Satan. Job knows not this; but here, about the middle of the poem, he declares his conviction that God would at length appear as his vindicator from the aspersions of his friends-his redeemer from dishonour and reproach; and in the end the Lord accordingly does so appear, justifying the expectation of his servant, and bringing the book to the close of which that expectation so emphatically forewarned us. The poem is thus rendered complete in all its parts. It has a distinct beginning, middle, and end. But the middle, which seems so essential to its completeness, is taken out, if we refer the passage before us to any expectation which the book itself does not declare to have been eventually realized. Most of the reasons lately produced,1 from the nature of the argument, and the like, against the probability of the doctrine of the resurrection being produced, apply equally here. Those reasons appear to show the improbability that this doctrine should be produced in any argument like this, even if it were known and believed. Many have questioned whether, in the early age to which the book belongs, there existed any knowledge of a life to come, or of an atonement for sin. That the former knowledge was then enjoyed, we are firmly persuaded, and shall soon have further occasion to show; and that it was scarcely possible for the latter to have been unknown then, we have had opportunities of declaring. It is customary to confound the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead with that of the immortality of the soul. But they are quite distinct, and multitudes have in all ages believed in a future state who had no notion of a resurrection. Job might, and we apprehend that he did, believe in a future state, without knowing of a resurrection. It is only in the later Scriptures of the Old Testament that we find the latter doctrine produced; but it was reserved for our Lord and his apostles to open it fully, and give to it, under the new dispensation, that fundamental importance, and essential illustration which it derived from our 1 Fifth Week-Fifth Day. 2 First Series: Third Week, Sixth Day; Eighth Week, First Day; Ninth Week, Third Day. Lord's own resurrection, and which it could not possibly have possessed before. I cannot at all concur in Dr. Kitto's interpretation of this passage. In my opinion it neither agrees with the grammatical structure, nor with the scope of the context. In the previous part of his speech, Job complains bitterly of the injustice and cruelty of his friends. Wearied by their reproaches and accusations, and crushed to the dust by his own terrible sufferings, he despairs altogether of relief or mercy from God in this world: 'Know ye not that God hath overthrown me, and hath compassed me about with his net? Behold I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard.' He looks only for death as the end of his troubles: 'He hath removed me on every side, and I am gone; and mine hope hath He removed like a tree.' To terminate such a speech in the manner represented by Dr. Kitto, would make the patriarch contradict himself; for while in the first part he gives way to despair, and looks for death as the only relief, it would make him at the close express a firm conviction in a complete cure and final justification before his friends. Job does not seem ever to have thought of this. Had he known it-had it been revealed to him, it would have taken the sting out of his trials, and thus counteracted their whole aim and object. The scope of the speech shows that, in the very depths of his sorrow and suffering, Job's faith suddenly triumphs over and rises above the afflictions of this life. He sees-dimly it may be, but he still sees, and glories in a future DELIVERER. The eye of faith recognises Him standing upon the earth. The disease which had already eaten away his skin, might also destroy his whole body; yet in some form, incorruptible, he would yet behold Eloah, the God of power. Such I believe to be the sense of this difficult passage. The words may be thus translated: 'And I know :-My Redeemer liveth; And at last upon the earth He shall arise. And after my skin they shall destroy this body, Yet in my flesh shall I behold Eloah: Whom I shall behold for myself, And my eyes shall see, and not another.' I thus agree with the view of Delitzsch, that 'the character of Job's present state of mind is, that he looks for certain death, and will hear nothing of the consolation of recovery, which sounds to him as a mere mockery (chap. xvii. 10-16); that he, however, notwith standing, does not despair of God, but, by the consciousness of his innocence and the uncharitableness of his friends, is more and more impelled from the God of wrath and caprice to the God of love, his future Redeemer.' Sixth Week-Third Day. WRITTEN ROCKS.