Moulton: The Literary Study of the Bible

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                THE

 

     LITERARY STUDY OF THE BIBLE

 

 

 

 

                                    AN ACCOUNT OF THE

       LEADING FORMS OF LITERATURE REPRESENTED

                             IN THE SACRED WRITINGS

 

 

 

 

                      INTENDED FOR ENGLISH READERS

 

 

 

                                                        By

                                  RICHARD G. MOULTON.

 

PROFESSOR OF LITERATURE IN ENGLISH IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

   LATE UNIVERSITY EXTENSION LECTURER (CAMBRIDGE AND LONDON)

 

 

 

 

 

 

                         BOSTON, U.S.A.: D. C. HEATH & CO.

                         LONDON : ISBISTER & CO., LIMITED

                                                    1896

 

        Public Domain: Scanned and edited by Ted Hildebrandt 3/2005


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                    COPYRIGHT, 1895,

                                 By Richard G. Moulton

 

                           ENTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                        Norwood Press:

                    J. S. Cushing & Co. -- Berwick & Smith

                                    Boston, Mass., U.S.A.

 


 

 

 

                                              PREFACE

 

            AN author falls naturally into an apologetic tone if he is pro-

posing to add yet one more to the number of books on the Bible.

Yet I believe the number is few of those to whom the Bible appeals

as literature. In part, no doubt, this is clue to the forbidding

form in which we allow the Bible to be presented to us. Let the

reader imagine the poems of Wordsworth, the plays of Shake-

speare, the essays of Bacon, and the histories of Motley to be

bound together in a single volume; let him suppose the titles of

the poems and essays cut out and the names of speakers and divi-

sions of speeches removed, the whole divided up into sentences

of a convenient length for parsing, and again into lessons contain-

ing a larger or smaller number of these sentences. If the reader

can carry his imagination through these processes he will have

before him a fair parallel to the literary form in which the Bible

has come to the modern reader; it is true that the purpose for

which it has been split into chapters and verses is something

higher than instruction in parsing, but the injury to literary form

remains the same.

            Of course earnest students of Scripture get below the surface of

isolated verses. Yet even in the case of deep students the literary

element is in danger of being overpowered by other interests.

The devout reader, following the Bible as the divine authority for

his spiritual life, feels it a distraction to notice literary questions.

And thereby he often impedes his own purpose: poring over a

passage of Job to discover the message it has for him, and for-

getting all the while the dramatic form of the book, as a result of

which the speaker of the very passage he is studying is in the end

 

                                                         iii

 


iv                                             PREFACE

 

pronounced by God himself to have said the thing that is "not

right." Another has been led by his studies to cast off the

authority of the Bible, and he will not look for literary pleasure to

that which has for him associations with a yoke from which he has

been delivered. A third approaches Scripture with equal rever-

ence and scholarship. Yet even for him there is a danger at the

present moment, when the very bulk of the discussion tends to

crowd out the thing discussed, and but one person is willing to

read the Bible for every ten who are ready to read about it.

            Now for all these types of readers the literary study of the

Bible is a common meeting-ground. One who recognises that

God has been pleased to put his revelation of himself in the form

of literature, must surely go on to see that literary form is a thing

worthy of study. The agnostic will not deny that, if every particle

of authority and supernatural character be taken from the Bible,

it will remain one of the world's great literatures, second to none.

And the most polemic of all investigators must admit that appre-

ciation is the end, and polemics only the means.

            The term ‘literary study of the Bible’ describes a wide field

of which the present work attempts to cover only a limited part.

In particular, the term will include the most prominent of all

types of Bible study, that which is now universally called the

‘Higher Criticism.’ There is no longer any need to speak of the

splendid processes of modern Biblical Criticism, nor of the mag-

nitude even of its undisputed results. I mention the Higher

Criticism only to say that its province is distinct from that which

I lay down for myself in this book. The Higher Criticism is

mainly an historical analysis; I confine myself to literary investi-

gation. By the literary treatment I understand the discussion of

what we have in the books of Scripture; the historical analysis goes

behind this to the further question how these books have reached

their present form. I think the distinction of the two treatments

is of considerable practical importance; since the historical analy-

sis must, in the nature of things, divide students into hostile camps,

 


                                                PREFACE                                          v

 

while, as it appears to me, the literary appreciation of Scripture is

a common ground upon which opposing schools may meet. The

conservative thinker maintains that Deuteronomy is the personal

composition of Moses; the opposite school regard the book as a

pious fiction of the age of Josiah. But I do not see how either

of these opinions, if true, or a third intermediate opinion, can pos-

sibly affect the question with which I desire to interest the reader,

— namely, the structure of Deuteronomy as it stands, whoever may

be responsible for that structure. And yet the structural analysis

of our Deuteronomy, and the connection of its successive parts, are

by no means clearly understood by the ordinary reader of the Bible.

            The historical and the literary treatments are then distinct: yet

sometimes they seem to clash. There are two points in particular

as to which I find myself at variance with the accepted Higher

Criticism. Historic analysis, investigating dates, sometimes finds

itself obliged to discriminate between different parts of the same

literary composition, and to assign to them different periods; hav-

ing accomplished this upon sound evidence, it then often proceeds,

no longer upon evidence, but by tacit assumption, by unconscious

insinuations rather than by distinct statement, to treat the earlier

parts of such a composition as ‘genuine’ or ‘original,’ while the

portions of later date are made ‘interpolations,’ or ‘accretions,’ —

in fact, are alluded to as something illegitimate. Thus, in the case

of Job, few will hesitate to accept the theory that there is an earlier

nucleus (to speak roughly) in the dialogue, while the speeches of

Elihu and the Divine Intervention have come from another source.

But nearly all commentators who hold this view seem to treat these

later portions as if they were on a lower literary plane, and — so

sensitive is taste to external considerations — they soon find them

in a literary sense inferior. This whole attitude of mind seems to

me unscientific: it is the intrusion of the modern conception of a

fixed book and an individual author into a totally different liter-

ary age. The phenomena of floating poetry, with community of

authorship and the perpetual revision that goes with oral tradition,

are not only accepted but insisted upon by biblical scholars. But

 


vi                                             PREFACE

 

in such floating literature our modern idea of  'originality' has no

place; the earliest presentation has no advantage of authenticity

over the latest; nor have the later versions necessarily any superi-

ority to the earlier. Processes of floating poetry produced the

Homeric poems, and in this case it is the last form, not the first,

that makes our supreme Iliad. My contention is that, whatever

may be the truth as to dates, all the sections of such a poem as

Job are equally ‘genuine.’ And as a matter of literary analysis, I

find the Speeches of Elihu and the Divine Intervention, from what-

ever sources they may have come, carrying forward the previous

movement of the poem to a natural dramatic climax, and in liter-

ary effect as striking as any part of the book.

            My second objection to the characteristic methods of the Higher

Criticism has to do with the divisions of the text. In analysing

the contents of a book of Scripture many even of the best critics

betray an almost exclusive preoccupation with subject matter, to

the neglect of literary form; a powerful search-light is thrown upon

minute historic allusions, while even broad indications of literary

unity or diversity are passed by. I will take a typical example.

In the latter part of our Book of Micah a group of verses (vii.

7–10) must strike even a casual reader by their buoyancy of tone,

so sharply contrasting with what has gone before. Accordingly

Wellhausen sees in this changed tone evidence of a new composi-

tion, product of an age long distant from the age of the prophet:

"between v. 6 and v. 7 there yawns a century."1 What really

yawns between the verses is simply a change of speakers. The

latter part of Micah is admittedly dramatic, and a reader attentive

to literary form cannot fail to note a distinct dramatic composition

introduced by the title-verse (vi. 9): "The voice of the LORD

crieth unto the city, and the man of wisdom will fear thy name„"

The latter part of the title --"and the man of wisdom will fear

thy name "—prepares us to expect an addition in the ‘Man of

Wisdom’ to the usual dramatis personae of prophetic dramas, which

are confined to God, the Prophet, and the ruined Nation. All

 

                        1 Quoted in Driver's Introduction, in loc.

 


                                                PREFACE                                          vii

 

that follows the title-verse bears out the description. Verses 10–16

are the words of denunciation and threatening put into the mouth

of God. Then the first six verses of chapter seven voice the woe

of the guilty city. Then the Man of Wisdom speaks, and the dis-

puted verses change the tone to convey the happy confidence of

one on whose side the divine intervention is to take place:

 

            But as for me, I will look unto the LORD; I will wait for the God of

            my salvation: my God will hear me. Rejoice not against me, 0 mine

            enemy: when I fall, I shall arise, etc.

 

The sequence of verses follows quite naturally the dramatic form

indicated by the title, and no break in the text is required. I have

no objection in the abstract to the hypothesis of defects in textual

transmission; but in judging of any alleged example it is reason-

able to give to indications of literary form a weight not inferior to

that of suggestions drawn from subject matter.

            Besides this historic analysis other obvious lines of literary treat-

ment are omitted from this book. I have scarcely touched such

poetic criticism as was admirably illustrated by the digest of

Hebrew imagery which Mr. Montefiore contributed some time

since to the Jewish Quarterly Review. I have little or nothing

to say about the style of biblical writers, although I welcome Pro-

fessor Cook's introduction of the Bible as a model in the teaching

of Rhetoric. I have even felt compelled to drop the survey of

subject matter which was at first a part of my plan. The more I

have studied the Bible from a literary standpoint, and considered

also the conditions for making such a standpoint generally acces-

sible, the more one single aspect of the subject has come into

prominence — the treatment of literary morphology: how to dis-

tinguish one literary composition from another, to say exactly

where each begins and ends; to recognise Epic, Lyric, and other

forms as they appear in their biblical dress, as well as to distin-

guish literary forms special to the Sacred writers. Hence the

book is "An account of the leading Forms of Literature repre-

sented in the Sacred Writings." The whole works up to what I

 


viii                                           PREFACE

 

have called a " Literary Index of the Bible." This ranges from

Genesis to Revelation, including the apocryphal books of Wisdom

and Ecclesiasticus; it marks off exactly each separate composition

(or integral parts of the longer compositions), indicates the liter-

ary form of each, and, where suitable (as in the case of an essay

or sonnet), suggests an appropriate title. My idea is that a stu-

dent might mark these divisions and titles in the margin of his

Revised Version, and so do for his Bible what the printer would

do for all other literature. I believe it is almost impossible to

overestimate the difference made to our power of appreciation when

the literary form of what we are reading is indicated to the eye,

instead of our having to collect it laboriously from what we read.

The underlying axiom of my work is that a clear grasp of the outer

literary form is an essential guide to the inner matter and spirit.

            I am of course not so sanguine as to suppose that the arrange-

ment of the Sacred Writings in this Index — involving, as it must,

critical questions in relation to every book of the Bible — will be

accepted. I desire nothing better than to set every student to

make such an arrangement for himself, getting help from every

source that is open to him and so to tide over the period before

public opinion permits the Bible to be issued with such aids to

intelligent reading from the printed page as are taken for granted

in all other literature.

            I have spoken so far from the point of view of the general or

the religious reader. But a consideration of a different kind has

had weight with me in the production of this book: the place in

liberal education of the Bible treated as literature. It has come

by now to be generally recognised that the Classics of Greece and

Rome stand to us in the position of an ancestral literature, — the

inspiration of our great masters, and bond of common associations

between our poets and their readers. But does not such a posi-

tion belong equally to the literature of the Bible? if our intellect

and imagination have been formed by the Greeks, have we not in

similar fashion drawn our moral and emotional training from

 


                                                PREFACE                                          ix

 

Hebrew thought? Whence then the neglect of the Bible in our

higher schools and colleges? It is one of the curiosities of our

civilisation that we are content to go for our liberal education to

literatures which, morally, are at an opposite pole from ourselves:

literatures in which the most exalted tone is often an apotheosis

of the sensuous, which degrade divinity, not only to the human

level, but to the lowest level of humanity. Our hardest social

problem being temperance, we study in Greek the glorification of

intoxication; while in mature life we are occupied in tracing law

to the remotest corner of the universe, we go at school for literary

impulse to the poetry that dramatises the burden of hopeless fate.

Our highest politics aim at conserving the arts of peace, our first

poetic lessons are in an Iliad that cannot be appreciated without a

bloodthirsty joy in killing. We seek to form a character in which

delicacy and reserve shall be supreme, and at the same time are

training our taste in literatures which, if published as English

books, would be seized by the police. I recall these paradoxes,

not to make objection, but to suggest the reasonableness of the

claim that the one side of our liberal education should have

another side to balance it. Prudish fears may be unwise, but

there is no need to put an embargo upon decency. It is surely

good that our youth, during the formative period, should have

displayed to them, in a literary dress as brilliant as that of Greek

literature — in lyrics which Pindar cannot surpass, in rhetoric as

forcible as that of Demosthenes, or contemplative prose not in-

ferior to Plato's — a people dominated by an utter passion for

righteousness, a people whom ideas of purity, of infinite good, of

universal order, of faith in the irresistible downfall of all moral

evil, moved to a poetic passion as fervid, and speech as musical,

as when Sappho sang of love or AEschylus thundered his deep

notes of destiny. When it is added that the familiarity of the

English Bible renders all this possible without the demand upon

the time-table that would be involved in the learning of another

language, it seems clear that our school and college curricula will

not have shaken off their medieval narrowness and renaissance

 


x                                              PREFACE

 

paganism until Classical and Biblical literatures stand side by side

as sources of our highest culture.

