, and bindeth up: hewoundeth, and his hands make whole." (Chap. v.)We are reminded of the Aztec prayer, where allusion is made to the wounded and sick in the cave "whose mouths were full ofearthand scurf." Doubtless, thousands were crushed, and cut, and wounded by the falling stones, or burned by the fire, and some of them were carried by relatives and friends, or found their own way, to the shelter of the caverns."20. Infaminehe shall redeem thee from death: and in war from the power of the sword."21.Thou shalt be hidfrom the scourge of the tongue: neither shalt thou be afraid of destruction when it cometh." (Chap. v.)"The scourge of the tongue" has no meaning in this context. There has probably been a mistranslation at some stage of the history of the poem. The idea is, probably, "You are hid in safety from the scourge of the comet, from the tongues of flame; you need not be afraid of the destruction that is raging without.""22. At destruction and famine thou shalt laugh neither shalt thou be afraid of the beasts of the earth."23. For thou shalt be in league with THE STONES OF THE FIELD: and the beasts of the field shallbe at peace with thee." (Chap. v.)That is to say, as in the Aztec legend, the stones of the field have killed some of the beasts if the earth, "the lions have perished," and their whelps have been scattered;{p. 287}the stones have thus been your friends; and other beasts have fled with you into these caverns, as in the Navajo tradition, where you may be able, living upon them, to defy famine.Now it may be said that all this is a strained construction; but what construction can be substituted that will make sense of these allusions? How can the stones of the field be in league with man? How does the ordinary summer rain falling on the earth set up the low and destroy the wealthy? And what has all this to do with a darkness that cometh in the day-time in which the wicked grope helplessly?But the allusions continueJob cries out, in the next chapter (chap. vi)"2. Oh that my grief" (my sins whereby I deserved wrath) "were thoroughly weighed, and my calamity laid in the balances together!3.As the sands of the sea this would appear heavier, therefore my words are full of sorrow. (Douay version.)'14. For thearrows of the Almighty are withinme, the poison whereof drinketh up my spirit;the terrors of God do set themselves in array against me" ("war against me"-Douay ver.).That is to say, disaster comes down heavier than the sands--the gravel of the sea; I am wounded; the arrows of God, the darts of fire, have stricken me. We find in the American legends the descendingdébrisconstantly alluded to as "stones, arrows, and spears"; I am poisoned with the foul exhalations of the comet; the terrors of God are arrayed against me. All this is comprehensible as a description of a great disaster of nature, but it is extravagant language to apply to a mere case of boils."9. Even that it would please God to destroy me; that he would let loose his hand and cut me off."{p. 288}The commentators say that "to destroy me" means literally "to grind or crush me." (Chap. vi.)Job despairs of final escape:"11. What is my strength that I can hold out? And what is I end that I should keep patience?" (Douay.)"12 . Is my strength thestrength of stones?Or is my flesh of brass? "That is to say, how can I ever bold out? How can I ever survive this great tempest? How can my strength stand the crushing of these stones? Is my flesh brass, that it will not burn up? Can I live in a world where such things are to continue?And here follow allusions which are remarkable as occurring in an Arabian composition, in a land of torrid beats:"15. My brethren" (my fellow-men) "have dealt deceitfully" (have sinned) "as a brook, and as the stream of brooksthey pass away.16. Which are blackishby reason of the ice, and whereinthe snow is hid."17. What time they waxwarm, they vanish: when it is hot, theyare consumed out of their place.18. The paths of their way are turned aside; theygo to nothing and perish."The Douay version has it:"16. They" (the people) "that fear the hoary frost,the snow shall fall upon them."17. At the timewhen they shall be scattered they shall perish;and after itgroweth hot they shall be melted out of their place."18. The paths of their steps are entangled;they shall walk in vain and shall perish."There is a great deal of perishing here--some by frost and snow, some by heat; the people are scattered, they lose their way, they perish.{p. 289}Job's servants and sheep were also consumed in their place;theycame to naught,theyperished.Job begins to think, like the Aztec priest, that possibly the human race has reached its limit and is doomed to annihilation (chap. vii):"1. Is there not an appointed time to man upon earth? Are not his days also like the days of an hireling?"Is it not time to discharge the race from its labors?"4. When I lie down, I say, When shall I arise,and the night be gone?and I am full of tossings to and fro untothe dawning of the day."He draws a picture of his hopeless condition, shut up in the cavern, never to see the light of day again. (Douay ver., chap. vii):"12: Am I sea or a whale,that thou hast inclosed me in a prison?""7. My eyesshall not return to see good things."8. Nor shall the sight of man behold me; thy eyes are upon me, and I shall be no more"; (or, as one translates it, thy mercy shall come too late when I shall be no more.)"9. As a cloud is consumed and passeth away, so he that shall go down to hell" (or the grave, the cavern) shall not come up."10. Nor shall he return any more into his house, neither shall his place know him any more."How strikingly does this remind one of the Druid legend, given on page 135,ante:"The profligacy of mankind had provoked the Great Supreme to send a pestilential wind upon the earth. A pure poison descended, every blast was death. At this time the patriarch,distinguished for his integrity, wasshut up, together with his select company, in the inclosure with the strong door. Here the just ones were safe from injury. Presently a tempest of fire arose," etc.{p. 290}Who can doubt that these widely separated legends refer to the same event and the same patriarch?Job meditates suicide, just as we have seen in the American legends that hundreds slew themselves under the terror of the time:"21. For now shall I sleep in the dust; and thou shalt seek me in the morning, but I shall not be."The Chaldaic version gives us the sixteenth and seventeenth verses of chapter viii as follows:"The sun is no sooner risen with a burning heat but it withereth the grass, and the flower thereof faileth, and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth, so also shall the rich man fade away in his ways."And then Job refers to the power of God, seeming to paint the cataclysm (chap. ix):"5. Whichremoveth the mountains, and they know not whichoverturneth them in his anger."6. Whichshaketh the earth out of her place, and thepillars thereoftremble."7. Which commandeth the sun,and it riseth not; and sealeth up the stars."8. Which alone spreadeth out the heavens andtreadeth upon the waves of the sea."All this is most remarkable: here is the delineation of a great catastrophe--the mountains are removed and leveled; the earth shakes to its foundations; the sunfails to appear, and the stars are sealed up. How? In the dense masses of clouds?Surely this does not describe the ordinary manifestations of God's power. When has the sun refused to rise? It can not refer to the story of Joshua, for in that case the sun was in the heavens and refrained from setting; and Joshua's time was long subsequent to that of Job. But when we take this in connection with the fire{p. 291}falling from heaven, the great wind, the destruction of men and animals, the darkness that came at midday, the ice and snow and sands of the sea, and the stones of the field, and the fact that Job is shut up as in a prison, never to return to his home or to the light of day, we see that peering through the little-understood context of this most ancient poem are the disjointed reminiscences