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Job - Koheleth - Agur, by Emile Joseph Dillon
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Title: The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur
Author: Emile Joseph Dillon
Release Date: May, 2005 [EBook #8193]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on June 30, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SCEPTICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT ***
Produced by David Starner, Thomas Berger
and the Distributed Prooreaders team.
THE SCEPTICS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
JOB * KOHELETH * AGUR
with English text translated for the first time from the primitive Hebrew
as restored on the basis of recent philological discoveries.
by
E. J. Dillon
Late Professor of Comparative Philology and Ancient Armenian at the
Imperial University of Kharkoff; Doctor of Oriental Languages of the
University of Louvain; Magistrand of the Oriental Faculty of the Imperial
University of St. Petersburg; Member of the Armenian Academy of Venice;
Membre de la Société Asiatique de Paris, &c. &c.
* * * * *
_To ALEXANDER VASSILYEVITCH PASCHKOFF, M.A.
THE FOLLOWING PAGES ARE AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED_
* * * * *
DEDICATORY NOTE
_My Dear Paschkoff,
In the philosophical problems dealt with by the Sceptics of the Old
Testament, you will recognise the theme of our numerous and pleasant
discussions during the past sixteen years. Three of these are indelibly
engraven in my memory, and, if I mistake not, in yours.
The first took place in St. Petersburg one soft Indian-summer's evening,
in a cosy room on the Gagarine Quay, from the windows of which we looked
out with admiration upon the blue expanse of the Neva, as it reflected
the burnished gold of the spire of the Fortress church. At that time we
gazed upon the wavelets of the river and the wonders of the world from
exactly the same angle of vision.
The second of these memorable conversations occurred after the lapse of
nine years. We had met together in the old place, and sauntering out one
bitterly cold December evening resumed the discussion, walking to and fro
on the moonlit bank of the ice-bound river, until evening merged into
night and the moon sank beneath the horizon, leaving us in total
darkness, vainly desirous, like Goethe, of "light, more light."
Our last exchange of views took place after six further years had sped
away, and we stood last August on the summit of the historic Mönchsberg,
overlooking the final resting-place of the great Paracelsus. The long and
interesting discussions which we had on that occasion, just before
setting out in opposite directions, you to the East and I to the West,
neither of us is likely ever to forget.
It is in commemoration of these pleasant conversations, and more
especially of the good old times, now past for ever, when we looked out
upon the wavelets of the Neva and the wonders of the world from the same
angle of vision, that I ask you to allow me to associate your name with
this translation of the primitive texts of the Sceptics of the Old
Testament.
Yours affectionately,
E. J. DILLON.
TREBIZOND, January 3, 1895._
* * * * *
PREFACE
A careful perusal of this first English translation of the primitive text
of "Job," "Koheleth," and the "Sayings of Agur" will, I doubt not,
satisfy the most orthodox reader that I am fully warranted in
characterising their authors as Sceptics. The epithet, I confess, may
prove distasteful to many, but the truth, I trust, will be welcome to
all. It is not easy to understand why any one who firmly believes that
Providence is continually educing good from evil should hesitate to admit
that it may in like manner allow sound moral principles to be enshrined
in doubtful or even erroneous philosophical theories. Or, is trust in God
to be made dependent upon the confirmation or rejection by physical
science of, say, the Old Testament account of the origin of the rainbow?
Agur, "Job" and "Koheleth" had outgrown the intellectual husks which a
narrow, inadequate and erroneous account of God's dealings with man had
caused to form around the minds of their countrymen, and they had the
moral courage to put their words into harmony with their thoughts.
Clearly perceiving that, whatever the sacerdotal class might say to the
contrary, the political strength of the Hebrew people was spent and its
religious ideals exploded, they sought to shift the centre of gravity
from speculative theology to practical morality.
The manner in which they adjusted their hopes, fears, and aspirations to
the new conditions, strikes the keynote of their respective characters.
"Job," looking down upon the world from the tranquil heights of genius,
is manful, calm, resigned. "Koheleth," shuddering at the gloom that
envelops and the pain that convulses all living beings, prefers death to
life, and freedom from suffering to "positive" pleasure; while Agur,
revealing the bitterness bred by dispelled illusions and blasted hopes,
administers a severe chastisement to those who first called them into
being. All three[1] reject the dogma of retribution, the doctrine of
eternal life and belief in the coming of a Messiah, over and above which
they at times strip the notion of God of its most essential attributes,
reducing it to the shadow of a mere metaphysical abstraction. This is why
I call them Sceptics.
"Job" and "Koheleth" emphatically deny that there is any proof to be
found of the so-called moral order in the universe, and they
unhesitatingly declare that existence is an evil. They would have us
therefore exchange our hopes for insight, and warn us that even this is
very circumscribed at best. For not only is happiness a mockery, but
knowledge is a will-o'-the-wisp. Mankind resembles the bricklayer and the
hodman who help to raise an imposing edifice without any knowledge of the
general plan. And yet the structure is the outcome of their labour. In
like manner this mysterious world is the work of man--the mirror of his
will. As his will is, so are his acts, and as his acts are, so is his
world. Or as the ancient Hindoos put it:
"Before the gods we bend our necks, and yet
within the toils of Fate
Entangled are the gods themselves. To Fate,
then, be all honour given.
Yet Fate itself can compass nought, 'tis but the
bringer of the meed
For every deed that we perform.
As then our acts shape our rewards, of what
avail are gods or Fate?
Let honour therefore be decerned to deeds
alone."
But what, I have been frequently asked, will be the effect of all this
upon theology? Are we to suppose that the writings of these three
Sceptics were admitted into the Canon by mistake, and if not, shall we
not have to widen our definition of inspiration until it can be made to
include contributions which every Christian must regard as heterodox? An
exhaustive reply to this question would need a theological dissertation,
for which I have neither desire nor leisure. I may say, however, that
eminent theologians representing various Christian denominations--Roman
Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Anglican and Lutheran--have assured me that
they could readily reconcile the dogmas of their respective Churches with
doctrines educible from the primitive text of "Job," "Koheleth," and
Agur, whose ethics they are disposed to identify, in essentials, with the
teachings of the Sermon on the Mount. With the ways and means by which
they effect this reconciliation I am not now concerned.
My object was neither to attack a religious dogma, nor to provoke a
theological controversy, but merely to put the latest results of
philological science within the reach of him who reads as he runs. And I
feel confident that the reader who can appreciate the highest forms of
poetry, or who has anxiously pondered over the problems of God,
immortality, the origin of evil, &c., will peruse the writings of "Job,"
"Koheleth" and Agur with a lively interest, awakened, and sustained not
merely by the extrinsic value which they possess as historical documents,
but by their intrinsic merits as precious contributions to the literature
and philosophy of the world.
E. J. DILLON.
CONSTANTINOPLE, _New Year's Day, 1895._
Footnotes:
[1] In Agur's case, this is but an inference from his first saying, but
an inference which few would think of calling in question.
* * * * *
CONTENTS
THE POEM OF JOB
HEBREW PHILOSOPHY
THE PROBLEM OF THE POEM
JOB'S METHOD OF SOLVING THE PROBLEM
DATE OF THE COMPOSITION
THE TEXT AND ITS RECONSTRUCTION
INTERPOLATIONS
JOB'S THEOLOGICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPTIONS
ANALYSIS OF THE POEM
KOHELETH
CONDITION OF THE TEXT
PRIMITIVE FORM OF THE BOOK
KOHELETH'S THEORY OF LIFE
PRACTICAL WISDOM
KOHELETH'S PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE
SOURCES OF KOHELETH'S PHILOSOPHY
AGUR THE AGNOSTIC
AGUR, SON OF YAKEH
FORM AND CONTENTS OF THE SAYINGS OF AGUR
DATE OF COMPOSITION
AGUR'S PHILOSOPHY
THE POEM OF JOB (TRANSLATION OF THE RESTORED TEXT)
THE SPEAKER (TRANSLATION OF THE RESTORED TEXT)
THE SAYINGS OF AGUR (TRANSLATION OF THE RESTORED TEXT)
INDEX
THE POEM OF JOB
* * * * *
HEBREW PHILOSOPHY
According to a theory which was still in vogue a few years ago, the
ancient races of mankind were distinguished from each other no less by
their intellectual equipment than by their physical peculiarities. Thus
the Semites were supposed to be characterised, among other things, by an
inborn aptitude for historical narrative and an utter lack of the mental
suppleness, ingenuity, and sharp incisive vision indispensable for the
study of the problems of philosophy; while their neighbours, the Aryans,
devoid of historical talent, were held to be richly endowed with all the
essential qualities of mind needed for the cultivation of epic poetry and
abstruse metaphysics. This theory has since been abandoned, and many of
the alleged facts that once seemed to support it have been shown to be
unwarranted assumptions. Thus, the conclusive proof, supplied by Biblical
criticism, of the untrustworthiness of the historical books of the Old
Testament, has removed one alleged difference between Aryans and Semites,
while the discoveries which led to the reconstruction of the primitive
poem of Job and of the treatise of Koheleth have undermined the basis of
the other. For these two works deal exclusively with philosophical
problems, and, together with the Books of Proverbs and Jesus Sirach, are
the only remains that have come down to us of the ethical and
metaphysical speculations of the ancient Hebrews whose descendants have
so materially contributed to further this much-maligned branch of human
knowledge. And if we may judge by what we know of these two books, we
have ample grounds for regretting that numerous other philosophical
treatises which were written between the fourth and the first centuries
B.C. were deemed too abstruse, too irrelevant, or too heterodox to find a
place in the Jewish Canon.[2] For the Book of Job is an unrivalled
masterpiece, the work of one in whom poetry was no mere special faculty
cultivated apart from his other gifts, but the outcome of the harmonious
wholeness of healthy human nature, in which upright living, untrammelled
thought, deep mental vision, and luxuriant imagination combined to form
the individual. Hence the poem is a true reflex of the author's mind: it
dissolves and blends in harmonious union elements that appeared not
merely heterogeneous, but wholly incompatible, and realises, with the
concreteness of history, the seemingly unattainable idea which Lucretius
had the mind to conceive but lacked the artistic hand to execute; in a
word, it is the fruit of the intimate union of that philosophy which,
reckless of results, dares to clip even angels' wings, and of the art
which possesses the secret of painting its unfading pictures with the
delicate tints of the rainbow. Rich fancy and profound thought co-operate
to produce a _tertium quid_--a visible proof that the beautiful is
one with the true--for which neither literature nor philosophy possesses
a name. It is no wonder, then, that this unique poem, which gives
adequate utterance to abstract thought, truly and forcibly states the
doubts and misgivings which harrow the souls of thinking men of all ages
and nations, and helps them to lift a corner of the veil of delusion and
get a glimpse of the darkness of the everlasting Night beyond, should
appeal to the reader of the nineteenth century with much greater force
than to the Jews of olden times, who were accustomed to gauge the
sublimity of imaginative poetry and the depth of philosophic speculation
by the standard of orthodoxy and the bias of nationality.
The Book of Job, from which Pope Gregory the Great fancied he could piece
together the entire system of Catholic theology, and which Thomas of
Aquin regarded as a sober history, is now known to be a regular poem,
but, as Tennyson truly remarked, "the greatest poem whether of ancient or
modern times," and the diction of which even Luther instinctively felt to
be "magnificent and sublime as no other book of Scripture." And it is
exclusively in this light, as one of the masterpieces of the world's
literature, that it will be considered in the following pages. Whatever
religious significance it may be supposed to possess over and above, as
one of the canonical books of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, will,
it is hoped, remain unaffected by this treatment, which is least of all
controversial. The flowers that yield honey to the bee likewise delight
the bee-keeper with their perfume and the poet with their colours, and
there is no adequate reason why the magic verse which strikes a
responsive chord in the soul of lovers of high art, and starts a new
train of ideas in the minds of serious thinkers, should thereby lose any
of the healing virtues it may have heretofore possessed for the suffering
souls of the believing.
But viewed even as a mere work of art, it would be hopeless to endeavour
to press it into the frame of any one of the received categories of
literary composition, as is evident from the fact that authorised and
unauthorised opinion on the subject has touched every extreme, and still
continues oscillating to-day. Many commentators still treat it as a
curious chapter of old-world history narrated with scrupulous fidelity by
the hero or an eye-witness, others as a philosophical dialogue; several
scholars regard it as a genuine drama, while not a few enthusiastically
aver that it is the only epic poem ever written by a Hebrew. In truth, it
partakes of the nature of each and every one of these categories, and is
yet circumscribed by the laws and limits of none of them. In form, it is
most nearly akin to the drama, with which we should be disposed to
identify it if the characters of the prologue and epilogue were
introduced as _dramatis personae_ in action. But their doing and
enduring are presupposed as accomplished facts, and employed merely as a
foil to the dialogues, which alone are the work of the author. Perhaps
the least erroneous way succinctly to describe what in fact is a
_unicum_ would be to call it a psychological drama.
Koheleth, or the Preacher, is likewise a literary puzzle which for
centuries has baffled the efforts of commentators and aroused the
misgivings of theologians. Regarded by many as a _vade mecum_ of
materialists, by some as an eloquent sermon on the fear of God, and by
others as a summary of sceptical philosophy, it is impossible to analyse
and classify it without having first eliminated all those numerous
later-date insertions which, without improving the author's theology,
utterly obscure his meaning and entirely spoil his work. When, by the aid
of text criticism, we have succeeded in weeding it of the parasitic
growth of ages, we have still to allow for the changing of places of
numerous authentic passages either by accident or design, the effects of
which are oftentimes quite as misleading as those of the deliberate
interpolations. The work thus restored, although one, coherent and
logical, is still susceptible of various interpretations, according to
the point of view of the reader, none of which, however, can ignore the
significant fact that the sceptically ideal basis of Koheleth's
metaphysics is identical with that of Buddha, Kant, and Schopenhauer, and
admirably harmonises with the ethics of Job and the pessimism of the New
Testament.
The Sayings of Agur, on the contrary, tell their own interesting story,
without need of note or commentary, to him who possesses a fair knowledge
of Hebrew grammar, and an average allowance of mother wit. The lively
versifier, the keenness of whose sense of humour is excelled only by the
bitterness of his satire, could ill afford to be obscure. A member of the
literary fraternity which boasts the names of Lucian and Voltaire, a firm
believer in the force of common sense and rudimentary logic, Agur
ridicules the theologians of his day with a malicious cruelty which is
explained, if not warranted, by the pretensions of omniscience and the
practice of intolerance that provoked it. The unanswerable argument which
Jahveh considered sufficient to silence his servant Job, Agur deems
effective against the dogmatical doctors of his own day:
"Who has ascended into heaven and come down again?
* * * * *
Such an one would I question about God: What is his name?"
Footnotes:
[2] Job and Ecclesiastes were inserted in the Jewish and, one may add,
the Christian Canon, solely on the strength of passages which the
authors of these compositions never even saw, and which flatly
contradict the main theses of their works.
* * * * *
THE PROBLEM OF THE POEM
Purged of all later interpolations and restored as far as possible to the
form it received from the hand of its author, the poem of Job is the most
striking presentation of the most obscure and fascinating problem that
ever puzzled and tortured the human intellect: how to reconcile the
existence of evil, not merely with the fundamental dogmas of the ancient
Jewish faith, but with any form of Theism whatever. Stated in the terms
in which the poet--whom for convenience sake we shall identify with his
hero[3] manifestly conceived it, it is this: Can God be the creator of
all things and yet not be responsible for evil?
The Infinite Being who laid the earth's foundation, "shut in the sea with
doors," whose voice is thunder and whose creatures are all things that
have being, is, we trust, moral and good. But it is His omnipotence that
strikes us most forcibly. Almighty in theory, He is all active in fact,
and nothing that happens in the universe is brought about even indirectly
by any one but Himself. There are no second causes at work, no chance, no
laws of nature, no subordinate agents, nothing that is not the immediate
manifestation of His free will.[4] This is evident to our senses. But
what is equally obvious is that His acts do not tally with His attribute
of goodness, and that no facts known or imaginable can help us to bridge
over the abyss between the infinite justice ascribed to Him and the
crying wrongs that confront us in His universe, whithersoever we turn.[5]
His rule is such a congeries of evils that even the just man often
welcomes death as a release, and Job himself with difficulty overcame the
temptation to end his sufferings by suicide. All the cut-and-dried
explanations of God's conduct offered by His human advocates merely
render the problem more complicated. His professional apologists are
"weavers of lies," and contend for Him "with deception," and, worse than
all else, He Himself has never revealed to His creatures any truth more
soothing than the fact they set out with, that the problem is for ever
insoluble. Wisdom "is hid from the eyes of all living,"[6] and the dead
are in "the land of darkness and of gloom,"[7] whence there is no issue.
The theological views prevalent in the days of the poet, as expounded by
the three friends of Job, instead of suggesting some way out of the
difficulty were in flagrant contradiction with fact. They appealed to the
traditional theory and insisted on having that accepted as the reality.
And it was one of the saddest theories ever invented. Virtue was at best
a mere matter of business, one of the crudest forms of utilitarianism, a
bargain between Jahveh and His creatures. As asceticism in ancient India
was rewarded with the spiritual gift of working miracles, so upright
living was followed in Judea by material wealth, prosperity, a numerous
progeny and all the good things that seem to make life worth living. Such
at least was the theory, and those who were satisfied with their lot had
little temptation to find fault with it for the sake of those who were
not. In sober reality, however, the obligation was very one-sided:
Jahveh, who occasionally failed to carry out His threats, observed or
repudiated His solemn promises as He thought fit, whereas those among His
creatures who faithfully fulfilled their part of the contract were never
sure of receiving their stipulated wage in the promised coin. And at that
time none other was current: there was no future life looming in the dim
distance with intensified rewards and punishments wherewith to redress
the balance of this. And it sadly needed redressing. The victims of
seeming injustice naturally felt that they were being hardly dealt with.
And as if to make confusion worse confounded, their neighbours, who had
ridden roughshod over all law, human and divine, were frequently exempt
from misfortune, lived on the fat of the land, and enjoyed a monopoly of
the divine blessings. To Job, whose consciousness of his own
righteousness was clearer and less questionable than the justice of his
Creator, this theory of retribution seemed unworthy of belief.
The creation of this good God, then, is largely leavened with evil for
which--all things being the work of His hands--He, and He alone, is
answerable. There was no devil in those olden times upon whose broad
shoulders the responsibility for sickness, suffering, misery and death
could be conveniently shifted. The Satan or Adversary is still one of the
sons of God who, like all his brethren, has free access to the council
chamber of the Most High, where he is wont to take a critical, somewhat
cynical but not wholly incorrect view of motives and of men. In the
government of the world he has neither hand nor part, and his
interference in the affairs of Job is the result of a special permission
accorded him by the Creator. God alone is the author of good _and of
evil_,[8] and the thesis to be demonstrated by His professional
apologists consists in showing that the former is the outflow of His
mercy, and the latter the necessary effect of His justice acting upon the
depraved will of His creatures. But the proof was not forthcoming.
Personal suffering might reasonably be explained in many cases as the
meet and inevitable wage for wrong-doing; but assuredly not in all. Job
himself was a striking instance of unmerited punishment. Even Jahveh
solemnly declares him to be just and perfect; and Job was admittedly no
solitary exception; he was the type of a numerous class of righteous,
wronged and wretched mortals, unnamed and unknown:
"Omnes illacrymabiles....
ignotique longa
Nocte, carent quia vate sacro."
Job is ready to admit that God, no doubt, is just and good in theory, but
he cannot dissemble the obvious fact that His works in the universe are
neither; indeed, if we may judge the tree by its fruits, His
_régime_ is the rule of an oriental and almighty despot whose will
and pleasure is the sole moral law. And that will is too often
undistinguishable from malice of the blackest kind. Thus
"He destroyeth the upright and the wicked,
When his scourge slayeth at unawares.
He scoffeth at the trial of the innocent;
The earth is given into the hand of the wicked."
In a word, the poet proclaims that the current theories of traditional
theology were disembodied, not incarnate in the moral order of the world,
had, in fact, nowhere taken root.
The two most specious arguments with which it was sought to prop up this
tottering theological system consisted in maintaining that the wicked are
often punished and the good recompensed in their offspring--a kind of
spiritual entail in which the tenant for life is denied the usufruct for
the sake of heirs he never knew--and that such individual claims as were
left unadjusted by this curious arrangement were merged in those of the
community at large and should be held to be settled in full as long as
the weal of the nation was assured. In other words, the individual sows
and his offspring or the nation reaps the harvest. But Job rejects both
pleas as illusory and immoral, besides which, they leave the frequent
prosperity of the unrighteous unexplained. "Wherefore," he asks, "do the
wicked live, become old, yea wax mighty in strength?" The reply that the
fathers having eaten sour grapes, the children's teeth will be set on
edge, is, he contends, no answer to the objection; it merely intensifies
it. For he who sows should reap, and he who sins should suffer. After
death the most terrible punishment meted out to the posterity of
criminals is powerless to affect their mouldering dust. That, surely,
cannot be accepted as a vindication of justice, human or divine.
"Ye say: God hoards punishment for the children.
Let him rather requite the wicked himself that he may feel it!
His own eyes should behold his downfall,
And he himself should drain the Almighty's wrath.
If his sons are honoured, he will not know it;
And if dishonoured, he will not perceive it.
Only in his own flesh doth he feel pain,
And for his own soul will he lament."
As to the latter argument, that the well-being of the nation was a
settlement in full of the individual's claims to happiness, it was
equally irrelevant, even had the principle underlying it been confirmed
by experience. Granting that a certain wholesale kind of equity was
administered, why must the individual suffer for no fault of his own?
Wherein lies the justice of a Being who, credited with omnipotence,
permits that by a sweep of the wild hurricane of disaster, "green leaves
with yellow mixed are torn away"?
But the contention that, viewing the individual merely as a unit of the
aggregate, justice would be found to be dealt out fairly on the whole,
ran counter to experience. The facts were dead against it. The Hebrew
nation had fared as badly among neighbouring states as Job among his
friends and countrymen. In this respect the sorely tried individual was
the type of his nation. The destruction of the kingdom of Samaria which
had occurred nearly two hundred years before and the captivity of Judah,
which was not yet at an end, gave its death-blow to the theory. "The
tents of robbers prosper and they that provoke Shaddai[9] are secure."
In truth, there was but one issue out of the difficulty: divine justice
might not be bounded by time or space; the law of compensation might have
a larger field than our earth for its arena; a future life might afford
"time" and opportunity to right the wrongs of the present, and all end
well in the best of future worlds. This explanation would have set doubts
at rest and settled the question for at least two thousand years; and it
seemed such a necessary postulate to the fathers of the Church, who
viewed the matter in the light of Christian revelation, that they
actually put into Job's mouth the words which he would have uttered had
he lived in their own days and been a member of the true fold. And they
effected this with a pious recklessness of artistic results and of
elementary logic that speaks better for their intentions than for their
aesthetic taste. In truth, Job knows absolutely nothing of a future life,
and his friends, equally unenlightened, see nothing for it but to
"discourse wickedly for God," and "utter lies on His behalf."[10] There
was, in fact, no third course. Indeed, if the hero or his friends had
even suspected the possibility of a solution based upon a life beyond the
tomb, the problem on which the book is founded would not have existed. To
ground, therefore, the doctrines of the Resurrection, the Atonement, &c.,
upon alleged passages of the poem of Job is tantamount to inferring the
squareness of a circle from its perfect rotundity. In the Authorised
Version of the Bible the famous verses, which have probably played a more
important part in the intellectual history of mankind than all the books
of the Old Testament put together, run thus: "For I know _that_ my
redeemer liveth, and _that_ he shall stand at the latter _day_
upon the earth: and _though_ after my skin _worms_ destroy this
_body_, yet in my flesh shall I see God: whom I shall see for
myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; _though_ my
reins be consumed within me."[11]
Now this, it is hardly necessary to say, is not a translation from the
poem nor from any known text of it, but the embodiment of the salutary
beliefs of well-intentioned theologians--of St. Jerome among others--
momentarily forgetful of the passage: "Will ye speak wickedly for God?"
The Christian conception of a Redeemer would, had he but known it, have
proved balm to the heart of the despairing hero. As a matter of mere
fact, his own hope at that critical moment was less sublime and very much
less Christian: the coming of an avenger who would punish his enemies and
rehabilitate his name. It was the one worldly and vain longing that still
bound him to the earth. Other people demanded happiness as their reward
for virtue, too often undistinguishable from vice; Job challenged the
express approval of the Deity, asked only that he should not be
confounded with vulgar sinners. The typical perfect man, struck down with
a loathsome disease, doomed to a horrible death, alone in his misery,
derided by his enemies, and, worse than all, loathed as a common criminal
by those near and dear to him, gives his friends and enemies, society and
theologians, the lie emphatic--nay, he goes the length of affirming that
God Himself has, failed in His duty towards him. "Know, then, that God
hath wronged me."[12] His conscience, however, tells him that inasmuch as
there is such a thing as eternal justice, a time will come when the truth
will be proclaimed and his honour fully vindicated; Shaddai will then
yearn for the work of His hands, but it will be too late, "For now I must
lay myself down in the dust; and Thou shalt seek me, but I shall not be."
And it is to this conviction, not to a belief in future retribution, that
the hero gives utterance in the memorable passage in question:
"But I know that my avenger liveth,
Though it be at the end upon my dust;
My witness will avenge these things,
And a curse alight upon mine enemies."
He knows nothing whatever of the subsistence of our cumbrous clods of
clay after they have become the food of worms and pismires; indeed, he is
absolutely certain that by the sleep of death
"we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to."
And he emphasises his views in a way that should have given food for
wholesome reflection to his commentators.
"There is a future for the tree,
And hope remaineth to the palm;
Cut down, it will sprout again,
And its tender branch will not cease.
"Though its roots wax old in the earth,
And its stock lie buried in mould,
Yet through vapour of water will it bud,
And put forth boughs like a plant.
"But man dieth and lieth outstretched;
He giveth up the ghost, where is he then?
He lieth down and riseth not up;
Till heaven be no more he shall not awake."[13]
Nothing could well be further removed from the comforting hope of a
future life, the resurrection of the body, and eternal rewards, than this
unshaken belief that Death is our sole redeemer from the terrible evils
of life.
Footnotes:
[3] Although the former was a Jew and the latter a Gentile.
[4] _Cf._ Translation, strophe ci.:
"Is not the soul of every living thing in his hand,
And the breath of all mankind?"
Strophe civ.:
"With him is strength and wisdom,
The erring one and his error are his."
[5] Strophe cxcii.-cxciii.:
"Look upon me and tremble,
And lay your hand upon your mouth!
When I remember I am dismayed,
And trembling taketh hold on my flesh."
Strophe ccxxi.:
"Why do the times of judgment depend upon the Almighty,
And yet they who know him do not see his days?
[6] Strophe ccxxxiv.
[7] Strophe lxxxix.
[8] "The erring one and his error are his" (God's): strophe civ. _Cf_.
also strophe cvii.
[9] God.
[10] Strophe cxi.
[11] Job xix. 25-27. The Revised Version gives the passage as follows:
"But I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand up at
the last upon the earth: and after my skin hath been thus destroyed,
yet from my flesh shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and
mine eyes shall behold, and not another."
[12] Strophe clxix.
[13] Job, strophes cxxiv.-cxxvi. of my English translation.
* * * * *
JOB'S METHOD OF SOLVING THE PROBLEM
It is perhaps hardly necessary to point out that the doctrine of eternal
pains and rewards as laid down by the Christian Church, unless reinforced
by faith, neither solves the problem nor simplifies it. If the truth must
be told, it seems to unenlightened reason to entangle it more hopelessly
than before. In simple terms and in its broadest aspect the question may
be stated as follows: God created man under conditions of His own
choosing which necessarily led to the life-long misery of countless
millions upon earth and their never-ending torments in hell. To the
question, Did He know the inevitable effect of His creative act, the
answer is, God is omniscient. To the query, Could He have selected other
and more humane conditions of existence for His creature--conditions so
adjusted that, either with or without probation, man would have been
ultimately happy? the reply is, God is almighty.
Involuntarily, then, the question forces itself upon us, Is He all-good?
Can that Being be deemed good who, moved by no necessity, free to create
or to abstain from creating, at liberty to create for happiness or for
misery, calls mankind into existence under such conditions and
surroundings that myriads are miserable, so unutterably miserable, that,
compared with their tortures, the wretch bleeding and quivering on the
wheel is lolling in the lap of enjoyment? Why did God make man under such
conditions? Or at least how are we to reconcile His having done so with
His attribute of goodness? To this question there are many replies but no
answer, the former being merely attempts to explain the chronic effects
of the primordial ethical poison commonly called original sin.
Job's main objection to the theological theories in vogue among his
contemporaries, and, indeed, to all conceivable explanations of the
difficulty, is far more weighty than at first sight appears. Everything,
he tells us--if anything--is the work of God's hands; and as pain,
suffering, evil, are everywhere predominant, it is not easy to understand
in what sense God can be said to be good. The poet does not formulate the
argument, of which this is the gist, in very precise terms, nor press it
home to its last conclusions. But he leaves no doubt about his meaning.
Some men are relatively good by nature, others wicked; but all men were
created by God and act in accordance with the disposition they received
from Him. If that disposition or character brought forth sin and evil,
these then are God's work, not man's, and He alone is responsible
therefor. The individual who performs an act through an agent is rightly
deemed to have done it himself. A man, therefore, who, being free to do a
certain thing or to leave it undone, and perfectly aware of the nature of
its necessary consequences, performs it, is held to be answerable for the
results, should they prove mischievous. Much greater is his
responsibility if, instead of being restricted to the choice between
undertaking a work certain to prove pernicious and abstaining from it, he
was free to select a third course and to accomplish it in such a way that
the result would not be evil, but unmixed good. In this case it would
hardly seem possible to exonerate the doer from a charge of wanton
malice, diabolic in degree. And such is the position in which many
theologians seem--to those who view things in the light of reason--to
have placed God Himself. It was open to Him, they maintain, to create or
to refrain from creating. Having declared for the former alternative, He
is chargeable with the consequences. The consequences, however, need not
have been evil; He might, had He so willed it, have endowed His creature
with such qualities and placed him in such surroundings that, without
ceasing to be man, he would never have fallen at all. Yet it did not
please Him to adopt that course. This admission, rationalists urge, is
conclusive as to the origin of sin and evil.