            My obligations will be obvious to the main representative works

of Biblical Criticism, more especially to the works of Cheyne,

Briggs, George Adam Smith, and the late Professor Milligan; to

the lectures of President Harper; above all to Canon Driver's

Introduction to Old Testament Literature, which has placed the

best results of modern investigation within easy reach of the ordi-

nary reader. I have made copious citations from the Revised

Version of the Bible and Apocrypha, for the use of which I am

under obligations to the University Presses of Oxford and Cam-

bridge. I am indebted for assistance of various kinds to personal

friends, amongst whom I ought to mention my brother, Dr. Moulton,

of the Leys School, and—here as always—Mr. Joseph Jacobs,

who has become to his large circle of friends a universal referee

for all departments of study. I have other obligations in my

memory, which it is not so easy to specify; obligations to public

institutions and private individuals whose encouragement has

assisted me at every step. For the last four years I have been

lecturing on Biblical literature in churches of various denomina-

tions, in theological schools and universities, and in popular lecture

rooms; my audiences in England and America have included

clergy and laity, Christian and Jewish, not without a representa-

tion of that other public which never reads the Bible and hears

with surprise its most notable passages. Though I have taken

pains to inquire, I have never found examples of the difficulties

which it was feared by some the handling of this topic on the

lecture platform might create. On the contrary, my experience

has uniformly confirmed what I have called above the foundation

axiom of my work — that an increased apprehension of outer

literary form is a sure way of deepening spiritual effect.

            I think it right to state that the issue of this work — announced

more than a year ago--has been delayed by circumstances for

which neither author nor publishers are responsible.

 

                                                                        RICHARD G. MOULTON.

August, 1895.

 


 

 

                                CONTENTS

 

 

                                                 INTRODUCTION

                                                                                                                                    PAGE

THE BOOK OF JOB: AND THE VARIOUS KINDS OF LITERARY INTEREST

            ILLUSTRATED BY IT                                                                                  3

 

                                                       BOOK FIRST

                       LITERARY CLASSIFICATION APPLIED TO THE

                                            SACRED SCRIPTURES

CHAPTER

I. VERSIFICATION AND RHYTHMIC PARALLELISM                          45

 

II. THE HIGHER PARALLELISM, OR PARALLELISM OF INTERPRE-

            TATION                                                                                                          68

 

III. THE LOWER AND THE HIGHER UNITY IN LITERATURE                        81

 

IV. CLASSIFICATION OF LITERARY FORMS                                        105

 

 

                                                 BOOK SECOND

                                  LYRIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE

 

V.  THE BIBLICAL ODE                                                                                          127

 

VI. OCCASIONAL POETRY, ELEGIES, AND LITURGICAL PSALMS            153

 

VII.  DRAMATIC LYRICS, AND LYRICS OF MEDITATION                 174

 

VIII.     LYRIC IDYL:  ‘SOLOMON'S SONG’                                                        194

 

 

                                                   BOOK THIRD

                                    BIBLICAL HISTORY AND EPIC

 

IX. EPIC POETRY OF THE BIBLE                                                                        221

 

X.  BIBLICAL HISTORY IN ITS RELATION WITH BIBLICAL EPIC   244

 

                                                            xi


xii                                            CONTENTS

 

                                              BOOK FOURTH

               THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE BIBLE, OR WISDOM

                                              LITERATURE

CHAPTER                                                                                                                  PAGE

XI.  FORMS OF WISDOM LITERATURE                                                 255

 

XII. THE SACRED BOOKS OF WISDOM                                                            284

 

XIII. ‘THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON’                                                                   305                

 

                                               BOOK FIFTH

                        BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF PROPHECY

 

XIV. FORMS OF PROPHETIC LITERATURE                                                      327

 

XV. FORMS OF PROPHETIC LITERATURE: THE DOOM SONG       353

 

XVI. FORMS OF PROPHETIC LITERATURE: THE RHAPSODY                     364

 

XVII. THE RHAPSODY OF ‘ZION REDEEMED’ [Isaiah xl-lxvi]                       395

 

XVIII.  THE WORKS OF THE PROPHETS                                                           417

 

 

                                                  BOOK SIXTH

                         THE BIBLICAL LITERATURE OF RHETORIC              

 

XX.  THE EPISTLES: OR WRITTEN RHETORIC                                                439

 

XXI.  SPOKEN RHETORIC: AND THE ‘BOOK OF DEUTERONOMY’           444

 

 

                                                  APPENDICES

1.  LITERARY INDEX TO THE BIBLE                                                                  465

 

II.  TABLES OF LITERARY FORMS                                                                      499

 

III. ON THE STRUCTURAL PRINTING OF SCRIPTURE                                   512

 

IV.  USE OF THE DIGRESSION IN ‘WISDOM’                                       521

 

GENERAL INDEX                                                                                                   527


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                INTRODUCTION

 

 

 

                        THE BOOK OF JOB: AND THE VARIOUS KINDS OF

                                LITERARY INTEREST ILLUSTRATED BY IT


 

 

 

 

 

                                   INTRODUCTION

 

 

 

                                                         I

 

            THE story in the Book of Job opens by telling how there was a

man in the land of Uz whose name was Job; how he was perfect

and upright, a man that feared God and eschewed                       Book of Job:

evil. It tells of his great substance in sheep and                          The Story Opens

camels and oxen, and how he was the greatest of                                  1, ii

all the children of the east. Then it speaks of his seven sons

and three daughters, and describes their joyous family life. And so

scrupulous was the piety of Job that, when his sons and daughters

had concluded a round of feastings at one another's houses, Job

rose early and sanctified them, lest perchance in their gaiety they

had offended God.

            Then the story passes to a Council in Heaven, at which the

sons of God came, each from his several province, to present

themselves before the Lord; and amongst them came the Adver-

sary from his sphere of inspection, the Earth. He in his turn

was questioned as to his charge, and Job was instanced by the

Lord as a type of human perfection. But the Adversary, as his

office was, began to raise doubts as to this perfection. God had

made a hedge of prosperity about the man: if he were to put

forth his hand, and destroy all at a stroke, Job might yet renounce

his worship.

            The Lord gave consent for this experiment to be made. So it

came about that in the midst of Job's prosperity there came a

messenger to him and said:

 

                                                            3


4                      LITERARY STUDY OF THE BIBLE

 

                                    The oxen were plowing,

                           and the asses feeding beside them;

                               and the Sabeans fell upon them

                                          and took them away;

                                yea, they have slain the servants

                                    with the edge of the sword;

                         and I only am escaped alone to tell thee!

 

While he was yet speaking there came also another, and said:

 

                              The fire of God is fallen from heaven,

                        and hath burned up the sheep, and the servants,

                                            and consumed them;

                             and I only am escaped alone to tell thee!

 

While he was yet speaking there came also another, and said:

 

                                   The Chaldeans made three bands,

                                             and fell upon the camels,

                                           and have taken them away,

                      yea, and slain the servants with the edge of the sword;

                                  and I only am escaped alone to tell thee!

 

While he was yet speaking there came also another, and said:

 

                                          Thy sons and thy daughters

                     were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother's house;

                                                       and behold,

                               there came a great hind from the wilderness,

                                    and smote the four corners of the house,

                                         and it fell upon the young men,

                                                 and they are dead;

                                  and I only am escaped alone to tell thee!

 

Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and

fell down upon the ground, and worshipped; and he said:

 

                        Naked came I out of my mother's womb,

                              and naked shall I return thither!

                                              The Lord gave,

                               and the Lord hath taken away:

                             Blessed be the Name of the Lord!


                                    INTRODUCTION                                          5

 

So the experiment of the Adversary was over, and Job had not

fallen into sin.

            A second Council in Heaven followed, and a second time came

the sons of God, and the Adversary among them, and made their

reports. When the Lord triumphed in the matter of Job, that he

still retained his integrity notwithstanding the destruction done to

him, the Adversary did honour to the goodness of the man by

suggesting a yet severer test:

 

            Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life. But

            put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he

            will renounce thee to thy face.

           

Even in this case the Almighty had no fear for his servant. So

the Adversary went forth, and smote Job with sore boils from the

sole of his foot unto his crown. And Job silently passed out, as

one unclean, and crept up the ash-mound, and there he sat and

suffered; until his good wife — who had uttered no word of com-

plaint when all the substance was swallowed up and her children

perished — broke down in the presence of this helpless pain:

 

            Dost thou still hold fast thine integrity? renounce God, and die!

 

But Job rebuked this momentary lapse from her wisdom:

 

            What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not

            receive evil?

 

So the second experiment was over, and still Job sinned not with

his lips.

            But a third trial awaited Job, which needed no Council in

Heaven to decree it,—the trial of time. Day followed day, but

no relief came; and Job sat patiently on the ash-mound, an out-

cast and unclean. And gradually a reverence grew about the

silent sufferer: the children no longer jostled him as they sported

to and fro, and groups of sympathising spectators would gather

about the mound to gaze for a while on the fallen child of the

east. And the travellers as they passed by the way smote on


6                      LITERARY STUDY OF THE BIBLE

 

their breasts at the sight; and they made a token of it, and

carried the news into distant countries, until it reached the ears

of Job's three Friends, all of them great chieftains like himself:

the stately Eliphaz the Temanite, and Bildad the sturdy Shuhite,

and Zophar the Naamathite, with his venerable grey hairs. These

three made an appointment together to visit Job; and, when they

came in sight of him, with one accord they lifted up their voices

and wept. And the crowd of spectators made way for the great

men to ascend the mound; and they sat down upon the ground

opposite Job. Day after day they took their station there, yet

they could only weep with their friend; for, though they longed

to speak, their utter courtesy forbade them to disturb the majesty

of that silent suffering.

            At last it was Job himself who broke the long silence, in order

to curse, not God, but his own life. And at this point the intro-

ductory story in which the poem is framed begins to give place to

dialogue; but not before the introduction has made its contribu-

(Problem of the          tion to the general argument. The topic of the

poem and First          whole book is the Mystery of Human Suffering:

Solution)                   the introduction has suggested a First Solution of

the Mystery: Suffering presented as Heaven's test of goodness;

the test being made the severer where the goodness is strong

enough to stand it.

            Job opened his mouth, and cursed the day of his birth. Would

that it might be blotted from among the days of the year, that the

cloud, and the thick darkness, and the shadow of

Jobs curse             death, and all the degrees of blackness might seize

iii                      for their own! If the best of all gifts — never to

have existed—must be denied him, why might not that day of

his birth have also brought to him the Grave, and the long quiet

sleep with the stately dead, and with the wicked and the weary,

the prisoner and his task-master, the small and the great, all at

their ease together? Why should life be forced upon the bitter

in soul?


                                    INTRODUCTION                                          7

 

            In these later thoughts Job seems to reflect upon the order of

God's providence: he must be checked, and yet gently; and

Eliphaz takes this task upon himself. He dreads                 The Dramatic

to give pain to his friend, yet how can he refrain               Dialogue

from speaking, and laying down to Job the foun-               First cycle

dations of hope and fear with which Job himself                           iv-xiv

has so often comforted the afflicted?

 

            Now a thing was secretly brought to me,

            And mine ear received a whisper thereof:

                        In thoughts from the visions of the night,

                        When deep sleep falleth on men,

                        Fear came upon me, and trembling,

                        Which made all my bones to shake.

                        Then a spirit passed before my face;

                        The hair of my flesh stood up.

                        It stood still, but I could not discern the appearance thereof,

                        A form was before mine eyes:

                        There was silence, and I heard a voice, saying,

            "Shall mortal man be more just than God?

            Shall a man be more pure than his Maker?"

 

With the awful solemnity of this vision Eliphaz enforces the view

which the three Friends maintain throughout the discussion, and

which is put forward as a Second Solution of the Problem: The

very righteousness of God (they think) is involved in the doctrine

that all Suffering is a judgment upon Sin. Affliction, Says Eliphaz,

does not spring up of itself like the grass, but it is they who have

sown trouble that reap the same. But he puts the doctrine gently,

as constituting so much hope for Job: when the sinner has once

sought unto God he will find what great and unsearchable

wonders God doeth. Then happy will have been the chastening

of the Almighty, for if he maketh sore he bindeth up.