of the age of fire and gravel. It sounds like the cry not of a man but of a race, a great, religious, civilized race, who could not understand how God could so cruelly visit the world; and out of their misery and their terror sent up this pitiful yet sublime appeal for mercy."13. If God will not withdraw his anger, the proud helpers do stoop under him."One commentator makes this read:"Under him the whales below heaven bend," (the crooked leviathan?)"17. For he shall crush me in awhirlwind, and multiplieth my wounds even without cause." (Douay ver.)And Job can not recognize the doctrine of a special providence; he says:"22. This is one thing" (therefore I said it). "Hedestroyeth the perfect and the wicked."23. If thescourge slay suddenly, he will laugh at the trial of the innocent."24. The earthis given into the hands of the wicked:he covereth the faces of the judges thereof; if it be not him, who is it then?" (Douay ver.)That is to say, God has given up the earth to the power of Satan (as appears by 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{p. 292}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 hisrod 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. Aland of darknessas darkness itself, and of the shadow of death,without any order, andwhere the light is as darkness."Or, as the Douay version has it:"21. Before I go, and return no more, toa 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 buteverlasting 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{p. 293}come because of the wickedness of the people, and that it is all right:"10. If hecut offandshut upandgather 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 areyougoing 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 itas 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, "thoughnow thou art in darknessthou 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 digabout 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 shaltdig thy way out of these caverns;and then take thy rest in{p. 294}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 lampdespised 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,") "andtheyshall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, andtheyshall 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{p. 295}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, andthey 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 wanderin 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 heardand 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:{p. 296}"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 untoashes, your bodies to bodies ofclay."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.""Asthe waters fail from the sea," says Job, (xiv, 11,) and the flooddecayeth and drieth up:"12. So manlieth down, and riseth not:till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep.{p. 297}13. O that thou wouldesthide mein the grave, that thou wouldest keep me secret,until thy wrath be past, that thou wouldest appoint me a set time, andremember 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, andI 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 thepoison 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.{p. 298}"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 heavensshall reveal his iniquity;andthe earth shall rise up against him."28. The increase of his house shall depart, and his goods shallflow awayin 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, andin 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.{p. 299}"10. He hath gathered together his fury against me; and threatening me he hathgnashed with his teeth upon me:my enemy hath beheld mewith terribleeyes.""14. He has compassed meround 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 withwound upon wound, he hath rushed in upon melike a giant.""20. For beholdmy 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, andsudden 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 judgethrough 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, butthe remnant of them the fire consumeth.""24. He shall give for earthflint, and for flinttorrents of gold." (Douay ver.){p. 300}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 deliverthe 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 fromunder 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.]{p. 301}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, andspreadeth 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 heaventremble, 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 wisdomhe has struck the proudone."--Douay ver.)"13. By his spirit he hath garnished the heavens his hand hathformed 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{p. 302}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 "thestonesof 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 upas 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--theystagger." 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.]{p. 303}This is according to the King James version, but the Douay version gives it as follows:"3. He hath seta time for darkness, and theend of all things he considereth; the stone also that isin the dark, and the shadow of death."4. The flooddivideth 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 theflint, he hathoverturned 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{p. 304}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 calamityand misery.4. And they ate grass, andbarks of trees, and theroot of junipers was their food."5. Who snatched up these things out of the valleys, andwhen they had found any of them, they ran to them with a cry."6. They dwelt in thedesert places of torrents, andin 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 thecrash of falling masonry."{p. 305}29. I was the brother ofdragonsand companion of ostriches."30. Myskin is become blackupon me, and my bones are dried up with theheat."We are reminded of Ovid's statement that the conflagration of Phaëton caused the skin of the Africans to turn black.In chapter xxxiv, (King James's version,) we read:"14. If he" (God) "set his heart upon man, if he gather unto himself his spirit and his breath;"15.All flesh shall perish together, and man shall turn again unto dust."And in chapter xxxvi, (verses 15, 16, Douay,) we see that Job was shut up in something like a cavern:"15. He shall deliver the poor out of his distress, and shall open his ear in affliction."16. Therefore he shallset thee at large out of the narrow mouth, and which hath no foundation under it; and the rest of thy table shall be full of fatness."That is to say, in the day when he delivers the poor out of their misery, he will bring thee forth from the place where thou hast been "hiding," (see chap. xiii, 20,) from that narrow-mouthed, bottomless cavern; and instead of starving, as you have been, your table, during the rest of your life, "shall be full of fatness.""27. He" (God) "lifteth up the drops of rain and poureth out showers like floods."28. Which flow from the clouds whichcover all from above."The commentators tell us that this expression, "which cover all from above," means literally, "the bottom of the sea is laid bare"; and they confess their inability to understand it. But is it not the same story told by Ovid of the bottom of the Mediterranean having been rendered{p. 306}a bed of dry sand by Phaëton's conflagration; and does it not remind us of the Central American legend of the starving people migrating in search of the sun, through rocky places where the sea had been separated to allow them to pass?And the King James version continues"32.With clouds he covereth the light; and commandeth it not to shine by the cloud that cometh betwixt."33.The noise thereofsheweth concerning it, the cattle also concerning the vapor."This last line shows how greatly the original text has been garbled; what have the cattle to do with it? Unless, indeed, here, as in the other myths, the cows signify the clouds. The meaning of the rest is plain: God draws up the water, sends it down as rain, which covers all things; the clouds gather before the sun and hide its light; and the vapor restores the cows, the clouds; and all this is accompanied by great disturbances and noise.And the next chapter (xxxvii) continues the description:"2. Hear ye attentively the terror of his" (the comet's) "voice, and the sound that cometh out of his mouth."3. He beholdeth under all the heavens," (he is seen under all the heavens?) "and hislight is upon the ends of the earth."4. After it a NOISE SHALL ROAR, he shall thunder with the voice of his majesty, and shall not be found out when his voice shall be heard."The King James version says, "And he will not stay them when his voice is heard.""5. God shallthunder wonderfullywith his voice, he that doth great and unsearchable things."Here, probably, are more allusions to the awful noises made by the comet as it entered our atmosphere, referred to by Hesiod, the Russian legends, etc.