But the arguments are not yet exhausted. Even then the Creator might have
made everything right by an act which it seems impossible to distinguish
from elementary justice. Had He regarded the first man who brought sin
into the world as a mere individual, and treated him as such--and this,
theologians assure us, He could easily have done[14]--He might have
punished him as an individual, and the matter would have been at an end.
But instead of this, He contemplated him as the type and representative
of the human race, and decreed that his sin should, like a subtle
spiritual poison, infect the soul of every man coming into the world. In
other words, God, who is supposed to hate evil so profoundly that He
damns for ever in hell a man guilty of one single "mortal" transgression,
enacted that if one sin were committed it should be needlessly made to
engender myriads of other sins, and that the tiny seed of evil which was
first thrown upon the earth by His creature in a moment of pardonable
weakness, and might have so easily been trampled out, should take root,
sprout up and grow into a vast Upas tree whose poisonous branches
overshadow all creation. This proposition, it is contended, explicitly
taxes God, if not with the sole authorship of sin and evil, at least with
the moral responsibility for propagating it. And this is the prevailing
view among modern apologists.
As to the origin of evil, it is to be sought for, theologians have
discovered, in the free will with which God endowed man. This, they
allege, shifts all the responsibility on the human creature because,
instead of evil, he might have chosen good. Unfortunately, the same
argument would seem to apply to the Creator Himself.[15] He, too, being
omnipotent, might have chosen good instead of evil subjects, and created
human beings whose acts would have been blameless and virtuous, their
will remaining what it is. Further, not having done this and having
needlessly allowed an abyss to be made by sin between Himself and the
first man, it was still open to Him to have abstained from widening it
until it became an impassable gulf between Himself and the entire human
race. But He did not abstain; instead of localising, He deliberately and
wantonly spread the evil, and the ruin that overwhelmed all mankind
cannot therefore be said to have sprung from the will of the race, but
from His own. Again, the interposition of a free will between God and
evil, it is urged, affords no real solution of the problem, for the
question still remains, why were the workings of that free will evil and
not good? Obviously because such was its God-created nature; for the
action of outward circumstances upon the will neither builds up nor
modifies this nature, but simply discloses it to our view.
These ideas were adopted, developed and defended by a few of the most
profound Christian philosophers of the early Church, and most ably of all
by Scotus Erigena,[16] who held that the origin of evil which cannot be
sought for in God must not be placed _in the free will of man_,
because the latter hypothesis would still leave the responsibility with
the Creator, the human will being His own handiwork.
At the root of this argument lies yet another consideration upon which
unbelieving thinkers rely still more: it is drawn from the alleged
incompatibility between the conception of a created being and free will,
and will be noticed presently. It is commonly regarded as the principal
difficulty which Theists and Pantheists are condemned continually to
encounter without ever being able to explain--the rock, so to say, upon
which their optimistic systems strike, and are shattered to
pieces--unless protected by the armour of supernatural faith.
But besides the Christian and Pantheistic theories, there is another
explanation of the origin of evil offered by the religion of more than
one-third of the human race. It is a theory which can readily be labelled
and libelled by the most unphilosophical reader, but cannot be grasped
and appreciated without serious study and reflection by the most
intelligent, for it is based upon the doctrine that time, space and
causality have no existence outside the human mind.[17] The world which
we see and know, therefore, and everything it contains is "such stuff as
dreams are made of"--the woof and warp being evolved from, and interwoven
by, our own minds. Underlying the innumerable illusive appearances which
we call the world is a reality, a being or force which is one. We and
everything else are but manifestations, in time and space, of this one
reality with which, however, each and every one of us is at bottom
identical and whose sole attribute is unity. This force or will manifests
itself in myriads of facets, so to say, in the universe, and these
manifestations are not good, constitute, indeed, a sort of fall.
Intelligence is not one of the primary attributes of this eternal will.
It attained to clear consciousness and knowledge only in man and then for
the first time perceived that the existence for which it yearned is evil
and not good. Man therefore is his own work; and existence, as it
constitutes a fall, is its own punishment; for his life is a series of
inane desires which, when momentarily satiated, are immediately succeeded
by others equally vain, fruitless and hollow, and the cessation of desire
is the beginning of tedium which is oftentimes still less endurable,
seeing that it leaves little room for hope.
"Life which ye prize is long-drawn agony;
Only its pains abide, its pleasures are
As birds which light and fly."
Every wish springs from want which causes pain, the attainment of the
wished-for object--commonly called pleasure--is but the cessation of that
pain: in other words it is a mere negation. Man's life is a never-ending
oscillation between pleasure and pain: the former mere illusion, the
latter a dread reality. The origin of this and of all other evil is
individual existence, and individual existence is the free act of the one
substance or force which is identical with each and all of us.
This theory excludes creation. For free will is utterly incompatible with
the state of a created being;[18] because _operari sequitur
esse_--_i.e._, the operation, the working of every being, must be
the necessary result of its qualities which are themselves known only by
the acts they bring forth. If these acts be praiseworthy, the qualities
are good: if reprehensible, they are bad. But if the acts are to be free,
they should be neither good nor bad. A being therefore to be perfectly
free should have no qualities at all--_i.e._, should not be created.
For it must be borne in mind that it is not the motives that impart to
the will its ethical quality. Motives are accidental and operate in the
same way as the rays of the sun falling upon a tree or a flower: they
reveal the nature of the object but are powerless to change it, for
better or for worse.[19] But if this be so, one may ask, why do we feel
sorrow, shame, repentance for acts which we were not free to perform or
abstain from performing? Because we are "metaphysically" free, that is to
say, our inborn disposition from which they necessarily emanate, is the
work of our free will, which specific acts are not. No doubt, when we do
right or wrong, we are conscious that we might have acted
differently--_had we willed it_. But this proves nothing; the
all-important question being, could we, under the circumstances, have
willed otherwise than we did? And to this the reply is an emphatic
negative. But for our personal character, be it good or evil, we are
answerable, and therefore likewise for the acts that flow from it with
the rigorous necessity characteristic of all causality. For individuality
in the human race is identical with character, and as individuality is
the work of our own free will exercised outside the realm of time and
space, we are responsible for it, and conscious of the responsibility,
although not of the manner in which it was incurred.
Our acts, therefore, and they only, show us what we really are; our
sufferings what we deserve. The former are the necessary outcome of our
character which external circumstances, in the guise of motives, call
into play; just as gravitation is acted upon when we shake an apple off
the tree. Our deeds then being the inevitable resultant of that
self-created character acted upon by motives, must consequently follow
with the same necessity as any other link in the chain of cause and
effect. The knowledge of our character and the foreknowledge of these
outward events which, in the unbroken chain of cause and effect, act upon
it, would suffice to enable us to foresee our future as readily as
astronomers foresee eclipses of the sun and moon. Now if the root of all
evil be individuality, the essence of all morality is self-denial; and no
act performed for the purpose of obtaining happiness, temporal or
eternal, is moral. The evil and pain, therefore, which befall us upon
earth cannot be regarded as the retribution for the deeds done in this
life; for these are necessary and inevitable. They are the fruits of our
character whence these acts emanate; and it is only our character which
is our own work. With the ethical nature of that character each
individual gradually grows acquainted as well in his own case as in that
of his neighbour's, solely from a study of his own acts, which often
astonish himself quite as much as his friends.
Brahmanism and Buddhism symbolized these notions in the somewhat gross
but only intelligible form in which the mind can readily grasp them,
viz., in the dogma of the transmigration of souls, according to which a
man's good deeds and bad follow him like his shadow from one existence to
another, and in this life he expiates the sins or enjoys the fruits of a
previous existence:[20]
"Each man's life
The outcome of his former living is;
The bygone wrongs bring forth sorrows and woes,
The bygone right breeds bliss.
"That which ye sow ye reap. See yonder fields!
The sesamum was sesamum, the corn
Was corn. The Silence and the Darkness knew!
So is man's fate born."
In the former religion, Brahma, who is identical with all of us, produces
the world by a kind of fall from his primeval state and remains therein
until he has redeemed himself. In the latter there is no god; man being
his own handiwork and sin and evil the result of his blind striving after
individual existence. It is however in his power, and in his alone, to
right the wrong and remedy the evil, by starving out the fatal hunger for
life. And in this work, faith, supplication and sacrifice avail him
nothing.
"Pray not! the Darkness will not brighten! Ask
Nought from the Silence, for it cannot speak!
Vex not your mournful minds with pious pains!
Ah, brothers, sisters! seek
Naught from the helpless gods by gift and hymn,
Nor bribe with blood, nor feed with fruits and cake;
Within yourself deliverance must be sought:
Each man his prison makes."
The ethical bearing of this view is more easily discerned than its
metaphysical basis. Individual existence with its tantalising mirage of
pleasures being the root of all evil, the first step towards finding a
remedy is to recognise this truth, to obtain insight into the heart of
things athwart the veil of Maya or delusion. The conviction that all
beings are not merely brothers but one and the same essence, is the death
of egotistic desire, of the pernicious distinction between me and thee,
and the birth of pity, love and sympathy for all men. And this is a very
old doctrine. In India it was taught in the Veda and the Vedanta under
the formula _tat tvam asi_--thou art this--_i.e._, individual
differs not essentially from individual, nor a man from the whole human
race. He who obtains this insight and perceives how sorrow is shadow to
life, who weans his thirst for existence, seeks not, strives not, wrongs
not, starves out his passions, resigns himself wholly to pain and
suffering as to "ills that flow from foregone wrongfulness" and asks for
no clue from the Silence which can utter naught, he is truly blessed and
released from all misery forever. He glides "lifeless to nameless quiet,
nameless joy, blessed Nirvana."
It is probable, not to say certain, that it was an intuition of this kind
that finally reconciled Job with the grey monotony of misery and seeming
injustice which characterises all human existence and enabled him to
resign himself cheerfully to whatever might befall. This at least would
seem to be the only reasonable construction of which Jahveh's apparition
and discourse are susceptible. That they are resorted to by the poet
solely as an image and symbol of the inner illumination of his hero's
intellect, is evident to most readers. Nothing that Jahveh has to
disclose to Job and his three friends even remotely resembles a clue to
the problem that exercised them. The human mind would be unable to grasp
a solution if any existed, for it possesses no forms in which to
apprehend it. This will soon become apparent even to the
non-philosophical reader who endeavours to _reason_ about a state in
which time, space, _and causality_ have no existence. But there is
no solution. Jahveh virtually asks, as Buddha had asked before:
"Shall any gazer see with mortal eyes,
Or any searcher know with mortal mind?
Veil after veil will lift--but there must be
Veil upon veil behind."
Unless we assume some such sudden illumination of the mind as Buddha
obtained under the shadow of the fig-tree and the author of the 73rd
Psalm among the ruins of the kingdom of Juda, it is impossible to account
for Job's unforeseen and entire resignation, or to bring his former
defiant utterances into harmony with the humble sentiments to which he
now gives expression. For nothing but his mind had meanwhile undergone a
change. All the elements of the problem remained what they were. The
evils that had fired his indignation were not denied by their presumptive
author, nor was any explanation of them vouchsafed to him. No remedy was
promised in this life, no hope held out of redress in a possible world to
come. On the contrary, Jahveh confirms the terrible facts alleged by His
servant; He admits that pleasure and pain are not the meed of deeds done
upon earth, and that the explanation we seek, the light we so wistfully
long for, will never come; for human existence is not a dark spot in an
ocean of dazzling splendour, but a will'-o'-the-wisp that merely
intensifies the murkiness of everlasting Night.
Moreover, Job was detached from the world already. He had overcome all
his passions and kept even his legitimate affections under control. He
had no word of regret on losing his cattle, his possessions, his
children. During his most exquisite sufferings, he declared that he held
only to his good name. This, too, he now gives up and demanding nothing,
avers that he is satisfied. "I resign and console myself. Though it be in
dust and ashes." Complete detachment from existence, and not for the sake
of some other and better existence (for there is none) is the practical
outcome of Job's intuition. But in a God-created world made for the
delectation of mankind, to forego its pleasures would be to offend the
Creator, if indeed stark madness could kindle His ire. But to curb one's
thirst for life and to spurn its joys because one holds them to be the
tap root of all evil, is an action at once intelligible and wise. And
this is what Job evidently does when he practises difficult virtues and
undergoes terrible sufferings without the consciousness of past guilt or
the faintest hope of future recompense.
As Buddha taught his followers: "When the disciple has lost all doubt as
to the reality of suffering; when his doubts as to the origin of
suffering are dispelled; when he is no longer uncertain as to the
possibility of annihilating suffering and when he hesitates no more about
the way that leads to the annihilation of suffering: then is he called a
holy disciple, one who is in the stream that floweth onwards to
perfection, one who is delivered from evil, who is guaranteed, who is
devoted to the highest truth."[21]
Footnotes:
[14] One of the best accredited exponents of this theory, which is now
generally accepted by Catholic divines, is Father (now Cardinal)
Mazella.
[15] And Job more than once applies it.
[16] _Cf._ Editio Princeps, Oxford, 1681, p. 287.
[17] Many pious Christians who scoff at such emotions, without
endeavouring to understand them, would do well to remember that
whatever truth there is in the dogma of the immorality of the soul,
is dependant upon this proposition, that time, space, and the law of
casuality have no real existence whatever, but are merely the
furniture of the human mind--the forms in which it apprehends. As
time exists only in our consciousness, and as beginning and end can
take place only in time, they can affect only our consciousness,
which ends in death, but not our souls, which are distinct from mind
and consciousness.
[18] Job, who rejected all secondary causes whatever, could not in logic,
and did not in fact, believe in free will as it is commonly
understood in our days.
[19] _Cf_. Matt. xii. 33-35.
[20] Even the Bible is not wholly devoid of traces of the same symbol
employed to convey the same ideas; _cf._ Matt. xi. 14, John ix. 2,
for the New Testament, and Ps. xc. 3 for the Old. The apparent inner
absurdity of the doctrine of the transmigration of souls arises
mainly from our inability to grasp and realise the two propositions
which it presupposes--viz., that there is no such thing as time
outside of the human mind, and therefore no past or future; and,
secondly, that soul is but individualised will momentarily illumined
by the intellect which is a function of the brain. Metempsychosis was
originally no more than a symbol.
[21] "Samyuttaka-Nikayo," vol. iii. chap. iii. p. 24. _Cf._ Dr. K.
E. Neumann's "Buddhistische Anthologie," Leiden, 1892, p. 204.
* * * * *
DATE OF THE COMPOSITION
The question which frequently exercised the ingenuity of former
commentators, whether the poem of Job is the work of one or of many
authors, has no longer any actuality. It is absolutely certain that the
book, as we find it in the Authorised Version, and even in the best
Hebrew manuscripts, is a mosaic put together by a number of writers
widely differing in their theological views and separated from each other
by whole centuries; and it is equally undoubted that, restored to its
original form, it is "a poem round and perfect as a star"--the
masterpiece of one of the most gifted artists of his own or any age. To
the inquiry where he lived and wrote, numerous tentative replies have
been offered but no final answer. To many he is the last of the venerable
race of patriarchs, and his verse the sweet, sublime lisping of a
childlike nature, disporting itself in the glorious morning of the
world.[22]
This, however, is but a pretty fancy, which will not stand the ordeal of
scientific criticism, nor even the test of a careful common-sense
examination. The broader problems that interest thinking minds of a late
and reflective age, the profounder feelings and more ambitious
aspirations of manhood and maturity, are writ large in every verse of the
poem. The lyre gives out true, full notes, which there is no mistaking.
The hero is evidently a travelled cosmopolitan, who has outgrown the
narrow prejudices of petty patriotism and national religious creeds to
such an extent that he studiously eschews the use of the revealed name of
the God of his people, and seems to believe at most in a far-away and
incomprehensible divinity who sometimes merges into Fate. In the God of
theologians he had no faith. His comforters, who from the uttermost ends
of the earth meet together in a most unpatriarchal manner to discuss the
higher problems of philosophy, allude to the views in vogue in the
patriarchal age as to traditions of bygone days before the influence of
foreign invaders had tainted the purity of the national faith; and
passages like xii. 17, xv. 19, seem to point to the captivity of the
Hebrew people as an accomplished fact. In a word, the strict monotheism
of the hero, which at times borders upon half-disguised secularism, has
nothing in common with the worship of the patriarchs except the absence
of priests and the lack of ceremonies. The language of the poem,
flavoured by a strong mixture of Arabic and Aramaic words and phrases,
and the frequent use of imagery borrowed from Babylonian mythology, to
say nothing of a number of other signs and tokens of a comparatively late
age, render the patriarchal hypothesis absolutely untenable.[23] This, at
least, is one of the few results of modern research about which there is
perfect unanimity among all competent scholars.
If the date of the composition of Job cannot be fixed with any approach
to accuracy, there are at least certain broad limits within which it is
agreed on all hands that it should be placed. This period is comprised
between the prophetic activity of Jeremiah and the second half of the
Babylonian Exile. The considerations upon which this opinion is grounded
are drawn mainly, if not exclusively, from authentic passages of Job
which the author presumably borrowed from other books of the Old
Testament. Thus a comparison of the verses in which the hero curses the
day of his birth[24] with an identical malediction in Jeremiah (xx.
14-15), and of the respective circumstances in which each was written,
leads to the conviction that the borrower was not the prophet whose
writings must therefore have been familiar to the poet. This conclusion
is confirmed by a somewhat far-fetched but none the less valid argument
drawn from the circumstance that Ezekiel,[25] who would probably have
known the poem had it existed in his day, obviously never heard of it;
for this prophet, broaching the question, apparently for the first time
among his countrymen, as to the justice of human suffering, denies point
blank that any man endures unmerited pain,[26] and affirms in emphatic
terms that to each one shall be meted out reward or punishment according
to his works.[27] And this he could hardly have done had he been aware of
the fact that the contradictory proposition was vouched for by no less an
authority than Jahveh Himself.
Again, it is highly probable, although one would hardly be justified in
stating it as an established fact, that certain striking poetic images
clothed in the same form of words in Job and in the Second Isaiah,[28]
are the coinage of the rich imagination of the latter,[29] from whose
writings they must consequently have been taken by the author of Job. If
this assumption be correct, and it is considerably strengthened by
collateral evidence, we should have no choice but to assign to the
composition of the poem a date later than that of the Second Isaiah who
wrote between 546 and 535 B.C. The ingenious and learned German critic,
Dr. Cornill, holds it to be no less than two or three hundred years
younger still, and bases his opinion principally upon the last verse of
the last chapter of the Book of Job, where the expression (Job died) "old
and full of days," is, in his opinion, borrowed from the Priests' Code.
It is, however, needless to analyse this argument, seeing that the verse
in question was wanting in the Septuagint[30] version, and must therefore
be held to be a later addition.
Another question, once a sure test of orthodoxy, the discussion of which
has become equally superfluous to-day, is to what extent the narrative is
based upon historical facts. The second council of Constantinople
solemnly condemned Theodore, Bishop of Mopsuestia, one of the most
enlightened Fathers of the Church, for having advanced the opinion that
the story of Job was a pious fiction and the doctrine it embodies
irreconcileable with orthodoxy. It would be rash to say what conclusion a
council sitting at the end of the nineteenth century would be likely to
arrive at. But it would hardly find fault with the majority of
contemporary critics who hold that the prologue and epilogue, which are
in prose and contain in outline the popular legend of Job, were anterior
to the colloquies between the hero and his friends, bear in fact the same
relation to the poem that the mediaeval legend of Johan Faustus does to
the masterpiece of Goethe. And it was to the popular legend, not to the
poem, that Ezekiel alluded in the passage in which he instances Job as
the type of the just man. But one must needs be endowed with a strong and
child-like faith to accept, in the light of ancient history and modern
science, as sober facts the familiar conversation between Jahveh and the
Adversary in the council-chamber of heaven, the sudden intervention of
the latter in the life of Job, the ease with which he breaks through the
chain of causality and bends even the human will to his purpose, the
indecent haste with which he overwhelms the just man with a torrent of
calamities in the course of one short day, the apparition of Jahveh in a
storm-cloud, and many other equally improbable details. Improbability,
however, is the main feature of all miracles; and faith need not be
dismayed even by the seemingly impossible. In any case where it is
hopeless to convince, it is needless to discuss, and if there still be
readers to whose appreciation of the poem belief in its historical truth
is absolutely indispensable, it would be cruel to seek to spoil or even
lessen their enjoyment of one of the most sublime creations known to any
literature of the world.
Footnotes:
[22] One of the main grounds for this opinion is the absolute ignorance
of the Mosaic law manifested by the author of Job. The line of
reasoning is that he must have been either a Jew--and in that case
have lived before or simultaneously with Moses--or else an Arab, like
his hero, and have written the work in Arabic, Moses himself probably
doing it into Hebrew. To a Hebrew scholar this sounds as plausible as
would the thesis, to one well versed in Greek, that the Iliad is but
a translation from the Sanscrit. The Talmud makes Job now a
contemporary of David and Solomon, now wholly denies his existence.
Jerome, and some Roman Catholic theologians of to-day, identify the
author of the poem with Moses himself, a view in favour of which not
a shred of argument can be adduced. _Cf._ Loisy, "Le Livre de Job,"
Paris, 1892, p. 37; Reuss, "Hiob.," Braunschweig, 1888, pp. 8 ff.
[23] The subject of the date and place of composition has been treated by
Cornill, "Einleitung in das Alte Testament," 235 fol., by Prof.
Duhm, "The Book of Job" (_cf._ "The New World," June, 1894), and
others. But the most lucid, masterly, and dispassionate discussion of
the subject is to be found in Prof. Cheyne's "Job and Solomon,"
chaps. viii.-xii.
[24] Job A.V. iii. 3-10.
[25] 592-572 B.C.
[26] Ezek. xviii. 2, 3.
[27] _Ibid._ 4-9.
[28] "The Second Isaiah" is the name now usually given to the unknown
author of one of the sublimest books of the Old Testament, viz.,
chaps, xl.-lxvi. of the work commonly attributed to Isaiah. It was
composed most probably between 546 and 535 B.C.
[29] They may be found by referring to the parallel passages given in the
margin of the Authorised Version of Job; for instance, chap. xiv.
One example may suffice: In the Second Isaiah, xl. 6-8, we read
"The Voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is
grass, and all the goodliness thereof _is_ as the flower of the
field: the grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of
the Lord bloweth upon it: surely the people _is_ grass. The grass
withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for
ever." In Job we find the winged word embodied in the verse 2, chap.
xiv. A.V. (strophe cxxi.).
Man that is born of a woman,
Poor in days and rich in trouble;
He cometh forth as a flower and fadeth,
He fleeth like a shadow and abideth not.
[30] For the value of the testimony of the Septuagint, _cf_.
following chapter.
* * * * *
THE TEXT AND ITS RECONSTRUCTION
Our Authorised Version of Job is based upon the text handed down to us in
existing Hebrew manuscripts and upon Jerome's Latin translation. None of
the manuscripts, the most important of which are those of the
Vatican,[31] of Alexandria[32] and of Sinai,[33] go further back than the
fourth century A.D. And some of the modifications, made by Jerome in the
Latin translation, particularly in chap. xxi. 25-27, into which he
introduces the Christian idea of the Resurrection, were not based upon
the various readings of the Codices, but inspired by a pious desire to
render the work more edifying. As our Hebrew manuscripts are all derived
from a single copy which was probably contemporaneous with the reign of
the Emperor Hadrian,[34] the words and the corrections of which they
reproduce with Chinese scrupulosity, the utmost we can expect from them
is to supply us with the text as it existed at that relatively late age.
The comparative indifference that reigned before that time as to the
purity of the text of the most important books of the Canon, and the
utter carelessness with which down to the first century of the Christian
era the manuscripts of the Hagiographa[35] were treated, render it highly
probable that long before the reign of Hadrian the poem of Job had
undergone many and serious modifications. The ease with which words
written with consonants only, many of which resembled each other, were
liable to be interchanged, strengthens this probability; while a detailed
study of the various manuscripts and translations transforms it into
certainty. The parallel passages alone of almost any of the books of the
Old Testament yield a rich harvest of divergences.
But involuntary errors of the copyists are insufficient to explain all
the bewildering changes which disfigure many of the books of the Sacred
Scriptures. The gradual evolution of the Hebrew religion from virtual
polytheism to the strictest monotheism seemed peremptorily to call for a
corresponding change in the writings in which the revelation underlying
it was enshrined. A later stadium of the evolution--which, of course, was
never felt to be such--might naturally cause the free and easy views and
lax practices which once were orthodox and universal to assume the odious
form of heresy and impiety, and a laudable respect for the author of
revelation was held to impose the sacred duty of bringing the documentary
records of ancient practices into harmony with present theories. This was
especially true of the Books of Job and Ecclesiastes, in which not only
was the general tone lacking in respect for all that the Jewish community
held sacred, but likewise long and eloquent passages directly called in
question the truth of revelation and blasphemously criticised the
attributes of the Most High.
Gauged by the narrow standards of the Jewish community,[36] some of Job's
most sublime outbursts of poetic passion must have seemed as impious to
his contemporaries as to the theologians of our own country the
"blasphemies" hurled by Byron's Lucifer against the "Everlasting Tyrant."
There can be no doubt that it is to the feeling of holy horror which his
plain speaking aroused in the minds of the strait-laced Jews of 2400
years ago that we have to ascribe the principal and most disfiguring
changes which the poem underwent at the hands of well-meaning censors. It
is quite possible even now to point out, by the help of a few disjointed
fragments still preserved, the position, and to divine the sense, of
certain spiritful and defiant passages which, in the interest of
"religion and morals," were remorselessly suppressed, to indicate others
which were split up and transposed, and to distinguish many prolix
discourses, feeble or powerful word-pictures and trite commonplaces which
were deliberately inserted later on, for the sole purpose of toning down
the most audacious piece of rationalistic philosophy which has ever yet
been clothed in the music of sublime verse.
The disastrous results of these corrections which were made at various
times and by different persons is writ large in the present text of Job
as we find it in the Hebrew manuscripts and our Authorised Version, which
offer us in many places a jumble of disjointed fragments, incoherent,
irrelevant or self-contradictory.
In addition to common sense aided by cautious text criticism which
enables us to recognise interpolations, to correct copyists' errors and
occasionally even to determine the place and the tendency of expunged
passages, the means at our disposal for the restoration of the poem are
principally two: The laws of Hebrew poetry (parallelism and metre) on the
one hand, and a comparison of the Hebrew text with the ancient Greek
translation of the Septuagint,[37] on the other. A judicious use of these
helps which are recognised as such even by the most conservative
Christians, who condemn without hearing the tried methods and least
doubtful conclusions of biblical criticism, enables one to accomplish all
that is now possible towards restoring the poem of Job to its original
form.
The nature and the laws of Hebrew metre, the discovery of which is
indissolubly associated with the name of Prof. Bickell,[38] are identical
with those of Syriac poetry. The unit is the line, the syllables of which
are numbered and accentuated, the line most frequent containing seven
syllables with iambic rhythm. Accentuated syllables alternate regularly
with unaccentuated, whereby the penultimate has the accent; and the
poetic accent always coincides with the grammatical, as in Syriac poetry
and in the Greek verse of early Christian times, the structure of which
was copied from the Syriac. Compare for instance the following:
[Greek:
Hae parthenos saemeron
Ton epouranion tiktei,
Kai hae gae to spaelaion
To aprosito parechei.]
with a strophe from Job:
Shamáti khéllä rábbot:
Menáchme 'amal koól' khem,
Hakeç ledíberé rooch?
Ma-yámriç'khá, ki táhnä?
The second characteristic of Hebrew poetry, which is occasionally to be
found even in prose, is that repetition of the same thought in a slightly
modified form which is commonly known as parallelism. Thus, in the poem
of Job the second line of the strophe expresses an idea very closely
resembling that embodied in the first; and the third and fourth run
parallel in like manner. For instance, Eliphaz, expounding the
traditional teaching that the wicked man is punished in this life, says:
"His offshoot shall wither before his time,
And his branch shall not be green;
He shall shake off his unripe grape, like the vine,
And shall shed his flower, like the olive."
The second important aid to emendation is a careful comparison of the
Hebrew text with the Greek translation known as the Septuagint (LXX.),
which, undertaken and completed in Alexandria between the beginning of
the third and the close of the second century B.C., offers the first
recorded instance of an entire national literature being rendered into a
foreign tongue. The extrinsic value of this work is obvious from the fact
that it enables us to construct a text which is centuries older than that
of which all our Hebrew manuscripts are servile copies, and is over a
thousand years more ancient than the very oldest Hebrew codices now
extant.[39] Not indeed that the poem of Job had undergone no changes
between the time of its composition and the second century B.C. On the
contrary, some of the most important interpolations had already been
inserted[40] and various excisions and transpositions made before the
translator first took the work in hand. But at least the ground is
cleared considerably, seeing that no less than four hundred verses which
we now read in all our present Bibles, Hebrew and vernacular, were tacked
on to the poem at a date subsequent to the Greek translation and
therefore found no place in that version. These additions may, on the
faith of the Septuagint, be struck out with all the less hesitation that
both metre and parallelism confirm with their weighty testimony the
trustworthy evidence of the orthodox translation that the strophes in
question are insertions of a later date.