-JOB XIX. 24. LET us to-day return to the passage in which Job desires for his words some enduring monument. He says, 'Oh that my words were now written! Oh that they were printed in a book! That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever!' In an antiquarian point of view, this is a deeply interesting passage, being the earliest existing reference to the most ancient modes of writing-not to one of them, but to several,—to all, in fact, that appear to have been known at the time this book was written. The strange blunder of the translators about printing in a book, is calculated to provoke a smile, and is on that ground alone censurable. We knew a man by no means ill-informed or unintelligent, who contended from this that printing was but the revival of an ancient invention known in the time of Job, with the only alternative that Job predicted the invention, and declared his conviction that his words would hereafter be printed in a book—' And this has really come to pass,' he triumphantly added, deeming that his acumen had added one more to the long list of fulfilled prophecies. This carelessness is the less excusable, as the earlier versions are free from this fault. In them we have, 'O that they were put in a boke;" "O that they were written in a booke.'2 Still there might be something to mislead in the words. 'written' and 'book;' not that they are absolutely incorrect, but that they have acquired more restricted signification than they anciently possessed. Not, however, to enter into questions 1 ROGER'S Rible, and BISHOPS' Bible. 2 Geneva Bible. as to the meaning of words, we shall give the translation which seems to us preferable : 'O that my words were now recorded! O that they were engraven on a tablet! That they were graven in a rock for ever.' The careful reader will here find four ideas, rising to a climax in the grandest and most durable form of writing. Job first expresses a wish that his words were simply written down or recorded in the ordinary mode, without specifying any; neither shall we now, as there will be a future occasion to do so. But we cannot help pointing out the error of those who contend, from the text before us, that graving on metal or stone was the only mode of writing known in the time of Job, and consequently, that there were no such things as books, or rather rolls (which was the ancient form of books), in existence. But why not? The world was already 2200 years old at the very earliest date ascribed to the history of Job, and men inherited, through Noah's family, the knowledge and accumulated improvements of the antediluvians. And as this is urged by those who insist upon the most ancient date of the history and the Book of Job, it may well be asked, How, in the alleged absence of the means of copious writing, in the shape of books of leaves or bark, or rolls of skins (not parchment, which was later), linen, or papyrus, the Book of Job itself came to be written and preserved? No one will surely contend that a volume so large was engraven on stone, or even on metal. Further, in the time of Moses, materials for large rolls of writing existed, or how else were the books of the Pentateuch written, for only the ten commandments were engraven upon stone? Lastly, we have actual possession of Egyptian papyrus rolls of the most remote Pharaonic age; and through the sculptures we are enabled to ascertain that this mode of writing was common in the age of Suphis, or Cheops, the builder of the great pyramid, more than 2000 years before Christ, and therefore anterior to the age of Job. The patriarch then goes on to engraving or writing on tablets. These tablets may have been of wood, earthenware, or bone. Waxen tablets we take to be of a later age, not well suited to a warm climate, and never used but for temporary memoranda, like our slates. We mention bone, in the recollection that the shoulder-blades of sheep were, in ancient times, and especially among pastoral tribes, the representatives of our ivory tablets. Then Job comes to the process of writing on tablets of soft metal with a pen or stylus of harder metal-with a pen of iron on tablets of lead. Tablets for the purpose of writing, were composed of plates of lead, copper, brass, and other metals. These, as also tablets of wood, mentioned before, were either single, or frequently from two to five leaves were done up into a sort of book, something like our slate books. Lead, from its comparative cheapness and softness, and from the facility of beating out or melting down writing no longer useful, was much used, and was probably first employed for this purpose, though the prominent mention of it by Job does not imply that no other metals were used. It is stated by Pliny that sheets of lead were still in his time used for important public docuA zealous antiquary of the seventeenth century, Montfaucon, states that he purchased in 1699, at Rome, an ancient book entirely composed of lead. It was about four inches long and three inches wide; and not only were the two pieces that formed the cover and the leaves, six in number, of lead, but also the pin inserted through the rings to hold the leaves ments. |