 

                        He shall deliver thee in six troubles;

                        Yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee.

                                    In famine he shall redeem thee from death;

                                    And in war from the power of the sword.

                                    Thou shalt be hid from the scourge of the tongue;


8                      LITERARY STUDY OF THE BIBLE

 

                        Neither shalt thou be afraid of destruction when it cometh.

                        At destruction and dearth thou shalt laugh:

                        Neither shalt thou be afraid of the beasts of the earth.

                        For thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field;

                        And the beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee.

                        And thou shalt know that thy tent is in peace;

                        And thou shalt visit thy fold and shalt miss nothing.

                        Thou shalt know also that thy seed shall be great,

                        And thine offspring as the grass of the earth.

                        Thou shalt come to thy grave in a full age,

                        Like as a shock of corn cometh in in its season.

            Lo this, we have searched it, so it is;

            Hear it, and know thou it for thy good.

 

            Job is bitterly disappointed at thus meeting reproof where he

had looked for consolation.

 

                        My brethren have dealt deceitfully as a brook,

                        As the channel of brooks that pass away;

                                    Which are black by reason of the ice,

                                    And wherein the snow hideth itself:

                                    What time they wax warm, they vanish:

                                    When it is hot they are consumed out of their place.

                                    The paths of their way are turned aside,

                                    They go up into the waste and perish.

                                    The caravans of Tema looked,

                                    The companies of Sheba waited for them.

                        They were ashamed because they had hoped;

                        They came thither and were confounded.

 

The comfort Job longs for is the crushing pain that would cut

him off altogether. And has he not a right to look for it? Is not

man's life a warfare for a limited time?

 

            As a servant that earnestly desireth the shadow,

            And as an hireling that looketh for his wages,

 

so Job passes his wearisome nights and months of vanity.

 

            If I have sinned, what can I do unto thee,

                        0 thou watcher of men?

            Why hast thou set me as a mark for thee,

                        So that I am a burden to myself?


                                    INTRODUCTION                                          9

 

                        And why dost thou not pardon my transgression,

                                    And take away mine iniquity?

                        For now shall I lie down in the dust;

                                    And thou shalt seek me diligently,

                        But I shall not be!

 

            Job never claims to be sinless, but he knows that no sin of his

can be proportionate to the total ruin that has fallen upon him.

But this does not satisfy the second speaker.

 

                        Doth God pervert judgement?

                        Or doth the Almighty pervert justice?

 

Will not Job disentangle himself from the transgression which has

already found victims in his children? For so surely as the flag

cannot grow without water: though it be green and spreading

above, with roots wrapped round and round its solid bed, yet it

perishes as if it had never been seen: so surely God will not

uphold the evil-doer. But neither will God cast away a perfect

man.

                        He will yet fill thy mouth with laughter,

                                    And thy lips with shouting.

                        They that hate thee shall be clothed with shame,

                                    And the tent of the wicked shall be no more.

 

            Job knows of a truth that it is so. Yet how can a man be just

with God:

 

                        Which removeth the mountains, and they know it not,

                                    When he overturneth them in his anger.

                        Which shaketh the earth out of her place,

                                    And the pillars thereof tremble.

                        Which commandeth the sun, and it riseth not;

                                    And sealeth up the stars.

 

What answer but supplication is possible before that overpower-

ing Strength? a Strength that can destroy both the perfect and

the wicked alike: for if it be not God who does this, who is it?

Certain it is that the earth is given into the hand of the wicked.

However innocent the accused may be, before that Strength his

own mouth would condemn him.


10                    LITERARY STUDY OF THE BIBLE

 

                        If I wash myself with snow water,

                        And make my hands never so clean:

                                    Yet wilt thou plunge me in the ditch,

                                    And mine own clothes shall abhor me.

                        For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him,

                        That we should come together in judgement;

                        There is no daysman betwixt us,

                        That might lay his hand upon us both.

 

And Job appeals to God himself against this oppression of his

own handiwork.

                        Thine hands have framed me

                        And fashioned me together round about;

                                    Yet thou dost destroy me.

                        Remember, I beseech thee, that thou hast fashioned me as clay;

                                    And wilt thou bring me into dust again?

                        Hast thou not poured me out as milk,

                        And curdled me like cheese?

                        Thou hast clothed me with skin and flesh,

                        And knit me together with bones and sinews.

 

It is but a small boon that the creature asks of his Creator: that

he may be let alone for a brief space —

                        Before I go whence I shall not return:

                        Even to the land of darkness

                                    And of the shadow of death:

                        A land of thick darkness,

                        As darkness itself;

                                    A land of the shadow of death,

                                    Without any order,

                        And where the light is as darkness.

 

            Zophar is deeply shocked at a spectacle he has never beheld in

all his long life, — a good man questioning a visible judgment of

God.

                        Canst thou by searching find out God?

                        Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?

                                    It is high as heaven; what canst thou do?

                                    Deeper than Sheol; what canst thou know?

                                    The measure thereof is longer than the earth,

                                    And broader than the sea.


                                    INTRODUCTION                                          11

 

There is no course for Job but to set his heart aright, and put

iniquity far away; then shall he again lift up a spotless countenance

before God.

                        For thou shalt forget thy misery;

                                    Thou shalt remember it as waters that are passed away:

                        And thy life shall be clearer than the noonday;

                                    Though there he darkness, it shall be as the morning.

 

            Before the persistent dogmatism of the three Friends Job loses

more and more the patience which had stood the shocks of the

Adversary.

                                    No doubt but ye are the people,

                                    And wisdom shall die with you.

                        But I have understanding as well as you;

                        I am not inferior to you:

                        Yea, who knoweth not such things as these?

 

The just man is made a laughing-stock, and the tents of robbers

prosper : and yet the very beasts of the field can tell the inquirer

that the hand of the Lord is responsible for every breath of every

living thing. What, do the Friends stand forth as representatives

of Wisdom? Nay,

                        With HIM is wisdom and might;

                        He hath counsel and understanding.

 

Priests and counsellors spoiled, kings bound and unbound, the

mighty overthrown, speech reft from the trusty, and understanding

from the elders, contempt poured upon princes, and the belt of

the strong loosed: these declare the Wisdom to which alone Job

will appeal. Will the Friends lie on God's behalf? Will they be

partial advocates in his cause?

            Though he slay me, yet will I wait for him:

            Nevertheless I will maintain my ways before him.

 

Job appeals to God against God's own dealings, and never doubts

the issue of his appeal. And yet he is so feeble to plead his cause:

a driven leaf, a fettered prisoner, a moth-eaten rag! And the

time left for his vindication is so short!


12                    LITERARY STUDY OF THE BIBLE

 

                        Man that is born of a woman

                                    Is of few days, and full of trouble;

                                    He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down,

                                    He fleeth also as a shadow and continueth not.

 

                        For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down,

                                    That it will sprout again,

                                    And that the tender branch thereof will not cease;

                        Though the root thereof wax old in the earth

                        And the stock thereof die in the ground,

                                    Yet through the scent of water it will bud,

                                    And put forth boughs like a plant.

                        But man dieth, and wasteth away:

                        Yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?

                                    As the waters fail from the sea,

                                    And the river decayeth and drieth up,

                        So man lieth down and riseth not;

                                    Till the heavens be no more,

                        They shall not awake,

                        Nor be roused out of their sleep.

 

A strange fancy plays for a moment with the emotions of the

sufferer,—the fancy that the Grave itself might be sweet, if only

there might come the vindication beyond it.

 

                        Oh that thou wouldest hide me in Sheol,

                        That thou wouldest keep me secret, until thy wrath be past,

                        That thou wouldest appoint me a set time, and remember me!

                                    —If a man die, shall he live again?

                        All the days of my warfare would I wait,

                                    Till my release should come;

                                    Thou shouldest call,

                        And I would answer thee:

                        Thou wouldest have a desire to the work of thine hands.

 

But Job dismisses the thought as vain.

                        Surely the mountain falling cometh to nought,

                        And the rock is removed out of its place,

                        The waters wear the stones,

                        The overflowings thereof wash away the dust of the earth:

                                    And thou destroyest the hope of man:


                                    INTRODUCTION                                          13

 

                                    Thou prevailest for ever against him, and he passeth;

                                    Thou changest his countenance, and sendest him away;

                        His sons come to honour,

                                    And he knoweth it not;

                        And they are brought low,

                                    But he perceiveth it not of them;

                                    Only for himself his flesh hath pain

                                    And for himself his soul mourneth.

 

            It has come to the turn of Eliphaz again to speak: he is

shocked that Job should resist the united appeals                 Second cycle

of his Friends.                                                                                          xv-xxi

                        Art thou the first man that was born?

                                    Or wast thou brought forth before the hills?

                        Hast thou heard the secret counsel of God?

                                    And dost thou restrain wisdom to thyself?

 

On his side, Eliphaz says, and perhaps as he speaks he lays his

hand upon the shoulder of Zophar, are the aged and greyheaded,

men much older than Job's father. Then he proceeds to formu-

late again the doctrine of the unfailing judgment upon sin, a judg-

ment never so certain as when it appears for the time to be delayed.

 

                        The wicked man travaileth with pain all his days,

                        Even the number of years that are laid up for the oppressor.

                                    A sound of terrors is in his ears;

                                    In prosperity the spoiler shall come upon him:

                                    He believeth not that he shall return out of darkness,

                                    And he is waited for of the sword.

 

Job cries out against such miserable consolation as this: for his

comfort he will go to a very different source.

 

                                    O earth, cover not thou my blood,

                                    And let my cry have no resting-place.

                                    Even now, behold, my Witness is in heaven,

                                    And He that voucheth for me is on high.

 

But once more the certainty of an ultimate vindication is over-

shadowed by the thought of the rapidly flitting life.


14                    LITERARY STUDY OF THE BIBLE

 

                        If I look for Sheol as mine house;

                        If I have spread my couch in the darkness;

                        If I have said to corruption, Thou art my father;

                        To the worm, Thou art my mother, and my sister;

                        Where then is my hope?

 

            Bildad rebukes Job's discomposure of manner.

                        Thou that tearest thyself in thine anger,

                        Shall the earth be forsaken for thee?

                        Or shall the rock be removed out of its place?

 

He sternly reiterates the doctrine of judgment, and images of

doom flow freely. Nets and toils are under the feet of the sinner,

gins and snares are all about him; his strength is hungerbitten and

the firstborn of death devours his members; brimstone is scattered

upon his habitation ; he is driven from light into darkness and

chased out of the world.

            Such reiteration simply drives Job to stronger and stronger self-

assertion: in set terms he declares that God subverteth him in his

cause, and denies him the judgment for which he calls. And

God has removed all other succour from him: his kinsfolk have

failed him, his acquaintance are estranged, his very household

look upon him as an alien.

                        Have pity upon me, have pity upon me,

                                    0 ye my friends,

                        For the hand of God hath touched me!

 

But the weakness of a moment is transformed into a burst of

strength, as he proceeds to lay his hopes upon a help from above.

 

                        Oh that my words were now written!

                        Oh that they were inscribed in a book!

                        That with an iron pen and lead

                        They were graven in the rock for ever!

            For I know that MY VINDICATOR LIVETH,

            And that he shall stand up at the last upon the earth;

            And after my-skin bath been thus destroyed,

            Yet without my flesh shall I see God!

            Whom I shall see on my side,

            And mine eyes shall behold, and not another!


                                    INTRODUCTION                                          15

 

With the overpowering emotions called up by this thought Job

almost faints :

                        — My reins are consumed within me —

 

but after a pause he recovers himself, and is able to bring his

speech to a conclusion.

            Zophar can scarcely wait his opportunity for speaking; his

thoughts anticipate his words on the favourite topic.

                                    Knowest thou not this of old time,

                                    Since man was placed upon earth,

                        That the triumphing of the wicked is short,

                        And the joy of the godless but for a moment?

 

And many wise saws are poured forth by Zophar, testifying to this

mockery of the sinner.

                        His children shall seek the favour of the poor,

                        And his hands shall give back his wealth.

                        His bones are full of his youth,

                        But it shall lie down with him in the dust.

                        The heavens shall reveal his iniquity

                        And the earth shall rise up against him.

 

            The doctrine thus thrust upon him again and again Job at last

begins to look fairly in the face; and the more he considers it the

more he trembles at the doubts that come crowding into his mind.

 

                        How oft is it that the lamp of the wicked is put out?

                        That their calamity cometh upon them?

                        That God distributeth sorrows in his anger?

                        That they are as stubble before the wind,

                        And as chaff that the storm carrieth away?

                        One dieth in his full strength,

                        Being wholly at ease and quiet:

                        His breasts are full of milk,

                        And the marrow of his bones is moistened.

                                    And another dieth in bitterness of soul,

                                    And never tasteth of good.