{p. 307}"6.He commandeth the snow to go down upon the earth, andthe winter rainand the shower of his strength "--("thegreat rain of his strength," says the King James version)."7. He sealeth up the hand of every man."This means, says one commentator, that "he confines men within doors" by these great rains. Instead of houses we infer it to mean "the caves of the earth," already spoken of, (chap. xxx, v. 6,) and this is rendered more evident by the next verse:"8. Andthe beast shall go into his covertand shallabide in his den."9. Out of the inner parts" (meaning the south, say the commentators and the King James version) "shall tempest come, andcold out of the north."10. When God bloweth, there comethfrost, andagain the waters are poured forth abundantly."The King James version continues:"11. Also by watering he wearieth the thick cloud."That is to say, the cloud is gradually dissipated by dropping its moisture in snow and rain."12. And it is turned round about by his counsels that they may do whatsoever be commandeth them upon the face of the world in the earth."13. He causeth it to come, whether forcorrection, or for his land, or for mercy."There can be no mistaking all this. It refers to no ordinary events. The statement is continuous. God, we are told, will call Job out from his narrow-mouthed cave, and once more give him plenty of food. There has been a great tribulation. The sun has sucked up the seas, they have fallen in great floods; the thick clouds have covered the face of the sun; great noises prevail; there is a great light, and after it a roaring noise; the snow
"Here was a people, whom, after their works, thou shalt see wept over for their lost dominion.
"And in this palace is the last information respecting lords collected in the dust.
"Death hath destroyed them and disunited them, and in the dust they have lost what they amassed."
Talib goes on with his troops, until they come to a great pillar of black stone, sunk into which, to his armpits, was a mighty creature; "he had two wings and four arms; two of them like those of the sons of Adam, and two like the fore-legs of lions with claws. He had hair upon his head like the tails of horses, and two eyes like two burning coals, and he had a third eye in his forehead, like the eye of the lynx, from which there appeared sparks of fire."
He was the imprisoned comet-monster, and these
{p. 270}
arms and eyes, darting fire, remind us of the description given of the apostate angel in the other legends:
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THE AFRITE IN THE PILLAR.
"He was tall and black; and he was crying out 'Extolled be the perfection of my Lord, who hath appointed me this severe affliction and painful torture until the day of resurrection!'"
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The party of Talib were stupefied at the sight and retreated in fright. And the wise man, the Sheik Abdelsamad, one of the party, drew near and asked the imprisoned monster his history. And he replied:
"I am an Afrite of the genii, and my name is Dahish, the son of Elamash, and I am restrained here by the majesty of God.
"There belonged to one of the sons of Eblis an idol of red carnelian, of which I was made guardian; and there used to worship it one of the kings of the sea, of illustrious dignity, of great glory, leading, among his troops of the genii, a million warriors who smote with swords before him, and who answered his prayer in cases of difficulty. These genii, who obeyed him, were under my command and authority, following my words when I ordered them: all of them were in rebellion against Solomon the son of David (on both of whom be peace!), and I used to enter the body of the idol, to command them and to forbid them."
Solomon sent word to this king of the sea that he must give up the worship of the idol of red carnelian; the king consulted the idol, and this Afrite, speaking through the idol, encouraged the king to refuse. What,--he said to him,--can Solomon do to thee, "when thou art in the midst of this great sea?" And so Solomon came to compel the island-race to worship the true God; he surrounded his island, and filled the land with his troops, assisted by birds and wild beasts, and a dreadful battle followed in the air:
"After this they came upon us all together, and we contended with him in a wide tractfor a period of two days; and calamity befell us on the third day, and the decree of God (whose name be exalted!) was executed among us. The first who charged upon Solomon were I and my troops: and I said to my companions, 'Keep in your places in the battle-field while I go forth to them and challengeDimiriat."' (Dimiriat was the Sun, the
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bright one.) "And lo,he came forth, like a great mountain, his fires flaming and his smoke ascending;and he approached andsmote me with a flaming fire; and his arrow prevailed over my fire. He cried out at mewith a prodigious cry, so that I imagined theheaven had fallenand closed over me, and the mountains shook at his voice.
###
DAHISH OVERTAKEN BY DIMIRIAT.
Then he commanded his companions, and they charged upon us all together: we also charged upon them, and we cried out one to another:the fires rose and the smoke ascended, the hearts of the combatants were almost cleft asunder, and the battle raged. The birds fought in the air, and the wildbeasts in the dust; and I contended with Dimiriat until he wearied me and I wearied him;
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after which I became weak, and my companions and troops were enervated and my tribes were routed."
The birds tore out the eyes of the demons, and cut them in pieces untilthe earth was covered with the fragments, like the trunks of palm-trees. "As for me, I flew from before Dimiriat, but he followed me a journey of three months until he overtook me." And Solomon hollowed out the black pillar, and sealed him in it with his signet, and chained him until the day of resurrection.
And Talib and his party go on still farther, and find "the City of Brass," a weird, mysterious, lost city, in a desolate land; silent, and all its people dead; a city once of high civilization, with mighty, brazen walls and vast machinery and great mysteries; a city whose inhabitants had perished suddenly in some great calamity. And on the walls were tablets, and on one of them were inscribed these solemn words:
"'Where are the kings and the peoples of the earth? They have quitted that which they have built and peopled. And in the grave they are pledged for their past actions. There, after destruction, they have become putrid corpses. Where are the troops? They repelled not nor profited. And where is that which they collected and boarded? The decree of the Lord of the Thronesurprised them. Neither riches nor refuge saved them from it.'
"And they saw the merchants dead in their shops; their skins were dried, and their bones were carious, and they had become examples to him who would be admonished."
Everywhere were the dead, "lying upon skins, and appearing almost as if they would speak."
Their death seems to have been due to a long period of terrible heat and drought.