But the value of the Septuagint depends upon its greater or less immunity
from those disfiguring changes which render the Hebrew text
incomprehensible and from which few ancient works are wholly free. And
unfortunately no such immunity can be claimed for it. What happened to
the original text likewise befell the Greek translation. Desirous of
putting an end to the disputes between Jews and Christians as to the
respective merits of the two, a proselyte from Ephesus, Theodotion by
name, undertook to do the Bible into Greek anew somewhere between 180-192
A.D. The basis of his work was the Septuagint, of which he changed
nothing that in his opinion could stand; but at the same time he
consulted the Hebrew manuscripts and vainly endeavoured to effect a
compromise between the two. Among other innovations, he inserted in his
translation the four hundred interpolated verses which, having been added
to the Hebrew text after it had been first rendered into Greek, could not
possibly have formed part of the Septuagint version. Later on (232-254
A.D.) Origen, anxious to throw light upon the cause of the divergences
between existing translations and the original text, and to provide the
means of judging of the respective merits of these, undertook one of
those wearisome works of industry, which later on constituted a special
feature of the activity of the Benedictine monks. The result of his
researches was embodied in the Hexapla--a book containing, in six
parallel columns, the original text in Hebrew and in Greek letters, the
Greek translation by Aquila, another by Symmachus, the text of the
Septuagint edited by himself, and Theodotion's version. Now Origen,
acting upon the gratuitous assumption that the passages wanting in the
Septuagint had formed part of the original Book of Job and had been
omitted by the translators solely because they failed to understand their
meaning, took them from Theodotion and incorporated them in his edition
of the Septuagint as it appeared in the Hexapla, merely distinguishing
them by means of asterisks. Unfortunately, in the course of time these
distinctive marks disappeared partially or wholly, thus depriving the old
Greek translation of its inestimable value as an aid to text criticism;
and there remained but five manuscripts in which they were to some extent
preserved.[41]
Until recently it was generally taken for granted by Biblical scholars
that there were no codices extant in the world but these five, which
contained data of a nature to enable us to reconstruct the text of the
Septuagint. And the assistance given by these manuscripts was dubious at
best, for they included the misleading additions incorporated in the text
by Origen, merely marking them with asterisks, which were not only
insufficient in number, but oftentimes wrongly distributed. No one
ventured to hope that there was still extant a version from which the
spurious verses were rigorously excluded. And the discovery of such a
text by my friend, Prof. Bickell, marks a new epoch in the history of
Biblical criticism.
One day that distinguished scholar, while sauntering about Monte Pincio
with the late Coptic Bishop, Agapios Bsciai, was informed by this
dignitary that he had found and transcribed a wretched codex of the
Saidic[42] Version of Job in the Library of the Propaganda. Hearing that
numerous passages were wanting in the newly discovered codex, Prof.
Bickell at once conjectured that this "defective" version might possibly
prove to be a translation of the original Septuagint text without the
later additions; and having studied it at the bishop's house saw his
surmise changed to certainty; the text was indeed that of the original
Septuagint without the disfiguring additions inserted by Origen. The late
Prof. Lagarde of Göttingen then applied for, and received, permission to
edit this precious find; but owing to the desire conceived later on by
Pope Leo XIII. that an undertaking of such importance should be carried
out by an ecclesiastic of the Roman Catholic Church, Lagarde's hopes were
dashed at the eleventh hour, and Monsignor Ciasca, to whom the task was
confided, accomplished all that can reasonably be expected from pious
zeal and patient industry.
The Saidic version, therefore, as embodying a purer and more ancient text
of the Book of Job than any we had heretofore possessed, is one of the
most serviceable of the instruments employed in restoring the poem to its
primitive form.[43] It frequently enables us to eliminate passages which
formerly rendered the author's meaning absolutely incomprehensible, and
at other times replaces obscure with intelligible readings which, while
differing from those of the Massoretic manuscripts, are obviously the
more ancient.
Footnotes:
[31] Fourth century A.D.
[32] Fifth century A.D.
[33] Fourth century A.D.
[34] A.D. 117-138.
[35] The Hagiographa--or, as the Hebrews term them, _Ketubim_--include
Job, Proverbs, the Psalms, the Canticle of Canticles, Ruth, the
Lamentations, Koheleth, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and
Chronicles.
[36] As distinguished from the pre-exilian people. Before the Captivity
the Israelites lived the political life of all independent nations.
After the Exile they were but a religious community--a Church. It was
for this Church that the "Mosaic" legislation of the Priests' Code
was written and the ancient historical records retouched.
[37] Completed probably in the second century B.C.
[38] Ewald and others had conjectured long before that the colloquies of
Job were in verse, but their attempts to reduce them to strophes
were of a nature to weaken rather than confirm the theory. That
the strophes consisted of four lines is a discovery of Prof.
Bickell's. At first listened to with scepticism, it is now accepted
by some of the leading critics of Germany, and received with favour
by such English scholars as Prof. Cheyne.
[39] St. Paul in his quotations from the Old Testament usually follows
the Septuagint. But the poem of Job he quotes from a lost version,
some traces of which are to be found in the works of Clement of
Alexandria.
[40] "Inserted" is the strongest term that can be applied to editors who
lived in a time when to foist one's own elucubrations upon a
deceased genius was a work of piety deserving praise. Some of the
acts which were virtues in Job's days have assumed a very different
aspect in ours; but good intentions are always at a premium, and the
Jewish interpolators were animated by the best.
[41] Two Greek, two Latin, and one Syriac.
[42] Also called the Thebaic Version.
[43] As a translation it is a poor performance.
* * * * *
INTERPOLATIONS
Having thus briefly sketched the instruments by means of which the
reconstruction of the poem of Job was undertaken, it may not be amiss to
illustrate the manner in which they are employed in the light of a few
examples. To begin with the structure of the metre. In the Authorised
Version we find (chap. xii. 12) the words: "With the ancient is wisdom,
and in length of days understanding." This in Hebrew is
Bishíshim chókhma
Veórekh yámim t'búna.
The first line therefore has five instead of seven syllables and is
consequently defective; something must have fallen out. This conclusion,
based upon the laws of the metre, is fully borne out by a study of the
context; for it is enough to read Job's reply from the beginning to see
that he could not have set himself to prove, as he is here made to do,
that God is as wise as man; his contention really being that man's
knowledge is ignorance compared with the wisdom of the Being who governs
the universe. For he is arguing against the traditionalists who assert
that justice is the essential characteristic of the conduct of the world,
a thesis refuted by almost everything we see and hear around us. Bildad
besought his sorely tried friend to learn of bygone generations and to
view things through their eyes. "Shall they not teach thee?" he asks
(viii. 10), to which Job's reply is an emphatic negative: "There is
_no_ wisdom with the ancient, nor understanding in length of days."
To agree with his "friend" would be to throw up his case, and this the
Authorised Version makes him do. God alone is endowed with wisdom; but is
He likewise good? To this question His government of the universe alone
can furnish an answer. There must evidently then have been a negative
particle in the text which a copyist, shocked at the seemingly rash
assertion, expunged. If now we add the words "for not" the metre is in
order and the sense perfect:
Ki én bishíshim chókhma
Veórekh yámim t'búna.
Take another instance. The first part of v. 14, chap. xiv. is rendered in
our version as follows: "If a man die shall he live again?" and the
translation would be faithful enough if the Hebrew word were
_hayichyä_, as our MSS. testify, but as an interrogation would
destroy the parallelism of the strophe, it is evident that the syllable
_ha_, which in Hebrew consists of one and not two letters, is an
interpolation, and the word should be _yichyä_ and the strophe
(composed of v. 13 and 14a).
"Oh, that thou wouldst hide me in the grave!
That thou wouldst secrete me till thy wrath be passed!
That thou wouldst appoint me a set time, and remember me!
If so be man could die and yet live on."
Again starting from the recognised principle that the entire poem is
composed on a regular plan and consists exclusively of four-line
strophes, it is obvious that all the tristichs in chapters xxiv. and xxx.
must be struck out. The circumstances that their contents are as
irrelevant to the context as would be a number of stanzas of "The Ancient
Mariner" if introduced into "Paradise Lost," that in form they are wholly
different from the strophes of the poem of Job, and that there is
obviously a sudden break in the text of the latter just when heterodoxy
merges into blasphemy, have forced critics to the conclusion--about which
there is hardly any difference of opinion--that these tristichs are
extracts from a very different work, which were inserted to fill up the
void created by orthodox theologians of a later date.[44]
Besides the four hundred verses which must be excluded on the ground that
they are wanting in the Septuagint Version, and were therefore added to
the text at a comparatively recent period,[45] the long-winded discourse
of Elihu[46] must be struck out, most of which was composed before the
book was first translated into Greek. Common sense, unaided by any
critical apparatus, suffices to mark this tedious monologue as an
interpolation. The poet knew nothing of him who is supposed to have
uttered it. In the prologue in prose where all the actors in this
psychological drama are enumerated and described, Elihu is not once
alluded to; and in the epilogue, where all the debaters are named and
censured, he alone is absolutely ignored. Nay, it is evident that when
Jahveh's discourse was written, the poet had no suspicion of the
existence of this fourth friend; for at the conclusion of the "fourth
friend's" pretentious speech, composed of scraps borrowed from those of
the other actors in the drama, Jahveh addressed all present in a form of
words which implies that not Elihu but Job was the last speaker, and had
only that instant terminated his reply. This fact alone should be
conclusive. But it is confirmed by other weighty considerations which
leave no place for doubt: Thus, Elihu's style is _toto coelo_
different from that of the other parts of the poem: artificial, vague,
rambling, prosaic, and strongly coloured by Aramaic idioms, while his
doctrinal peculiarities, particularly his mention of interceding angels,
while they coincide with those of the New Testament, are absolutely
unknown to Job and his friends. Moreover, if Elihu had indeed formed one
of the _dramatis personae_ of the original work, the _rôle_ he
would and should have assumed is not dubious; he must be the wise man
according to the author's own heart. This he is or nothing. And yet, if
he were really this, we should have the curious spectacle of the poet
developing at great length an idea which runs directly counter to the
fundamental conception underlying the entire work. For Elihu declares
Job's sufferings to be a just punishment for his sins; whereas the poet
and Jahveh Himself proclaim him to be the type of the just man, and
describe his misery as a short, unmerited and exceptional probation.
Evidently then Elihu is the elaborate production of some second-rate
writer and first-class theologian awkwardly wedged into the poem perhaps
a century or more after it had been composed, and certainly before the
work was first translated into Greek.
The confusion introduced into the text by this insertion is bewildering
in the extreme; and yet the result is but a typical specimen of the
inextricable tangle which was produced by the systematic endeavours of
later and pious editors to reduce the poem to the proper level of
orthodoxy. Another instance is to be found in Job's reply to the third
discourse of Bildad: in two passages of this discourse the hero
completely and deliberately gives away the case which he had been
theretofore so warmly defending, and accepts--to reject it later on as a
matter of course--the doctrine of retribution.[47] Now, on the one hand,
if we remove these verses, Job's speech becomes perfectly coherent and
logical, and the description of wisdom falls naturally into its right
place; but, on the other hand, we have no reason whatever to call their
authenticity in question and to strike them out. The solution of this
difficulty is that Zophar who, in our versions, speaks but twice, really
spoke three times, like each of his three colleagues, and that the verses
in question were uttered by him, and not by Job. His discourse was
intentionally split up into two portions, and incorporated in a speech
delivered by Job, in order to represent the hero as an advocate of the
dogma of retribution.
Another example of obviously intentional transposition occurs in chap.
xl. where two verses are introduced as one of Job's replies to God, so as
to allow of the latter delivering a second speech and utilising therein a
fine description of the hippopotamus and the crocodile. Lastly, it needs
little critical acumen to perceive that the scraps of dialogue attributed
to Jahveh in the Hebrew text and Authorised Version are, in so far as
they can claim to be regarded as authentic, but fragments of a single
discourse. It would be preposterous to hold a poet or even an average
poetaster responsible for the muddle made by the negligence of copyists
and the zeal of interpolators who sought thus awkwardly to improve the
author's theology at the cost of his poetry. But it is enough to consider
the elements of this particular question for a moment to perceive that
there can be but one solution. Jahveh makes a long and crushing reply to
Job, gradually merges into fine descriptive but irrelevant poetry, and
then suddenly calls for a rejoinder. The hero, humbled to the dust,
exclaims[48] that he is vile and conscious of his impotence, and will lay
his hand upon his mouth and open his lips no more. Here the matter should
end, for Job has confessed himself vanquished. But no, Jahveh, instead of
being touched by this meek avowal and self-humiliation, must needs
address the human worm as if he had turned against his Creator, and asks
such misplaced questions as "Hast thou an arm like God?" As a matter of
fact, Jahveh, whose apparition is but a poetic symbol of the sudden flash
of light which illumined the mind of the despairing hero, spoke but once.
For Job, one glimpse through the veil was enough, one rapid glance at the
realm where all is dark, and deep lies
"under deep unknown,
And height above unknown height."
Footnotes:
[44] Chap. xxiv. 5-8, 10-24 and chap. xxx. 3-7 take the place of Job's
blasphemous complaint about the unjust government of the world.
[45] For the benefit of readers who shrink from making any alteration in
the Bible, and who are mostly unaware that innumerable and
wide-reaching changes were effected in it by the negligence or
design of scribes, theologians, and others, it may be well to point
out that none of the changes rendered necessary by the reconstruction
of the Books of Job and Ecclesiastes in any way affects whatever
degree of inspiration they feel disposed to attribute to the Bible as
a whole, or to the interpolations in particular. The point of view of
the critic, if by no means identical with that of the pious
worshipper, need not to clash with it. An interpolation may be--and
as we here see very often is--much more orthodox than an original
text, and the more recent its origin the greater the chances that it
will be so.
[46] xxxii.-xxxvii. In the Septuagint Version Elihu's discourse occupies
but little more than half the number of verses to be found in the
Hebrew manuscript and in the Authorised Version.
[47] xxvii. 8-10, 14-23.
[48] xl. 4-5.
* * * * *
JOB'S THEOLOGICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL CONCEPTIONS
Although the main object of the poet is to present in a clear,
comprehensive and palpable form the sphinx riddle of human existence, his
work abounds nevertheless in a variety of interesting data, which throw
considerable light upon the philosophical and theological theories in
vogue among the thoughtful spirits of the Jewish community. Their
"natural philosophy" offers little that is likely to interest and nothing
of a nature to instruct the well-informed reader of to-day. But the
mythological concreteness and palpitating vitality of all its elements
profoundly impress us, less because of the curious standard they supply
by which to gauge the intellectual level of that age than as the symbols
chosen by the poet to express the identity and nothingness of all things
living and inanimate. Before God, all creatures think, reason, speak,
like man, because all are equal to him and he is but a breath. The stars,
which are relatives of the Satan and of God's own children, wax
enthusiastic and shout for joy; the lightning hearkens to the voice of
its Creator and, flashing athwart the heavens, announces its presence.
The sun is in continual danger of being devoured by a rapacious monster
upon whom a watch has to be set; and all things live and move in the same
way and by exactly the same force that dwells and acts in man with whom
they are one in essence; and he himself is but a flower that sprouts,
fades and dies.[49] Death is the end of man and beast and flower and
grass alike; and after death comes dismal darkness. There is no
difference among them. Man is no more and no less than all the rest.
_Sheol_, or the realm of the dead, is a murky, silent and dreary
abode, the shadowy inmates of which are as if they were not, unconscious
as infants "which never saw the light."
This state, which is not perhaps absolutely equivalent to complete
annihilation, is yet identical with that of "an hidden untimely birth."
Translated into the language of philosophy this somewhat vague notion
might be expressed as follows: All things, past, present and to come,
which flit as unreal shadows on the wall of time and space, are
manifestations of the one sole force which is everlasting and
omnipresent. They are not parts of a whole which is one and divisible:
all that we see and know of them in life is nothing; and after death they
are what they were before--identical with the one.
"One life through all the immense creation runs,
One spirit is the moon's, the sea's, the sun's;
All forms in the air that fly, on the earth that creep,
And the unknown nameless creatures of the deep--
Each breathing thing obeys one mind's control,
And in all substance is a single soul."
For Job's theory of the universe is dynamic and recognises but one force,
which is so vague and indefinite that he hesitates to bestow upon it the
name of the concrete God of the Jews.[50] There is no multiplicity, no
duality, no other substance, no other cause. The One is and does alone.
All things are shadowy delusions; He alone is real. We are nothing except
in Him. Evil as well as good is His work. The Satan who tortures Job is
one of the sons of God to whom special power is exceptionally delegated;
but, as a rule, God Himself punishes the just and showers His blessings
on the wicked. Everything that happens is the outcome of His will. There
is no nature, no causation, no necessary law in the physical world; every
event is the embodiment of the one will which is absolutely free, and
therefore, neither to be foreseen nor explained.
Like Koheleth, Job seems to hold that intelligence is something secondary
not primordial. Man, who is richly endowed with it on earth, knows really
nothing, never can know anything, about the origin and reason of things.
They are absolutely unknowable. He finds abyss yawning under abyss,
height towering above height, and dark mysteries encompass him
everlastingly.
"But wisdom--whence shall it come?
And where is the place of understanding?
It is hid from the eyes of all living" (cxxxiv.).
And if there be at most but will-o'-the-wisps on this side of the shadow
of Night, there is nought but absolute darkness beyond.
These considerations would seem to offer a very satisfactory explanation
of the monotheism of the poet which is far in advance of that of his
contemporaries, to whatever age we may assign him. It is a purely
philosophical conception which never was and never can be enshrined in a
theological dogma, and to seek for its genesis in the evolution of the
Jewish religion is far less reasonable than to derive it from the
philosophy of the Greeks or the Hindoos.
Job's theory of ethics differs widely from that of his friends and
contemporaries, and indeed from that of the bulk of mankind of all times.
The Jews believed in fleeting pleasures and pains in this life as the
sole recompense for virtue and sin; their modern heirs and successors
hope for eternal bliss or fear everlasting suffering in the next. The
motives deducible from both creeds are identical, and philosophy connotes
them as egotism. Whether the meed I long for or the pain I would shun be
transitory or everlasting, the moment my individual well-being becomes
the motive of my conduct it is not easy to perceive where morality comes
in. And so universally is egotism to be found at the root of what appear
to us to be the most generous actions, that the Adversary was right
enough in refusing, without conclusive proof, to enrol Job's name in the
short list of exceptions. But Job's ethics were many degrees above proof.
In no book of the ancient Testament and in no religion or philosophy of
the old world, if we except Buddhism, do we find anything to compare with
the sublime morality inculcated in the poem that bears his name. It
utterly ignores the convenient and profitable virtue known as "duty to
one's self" and bases all the other virtues on pity for our fellows, who
are not merely our brethren but our very selves. The truly moral man
should be able to say with Job:
"I delivered the poor that cried aloud,
And the orphan and him that had none to help him;
And I gladdened the heart of the widow (ccxlvii.).
I became eyes to the blind,
And I was feet unto the lame (ccxlviii.).
If I saw one perish for lack of clothing,
Or any of the poor devoid of covering;
Then surely did his loins bless me,
And he was warmed with the fleece of my sheep (cclxix.).
I have never made gold my hope (cclxxi.).
Never did I rejoice at the ruin of my hater,
Nor exult when misery found him out (cclxxiii.).
Did not he that made me in the womb, make him? (cclxvii.)
Did I not weep for him that was in trouble?" (cclix.).
And having accomplished all this without fear of pain,
"Gaze onward without claim to hope,
Nor, gazing backward, court regret."
This is the only system of morality deserving that much-abused name; it
was preached and to a great extent practised in India by the Jainists and
the Buddhists, and for the first time in the Old Testament by the author
of our poem.
All the ills and sorrows of life, merited and unmerited alike, Job is
prepared for. They are the commonplaces of human existence and as
inseparable from it as shadow from light. But what he cannot endure is
the thought that his good name, the sole comfort left him in his misery,
shall be sacrificed to a theological theory which runs counter to every
fact of public history and private experience. This is an injustice which
seems to strike at the root of all morality, and he passionately attacks
all who uphold it, even though God Himself be of the number. For he has
unshaken faith in eternal justice as something independent even of the
deity. Its manifestations may be imperceptible and incomprehensible to
us, but it governs the universe all the same, and faith in this fact was
his lodestar when sun and moon had gone out and the aimless tornado raged
around and ghastly horrors issued from the womb of Night. The wicked may
prosper and the just man die on a dunghill, scorned by all and seemingly
forsaken by God Himself, but it is none the less true that sin and
suffering, virtue and reward are fruits of the same tree, one and
indivisible. They are the manna the taste of which adapts itself to the
eater. Job expresses the conviction, which St. Bernard so aptly
formulated when he said: "Nought can harm me but myself;" and it is this
conviction that nerves and sustains him in his defiant challenge to the
Most High and prompts his appeal to eternal justice against even God
Himself:
"Will he plead against me with his almighty power?
If not, then not even he would prevail against me.
For a righteous one would dispute with him." (ccxvi.)
But after the theophany, when the truth has dawned upon the mind of the
heroic sufferer, he sees that eternal justice needs not even this
certificate of its existence, that it can dispense with the most eloquent
human advocate, and he waives what he had theretofore held to be his
indefeasible right and puts the crown on his system of ethics by enduring
his lot in silence.
Peace grounded on knowledge, therefore, is the end of Job's doubts and
misgivings. But it is not the knowledge of a reward to come, a
presentiment of the joys of heaven, of an everlasting feeding-trough
where our hunger and thirst for existence shall be satiated for ever and
ever. It is that sobering knowledge which is increase of sorrow.
Injustice in the world there is none; if all beings living are liable to
pain, and everything animate and inanimate is subject to decay and death,
the reason is that suffering and dissolution are the conditions of
existence, which is therefore an evil. To desire the one is to wish for
or accept the other. This is the conviction which brings peace to the
soul of the hero and enables him to exclaim:
"I resign and console myself,
Though in dust and ashes."
Footnotes:
[49] Strophe cxxi.
[50] Lagarde seems to have hit the mark when he affirms that the poet's
faith in God reduces itself to a vague belief in the divine.
* * * * *
ANALYSIS OF THE POEM
The popular legend of Job, which was current among the Hebrews and
probably among their Semitic neighbours for centuries before the poem was
composed, is embodied in the prologue and epilogue,[51] which are written
in prose. The data it contains are utilised by the author for the purpose
of clearly stating, not of elucidating, the main problem, and it would be
a grave mistake on the part of the reader to attempt to supplement the
reasoning of Job's friends by arguments drawn from the details narrated
in the legend. Thus, the conversation between Jahveh and the Satan is
obviously intended to establish the all-important fact that Job, although
not a member of the chosen people, a believer in their priestly dogmas,
nor an observer of their religious rites and ceremonies, was none the
less a truly just man, the perfect type of the righteous of all times and
countries. On the other hand, the circumstances that his sufferings were
no more than a probation, and that they were followed by fabulous wealth
and intensified happiness, are dismissed by the poet as wholly irrelevant
to the question at issue. Nor, considering their purely exceptional
character, would they have tended in any degree to solve it. If Job's
misery was an ordeal, all unmerited suffering cannot be pressed into the
same convenient category. His individual privations and pains may have
been compensated for by subsequent plenty and prosperity; but there are
other just men who rot on the dunghill and die in despair. The author,
therefore, wisely refrained from drawing on the legend more extensively
than was absolutely needful for the materials of his poem, and from thus
reducing a universal problem to the dimensions of an individual case.
The folk-story of the just man, Job, is conceived in the true spirit of
Eastern legendary lore. The colours are laid on with an ungrudging hand.
He was not merely well-to-do and contented, he was the happiest mortal
who had ever walked the earth in his halcyon days, and the most
hopelessly wretched during his probation.
But although wont, as the Preacher recommends, to fill up his cup with
the wine of life, "pressing all that it yields of mere vintage," he was
anything but an egotist. The broad stream of his sympathy flowed out
towards all his fellows, nay, to all things animate and inanimate. The
sheep, the lion, the eagle, and the oxen, were his comrades, the fire and
the wind his kinsmen. Even for his worst enemies he had no curse, nor did
he ever rejoice in their merited misfortunes. So blameless and upright
was his living and working, so completely had he eschewed even
heart-sins, that he might have carried windows in his breast that all
might see what was being done within.
Now, in accordance with the retribution-theory then in fashion--small
temporary profits and quick returns--he had amply merited his good
fortune, and might have reasonably expected to enjoy it to the close of a
long life, which for him was the end of everything. In fact, he had no
longer any serious grounds for apprehending the gathering of clouds of
misfortune to darken the sunshine of his existence, seeing that he had
already attained to a ripe age, was possessed of vast herds of cattle and
thousands of camels, was blest with a numerous family, and passed for
"the greatest of all the children of the East." But the most specious
theological theories are as powerless to guarantee the just man from the
blows of adversity as to hinder the worm from finding the blushing rose's
"bed of crimson joy"; and whether pain and sorrow be labelled "probation"
or "just punishment," they will never cease to figure among the
commonplaces of human existence.
At one of the social gatherings of the courtiers of heaven, Jahveh takes
occasion to laud the virtue of the just man, Job, whereupon the Satan,
who not only understands, but sees through the righteousness of the bulk
of mankind, expresses his conviction that it has its roots in mere
selfishness. Jahveh then empowers the Adversary to put it to the test by
depriving Job of his possessions and his family. On this, the hero's
wealth and happiness vanished as suddenly as the smile on the face of an
infant, and in a twinkling, so to say, he was changed into a perfect type
of human wretchedness.
By one of those extraordinary miracles which are characteristic of
Oriental fiction, in the course of a single day Job's four hundred yoke
of oxen were seized and carried off by the Sabeans, his seven thousand
scattered sheep were sought out and consumed by lightning, his three
thousand camels were driven away by Chaldeans, and his sons and daughters
killed by the falling of a house. Being but human, Job's soul is harrowed
up by grief; but, recognising the emptiness of all things, he endures his
lot manfully and without murmur or complaint.
When the sons of God met again in the council chamber of heaven, Jahveh
triumphantly inquired of the Adversary what he now thought of Job's
virtue and its taproot. But the Satan still clung tenaciously to his low
view of the mainspring of the hero's conduct. "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.
And the Lord said unto the Adversary: "Behold he is in thine hand; only
spare his life." Whereupon he was smitten with the most loathsome disease
known in the East, which together with the moral suffering resulting from
utter abandonment, besieged him, "even to the gates and inlets of his
life." But firm and manful, with strength nurtured by the witness of his
own conscience, and the conviction that true virtue is independent of
reward, he maintains the citadel unconquered, refusing to open the
portals even to Jahveh Himself.
Nothing can subdue Job, not even the bitter fruits of the diabolical
refinement of the Adversary who, having permission to slay all the hero's
kith and kin, spares his spouse, lest misery should harbour any
possibilities unrealised.
At last three of Job's friends come from the uttermost ends of the earth
to visit and console him. Travelling over enormous distances, and setting
out from opposite points of the compass, they all contrive to reach the
sufferer at the same moment; and at the sight of the deformed and
loathsome figure of their friend are all three struck dumb with grief.
Without any previous consultation among themselves, they sit silent and
sad for seven days and seven nights, gazing with fascinated horror on the
misshapen figure on the dunghill. This curious manifestation of
friendship unmans the hero whose fortitude had been proof against the
most cruel physical and moral suffering; utterly breaking down, he "fills
with woes the passing wind," and bitterly curses his existence. Awe at
first keeps him from censuring God's ways; truthfulness from condemning
himself. He cannot understand why he suffers, whether there be any truth
or none in the traditional doctrine of unfailing retribution upon earth;
for he has certainly done everything to merit happiness and nought to
deserve punishment. Society, however, is there in the person of his
friends to dispel this delusion. They hold a brief for the cut-and-dried
theology of the day which tells them that in Job there was a reservoir of
guilt and sin filling up from youth to age, which now, no longer able to
hold its loathsome charge, burst and overwhelmed with misery their friend
and his family. They play their parts very skilfully, at first softly
stroking, as it were, the beloved friend, as if to soothe his pain, and
then vigorously rubbing the salt in the gaping wounds of the groaning
victim.
The campaign is opened mildly by Eliphaz, a firm believer in the spooks
and spectres of borderland, who, in reply to Job's complaint, assures his
friend that no really innocent human being ever died in misery as he now
seems to be dying, and gently reminds him that "affliction shooteth not
from the dust, neither doth trouble sprout up from the ground;" they need
the fertile soil of sin, which Job must have provided, unknown to his
easy-going friends who, taking him at his own estimation, heretofore
considered him a just man. But even if he were what he would have them
believe he is, he has no ground for just complaint: for "happy is the man
whom God correcteth." To this the hero replies, accentuating his
innocence, and pouring forth his plaint in "wild words," for God "useth
me as an enemy." He seeks not for mercy, he explains, but for justice,
nay, he is magnanimous enough to be content with even less. He only asks
of God,
"That it would please him to destroy me,
That he would let go his hand and cut me off;"[52]
and this request having been refused, suicide, the ever "open door" of
the Stoics, invited him temptingly in, but he withstood the temptation,
and comforted himself with the knowledge that all things in time have an
end.
"My soul would have chosen strangling,
And death by my own resolve.
But I spurned it; for I shall not live for ever."[53]
The arbitrary and incomprehensible will of the deity may, in ultimate
analysis, be the changeful basis of right and wrong, but, if so, divine
justice differs from human not merely in degree but likewise in
character, and not apparently to its advantage. The tuneful Psalmist had
sung in ecstatic wonder at the mercy of God: "What is man, that thou art
mindful of him? and the son of man that thou visitest him? For thou hast
made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory
and honour."[54] Job, having looked upwards in the same direction, not
for mercy but for simple justice, and looked in vain, parodies with
bitter irony those same verses of the Psalm:
"What is man that thou shouldst magnify him?
And that thou shouldst set thine heart upon him?
That thou shouldst visit him every morning,
And try him every moment?"[55]
Bildad, the Traditionalist _par excellence_, then addresses a sharp
reproof to the just man who refused to recognise as mercy in God the
conduct which, were a man responsible for it, he must needs condemn as
wickedness. He bids him inquire of bygone generations what they thought
of the goodness of the Creator, and asks him to be guided by the wisdom
of his fore-fathers, who lived and throve on the spiritual food of
retribution which he now rejects with loathing. This attack provokes a
new outburst on the part of Job, who ironically paraphrases and develops
the ideas of his comforters, deriding the notion that the deity can
change right into wrong or that true morality needs the divine will as a
basis.
"How should man be in the right against God?
If he long to contend with him,
He cannot answer him one of a thousand."[56]
"Lo, he glideth by me and I see him not;
And he passeth on, but I perceive him not."[57]
His friends had recommended him to pray for pardon and repent, and had
promised him the return of his happiness as a consequence. But Job scouts
the idea. His righteousness, if he indeed possess it, is his own; no
prayers can add to, no punishment can take from, that.
