dealers' by Isaiah (xxxiii. 1), but the Babylonians impressed the Hebrew writers by their rapacity far more than the Assyrians. The 'unrighteous' of the Psalms are, when foreigners are spoken of, not the Assyrians, but either the Babylonians or still later oppressors (e.g. Ps. cxxv. 3); and the description of the Babylonians in the first chapter of Habakkuk strongly reminds us of those complaints of Job, 'The earth is given over into the hand of the unrighteous' (ix. 24), and 'The robbers' tents are in peace, and they that provoke God are secure, they who carry (their) god in their hand' (xii. 6; comp. Hab. i. 11, 16).
The view here propounded might be supported by an argument from linguistic data (see Chap. XIII.) which would lead us into details out of place here. It is that of Umbreit, Knobel, Grätz, and (though he does not exclude the possibility of a later date) the sober and thorough Gesenius. Long after the present writer's results were first committed to paper, he had the rare satisfaction of finding them advocated, so far as the date is concerned, in a commentary by a scholar of our own who has the best right to speak (A. B. Davidson, Introduction to The Book of Job, 1884). On the other hand, Stickel, Ewald, Magnus, Bleek, Renan (1860), Kuenen (1865), Hitzig, Reuss, Dillmann, Merx, prefer to place our poem in the period between Isaiah and Jeremiah, and this seems to me the earliest date from which the composition and significance of the book can be at all rightly understood. Reasons enough for this statement of opinion will suggest themselves to those who have followed me hitherto; let me now only add that the pure monotheism of the Book makes an earlier date, on historical principles, hardly conceivable.[1] A later date than the Exile-period is not, I admit, inconceivable (see Vatke, Die biblische
- [Footnote: small scale, nor yet that side by side with them are mentioned the Sabeans, surely
not those of S. Arabia (Noldeke), but those of N. Arabia (Delitzsch), detachments of whom might have encamped on the borders of Edom. Comp. Wetzstein in Delitzsch's Iob, ed. 2, p. 596 &c.]
- ↑ I write this with deference to the contrary opinion of Delitzsch, who is, however, too prejudiced against late dates, and biassed by his belief in the authenticity of the Song of Hezekiah. If the Book of Job be pre-Hezekian, it is of course natural to throw it back to the age of Solomon.