On a couch was a damsel more beautiful than all the daughters of Adam; she was embalmed, so as to preserve all her charms. Her eyes were of glass, filled with quick
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silver, which seemed to follow the beholder's every motion. Near her was a tablet of gold, on which was inscribed:
"In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful.... the Lord of lords, the Cause of causes; the Everlasting, the Eternal. . . . Where are the kings of the regions of the earth" Where are the Amalekites? Where are the mighty monarchs? The mansions are void of their presence, and they have quitted their families and homes. Where are the kings of the foreigners and the Arabs? They have all died and become rotten bones. Where are the lords of high degree? They have all died. Where are Korah and Haman? Where is Sheddad, the son of Add? Where are Canaan and Pharaoh? God hathcut them off, and it is he who cutteth short the lives of mankind, and he hath made the mansions to be void for their presence. . . . I am Tadmor, the daughter of the king of the Amalekites, of those who ruled the countries with equity: I possessed what none of the kings possessed," (i. e., in extent of dominion,) "and ruled with justice, and acted impartially toward my subjects; I gave and bestowed; and I lived a longtime in the enjoyment of happiness and an easy life, and emancipated both female and male slaves. Thus I did untilthe summoner of death came, and disasters occurred before me. And the cause was this:Seven yearsin succession came upon us,during which no water descended on us from heaven, nor did any grass grow for us on the face of the earth. So we ate what food we had in our dwellings, and after that we fell upon the beasts and ate, and there remained nothing. Upon this, therefore, I caused the wealth to be brought, and meted it with a measure, and sent it, by trusty men, who went about with it throughall regions, not leaving unvisited a single large city, to seek for some food.But they found it not, and they returned to us with the wealth after a long absence. So, thereupon we exposed to view our riches and our treasures, locked the gates of the fortresses in our city, and submitted ourselves to the decrees of our Lord; and thus we all died, as thou beholdest, and left what we had built and what we had treasured."
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And this strange tale has relations to all the other legends.
Here we have the great demon, darting fire, blazing, smoking, the destructive one; the rebel against the good God. He is overthrown by the bright-shining one, Dimiriat, the same as the Dev-Mrityu of the Hindoos; he and his forces are cut to pieces, and scattered over the land, and he, after being chased for months through space, is captured and chained. Associated with all this is a people of the Bronze Age--a highly civilized people; a people living on an island in the Western Sea, who perished by a calamity which came on them suddenly; "a summoner of death" came and brought disasters; and then followed a long period of terrible heat and drought, in which not they alone, but all nations and cities, were starved by the drying up of the earth. The demon had devoured the cows-the clouds; like Cacus, he had dragged them backward into his den, and no Hercules, no Indra, had arisen to hurl the electric bolt that was to kill the heat, restore the clouds, and bring upon the parched earth the grateful rain. And so this Bronze-Age race spread out their useless treasures to the sun, and, despite their miseries, they praise the God of gods, the Cause of causes, the merciful, the compassionate, and lie down to die.
And in the evil-one, captured and chained and sealed by Solomon, we seem to have the same thing prefigured in Revelation, xx, 2:
"2. And he laid hold on the dragon, the old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years.
"3. And he cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should no more seduce the nations."
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WE are told in the Bible (Job, i, 16)--
"While he [Job] was yet speaking, there came also another, and said,The fire of God is fallen from heavenand hath burned up the sheep, and the servants, andconsumed them, and I only am escaped alone to tell thee."
And in verse 18 we are told--
"While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, Thy sons and thy daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother's house:
"19. And behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, and they are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee."
We have here the record of a great convulsion. Fire fell from heaven; the fire of God. It was not lightning, for it killed the seven thousand sheep, (see chap. i, 3,) belonging to Job, and all his shepherds; and not only killed but consumed them--burned them up. A fire falling from heaven great enough to kill seven thousand sheep must have been an extensive conflagration, extending over a large area of country. And it seems to have been accompanied by a great wind--a cyclone--which killed all Job's sons and daughters.
Has the book of Job anything to do with that great event which we have been discussing? Did it originate out of it? Let us see.
In the first place it is, I believe, conceded by the foremost
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scholars that the book of Job is not a Hebrew work; it was not written by Moses; it far antedates even the time of Abraham.
That very high orthodox authority, George Smith, F. S. A., in his work shows that--
"Everything relating to this patriarch has been violently controverted. His country; the age in which he lived; the author of the book that bears his name; have all been fruitful themes of discord, and, as if to confound confusion, these disputants are interrupted by others, who would maintain that no such person ever existed; that the whole tale is a poetic fiction, an allegory!"[1]
Job lived to be two hundred years old, or, according to the Septuagint, four hundred. This great age relegates him to the era of the antediluvians, or their immediate descendants, among whom such extreme ages were said to have been common.
C. S. Bryant says:
"Job is in the purest Hebrew. The author uses only the wordElohimfor the name of God. The compiler or reviser of the work, Moses, or whoever he was, employed at the heads of chapters and in the introductory and concluding portions the name ofJehovah; but all the verses whereJehovahoccurs, in Job, are later interpolations in a very old poem, written at a time when the Semitic race had no other name for God butElohim; before Moses obtained the elements of the new name from Egypt."[2]
Hale says:
"The cardinal constellations of spring and autumn, in Job's time, wereChimaandChesil, or Taurus and Scorpio, of which the principal stars are Aldebaran, the Bull's Eye, and Antare, the Scorpion's Heart. Knowing, therefore, the longitudes of these stars at present, the interval
[1. "The Patriarchal Age," vol. i, p. 351.
2. MS. letter to the author, from C. S. Bryant, St. Paul, Minnesota.]
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of time from thence to the assumed date of Job's trial will give the difference of these longitudes, and ascertain their positions then with respect to the vernal and equinoctial points of intersection of the equinoctial and ecliptic; according to the usual rate of the precession of the equinoxes, one degree in seventy-one years and a half."[1]
A careful calculation, based on these principles, has proved that this period was 2338 B. C. According to the Septuagint, in the opinion of George Smith, Job lived, or the book of Job was written, from 2650 B. C. to 2250 B. C. Or the events described may have occurred 25,740 years before that date.