"I must make supplication unto his judgment,
Who doth not answer me, though I am righteous!"[58]
And as for a God who being almighty is yet unjust, prayer would be
superfluous, no supplications would avail aught with Him; He would cause
even incarnate holiness to appear wicked in its own eyes.
"Though I were just, my own mouth would condemn me;
Though I were faultless, he would make me crooked."
For even the will of a created being is in the hands of its Creator, and
is not, cannot be, free. Job feels and knows that he is right-minded and
good, and he puts the testimony of his own conscience above the decrees
of any beings, human or divine, which, whatever else they may achieve,
cannot shake the foundations of true justice and morality, which are
eternal.
"Faultless I am, I set life at naught;
I spurn my being, therefore I speak out."[59]
And the outcome of his outspokenness is a solemn charge of injustice
against God,[60] a sigh of profound regret that he was ever born into
this miserable world, and a wish that his sufferings might "come to an
end before he should return to the land of darkness and of gloom" whence
he came.
After this, Zophar, the third comforter, opens his lips for coarse
vituperation rather than sharp rebuke, and regrets that God Himself does
not feel moved to give a practical lesson of wisdom to the conceited
"prattler," who persists in believing in his own innocence in spite of
the unmistakable judgment of his just Creator and the unanimous testimony
of his candid friends. Job's reply to this vigorous advocate of God is
even more powerful and indignant than any of the foregoing. He repeats
and emphasises his indictment against the Deity. No omnipotent being who
was really just and good could approve, or even connive at, much less
practise, the scandalous injustice which characterises the conduct of the
universe and the so-called moral order, and of which his own particular
grievances are a specimen. Not that the curious spectacle that daily
meets our eye, wherein wickedness and hypocrisy are prosperous and
triumphant while truth and integrity are trampled under foot, is
necessarily incompatible with absolute and eternal justice; it is
irreconcileable only with the attributes of a personal deity, an almighty
and just creator, who would necessarily be responsible for these evils as
for all things else, if he existed. If the world be the work of an
omnipotent maker, its essential moral characteristic partakes of the
nature of his attributes; and the main moral feature of our world is
evil, and not good. This is the ever-recurring refrain of Job's
discourses. Nor does he hesitate when occasion offers to proclaim his
conviction in the plainest of plain language, for he entertains no fear
of what may further befall him.
"Lo, let him kill me, I cherish hope no more,
Only I will justify my way before his face."[61]
The three friends return a second time to the charge, each one speaking
in the same order as before, and each one eliciting a separate reply, in
which Job reaffirms his innocence, reiterates his indictment against the
Most High, and reproaches his comforters with their off-hand condemnation
of an attitude resulting from sufferings which they are slow to realise
and from knowledge which they are unable to grasp. In his rejoinder to
Zophar, he lays special stress upon the prosperity and success of the
wicked who scoff at the laws of God and yet "while away their days in
bliss." If God will not punish them, is He just? If He cannot, is He
almighty? As He does not, why speak of the moral order of His world or of
the moral attributes of Himself?
Ehphaz opens the third series of speeches by accusing his friend of
selfishness, dishonesty, hard-heartedness and avarice, on no better
grounds than the assumption that God's justice warrants us in believing
that where punishment is inflicted there also must sin have been
committed. Job, instead of condescending to refute the charge, ironically
admits it, and then bitterly remarks that he would like to know how God
would justify His conduct and convict him of sin if only they both could
argue out the question together on terms of equality. But in all the
universe he looks for God in vain:
"Behold, I go forward, but he is not there,
And backward, but I cannot perceive him."[62]
Bildad then proceeds to emphasise the omnipotence of the Creator with
whom the human worm, the maggot, dares to enter into judgment, and Job
replies to all three, refuting them out of their own mouths. His
conscience, he tells them, is proof sufficient of his right conduct,
whereas his misery, by their own admission, proves nothing at all.
"Till I die, I will not yield up my integrity!
My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it go,
My heart doth not censure any one of my days."[63]
As for the argument from punishment to sin, all three friends had in the
course of their speeches laid it down that the lines on which the
universe is governed are known to no man. If this be so, who are they
that have surprised the secret and found the clue to the enigma? Who
revealed to them that retribution is the basis of the moral order? Man
knows nothing, can never hope to know anything, of the inner working of
the world, of the why and the wherefore of our miserable being and of the
existence of all things. The Godhead alone could fathom these
mysteries,[64] if He existed.
Job takes no notice of the succeeding brief remarks of Zophar in his
final and longest discourse which, replete with sorrowful reminiscences
of his past happy life, is less defiant than any of those that preceded.
Wandering in thought through the necropolis of buried hopes, fears and
achievements, he seems to inhale an atmosphere of soothing melancholy
that softens and subdues his wild passion. The vibration of past efforts
and of deeds long since done, trembling along his tortured frame, causes
even saddest thoughts to blend with sweet sensations. Then turning from
what once was to what now is, and missing the logical nexus between the
two states, he solemnly calls upon God to produce it, if He can:
"Here is my signature; let the Almighty answer me,
And hear the indictment which my adversary hath written."[65]
Scarcely has Job finished speaking when Jahveh appears in a whirlwind and
the heart of the clouds is cloven by a voice of thunder startling the
silent air. The purpose of His coming is to prove men's ignorance, not to
enlighten it, at least not beyond the degree involved by affixing the
highest seal to the negative views expressed by the hero. He plies Job
with a number of questions on cosmology, astronomy, meteorology, &c.,
with a view to show that we are ignorant of the ultimate reason of even
the most familiar objects and phenomena, and practically know nothing
about anything. The natural conclusion is that they are unknowable, and
that intellect, knowledge, consciousness, is something secondary,
accidental, and as transitory as the life it accompanies. To make an
exception in favour of Jahveh Himself, would be to lose sight of the
important fact that His apparition was never meant by the poet to be
taken literally.[66]
It is neither more nor less than a symbol of the insight which Job
obtains into the nature of things, of the light which enables him to see
that there is naught but darkness now and for ever. He perceives by the
simplest, clearest, and most conclusive of all mental processes, a direct
intuition, the truth of the ideas to some of which he had but coldly
assented before--viz., that things are but shadows and existence an evil;
that underlying every being, animate and inanimate, there is a force
existing outside the realm of time and space, and that it is at bottom
identical with the human will; that eternal justice lies at the root of
everything, is the ultimate basis of all existence; that the sufferings
of men, innocent or guilty, and the prevalence of evil are incompatible
with a personal creator; that intellect is secondary, and barely
sufficient for the practical needs of life, after which it ceases to be
an attribute of whatever of man may outlive his body; and, finally, that
as we can know nothing beyond the bare fact that there is an absolute law
of compensation from which there is no exemption, it behoves us to
cultivate ethics rather than science, and to resign ourselves
uncomplainingly to the inevitable.
However unpalatable these final conclusions may appear to pious readers
accustomed to seek in the Book of Job for the most striking proofs of
some of the principal teachings of the Christian dispensation, it is
difficult, not to say impossible, to study the work in its restored form
and arrive at any other. With Job, God and wisdom are synonymous. And of
the latter he says:
"But wisdom--whence shall it come?
And where is the place of understanding?
It is hid from the eyes of all living,
Our ears alone have heard thereof."[67]
These words were uttered before he had obtained the insight which brought
resignation in its train. He alludes to them in his last brief discourse.
"I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear,
But now mine eye hath beheld thee;
Therefore I resign and console myself,
Though in dust and ashes."[68]
Professor Bickell puts the matter very lucidly in his short but
comprehensive introduction to the poem: "As long as Job, solicitous for
his understanding, demanded an explanation of his unutterable suffering,
whereby the mysterious, piteous condition of mankind is shadowed forth,
his seeking was vain, and he ran the risk of loosing himself in the
problems of eternal justice, the worth of upright living, and even the
existence of God; for an unjust, ruthless, almighty being is no God. But
by means of the theophany--which is to be understood merely as a process
in his own heart, and which clearly shows him the impotence of feeble man
to unravel the world-enigmas--he attains to insight; not, indeed, of a
positive kind such as a knowledge of the ways of God would confer, but
negative insight by means of that resignation which flows from excess of
pain. It is thus that his own heroic saying is fulfilled about the
reaction of unmerited suffering upon the just man."[69]
"But the righteous holds on his way,
And the clean-handed waxeth ever stronger."[70]
Footnotes:
[51] The prologue is contained in chaps. i.-ii.; the epilogue in chap.
xlii. 7-17 of our English Bibles.
[52] Strophe xxxv.
[53] Strophe lii.
[54] Psa. viii. 4, 5.
[55] Strophe liii.
[56] Strophe lxv.
[57] Strophe lxix.
[58] Strophe lxxi.
[59] Strophe lxxiii.
[60] Strophe lxxiv-lxxviii.
[61] Strophe cxv. _Cf_. strophe clxix., where he dares his friend to
prove him guilty of blasphemy when he is merely giving expression
to the truth:
"If indeed ye will glorify yourselves above me,
And prove me guilty of blasphemy;
Know, then, that God hath wronged me!"
[62] Strophe ccxvii.
[63] Strophe ccxxx.
[64] As Professor Bickell rightly remarks: "At bottom what Job means is,
that God alone knows the meaning of our sorrowful existence, if,
indeed, He does know it" ("Das Buch Job," p. 5).
[65] Strophe cclxxvi.
[66] The mere circumstance that the Deity is no longer called by His
usual name when He appears in the whirlwind is of itself an
indication that the poet was not alluding to God.
[67] Strophe ccxxxiv.
[68] Strophe cccix.
[69] _Cf._ Bickell, _op. cit._ pp. 8-9.
[70] Strophe clvi.
KOHELETH
* * * * *
[Greek: Archaen men mae phynai epichthonioisin ariston Maed' eisidein
augas oxeos aeëliou. Phynta d'hopos okista pylas Aidao peraesai, Kai
keisthai pollaen gaen epamaesamenon.]
Theognis.
* * * * *
CONDITION OF THE TEXT
Of all the books of the Old Testament, not excepting the Song of Songs,
none offers such rich materials to the historian of philosophy or such
knotty problems to the philological critic as Koheleth[70] or
Ecclesiastes. This interesting treatise is, in its commonly received
shape, little more than a tissue of loose disjointed aphorisms and
contradictory theses concerning the highest problems of ethics and
metaphysics. The form of the work is characterised by an utter lack of
plan; the matter by almost impenetrable obscurity. So completely
entangled are the various threads of thought, that few commentators or
critics possessed the needful degree of hope and courage to set about
unravelling them. One paragraph, for instance, is saturated with
Buddhistic pessimism; another breathes a spirit of religious resignation,
of almost hearty hopefulness; this sentence lays down a universal
principle which is absolutely denied by the next; the thesis is followed
by proofs, in the very midst of which lurks the antithesis; a series of
profound remarks upon one subject is suddenly interrupted by bald
statements about another, the irrelevancy of which is suggestive of the
ravings of a delirious fever patient. Thus one verse begins[71] by
recommending men to make the most of their youth by following the bent of
their inclinations and the desire of their eyes, such enjoyment being a
gift of God,[72] and finishes by threatening all who act upon the advice
with condign punishment to be ultimately dealt out by God Himself; and
the very next verse proceeds to draw the logical conclusion, which oddly
enough, runs thus: "_therefore_ drive sorrow from thy heart, and put
away evil from thy flesh." In one place[73] the writer solemnly and sadly
affirms that the destiny of the upright and the wicked, the wise and the
foolish is wholly alike; in another[74] he seems to proclaim that the
unrighteous shall suffer for their evil-doing, while the God-fearing
shall be rewarded with long life, which again he stoutly denies shortly
before and immediately afterwards. It is impossible to read chap. ii. 11
and 12 without coming to the conclusion that we either have to do with
the incoherent ravings of a disordered mind, or else that the leaves of
the original manuscript were dislocated and then put together
haphazard.[75] The "for" that connects the seventh and eighth verses of
chapter vi. is forcibly suggestive of the line of argument which made
Tenterden Steeple the cause of Goodwin Sands, while the nexus between the
sixth and seventh verses of chapter xi. is scarcely more obvious than
that which is to be found between any two of the nonsense verses that
amuse intelligent children in "Alice in Wonderland." And yet this
production, in its present chaotic condition, has been, and is still,
gravely attributed to the pen of King Solomon in his character as the
ideal sage of humanity![76]
Footnotes:
[70] The most satisfactory translation of the word Koheleth is, the
Speaker. "Preacher" conveys a modern and incorrect notion.
[71] xi. 9.
[72] ii. 24.
[73] ix. 2.
[74] viii. 12, 13.
[75] The verses in question are: "11. Then I looked on all the works that
my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to
do: and, behold, all _was_ vanity and vexation of spirit, and _there
was_ no profit under the sun. 12. And I turned myself to behold
wisdom, and madness, and folly: for what _can_ the man _do_ that
cometh after the king _even_ that which hath been already done."
[76] Only, however, by the strictest of orthodox theologians, who
admiringly attribute to the Holy Spirit a hopeless confusion of
ideas which they would resent as insulting if predicated of
themselves. As a matter of historic fact, Solomon, so far from
meriting his reputation as a philosopher, was a rough-and-ready
kinglet, who ruled his subjects with a rod of iron and ground
them down with intolerable burdens.
* * * * *
PRIMITIVE FORM OF THE BOOK
The desperate efforts of professional theologians to smooth away,
explain, and reconcile all these incoherences and contradictions,
constitute one of the most marvellous exhibitions of mental acrobatics
recorded even in the history of hermeneutics. Many of these exegetes set
out on the assumption that a revelation vouchsafed to Solomon could not
possibly embody any statement incompatible with the truths of
Christianity which emanate from the same eternal source; and they all
firmly held that at the very least it must be in harmony with the
fundamental dogmas common to Judaism and the teachings of Christ. In
reality, what this generous hypothesis came to, whenever there was no
question of text criticism involved, was a substitution of the human
ideal for the divine execution. The best accredited contemporary
theologians however, Catholic and non-Catholic, have insight enough to
descry the stamp of true inspiration in a book which enshrines some of
the highest truths laid down in the Sermon on the Mount combined with a
good deal that obviously clashes with theological dogmas formulated at a
much later date for the behoof of a very different social organism. In
any case the original work, as it appears to have issued from the hand of
"Koheleth," was composed in a spirit as conducive to true morality as the
sublime eloquence of Isaiah or the absolute resignation of the author of
the 73rd Psalm. Critics who succeeded in satisfactorily solving many of
the philological, philosophical, and historical problems suggested by
Koheleth utterly failed to find therein any traces of an intelligible
plan. It was reserved to Professor Bickell, of Vienna, to point out what
seem to be the true lines on which alone it is possible to arrive at a
solution alike satisfactory to the reader and respectful to the author.
His theory[77]--it is, and it can be no more than a theory--which has
already received the adhesion of some of the most authoritative Bible
scholars on the Continent, may be briefly summed up as follows: The
present disordered condition of the book, Koheleth, is the result of the
shifting of the sheets of the Hebrew manuscript from their original
places and of the addition of a number of deliberate interpolations. The
latter are of two kinds: those which seemed necessary for the purpose of
supplying the cement required to join together the unconnected verses
which, in consequence of the dislocation, were unexpectedly placed side
by side, and the passages composed with the object of toning down, or
serving as a counterpoise to the very unorthodox views of the writer.
Professor Bickell's assumption involves no inherent improbability, runs
counter to no ascertained facts, and is therefore perfectly tenable. What
it supposes to have occurred to Koheleth has, in fact, often happened to
other works, religious and profane. It can be conclusively shown, for
instance, that certain leaves of the Book of Ecclesiasticus dropped, in
like manner, from the Greek Codex, whereby three chapters were transposed
from their original places; for the Latin and Syriac versions, which were
made before the accident, still exhibit the original and only
intelligible arrangement. An old Syriac manuscript of the poems of Isaac
of Antioch, now in the Vatican Library, suffered considerably from a
similar mishap, and various other cases in point have come under the
notice of orientalists and archaeologists.[78] In the present instance,
what is believed to have taken place is this. The Hebrew Codex, of which
no translation had as yet been made, consisted of a series of fascicules,
each one of which contained four sheets once folded, or four double
leaves, the average number of characters on each single leaf amounting to
about 525.[79] The Codex, which most probably included other treatises
preceding and following Koheleth, possessed an unknown number of
fascicules, Koheleth beginning on the sixth leaf of one and ending on the
third of the fourth following. According to the hypothesis we are
considering, the middle fascicules becoming loose, fell out of the Codex,
and were found by some one who was utterly unqualified to replace them in
position. This person took the inner half of the second,[80] folded it
inside out, and then laid it in the new order[81] immediately after the
first fascicule. Next came the inner sheet of the third fascicule,[82]
followed by the outside half of the second,[83] in the middle of which
the two double leaves, 13, 18, and 14, 17, had already been inserted.[84]
Although the fourth fascicule had kept its place, it was not on this
account preserved from the effects of the confusing changes caused by the
loosening of the ligature, for between its two first leaves the remaining
sheet of the third fascicule[85] found a place. Finally, leaf 17 becoming
separated from its new environment, found a definite resting-place
between 19 and 21.[86] The result of this dislocation was the utter
disappearance of all trace of plan in the work, the incoherences of which
would be still more numerous and glaring, had it not been for the
transitional words and phrases that were soon after interpolated for the
purpose of welding together passages that were never intended to
dovetail.[87]
Such is the ingenious theory. The degree of probability attaching to it
depends partly on the weight of corroborative evidence to be found in the
book itself, and partly on the completeness with which it explains the
many difficulties which the traditionalist view could but formulate.
Thoroughly to sift and weigh this evidence, much of which is of a purely
philological character, would require a book to itself; but it will not
be amiss to give one or two instances of the nature of the arguments
relied upon.
Chap. x. 1, in the present text, is wholly corrupt, owing to the
circumstance that several interpolations were inserted in it at a later
date. Now a little reflection suffices to show that these additions
consist of words taken from chap. vii. 1. But if the book had been
composed as it now stands, such a transposition would be practically
impossible, because chap. x. is separated from chap. vii. by too great an
interval. In the original sequence, however, which Prof. Bickell's theory
supposes and restores, there was no difficulty. There the leaf ix. 11-x.
1 was followed by two leaves containing vi. 8-vii. 22, so that the words
"precious," and "wisdom is better than glory," might have been easily
shifted to x. 1 from the margin of vii. 1.
Again, in the primitive sequence viii. 4 was immediately followed by x.
2. After the dislocation of the leaves it was erroneously placed before
viii. 6, a few words having been previously interpolated between the two,
solely in the interests of orthodoxy.[88] In order to bridge over the gap
between them, a transitional half verse was strung together, in an
absolutely mechanical manner, from words that precede or follow. And the
words that precede and follow are those which we find in the primitive
arrangement of the manuscript, not in the present sequence. Thus, at the
bottom of the leaf containing viii. 4, the first words, "leb
chakham,"[89] of the following verse (x. 2) were inserted, and then by
inadvertence repeated on the next leaf. Seeing these words, the author of
the transition made them the subject of his new verse. He selected the
grammatical objects of the sentence from the verse which follows in the
new sequence,[90] and took the verb from the preceding half verse, which
is itself an older interpolation.
Lastly, Koheleth's treatise, which in our Bibles is utterly devoid of
order or sequence, falls naturally, in its restored form, into two
distinct halves: a speculative and a practical, distinguished from each
other by characteristics proper to each, which there is no mistaking. The
former, for instance, contains but few metrical passages, whereas the
latter is composed of poetry and prose in almost equal proportions. The
ethical part continually addresses the reader himself in the second
person singular, while the discursive section never does. In a word,
internal evidence leaves no doubt that, whether the dislocation of the
chapters was the result of accident or design, this was the ground plan
of the original treatise.
Footnotes:
[77] Professor Cheyne discusses Bickell's theory with the caution
characteristic of English theology and the fairness of unprejudiced
scholarship ("Job and Solomon," p. 273 fol.).
[78] _Cf_. for instance, Cornill, "Theologisches Literaturblatt,"
Sept. 19, 1884.
[79] This mean estimate tallies with calculations made by the late
Professor Lagarde for another book of the Old Testament.
[80] The leaves 6, 7, 8, 9.
[81] The pages following each other thus: 8, 9, 6, 7.
[82] Leaves 15 and 16.
[83] 4, 5, 10, 11.
[84] So that the order was then: 4, 5, 13, 14, 17, 18, 10, 11.
[85] 12, 19.
[86] The sequence of the leaves was then; 1, 2, 3, 8, 9, 6, 7, 15, 16, 4,
5, 13, 14, 18, 10, 11, 20, 12, 19, 17, 21, 22.
[87] The most practical and simple way of realising Professor Bickell's
theory is to make a little book of four fascicules of four double
leaves each. On these leaves write the contents of the original
manuscript leaves in chapter and verse numbers. On each of the three
last leaves of the first fascicule (counting, as in Hebrew, from
right to left) write i. 1-ii. 11. On the first two leaves of the
second fascicule write v. 9-vi. 7 (this must be written on each of
the leaves, as it is not quite certain how they were divided). On
third and fourth leaves of the second fascicule write iii. 9-iv. 8;
on each of the fifth and sixth leaves, ii. 12-iii. 8. On the seventh
and eighth leaves, viii. 6-ix. 3. Then comes the third fascicule. On
the first leaf, write ix. 11-x. 1; on the second and third leaves,
vi. 8-vii. 22 on the fourth and fifth leaves, iv. 9-v. 8; on the
sixth leaf, x. 16-xi. 6; on the seventh leaf, vii. 23-viii. 5; on the
eighth leaf, x. 2-15. Lastly comes the fourth fascicule. On the first
leaf, ix. 3-10, on the second and third leaves, xi. 7-xii. 8.
[88] The first half of viii. 5: "Whoso keepeth the commandment shall feel
no evil thing." This interpolation is older than the accident to
the MS.
[89] The heart of the wise.
[90] viii. 6.
* * * * *
KOHELET'S THEORY OF LIFE
Read in its primitive shape, the book is a systematic disquisition on the
questions, What positive boon has life in store for us? to which the
emphatic answer is "None;" and How had we best occupy the vain days of
our wretched existence? which the author solves by recommending moderate
sensuous enjoyment combined with healthy activity. He begins his gloomy
meditations with a general survey of the wearisome working of the
machinery of the world, wherein is neither rest nor profit. Everything is
vanity, and the pursuit of wind.[91] Existence in all its myriad forms is
an aimless, endless, hopeless endeavour. The very clod of earth manifests
its striving, in gravitation, for the attainment of a central point
without dimensions, which, if realised, would entail its own
annihilation; the solids tend to become liquids, the liquids to resolve
themselves in vapour. The plant grows from germ through stem and leaf to
blossom and fruit, which last is but the beginning of a new germ that
again develops through flower to fruit, and so on for ever and ever. In
animals, life is the same restless, aimless, unsatisfied striving, in the
first place after reproduction, followed by the death of the individual
and the appearance of a new one which in turn runs through all the stadia
of the old. The very matter of all organisms is ever changing. As for
man, his whole life is but one long series of yearnings after objects,
each one of which presents itself to his will as the one great goal until
attained, whereupon it is cast aside to make way for another. We know
what we long for to-day, we shall know what we shall seek to-morrow; but
what the human race supremely desires, its ultimate aim and end, no man
can say. Existence is a futile beating of the air, a clutching of the
wind. The living make way for the unborn, the dead nourish the living; no
one possesses ought that was not torn from some other being; strife and
hate, evil and pain are the commonplaces of existence; life and death
follow each other everlastingly. All striving is want and therefore
suffering, until it is satisfied, when it assumes the form of
disappointment; for no satisfaction is lasting. In a word, the universe
is a wheel that revolves on its axis for ever--and there is no ultimate
aim or end in it all.[92] Knowledge, wisdom, and enjoyment, each of which
Koheleth characterises by a distich, are likewise vain, or worse. What,
then, is the secret of "happiness"? Surely not wealth, which the Preacher
himself having possessed and applied to "useful" and "good" purposes,
proved emptiness in the end.[93] Wealth, indeed, is nothing if not a
means to happiness, yet experience tells us that the pains endured in
striving for it, and the anxiety suffered in preserving it, effectually
destroy our capacity for enjoying the bliss which it is supposed to
insure, long before misfortune or death snatches it from our grasp.[94]
Vain as pleasure is, in a world of positive evils it is at least a
negative good, in that it helps to make us forget the vanity of the days
of our life.[95] For this reason, no doubt, it is well-nigh unattainable,
the many being deprived of the means, the few of the capacity, of
enjoyment.[96]
Passing on to the consideration of wisdom, the Hebrew philosopher finds
it equally empty and vain, because subject to the same limitations and
characterised by the same drawbacks. It is caviare to the million, and a
fresh source of sorrow to the few. Man is tortured with a thirst for
knowledge, and yet all the springs at which it might have been allayed
are sealed up. Unreal shadows are the objects of human intuition, we are
denied a glimpse of the underlying reality. For it is unknowable.
Even the little we can know is not inspiriting. Take our fellow-men,
their ways and works, for instance, and what do we behold? Their own
evil-doing, injustice, and violence, drag them down to the level of the
brute; and that this is their natural level is obvious, if we bear in
mind that the end of men is that of the beasts of the fields,[97] and
that the ruling power within them, the mechanism, so to say, of these
living and feeling automata is love of life. Consider men at their
best--when cultivating such relative "virtues" as industry, zeal,
diligence in their crafts and callings, and we find these "good" actions
tainted at the very source: love of self and jealousy of others being the
determining motives.[98] In any case we see that work is no help to
happiness, for it is too evident that toil and moil--even that of the
writer himself, who knows full well that he is labouring for a
stranger--is but the price we pay, not for real pleasure, but for carking
care and poignant grief.[99] Such being the bitter fruits of knowledge,
the tree on which they flourish is scarcely worth cultivating.
Wisdom in its ethical aspect, as a rule of right conduct, is unavailing
as a weapon to combat the Fate that fights against man. Nay, it is not
even a guarantee that we shall be remembered by those who come after us,
and whose lot we have striven to render less unbearable than our own. The
memory of the dead is buried in their graves,[100] and the wheels of the
vast machine revolve as if they had never lived. For a man's moral worth
goes for nothing in the scale against Fate, whose laws operate with
crushing regularity, unmodified by his virtues or his crimes.[101]
Indeed, if there be any perceptible difference between the lot of the
upright and that of the wicked, it is often to the advantage of the
latter, who are furthered by their fierce recklessness and borne onwards
by ambition.[102] The knowledge of this curious state of things serves
but to encourage evil-doers.[103] The obvious conclusion is that instead
of fighting against Fate which is unalterable--"I discovered that
whatever God doeth is forever"[104]--we should resign ourselves to our
lot and draw the practical inference from the fact that life is an evil.
Wisdom in its practical aspect is equally unpromising. In no walk of life
is success the meed of merit or victory the unfailing guerdon of
heroism.[105] Such wisdom as is within man's reach is often a positive
disadvantage in life, owing to the modesty it inspires as pitted against
the self-confidence of noisy fools. Besides, should it contrive to build
up a stately structure, a small dose of folly, with which all human
wisdom is largely alloyed, is capable, in an instant, of undoing the work
of years.[106] In a word, the wise man is often worse off than the fool;
and in any case, no degree of wisdom can influence the laws of the
universe; what happens is foredoomed; a man's life-journey is mapped out
beforehand, and it is hopeless to struggle with the Will which is
mightier than his own. As we know not what is pre-arranged, we can never
find out what will dovetail with our true interests or is really good for
man.[107]
Footnotes:
[91] i. 2-11
[92] _Cf._ Schopenhauer, vol. i. 401-402, and _passim_.
[93] ii. 3-11.
[94] v. 9-16.
[95] Pain, then, for Koheleth, as for a greater than Koheleth, is
something positive; pleasure, on the contrary, negative. "We feel
pain, but not painlessness; we feel care, but not exemption from
it; fear, but not safety.... Only pain and privation are perceived as
positive and announce themselves; well-being, on the contrary, is
merely negative. Hence it is that we are never conscious of the three
greatest boons of life--health, youth, and freedom as such, so long
as we possess them, but only when we have lost them: for they too are
negations.... The hours fly the quicker the pleasanter they are; they
drag themselves on the slowlier the more painfully they are passed,
because pain, not enjoyment, is the something positive whose presence
makes itself felt."--Schopenhauer, ed. Grisebach, ii. 676, 677.
[96] v. 17-vi. 7; iii. 9, 12-13.
[97] iii. 19-iv. 3.
[98] iv. 4-6.
[99] iv. 7, 8; ii. 18-23.
[100] ii. 13-16.
[101] iii. 1-8, viii. 6-8.
[102] viii. 9-14.
[103] viii. 14, ix. 3.
[104] iii. 14.
[105] ix. 11-12.
[106] ix. 13-18, x. 1.
[107] vi. 8, 10-12.
* * * * *
PRACTICAL WISDOM
Having thus cleared the ground in the first part of the treatise,
Koheleth proceeds to erect his own modest system in the second. As life
offers us no positive good, those who, in spite of this obvious fact,
desire it, must make the best of such negative advantages as are within
their grasp. Although so far from being a boon, it is an evil, yet it
may, he points out, be rendered less irksome by following certain
practical rules; and warming to his subject, he winds up with an
exhortation to snatch such pleasures as are within reach, for when all
accounts have been finally cast up and everything has been said and done,
all things will prove vanity, and a grasping of wind.