                        They lie down alike in the dust,

                        And the worm covereth them.


16                    LITERARY STUDY OF THE BIBLE

 

Eliphaz will not notice these doubts of Job; his righteous

                                    indignation with his friend has reached a climax,

Third Cycle                     and casting restraint aside he openly accuses Job

xxii-xxx                           of sin.

 

                        Thou hast taken pledges of thy brother for nought,

                        And stripped the naked of their clothing.

                        Thou hast not given water to the weary to drink,

                        And thou hast withholden bread from the hungry.

 

Therefore has trouble come upon him: but there is yet a place

for repentance. If Job will acquaint himself with God and put

unrighteousness away, he may still delight himself again in the

Almighty.

            Job makes no reply as yet to the cruel accusations: his thoughts

are upon the heavenly Vindicator.

                        Oh that I knew where I might find him:

                        That I might come even to his seat!

 

There he would have a judge that would not use his greatness to

confound him.

                        Behold I go forward,

                                    But he is not there;

                        And backward,

                                    But I cannot perceive him:

                        On the left hand, when he doth work,

                                    But I cannot behold him;

                        He hideth himself on the right hand,

                                    That I cannot see him.

                        But he knoweth the way that I take;

                                    When he hath tried me,

                                    I shall come forth as gold.

 

His spirit purified by this meditation, Job is able with calm delib-

erateness to lay before his Friends the new thoughts which are

troubling him: the doubt whether his own is after all an excep-

tional case, whether it be not rather the truth that in life taken as

a whole the times of the Almighty are not plainly to be seen. He


                                                INTRODUCTION                                          17

 

speaks of the violence in the world, and the poverty that violence

brings in its train: how men remove the ancient landmarks and

drive the needy out of the way, until they have to seek precarious

subsistence from the inclement wilderness, or labour in the fields

of which they may never eat. He tells of violence in the city,

and cries rising to a regardless God; of the thief, the adulterer,

the murderer, — men who rebel altogether against the light, and

the dawn comes upon them like a shadow of death. Yet all these

fare just like the rest of mankind.

            They are exalted; yet a little while, and they are gone;

            Yea, they are brought low, they are gathered in, as all other!

 

            Bildad cannot meet these questionings of Job: his thoughts

are filled with the overpowering greatness of God. He rises on

the wave of a great theme, as he pictures the Ruler                                   xxv. 1-6

of the Universe engaged in matters of high celestial

policy, or discovering blemishes in the brightness of the stars;

before him the Shades beneath the sea tremble;1  Destruction

and the Abyss reveal their secrets; his work is to hang

the earth upon nothing, to support the mighty waters in                xxvi. 5-14

the flimsy clouds, to divide light and darkness by a boundary circle.

 

                        Lo, these are but the outskirts of his ways;

                        And how small a whisper do we hear of him!

                        But the thunder of his power who can understand?

 

            The Friends have persisted in ignoring the arguments that Job

has offered, and Job can only fall back into self-assertion.                      xxvi. 1-4

                                                                                                                              and

                        As God liveth, who hath taken away my right;                    xxvii. 1-6

                        And the Almighty, who hath vexed my soul;

                                    All the while my breath is in me,

                                    And the spirit of God is in my nostrils:

                        Surely my lips shall not speak unrighteousness,

                        Neither shall my tongue utter deceit.

 

 

l In reference to the rearrangement of the speeches at this point see Job in

Literary Index (Appendix I).


18                    LITERARY STUDY OF THE BIBLE

 

Once more, and for the last time, the doctrine of unfailing

xxvii. 7- judgment on sin is to be asserted, and Zophar com-

xxviii. 28             menses:

 

                        Let mine enemy be as the wicked—

 

His long experience has filled him with instances of the godless

frustrated in their hopes: their children multiplied for the sword,

their heaped-up silver divided amongst the innocent, and them-

selves swept by the tempest out of their place. To Zophar this

confidence in the unerring stroke of doom seems the very founda-

tion of Wisdom. There are mines out of which may be dug gold

and silver and precious stones, but where is the place of Wisdom?

 

                        The deep saith, It is not in me:

                        And the sea saith, It is not with me:

                        It cannot be gotten for gold,

                        Neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof.

 

God only is the source of it, and when he laid the foundations of

the universe he inwrought this into the structure of his world:

that the fear of the Lord and his judgments on evil — this should

be Wisdom and Understanding.

            Job is gathering himself together for his final vindication. But

first, softly to himself, he meditates upon the contrast between

then and now.

                        Oh that I were as in the months of old,

                        As in the days when God watched over me;

                        When his lamp shined upon my head,

                        And by his light I walked through darkness.

 

In the rich imagery of the East he paints a prosperity that washed

his steps in butter; he describes the hush that fell upon the

assembly of the great when he advanced to join them; how among

the people every ear that heard him blessed him, and every eye

that saw him was a witness to the deeds of kindness by which he

spread happiness around him. But now! He is derided by

those whose fathers were not to be ranked with the dogs of his


                                    INTRODUCTION                                          19

 

flock; the very rabble thrust him aside as he walks. And — worse

than all —

                        Thou art turned to be cruel to me:

                        With the might of thy hand thou persecutest me.

 

But before friend and foe, and in the presence of God himself,

Job stands forth to make solemn vindication. Towering above

the seated accusers, he waves his arm in the full

ritual of the Oath of Clearing. Article by article                            Job's vindication

he repudiates the lust of the eye, oppression of the                           xxxi

weak, failure in charity to the poor or hospitality to the stranger,

secret trust in gold or secret worship of the heavenly host; if there

be any other transgression — and Job passionately longs to see the

indictment of an adversary — he makes the very concealment of

it a fresh sin. Once more he breaks out:

 

                        If my land cry out against me,

                        And the furrows thereof weep together;

                        If I have eaten the fruits thereof without money,

                        Or have caused the owners thereof to lose their life:

                                    Let thistles grow instead of wheat,

                                    And cockle instead of barley!

 

Then, with a wave of dismissal — "The words of Job are ended"

—he seats himself and covers his face with his robe; and the

Friends understand that the discussion is closed.

 

            Religious tradition, embodied in the speeches of the three

Friends, has spent its energies and failed. But there is youth-

ful enthusiasm represented among the crowd of                            Interposition of

spectators round the ash-mound, in the person of                         Elihu

Elihu, of the great family of Ram. He has stood                            xxxii

listening with indignation in his heart; indignation against Job

because he justified himself and not God, and indignation against

the Friends because they had been unable to si-                             xxxii. 6-xxxiii

lence such presumption. Elihu now breaks through

the circle and ascends the ash-mound, standing respectful but


20                    LITERARY STUDY OF THE BIBLE

 

passionate before the seated elders. He had said that days must

speak and multitude of years show wisdom: but he has an under-

standing as well as they; yea, his spirit feels like wine that can find

no vent but by bursting its bottle. Thus, with juvenile profuse-

ness, he pours forth some fifty lines in saying that he is about to

speak, before he confronts Job — who had longed to meet God

face to face — with the words:

 

                        Behold, I am according to thy wish, in God's stead.

 

He thus reaches the point which makes his contribution to the

discussion, — a facet of the truth which his generation was seeing

a little more clearly than the generation before him. It may be

(Third Solution)               made a Third Solution of the Mystery: Suffering

                                    is one of the voices by which God warns and

restores men. He describes a man chastened with pain upon his

bed until his life abhorreth bread, and his soul the daintiest meat:

 

                        If there be with him an angel,

                        An interpreter, one among a thousand,

                        To skew unto man what is right for him;

                        Then he is gracious unto him, and saith,

                        "Deliver him from going down to the pit,

                        I have found a ransom."

 

An idyllic picture follows of restored purity and happy penitence;

and Elihu urges this view upon Job, and pauses for Job's reply.

            But Job vouchsafes no reply; and receives the new light with

contemptuous indifference.

            Disappointed at this reception, Elihu turns to the three Friends

— as wise men with an ear to try words — and hopes to take

                        them with him, and all men of understanding, in his

xxxiv                  protest against this Job, who drinketh up scorning like

                        water, who addeth rebellion unto sin, and clappeth his hands

against God. He enlarges upon the presumption of mankind

and the judgments with which it is overwhelmed, and looks to

the three Friends for assent.

 


                                    INTRODUCTION                                          21

 

            But the three Friends make no sign; they meet their youthful

champion with chilling silence.

            Slighted on both sides, Elihu, like Job, is driven to look up-

wards: as his glance sweeps the sky, another flood

of inspiration comes upon him.                                                       XXXV-XXXVII

 

                        Look unto the Heavens, and see:

 

he cries, alike to Job and to his companions. Is the God of those

heavens, he asks, a God to be harmed by a man's sin, or benefited

by his righteousness? Thus, "fetching his knowledge from afar,"

he makes the heavens a starting-point for a fresh vindication of

the providence that brings low and builds up again mighty kings,

or cuts off whole peoples in a night. A rumble of                    Rise of the Whirl-

distant thunder recalls him to his text; and, when                           wind

he looks up a second time, the brilliant sky of the                                     xxxvi. 22-

land of Uz has begun to show signs of change.                                           xxxvii. 24

Now his whole discussion of providential might is bound up with

the manifestations of power that are being exhibited at the moment

in the changing heavens. His words bring before us the small

drops of water and the spreading clouds, the play of lightning and

the noise that tells of God, down to the very cattle standing expect-

ant of the coming storm. When a nearer burst of thunder makes

his heart tremble and move out of its place, Elihu still keeps his

eyes fastened upon the sky: he finds fresh texts in the roaring voice

of the heavens, and the lightning that lightens to the ends of the

earth, in the snow intermingled with mighty rain as the icy breath

of the north encounters the storm out of the chambers of the

south, in the thick clouds wearied with waterings, and their delicate

balancings as they descend, and descend, until they have wrapped

in their folds speaker and hearers, and they cannot order their

speech by reason of the darkness, and the impetuous eloquence of

Elihu has died down into dread:

 

            If a man speak, surely he shall be swallowed up!

 

Now the whirlwind is upon them: in marvellous wise its blasts

 


22                    LITERARY STUDY OF THE BIBLE

 

seem to cleanse the mirky darkness into order; flashes of un-

earthly bright out of the dark make them cast their eyes down-

ward; until the flashes at last grow together into one terrible

majesty of golden splendour in the northern heart of the storm,

and the whirlwind has become the

 

                                    VOICE OF GOD

 

Divine Interven-              Who is this that darkeneth counsel

tion                                           By words without knowledge?

xxxviii-xlii.6                         Gird up now thy loins like a man;

                                                For I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me.

 

            As the Voice comes out of the storm a new aspect of the dis-

cussion unfolds itself. The perplexities of Job and his Friends

rested upon a one-sided view that confined its survey to Evil, as

if it alone were exceptional and unintelligible; the speech attrib-

uted to the Divine Being comes to restore the balance by taking

a more comprehensive survey. It may be reckoned as a Fourth

(Fourth Solution)             Solution of the Problem: That the whole universe

                                    is an unfathomed Mystery, in which the Evil is not

more mysterious than the Good and the Great. The idea of the

whirlwind is maintained throughout: the tone of overmastering

might— so often mistaken for the meaning of this Theophany —

is no more than the outward form in which the words of God are

embodied; the traditional association of thunder with the voice

of God leading our poet to convey the speech of Deity in the

form of short sharp interrogatories, like explosions of thunder,

each outburst putting some startling mystery of nature.

           

            Who shut up the sea with doors,

                        When it brake forth and issued out of the womb;

                        When I made the cloud the garment thereof,

                        And thick darkness a swaddling band for it,

                        And prescribed for it my decree,

                        And set bars and doors,

                        And said, "Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further;

                        And here shall thy proud waves be stayed"?

 


                                    INTRODUCTION                                          23

 

                        Have the gates of death been revealed unto thee,

                                    Or hast thou seen the gates of the shadow of Death?

 

                        Where is the way to the dwelling of light,

                                    And as for darkness, where is the place thereof?

 

                        Hath the rain a father?

                                    Or who bath begotten the drops of dew?

                        Out of whose womb came the ice?

                                    And the hoary frost of heaven, who bath gendered it?

 

There is no pause in the succession of wonders: the wonder of

the lioness hunting her prey; of the young ravens crying to God

for their food; the wonder of the wild goats bringing forth their

young; the wonder of the wild ass ranging loose in the wilderness,

and the ox abiding patiently by his crib; the wonder of the

ostrich, foolish over her young because God has deprived her of

wisdom, glorious in flight, putting to scorn the horse and his

rider; the wonder of the war-horse pawing in the valley and

rejoicing in his strength, swallowing the ground in fierceness and

rage amid the thunder of the captains and the shouting. There

is a momentary lull in the storm, when Job's voice is heard in

awe-struck humility:

                        Once have I spoken, and I will not answer:

                        Yea twice, but I will proceed no further.