It appears, therefore, that the book of Job was written, even according to the calculations of the orthodox, long before the time of Abraham, the founder of the Jewish nation, and hence could not have been the work of Moses or any other Hebrew. Mr. Smith thinks that it was producedsoon after the Flood, by an Arabian. He finds in it many proofs of great antiquity. He sees in it (xxxi, 26, 28) proof that in Job's time idolatry was an offense under the laws, and punishable as such; and he is satisfied that all the parties to the great dialogue were free from the taint of idolatry. Mr. Smith says:
"The Babylonians, Chaldeans, Egyptians, Canaanites, Midianites, Ethiopians of Abyssinia, Syrians, and other contemporary nations, had sunk into gross idolatry long before the time of Moses."
The Arabians were an important branch of the great Atlantean stock; they derived their descent from the people of Add.
"And to this day the Arabians declare thatthe father of Job was the founder of the great Arabian people."[2]
[1. Hale's "Chronology," vol. ii, p. 55.
2. Smith's "Sacred Annals," vol. i, p. 360.]
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Again, the same author says:
"Job acted as high-priest in his own family; and, minute as are the descriptions of the different classes and usages of society in this book, we have not the slightest allusion to the existence of any priests or specially appointed ministers of religion,a fact which shows the extreme antiquity of the period, as priests were, in all probability, first appointed about the time of Abraham, and became general soon after."[1]
He might have added that priests were known among the Egyptians and Babylonians and Phœnicians from the very beginning of their history.
Dr. Magee says:
"If, in short, there be on the whole, that genuine air of the antique which those distinguished scholars, Schultens, Lowth, and Michaelis, affirm in every respect to pervade the work, we can scarcely hesitate to pronounce, with Lowth and Sherlock, thatthe book of Job is the oldest in the world now extant."[2]
Moreover, it is evident that this ancient hero, although he probably lived before Babylon and Assyria, before Troy was known, before Greece had a name, nevertheless dwelt in the midst of a high civilization.
"The various arts, the most recondite sciences, the most remarkable productions of earth, in respect of animals, vegetables, and minerals, the classified arrangement of the stars of heaven, are all noticed."
Not only did Job's people possess an alphabet, but books were written, characters were engraved; and some have even gone so far as to claim that the art of printing was known, because Job says, "Would that my words were printed in a book!"
[1. Smith's "Sacred Annals," p. 364.
2. Magee "On the Atonement," vol. ii, p. 84.]
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The literary excellence of the work is of the highest order. Lowth says:
"The antiquary, or the critic, who has been at the pains to trace the history of the Grecian drama from its first weak and imperfect efforts, and has carefully observed its tardy progress to perfection, will scarcely, I think, without astonishment, contemplate a poem produced so many ages before, so elegant in its design, so regular in its structure, so animated, so affecting, so near to the true dramatic model; while, on the contrary, the united wisdom of Greece, after ages of study, was not able to produce anything approaching to perfection in this walk of poetry before the time of Æschylus."[1]
Smith says:
"The debate rises high above earthly things; the way and will and providential dealings of God are investigated. All this is done with the greatest propriety, with the most consummate skill; and, notwithstanding the expression of some erroneous opinions, all is under the influence of a devout and sanctified temper of mind."[2]
Has this most ancient, wonderful, and lofty work, breathing the spirit of primeval times, its origin lost in the night of ages, testifying to a high civilization and a higher moral development, has it anything to do with that event which lay far beyond the Flood?
If it is a drama of Atlantean times, it must have passed through many hands, through many ages, through many tongues, before it reached the Israelites. We may expect its original meaning, therefore, to appear through it only like the light through clouds; we may expect that later generations would modify it with local names and allusions; we may expect that they would even strike out parts whose meaning they failed to understand, and
[1. "Hebrew Poetry," lecture xxxiii.
2. "Sacred Annals," vol. i, p. 365.]
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interpolate others. It is believed that the opening and closing parts are additions made in a subsequent age. If they could not comprehend how the fire from heaven and the whirlwind could have so utterly destroyed Job's sheep, servants, property, and family, they would bring in those desert accessories, Sabæan and Chaldean robbers, to carry away the camels and the oxen.
What is the meaning of the whole poem?
God gives over the government of the world for a time to Satan, to work his devilish will upon Job. Did not God do this very thing when he permitted the comet to strike the earth? Satan in Arabic means a serpent. "Going to and fro" means in the Arabic in "the heat of haste "; Umbreit translates it, "froma flight over the earth."
Job may mean a man, a tribe, or a whole nation.
From a condition of great prosperity Job is stricken down, in an instant, to the utmost depths of poverty and distress; and the chief agency is "fire from heaven" and great wind-storms.
Does this typify the fate of the world when the great catastrophe occurred? Does the debate between Job and his three visitors represent the discussion which took place in the hearts of the miserable remnants of mankind, as they lay hid in caverns, touching God, his power, his goodness, his justice; and whether or not this world-appalling calamity was the result of the sins of the people or otherwise?
Let us see what glimpses of these things we can find in the text of the book.
When Job's afflictions fall upon him he curses his day--the day, as commonly understood, wherein he was born. But how can one curse a past period of time and ask the darkness to cover it?
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The original text is probably a reference to the events that werethentranspiring:
"Let that daybe turned into darkness; let not God regard it from above; andlet not the light shine upon it. Let darkness and theshadow of death cover it;let a mist overspread it, and let it be wrapped up in bitterness.Let a darksome whirlwindseize upon that night. . . . Let them curse it who curse the clay, who areready to raise up a leviathan."[1]
De Dieu says it should read, "And thou, leviathan, rouse up." "Let a mist overspread it"; literally, "let a gathered mass of dark clouds cover it."
"The Fathers generally understand the devil to be meant by the leviathan."
We shall see that it means the fiery dragon, the comet:
"Let the stars be darkenedwith the mist thereof;let itexpect light and not see it, nor the rising of the dawning of the day."[2]
In other words, Job is not imprecating future evils on a past time--an impossibility, an absurdity: he is describing the events then transpiring--the whirlwind, the darkness, the mist, the day that does not come, and the leviathan, the demon, the comet.
Job seems to regret that he has escaped with his life:
"For now," he says, "should I have lain still and been quiet," (if I had not fled) "I should have slept: then had I been at rest, with kings and counsellors of the earth, which built desolate places for themselves; or with princes that had gold, who filled their houses with silver."[3]
Job looks out over the whole world, swept bare of its inhabitants, and regrets that he did not stay and bide the
[1. Douay version, chapter iii, verses 4-8.