The ethics open with six metrical strophes composed, so to say, in the
minor key, which harmonises with the disheartening conclusions of the
foregoing. The theme is the Horatian _Levius fit patientia quicquid
corrigere est nefas._ Death is better than life, grief more becoming
than mirth, contemplation preferable to desire, deliberation more
serviceable than haste.[108] The fleeting joys and the abiding evils of
existence, are to be taken as we find them, seeing that it is beyond our
power to alter the proportions in which they are mixed, even by the
practice of virtue and the application of knowledge. Hence even in the
cultivation of righteousness the rule, _Ne quid nimis_, is to be
implicitly followed: "Be not righteous overmuch, neither make thyself
overwise."[109] On the other hand, wisdom is not to be despised, for it
hardens us against the strokes of Fate, and renders us insensible to the
insults of our fellows.[110] It also teaches us the drawbacks of
isolation, the benefits of co-operation, and the advantage of being open
to counsel.[111] The basis of all practical wisdom being resignation to
the inevitable, obedience to God is better than sacrifices destined to
influence His action. What He does, is done for ever, and our efforts are
powerless to alter it, or to induce Him to change it.[112] God is far
off, unknowable, inaccessible, and man is here upon earth, and such
prayers as we feel disposed to offer, had best be short and few; vows
too, although to be carried out if once made, serve no good purpose, and
are to be avoided. In a word, wild speculations and many words in matters
of religion and theology are vain and pernicious.[113] That work and
enterprise are beneficial in public and private life is obvious from a
study of the results engendered by their opposites.[114] Simple
individuals, no less than rulers, may benefit by enterprise and
initiative, provided that prudence, by multiplying the possibilities of
profit, leaves as little as possible to the vagaries of chance.[115] But
prudence is especially needed in order to avoid the seductive wiles of
woman, against whom one must be ever on one's guard.[116] It also enjoins
upon us submission to the political ruler of the day, who possesses the
power to enforce his will, and is therefore a living embodiment of the
inevitable.[117] In a word, this practical wisdom assumes the form of a
careful adjustment of means to the end in all the ups and downs of
existence.[118]
After this follows the recommendation of the negative good: the sensuous
joys within our reach. Seeing that no man knows what evil is before him,
nor what things will happen after him, he cannot go far astray, supposing
him to be actuated by a desire to make the best of life, if he tastes in
moderation of the pleasures that lie on his path, including those of
labour.[119] The young generation should, in an especial manner, take
this to heart and pluck the rosebuds while it may, for old age and death
are hurriedly approaching to prove by their presence that all is vanity
and a grasping of wind.[120]
Footnotes:
[108] vii. 1-6, vi. 9, vii. 7-9.
[109] vii. 10, 13-14, 15-18.
[110] vii. 21-22.
[111] iv. 9-16.
[112] iii. 14.
[113] v. 1-7.
[114] v. 7-8, x. 16-20.
[115] x. 1-3, 6, 4, 5.
[116] vii. 26-29.
[117] viii. 1-4, x. 2-7.
[118] x. 8-14a, 15.
[119] x. 14b, ix. 3-10, xi. 7-10.
[120] xi. 9, xii. 8.
* * * * *
KOHELETH'S PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE
Koheleth, who agrees with Job in so many other essential points, is
likewise at one with him in his views on human knowledge, or, as he terms
it, wisdom, which is the source of the highest good within the reach of
man. The only light which we have to guide us through the murky mazes of
existence, is at best but a miserable taper which serves only to render
the eternal darkness painfully visible. "I set my heart to learn wisdom
and understanding. And my heart discerned much wisdom and knowledge.... I
realised that this also is but a grasping of wind."[121] The scenes it
reveals in the moral as well as the material order are of a nature to
make us hate existence. "Then I loathed life."[122] Indeed, the so-called
moral order which, were it, in theory, what it is asserted to be in
truth, might reconcile us to our lot and kindle a spark of hope in the
human breast, is but the embodiment of rank immorality. "All things come
alike to all indiscriminately; the one fate overtaketh the upright man
and the miscreant, the clean and the unclean, him who sacrifices and him
who sacrifices not, the just and the sinner."[123] What then is life?
To this question the answer is, in effect, "The shadow of a thing which
is not." The sights and sounds of the universe are the only materials
upon which the human intellect can work; and they are all alike empty,
shadowy, unreal. They are the creation of the mind itself, the web it
weaves from its own gossamer substance; and beyond this are nothing.
Space and time, or, as Koheleth expresses it, the universe and eternity,
were placed in our consciousness from the very first, and are as
deceptive as the mirage of the desert.[124] Kant would define them to be
functions of the brain. A projection of the organ of human thought, the
world is woven of three threads--space, time, and causality--which, being
identical with the mind, appear and vanish with it. The one underlying
reality, whether we term it God, Nature, or Will, is absolutely
unknowable,[125] and everything else is Maya or illusion.
Strange as this doctrine may sound in orthodox ears, it contains, so far,
nothing incompatible with Christianity, which teaches that time and space
will disappear along with this transitory existence, and that the one
eternal and incomprehensible Will is outside the sphere of both and
exempt from the operation of the law of cause and effect. The only
difference between the two is that Christianity admits the existence of
many beings outside the realm of space and time, whereas without space
and time multiplicity is inconceivable, impossible.
We cannot hope to know the one reality which is and acts underneath the
appearances of which our world is made up, because knowledge is for ever
formed, coloured and bounded by time, space, and causation, and all three
are unreal. They alone constitute succession and multiplicity, which are
therefore only apparent, not existent. We can conceive nothing but what
is, was, or will be (and therefore in time), nothing outside ourselves
but what is in space, and absolutely nought that is not a cause or an
effect. "Far off is that which is, and deep, deep, who can fathom
it?"[126]
But we possess insight and understanding enough to enable us to perceive
that life is a positive evil, as, indeed, all evil, pain, and suffering
are positive; that pleasures are few, and being negative by their nature,
merely serve to make us less sensible of the evils of existence; that
happiness is a chimaera, birth a curse, death a boon,[127] and absolute
nothingness (Nirvana) the only real good. The hope of improvement,
progress, evolution, is a cruel mockery; for the present is but a
rehearsal of the past; the future will be a repetition of both;[128]
everything that is and will be, was; "what came into being had been long
before, and what will be was long ago."[129] In a word, what we term
progress is but the movement of a vast wheel revolving on its axis
everlastingly.
But may we not hope for some better and higher state in the future life
beyond the tomb where vice will be punished and virtue rewarded? To this
query Koheleth's reply, like that given by Job, is an emphatic negative;
and yet the doctrines of the immortality of the soul and of the
resurrection were rapidly making headway among the writer's
contemporaries. But he descries nothing in the material or moral order of
the world to warrant any such belief. What is there in material man that
he should be immortal? "Men are an accident, and the beasts are an
accident, and the same accident befalleth them all; as these die even so
die those, and the selfsame breath have they all, nor is there any
preeminence of man above beast; for all is nothingness."[130] Nor can any
such flattering hope be grounded upon the moral order, because there are
no signs of morality in the conduct of the world. "To righteous men that
happeneth which should befall wrong-doers, and that betideth criminals
which should fall to the lot of the upright."[131] Nay, "there are just
men who perish _through_ their righteousness, and there are wicked
men who prolong their lives _by means_ of their iniquity."[132] Of
divine promises and revelations Koheleth--who can hardly claim to be
considered a theist, and whose God is Fate, Nature, eternal Will--knows
nothing. The most favourable judgment he can pass upon such theological
speculations is far from encouraging: "in the multitude of fancies and
prattle there likewise lurketh much vanity."[133] In eternal justice,
however, he professes a strong belief, and, like Job, he formulates his
faith in the words: "Fear thou God."[134]
To accuse Koheleth of Epicureanism is to take a one-sided view of his
philosophy. His conception of life, its pleasures and pains, is as
clearly and emphatically expressed as that of the Buddha or of
Schopenhauer. He is an uncompromising pessimist, who sees the world as it
is. Everything that seems pleasant or profitable is vanity and a grasping
of wind; there is nothing positive but pain, nothing real but the eternal
Will, which is certainly unknowable and probably unconscious. These
truths, however, are not grasped by every one; they are the bitter fruits
of that rare knowledge, increase of which is increase of sorrow. The few
who taste thereof cling too tenaciously to life, though life be wedded to
sorrow and misery, to renounce such deceitful pleasures as are within
their reach; and the bulk of mankind revel in the empty joys of living.
To all such, Koheleth offers some practical rules of conduct to enable
them to make the best of what is to be had; but the gist of his
discourse is identical with those of Jesus, of the Buddha, of
Schopenhauer--renunciation.
Human pleasures, whatever their origin, are limited in degree by man's
capacity for enjoyment; and this is an inborn gift, varying in different
individuals but unchanging in each. Some dispositions, cheerful and
sanguine by nature, tinge even the blackest clouds of misfortune with the
rainbow hues of hope; others impart a sombre colour to the most
auspicious event, and descry cause for dread in the most complete
success, just as the bee sucks honey from the flower which yields only
poison to the adder. All joys, although produced by the chemistry of our
consciousness, are drawn either from within its inner sphere or from
without. The former, known as intellectual pleasures, are relatively
lasting because they emanate from what man is; the latter are fleeting
because their source is either what he has or what he seems. These are
never free from alloy; preceded by the pain of desire, they are
accompanied by that of disenchantment and followed by tedium, the worst
pain of all; those are exempt from all three, because instead of
gratifying passing whims they free the intellect from drudging for the
will and afford it momentary glimpses of truth. Wisdom therefore, for
Koheleth as for Job, is the greatest boon that can fall to man's
lot.[135] And yet the law of compensation, operating here as in all other
spheres, sensibility to pain is always proportionate to capacity for
intellectual enjoyment.
With regard to the pleasures of possession, seeing that they are often
difficult of attainment and always precarious, we must be moderate in
their pursuit and make the most of such as fall to our lot. Contentment
here is everything, and contentment is the result of an even balance
between desire and fulfilment, the former being always in our power and
the latter generally beyond our control. To such happiness as possession
can bestow, it is immaterial whether our demands are lowered or our
prosperity increased, just as in arithmetic it matters not whether we
divide the denominator of a fraction or multiply its numerator by the
same number. Therefore, "Better look with the eyes than wander with
desire."[136] The golden rule is to keep our wishes within the bounds of
moderation, and to adjust them to unfavourable circumstances. The rich
man who wants nothing and covets a mere trifle which is beyond his grasp,
is supremely wretched, while the poor man who needs much but longs for
nothing, is cheerful and contented. But even if wealth were as easily
obtained as it is difficult, the law of compensation should deter us from
seeking it. "Sweet is the sleep of the toiler, but his wealth suffereth
not the rich man to slumber."[137] The only enjoyments common to all men
are those which consist in the satisfaction of natural wants; the
pleasures which wealth can purchase over and above these are trifling,
and more than outweighed by the pain of carking care which it brings in
its train. He who labours for this is, therefore, cutting a stick for his
own back: "all his days are sorrows and his work grief."[138] "There is
no good for man," then--for the common run of mankind who, debarred from
intellectual enjoyment, yet cling tenaciously to life--"save that he
should eat and drink, and make glad his soul in his labour."[139] Health
being the condition of all enjoyment, and one of the greatest of earthly
boons, care should be taken to preserve it by eating, drinking, labour,
and rest, and by moderation in all things. For painlessness, which is
positive, is always to be preferred to pleasure, which is negative. It
matters little to the strong man that he is otherwise hale and thriving,
if he suffer from an excruciating toothache or lumbago. He forgets
everything else and thinks only of his misery. The world, then, being a
terrestrial hell, they who love it as a dwelling-place cannot do better
than try to construct a fireproof abode therein. To hunt for pleasures
while exposing oneself to the risk of pain is folly; to escape suffering
even at the sacrifice of enjoyments is worldly wisdom. As Aristotle put
it, [Greek: _ho phronimos to alupon diokei, ou to haedu_.] But when
all has been said and done, the highest worldly wisdom is but a less
harmful species of folly. Existence is an evil, and the sole effective
remedy renunciation.
Footnotes:
[121] i. 17, 16b.
[122] ii. 17.
[123] ix. 2.
[124] iii. 11.
[125] vii. 24, _cf_. also v. 1.
[126] vii. 24, _cf_. also viii. 16, 17.
[127] "I appraised the dead who died long since, as happier than the
quick who are yet alive; but luckier than both him who is still
unborn, who hath not yet witnessed the evil doings under the
sun," iv. 2, 3.
[128] In truth, time existing only in the intellect as one of the forms
of intuition, there can be neither past nor future, but an
everlasting now.
[129] iii. 15.
[130] iii. 19.
[131] viii. 14.
[132] vii. 15.
[133] v. 7.
[134] _Ibid._
[135] vii. 11, 12.
[136] vi. 9.
[137] v. 12.
[138] ii. 23.
[139] ii. 24.
* * * * *
THE SOURCES OF KOHELETH'S PHILOSOPHY
To what extent are these pessimistic doctrines the fruits of Koheleth's
own meditations, and how far may they be supposed to reflect the views of
the nation which admitted his treatise into its sacred canon? The latter
half of this question is answered by the desperate efforts made from the
very beginning to correct or dilute his pessimism, and by the grave
suspicion with which Jewish doctors continued to regard it, long after
the "poison" had been provided with a suitable antidote. Thus the book
known as the Wisdom of Solomon, which is accepted as canonical by the
Roman Catholic Church, contains a flat contradiction and emphatic
condemnation of certain of the propositions laid down by Koheleth, as,
for instance, in ch. ii. 1-9, which is obviously a studied refutation of
Koheleth's principal thesis, couched mainly in the identical words used
by the Preacher himself:
"For they have said, reasoning with themselves, but not
right: the time of our life is short and tedious, and in the end
of a man there is no remedy, and no man hath been known to
have returned from hell.
"For we are born of nothing, and after this we shall be as
if we had not been: for the breath in our nostrils is smoke;
and speech a spark to move our hearts.
"Which being put out, our body shall be ashes, and our
spirit shall be poured abroad as soft air, and our life shall pass
away as the trace of a cloud, and shall be dispersed as a mist,
which is driven away by the beams of the sun, and overpowered
with the heat thereof.
"And our name in time shall be forgotten, and no man shall
have any remembrance of our works.
"For our time is as the passing of a shadow, and there is
no going back of our end: for it is fast sealed, and no man
returneth.
"Come, therefore, and let us enjoy the good things that are
present, and let us speedily use the creatures as in youth.
"Let us fill ourselves with costly wine, and ointments; and
let not the flower of the time pass by us.
"Let us crown ourselves with roses before they be withered;
let no meadow escape our riot.
"Let none of us go without his part in luxury: let us everywhere
leave tokens of joy: for this is our portion, and this
our lot."
Although the book was accepted as canonical by generations of Hebrew
teachers and was quoted as such by men like Gamaliel, there was always a
strong orthodox party among the Jews opposed to its teachings and
apprehensive of its influence;[140] nor was it until the year 118 A.D.
that the protracted dispute on the subject was at last definitely settled
at the Synod which admitted Koheleth into the Canon. It was natural
enough that Hebrew theologians should have hesitated to stamp with the
seal of orthodoxy a book which the poet Heine calls the Canticles of
Scepticism and in which every unbiassed reader will recognise a powerful
solvent of the bases of theism; and the only surprising thing about their
attitude is that they should have ever allowed themselves to be persuaded
to abandon it.
For Koheleth's pessimistic theory, which has its roots in Secularism, is
utterly incompatible with the spirit of Judaism, whichever of its
historical phases we may select for comparison. It is grounded upon the
rejection of the Messianic expectations and absolute disbelief in the
solemn promises of Jahveh Himself. Koheleth cherishes no hope for the
individual, his nation, or the human race. The thing that hath been is
the same that shall be, and what befell is the same that shall come to
pass, and there is no new thing under the sun....[141] "I surveyed all
the works that are wrought under the sun, and behold all was vanity and
the grasping of wind."[142] Persians had succeeded Chaldeans; Cyrus, the
Anointed of Jahveh, had come and gone; Greeks had wrested the hegemony of
the East from Persians, but no change had brought surcease of sorrow to
the Jews. They were even worse off now than ever before. Jahveh, like
Baal of old, was become deaf to His worshippers, many of whom turned away
from Him in despair, exclaiming, "It is vain to serve God, and what
profit is it that we have kept His ordinance?"[143] Koheleth, like Job,
never once mentions Jahveh's name, but always alludes to the Eternal
Will, which alone is real and unknowable, under the colourless name of
Elohim. To say that he believed in a personal God in any sense in which a
personal God is essential to a revealed religion, is to misunderstand
ideas or to play with words.[144] And Koheleth was a type of a class.
Literary men of his day having mockingly asked for the name of the
Creator,[145] Koheleth answers that He is inaccessible to men, and that
prayer to Him is fruitless.[146] The Jewish aristocracy of his day,
desirous of embodying these views in a practical form, sought to abolish
once for all the national religion, as a body of belief and practices
that had been weighed in the balances and found wanting; while the party
that still remained faithful to the law was composed mainly of
narrow-minded fanatics, whose wild speculations, long-winded prayers and
frequent vows, Koheleth considers deserving objects of derision. He
himself held aloof from either camp. He took his stand outside the circle
of both, surveying life from the angle of vision of the philosophical
citizen of the world. But it would be idle to deny that he had far more
in common with the "impious" than with the orthodox.
Thus he scornfully rejects the old doctrine of retribution, and he is
never tired of affirming premisses from which the obvious and indeed only
conclusion is that the popular conception of a deity who spontaneously
created the universe and vigilantly watches over the Hebrew nation, is
erroneous, incredible, inconceivable. The Jahveh of olden times, with His
grand human passions and petty Jewish prejudices, he simply ignores. He
naturally rejects the immortality of the soul--a tenet or theory which
was then for the first time beginning to gain ground and to be relied
upon as the only means of ultimately righting the wrongs of existence.
The fact is that he had no belief in a soul as we understand it. Modern
theology regards the indestructible part of man as essentially
intelligent, while admitting the fact that intellect is indissolubly
associated with the brain, partaking of its vicissitudes during life and
vanishing with it apparently for ever at death. Job, Koheleth, and many
other writers of the Old Testament hold that if anything of the man
persists after the death of the individual, it is unconscious. "The
living know at least that they shall die, whereas the dead know not
anything at all."[147] In a word, no other philosopher, poet, or
proverb-writer of the Old Testament is less orthodox in his beliefs or
less Jewish in his sentiments--and Agur alone is more aggressive in his
scepticism--than Koheleth.
Much has been written about the sources from which this writer may and
even must have drawn his peculiar mixture of pessimism and
"Epicureanism," and considerable stress has been laid upon the profound
influence which Greek culture is supposed to have exerted upon Jewish
thinkers towards the second century B.C., when the moral atmosphere was
choked with "the baleful dust of systems and of creeds." The
"Epicureanism" of the man who said: "Better is sorrow than laughter,"
"the heart of the wise is in the mourning house,"[148] hardly needs the
hypothesis of a Greek origin to explain it. My own view of the matter,
which I put forward with all due diffidence, differs considerably from
those which have been heretofore expressed on the subject. I cannot
divest myself of the notion that Koheleth was acquainted, and to some
extent imbued, with the doctrines of Gautama Buddha, which must have been
pretty widely diffused in the civilised world towards the year 205 B.C.,
when the present treatise was most probably composed.[149]
Buddhism, the only one of the world-religions which, springing from an
abstruse system of metaphysics, brought forth such practical fruits as
truthfulness, honesty, loving-kindness and universal pity, spread with
extraordinary rapidity not only throughout the Indian continent but over
the entire civilised world. Its apostles[150] visited foreign countries,
touching and converting by their example the hearts and minds of those
who were incapable of weighing their arguments, or unwilling to listen to
their exhortations. They introduced a mild, tolerant, humane spirit
whithersoever they went, preaching entire equality, practising perfect
toleration, founding houses for meditation, erecting hospitals and
dispensaries for sick men and beasts, cultivating useful plants and
trees, gently suppressing cruelty to animals under any pretext,[151] and
generally sowing seeds of sympathy and brotherly love of which history
has noticed and described but the final fruits. From the earliest
recorded period Indian culture manifested a natural tendency to expand,
which was intensified at various times by the comparatively low ebb of
civilisation in the adjoining countries. One can readily conceive,
therefore, the effects of the strenuous and persevering efforts of one of
the most powerful Indian monarchs, Açoka Piyadassi,[152] king of Magadha,
to propagate that aspect of his country's civilisation which is
indissolubly bound up with the doctrines of the Buddha.
Açoka, grandson of the great king Tshandragupta, was the first monarch
who openly accepted the tenets and conscientiously practised the precepts
of the profoundest religious teacher ever born of woman; and no more
eloquent testimony could well be offered to the sincerity of the royal
convert than the well-nigh miraculous self-restraint with which he
forebore to cajole or coerce those of his subjects whom his arguments
failed to convince. Satisfied with the progress of the new religion in
his native place, he despatched his son, Mahindo, to introduce it into
Ceylon; and so successful were the young prince's missionary efforts that
that island became and remains the chief seat of Buddhism to this day.
Açoka next turned his attention to foreign countries, in which traders,
travellers, emigrants and others had already sparsely sown the seeds of
the new faith, and making political power and prestige subservient to
zeal for truth and pity for suffering humanity, he induced his allies and
their vassals to purchase his friendship by seconding his endeavours to
inculcate the philosophic doctrines and engraft the humane practices of
Buddhism on their respective subjects. The results he obtained are
recorded in his famous inscriptions composed in various Indian dialects
and engraven upon rocks all over the continent, from Cabul in the West to
Orissa in the East; and among the monarchs whom he there enumerates as
having co-operated with him in his apostolic labours, are Antiochus,[153]
Turamaya,[154] Alexander, Magas[155] and Antigenes;[156] into whose
hospitable dominions he despatched zealous Buddhist missionaries,
empowered to found monasteries, to open dispensaries and hospitals, at
his expense, and to preach the saving word to all who cared to hear.
The following literal translation of one of Açoka's inscriptions[157]
will help to convey an idea of the nature of his activity as the royal
apostle of Buddhism, the Constantine of India: "All over the realms of
the god-favoured king, Priyadarsin, and (the realms of those) who (are)
his neighbours, such as the Codas, Pandyas, the Prince of the
Sâtiyas,[158] the Prince of the Keralas, Tamraparnî, the King of the
Javanas, Antiochus, and (among the) others who (are) vassals of the said
King Antiochus, everywhere the god-beloved, king, Priyadarsin, caused two
kinds of hospitals to be erected: hospitals for men and likewise
hospitals for animals.[159] Wherever there were no herbs beneficial to
men or animals, he everywhere gave orders that they should be procured or
planted. In like manner, where there were no health-giving roots and
fruits, he everywhere commanded that they should be procured or planted.
And on the highways he had trees put down and wells dug for the behoof of
men and beasts."[160]
History confirms Açoka's testimony and declares him to have been no less
successful in sowing the seeds of medicinal plants than those of the
"saving doctrine." Buddhism enrolled numerous converts and zealous
apostles all over the civilised world, and in Ceylon, Egypt, Bactria, and
Persia, the yellow flag floated aloft from the roofs of the monasteries
of _Bhikshus_.[161] But its influence, in other ways equally
powerful while considerably more subtle, has oftentimes escaped the
vigilance of the historian. None of the great religions of ancient or
modern times succeeded in escaping its contact, or failed to be improved
by its spirit. In the second century B.C. there were flourishing Buddhist
communities in inhospitable Bactria, where they maintained a firm footing
for nearly a thousand years. A Greek,[162] who wrote about the year 80
B.C., and a Chinese pilgrim,[163] who passed through the land in the
beginning of the seventh century A.D., allude to them as important
elements of the population of the country in their respective ages, and
the Buddhist monastery founded in Balkh, the capital of Bactria, in the
second century B.C., was become a famous pilgrimage in the days of Hiuen
Thsang. The Zoroastrian priests of Erân hated and feared the followers of
the strange creed while silently adopting and unconsciously propagating
many of its institutions. Several of the Eranian kings incurred the
censure involved in the nickname of "idolaters" in consequence of the
favour they extended to the preachers of Nirvana.[164] No religion of
antiquity was less favourable to a life of passive contemplation than
Zoroastrianism, which defined life as a continuous struggle, and
considered virtue as a successful battle with the powers of darkness; and
yet little by little Zoroastrian monasteries sprang up by the side of the
Fire Temples, and offered a quiet refuge from the turmoil of the world to
the pious worshippers of Ahura Mazda.[165]
So saturated were the Eranian populations with the spirit of
Buddha--antagonistic though it was to their own--that the two great
Eranian sects,[166] one of which bade fair to become a universal
religion,[167] were little else than adaptations of the creed of the
Buddha to the needs of a different time and people. Mânî, for instance,
prohibited marriage, which was one of the principal duties and holiest
acts of a true servant of Ahura Mazda; forbade the killing of animals
which, in the case of ants, serpents, gnats, &c., was enjoined by the
priests of Zoroaster, and discouraged agriculture lest plants should be
destroyed in the process. And the two classes of perfect and imperfect
disciples in Mânî's community were copied from those of Buddhism, which
divides all believers into two categories: those who sincerely and
fervently seek to attain to Nirvana and are termed Bhikshus, and the
Upasakas or laymen who, while holding on to life, practise such virtues
as are compatible with this unholy desire.
The Jewish religion, in certain of its phases, reveals in like manner
unmistakable traces of the influence of the religion of the Buddha. To
take but one instance, the Essenians in Judaea, near the Dead Sea and the
Therapeutes in Egypt, practised continence, eschewed all bloody
sacrifices, encouraged celibacy, and extreme abstemiousness in eating and
drinking. They formed themselves into communities, and lived, after the
manner of Buddhist Bhikshus, in monasteries. During the life of Jesus,
the Essenians, who lived mostly in cloistered retirement on the shores of
the Dead Sea, played no historic role; but after the destruction of
Jerusalem, they embraced Christianity in a body, and originated the
ascetic movement of the Ebionites, which did not finally subside until it
had deposited the germs of monasticism in the Church of Christ.
Koheleth, who lived either in Jerusalem or in Alexandria--more probably
in the latter city--about the year 205 B.C., had exceptional
opportunities for becoming acquainted with the tenets and precepts of the
religion of Buddha. He was evidently a man of an inquiring mind, with a
pronounced taste for philosophical speculation; and the social and
political conditions of his day were such that a person even of a very
incurious disposition would be likely to be brought face to face with the
sensational doctrine which was responsible for such amazing innovations
as hospitals for men and for animals. Alexandria, the museum and library
of which had already been founded, was one of the principal strongholds
of non-Indian Buddhists. It is mentioned in the Milindapanho, a Pali work
which deals with events that took place in the second century B.C.;[168]
it is expressly included by Açoka in the list of cities into which he
introduced a knowledge of the "path of duty," and so devoted were its
inhabitants to the creed of Sakhya Mouni,[169] that thirty years after
Augustine had died at Hippo, thirty thousand Bhikshus set out from
Alasadda[170] to annex new countries to the realm of truth.
Footnotes:
[140] _Cf._ the epilogue (xii. 9-14), for example, which is one of the
most timid and shuffling apologies ever penned.
[141] i. 9.
[142] i. 14.
[143] Malachi iii. 14.
[144] Professor Cheyne remarks: "To me, Koheleth is not a theist in any
vital sense in his philosophic meditations."--"Job and Solomon,"
p. 250.
[145] _Cf._ Proverbs xxx. 4.
[146] iii. 14, v. 2.
[147] Eccles. ix. 5.
[148] vii. 3, 4.
[149] The view of several of the most authoritative scholars--in which I
entirely concur--is that Koheleth was written in Alexandria during
the reign of Ptolemy V. (Epiphanes), who came to the throne as a boy
under the guardianship of tutors and was alluded to in the verse:
"Woe, land, to thee whose king is a child."
[150] Some of them were foreigners resident in India who, after their
conversion, preached the new doctrine to their fellow-countrymen.
Thus, one of the earliest and most successful missionaries was a
Greek, whose Indian name was Dharmarakshita.
[151] Plants, too, were included in their care and profited by their
protection.
[152] Açoka is a Sanskrit word, which means "free from care;" and
Piyadassi a dialectic form of the Sanskrit word Priyadarsin, which
means lovable, amiable. It was applied as an epithet to King Açoka,
who reigned from 259-222 B.C.
[153] Antiochus II., called Theos, who was poisoned by his divorced wife
Laodike in 247 B.C. I am aware that some scholars identify the
Antiochus here mentioned with Antiochus the Great. Although both
views make equally for my contention, I fail to see how Açoka,
who died in all probability in the year 222 B.C., could have
carried on important negotiations with Antiochus the Great, who
came to the throne of Syria two years later.
[154] Ptolemy of Egypt, probably Ptolemy Philadelphos, who founded the
Museum and Library of Alexandria, and his successor Ptolemy
Euergetes (247-221 B.C.).
[155] Magas, king of Cyrene.
[156] The identity of this monarch is uncertain.
[157] The second Edict of Girnar, Khalsi version.
[158] A South Indian people.
[159] Usually a dispensary was opened for the distribution of simples,
and a hospital hard by for those who could not move about. The
Buddhists were almost as anxious to relieve the physical pain and
illness of animals as of human beings.
[160] _Cf._ Bühler, "Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen
Gesellschaft," Band xxxvii. folg. p. 98.
[161] The monks or real disciples of Buddha who endeavour to attain
Nibbana or Nirvana. The bulk of the population contents itself with
almsgiving and the practice of elementary morality, the reward for
which will be a less unhappy existence after death; but not Nirvana,
to which only the perfect can hope to attain.
[162] Alexander Polyhistor, quoted by Cyrillus (_contra Julianum_);
_cf._ also Clemens Alexandrinus, _Stromata I._, p. 339.
[163] Hiuen Thsang.
[164] Their names and deeds are preserved in the Persian epic known as
the Book of Kings (Firdoosi, Shah-Nameh, _cf_. 1033, v. 4, 1160,
v. 2, &c.).
[165] Ormuzd. An instructive instance of the way in which foreign
institutions become nationalised in Bactria is afforded by the
Buddhist monastery in Balkh, which was at first known by its
Indian name, _nava vihâra_, a term that was gradually changed to
_naubehar,_ which in Persian means "new spring."
[166] Mânî and Mazdak.
[167] The religion of Mânî.
[168] Ed. Trenckner, p. 327.
[169] Buddha.
[170] Alexandria.
AGUR, THE AGNOSTIC
* * * * *
AGUR, SON OF YAKEH
Embedded in the collection of the Book of Proverbs[171] is an interesting
fragment of the philosophy of a certain "Agur, son of Yakeh, the poet,"
which for scathing criticism of the theology of his day and sweeping
scepticism as to every form of revealed religion, is unmatched by the
bitterest irony of Job and the most dogmatic agnosticism of Koheleth.