 

Then again the swirl of mystery rages around: the Voice tells of

Behemoth, with bones of brass and limbs of iron, his larder a

mountain and a jungle his bower, watching unconcernedly the

swelling of the boisterous waterfloods; or of Leviathan himself,

panoplied against the hook of the fisher or snare of the fowler,

and scorning even the hunter's spear and the arrows of the war-

rior, flashing light and breathing smoke as he goes, terror dancing

before him, and ocean turning hoary in his wake.

            At last the storm begins to abate, and Job is able to make his

submission. He knows that God is all-powerful, and that no

purpose of his can be restrained.


24                    LITERARY STUDY OF THE BIBLE

 

            —"Who is this that hideth counsel without knowledge?"—

 

comes like an echoing rumble of the retiring storm. Job admits

the charge: he has uttered that which he understood not, and

meddled in things too high for him.

 

            —"I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me "

 

again sounds forth, like a more distant echo of the tempest. Job

comprehends his whole submission in one utterance.

 

                        I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear;

                        But now mine eye seeth thee,

                        Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent

                        In dust and ashes.

 

Then the storm has entirely cleared away. And with it the

dramatic poem has given place to the frame of story: which

                                    resumes to relate how, when Job had thus spoken,

The story closes              the anger of the Lord was kindled against the

                                    three Friends, because they had not said of Him

the thing that was right as His servant Job had. Thus the Epi-

logue furnishes a Fifth Solution: the proper attitude of mind

(Fifth Solution)                towards the Mystery of Human Suffering: that

                                    the strong faith of Job, which could even reproach

God as a friend reproaches a friend, was more acceptable to Him

than the servile adoration which sought to twist the truth in order

to magnify God. It only remains to tell how the Lord turned the

captivity of Job, and his wealth and prosperity returned in greater

measure than before; and he begat sons and daughters, and saw

his sons' sons to the fourth generation. So Job died, being old

and full of years.


                                    INTRODUCTION                              25

 

                                                II

 

            Such is the Book of Job presented as a piece of literature.

The questions of Theology or historic criticism that it suggests

are outside the scope of the present work. Our                                          Literary Interest

immediate concern is with the various kinds of                                         in the Book of

literary interest which have touched us as we                                             Job

have traversed this monument of ancient literature.

            The dominant impression is that of a magnificent drama. No

element of dramatic effect is wanting; and that which we might

least have expected, the scenic effect, is especially                                  Dramatic

impressive. The great ash-mound outside an an-                            Interest

cient village or town makes a stage just suited for                                    of Background

the single scene — and that an open-air scene — to which a Greek

tragedy would be confined. And resemblance to a Greek drama

is further maintained by the crowd of spectators who stand round

this ash-mound like a silent Chorus; — unless, indeed, we are to

consider that their sentiments are conveyed by Elihu as Chorus-

Leader. When we reach the crisis of the poem we are able to

see what advantage a drama addressed purely to the imagination

may have over plays intended for the theatre. No stage machin-

ery could possibly realise the changes of sky and atmosphere

which in Job make a dramatic background for the approach of

Deity. It is true that the original poem does not describe these

changes, as I have done, in straightforward narrative. But every

scholar is aware that the ‘stage directions’ of modern plays are

wanting in the dramas of antiquity: whatever variations of move-

ment and surroundings these involve have to be collected from the

words of the personages who take part in the dialogue. And in

the transformation traced above, from a day of brilliant sunshine

to a thunderstorm, and yet further to a supernatural apparition,

every detail of change is implied in the words of Ehhu. We

watch the changing scene through the eyes of those who are in

the midst of it.


26                    LITERARY STUDY OF THE BIBLE

 

            Interest of character abounds in the poem. I must confess I

cannot follow the subtle differences which some commentators see

                                    between the characters of the three Friends. It

of Character                    is easy to recognise in Eliphaz a stately personage

with a wider range of thought than his colleagues. But Bildad

and Zophar leave different impressions on different readers. To

me Bildad seems a touch more blunt in his manner than the rest.

Of Zophar I would only say that the speeches assigned him fit

well with the suggestion of his being a generation older than the

                        other personages of the poem; though of course the

xv. 10                 words of Eliphaz which claim such a personage as on

his side need not necessarily refer to anyone present. But what-

ever may be thought about the individualities of the Friends, no

one can miss the contrast between the whole group and Job;

between the interest of static character in various modifications

of conformity to current ideals, and the interest of a dynamic per-

sonality like that of Job, which can look back to a realisation of

the perfection his friends describe, and can yet at the call of cir-

cumstances fling his former beliefs to the winds, and probe pas-

sionately among the mysteries of providence for new conceptions

of divine rule. And the welcome addition to the poem of Elihu

adds the ever fresh interest of youth in contrast with age. In the

impetuous self-confidence of this personage, his flowing yet jejune

eloquence, and in the chilling reception it meets alike from Job

and Job's adversaries, we have youth presented from the one side.

But, on the other hand, youth has dramatic justice done to it

when we find Elihu's heart beating responsive to every change

of the changing heavens, and eagerly drinking in the accumulat-

ing terrors of the storm, until his wild speech stops only before

the voice of God.

            But scenery and character might almost be called secondary

elements of drama: its essence lies in action. The whole world

                                    of literature hardly contains a more remarkable

and of Movement                        piece of dramatic movement than the changes of

position taken up by Job in the course of his dialogue with the


                                    INTRODUCTION                                          27

 

Friends. Before it commenced Job had met his ruin with that

ideal patience which has forever been associated with his name.

At last we find just a shadow of resistance in his plaintive enquiry,

why life should be forced upon the miserable. His friends fasten

upon this, and make it a starting-point for the discussion in which

they urge that the sufferer is a sinner. Almost in an instant the

patient Job is transformed into an angry rebel, tearing to shreds

optimist views of righteous providence, and, with the passion of a

Titan, painting God as an Irresponsible Omnipotence that delights

to put righteousness and wickedness on an equality of helplessness

to resist Him. The Friends continue their pressure, and Job is

driven to appeal to God against their misconstruction; more and

more as the action advances Job is led to rest his hopes of vindi-

cation on the Being he began by maligning. At last he is found

to have traversed a circle: and the same God whom, in the ninth

chapter, he had accused of exercising judgment only to show his

omnipotence, he contrasts with the Friends in the twenty-third

chapter as a judge who would not contend with him in the great-

ness of his power. When the climax of the Theophany comes,

this movement of the drama is carried forward into a double sur-

prise. Job had felt that if only he could find his way into the

presence of God his cause would be secure. His prayer is strangely

granted, and with what result?

                        I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear;

                        But now mine eye seeth thee,

                        Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent

                        In dust and ashes.

Yet was Job's first thought a mistake ? The answer is a second

surprise. While the tempest lasts the Theophany appears wholly

directed against Job. But when the storm has cleared it is found

to be the adversaries who have incurred the wrath of God, and his

servant Job has said of him the thing that is right. The deep

moral significance of these various presentations of Deity need

not make us overlook the dramatic beauty in the transition from

one to another.


28                    LITERARY STUDY OF THE BIBLE

 

            The dialogue in Job is introduced and concluded by a narrative

story, and to dramatic effect must be added epic: I use this word

                                    without meaning to convey any judgment: on the

Epic Interest                      question whether the incidents of the book are to

be regarded as imaginary or as historically true. The narrative is

one of grand simplicity, like the epics of antiquity. A few touches

create for us a whole picture of life and scheme of society. The

first note struck is that of perfection; and the life of which Job

is declared the perfect type is that of a simple pastoral age. His

substance of cattle is given in ideal figures; and he is called the

greatest of all the children of the east. It is an age in which the

‘state’ is not yet born, but family life is pictured on the highest

scale. The great seasons which break the monotony of such

patriarchal existence are rounds of festal gatherings among the

seven sons of Job, each receiving on his day with a regularity

never broken; the sons moreover invite their sisters, and so

women's society raises a revel into a dignified ceremonial. Such

interchange of festivity would represent the highest ordinary ideals

of the age. But behind this, Job, who lives in a wider world, has

his high day of religious devotion, rising early in the morning to

sanctify his children against possible sin.

            In an instant, without any connecting link or wordy preparation,

after the fashion of the old epics which have the doings of gods

and men alike in their grasp, we are transported to the heavenly

counterpart of such earthly festivities. Heaven too has its high

day on which the sons of God gather together from their several

provinces; in the description of two such assemblies the recur-

rence of identical phrases conveys the notion of ritual and cere-

monial observance. We reach a point in the story at which the

utmost care is needed to guard against a misconception of the

                                    whole incident. Among the sons of God, it is

(The Satan of                    said, comes ‘The Satan.’ It is best to use the article

Job)                              and speak of  ‘The Satan,’ or as the margin gives

it, ‘The Adversary: that is, the Adversary of the Saints. Else-

where in Scripture the title of this office has become the name of


 

                                    INTRODUCTION                                          29

 

a personage — the Adversary of God, or ‘Satan.’1 But here (as

in a similar passage of Zechariah) the Satan is an official

of the Court of Heaven. There is nothing in his recep-                             Zecha-

tion to distinguish him from the other sons of God; as                             riah iii.1

they may come from sun or moon or other parts of the Uni-

verse, so the Satan is the Inspector of Earth, and describes his

occupation as " going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and

down in it." When once the associations with the other ‘Satan’

are laid aside, it is easy to see that in the dealings of this per-

sonage with Job there is no malignity; he simply questions where

others accept, and in an inspector such distrust is a virtue. The

Roman Church has exactly caught this conception in its ‘Advoca-

tus Diaboli’: such an advocate may be in fact a pious and kindly

ecclesiastic, but he has the function assigned him of searching out

all possible evil that can be alleged against a candidate for canoni-

sation, lest the honours of the Church might be given without due

enquiry. In the present case the Satan merely points out possible

weaknesses in Job, and a means of testing them. The Court of

Heaven sanctions the ‘experiment’: — the word ‘experiment’ has

only to be changed into its equivalent ‘probation’ for the whole

proceeding to be brought within accepted notions of divine gov-

ernment.

            Epic power is again exhibited in the description of the mode in

which this experiment is carried out. Slow history brings about

results by what means are in its power, with much of makeshift,

and accidents which mar the symmetry of events. But epic

poetry can make its action harmonious; and it seems to be a

conspiracy of heaven and earth that compasses Job's destruction.

The Sabeans take his oxen, the sky rains fire upon the sheep, the

 

                1 Bishop Bickersteth in his epic poem Yesterday, To-day, and Forever ingeniously

harmonises these two conceptions of Satan. He makes his Lucifer Guardian Spirit

of Earth and Man: as part of his office he tempts Adam then flies to Heaven to be

fallen Man's accuser: gradually the spirit in which he has executed his office

intensifies and makes more and more pronounced his own fall, until he at last sinks

into an open Adversary of God. See the poem, books iv—vi, and the bishop's de-

fence of this view in the St. James's Sermons.


30                    LITERARY STUDY OF THE BIBLE

 

Chaldeans carry away the camels, and the winds of the wilderness

overwhelm Job's children: while the separate destructions are

worked into a concerto of ruin by the recurrence of the mes-

senger's wail —

 

                        I only am escaped alone to tell thee.

 

It is an ideally grand shock. But at this stage Job's character is

epic, and the shock is met by an ideal grandeur of acceptance.

One by one the customary gestures of distress are exhibited, and

then slowly succeed the words which have become the world's

formulary for the emotion of bereavement. They are sublime

words, that first proclaim simply the essential manhood to which

the whole of life is but an accessory, and then throw over pious

submission a grace of oriental courtesy that would make the

resumption of a gift an occasion for remembering the giver.

 

                        Naked came I out of my mother's womb,

                                    And naked shall I return thither!

                                                The Lord gave,

                                    And the Lord hath taken away:

                        Blessed be the Name of the Lord!

 

            Our epic plot intensifies, and when the second assembly in

heaven is held, God and the Satan concur in honouring Job's con-

stancy by severer tests. In what follows there is no realistic

description; epic poetry can act by reticence, and a word or two

are sufficient to convey the picture of Job shrinking away silent

and unclean from among his fellows, with a patience terrible to

look upon; until the silence is broken by a second of those

utterances of his which are so colossal in their simplicity.  The

oriental nomad life has two ideals specially its own. One is the

solemn giving and receiving of gifts. The other is an instinct of

authority that knows no bounds to its submission: an oriental

seems to feel a pride in self-prostration before his natural lord.

Both ideals are united in Job's answer to his wife's murmur

 

                        What? shall we receive good at the hands of God and

                        shall we not receive evil?