2. Ibid., verse 9.
3. King James's version, chapter iii, verses 18-15.]
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pelting of the pitiless storm, as, if he had done so, he would be now lying dead with kings and counselors, who built places for themselves, now made desolate, and with princes who, despite their gold and silver, have perished. Kings and counselors do not build "desolate places" for themselves; they build in the heart of great communities; in the midst of populations: the places may become desolate afterward.
Eliphaz the Temanite seems to think that the sufferings of men are due to their sins. He says:
Evenas I have seen, they that plough wickedness and sow wickedness, reap the same.By the blast of God they perish, and by the breath of his nostrils are they consumed. The roaring of the lion, and the voice of the fierce lion, and the teeth of the young lions are broken.The old lion perisheth for lack of prey, and the stout lion's whelps are scattered abroad."
Certainly, this seems to be a picture of a great event. Here again the fire of God, that consumed Job's sheep and servants, is at work; even the fiercest of the wild beasts are suffering: the old lion dies for want of prey, and its young ones are scattered abroad.
Eliphaz continues:
"In thoughts, from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth on me,fear came upon me, and trembling, which made all my bones to shake. Then a spiritpassed before my face, the hair of my flesh stood up."
A voice spake:
"Shall mortal man be more just than God? Shall a man be more pure than his Maker? Behold he put no trust in his servants, and his angels he charged with folly: How much less them that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, which are crushed before the moth.They are destroyed from morning to evening; they perish forever without any regarding it."
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The moth can crush nothing, therefore Maurer thinks it should read, "crushed like the moth." "They are destroyed," etc.; literally, "they arebroken to pieces in the space of a day."[1]
All through the text of Job we have allusions to the catastrophe which had fallen on the earth (chap. v, 3):
"I have seen the foolish taking root: but suddenly I," (God,) "cursed his habitation."
"4. His children are far from safety," (far from any place of refuge?) "and they arecrushed in the gate, neither is there any to deliver them.
"5. Whose harvest the hungry eateth up, and taketh it even out of the thorns, and the robber swalloweth up their substance."
That is to say, in the general confusion and terror the harvests are devoured, and there is no respect for the rights of property.
"6. Although afflictioncometh not forth of the dust, neither doth troublespring out of the ground."
In the Douay version it reads:
"Nothing on earth is done without a cause, and sorrow doth not spring out of the ground" (v, 6).
I take this to mean that the affliction which has fallen upon men comes not out of the ground, but from above.
"7. Yet man is born unto trouble,as the sparks fly upward."
In the Hebrew we read for sparks, "sons offlameor burning coal." Maurer and Gesenius say, "As the sons of lightning fly high"; or, "troubles are many and fiery as sparks."
[1. Faussett's "Commentary," iii, 40.]
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"8. I would seek unto God, and unto God would I commit my cause;
"9. Which doeth great things and unsearchable; marvellous things without number:
10. Whogiveth rain upon the earth, and sendeth waters upon the fields."
Rain here signifies the great floods which cover the earth.
"11. To set upon highthose that be low; that those which mourn may beexalted to safety."
That is to say, the poor escape to the high places--to safety--while the great and crafty perish.
"12. He disappointeth the devices of the crafty, so that their hands can not perform their enterprise.
"13. He taketh the wise in their own craftiness," (that is, in the very midst of their planning,) "and the counsel of the froward iscarried headlong," (that is, it is instantly overwhelmed).
"14. They MEET WITH DARKNESS IN THE DAY-TIME, andgrope in the noonday as in the night." (Chap. v.)
Surely all this is extraordinary--the troubles of mankind come from above, not from the earth; the children of the wicked are crushed in the gate, far from places of refuge; the houses of the wicked are "crushed before the moth," those that plow wickedness perish," by the "blast of God's nostrils they are consumed"; the old lion perishes for want of prey, and its whelps are scattered abroad. Eliphaz sees a vision, (the comet,) which "makes his bones to shake, and the hair of his flesh to stand up"; the people "are destroyed from morning to evening"; the cunning find their craft of no avail, but are taken; the counsel of the froward is carried headlong; the poor find safety in high places; and darkness comes in midday, so that the people grope their way;
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and Job's children, servants, and animals are destroyed by a fire from heaven, and by a great wind.
Eliphaz, like the priests in the Aztec legend, thinks he sees in all this the chastening hand of God:
"17. Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty:
"18. For hemaketh sore, and bindeth up: hewoundeth, and his hands make whole." (Chap. v.)
We are reminded of the Aztec prayer, where allusion is made to the wounded and sick in the cave "whose mouths were full ofearthand scurf." Doubtless, thousands were crushed, and cut, and wounded by the falling stones, or burned by the fire, and some of them were carried by relatives and friends, or found their own way, to the shelter of the caverns.
"20. Infaminehe shall redeem thee from death: and in war from the power of the sword.
"21.Thou shalt be hidfrom the scourge of the tongue: neither shalt thou be afraid of destruction when it cometh." (Chap. v.)
"The scourge of the tongue" has no meaning in this context. There has probably been a mistranslation at some stage of the history of the poem. The idea is, probably, "You are hid in safety from the scourge of the comet, from the tongues of flame; you need not be afraid of the destruction that is raging without."
"22. At destruction and famine thou shalt laugh neither shalt thou be afraid of the beasts of the earth.
"23. For thou shalt be in league with THE STONES OF THE FIELD: and the beasts of the field shallbe at peace with thee." (Chap. v.)
That is to say, as in the Aztec legend, the stones of the field have killed some of the beasts if the earth, "the lions have perished," and their whelps have been scattered;
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the stones have thus been your friends; and other beasts have fled with you into these caverns, as in the Navajo tradition, where you may be able, living upon them, to defy famine.
Now it may be said that all this is a strained construction; but what construction can be substituted that will make sense of these allusions? How can the stones of the field be in league with man? How does the ordinary summer rain falling on the earth set up the low and destroy the wealthy? And what has all this to do with a darkness that cometh in the day-time in which the wicked grope helplessly?