Unfortunately it is no more than a mere fragment, the verses of which are
thoughtfully separated from each other by strictures, protests, and
refutations of the baldest and most orthodox kind. Indeed, it is in all
probability precisely to the presence of the infallible antidote that we
owe the preservation of the deadly poison; and if we may found a
conjecture as to the character of the whole work on a comparison of the
fragments with what we know generally of the sceptical schools of
philosophy prevalent among the Jews of post-Exilian days, we shall feel
disposed to hold the seven strophes preserved in our Bibles as that
portion of the poem which the compiler considered to be the most innocent
because the least startling and revolutionary.
To the thinking of the critics of former times the Proverbs displayed
unmistakable traces of the unique and highly finished workmanship of the
great and wise king Solomon. At the present day no serious student of the
Bible, be he Christian or Rationalist, would raise his voice on behalf of
this Jewish tradition which, running counter to well-established facts,
is devoid even of the doubtful recommendation of moderate antiquity. A
more accurate knowledge of history and a more thorough study of philology
have long since made it manifest to all who can lay claim to either, that
however weighty may have been Solomon's titles to immortality, they
included neither depth of philosophic thought nor finish of literary
achievement. And an average supply of plain common-sense enables us to
see that even had that extraordinary monarch been a profound thinker or a
classic writer, he would hardly have treated future events as
accomplished facts without being endowed with further gifts and marked by
graver defects which would involve a curious combination of prophecy and
folly.
The Proverbs themselves, when properly interrogated, tell a good deal of
their own story; sacred and profane history supply the rest. In their
present form they were collected and edited by the author of the first
six verses of the first chapter, who drew his materials from different
sources. The first and most important of these was the so-called "Praise
of Wisdom" which, until a comparatively recent period, was erroneously
held to be a rounded, homogeneous poem. Professor Bickell conclusively
showed that it consists of ten different songs composed in the same metre
as the Poem of Job, each chapter being coextensive with one song, except
the first chapter, which contains two.[172] The fifth collection,
containing the proverbs copied "by the men of Hezekiah," is characterised
by the strong national spirit of the writers. Most of the others make
frequent mention of God, give a prominent place to religion, and adapt
themselves for use as texts for sermons; these, on the contrary, never
once mention His name, reflect religion as it was--viz., as only one of
the many sides of national existence, and deal mainly with the concrete
problems of the everyday life of the struggling people. The other sayings
may be aptly described as the pious maxims of a sect; these as the
thoughts of a nation. The seventh part of the Book of Proverbs contains
the remarkable sayings of Agur,[173] which were quite as frequently
misunderstood by the Jews of old as by Christians of more recent times,
the former heightening the impiety of the author and the latter
generously identifying him with the pious and fanatical writer to whose
well-meant refutations and protests we owe the preservation of this
interesting fragment of ancient Hebrew agnosticism.
Footnotes:
[171] The Book of Proverbs begins with ten songs on wisdom, which
constitute the first part of the work. The second part is made up
of distichs, each one of which, complete in itself, embodies a
proverbial saying (x. i-xxii. 16). The third section is composed of
the "sayings of the wise men," which are enshrined in tetrastichs or
strophes of four lines, among which we find an occasional
interpolation by the editor, recognisable by the paternal tone, the
words "My son," and the substitution of distichs for tetrastichs.
Then comes the appendix containing other proverbial dicta (chap.
xxiv. 23-34. chap. vi. 9-19, chap. xxv. 2-10), followed by the
proverbs "of Solomon, which the men of Hezekiah copied out"
(xxv. 11-xxvii. 22), and wound up with a little poem in praise of
rural economy. Chaps. xxviii. and xxix. constitute another collection
of proverbs of a more strictly religious character, and then come the
sayings of Agur, written in strophes of six lines, the rules for a
king and the praise of a good housewife.
[172] Prov. i. 7-19 and i. 20-33.
[173] Chap. xxx.
* * * * *
FORM AND CONTENTS OF THE SAYINGS OF AGUR
It is needless to discuss the condition and the contents of the entire
Book of Proverbs, seeing that each one of its component parts has an
independent, if somewhat obscure, history of its own. The final compiler
and editor, to whom we are indebted for the collection in its present
form, undoubtedly found the sweeping scepticism of the poet Agur and the
pious protestations of his anonymous adversary, the thesis and the
antithesis, inextricably interwoven in the section now known as the
thirtieth chapter. He himself apparently identified the two
antagonists--the scoffing doubter and the believing Jew; most modern
theologians have cheerfully followed his example. The fact would seem to
be that the orthodox member of the Jewish community, who thus
emphatically objected to aggressive agnosticism, was a man who strictly
observed the "Mosaic" Law, and sympathised with the people in their
hatred of their heathen masters and their hopes of speedy deliverance by
the Messiah; in a word, an individual of the party which later on played
an important role in Palestine under the name of the Pharisees.
Possessing a copy of Agur's popular philosophical treatise, this zealous
champion undertook to refute the theory before he had ascertained the
drift of the sayings in which it was enshrined, or grasped their primary
meaning. Thus, in one passage[174] he fancies that the taunts which Agur
levelled against omniscient theologians who are well up in the history of
everything that is done or left undone in heaven, while amazingly
ignorant of the ascertainable facts of earthly science, are really aimed
at God; and he seeks to parry the attack accordingly. His numerous and
amusing errors are such as characterise the fanaticism that would refute
a theory before hearing it unfolded, not those which accompany and betray
pious imbecility. Hence it would be unfair to tax him with the utter
incoherency of the prayer which our Bibles make him offer up, when
warding off the supposed attack upon God: (8) "Feed me with food
convenient for me, (9) Lest I be full and deny thee, and say, Who is the
Lord? or lest I be poor and steal, and take the name of my God _in
vain_." The mistake is the result of the erroneous punctuation of the
Hebrew words,[175] which may be literally rendered into English as
follows:
"Feed me with food suitable for me,
Lest I be sated and deny thee,
And say, Who is the Lord?
Or lest I be poor and yield to seduction,
And sin against the name of my God.'
In the ensuing verse the controversialist, full of his own Pharisaic[176]
views of politics, and fancying he detects in certain of Agur's
words,[177] an apology for the heathen rulers and contempt for the
orthodox people of God, inveighs against the traitor who would denounce
his fellow-subjects to their common master,[178] and holds him up to
universal odium.
One or two other false constructions put upon Agur's sayings by the
champion of the "Law of Jahveh," are likewise worthy of attention. In the
second sentence, which can be traced back to the proverbial philosophy of
the Hindoos, Agur, enumerating the four things that are never satisfied,
lays special stress upon two which are, so to say, the beginning and end
of all things, the alpha and omega of human philosophy--viz., the grave
and the womb;[179] the latter the bait as well as the portal of life, the
former the bugbear and the goal of all things living. The idea, no less
than the form, is manifestly Indian. Birth and death constitute the axis
of existence; the womb is the symbol of the allurement that tempts men to
forget their sorrows, to keep the Juggernaut wheel revolving and to
supply it with fresh victims to be mangled and crushed into the grave.
The lure and the deterrent--love of sensuous pleasure and fear of
dissolution--are as deceitful as all the other causes of pain and
pleasure in this world of appearance. Schopenhauer puts it tersely thus:
"As we are decoyed into life by the utterly illusory impulse to
voluptuousness, even so are we held fast therein by the fear of death,
which is certainly illusory in an equal degree. Both have their immediate
source in the Will, which in itself is unconscious."[180]
The only reward which life offers to those who crave it, is suffering and
death. The desire of life--the Indian _tanha_ or thirst of
existence--Agur represents in the form of the beautiful but terrible
Ghoul of the desert who has two daughters: birth and death. By means of
her fascinating charms she entices the wanderer to her arms, but instead
of satiating his soul with the promised joys, she ruthlessly flings him
to her two daughters who tear him to pieces and devour him on the spot.
Desire is the source of life which in turn is the taproot of all evil and
pain; insight into this truth--the knowledge or wisdom lauded by Job and
prized by Koheleth--affords the only means of breaking the unholy spell,
and escaping from the magic circle.
This ingenious and profound philosophical image was wholly misunderstood
by Agur's orthodox adversary, who founds upon the deprecatory allusion to
the womb a general accusation of lack of reverence for maternity and a
specific charge of disrespect for Agur's own mother.[181]
Agur's third saying has been likewise sadly misconstrued by the ancient
Pharisaic controversialist and by his faithful modern successors. He
enumerates therein four things which to him seem wholly incomprehensible,
the fourth and last being the darkest mystery of all: the flying of an
eagle in the air, the movement of a serpent--which is devoid of special
organs of locomotion--along a rock, the sailing of a ship on the ocean,
and "the way of a man with a maid."[182] It is very hard to believe what
is nevertheless an undeniable fact, that the bulk of serious commentators
classify these as the trackless things, whereby, strangely enough, they
understand the last of the four in a moral instead of a metaphysical
sense. The error is an old one: it was on the strength of this arbitrary
and vulgar interpretation that Agur was accused by his Jewish antagonist
of a criminal lack of filial piety towards his own father,[183] and
threatened with condign punishment, to be inflicted by the eagles that
fly so wonderfully in the air;[184] while another scribe, unaware that
the mystery of generation could be chosen as the text for a treatise on
metaphysics, and firmly convinced that the philosopher was condemning
unhallowed relations between the sexes, penned a gloss to make things
sufficiently clear which was afterwards removed from the margin to the
text where it now figures as the twentieth verse.
In truth, Agur gives utterance to a natural sentiment of awe and wonder
at the greatest and darkest of all mysteries whose roots lie buried in
the depths of the two worlds we conceive of. What could be more
awe-inspiring than the instantaneous metamorphosis of pure immaterial
will into concrete flesh and blood, throbbing with life hastening to
decay, the incarnation in the sphere of appearances of an act of the one
being which is not an appearance only, but the denizen of the world of
reality? Will is primary, real, enduring; intellect secondary,
accidental, fleeting; the one, abiding for ever, is identical in all
things; the latter varies in different beings, nay in the same
individuals at various times, and perishes with the brain, of which it is
a function. Will is devoid of intellect, as intellect is deprived of
velleity. We know will through our inner consciousness which has to do
exclusively with it and its manifold manifestations; all other
things--the world of appearances--we know through what may be termed our
outer consciousness.
Now in our self-consciousness we apprehend the fierce, blind, headstrong
sexual impulse as the most powerful motion of concentrated will. The act
is marked by the spontaneity, impetuosity, and lack of reflection which
characterises the agent, will being by nature unenlightened and
unconditioned. And yet that which in our inner consciousness is a blind,
vehement impulse, appears in our outer consciousness in the form of the
most complex living organism we know. Generation, then, is manifestly the
point at which the real and the seeming intersect each other.
Birth and death--the inevitable lot of each and every one--would seem to
affect the individual only, the race living on without change or decay.
This, however, is but the appearance. In reality the individual and the
race are one. The blind striving to live, the will that craves existence
at all costs, is absolutely the same in both, as complete in the former
as in the latter, and the perpetuity of the race is, so to say, but the
symbol of the indestructibility of the individual--_i.e._, of will.
Now this all-important fact is exemplified quite as clearly by the
phenomenon of generation as by the process of decay and death. In both we
behold the opposition between the appearance and the essence of the
being, between the world as it exists in our intellect as representation,
and the world as it really is, as will. The act of generation is known to
us through two different media: that of the inner consciousness which is
taken up with our will and all its movements, and that of our outer
consciousness which has to do with impressions received through the
senses. Seen through the former medium, the act is the most complete and
immediate satisfaction of the will--sensual lust; viewed in the light
supplied by the outer consciousness, it appears as the woof of the most
intricate texture, the basis of the most complex of living organisms.
From this angle of vision, the result is a work of amazing skill,
designed with the greatest ingenuity and forethought, and carried out
with patient industry and scrupulous care; from that point of view it is
the direct outcome of an act which is the negation of plan, forethought,
skill, and ingenuity, a blind unreasoning impulse. This contrast or
rather opposition between the seeming and the real, this new view of
birth and death, this sudden flash of light athwart the impenetrable
darkness, is what provokes the wonder of this scoffing sceptic.[185]
In the fourth saying, Agur mentions, among the persons whom the earth
cannot endure, a low-bred fellow who is set to rule over others, and a
fool when he acquires a competency and becomes independent. The anonymous
Pharisee, who keeps a vigilant watch for doctrinal slips and political
backslidings and frequently finds them where they are not, descries in
the first of the four unbearable things a proof that Agur was a Sadducee
and an aristocrat who would rather obey a monarch who is "every inch a
king"--even though he be a heathen--than a native clodhopper who should
climb up to the throne on the backs of a poor deluded people and grind
them down in the sacred name of liberty and independence. Agur is
therefore duly reprimanded and classed with the shameless oppressors of
the multitude and the devourers of the substance of the poor,[186] as the
Sadducees generally were by their Pharisaic opponents.
The sentence that follows, enumerating the things "which are little upon
the earth,[187] is not from the pen of our philosopher, but a harmless
passage inserted subsequently as a _pendant_ to the four things
which "are comely in going." The main considerations that point to this
conclusion and warrant us in ascribing the verses to a different author
are these: all the other "numerical sayings" which are admittedly the
work of Agur, contain first of all the number three and in the parallel
verse four,[188] whereas this sentence speaks of four only. Again, all
Agur's proverbs are in the form of strophes of six lines each; but this
passage consists of five distichs. Lastly, it is a manifest digression,
leads nowhither, and, what is still more important, has no point, as all
Agur's sayings have.[189]
The final sentence of this interesting fragment needs no elaborate
explanation: it contains the pith of Agur's practical philosophy in the
form of an exhortation to renounce honour, glory, the esteem of men, &c.,
if we possess legitimate claims to such, and still more if we have none;
the acquisition of peace and quiet is cheap at the price of obscurity;
freedom from care and worry and from the evils they bring in their train,
being of infinitely greater value than the chance and even the certainty
of so-called "positive" enjoyments.
Footnotes:
[174] Prov. xxx. 4.
[175] The Hebrew text consists of vowelless words. The correct vowels
must be ascertained before the meaning of a word or sentence can
be definitely established. The vowel points of our Hebrew Bibles
are not older than the seventh century A.D., and are frequently
erroneous. In the present case the word stealing does not occur
in the text, but only the being stolen--viz., seduction, temptation.
[176] I employ the word in its natural, not in its conventional, sense.
[177] Prov. xxx. 21, 22.
[178] _Ibid_ xxx. 10.
[179] The word "barren" added in our Bibles (Hebrew _'oçzer_,
"barrenness") is not only excluded by the metre, but is also
wanting in the Septuagint version--conclusive proofs that it is a
later interpolation.
[180] _Cf_. Schopenhauer, "Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung," herausg.
v. E. Grisebach, ii. p. 585. Grisebach's is the only correct edition
of Schopenhauer's works.
[181] Prov. xxx. 11.
[182] _Ib_. xxx. 18, 19.
[183] _Ib_. xxx. 11.
[184] _Ib_. xxx. 17.
[185] _Cf_. Schopenhauer, "Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung," vol. ii.
p. 583 fol.; also vol. i. pp. 424-426; and Bickell, "Wiener
Zeitschrift für Kunde des Morgenlandes," 1891.
[186] Prov. xxx. 19.
[187] _Ib_. xxx. 24-28.
[188] For example, Prov. xxx. 15:
"There are three things that are never satisfied,
Yea, four things say not, 'It is enough!'"
[189] _Cf_. Bickell, "Wiener Zeitschrift für Kunde des
Morgenlandes," 1891.
* * * * *
DATE OF COMPOSITION
The sayings of Agur cannot possibly be assigned to a date later than the
close of third century B.C. The ground for this statement is contained in
the circumstance that Jesus Sirach found the Book of Proverbs in
existence, with all its component parts and in its present shape, about
the year 200 B.C. He mentions a collection of proverbial sayings when
alluding to Solomon and his proverbs. Jesus Sirach's canon--if we can
apply this technical term to the series of scriptures in vogue in his
day--comprised the books contained in our Bibles from Genesis to Kings,
further Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezechiel, the twelve Minor Prophets, Psalms,
Proverbs, and Job. Moreover, it is no longer open to doubt that the
arrangement of the various parts of the Book of Proverbs which he read
was identical with that of ours. For the last part of this Book contains
an alphabetical poem in praise of a good housewife,[190] and Jesus Sirach
concluded his own work with a similar poem upon wisdom, in which he
imitated this alphabetical order. It is obvious, therefore, that Proverbs
in their present form could not have been compiled later than the date of
Jesus Sirach's work (about 200 B.C.). This conclusion is borne out by the
circumstance that the final editor of Proverbs in his introduction,[191]
mentions the Words of the Wise, which occur in chapters xxii. 17-xxiv.,
and "their dark sayings," or riddles, by which he obviously means the
sentences of Agur. For Proverbs and for Agur's fragment, therefore, the
latest date is the beginning of the second century B.C. Chapter xxx., in
which, on the one hand, Agur develops very advanced philosophical views,
some of them of Indian origin, and, on the other, his anonymous
antagonist breathes the narrow, fanatic spirit so thoroughly
characteristic of the later "Mosaic" Law, is among the very latest
portions of Proverbs. For it is in the highest degree probable that the
sayings of Agur are of a much later date even than the promulgation of
the Priests' Code;[192] and the circumstance that the anonymous stickler
for strict orthodoxy already begins to accentuate the political and
religious opposition between the two great parties known as Pharisees and
Sadducees, as well as other grounds of a different order, disposes me to
assign the fragment of Agur to the third century B.C. This conclusion
would be borne out by the influence upon Agur's scepticism of
comparatively recent foreign speculation. Some of his sayings have an
unmistakable Indian ring about them. A few are even directly traceable to
the philosophical sentences of the Hindoos. The enumeration of the four
insatiable things, for instance, is but a slight modification of the
Indian proverb in the Hitopadeça which runs: "Fire is not satiated with
fuel; nor the sea with streams; nor death with all beings; nor a
fair-eyed woman with men."[193] Still more striking and suggestive is the
correspondence between the desire of life, personified in Agur's fragment
by the beautiful Ghoul, and the thirst of existence denoted by the Buddha
and his countrymen as _tanha_--the root of all evil and suffering.
"Through thirst for existence (_tanha_)," the Buddha is reported to
have said to his disciples, "arises a craving for life; through this,
being; through being, birth; through birth are produced age and death,
care and misery, suffering, wretchedness and despair. Such is the origin
of the world.... By means of the total annihilation of this thirst for
existence (_tanha_) the destruction of the craving for life is
compassed; through the destruction of the craving for life, the uprooting
of being is effected; through the uprooting of being, the annihilation of
birth is brought about; by means of the annihilation of birth the
abolition of age and death, of care and misery, of suffering,
wretchedness and despair is accomplished. In this wise takes place the
annihilation of this sum of suffering."[194] The same doctrine is laid
down by the last accredited of the Buddha's disciples, Sariputto: "What,
brethren, is the source of suffering?" he is reported to have said. "It
is that desire (_tanha_) which leads from new birth to new birth,
which is accompanied by joy and passion, which delights now here, now
there; it is the sexual instinct, the impulse towards existence, the
craving for development. That, brethren, is what is termed the source of
suffering."[195]
Footnotes:
[190] Prov. xxxi. 10-31.
[191] Prov. i. 6.
[192] 444 B.C.
[193] _Cf_. Hitopadeça, book ii. fable vi.; ed. Max Müller, vol. ii.
p. 38.
[194] Samyuttaka-Nikayo, vol. ii. chap. xliv. p. 12; _cf_. Neumann
"Buddhistiche Anthologie," Leiden, 1892, pp. 161-162.
[195] Majjhima-Nikayo; _cf_. Neumann, _op. sit.,_ p.25.
* * * * *
AGUR'S PHILOSOPHY
Of the three Hebrew thinkers of the Old Testament who ventured to sift
and weigh the evidence on which the religious beliefs of their
contemporaries were based, Agur was probably the most daring and
dangerous. He appealed directly to the people, and set up a simple
standard of criticism which could be effectively employed by all. Hence,
no doubt, the paucity of the fragments of his writings which have come
down to us and the consequent difficulty of constructing therewith a
complete and coherent system of philosophy. To what extent he assented to
the theories and approved the practices which constitute the positive
elements of the Buddha's religion, is open to discussion; but that he was
a confirmed sceptic as regards the fundamental doctrines of Jewish
theology, and that his speculations received their impulse and direction
from Indian philosophy, are facts which can no longer be called in
question.
To the theologians of his day he shows no mercy; for their dogmas of
retribution, Messianism, &c., he evinces no respect; nay, he denies all
divine revelation and strips the deity itself of every vestige of an
attribute. Proud of their precise and exhaustive knowledge of the
mysteries of God's nature, the doctors of the Jewish community had drawn
up comprehensive formulas for all His methods of dealing with mankind,
and anathematised those who ventured to cast doubts upon their accuracy.
"Whatever sceptic could inquire for,
For every why they had a wherefore,"
the unanswerable tone of which lay necessarily and exclusively in the
implicit and tenacious faith of the hearer. Now, faith may be governed by
conditions widely different from those that regulate scientific
knowledge, but if its object be something that lies beyond the ken of the
human intellect it must be based either upon a supernatural intuition
accorded to the individual or upon a divine revelation vouchsafed to all.
In the former case it cannot be embodied in a religious dogma; in the
latter it cannot--or should not--be accepted without thorough discussion
and due verification of the alleged historical fact of the divine
message.
This is the gist of Agur's reasoning against the allwise theologians of
the Jewish Church.
These sapient specialists, whose intellects were nurtured upon the
highest and most abstruse speculations and who could readily account for
all the movements of the Deity with a wealth of detail surpassing that of
a French police _dossier_, were utterly and notoriously ignorant of
the rudimentary laws of science which every inquisitive mind might learn
and every educated man could verify. Now, as truth is one, Agur reasoned,
how comes it that the persons who thus lay claim to a thorough knowledge
of the more difficult, are absolutely ignorant of the more simple?
Whence, in a word, did they obtain their perfect acquaintance with the
mysteries of the divine nature and the mechanism of the universe, the
elementary laws of which are yet unknown to them? Surely not from any
source accessible to all; for Agur, possessing equally favourable
opportunities for observation and quite as keen an interest in the
subject, not only failed to make any similar discoveries, but even to
find any confirmation of theirs. For this he sarcastically accounts by
admitting that he must be considerably more stupid than the common run of
mankind, in fact, that he is wholly devoid of human understanding--a
confession which he evidently expects every reasonable man to repeat
after him to those who assert that crass ignorance of fundamental facts
is an aid to the highest kind of knowledge.
"I have worried myself about God, and succeeded not,
For I am more stupid than other men,
And in me there is no human understanding:
Neither have I learned wisdom,
So that I might comprehend the science of sacred things."
Still he is a very docile disciple, and, having failed to make any
discoveries of his own, would gladly accept those of a qualified
master--of one who endeavours to know before setting out to teach and who
prefaces his account of the wonders of the unseen world by pointing out
the bridge over which he passed thither, from this. But does such a
genuine teacher exist?
"Who has ascended into heaven and come down again?
Who can gather the wind in his fists?
Who can bind the waters in a garment?
Who can grasp all the ends of the earth?
Such an one would I question about God: 'What is his name?
And what the name of his sons, if thou knowest it?'"
And if even specialists do not fulfil these conditions, are we not forced
to conclude that their so-called knowledge is a fraud and its
subject-matter unknowable?
Agur's views of right conduct--if we may judge by the general tenour of
his fragmentary sayings and by the principle embodied in his sixth and
last sentence, in which he rejects as a motive for action "a high hope
for a low heaven"--are marked by the essential characteristics of true
morality. An action performed for the sake of any recompense, human or
divine, transitory or eternal, is egotistic by its nature, and therefore
not moral; and the difference between the man who, in his unregenerate
days, cut his neighbours' throats in order to enjoy their property, and
after his conversion gave all his goods to feed the poor, in order to
enjoy eternal happiness in heaven, is more interesting to the legislator
than to the moralist. But, were it otherwise, Agur holds that, even from
a purely practical point of view, all the honours and rewards which
mankind can bestow upon their greatest benefactor would be too dearly
purchased by a ruffled temper; in other words, mere freedom from positive
pain is a greater boon than the highest pleasure purchased at the price
of a little suffering.
Agur's politics gave as much offence to the priests as his theology. Like
most original thinkers, he is a believer in the aristocracy of talent,
and he makes no secret of his preference of a hereditary nobility to
those upstarts from the ranks of the people who possess no intellectual
gifts to recommend them. For the former have at least training and
heredity to guide them, whereas the latter are devoid even of these
recommendations. These views furnished the grounds for the charge of
Sadduceeism preferred against him by his adversary.
To what extent Indian thought, and in particular the metaphysics and
ethics of Buddhism, influenced Agur's religious speculations, it is
impossible to do more than conjecture. Personally I am disposed to think
that he was well acquainted and indeed thoroughly imbued with the
teachings of the Indian reformer. In the third century B.C., as already
pointed out, the spread of the new religion through Bactria, Persia,
Egypt, and Asia Minor was rapid. Moreover, the turn taken by the
speculations of cultured Hebrews of that epoch was precisely such as we
should expect to find, if it stood to Buddhistic preaching in the
relation of effect to cause. The scepticism of the philosophers of the
Old Testament, not excepting that of Agur who may aptly be termed the
Hebrew Voltaire, was not wholly destructive. Its sweeping negations in
the spheres of metaphysics and theology were amply compensated for--if
one can speak of compensation in such a connection--by the positive,
humane, and wise maxims it lays down in the domain of ethics. And the
cornerstone of the morality of all three--Job, Koheleth, and Agur--would
seem to be virtually identical with that formulated in the Indian
aphorism:
"Alone the doer doth the deed; alone he tastes the fruit it brings;
Alone he wanders through life's maze; alone redeems himself from
being."
Buddhistic influence in the case of Agur, therefore, is all the more
probable that it admirably dovetails with all the circumstances of time
and place known to us, even on the supposition, which I am myself
inclined to favour, that Agur lived and wrote in Palestine. This
probability is greatly enhanced by the striking affinity between the
Buddhist conception of revealed religions, of professional priests and of
practical wisdom, and that enshrined in the few verses of Agur which we
possess. It is raised to a degree akin to certainty by the actual
occurrence of Indian images, similes, and even concrete aphorisms in the
short fragment of seven strophes preserved to us in the Book of Proverbs.
* * * * *
THE POEM OF JOB
TRANSLATION OF THE RESTORED TEXT
* * * * *
PROLOGUE
CHAP. I. A.V.]
1 _There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man
was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil._
2 _And there were born unto him seven sons and three daughters._
3 _His substance also was seven thousand sheep, and three thousand
camels, and five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she asses, and a
very great household; so that this man was the greatest of all the men of
the east._
4 _And his sons went and feasted_ in their _houses, every one his
day; and sent and called for their three sisters to eat and to drink with
them._
5 _And it was so, when the days of_ their _feasting were gone
about, that Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the
morning, and offered burnt offerings_ according _to the number of
them all: for Job said, It may be that my sons have sinned, and cursed
God in their hearts. Thus did Job continually._
6¶ _Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves
before the Lord, and Satan came also among them._
7 _And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan
answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth and from
walking up and down in it._
8 _And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job,
that_ there is _none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright
man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?_
9 _Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, Doth Job fear God for
nought?_
10 _Hast not thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and
about all that he hath on every side? thou hast blessed the work of his
hands, and his substance is increased in the land._
11 _But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he
will curse thee to thy face._
12 _And the Lord said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath_ is _in
thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand. So Satan went
forth from the presence of the Lord._
13¶ _And there was a day when his sons and his daughters were eating
and drinking wine in their eldest brother's house:_
14 _And there came a messenger unto Job, and said, The oxen were
plowing, and the asses were feeding beside them:_
15 _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._
16 _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._
17 _While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The
Chaldeans made out three bands, and fell upon the camels, and have
carried them away, yea, and slain the servants with the edge of the
sword; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee._
18 _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:
19 _And, behold, there came a great wind 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._
20 _Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell
down upon the ground and worshipped,_
21 _And 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._
22 _In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly._
CHAP. II. A.V.]
1 _Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present
themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them to present
himself before the Lord._
2 _And the Lord said unto Satan, From whence comest thou? And Satan
answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from
walking up and down in it._
3 _And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job,
that_ there is _none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright
man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? and still he holdeth fast
his integrity, although thou movedst me against him, to destroy him
without cause._
4 _And Satan answered the Lord, and said, Skin for skin, yea, all that
a man hath will he give for his life._
5 _But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and
he will curse thee to thy face._
6 _And the Lord said unto Satan, Behold he is in thine hand; but save
his life._
7¶ _So went Satan forth from the presence of the Lord, and smote Job
with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown._
8 _And he took him a potsherd to scrape himself withal; and he sat down
among the ashes._
9¶ _Then said his wife unto him, Dost thou still retain thine
integrity? curse God, and die._
10 _But he said unto her, Thou speakest as one of the foolish women
speaketh. What! shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we
not receive evil? In all this did not Job sin with his lips._
11¶ _Now when Job's three friends heard of all this evil that was come
upon him, they came every one from his own place; Eliphaz the Temanite,
and Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite: for they had made an
appointment together to come to mourn with him and to comfort him._
12 _And when they lifted up their eyes afar off, and knew him not, they
lifted up their voice, and wept; and they rent every one his mantle, and
sprinkled dust upon their heads toward heaven._
13 _So they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven
nights, and none spake a word unto him: for they saw that_ his
_grief was very great_.
CHAP. III. A.V.
1 _After this opened Job his mouth, and cursed his day_.
2 _And Job spake, and said_:
I
JOB:
Would the day had perished wherein I was born,
And the night which said: behold, a man child!
Would that God on high had not called for it,
And that light had not shone upon it!
II
Would that darkness and gloom had claimed it for their own;
Would that clouds had hovered over it;
Would it never had been joined to the days of the year,
Nor entered into the number of the months!
III
Would that that night had been barren,
And that rejoicing had not come therein;
That they had cursed it who curse the days,[196]
That the stars of its twilight had waxed dim!
IV
Would it had yearned for light but found none,
Nor beheld the eye-lids of the morning dawn!
