BOOKS.

THE BOOK OF JOB.*

THE word " commentary " on the title-page of a large volume -will frighten some readers, and it may be as well to begin by reassuring them. Those who have stomach for anything more solid than the latest novel need not be alarmed, either at the name or at the length of this book. This is not, as so many works of the kind are, the bones of a commentary, a collection of dry, disjointed notes, bristling with Hebrew and Greek. Mr. Cox assumes in his readers no knowledge of any language not their own. He quotes, indeed, perhaps even to excess, but from English authors, and principally from English poets. What he gives us is a key to the understanding of a most sublime poem, and a key which will obey the least-instructed hand. The work is based on wide reading and careful study of the subject, but 3Ir. Cox has known how to present his learning in a readable form, and to interest the general public, as well as specialists and students.

No portion of the Bible stands more in need of such a com- mentary than the Book of Job. The attentive English reader can understand most of his Bible, not, perhaps, always as the original writers meant, but sufficiently, at any rate, for his own edification. But Job stands quite by itself. Though written in Hebrew, it is scarcely a Hebrew poem. The actors, the allu- sions to persons and things, the mythology, are almost all out- side Israel, and require explanation. Nor have our translators been as happy here as elsewhere. The English version of the Bible is so fine, that we shall never consent to replace it by a more correct, but colder and less rhythmical translation. But it must be admitted that Job, as it stands in our Bibles, needs correction, though with a most careful and sparing hand. Not only is the sense of the original often lost, but it is not always replaced by words which are good sense in them- selves. There are passages to which it is impossible to assign an intelligible meaning; and these stumbling-blocks prevent readers from perceiving the drift of the poem, and turn them to easier ground elsewhere. To take an instance, almost at random, "Dead things are formed from under the waters, and the inhabitants thereof" (Job xx-vi., 3), will to many become intelligible for the first time in Mr. Cox's translation,— • A Commentary on the Book of Job, with a Translatka. By Samuel Cox. -London; C. Began Paul and Co. 1880.

"The Shades tremble Beneath the waters and their inhabitants."

At the beginning of the next chapter there is a passage then connection of which with the context is not apparent, as we read it and which is quite as obscure in other versions—for example,.

in the Septuagint—as in our own. "He setteth an end to darkness" is a literal translation ; but Mr. Cox brings out clearly the allusion to the miner who succeeds in finding "the stones of darkness," while "Man knoweth not the haunt of wisdom." We give the passage as Mr. Cox renders it :—

"Chap. xxviii., 1.—Surely there is a vein for silver, And a place for the gold which men wash out ;

2. Iron may be taken from the earth, And the rock be smelted for copper. 3. [The miner] maketh an end of darkness, And searcheth through all its limits For the stones of darkness and of the blackness of death ; 4. He sinketh a shaft far from the habitations of men, He is forgotten of those who walk above, He swingeth suspended afar from men ; 5. The underparts of the earth, out of which cometh forth bread; Are stirred up as if by fire; 6. The rocks are the sapphire's bed, And yield him gold-dust. T. That path ! no bird of prey knoweth it, Nor hath the eye of the hawk scanned it ; 8. No proudly-pacing beast hath trodden it, Nor lion passed by upon it.

9. He putteth forth his hand against the quartz, He turneth up the mountains from their base; 10. He cntteth out canals among the rocks, And his eye detecteth every precious thing ; 11. He biodeth up waters so that they weep not, And bringeth that which is hidden to light."

