- standing the afflictions sent upon him, he freely admits, and
this in language as emphatic as their own, the reality of God's providential government, and that punishment does overtake the ungodly. Nevertheless there is a mystery enveloping the divine administration, which is quite impenetrable to the human understanding' (The Book of Job, p. 233). This is very unnatural.[1] How can Job suddenly adopt the language of the friends without conceding that he has himself hitherto been completely in error? And what right have we to force such a subtle connection between chaps. xxvii. and xxviii? Looking at the latter by itself, one cannot help suspecting that it once formed part of a didactic treatise similar to the Introduction to the Book of Proverbs (see end of Chap. III). For a careful exegetical study of chaps. xxvii., xxviii., see Giesebrecht (see 'Aids to the Student,' after Chap. XV.), with whom Dr. Green seems to accord, but who fails to convince me. See also Budde in his Beiträge, and Grätz, 'Die Integrität der Kap. 27 und 28 im Hiob,' Monatsschrift, 1872, p. 241 &c.
- ↑ It is a pleasure to quote the forcible summing-up of Mr. Froude. 'A difficulty,' he remarks, 'now arises which, at first sight, appears insurmountable. As the chapters are at present printed, the entire of the 27th is assigned to Job, and the paragraph from the 11th to the 23rd verses is in direct contradiction to all which he has maintained before—is, in fact, a concession of having been wrong from the beginning. Ewald, who, as we said above, himself refuses to allow the truth of Job's last and highest position, supposes that he is here receding from it, and confessing what an over-precipitate passion had betrayed him into denying. For many reasons, principally because we are satisfied that Job said then no more than the real fact, we cannot think Ewald right; and the concessions are too large and too inconsistent to be reconciled even with his own general theory of the poem' (Short Studies, vol. i.) He then proceeds to mention with cautious approbation the theory of Kennicott (see note on Text at end of Chap. XV.)