                                    INTRODUCTION                                          31

 

            The simple power of epic poetry has raised us to a high plane

of thought and feeling: upon that plane the action of the poem is

to move with a passionateness that is proper to

drama. But there is a transition stage between                               The Curse a Lyric

the one and the other in that portion of the book                           Poem

entitled ‘Job's Curse.’ This is not narrative, and so cannot be

epic; it is clearly distinct from the dramatic poetry to which it is

a starting-point. Examination of it shows at once the musical

elaboration and accumulation of musings on a situation or thought

which we associate with lyric poetry. The Curse is a counterpart

to such English lyrics as Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality

or Gray's Bard. I subjoin the whole here, that it may be read

in this connection as a separate lyric: — an Elegy of a Broken

Heart.

                                                I

                        Let the clay perish wherein I was born;

                        And the night which said, There is a man child conceived

                                   

                                    Let that day be darkness;

                                    Let not God regard it from above,

                                    Neither let the light shine upon it!

                                    Let darkness and the shadow of death claim it for their own;

                                    Let a cloud dwell upon it;

                                    Let all that maketh black the day terrify it!

 

                                    As for that night, let thick darkness seize upon it;

                                    Let it not rejoice among the days of the year;

                                    Let it not come into the number of the months!

                                    Lo, let that night be barren;

                                    Let no joyful voice come therein!

                                    Let them curse it that curse the day,

                                    Who are ready to rouse up leviathan!

                                    Let the stars of the twilight thereof be dark!

                                    Let it look for light, but have none;

                                    Neither let it behold the eyelids of the morning:

 

                        Because it shut not up the doors of my mother's womb,

                        Nor hid trouble from mine eyes!


32                    LITERARY STUDY OF THE BIBLE

 

                                                2

 

                        Why died I not from the womb?

                                    Why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly?

                        Why did the knees receive me?

                                    Or why the breasts, that I should suck?

                        For now should I have lien down and been quiet;

                        I should have slept; then had I been at rest,

                                    With kings and counsellors of the earth,

                                    Which built solitary piles for themselves;

                                    Or with princes that had gold,

                                    Who filled their houses with silver;

                        Or as an hidden untimely birth I had not been;

                        As infants which never saw light.

                                    There the wicked cease from troubling;

                                    And there the weary be at rest.

                                    There the prisoners are at ease together;

                                    They hear not the voice of the taskmaster.

                                    The small and great are there;

                                    And the servant is free from his master.

 

                        Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery,

                        And life unto the bitter in soul?

                                    Which long for death, but it cometh not;

                                    And dig for it more than for hid treasures;

                                    Which rejoice exceedingly,

                                    And are glad when they can find the grave.

                        Why is light given to a man whose way is hid,

                        And whom God bath hedged in?

                                    For my sighing cometh before I eat,

                                    And my roarings are poured out like water.

                                    For the thing which I fear cometh upon me,

                                    And that which I am afraid of cometh unto me.

                                    I am not at ease,

                                    Neither am I quiet,

                                    Neither have I rest;

                                    But trouble cometh.

 

            Our result then so far is that the Book of Job contains specimens

of epic, lyric, and dramatic composition; all the three main

elements of poetry find a representation in it, and a representation


                                    INTRODUCTION                                          33

 

of the most impressive kind. I pass now to those departments

of literature which are usually considered to be

furthest removed from poetry,--philosophy and                                        Interest of

science: philosophy that seeks to find a meaning                                      Philosophy

underlying life as a whole, and science that observes in detail and

arranges its observations.

            The whole work is a philosophical discussion dramatised. The

subject discussed is the mystery of human suffering,                               Various Attitudes

and its bearing upon the righteous government of                                     to the problem

the world: this is one of the stock questions of                                         discussed

philosophy. Each section of the book is the representation of a

different philosophical attitude to this question.

            The three Friends present a cut and dried theory of suffering --

that it is always penal. They are brought before

us as behaving in the usual fashion of persons                                           The Friends: A

finally committed to a theory: they pour out                                              Theory

stores of facts that make for their view, they ignore and refuse to

examine facts that tell against it, and they hint moral obliquity as

the real explanation of refusal to concur in their

doctrine. Elihu introduces the same theory modi-                         Elihu: Theory

fled and corrected to date; with him suffering is                                       modified

punishment for sin, but that special kind of punishment which is

corrective in character. He accordingly stands for a philosophic

school of the second generation; and we are not surprised to find

him maintaining his position with as much inflexibility as the

Friends have shown, and at the same time magnifying his slight

difference from them, and appearing no less an adversary to the

Friends than to Job himself.

 

                        Beware lest ye say, "We have found wisdom;

                        God may vanquish him, not man":

                        For he hath not directed his words against me;

                        Neither will I answer him with your speeches.

 

            At the furthest remove from these is found Job, who takes a

negative attitude, shattering other theories but providing none of


34                    LITERARY STUDY OF THE BIBLE

 

his own. Of course no one will understand Job really to accept

                        what some of his words imply, as where he sees in

Job's Negative      God an omnipotence that judges only to display

Attitude             power. But these wild words are not out of place

as a poetically strong representation of the perplexities that en-

counter one who would explain providential action. Job simply

cannot solve these perplexities; he trusts in a divine vindication

at some time, but meanwhile can only pronounce the problem of

life insoluble. This is distinctly a philosophic attitude: it is noth-

ing but the famous epoche, or suspension of mind, which from the

time of Socrates has been recognised as a natural tone of mind

for an enquirer. Of course there is a vast difference between

the cold brightness of Plato's dialogues and the heated debate in

Job; the Hebrew poem is not the discussion in the Porch or

Garden, but represents philosophy as it is talked in the school

of affliction. Job represents the epoche in a passion.

            Yet another' philosophical position is embodied in the Divine

Intervention. As I have suggested above, this portion of the

Divine Interven-              poem has been often misunderstood. It has been

tion: Reference to             assumed, not unnaturally, that the Divine Inter-

a wider category              vention — like the Deus ex machina of the Greek

drama—must be a final settlement of the questions in dispute.

When the speeches attributed to God are examined in this light

they are found to be no settlement at all, or, what were worse

than any settlement, an indignant denial of man's right to ques-

tion. But such interpretations overlook one important considera-

tion: that in the epilogue Job is pronounced by the Lord to have

said of him the thing that is right, while Job's Friends, who main-

tained the wickedness of questioning, are declared to have incurred

the Divine anger. The interpretation involves a double mistake.

On the one hand the Divine Intervention is not a settlement of

the matter in dispute; at the end of the poem the problem of

human suffering remains a mystery. But this section of the work,

like others, is a distinct contribution towards a solution. In esti-

mating what that contribution is a second mistake must be avoided,

 


                                    INTRODUCTION                                          35

 

by which form and substance have been confused. The tone of

scorn which rings through the sentences of the Divine utterance

must, as I have said above, be considered part of the dramatic

form thrown over the discussion; the poet has conceived the

thunder tone to be the proper embodiment for the Divine voice,

and the explosive interrogatories of which the speeches are com-

posed are just as much a portion of this dramatic setting as the

signs of a rising tempest which are put into the mouth of Elihu.

The whole is introduced with the explanation: "The Lord

answered Job out of the whirlwind." But when we go below

this outer form, and enquire what is the general drift of the

Divine utterance as a whole, we find, as I have said before, that

its effect is to widen the field of discussion. Job has fastened his

attention simply upon Evil, and successfully maintained its inex-

plicableness against his friends. The Divine Intervention brings

out that the Good and the Great, all that men instinctively

admire in the universe, is just as inexplicable as Evil. Now this

is distinctly a contribution towards the solution of the problem

in philosophic terms, it has included the matter under discussion

in a wider category, and this represents a stage of philosophic

advance. Moreover, it implies consolation to the human sufferer

as well as progress to the discussion. Job had met loss and pain

without a murmur; he broke down when long musing made him

realise the isolation his ruin had brought him, and how he was an

outcast from intelligible law. He recovers his self-control when

he is led to feel that his burden is only part of the world-mystery

of Good and Evil, for the solution of which all time is too short.

            Two sections of the work have yet to be considered in the

present connection, the prologue and the epilogue. From the

side of philosophy no part of Job is more im-                               Epilogue : Prac-

portant than the brief epilogue. Other sections                              tical bearings of

suggest distinct solutions of the problem under                            the question

discussion. But when a question is so wide as to admit of no

final settlement, but only of tentative treatment, philosophy can

have no more important task than to discover a practical attitude


36                    LITERARY STUDY OF THE BIBLE

 

which we may assume towards it while advancing slowly towards

theoretic knowledge. This is what the epilogue does in its pro-

nouncement that Job has been right and his friends wrong. As

suggested above, this can have no other meaning than to imply

that the bold faith of a Job, which could reproach his God as

friend reproaches friend where the Divine dealings seemed unjust,

was, though founded on ignorance, more acceptable to that God

than the servile adoration which sought to twist facts in order to

magnify His name. The deep significance of such a pronounce-

meat must be welcomed by every school of thought; it for ever

stamps the God of the Bible as a God on the side of enquiry.

            But before this principle has been laid down in the epilogue,

before Job and his friends have commenced to discuss the mys-

Prologue: Specu-             tery of suffering, another explanation of that mys-

lation upon a Tran-           tery has been suggested to our thoughts in the

scendental Expla-             prologue. When we are made to see the Powers

nation                             of Heaven discussing the character of Job as if it

were an item in which the welfare of the universe was concerned,

and contriving visitations of suffering as means of testing whether

the character be really all that it seems to be, it is impossible for

our minds not to generalise, and wonder whether large part of the

visible suffering in the actual world be not a probationary visita-

tion of this nature. Here then there is another solution presented:

how is the treatment to be classified from our immediate point of

view? The thinker has other weapons besides philosophic dis-

cussion. Philosophy deals with that which can be known by its

own methods; but the thinker may recognise a region outside

this, which therefore from the philosophic point of view is the

unknowable, which may nevertheless have influences operating

upon the region of what is known. In reference to such a region

he will not employ the method of discussion, but rather the form

of philosophic suggestion that has come to be called ‘speculation.’

The prologue to Job may be regarded as giving the authority of

Holy Writ to reverent speculation upon the higher mysteries.

No doubt here difference of interpretation comes in. Those who


                                    INTRODUCTION                                          37

 

consider that the first two chapters of Job represent an historic

fact — incidents which actually happened — will not use the word

speculation: to them this prologue will be the final settlement

of the whole question. But the great majority of readers will

take these chapters to be part of the parable into which the his-

tory of Job has been worked up; the incidents in heaven, like the

incidents of the Prodigal Son, they will understand to be spirit-

ually imagined, not historically narrated. And these will recognise

that the prologue gives completeness to the Book of Job viewed

from the standpoint of philosophy; the problem of human suffer-

ing, which has in other parts of the book been treated by theory

and theory modified, by negative positions and reference to a

wider category, and even by pronouncement upon its practical

bearings, has a further illumination cast upon it by a speculation

which refers the origin of suffering to the mysteries of the super-

natural world.

            I have spoken of science as well as philosophy. Science ob-

serves nature and life; observation of nature is the                                    Interest of

special work of modern science, antiquity turned                                     science:

its reflection chiefly on human life. It is hardly                                         The Land Ques-

necessary to point out that proverb-like reflec-                                         tion

tions on society and life form large part of the material out of

which the dialogue in Job is constructed. I will be content with

a single one of the more extended illustrations. It is remarkable

that the whole course of what the most modern thought calls

‘the land question’ is sketched in a single chapter of                                xxiv

Job. The patriarch is describing what seems to him

the misgovernment of the world. He commences with the en-

croachments of private ownership upon the common land:

 

                        There are that remove the landmarks. .  . .               2,  4

                        They turn the needy out of the way.

 

There is consequently the formation of a class of the poor, who

are either driven to the barren regions, or become a mere labour-

ing class without rights in the land of the community.


38                    LITERARY STUDY OF THE BIBLE

 

4, 5                  The poor of the earth hide themselves together:

                        Behold, as wild asses in the desert

                        They go forth to their work, seeking diligently for meat;

                        The wilderness yieldeth them food for their children.

7, 8                  They lie all night naked without clothing,

                        And have no covering in the cold.

                        They are wet with the showers of the mountains,

                        And embrace the rock for want of a shelter.

 

Poverty, Job sees, necessitates borrowing, and the fresh distress

that is its natural sequel.

 

2, 3                  They violently take away flocks and feed them,

                        They drive away the ass of the fatherless,

                        They take the widow's ox for a pledge.

 

Poverty is seen side by side with wealth, forced into close relation-

ship with it that increases the distress of want.

 

6                      They cut his provender in the field;

                        And they glean the vintage of the wicked.

10, 11             And being an-hungered they carry the sheaves;

                        They make oil within the walls of these men;

                        They tread their winepresses, and suffer thirst.

 

As a next stage we get the crowding of population in cities, with

hints of fresh distress and turbulence.