We should like to suggest that Mr. Cox's translation might be published separately, in a cheap form, together with just so much of the commentary as is absolutely necessary. It would then find its way to many who will not see the work in its pm-- sent shape. If this should be done, some alight alterations will be required. Mr. Cox has parted company with the work of our translators further than faithfulness to the original compels

him. In some cases this is quite justifiable in a commentary Thus, "the Cluster" and "the Giant" are quite right in a work which is only intended to illustrate our received text But in a version to be read instead of that in our Bibles, the Pleiades and Orion should certainly be retained; and, as it is the return of Spring whieh is indicated, the "sweet influences' might probably be kept also. There are other passages wherer even in the present work, we prefer the words of the English version. In ix.-27 Mr. Cox makes Job resolve to "leave my sad faces." So good a Shakespearian scholar might have remembered that this phrase suggests a passage in Hamlet, where such a suggestion is not wanted ; and apart from this, "my heaviness" is preferable. "Devoid of knowledge" is not so good as "without knowledge ;" "the face of the deep frozen" is better than "the surface of the deep

cohere." In this and many other instances, the accustomed words might be kept, without doing violence to the Hebrew ; or with the more correct translations set down in the margin or appended commentary. We must not multiply instances ; but "thy proud waves," is more striking and poetical than "the

prideof thy waves," and we should like to ask whether it is not more correct to make Jehovah speak out of the whirlwind than out of the tempest ? The latter word seems to suggest the thunderstorm, which has passed over; while the whirlwind— the storm of wind and clouds, as the Septuagint has it—is the disturbance which follows the tempest. These are compara- tively small defects in a very excellent translation, which is the

result not only of Mr. Cox's researches in the Hebrew original,. but also of a diligent comparison with the labours of other scholars. If the work is to remain only in its present shape, these small criticisms would, perhaps, be hardly worth making. But a new version of Job is urgently needed; and for this purpose, at least, the verbal changes in the text should be as few as possible.

The next, and larger, point to be dealt with is our author's success in treating the meaning and scope of the poem ; and it may be said at once that this is done in that calm and judicial spirit which is a note of the best English exegesis. It is im-

possible to understand the Book of Job until it is accepted as a poem; as the poetical attempt of some great thinker to state, rather than to solve, the deepest problems of life. The idea that the Book must be taken as historical fact, that it is God's own way of accounting for human misery, lands us in hopeless confusion; and the difficulties caused by this notion go far to -account for the neglect of the poem of which Mr. Cox justly -complains. It is simply shocking to our minds to suppose, as a matter of actual fact, that God laid. a wager with Satan ; that Job's children were killed, and his person afflicted, merely to refute and. humiliate the Spirit "who ever denies." Even Mr. Cox scarcely brings out with sufficient -clearness the character of the prologue, as poetical machinery necessary to the expression of the poet's idea. Another blunder of commentators has been to read into the text of the poet of the Hauran, doctrines and ideas which belong to a much later time and a different circle of thought. Mr. Cox has very well exposed the errors of this method ; but it is difficult to throw oneself completely into an alien stand-point. Our own notions, -do what we will, intrude themselves ; and it is not clear that Mr. Cox has not credited the poet with modern doctrines, in one or two instances. Possibly, somethiug of the sort leads our author to find. a "profound craving" for a Mediator, in a passage where Job is simply stating the obvious difficulty that God is not a man, to be spoken to withal; and that there is no " daysman " to lay his hand upon both, and decide betwixt him and. his Divine Adversary. Possibly, also, Mr. Cox makes too . much of the intimations of immortality in the celebrated Inscription verses. If they mean what Mr. Cox, and other eminent authorities, make -them mean, it is surely most strange that neither the Friends, nor Elihu, nor Jehovah, nor the poet himself in the epilogue— except, indeed, in the Septuagint version—allude to this great light which so suddenly bursts upon Job. It is not for us to settle so great a dispute ; but admitting that Job in his despair of life conceives a hope of Hades, is it not plain that this is passed. over as insufficient ? The shadowy Sheol of the poet is not a place where so great a wrong could be adequately righted ; and. in fact, the compensation comes in the shape of other children, restored health and riches, length of days, and honour.