But the allusions continue
Job cries out, in the next chapter (chap. vi)
"2. Oh that my grief" (my sins whereby I deserved wrath) "were thoroughly weighed, and my calamity laid in the balances together!
3.As the sands of the sea this would appear heavier, therefore my words are full of sorrow. (Douay version.)
'14. For thearrows of the Almighty are withinme, the poison whereof drinketh up my spirit;the terrors of God do set themselves in array against me" ("war against me"-Douay ver.).
That is to say, disaster comes down heavier than the sands--the gravel of the sea; I am wounded; the arrows of God, the darts of fire, have stricken me. We find in the American legends the descendingdébrisconstantly alluded to as "stones, arrows, and spears"; I am poisoned with the foul exhalations of the comet; the terrors of God are arrayed against me. All this is comprehensible as a description of a great disaster of nature, but it is extravagant language to apply to a mere case of boils.
"9. Even that it would please God to destroy me; that he would let loose his hand and cut me off."
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The commentators say that "to destroy me" means literally "to grind or crush me." (Chap. vi.)
Job despairs of final escape:
"11. What is my strength that I can hold out? And what is I end that I should keep patience?" (Douay.)
"12 . Is my strength thestrength of stones?Or is my flesh of brass? "
That is to say, how can I ever bold out? How can I ever survive this great tempest? How can my strength stand the crushing of these stones? Is my flesh brass, that it will not burn up? Can I live in a world where such things are to continue?
And here follow allusions which are remarkable as occurring in an Arabian composition, in a land of torrid beats:
"15. My brethren" (my fellow-men) "have dealt deceitfully" (have sinned) "as a brook, and as the stream of brooksthey pass away.
16. Which are blackishby reason of the ice, and whereinthe snow is hid.
"17. What time they waxwarm, they vanish: when it is hot, theyare consumed out of their place.
18. The paths of their way are turned aside; theygo to nothing and perish."
The Douay version has it:
"16. They" (the people) "that fear the hoary frost,the snow shall fall upon them.
"17. At the timewhen they shall be scattered they shall perish;and after itgroweth hot they shall be melted out of their place.
"18. The paths of their steps are entangled;they shall walk in vain and shall perish."
There is a great deal of perishing here--some by frost and snow, some by heat; the people are scattered, they lose their way, they perish.
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Job's servants and sheep were also consumed in their place;theycame to naught,theyperished.
Job begins to think, like the Aztec priest, that possibly the human race has reached its limit and is doomed to annihilation (chap. vii):
"1. Is there not an appointed time to man upon earth? Are not his days also like the days of an hireling?"
Is it not time to discharge the race from its labors?
"4. When I lie down, I say, When shall I arise,and the night be gone?and I am full of tossings to and fro untothe dawning of the day."
He draws a picture of his hopeless condition, shut up in the cavern, never to see the light of day again. (Douay ver., chap. vii):
"12: Am I sea or a whale,that thou hast inclosed me in a prison?"
"7. My eyesshall not return to see good things.
"8. Nor shall the sight of man behold me; thy eyes are upon me, and I shall be no more"; (or, as one translates it, thy mercy shall come too late when I shall be no more.)
"9. As a cloud is consumed and passeth away, so he that shall go down to hell" (or the grave, the cavern) shall not come up.
"10. Nor shall he return any more into his house, neither shall his place know him any more."
How strikingly does this remind one of the Druid legend, given on page 135,ante:
"The profligacy of mankind had provoked the Great Supreme to send a pestilential wind upon the earth. A pure poison descended, every blast was death. At this time the patriarch,distinguished for his integrity, wasshut up, together with his select company, in the inclosure with the strong door. Here the just ones were safe from injury. Presently a tempest of fire arose," etc.
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Who can doubt that these widely separated legends refer to the same event and the same patriarch?
Job meditates suicide, just as we have seen in the American legends that hundreds slew themselves under the terror of the time:
"21. For now shall I sleep in the dust; and thou shalt seek me in the morning, but I shall not be."
The Chaldaic version gives us the sixteenth and seventeenth verses of chapter viii as follows:
"The sun is no sooner risen with a burning heat but it withereth the grass, and the flower thereof faileth, and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth, so also shall the rich man fade away in his ways."
And then Job refers to the power of God, seeming to paint the cataclysm (chap. ix):
"5. Whichremoveth the mountains, and they know not whichoverturneth them in his anger.
"6. Whichshaketh the earth out of her place, and thepillars thereoftremble.
"7. Which commandeth the sun,and it riseth not; and sealeth up the stars.
"8. Which alone spreadeth out the heavens andtreadeth upon the waves of the sea."
All this is most remarkable: here is the delineation of a great catastrophe--the mountains are removed and leveled; the earth shakes to its foundations; the sunfails to appear, and the stars are sealed up. How? In the dense masses of clouds?
Surely this does not describe the ordinary manifestations of God's power. When has the sun refused to rise? It can not refer to the story of Joshua, for in that case the sun was in the heavens and refrained from setting; and Joshua's time was long subsequent to that of Job. But when we take this in connection with the fire
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falling from heaven, the great wind, the destruction of men and animals, the darkness that came at midday, the ice and snow and sands of the sea, and the stones of the field, and the fact that Job is shut up as in a prison, never to return to his home or to the light of day, we see that peering through the little-understood context of this most ancient poem are the disjointed reminiscences of the age of fire and gravel. It sounds like the cry not of a man but of a race, a great, religious, civilized race, who could not understand how God could so cruelly visit the world; and out of their misery and their terror sent up this pitiful yet sublime appeal for mercy.
"13. If God will not withdraw his anger, the proud helpers do stoop under him."
One commentator makes this read:
"Under him the whales below heaven bend," (the crooked leviathan?)
"17. For he shall crush me in awhirlwind, and multiplieth my wounds even without cause." (Douay ver.)
And Job can not recognize the doctrine of a special providence; he says:
"22. This is one thing" (therefore I said it). "Hedestroyeth the perfect and the wicked.
"23. If thescourge slay suddenly, he will laugh at the trial of the innocent.
"24. The earthis given into the hands of the wicked:he covereth the faces of the judges thereof; if it be not him, who is it then?" (Douay ver.)
That is to say, God has given up the earth to the power of Satan (as appears by 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 hisrod 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. Aland of darknessas darkness itself, and of the shadow of death,without any order, andwhere the light is as darkness."
