Isaiah has introduced a whole verse of the book of Job, almost verbatim, into his prophecy against Egypt (Isa 19:5 = Job 14:11): in the same prophecy, Isa 19:13. refer to Job 12:24., so also Isa 35:3 to Job 4:4. These reminiscences of the book of Job are frequent in Isaiah (Isa 40-66). This book of solace for the exiles corresponds to the book of Job not only in words, which exclusively belong in common to the two (as גּזע and צאצאים), and in surprising similarity of expression (as Isa 53:9, comp. Job 16:17; Isa 60:6, comp. Job 22:11), but also in numerous passages of similar thought and form (comp. Isa 40:23 with Job 12:24); and in the description of the Servant of Jehovah, one is here and there involuntarily reminded of the book of Job (as Isa 50:6, comp. with Job 16:10). In Jeremiah, the short lyric passage, Jer 20:14-18, in which he curses the day of his birth, falls back on Job 3: the form in which the despondency of the prophet breaks forth is determined by the book of Job, with which he was familiar. It requires no proof that the same prophet follows the book of Job in many passages of Lamentations, and especially the first part of Lam 3: he makes use of confessions, complaints, and imagery from the affliction of Job, to represent the affliction of Israel.
By the end of the time of the kings, Job was a person generally known in Israel, a recognised saint: for Ezekiel, in the year 593-2 b.c. (Eze 14:14.), complains that the measure of Israel's sin is so great, that if Noah, Daniel, and Job were in the midst of Israel, though they might save themselves, they would not be able to hold back the arm of divine justice. The prophet mentions first Noah, a righteous man of the old world; then Daniel, a righteous man of contemporary Israel; and last of all Job, a righteous man beyond the line of the promise.[1]
He would not, however, have been able
- ↑ Hengstenberg (Beiträge, i. 72) thinks Job is mentioned last because less suited to Ezekiel's purpose than Noah and Daniel. Carpzov (Introd. in ll. poet. p. 35) is more ingenious, but too artificial, when he finds an anti-climax in the order: Noachus in clade primi mundi aecumenica, Daniel in clade patriae ac gentis suae, Iobus in clade familiae servatus est.