The problem of the poem is twofold, with its divine and its human side. The poet undertakes, first, to "justify the ways of God to man ;" and. secondly, to show that it is possible for a man to "retain his integrity" without hope of reward and under misery from which he despairs of release. In showing how the poet works out this double design Mr. Cox is at his best, and often rises to a very noble strain. He brings out thoroughly the conflict in Job's mind ; that he is "renouncing, yet holding to God ;" that what he really renounces is 'only the phantom God of the -current theology ;" while it is the hold which that theology still has on himself, and the struggle to get behind it to the purer light of God as he really is, which make the agony so intense. Nor does Mr. Cox neglect to show that Job on his ash-heap is typical of humanity, suffering from apparent in- justice, yet with a profound conviction that justice really rules. Strangely enough, the key-note of the poem in this respect is given by our own translators, in a verse which, as we are told, .does not truly represent the original, but which none the less condenses the spirit and meaning of Job's wrestlings with God, —" Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him ; but I will main- tain mine own ways before him." It is this which the Friends call blasphemy, and they afflict him with words to bring him to a better mind, as Kratos wishes that Prometheus may be "taught to love the tyranny of Zeus." But the end justifies the wild struggles towards the light of Job, and condemns the placid acceptance of a false theology.

But before the appearance of Jehovah, in the poem as we have it, Elihu comes forward to blame both Job and the Friends, and to supply some thoughts for which place could not be found elsewhere. In the defence of this passage is prob- ably the most original feature of the volume. On the opposing side it has been argued by Ewald and others that Elihu is un- necessary, that the poem is perfectly continuous without him, and, above all, that if he were part of the original scheme, some mention must have been made of him, either by way of praise or blame, in the epilogue, where the three Friends are con- demned. But Mr. Cox shows, in a powerful and striking argument, that Elihu does contribute essential ideas, and that he is necessary to the total dramatic effect. This is, not, perhaps, absolutely sufficient to convince us that Elihu, as he is now, had a place in the poem as first written ; but even if it were not so, more than one great work of imagination . has grown throughout a period, and has finally, by the action of time, been rounded into what is now a complete whole,—and as complete wholes, such poems must now be read. If, as Mr. Cox seems to think, the Book of Job was intended to be, not indeed acted on a stage, but conceived in a dramatic manner, presented. to the hearers as in a series of living pictures, then the part of Elihu greatly heightens the effect of the final scene. Great dramatic writers have often introduced long passages which, considered by themselves, seem unnecessary, before the catastrophe which the hearers know is coming. Thus, when Prometheus has hurled at Zeus his prediction and defiance, the thunderbolt is delayed by a long conversation with Hermes through which the hearers are ever expecting the approach of the final storm. It would show less art than we have a right to expect from this poet, to introduce Jehovah at once, when "the words of Job are ended."

Lastly, Mr. Cox has to meet the question,—What answer is supplied by the poem to the difficulties it suggests ? Probably the poet took what Mr. Stopford Brooke calls "an imperial view of God," and thought of him more as an absolute Eastern monarch than we do. Yet God, as well as Job, is meant to be justified ; and it is not clear at first sight how this is done, since Jehovah's reply seems to be the very appeal to unques- tionable power against which Job had protested. Elihu has already put forward the idea that suffering is, and is meant to be, remedial; but this doctrine cannot he carried far without being fortified by that of a future life, which is here,at most, alluded to as a dim and not very satisfactory possibility. But Mr. Cox shows in a very eloquent and convincing way that Jehovah's reply is not:that of an absolute despot; that by the series of awful and yet beautiful pictures which he presents, he is turning the mind of Job from his own pains and. sorrows to find peace in the majestic order of the universe ; and that this was the only answer he was capable of receiving. Here, however, as in other parts of the Cminneatary, Mr. Cox does not shrink from admitting that the poet's solution is not always satisfactory ; but he brings out the grand poetry, with a skilful and sympathetic hand. The Book of job certainly stands far ahead of any poem touching the same ground ; and we have the best reason to be grateful to Mr. Cox for enabling us to see this superiority more plainly than before. We are sure that he will prove to have rendered the same service to a very wide circle of readers.