 

12                    From out of the populous city men groan,

                        And the soul of the wounded crieth out,

                        Yet God imputeth it not for folly.

 

The climax comes in the formation of a purely criminal class.

 

13-17              These are of them that rebel against the light;

                                    They know not the ways thereof,

                                    NOT abide in the paths thereof.

                        The murderer riseth with the light,

                                    He killeth the poor and needy;

                                    And in the night he is as a thief.

                        The eye also of the adulterer waiteth for the twilight;

                                    Saying, No eye shall see me;

                                    And he putteth a covering on his face.


                                                INTRODUCTION                              39

 

                        In the dark they dig through houses:

                                    They shut themselves up in the daytime.

                                    They know not the light.

                        For the morning is to all of them

                                    As the shadow of death;

                                    For they know the terrors of the shadow of death.

 

It is noteworthy that when Job makes his general vindication he

finds a climax in disowning sins against the rights                                    xxxi. 38

and duties of land.

            It appears then that both philosophy and science have their

representation in this ancient book of the Bible. Yet every reader

will feel that these words are an imperfect descrip-         

tion of the matter which makes up the poem of                                         Interest of

Job. Philosophy is based upon reason; but in the                                       Prophecy

present case there is a section of the poem which represents God

himself as entering into the discussion, and holding up a view

of the truth from which no one appeals. It is clear that in the

Book of Job yet another element of Revelation mingles side by

side with Philosophy; and the new element implies a new divi-

sion of literature. The student who comes to the Bible from

other literatures must be prepared to recognise a special literary

type, that of Prophecy: a department which is distinguished from

others not by form — for Prophecy may take any form   but by

spirit, its differentia being that it presents itself as an authoritative

Divine message. The literary study of the Bible has no more

important task than that of describing Prophecy from the literary

point of view.

            The varieties of literary form illustrated in the work we are

considering are not yet exhausted. We have called the Book of

Job a drama and a philosophic discussion; yet                                           Interest of

neither of these descriptions will account for the                                     Rhetoric

strange character of the individual speeches which

strikes every reader. Their length, if nothing else, would dis-

tinguish them from the speeches of other dramas; and their tone

is equally far removed from the tone of philosophic disquisition.


40                    LITERARY STUDY OF THE BIBLE

 

They have in them plenty of dramatic force, and also clear and

effective strokes of argument. But they do not stop with these;

the dramatic thrust gives place to ornate moralising which, from

the dramatic point of view, seems so much waste; and the point

of the argument is again and again lost in an accumulation of

beautiful irrelevancy. He would be a very perverse reader who

should cry out against these characteristics of Job as literary faults:

on the contrary, they are evidence that the character of the work

is insufficiently described by the terms drama and discussion. A

further element comes in of Rhetoric: not in the debased sense

which the word is coming to bear to modern ears, but the Rhetoric

of antiquity which was the delight in speech for its own sake.

Each delivery of a speaker in the poem of Job is to be looked

upon as a work of art in itself. If Job in the course of the dis-

cussion interjects the parenthetic thought, "What is the good of

                        arguing?" this parenthesis is found to be a finished

xvi. 6-17 meditation of twenty-eight lines. The speech in which

it occurs is answered by Bildad, and he meets Job's eloquence by

a tour-de-force of imagery painting the whole universe watch-

                        ing to destroy the sinner, and this piece of word-beauty

xviii. 5-21            runs to thirty-four lines. Zophar in the same round of

discussion varies the beauty by a string of wise saws on the same

topic, and these extend to sixty lines. All this is over and above

                        the portions of the speeches which are strictly argument-

xx. 4-29               ative. It is clear then that the personages of the poem

answer one another, not only with argument and dramatic passion,

but also with counterpoises of rhetoric weight. The whole be-

comes like a controversy carried on in sonnets, a discussion waged

in perorations. Once more the many-sidedness of the Bible is

apparent; and the student who would fully appreciate it must

train himself in the literary interest of Rhetoric.

            One word more has yet to be said. The literary varieties men-

tioned so far are such as appeal chiefly to the mind. But there

is one main distinction in literature that appeals to the eye and

the ear also the distinction between the ‘straight-forward’ speech


                                    INTRODUCTION                                          41

 

called ‘prose,’ and that kind of speech which ‘measures’ itself

into metres and verses. A glance at the Book of

Job in any properly printed version shows that                                          Interest of

this work, like the plays of Shakespeare or the                                          Versification

later stories of William Morris, presents an interchange between

the two fundamental forms of language, being a dialogue in verse

enclosed in a frame of prose story. When however the English

reader calls in his ear to supplement his eye, he finds that the

verse passages of Job differ essentially from what he is accustomed

to find in English verse. There is no rhyme, nor do the lines

correspond in meters or syllables. The Book of Job, then, in

addition to its other literary suggestiveness, raises the elementary

questions of Biblical versification.

            The purpose of this Introduction is now accomplished. I have

engaged the reader's attention with a single book of the Bible;

we have seen that, over and above what it yields to

the theological faculty or the religious sense, the work                           Plan of the whole

Book of Job is a piece of literature, the analysis of                                  work

which brings us into contact with all the leading varieties of

literary form. What the Introduction has done in reference to a

single book, the work as a whole is to do in reference to the

whole Bible, proceeding however by a method more regular than

has been necessary so far. The work will be divided into six

books. The first book will start with the point last reached --

Biblical Versification--and widening from this will search out

other distinctions which may serve as a basis for the Classification

of Literature under such heads as Lyric, Epic, Philosophic, Pro-

phetic, Rhetoric. The subsequent books will take up these depart-

ments one by one, illustrating each, with the subdivisions of each,

from the most notable examples in the Sacred Writings. The

reader who has thus given his attention to the general literary

aspects of the Bible will then find, in an Appendix, Tabular

arrangements into which the whole of the Bible enters, intended

to assist him when he desires to read the Sacred Writings from the

literary point of view.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                    BOOK FIRST

    

 

 

 

         LITERARY CLASSIFICATION APPLIED TO THE

                               SACRED SCRIPTURES

 

 

CHAPTER                                                                                                                  PAGE

1. VERSIFICATION AND RHYTHMIC PARALLELISM                         45

 

II. THE HIGHER PARALLELISM, OR PARALLELISM OF INTER-

            PRETATION                                                                                      68

 

III. THE LOWER AND THE HIGHER UNITY IN LITERATURE                        81

 

IV. CLASSIFICATION OF LITERARY FORMS                                        105


 

 

 

 

                                                CHAPTER I

 

 

 

            VERSIFICATION AND RHYTHMIC PARALLELISM

 

            THE Bible is the worst-printed book in the world. No other

monument of ancient or modern literature suffers the fate of being

put before us in a form that makes it impossible,                                      Literary form of

without strong effort and considerable training, to                                    Scripture ob-

take in elements of literary structure which in all                                     scured by ordi-

other books are conveyed directly to the eye in a                                      nary modes of

manner impossible to mistake.                                                                    printing.

            By universal consent the authors of the Sacred Scriptures

included men who, over and above qualifications of a more

sacred nature, possessed literary power of the highest order. But

between their time and ours the Bible has passed through what

may be called an Age of Commentary, extending over fifteen

centuries and more. During this long period form, which should

be the handmaid of matter, was more and more overlooked;

reverent, keen, minute analysis and exegesis, with interminable

verbal discussion, gradually swallowed up the sense of literary

beauty. When the Bible emerged from this Age of Commentary,

its artistic form was lost; rabbinical commentators had divided

it into ‘chapters,’ and medieval translators into ‘verses,’ which

not only did not agree with, but often ran counter to, the origi-

nal structure. The force of this unliterary tradition proved too

strong even for the literary instincts of King James's translators.

Accordingly, one who reads only the ‘Authorized Version’ incurs

a double danger: if he reads his Bible by chapters he will, with-

out knowing it, be often commencing in the middle of one com-

 

                                                45


46        LITERARY CLASSIFICATION OF SCRIPTURE

 

position and leaving off in the middle of another; while, in

in particular:                    whatever way he may read it, he will know no dis-

verse printed as               tinction between prose and verse. It is only in

prose                             our own day that a better state of things has

arisen. The Church of England led the way by issuing its ‘New

Lectionary’; the new lessons will be found to differ from the old

chiefly in the fact that the passages marked out for public reading

are no longer limited by the beginnings and endings of chapters.

Later still the ‘Revised Version’ of the Bible, whatever it may

have left undone, has at all events made an attempt to rescue

Biblical poetry from the reproach of being printed as prose.

            It is to the latter of these two points — the distinction between

verse and prose — that I address myself in the present chapter.

Biblical Versifi-                No doubt the confusion of the two would have

cation based on               been impossible, were it not that the versification

parallelism of                     of the Bible is of a kind totally unlike that which

clauses                          prevails in English literature.  Biblical verse is

made neither by rhyme nor by numbering of syllables; its long-

lost secret was discovered by Bishop Lowth more than a cen-

tury after King James's time. Its underlying principle is found

to be the symmetry of clauses in a verse, which has come to be

called ‘Parallelism.’

 

                        Hast thou given the horse his might?

                        Hast thou clothed his neck with the quivering mane?

                        Hast thou made him to leap as a locust?

                                    The glory of his snorting is terrible.

                                    He paweth in the valley, and rejoiceth in his strength:

                                    He goeth out to meet the armed men.

                                    He mocketh at fear, and is not dismayed;

                                    Neither turneth he back from the sword.

                                    The quiver rattleth against him,

                                    The flashing spear and the javelin.

                                    He swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage;

                                    Neither standeth he still at the voice of the trumpet.

                                    As oft as the trumpet soundeth he saith, Aha

                                    And he smelleth the battle afar off,

                                    The thunder of the captains, and the shouting.


                        RHYTHMIC PARALLELISM                                 47

 

It is abundantly clear, first, that this is a passage of the highest

rhythmic beauty; secondly, that the effect depends neither on

rhyme nor metre. Like the swing of a pendulum to and fro, like

the tramp of an army marching in step, the versification of the

Bible moves with a rhythm of parallel lines.

            How closely the effect of this versification is bound up with the

parallelism of the clauses, the reader may satisfy himself by a

simple experiment. Let him take such a psalm as the one hun-

dred and fifth; and, commencing (say) with the eighth verse,

let him read on, omitting the second line of each couplet: what

he reads will then make excellent historic prose.

 

            He hath remembered his covenant for ever: the covenant which he

            made with Abraham, and confirmed the same unto Jacob for a

            statute, saying, "Unto thee will I give the land of Canaan," when

            they were but a few men in number, and they went about from

            nation to nation. He suffered no man to do them wrong, saying,

            "Touch not mine anointed ones."

 

Let him now read again, putting in the lines omitted: the prose

becomes transformed into verse full of the rhythm and lilt of a

march.

 

                        He hath remembered his covenant for ever,

                                    The word which he commanded to a thousand generations;

                        The covenant which he made with Abraham,

                                    And his oath unto Isaac;

                        And confirmed the same unto Jacob for a statute,

                                    To Israel for an everlasting covenant:

                        Saying, "Unto thee will I give the land of Canaan,

                                    The lot of your inheritance":

                        When they were but a few men in number;

                                    Yea, very few, and sojourners in it;

                        And they went about from nation to nation,

                                    From one kingdom to another people

                        He suffered no man to do them wrong;

                                    Yea, he reproved kings for their sakes;

                        Saying, "Touch not mine anointed ones,

                                    And do my prophets no harm."


48        LITERARY CLASSIFICATION OF SCRIPTURE

 

            The alphabet, then, of Scriptural versification will be the figures

The Couplet and              of Parallelism. Of these figures the simplest and

Triplet                            most fundamental are the Couplet and Triplet. A

Couplet consists of two parallel clauses, a Triplet of three.

 

                                    The LORD of Hosts is with us;

                                    The God of Jacob is our refuge.

                        He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth;

                        He breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder;

                        He burneth the chariots in the fire.

 

It is remarkable that the musical rendering of the psalms by

chants, which in some points is carried to such a degree of nicety,

entirely ignores this foundation difference of Couplet and Triplet,

the same chant being sung to both. To take a typical case.

 

            The LORD of Hosts  is         with us

 

            The God of     Ja - cob           is         our refuge.

 

This is correct, because a piece of music which is two-fold in

its structure is sung to a couplet verse. But presently the same

music will be sung to the triplet verse.

 

            He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth :

            He breaketh the bow and CUTTETH the       spear in sunder.

 

 

            He BURNeth the                       char - iots   in         the fire.

 


                        RHYTHMIC PARALLELISM                                  49

 

Every ear must detect that this is a clumsy makeshift: it runs

counter to a rhythmic distinction as fundamental as the distinction

of common time and triple time in music. The remedy is very

simple. Chants of this nature are made up of two parts.

