say, as the tone of the friends becomes harsher and more cutting, Job meets their vituperation with growing calmness and dignity. Disappointed in his friends, he clings with convulsive energy to that never quite surrendered postulate of his consciousness a God who owns the moral claims of a creature on the Creator. Remarkable indeed is the first distinct expression of this faith of the heart, of which an antiquated orthodoxy sought to deprive him. He has just listened to the personalities, the cruel assumptions, and the shallow commonplaces of Eliphaz (who treats Job as an arrogant pretender and a self-convicted blaspheming sinner), and with a few words of utter contempt he turns his back on his 'tormenting[1] comforters' (xvi. 2). (Soon, however, he will appeal to them for sympathy; so strong is human nature! See xix. 21.) Left to his own melancholy thoughts, he repeats the sad details of his misery and of God's hostility (and again we feel that the poet thinks of suffering humanity in general[2]), and reasserts his innocence in language afterwards used of the suffering Servant of Jehovah (xvi. 17; comp. Isaiah liii. 9). Then in the highest excitement he demands vengeance for his blood. But who is the avenger of blood but God (xix. 25; comp. Ps. ix. 12)—the very Foe who is bringing him to death? And hence the strange but welcome thought that behind the God of pitiless force and undiscriminating severity there must be a God who recognises and returns the love of His servants, or, in the fine words of the Korán, 'that there is no refuge from God but unto Him.'[3] 'Even now,' as he lies on the rubbish-heap—
Even now, behold, my Witness is in heaven,
and he that vouches for me is on high.
My friends (have become) my scorners;
mine eye sheds tears unto God—
that he would right a man against God,
and a son of man against his friend (xvi. 20, 21).
- ↑ Miss E. Smith's rendering, 'irksome,' Renan's 'insupportable,' are not definite enough. Job means that his would-be comforters do but aggravate his unease.
- ↑ Notice the expressions in xvi. 10, and comp. Ps. xxii. 7, 12, 13. [Ps. xxii., like the Book of Job, has some features which belong to an individual and some to a collection of sufferers.) Job would never have spoken of his friends in the terms used in xvi. 10, 11.
- ↑ Sur. ix. 119.