For it closed not the door of my mother's womb,
Nor hid sorrow from mine eyes.
V
Why died I not straight from the womb?
Why, having come out of the belly, did I not expire?
Why did the knees meet me?
And why the breasts, that I might suck?
VI
For then should I have lain still and been quiet,
I should have slept and now had been at rest,
With the kings and counsellors of the earth,
Who built desolate places for themselves.
VII
Or with princes, once rich in gold,
Who filled their houses with silver,
I should be as being not, as an hidden untimely birth,
Like infants which never saw the light!
VIII
There the wicked cease from troubling,
And there the weary be at rest;
There the prisoners repose together,
Nor hear the taskmaster's voice.
IX
Why gives he light to the afflicted,
And life unto the bitter in soul,
Who yearn for death, but it cometh not,
And dig for it more than for buried treasures?
X
Hail to the man who hath found a grave!
Then only hath God "hedged him in."[197]
For sighing is become my bread,
And my crying is unto me as water.
XI
For the thing I dreaded cometh upon me,
And that I trembled at befalleth me.
I am not in safety, neither have I rest;
Nor quiet, but trouble cometh alway.
XII
ELIPHAZ:
Lo, thou hast instructed many,
Thy words have upholden him that was stumbling.
Now hath thine own turn come,
And thou thyself art worried and troubled.
XIII
Was not the fear of God thy confidence?
And the uprightness of thy ways thy hope?
Bethink, I pray thee, who ever perished guiltless?
Or where were the righteous cut off?
XIV
I saw them punished that plough iniquity,
And them that sow sorrow reap the same;
By the blast of God they perish,
And by the breath of his nostrils are they consumed.[198]
XV
Now a word was wafted unto me by stealth,[199]
And mine ear received the whisper thereof;
In thoughts from the visions of the night,
When deep sleep falleth upon man.
XVI
Fear came upon me and trembling,
Which made all my bones to shake.
Then a spectre sped before my face;
The hair of my flesh bristled up.
XVII
It stood, but I could not discern its form.
I heard a gentle voice:--
"Shall a mortal be more just than God?
Shall a man be more pure than his maker?
XVIII
Behold, in his servants he puts no trust,--
Nay, his angels[200] he chargeth with folly;--
How much less in the dwellers in houses of clay,
Whose foundations are down in the dust.
XIX
Between dawn and evening they are destroyed:
They perish and no man recketh.
Is not their tent-pole torn up?[201]
And bereft of wisdom, they die."
XX
Call now, if so be any will answer thee;
And to which of the angels wilt thou turn?
For his own wrath killeth the foolish man,
And envy slayeth the silly one.
XXI
His children are far from safety;
They are crushed, and there is none to save them.
The hungry eateth up their harvest,
And the thirsty swilleth their milk.
XXII
For affliction springeth not out of the dust,
Nor doth sorrow sprout up from the ground;--
For man is born unto trouble,
Even as the sparks fly upward.
XXIII
But I would seek unto God,
And unto God would I commit my cause,
Who doth great things and unfathomable,
Marvellous things without number.
XXIV
He giveth rain unto the earth,
And sendeth waters upon the fields;
To set up on high those that be low,
That they who mourn may be helped to victory.
XXV
He catcheth the wise in their own craftiness,
And the counsel of the cunning is thwarted;
Wherefore they encounter darkness in the daytime,
And at noonday grope as in the night.
XXVI
The poor he delivereth from the sword of their mouth,
And the needy out of the hand of the mighty;
Thus the miserable man obtaineth hope,
And iniquity stoppeth her mouth.
XXVII
Happy is the man whom God correcteth;
Therefore spurn not thou the chastening of the Almighty:
For he maketh sore and bindeth up;
He smiteth, and his hands make whole.
XXVIII
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.
XXIX
Thou shall be hid from the scourge of the tongue,[202]
Neither shalt thou fear misfortune when it cometh;
At destruction and famine thou shalt laugh,
Nor shalt dread the beasts of the earth.
XXX
For thy tent shall abide in peace,
And thou shalt visit thy dwelling and miss nought therein;
Thou shalt likewise know that thy seed will be great,
And thine offspring as the grass of the earth.
XXXI
Thou shalt go down to thy grave in the fulness of thy days,
Ripe as a shock of corn brought home in its season.
Lo, this have we found out, so it is!
This we have heard, and take it thou to heart.
XXXII
JOB:
Oh that my "wrath" were thoroughly weighed,
And my woe laid against it in the balances!
For it would prove heavier than the sands of the sea;
Therefore are my words wild.
XXXIII
For the arrows of the Almighty are within me;
My spirit drinketh in the venom thereof.
The terrors of God move against me,
He useth me like to an enemy.
XXXIV
Doth the wild ass bray when he hath grass?
Or loweth the ox over his fodder?
Would one eat things insipid without salt?
Is there taste in the white of raw eggs?
XXXV
Oh that I might have my request,
And that God would grant me the thing I long for!
Even that it would please him to destroy me,
That he would let go his hand and cut me off!
XXXVI
Then should I yet have comfort,
Yea, I would exult in my relentless pain.
For that, at least, would be my due from God,
Since I have never withstood the words of the Holy One.
XXXVII
What is my strength that I should hope?
And what mine end that I should be patient?
Is my strength the strength of stones?
Or is my flesh of brass?
XXXVIII
Am I not utterly bereft of help?
And is not rescue driven wholly away from me?
Is not pity the duty of the friend,
Who, else, turneth away from the fear of God?
XXXIX
My brethren have disappointed me as a torrent,
They pass away as a stream of brooks,
Which were blackish by reason of the ice,
Wherein the snow hideth itself.
XL
The caravans of Tema sought for them,
The companies of Sheba hoped for them.
But when the sun warmed them they vanished;
When it waxed hot they were consumed from their place.
XLI
Did I say: Bestow aught upon me?
Or give a bribe for me of your substance?
Or deliver me from the enemy's hand?
Or redeem me from the hand of the mighty?
XLII
Teach me and I will hold my tongue;
And cause me to discern wherein I have erred.
How cutting are your "righteous" words!
But what doth your arguing reprove?
XLIII
Do ye imagine to rebuke words?
But the words of the desperate are spoken to the wind.
Will ye even assail me, the blameless one?
And harrow up your friend?
XLIV
But now vouchsafe to turn unto me,
For surely I will not lie to your face.
I pray you, return; let no wrong be done.
Return, for justice abideth still within me.
XLV
Is there iniquity in my tongue?
Cannot my palate discern misfortunes?
Hath not man warfare upon earth?
And are not his days like to those of an hireling?
XLVI
As a slave panting for the shade, and finding it not,
As an hireling awaiting the wage for his work,
So to me months of sorrow are allotted,
And wearisome nights are appointed to me.
XLVII
Lying down I exclaim: When shall I arise?
And I toss from side to side till the dawning of the day;[203]
My flesh is clothed with worms and clods of dust,
My skin grows rigid and breaks up again.
XLVIII
My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle,
And have come to an end without hope;[204]
Remember, I pray, that my life is wind,
That mine eye shall see good no more.
XLIX
As the cloud is dispelled and vanisheth away,
So he that goes down to the grave shall not come up again;
He shall never return to his house,
Neither shall his place know him any more.
L
I too will not restrain my mouth,
I will speak out in the bitterness of my soul.
Am I a sea or a sea-monster,[205]
That thou settest a watch over me?
LI
When I say: "My bed shall comfort me,
My couch shall ease my complaint;"
Then thou scarest me with dreams,
And terrifiest me with visions.
LII
Then my soul would have chosen strangling,
And death by my own resolve:
But I spurned it, for I shall not live for ever;
Let me be, for my days are a breath.
LIII
What is man that thou shouldst magnify him?
And that thou shouldst set thine heart upon him?
That thou shouldst visit him every morning,
And try him every moment?[206]
LIV
Why wilt thou not look away from me?
Nor leave me in peace while there is breath in my throat?
Why hast thou set me up as a butt,
So that I am become a target for thee?
LV
Why dost thou not rather pardon my misdeed,
And take away mine iniquity?
For now I must lay myself down in the dust,
And thou shalt seek me, but I shall not be.
LVI
BILDAD:
How long wilt thou utter these things,
And shall the words of thy mouth be like a storm wind?
Doth God pervert judgment?
Or doth the Almighty corrupt justice?
LVII
If thou wouldst seek unto God,
And make thy supplication to the Almighty,
He would hear thy prayer,
And restore the house of thy blamelessness.
LVIII
For inquire, I pray thee, of the bygone age,
And give heed to the search of the forefathers;
Shall they not teach thee,
And utter words out of their heart?
LIX
Can the papyrus grow without marsh?
Can the Nile-reed shoot up without water?
Whilst still in its greenness uncut,
It withereth before any herb.
LX
Such is the end of all that forget God,
And even thus shall the hope of the impious perish,
Whose hope is as gossamer threads,
And whose trust is as a spider's web.
LXI
For he leans upon his house,
And has a firm footing to which he cleaves;
He is green in the glow of the sun,
And his branch shooteth forth in his garden.
LXII
But his roots are entangled in a heap of stones,
And rocky soil keeps hold upon him;
It destroyeth him from his place,
Then that denying him saith: "I have not seen thee."
LXIII
Behold, this is the "joy" of his lot,
And out of the dust shall others grow.
Lo! God will not cast out a perfect man,
Neither will he take evil-doers by the hand.
LXIV
He will yet fill thy mouth with laughing
And thy lips with rejoicing.
They that hate thee shall be clothed with shame,
And the tent of the wicked shall disappear.
LXV
JOB:
I know it is so of a truth;
For how should man be in the right against God?
If he long to contend with him,
He cannot answer him one of a thousand.
LXVI
Wise is he in heart and mighty in strength:
Who could venture against him and remain safe?--
Against him who moveth mountains and knoweth not
That he hath overturned them in his anger.
LXVII
He shaketh the earth out of her place,
And the inhabitants thereof quake with fear;
He commandeth the sun and it riseth not,
And he sealeth up the stars.[207]
LXVIII
He alone spreadeth out the heavens,
And treadeth upon the heights of the sea;
He doth great things past finding out,
Yea, and wonders without number.[208]
LXIX
Lo, he glideth by me and I see him not;
And he passeth on, but I perceive him not.
Behold, he taketh away, and who can hinder him?
Who will say unto him: "What dost thou?"
LXX
God will not withdraw his anger;
The very helpers of the sea-dragon[209] crouch under him.
How much less shall I answer him,
And choose out my words to argue with him?
LXXI
I must make supplication unto his judgment,
Who doth not answer me, though I am righteous,
Who would sweep me away with a tempest,
And multiply my wounds without cause!
LXXII
He will not suffer me to take my breath,
But filleth me with bitterness.
If strength be aught, lo, he is strong,
And if judgment, who shall arraign him?
LXXIII
Though I were just, my own mouth would condemn me:
Though I were faultless, he would make me crooked.
Faultless I am, I set life at naught;
I spurn my being, therefore I speak out.
LXXIV
He destroyeth the upright and the wicked,
When his scourge slayeth at unawares.
He scoffeth at the trial of the innocent:
The earth is given into the hand of the wicked.
LXXV
My days are swifter than a runner:
They flee away, they have seen no good;
They glide along like papyrus-boats,
Like the eagle swooping upon its prey.
LXXVI
If I say: "I will forget my complaint,
I will gladden my face and be cheerful;"
Then I shudder at all my sorrows:
I know thou wilt not hold me guiltless.
LXXVII
If I washed myself with snow,
And cleansed my hands with lye,
Thou wouldst plunge me in the ditch,
So that mine own garments would loathe me.
LXXVIII
Would he were like unto myself, that I might answer him,
That we might come together in judgment!
Would there were an umpire between us,
Who might lay his hand upon us both!
LXXIX
Let him but withdraw from me his rod,
And let not dread of him terrify me;
Then would I speak and not fear him,
For before myself I am not so.[210]
LXXX
My soul is aweary of life,
I will let loose my complaint against God;
I will say unto God: Hold me not guilty;
Show me wherefore thou contendest with me.
LXXXI
Is it meet that thou shouldst oppress,
Shouldst thrust aside the work of thine hands?
Seest thou as man seeth?
Are thy days as the days of mortals?
LXXXII
For thou inquirest after mine iniquity,
And searchest after my sin,
Though thou knowest that I am not wicked,
And that there is none who can deliver out of thine hand.
LXXXIII
Thine hand hath made and fashioned me,
And now hast thou turned to destroy me;
Remember, I pray thee, that thou hast formed me as clay;
And now wilt thou grind me to dust again?
LXXXIV
Didst thou not pour me out as milk,
And curdle me like cheese?
Hast thou not clothed me with skin and flesh?
And knitted me with bones and sinews?
LXXXV
Thou enduedst me with life and grace;
And thy care hath cherished my spirit.
And yet these things hadst thou hid in thy heart!
I know that this was in thee!
LXXXVI
Had I sinned, thou wouldst have watched me,
Nor wouldst have acquitted me of my wrongdoing.
Had I been wicked, woe unto me!
And though righteous, I dare not to lift up my head.
LXXXVII
As a lion thou huntest me, who am soaked in misery,
And ever showest thyself marvellous[211] against me!
While I live, thou smitest me ever anew,
And lettest thy wrath wax great against me.
LXXXVIII
Wherefore, then, didst thou bring me out of the womb?
Would I had then given up the ghost, and no eye had seen me!
I should now be as though I had never been;
I had been borne from the womb to the grave.
LXXXIX
Are not the days of my life but few,
So that he might let me be, while I take heart a little
Before I depart whence I shall not return,
To the land of darkness and of gloom?
XC
ZOPHAR:
Shall the multitude of words be left unanswered?
And shall the prattler[212] be deemed in the right?
Should men hold their peace at thy babbling?
And when thou jeerest, shall none make thee ashamed?
XCI
But oh that God would speak,
And open his lips against thee,
And that he would show thee the secrets of wisdom
That they are as marvels to the understanding!
XCII
It[213] is high as heaven; what canst thou do?
Deeper than hell; what canst thou know?
The measure thereof is longer than the earth,
And broader than the ocean.
XCIII
For he knoweth men of deceit;
He seeth wickedness and needeth not to gauge it.
Thus[214] the empty man gets understanding,
And the wild-ass' colt is born anew as man.
XCIV
If thou make ready thine heart,
And stretch out thine hands towards him,
Then shalt thou lift up thy face,
And in time of affliction be fearless.
XCV
For then shalt thou forget thy misery,
And remember it as waters that have passed away;
The darkness shall be as morning,
And thine age shall be brighter than the noonday.
XCVI
Thou shalt be secure because there is hope,
Thou shalt look around and take thy rest in safety;
Thou shalt lie down and none shall startle thee,
Yea, many shall make suit unto thee.
XCVII
But the eyes of the wicked shall fail,
And refuge shall vanish from before them;
Their hope shall be the giving up of the ghost;
For with him is wisdom and might.
XCVIII
JOB:
No doubt but ye are clever people,
And wisdom shall die with you;
I too have understanding as well as ye;
Just, upright is my way.
XCIX
He that is at ease, scorneth the judgments of Shaddai.[215]
His foot stands firm in the time of trial.
The tents of robbers prosper,
And they that provoke God are secure.
C
But ask, I beseech you, the beasts,
And the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee;
Or speak to the earth and it shall teach thee,
And the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee.
CI
Is not the soul of every living thing in his hand,
And the breath of all mankind?
Doth not the ear try words
As the mouth tasteth its meat?
CII
For there is no wisdom with the aged,[216]
Nor understanding in length of days;
With him is wisdom and strength;
He hath counsel and understanding.
CIII
Behold he breaketh down and it cannot be builded anew:
He shutteth up a man, and who can open to him?
Lo, he withholdeth the waters and they dry up,
He letteth them loose and they overwhelm the earth.
CIV
With him is strength and wisdom,
The erring one and his error are his,
Who leadeth away counsellors barefoot,
And rendereth the judges fools.
CV
He bringeth back kings into their mausoleums,
And overthroweth the nobles;
He withdraweth the speech of the trusty,
And taketh away the understanding of the aged.
CVI
He poureth scorn upon princes,
And looseth the girdle of the strong;
He discovereth deep things out of darkness,
And bringeth gloom unto light.
CVII
He stealeth the heart of the chiefs of the earth,
And maketh them wander in a pathless wilderness
So that they grope in the dark without light,
And stagger to and fro like a drunken man.
CVIII
Lo, mine eye hath seen all this,
Mine ear hath heard and understood it.
What ye know, the same do I know also;
I am nowise inferior to you.
CIX
But now I would speak to the Almighty,
And I long to argue with God;
For ye are weavers of lies,
Ye all are patchers of inanities.
CX
Oh that ye would all of you hold your peace,
And that should stand you in wisdom's stead!
Hear, I beseech you, the reasoning of my mouth,
And hearken to the pleadings of my lips!
CXI
Will ye discourse wickedly for God?
And utter lies on his behalf?[217]
Will ye accept his person by dint of trickery?
Will ye contend for God with deception?
CXII
Were it well for you should he search you out?
Can ye dupe him as ye dupe men?
Will he not surely rebuke you,
If ye secretly[218] accept his person?
CXIII
Shall not his majesty, then, make you afraid?
And his dread seize hold of you?
Will not your adages become as ashes,
Your arguments even as bulwarks of clay?
CXIV
Hold your peace that I may speak,
And let come upon me what will!
I shall take my life in my teeth,
And put my soul in mine hand.
CXV
Lo, let him kill me, I cherish hope no more,
Only I will justify my way before his face.
This too will aid my triumph,
That no wicked one dares appear in his sight.
CXVI
Behold now, I have ordered my cause;
I know that I shall be justified.
Who is he that will plead with me?
Only do not two things unto me!
CXVII
Withdraw thine hand from me,
And let not dread of thee make me afraid.
Then call thou and I will answer,
Or let me speak and answer thou unto me.
CXVIII
How many are mine iniquities?
Make me to know my misdeeds.
Wherefore hidest thou thy face,
And holdest me for thine enemy?
CXIX
Wilt thou scare a leaf driven to and fro?
And wilt thou pursue the dry stubble?
That thou writest down bitter things against me,
And imputest to me the errors of my youth.
CXX
Thou observest all my paths,
And puttest my feet into the stocks,
Thy chain weigheth heavy upon me,
And cutteth into my feet.[219]
CXXI
Man that is born of a woman,
Poor in days and rich in trouble;
He cometh forth like a flower and fadeth,
He fleeth as a shadow and abideth not.
CXXII
And upon such an one dost thou open thine eyes!
And him thou bringest into judgment with thee!
Though he is gnawed as a rotten thing,
As a garment that is moth-eaten.
CXXIII
If his days are determined upon earth,
If the number of his months are with thee;
Look then away from him that he may rest,
Till he shall accomplish his day, as an hireling.
CXXIV
For there is a future for the tree,
And hope remaineth to the palm:
Cut down, it will sprout again,
And its tender branch will not cease.
CXXV
Though its roots wax old in the earth
And its stock lie buried in mould,
Yet through vapour of water will it bud,
And bring forth boughs like a plant.
CXXVI
But man dieth, and lieth outstretched;
He giveth up the ghost, where is he then?
He lieth down and riseth not up;
Till heaven be no more he shall not awake.
CXXVII
Oh that thou wouldst hide me in the grave!
That thou wouldst secrete me till thy wrath be passed!
That thou wouldst appoint me a set time and remember me!
If so be man could die and yet live on!
CXXVIII
All the days of my warfare I then would wait,
Till my relief should come;
Thou wouldst call and I would answer thee,
Thou wouldst yearn after the work of thine hands.
CXXIX
But now thou renumberest my steps,
Thou dost not forgive my failing;
Thou sealest my transgressions in a bag,
And thou still keepest adding to my guilt.
CXXX
ELIPHAZ:
Should a wise man utter empty knowledge,
And fill his belly with the east wind?
Should he reason with bootless prattle?
Or with speeches that profit him nothing?
CXXXI
Yea, thou makest void the fear of God,
And weakenest respect before him;
For thine own iniquity instructeth thy mouth,
And thou choosest the tongue of the crafty.
CXXXII
Art thou the first man born?
Or wast thou made before the hills?
Wast thou heard in the council of God?
And hast thou drawn wisdom unto thyself?
CXXXIII
What knowest thou that we know not?
What understandest thou which is not in us?
Doth the solace of God not suffice unto thee,
And a word to thee whispered softly?
CXXXIV
Why doth thine heart carry thee away,
And what do thine eyes wink at,
That thou turnest thy spirit against God,
And lettest go such words from thy mouth?
CXXXV
Behold he putteth no trust in his saints;
Yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight;
How much less the foul and corrupt one,--
Man, who lappeth up wickedness like water.
CXXXVI
What the wise announce unto us,
Their fathers did not withhold it from them;
Unto them alone the land was given,
And no stranger passed among them.[220]
CXXXVII
The wicked man travaileth all his days with pain,
And few are the years appointed to the oppressor:
A sound of dread is in his ears:
In prosperity the destroyer shall overtake him.
CXXXVIII
He has no hope of return out of darkness,
And he is waited for by the sword.
The day of gloom shall terrify him,
Distress and anguish shall fasten upon him.
CXXXIX
For he stretched out his arm against God,
And girded himself against the Almighty:
Rushing upon him with a stiff neck,
Guarded by the thick bosses of his buckler.
CXL
The glow shall dry up his branches,
And his blossom shall be snapped by the storm-wind.
Let him not trust in vanity--he is deluded,
For his barter[221] shall prove worthless.
CXLI
His offshoot shall wither before his time,
And his branch shall not be green;
He shall shake off his unripe grape, like the vine,
And shall shed his flower like the olive.
CXLII
For the tribe of the wicked shall be barren,
And fire shall consume the tents of bribery:
They conceive mischief, and bring forth disaster,
And their belly breeds abortion.
CXLIII
JOB:
Many such things have I heard before.
Stinging comforters are ye all!
Shall idle words have an end?
What pricks thee that thou answerest?
CXLIV
I, too, could discourse as ye do,
If your souls were in my soul's stead.
I would inspirit you with my mouth,
Nor would I grudge the moving of my lips.
CXLV
But he hath so jaded me that I am benumbed;
His whole host[222] hath seized me.
His wrath hackles me and pursues me,
He gnashes upon me with his teeth.
CXLVI
The arrows of his myriads have stricken me,
He whets his sword, fixing his eyes upon me.
They smite me on the cheek outrageously,
They mass themselves together against me.
CXLVII
God hath turned me over to the ungodly,
And delivered me into the hands of the wicked.
I was at ease, but he clove me asunder,
He throttled me and shook me to pieces.
CXLVIII
He sets me up for his target;
His archers compass me round about;
He rives my reins asunder, and spareth not,
He poureth out my gall upon the ground.
CXLIX
With breach upon breach he breaketh me,
He rusheth upon me like a warrior;
Sackcloth and ashes cover me,
And my horn has been laid in the dust.
CL
My face is aglow with weeping
And darkness abides on my eyelids;
Though on my hands there is no evil,
And my prayer is pure!
CLI
Oh earth! cover not thou my blood!
And let my cry find no resting-place!
Even now behold my witness is in heaven,
And my voucher is on high.
CLII
My friends laugh me wantonly to scorn;
Mine eye poureth tears unto God.
Let him adjudge between man and God,
And between man and his fellow.
CLIII
Soon will the wailing-women come,
And I go the way I shall not return.
My spirit is spent, the grave is ready for me
Truly I am scoffed at.
CLIV
Hold still my pledge in thy keeping,
Who then will be my voucher?[223]
He yielded his friends as a prey,
And the eyes of his children must shrivel up.
CLV
He hath made me a by-word of the peoples,
And they spit into my face.
My eye is dim by dint of sorrow,
And all my members are as a shadow.
CLVI
At this the upright are appalled,
And the just bridles up against the impious.
But the righteous holds on his way,
And the clean-handed waxeth ever stronger.
CLVII
But as for you all--do ye return,
For I discern not one wise man among you.
My days, my thoughts have passed away;
My heart's desires are cut asunder.
CLVIII
If I still hope, it is for my house--the tomb.
I have made my bed in the darkness.
I have said unto the grave, "My Mother,"
And to the maggot, "Sister mine."
CLIX
And my hope--where is it now?
My bliss--who shall behold it?[224]
They go down to the bars of the pit,
When our rest together is in the dust.
CLX
BILDAD:
When wilt thou make an end of words?
Reflect, and then let us speak!
Wherefore are we counted as beasts?
Deemed silenced in thy sight?
CLXI
Shall the earth be deserted for thy sake?
And shall the rock be removed from its place?
Still the light of the wicked shall be douted,
And the spark of his fire shall not twinkle.
CLXII
The light in his tent shall be dark;
And his taper above him shall be put out.
The steps of his strength shall be straitened,
And his own design shall ruin him.
CLXIII
For he is tangled in the net by his own feet,
And he walketh upon a snare.
The slings shall catch him;
Many terrors rage menacingly round him.
CLXIV
Hunger shall dog his footsteps;
Misery and ruin stand ready by his side:
The limbs of his body[225] shall be gnawed,
Devoured by the firstborn of death.[226]
CLXV
He shall be dragged out from his stronghold,
And he shall be brought to the king of terrors;[227]
The memory of him shall vanish from the earth,
He shall be driven from light into darkness.
CLXVI
He shall have nor son nor offspring among his people,
And he shall have no name above the ground;
None shall survive in his dwellings;
Strangers shall dwell in his tent.
CLXVII
They of the west are astonied at him,
And those of the east stand aghast:
Such are the dwellings of the wicked,
And this his place who knoweth not God.
CLXVIII
JOB:
How long will ye harrow my soul,
And crush me with words?
Already ten times have ye insulted me,
Ever incensing me anew.
CLXIX
If indeed ye will glorify yourselves above me,
And prove me guilty of blasphemy;
Know, then, that God hath wronged me,
And hath compassed me round with his net!
CLXX
Lo, I cry out against violence, but I am not heard;
I cry aloud, but there is no judgment.
He hath fenced up my way that I cannot pass;
And he hath set darkness in my paths.
CLXXI
He hath stripped me of my glory,
And taken the crown from my head.
On all sides hath he ruined me, and I am undone;
And mine hope hath he felled like a tree.
CLXXII
He hath kindled against me his wrath,
And looketh on me as one of his foes.
His troops throng together on my way,
And encamp round about my tent.
CLXXIII
He hath put my brethren far from me,
And mine acquaintance are estranged from me;
My kinsfolk stay away from me,
And my bosom friends have forgotten me.
CLXXIV
They that dwell in my house, and my maids,
As an alien am I in their eyes.
I call my servant, and he giveth me no answer,
I must supplicate unto him with my mouth.
CLXXV
My breath is irksome to my wife,
And my entreaty to the children of my body.[228]
Yea, mere lads despise me:
When I arise, they talk about me.
CLXXVI
All my cherished friends abhor me,
And they whom I loved are turned against me;
My skin cleaveth to my bones,
And my teeth are falling out.
CLXXVII
Have pity, have pity on me, O my friends!
For the hand of God hath smitten me.
Why do ye persecute me like God,
And are not satiated with my flesh?
CLXXVIII
Oh would but that my words,
Oh would that they were written down!
Consigned to writing for ever,
Or engraven upon a rock!
CLXXIX
But I know that my avenger liveth,
Though it be at the[229] end upon my dust;
My witness will avenge these things,
And a curse alight upon mine enemies.
CLXXX
My reins within me are consumed,
Because you say: "How we shall persecute him!"
Fear, for yourselves, the sword,
For "wrath overtaketh iniquities."
CLXXXI
ZOPHAR:
It is not thus that my thoughts inspire me,
Nor is this the eternal law that I have known.[230]
No; the triumph of the wicked is shortlived,
And the joy of the ungodly is but for a twinkling.
CLXXXII
Though his height tower aloft to the heavens,
And his head reach up to the clouds,
Yet shall he perish for ever like dung,
They who have seen him shall ask: "Where is he?"
CLXXXIII
He flitteth like a dream and shall not be found,
Yea, he shall be chased away as a vision of the night;
His hands having crushed the needy,
Must restore the substance, and he cannot help it.
CLXXXIV
He hath swallowed down riches and shall disgorge them anew;
They shall be driven out of his belly.
He hath sucked in the poison of asps,
The viper's tongue shall slay him.
CLXXXV
He shall not gaze upon the rivers,
The brooks of honey and milk;
He must restore the gain and shall not swallow it,
His lucre shall be as sand which he cannot chew.
CLXXXVI
For the poor he had crushed and forsaken;
Had robbed an house but shall not build it up.
Nought had escaped from his greed,
Therefore shall his wealth not endure.
CLXXXVII
In the fulness of his abundance he shall be in straits,
Every hand of the wretched shall come upon him:
He[231] shall cast the fury of his wrath upon him,
And shall rain down upon him terrors.
CLXXXVIII
When he fleeth from the iron weapon,
Then the arrow of steel shall transfix him;
He draweth, and it cometh out of his back,
And the glittering steel out of his gall.
CLXXXIX
Terrors will trample upon him,
All darkness is hid in store for him;
A fire not kindled[232] shall consume him,
What remaineth in his tent shall be devoured thereby.
CXC
The heavens reveal his iniquity,
And the earth riseth up against him:
This is the wicked man's portion from God,
And the heritage appointed him by Elohim.
CXCI
JOB:
Hearken diligently to my speech,
And let that stand me in your comfort's stead!
Suffer me that I may speak;
And after that I have spoken, mock on!
CXCII
As for me, is my complaint to men?
And how should not my spirit be impatient?
Look upon me, and tremble,
And lay your hand upon your mouth![233]
CXCIII
Even when I remember, I am dismayed,
And trembling taketh hold on my flesh.
Wherefore do the wicked live?
Become old, yea, wax mighty in strength?
CXCIV
Their houses are safe from fear,
Neither is the rod of God upon them;
Their bull genders and faileth not,
Their cow casteth not her calf.
CXCV
Their seed is established in their sight,
And their offspring before their eyes;
They send forth their little ones like a flock,
And their children skip about.
CXCVI
They take down the timbrel and the harp,
And delight in the sound of the bagpipe;
They while away their days in bliss,
And in a twinkling go down to the grave.[234]
CXCVII
And yet they say unto God: "Depart from us,
We desire not the knowledge of thy ways."