 

 

As such they are only fitted to couplet verses. For the triplet

verse a variant is needed to the first part, sufficiently like it to be

recognised, yet differing in a note or two. For

 

                   

 

a simple variant would be

 

                     

 

The couplet verse would be sung as before; for the triplet the

variant would be inserted between the first and second parts.

 

(first part)

 

 

He maketh wars to CEASE unto the                        end      of the earth.

 

(variant)

 

 

He breaketh the bow and CUTTETH the                spear    in         sunder.

 

(second part)

 

 

              He BURNeth the                       char – iots   in      the       fire.


50        LITERARY CLASSIFICA TION OF SCRIPTURE

 

            I am loth to delay the reader with what may seem to be merely

technical matters. But attention to just a few of the elementary

                                    forms of Hebrew verse will richly repay itself in

Quatrains and                 increased susceptibility to the rhythmic cadence of

Double Triplets               Biblical poetry. Passing then to other figures, it is

natural to mention first the Quatrain, which has four lines. The

four lines may be related to one another in various ways, of which

the commonest is Alternation, the first line being parallel with the

third, and the second with the fourth.

                        With the merciful

                                    Thou wilt show thyself merciful:

                        With the perfect man

                                    Thou wilt show thyself perfect.1

 

In the Quatrain Reversed, or Introverted, the first line corresponds

with the fourth, and the two middle lines with one another.

                        Have mercy upon me, 0 God,

                                    According to thy loving kindness:

                                    According to the multitude of Thy tender mercies

                        Blot out my transgressions.2

 

Usually such introversion is merely a matter of form, but some-

times it is found to be closely bound up with the sense.

 

                        Give not that which is holy unto the dogs,

                                    Neither cast your pearls before the swine:

                                    Lest haply they [the swine] trample them under their feet,

                        And [the dogs] turn and rend you.3

 

                1 Psalm xviii. 25. The following verse is another example, and this figure is

very common.

                2 Psalm li. I. Compare the metre of In Memoriam. Other examples are Psalm

ciii. i ; ix. 15.

                3 Matthew vii. 6. It will be observed that Hebrew parallelism strongly influ-

ences the language of the New Testament, and of Apocryphal books originally

Greek. It is therefore technically correct to treat Biblical literature as a depart-

ment by itself.


                        RHYTHMIC PARALLELISM                                  51

 

Very rarely the couplets of a Quatrain are not only parallel but

interwoven, so that the sense of the first line is carried on by the

third, and the sense of the second by the fourth.

 

                        I will make mine arrows drunk with blood,

                                    And my sword shall devour flesh:

                        With the blood of the slain and the captives,

                                    [Flesh] From the head of the leaders of the enemy.1

 

As we have Quatrain and Quatrain Reversed, so we have the

Double Triplet and the Triplet Reversed.

 

                        Ask, and it shall be given you;

                                    Seek, and ye shall find;

                                                Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.

                        For every one that asketh receiveth,

                                    And he that seeketh findeth,

                                                And to him that knocketh it shall be opened.2

 

The eye catches what the ear confirms in this arrangement: how

the first line of the second triplet balances the first line of the

first triplet, the second the second, and the third the third. But

in what follows the order of the second triplet is reversed, so

that the beginning of the whole corresponds with the end, and

the middle lines with one another:

 

                        No servant can serve two masters:

                                    For either he will hate the one,

                                                And love the other;

                                                Or else he will hold to one,

                                    And despise the other.

                        Ye cannot serve God and mammon.3

 

            It is to be observed that such figures occur either             Recitative addi-

pure or intermixed with a sequence of words that                         tions to Figures

 

            1 Deut. xxxii. 42.

            2 Matthew vii. 7, 8. Other examples are Matthew xii. 35; Isaiah xxxv. 5.

            3  Luke xvi. 13. Other examples are Proverbs xxx. 8, 9; Ezekiel i. 27.


52        LITERARY CLASSIFICATION OF SCRIPTURE

 

remains outside the rhythm, like the ‘recitative’ of a chant. Such

a recitative may occur at the beginning:

 

                        And in that day thou shalt say

                                    I will give thanks unto thee, 0 Lord,

                                                For though thou vast angry with me,

                                                Thine anger is turned away,

                                    And thou comfortest me.

 

or at the end:

 

                        Make the heart of this people fat,

                                    And make their ears heavy,

                                                And shut their eyes:

                                                Lest they see with their eyes,

                                    And hear with their ears,

                        And understand with their heart:

            and turn again and be healed.

 

Or the recitative may even occur by interruption in the middle of

the figure: a passage in St. Matthew has two Reversed Quatrains

in succession thus interrupted.

           

      Whosoever shall swear by the Temple, it is nothing,

            But whosoever shall swear by the Gold of the Temple, he is a debtor:

                        (Ye fools and blind)

            For whether is greater, the Gold?

     Or the Temple that hath sanctified the Gold?

 

     And, Whosoever shall swear by the Altar, it is nothing,

            But whosoever shall swear by the Gift that is upon it, he is a debtor:

                        (Ye fools and blind)

            For whether is greater, the Gift?

      Or the Altar that sanctifieth the Gift?

 

There is no limit to the length or variety of such figures in

                                    Biblical versification. Of the more elaborate it

The Chain Figure             will be enough to instance two. The Chain Fig-

ure is made up of a succession of clauses so linked that the goal

of one clause becomes the starting-point of the next.


                        RHYTHMIC PARALLELISM                                  53

 

                        That which the palmerworm hath left

                                    hath the locust eaten;

                                    and that which the locust hath left

                                                hath the cankerworm eaten;

                                                and that which the cankerworm hath left

                                                            hath the caterpillar eaten.l

 

The figure is all the more impressive when an additional line

comes to complete the chain of ideas by connecting the end with

the beginning.

 

                        For her true beginning is

                                    desire of discipline;

                                    And the care for discipline is

                                                love of her;

                                                And love of her is

                                                            observance of her laws;

                                                            And to give heed to her laws

                                                                  confirmeth incorruption;

                                                                 And incorruption bringeth near unto God;

                        So then desire of wisdom promoteth to a kingdom.

 

But perhaps the most important figure, and the one most attrac-

tive to the genius of Hebrew poetry, is the Envel-                                     The Envelope

ope Figure, by which a series of parallel lines                                           Figure

running to any length are enclosed between an identical (or

equivalent) opening and close.

 

                        By their fruits ye shall know them.

                                    Do men gather grapes of thorns?

                                    Or figs of thistles?

                                    Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit,

                                    But the corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit:

                                    A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit,

                                    Neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.

                                    Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit

                                    Is hewn down, and cast into the fire.

                        Therefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

 

            1 Joel i. 4. Other examples are in Hosea ii. 21, 22; Romans x. 14, 15; II Peter i.

5-7. The passage next cited is from Wisdom vi. 17-20.

            2 Compare Psalm viii: or, in English poetry, the opening stanza of Southey's

Thalaba.


54        LITERARY CLASSIFICATION OF SCRIPTURE

 

The same artistic effect of envelopment is produced when in such

a figure the close is not a repetition of the opening, but completes

it, so that the opening and the close make a unity which the

parallel clauses develop,

 

                        Consider the ravens:

                                    that they sow not,

                                    neither reap:

                                    which have no store-chamber nor barn;

                                    and God feedeth them:

                        Of how much more value are ye than the birds!1

 

            The general subject of versification includes not only these

Figures of Parallelism, the ultimate form by which Biblical verse

                        separates itself from prose, but also those larger

Stanzas              aggregations of lines and verses making integral

parts of a poem, which may be called ‘Stanzas.’ Four points

may be noted in regard to the position of the stanzas in the

structure of Hebrew verse.

            First, a poem may be, composed of similar figures through-

out: this is the treatment most familiar to the reader of English

1. Stanzas of Sim-             literature. The hundred and twenty-first psalm

ilar Figures                     is made up of four similar quatrains.

 

Psalm cxxi     I will lift up mine eyes unto the mountains:

                                    From whence shall my help come?

                                    My help cometh from the LORD,

                                    Which made heaven and earth.

 

                        He will not suffer thy foot to be moved:

                                    He that keepeth thee will not slumber;

                                    Behold, he that keepeth Israel

                                    Shall neither slumber nor sleep.

                       

                        The LORD is thy keeper:

                                    The LORD is thy shade upon thy right hand;

                                    The sun shall not smite thee by day,

                                    Nor the moon by night.

 

            1 Luke xii. 24.-The figure made by a Question and its Answer comes under

this head; e.g. Psalm xv, or Psalm xxiv. 3-6.


                                    RHYTHMIC PARALLELISM                                  55

 

                        The LORD shall keep thee from all evil:

                                    He shall keep thy soul;

                                    The LORD shall keep thy going out and thy coming in,

                                    From this time forth and for evermore.

 

            Here may be mentioned a device of versification which applies

to this as to all varieties of structure. It is the Refrain: the recur-

rence of a verse (or part of a verse) the repetition                                    The Refrain as a

of which, besides being an artistic effect in itself,                                    structural device

assists also in marking off such divisions as stanzas. A refrain in

stanzas of this first kind will be given by the familiar hundred and

thirty-sixth psalm; the poem is wholly composed of couplets,

and the second line of each couplet is the refrain,

 

                                    For his mercy endureth for ever.

 

            A second treatment of stanzas is seen where a psalm is found

to be composed of different figures. The analysis of the first

psalm yields a result of this nature. First we                                              2. Stanzas of

have a triple triplet preceded by a recitative.                                              Varying Figures

 

                        Blessed is the man                            Psalm i

 

                                    that walketh not

                                                in the counsel

                                                            of the wicked,

                                    Nor standeth

                                                in the way

                                                            of sinners,

                                    Nor sitteth

                                                in the seat

                                                            of the scornful.

 

This is followed by a quatrain reversed.

                        But his delight

                                    is in the law of the LORD :

                                    And in his law

                        Doth he meditate day and night.


56        LITERARY CLASSIFICATION OF SCRIPTURE

 

The next verse is a good example of the closeness with which

form reflects matter. Its form is found to be a double quatrain

with an introduction. On examination this recitative introduction

will be seen to put forward the general thought — the comparison

of the devout life to a tree; while the figure works this thought

out into particulars, on the plan of the left-hand members of the

figure suggesting elements of vegetable life—the planting, the

fruitage, the foliage—and the right-hand members predicating

perfection of each.

 

                        And he shall be like a Tree

                                    Planted

                                                by the streams of water,

                                    That bringeth forth its fruit

                                                in its season;

                                    Whose leaf also

                                                cloth not wither,

                                    And whatsoever he doeth

                                                shall prosper.

 

Next, we have a single couplet, sharply contrasting with what has

gone before the mere worldly life.

 

                        The wicked are not so,

                        But are like the Chaff which the wind driveth away.

 

A simple quatrain and a quatrain reversed bring the poem to a

conclusion.

                        Therefore the wicked shall not stand

                                    in the judgement,

                        Nor sinners

                                    in the congregation of the righteous.

 

                        For the LORD knoweth

                                    the way of the righteous,

                                    But the way of the wicked

                        shall perish.

 

As much lyric beauty is here produced by the avoidance of similar

figures in successive verses as in the former case by the repetition

of them.


                        RHYTHMIC PARALLELISM                                  57

 

            Where lyrics are constructed on this second plan the refrain

may still come to emphasise the divisions. The forty-sixth psalm

is arranged in the Revised Version in two stanzas of six lines and

one of seven: the refrain — a shout of triumph brings each to

a climax. It has, however, dropped out by accident from the first

stanza in the received text, and must be restored.1

 

                        God is our refuge and strength,                                Psalm xlvi

                        A very present help in trouble.

                                    Therefore will we not fear, though the earth do change,

                                    And though the mountains be moved in the heart of the seas;

                                    Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled,

                                    Though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof.

            THE LORD OF HOSTS IS WITH US;

            THE GOD OF JACOB IS OUR REFUGE!

 

            There is a river, the streams whereof make glad the city of God,

            The holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High.

                        God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved:

                        God shall help her, and that right early.

                        The nations raged, the kingdoms were moved:

                        He uttered his voice, the earth melted.

            THE LORD OF HOSTS IS WITH US;

            THE GOD OF JACOB IS OUR REFUGE!

 

            Come, behold the works of the LORD,

            What desolations he hath made in the earth.

                        He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth;

                        He breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder;

                        He burneth the chariots in the fire.

                        “Be still, and know that I am God:

                        I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth."

            THE LORD OF HOSTS IS WITH US;

            THE GOD OF JACOB IS OUR REFUGE!

 

            1 On the general subject of textual emendation, I would lay down the principle

that, where the sense is affected by a proposed change, it is prudent to be con-

servative and chary of admitting it. But where (as with a repetition) it is only a

question of form, the long period of tradition mentioned above, during which the

literary form of Scripture was overlooked, justifies us in expecting many omissions

and misplacements.