Or, as the Douay version has it:
"21. Before I go, and return no more, toa 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 buteverlasting 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 hecut offandshut upandgather 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 areyougoing 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 itas 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, "thoughnow thou art in darknessthou 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 digabout 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 shaltdig 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 lampdespised 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,") "andtheyshall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, andtheyshall 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, andthey 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 wanderin 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 heardand 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 untoashes, your bodies to bodies ofclay.
"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."
"The grief that will not speak,Whispers the o'erfraught heart, and bids it break."
"The grief that will not speak,Whispers the o'erfraught heart, and bids it break."
"Asthe waters fail from the sea," says Job, (xiv, 11,) and the flooddecayeth and drieth up:
"12. So manlieth 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 wouldesthide mein the grave, that thou wouldest keep me secret,until thy wrath be past, that thou wouldest appoint me a set time, andremember 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, andI 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 thepoison 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 heavensshall reveal his iniquity;andthe earth shall rise up against him.
"28. The increase of his house shall depart, and his goods shallflow awayin 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, andin 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 hathgnashed with his teeth upon me:my enemy hath beheld mewith terribleeyes."
"14. He has compassed meround 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 withwound upon wound, he hath rushed in upon melike a giant."
"20. For beholdmy 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, andsudden 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 judgethrough 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, butthe remnant of them the fire consumeth."
"24. He shall give for earthflint, and for flinttorrents 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 deliverthe 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 fromunder 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, andspreadeth 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 heaventremble, 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 wisdomhe has struck the proudone."--Douay ver.)
"13. By his spirit he hath garnished the heavens his hand hathformed 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 "thestonesof 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 upas 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--theystagger." 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 seta time for darkness, and theend of all things he considereth; the stone also that isin the dark, and the shadow of death.
"4. The flooddivideth 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 theflint, he hathoverturned 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 calamityand misery.
4. And they ate grass, andbarks of trees, and theroot of junipers was their food.
"5. Who snatched up these things out of the valleys, andwhen they had found any of them, they ran to them with a cry.
"6. They dwelt in thedesert places of torrents, andin 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 thecrash of falling masonry."
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29. I was the brother ofdragonsand companion of ostriches.
"30. Myskin is become blackupon me, and my bones are dried up with theheat."
We are reminded of Ovid's statement that the conflagration of Phaëton caused the skin of the Africans to turn black.
In chapter xxxiv, (King James's version,) we read:
"14. If he" (God) "set his heart upon man, if he gather unto himself his spirit and his breath;
"15.All flesh shall perish together, and man shall turn again unto dust."
And in chapter xxxvi, (verses 15, 16, Douay,) we see that Job was shut up in something like a cavern:
"15. He shall deliver the poor out of his distress, and shall open his ear in affliction.
"16. Therefore he shallset thee at large out of the narrow mouth, and which hath no foundation under it; and the rest of thy table shall be full of fatness."
That is to say, in the day when he delivers the poor out of their misery, he will bring thee forth from the place where thou hast been "hiding," (see chap. xiii, 20,) from that narrow-mouthed, bottomless cavern; and instead of starving, as you have been, your table, during the rest of your life, "shall be full of fatness."
"27. He" (God) "lifteth up the drops of rain and poureth out showers like floods.
"28. Which flow from the clouds whichcover all from above."
The commentators tell us that this expression, "which cover all from above," means literally, "the bottom of the sea is laid bare"; and they confess their inability to understand it. But is it not the same story told by Ovid of the bottom of the Mediterranean having been rendered
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a bed of dry sand by Phaëton's conflagration; and does it not remind us of the Central American legend of the starving people migrating in search of the sun, through rocky places where the sea had been separated to allow them to pass?
And the King James version continues
"32.With clouds he covereth the light; and commandeth it not to shine by the cloud that cometh betwixt.
"33.The noise thereofsheweth concerning it, the cattle also concerning the vapor."
This last line shows how greatly the original text has been garbled; what have the cattle to do with it? Unless, indeed, here, as in the other myths, the cows signify the clouds. The meaning of the rest is plain: God draws up the water, sends it down as rain, which covers all things; the clouds gather before the sun and hide its light; and the vapor restores the cows, the clouds; and all this is accompanied by great disturbances and noise.
And the next chapter (xxxvii) continues the description:
"2. Hear ye attentively the terror of his" (the comet's) "voice, and the sound that cometh out of his mouth.
"3. He beholdeth under all the heavens," (he is seen under all the heavens?) "and hislight is upon the ends of the earth.
"4. After it a NOISE SHALL ROAR, he shall thunder with the voice of his majesty, and shall not be found out when his voice shall be heard."
The King James version says, "And he will not stay them when his voice is heard."
"5. God shallthunder wonderfullywith his voice, he that doth great and unsearchable things."
Here, probably, are more allusions to the awful noises made by the comet as it entered our atmosphere, referred to by Hesiod, the Russian legends, etc.
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"6.He commandeth the snow to go down upon the earth, andthe winter rainand the shower of his strength "--("thegreat rain of his strength," says the King James version).
"7. He sealeth up the hand of every man."
This means, says one commentator, that "he confines men within doors" by these great rains. Instead of houses we infer it to mean "the caves of the earth," already spoken of, (chap. xxx, v. 6,) and this is rendered more evident by the next verse:
"8. Andthe beast shall go into his covertand shallabide in his den.
"9. Out of the inner parts" (meaning the south, say the commentators and the King James version) "shall tempest come, andcold out of the north.
"10. When God bloweth, there comethfrost, andagain the waters are poured forth abundantly."
The King James version continues:
"11. Also by watering he wearieth the thick cloud."
That is to say, the cloud is gradually dissipated by dropping its moisture in snow and rain.
"12. And it is turned round about by his counsels that they may do whatsoever be commandeth them upon the face of the world in the earth.
"13. He causeth it to come, whether forcorrection, or for his land, or for mercy."
There can be no mistaking all this. It refers to no ordinary events. The statement is continuous. God, we are told, will call Job out from his narrow-mouthed cave, and once more give him plenty of food. There has been a great tribulation. The sun has sucked up the seas, they have fallen in great floods; the thick clouds have covered the face of the sun; great noises prevail; there is a great light, and after it a roaring noise; the snow