Yet hold they not happiness in their own hands?
Is he not heedless of the counsel of the wicked?
CXCVIII
How oft is "the lamp of evil-doers put out"?
And how often doth "ruin" overwhelm them?
How oft are they as stubble before the wind,
And as chaff that the storm carries away?
CXCIX
Ye say, "God hoards punishment for the[235] children."
Let him rather requite the wicked himself that he may feel it!
His own eyes should behold his downfall
And he himself should drain the Almighty's wrath!
CC
If his sons are honoured,[236] he will not know it,
And if dishonoured, he will not perceive it.
Only in his own flesh doth he feel pain,
And for his own soul will he lament.
CCI
Is the wicked taught understanding by God?
And does he judge the man of blood?
Nay, he[237] filleth his milk vessels with milk,
And supplieth his bones with marrow.
CCII
But the guiltless dies with embittered soul,
And hath never enjoyed a pleasure;
Then they alike lie down in the dust,
And the worms shall cover them both.
CCIII
Behold I know your thoughts,
And the plots which ye wrongfully weave against me.
And how will ye comfort me in vain,
Since of your answers nought but falsehood remains?
CCIV
ELIPHAZ:
Can a man be profitable unto God?
Only unto himself is the wise man serviceable.
Is it a boon to the Almighty that thou art righteous?
Or is it gain to him that thou makest thy way perfect?
CCV
Will he reprove thee for thy fear of him?
Will he enter with thee into judgment for that?
Is not rather thy wickedness great?
Are not thine iniquities numberless?
CCVI
For thou hast taken a pledge from thy brother for nought,
And stripped the naked of their clothing;
Thou hast not given water to the weary to drink,
And hast withholden bread from the hungry.
CCVII
But as for the mighty man, he held the land,
And the honoured man dwelt in it.
Thou hast sent widows away empty,
And the arms of the fatherless have been broken.
CCVIII
Therefore snares are round about thee,
And sudden fear troubleth thee;
Thy light hath become darkness, thou canst not see,
And a flood of waters covereth thee.
CCIX
Doth not God look down from the height of heaven,
And crush the mighty for that they are grown haughty,
Which say unto God: "Depart from us,"
And "What can the Almighty do against us?"
CCX
And he forsooth "shall fill their houses with goods,"
And "be heedless of the counsel of the wicked":
No; the righteous shall look on and be glad,
And the innocent shall laugh them to scorn.
CCXI
Befriend now thyself with him, and thou shalt be safe,
Thereby shall good come unto thee.
Receive, I pray thee, instruction from his mouth,
And treasure up his words in thine heart.
CCXII
If thou turnest to God and humblest thyself,
If thou remove iniquity from thy tent,
Then shalt thou have delight in the Almighty,
And shalt lift up thy face unto God.
CCXIII
Thou shalt pray unto him and he shall hear thee,
And thou shalt pay thy vows;
If thou purpose a thing, it shall prosper unto thee,
And a light shall shine upon thy ways.
CCXIV
JOB:
Oh, I know it already: I myself am to blame for my misery,[238]
And his hand is heavy upon me by reason of my groaning!
Oh that I knew where I might find him,
That I might come even unto his seat!
CCXV
I would plead my cause before him,
And fill my mouth with arguments;
I would fain know the words which he could answer me,
And learn what he would say unto me.
CCXVI
Will he plead against me with his almighty power?
If not, then not even he would prevail against me.
For a righteous one would dispute with him;
So should I be delivered for ever from my judge.
CCXVII
Behold I go forward, but he is not there,
And backward, but I cannot perceive him.
For he knoweth the way that I have chosen:
If he would try me, I should come forth as gold.
CCXVIII
My foot has held his steps,
His way have I kept and swerved not;
I have not gone back from the precept of his lips,
I have hid the words of his mouth in my bosom.
CCXIX
But he is bent upon one thing and who can turn him away?
And what his soul desireth even that he doeth.
Therefore am I troubled before his face;
When I consider, I am afraid of him.
CCXX
God hath crushed my heart,
And the Almighty hath terrified me.
For I am annihilated because of the darkness,
And gloom enwrappeth my face.
CCXXI
Why do the times of judgment depend upon the Almighty,
And yet they who know him do not see his days?[239]
The wicked remove the landmarks;
They rob flocks and lead them to pasture.
CCXXII
They drive away the ass of the fatherless,
The widow's ox they seize for a pledge;
They turn the needy out of the way,
All the poor of the earth have to hide themselves.[240]
CCXXIII
Lo, these things mine ear hath heard,
Mine eye hath seen them, and so it is.[241]
And if it be not so now, who will make me a liar,
And render my speech meaningless?
CCXXIV
BILDAD:
Dominion and fear are with him,
Who maketh peace in his high places.
Is there any number to his armies?
And upon whom doth his light not arise?
CCXXV
By his power the sea groweth calm,
And by his understanding he smiteth the sea-dragon.
By his breath the heavens become splendour;
His hand hath pierced the bolt-serpent.
CCXXVI
But the thunder of his power,
Who understands its working?
And how can man be deemed just before God,
And how can he be clean who is born of a woman?
CCXXVII
Behold, even the moon shineth not,
Yea, the stars are not pure in his sight;
How much less man, the worm;
And the son of man, the maggot!
CCXXVIII
JOB:
How hast thou helped him that is without power?
How upholdest thou the arm that hath no strength?
To whom hast thou uttered words?
And whose spirit went out from thee?
CCXXIX
As God liveth who hath taken away my right,
And the Almighty who hath made my soul bitter,
Never shall my lips confess untruth,
Nor my tongue give utterance to falsehood!
CCXXX
Far be it from me to agree with you!
Till I die I will not yield up my integrity!
My righteousness I hold fast and will not let it go,
My heart doth not censure any one of my days.
CCXXXI
I will teach you about the hand of God,
The counsel of the Almighty will I not conceal.
Behold, all ye yourselves have seen it.[242]
Why then do ye utter such empty things?
CCXXXII
For there is a mine for silver,
And a place for gold where they fine it;
Iron is taken out of the dust,
And copper is smolten out of the stone.
CCXXXIII
He that hovers far from man hath made an end to gloom,[243]
He turneth the mountains upside down.
He cutteth out stulms among the rocks,
And the thing that is hid he bringeth forth to light.
CCXXXIV
But wisdom--whence shall it come?
And where is the place of understanding?
It is hid from the eyes of all living,
Our ears alone have heard thereof.[244]
CCXXXV
God understandeth its way,
And he knoweth its dwelling-place;
For he looketh to the ends of the earth,
And seeth under the entire heaven.
CCXXXVI
When he made the weight for the winds,
And weighed the waters by measure,
Then did he see and declare it,
He prepared it, yea, and searched it out.
CCXXXVII
Then he said unto man, "Desist!
Worry not about things too high for thee.
Behold, fear of me, that is wisdom,
And to depart from evil, that is understanding."
CCXXXVIII
ZOPHAR:
May the lot of the wicked befall mine enemy,
And that of the ungodly him who riseth up against me!
For what can be the hope of the iniquitous,
When God cutteth his soul away?
CCXXXIX
Will God hear his cry,
When trouble overtaketh him?
Will he delight himself in the Almighty?
Will he always call upon God?
CCXL
If his children be multiplied, it is for the sword,
And his offspring shall not be sated with bread;
They that survive him shall be buried in death,
And their widows shall not weep.
CCXLI
Though he heap up silver as the dust
And store up raiment as the clay,
He may indeed prepare it, but the just shall put it on,
And the guiltless shall divide the silver.
CCXLII
He buildeth his house as a spider;
Rich shall he lie down, but rich he shall not remain.
Terrors take hold on him like waters;
A tempest sweepeth him away in the night.
CCXLIII
JOB:
Oh that I were as in months gone by,
As in the days when God preserved me;
When his lamp shined upon my head,
And when I walked by his light through darkness!
CCXLIV
For then I moved in sunshine,
While God was familiar with my tent;
While I washed my steps in cream,
And the rock poured me out rivers of oil.
CCXLV
When I went to the gate at the city,[245]
When I prepared my seat on the public place,
Then the young men, seeing me, hid themselves,
And the aged arose and remained standing.
CCXLVI
Princes desisted from talking,
And laid their hands upon their mouths;
For the ear heard me and blessed,
The eye saw me and bore me witness.
CCXLVII
For I delivered the poor that cried aloud,
And the orphan and him that had none to help him;
The blessing of him that was perishing came upon me,
And I gladdened the heart of the widow.
CCXLVIII
I put on righteousness and it clothed me;
My judgment was as a robe and a diadem.
I became eyes to the blind,
And I was feet unto the lame.
CCXLIX
I was a father to the poor,
And the cause which I knew not I searched out;
And I brake the grinders of the wicked.
And plucked the spoil out of his teeth.
CCL
Unto me men gave ear and waited,
And kept silence at my counsel.
After my words they spake not again,
And my speech fell upon them as a shower.
CCLI
But now they laugh me to scorn,
Shepherd boys approach me with insolence,
Whose fathers I would not have deigned
To set with the dogs of my flock.
CCLII
Yea, what booted me the strength of their hands?
Pity upon them was thrown away.
They were children of fools, yea, men of no name,
They were driven forth from the land.
CCLIII
And now I am become the song of these!
Yea, I am become their byword!
They loathe me, they flee far from me,
And withhold not spittle from my face.
CCLIV
For he hath dissolved my dignity and humbled me,
And he hath taken away my renown.
He hath opened a way to my miseries;
They enter and no one helpeth me.
CCLV
With rumbling and booming they bounded along;
Terrors are turned upon me;
Thou scatterest my dignity, as with a wind,
And my welfare passeth as a cloud.
CCLVI
The night gnaws away my bones,
And my devourers need no repose;
By swellings is my garment misshapen,
And I am grown like unto dust and ashes.
CCLVII
I cry and thou hearest me not,
Thou art become ruthless towards me;
With the strength of thy hand thou assailest me,
And thou meltest my salvation away.
CCLVIII
For I know that thou wilt bring me to death,
And to the house appointed for all living.
But shall not a drowning man stretch out his hand?
Shall he not cry out in his destruction?
CCLIX
Did I not weep for him that was in trouble?
Was not my soul grieved for the needy?
I looked for good and waited for light;
Behold days of sorrowing are come upon me.
CCLX
I go mourning without sun;
I stand up in the assembly and cry aloud;
I am become a brother unto jackals,
And a comrade unto ostriches.
CCLXI
My skin hath grown black upon me
And my bones are scorched with heat;
My harp is turned to mourning,
And my bagpipe into the wail of the weeping.[246]
CCLXII
If I have walked with men of wickedness,
Or if my feet have hastened to deceit,
Let him weigh me in balances of justice,
That God may know mine integrity!
CCLXIII
If my steps have swerved from the way,
And mine heart followed in the wake of mine eyes,
Let me now sow and another eat,
Yea, let my garden be rooted out!
CCLXIV
If mine heart have been deceived by a woman,
Or if I have lain in wait at my neighbour's door,
Then let my wife turn the mill unto another
And let others bow down upon her!
CCLXV
For adultery is a grievous crime,
Yea, a crime to be punished by the judges:
It is a fire that consumeth to utter destruction,
And would root out all mine increase.
CCLXVI
Had I despised the right of my man-servant
Or of my maidservant, when they contended with me,
What could I do, when God rose up?
And when he visiteth, what could I answer him?
CCLXVII
For perdition from God was a terror to me,
And for his highness' sake I could not do such things.
Did not he that made me in the womb, make him?[247]
And did he not fashion us in one belly?
CCLXVIII
Never have I withheld the poor from their desire,
Nor caused the widow's eyes to fail;
Nor have I eaten my morsel alone,
Unless the fatherless had partaken thereof.
CCLXIX
If I saw one perish for lack of clothing,
Or any of the poor devoid of covering;
Then surely did his loins bless me,
And he was warmed with the fleece of my sheep.
CCLXX
If I lifted up my hand against the fatherless,
When I saw my backers in the gate,[248]
Then let my shoulder fall from its setting,
And mine arm from its channel bone!
CCLXXI
I have never made gold my hope,
Nor said to the fine gold: "Thou art my trust;"
Never did I rejoice that my wealth was great,
And because mine hand had found much.
CCLXXII
Never did I gaze upon the sun, because it shone brightly,
Nor upon the moon floating in glory,
So that my heart was secretly enticed,
And I wafted kisses to them, putting my hand to my mouth.[249]
CCLXXIII
Never did I rejoice at the ruin of my hater,
Nor exult when misery found him out;
Neither have I suffered my throat to sin,
By wreaking a curse upon his soul.
CCLXXIV
Never had the guests of my tent to say:
"Oh, that we had our fill of his meat!"
I suffered not the stranger to lodge out of doors,
But I opened my gates to the traveller.
CCLXXV
I covered not my failings after the manner of men,
By locking mine iniquity in my bosom,
As if I feared the vast multitude,
Or because the scorn of families[250] appalled me.
CCLXXVI
And I, forsooth, should keep silence, should not come forward!
Oh, that one would hear me!
Here is my signature; let the Almighty answer me,
And hear the indictment which my adversary hath written![251]
CCLXXVII
Surely I would hoist it upon my shoulder,
And weave it as a crown unto myself;
I would account to him for the number of my steps;
As a prince would I draw near unto him.
CCLXXVIII
JAHVEH:
Who is this that darkeneth my counsel,
With words devoid of knowledge?
Now gird up thy loins like a man,
For I shall ask of thee, and do thou teach me!
CCLXXIX
When I laid the earth's foundation where wast thou?
Declare, if thou hast understanding!
Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest,
Or who hath stretched the line upon it?
CCLXXX
Where are its sockets sunk down,
Or who laid the corner-stone thereof?
When the morning stars exulted together,
And all the sons of God shouted for joy.
CCLXXXI
Who shut in the sea with doors,
When it brake forth as issuing from the womb?
When I made the clouds its garment,
And thick darkness for its swaddling-band.
CCLXXXII
Then I brake up for it its appointed place,
And set it bars and portals,
And said: "Hitherto shalt thou come,
And here shall thy haughty waves be stayed!"
CCLXXXIII
Was it at thy prompting that I commanded the morning,
And caused the dawn to know its place?
That it might seize hold of the ends of the earth,
That the wicked might be shaken out?[252]
CCLXXXIV
Then the earth changes as clay under the seal,
And all things appear therein as an embroidery;[253]
But from the wicked is withholden their hiding-place,
And the raised arm shall be shattered.
CCLXXXV
Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea?
Or hast thou walked in search of the abysses?
Have the gates of death been opened unto thee,
Or hast thou seen the doors of darkness?
CCLXXXVI
Hast thou surveyed the breadth of the earth?
Declare, if thou knowest, its measure!
Thou must needs know it, for then wast thou already born,
And great is the number of thy days!
CCLXXXVII
Which way leadeth to the dwelling of light?
And of darkness, where is the abode?
That thou shouldst take it to its bounds,
And that thou shouldst know the paths to its house?
CCLXXXVIII
Hast thou entered into the granaries of the snow,
Or hast thou seen the arsenals of the hail,
Which I have laid up for the time of trouble,
Against the day of battle and of war?
CCLXXXIX
By what way is the mist parted?
And the east wind scattered upon the earth?
Who hath divided its course for the rain-storm?
And its path for the lightning of thunder?
CCXC
Out of whose womb issued the ice?
And who gendered the hoar-frost of heaven?
The waters are as stone,
And the face of the deep condensed like clots together.
CCXCI
Canst thou bind the knots of the Pleiads,
Or loose the fetters of Orion?
Canst thou send lightnings that they may speed,
And say unto thee: Here we are?
CCXCII
Who in his wisdom can number the clouds,
Or who can pour out the bottles of heaven,
That the dust may thicken into mire,
And the clods cleave close together?
CCXCII
Canst thou hunt its prey for the lion,
Or sate the appetite of the young lions,
When they couch in their dens,
And abide in the covert to lie in wait?
CCXCIV
Who provideth his food for the raven,
When his young ones cry unto God?
It hovereth around nor groweth weary,
Seeking food for its nestlings.
CCXCV
Canst thou mark when the hinds do calve?
Canst thou number the months when they bring forth?
They cast out their burdens,
Their little ones grow up out of doors.
CCXCVI
Who hath sent out the wild ass free,
Whose dwelling I have made the wilderness,
Who scorneth the noise of the city,
Nor heedeth the driver's cry?
CCXCVII
Will the wild ox be willing to serve thee,
Or abide by thy grip?
Wilt thou trust him because his strength is great,
Or wilt thou leave thy labour to him?
CCXCVIII
Dost thou bestow might upon the horse?
Dost thou clothe his neck with a waving mane?
Dost thou make him to bound like a locust,
In the pride of his terrible snort?
CCXCIX
He paws in the vale and rejoices;
Goes with strength to encounter the weapons;
He mocks at fear, and is not dismayed,
And recoileth not from the sword.
CCC
The quiver clangs upon him,
The flashing lance and the javelin;
Furiously bounding, he swallows the ground,
And cannot be reined in at the trumpet-blast.
CCCI
When the clarion soundeth he crieth, "Aha!"
And sniffs the dust raised by the hosts from afar;
He dasheth into the thick of the fray,
Into the captains' shouting and the roar of battle.
CCCII
Doth the hawk fly by thy wisdom,
And spread her pinions towards the south?
She builds her nest on high, dwelling on the rock,
And abideth there, seeking prey.
CCCIII
Will the caviller still contend with the Almighty?
He that reproves God, let him answer!
Wilt thou even disannul my judgment?
Wilt thou condemn me that thou mayst be in the right?
CCCIV
If thou hast an arm like God,
If thou canst thunder with a voice like his,
Deck thyself now with majesty and grandeur
And array thyself in glory and splendour!
CCCV
Scatter abroad the rage of thy wrath,
And hurl down all that is exalted!
The haughty bring low by a glance,
And trample down the wicked in their place!
CCCVI
Hide them together in the dust,
And bind their faces in secret!
Then will I, too, confess unto thee
That thine own right hand can save thee!
CCCVII
JOB:
Behold I am vile, what shall I answer thee?
I will lay mine hand upon my mouth.
Once have I spoken, but I will do so no more,
Yea, twice, but I will proceed no further.
CCCVIII
I know that thou canst do everything,
And that nothing is beyond thy reach;
Hence I say: I have uttered that I understand not,
Things too wonderful for me, which I know not.
CCCIX
I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear,
But now mine eye hath beheld thee;
Therefore I resign and console myself,
Though in dust and ashes.
EPILOGUE
CHAP. XLII. A.V.]
7¶ _And if was so, that after the Lord had spoken these words unto Job,
the Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite, My wrath is kindled against thee,
and against thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of me_ the thing
that is_ right, as my servant Job_ hath.
8 _Therefore take unto you now seven bullocks and seven rams, and go to
my servant Job, and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering; and my
servant Job shall pray for you: for him will I accept: lest I deal with
you_ after your _folly, in that ye have not spoken of me_ the
thing which is _right, like my servant Job._
9 _So Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the
Naamathite went, and did according as the Lord commanded them: the Lord
also accepted Job._
10 _And the Lord turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his
friends: also the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before._
11 _Then came there unto him all his brethren, and all his sisters, and
all they that had been of his acquaintance before, and did eat bread with
him in his house: and they bemoaned him, and comforted him over all the
evil that the Lord had brought upon him: every man also gave him a piece
of money, and every one an earring of gold._
12 _So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning:
for he had fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a
thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she asses_.
13 _He had also seven sons and three daughters_.
14 _And he called the name of the first, Jemima; and the name of the
second, Kezia; and the name of the third, Kerenhappuch_.
15 _And in all the land were no women found so fair as the daughters of
Job: and their father gave them inheritance among their brethren_.
16 _After this lived Job an hundred and forty years, and saw his sons,
and his sons' sons, even four generations_.
17 _So Job died, being old and full of days_.
Footnotes:
[196] _I.e._, the magicians by means of incantations.
[197] Allusion to the Satan's remark in the Prologue, chap. i. to: "Hast
not thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all
that he hath on every side?"
[198] The strophe which follows in Prof. Bickell's text I consider a
later insertion, and have therefore struck it out. It runs thus:
"The roaring of the lion, and the voice of the fierce lion,
And the teeth of the young lions are broken;
The old lion perisheth for lack of prey,
And the stout lion's whelps are scattered abroad."
[199] The prophetic vision which Eliphaz now describes is relied upon by
him as the sanction for his whole discourse. To his seeming, it is a
direct revelation from God.
[200] The sons of God, sons of the Elohim. _Cf._ Genesis vi. 4. There is
no analogy between these sons of God and the angels or saints of
Christianity. _Cf._ also Prof. Cheyne, "Job and Solomon," p. 81:
Baudissin, Studien, II.
[201] The human body is likened to a tent of which the tent-pole is the
breath of life; this gone, all that remains is the natural prey
of the elements.
[202] Calumny.
[203] Allusion to his sufferings at night from elephantiasis. This
terrible malady, which was first described by Rhazes, in the ninth
century, under the name _dâ-l-fîl_ ("disease of the elephant"), was
for a long time erroneously believed to be confined to Arabia. As a
matter of fact, it is found in an endemic state in all warm
countries, and sporadically even in Europe. In tropical and
sub-tropical lands it progresses with alarming rapidity. Every new
crisis is preceded by a shivering sensation and violent fever,
frequently accompanied with headache, delirium, and nervous and
gastric suffering. A violent attack of this kind may last seven or
eight days. The seat of the disease is generally the foot or the
reproductive organs. In the former case the foot swells to a
monstrous size, instep, toes and heel and ankle all merging in one
dense mass that reminds one of the foot of an elephant.
[204] Job feels that death is nigh.
[205] Allusion to an ocean myth. A watch had to be set upon the movements
of the monsters of the sea and the firmament.
[206] The irony of these words addressed by Job to Jehovah would be
deemed blasphemous in a poet like Byron or Shelley. As a matter of
fact, they constitute a parody of Psalm viii. 5. as Prof. Cheyne has
already pointed out ("Job and Solomon").
[207] The firmament, being a solid mass, has paths cut out along which
the stars move in their courses, just as there are channels made
for the clouds and rain.
[208] This entire speech is ironical.
[209] Allusion to a myth.
[210] In the light of my own conscience I am not an evil-doer.
[211] Ironical.
[212] _Lit_., the man of lips.
[213] Wisdom.
[214] _I.e_., God's wisdom enables him to discern the deceit of those who
appear just, and the punishment which he deals out to them makes the
result of his knowledge visible to the dullest comprehension.
[215] A name for God.
[216] The current versions of the Bible make Job say the contrary: "With
the ancient _is_ wisdom; and in length of days understanding" (Job
xii. 12, Authorised Version). _Cf. ante_, "Interpolations."
[217] _I.e_., Will ye persist in maintaining that God rewards the good
and punishes the wicked (as Zophar has just done, strophe xcvii.) in
spite of the fact that ye know it is untrue?
[218] _I.e_., not on grounds obvious to all, but because your own
particular lot is satisfactory.
[219] Compare this with the extraordinary verse in our Authorised
Version: "Thou settest a print upon the heels of my feet"! (Job
ii. 27).
[220] This is one of the very few passages in the Poem which throw light
upon the date of its composition.
[221] _I.e_., the object for which he bartered righteousness.
[222] Host of evils which has attacked me from all sides.
[223] Ironical.
[224] An allusion to the promises made by the friends on the part of God
that Job would, if he repented and asked for pardon, recover his
former prosperity.
[225] _Lit_., the pieces of his skin.
[226] Probably an allusion to elephantiasis.
[227] The personification of death.
[228] Either "the sons of the womb which has borne me," as in iii. 10, or
else "my own children," the poet forgetting that in the prologue
they are described as having been killed.
[229] _I.e_., when it is too late.
[230] Zophar discerns perfect moral order in the world.
[231] God.
[232] _I.e_., by man.
[233] _I.e_., be silent.
[234] Job's ideal of a happy death was identical with that of Julius
Caesar--the most sudden and least foreseen.
[235] Literally, "his."
[236] _I.e_., after his death.
[237] _I.e._, God.
[238] Ironical.
[239] If there be a God who rules the world, punishes evil, and rewards
good, how comes it that we descry no signs of such just retribution?
[240] About seven strophes in the same quasi-impious strain,
characterising the real reign of Jehovah upon earth as
distinguished from the optimistic delineations of Job's friends,
are lost. The verses that have taken their place in our
manuscripts are portions of a different work, which has no
relation whatever to our poem. They are not even in the same
metre as Job, but contain strophes of three lines only.
[241] Conjecture of Professor Bickell; these two lines are not found in
the MSS.
[242] I will judge ye out of your own mouths. Ye maintained, all of you,
that the principles on which the world is governed are absolutely
unintelligible. How then can ye reason as if the moral order were
based upon retribution, and from my sufferings infer my sins?
[243] The miner who descends into the abyss of the earth, and carries a
lamp.
[244] Wisdom is here identified with God, of whom we know nothing and
have only vaguely heard from those who knew less, i.e., former
generations, for whom Job has scant respect.
[245] To mete out justice.
[246] Two strophes are wanting here, in which Job presumably says that
this great change of fortune is not the result of his conduct.
The LXX offers nothing here in lieu of the lost verses; but the
Massoretic text has the strophes which occur in the Authorised
Version (xxxi. 1-4), and which would seem to have been
substituted for the original verses. The present Hebrew text is
useless here. If the four Massoretic verses which it offers had
stood in the original, so important are they that they would
never have been omitted by the Greek translators, who evidently
did not possess them in their texts. They remind one to some
extent of certain passages of the Sermon on the Mount, and are
manifestly of late origin.
[247] _I.e._, my servant.
[248] The concourse of people and partisans at the gate where justice was
administered.
[249] _I.e._, I never adored them as gods.
[250] Of the nobles.
[251] This is the passage become famous in the imaginary form: "That mine
adversary had written a book!" (xxxi. 35).
[252] Daylight is hostile to criminals, and the manner in which it
operates is here compared to a tossing of them off the outspread
carpet of the earth.
[253] On a carpet, to which the earth is still compared.
* * * * *
THE SPEAKER
TRANSLATION OF THE RESTORED TEXT
* * * * *
THE SPEAKER
PART I
I. THESIS: _Vanity of the so-called Absolute Joys of Living._
I 1.[254] The words of the Speaker, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.
2. Vanity of vanities, saith the Speaker, vanity of vanities: all is
vanity.
3. What profit hath man of all his toil wherewith he wearies himself
under the sun?
4. One generation passeth away and another cometh; the earth alone
abideth for ever.
5. The sun riseth and the sun goeth down and panting hasteneth back to
his place where he rose.
6. The wind sweepeth towards the south and veereth round to the north,
whirling about everlastingly; and back to his circuits returneth the
wind.
7. All rivers flow into the sea; yet the sea is not full; whence the
rivers take their source, thither they return again.
8. The all is in a never-ceasing whirl,
No man can utter it in words;
Rest is not vouchsafed to the eye from seeing,
Nor unto the ear from hearing.[255]
9. The thing that hath been is the same that shall be, and what befell is
the same that shall come to pass, and there is no new thing under the
sun. 10. If aught there be whereof one would say, "Lo, this is new!"--it
was erstwhile in the eternities that were before us.[256]
11. There is no memory of those that were; neither shall there be any
remembrance of them that are to come, among their posterity.
12. I, the Speaker, was king over Israel in Jerusalem, 13. and I set my
heart to seek out and probe with wisdom all things that are done under
heaven. 14. I surveyed all the works that are wrought under the sun, and
behold all was vanity and the grasping of wind.
15. That which is crooked cannot be straight,
Nor can loss be reckoned as gain.
16_a_. I communed with my heart, saying: Lo, I have gathered great
and ever-increasing wisdom, more than all that were before me in
Jerusalem. 17. Then I set my heart to learn wisdom and understanding.
16_b_. And my heart discerned much wisdom and knowledge, 17. madness
and folly. I realised that this also is but a grasping of wind. 18. For
In much wisdom is much grief;
Who increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow.
II.1. I said in my heart: Go to, now, I will try mirth
and taste pleasure! But behold, this too was
vanity.
2. Unto laughter I said: It is mad.
Unto mirth: What cometh of it?
PROOFS OF THE VANITY OF POSSESSION AND ENJOYMENT
_(a) Because Enjoyment is Marred by Possession_
II. 3. I cast about me, how I might confer pleasure upon my body--my
reason continuing to guide with wisdom the while--and how I might take to
folly till I should discern what is good for the sons of men that they
should do under heaven during the brief days of their existence. 4. I
undertook huge works, I builded me houses, cultivated vineyards, 5. laid
out gardens and orchards wherein I planted trees with all kinds of
fruits; 6. I dug out reservoirs of water wherewith to water the
tree-bearing wood. 7. I got me men slaves and female slaves and had
servants born in my house; I likewise owned horned and small cattle,
above all that were in Jerusalem before me. 8. I also piled up silver and
gold, the treasures of kings and provinces, I got me men singers and
women singers, and the delight of the sons of men, wife and wives. 9.
And I waxed great and increased more than all that had been before me in
Jerusalem; also my wisdom abode with me. 10. And what thing so ever mine
eyes coveted, I kept not from them. I withheld not my heart from any joy;
but my heart took pleasure in all my labour, for this only was my portion
of all my toil.
II. Then I turned to all my works that my hands had wrought and to the
worry wherewith I had wearied myself, and behold, all was vanity and a
grasping of wind; and there is no profit under the sun.
V.10. Whoso loveth silver shall not have joy of silver;[257]
And he who sets his heart on riches reaps nought therefrom.
This too is vanity.
11. When goods increase, they also are multiplied that devour them, and
what profit hath the owner thereof save the gazing thereon with his eyes?
12. Sweet is the sleep of the toiler; but his wealth suffered not the
rich man to slumber.[258]
_(b) Because Possession is at best but Fleeting_
V. 13. There is a sore evil which I have witnessed under the sun; riches
hoarded up by the owner thereof to his own undoing.[259] [For such an one
treasures them, spending thereby all his days in worry, vexation, grief,
and carking care without gladdening his soul;] 14. then the riches perish
by evil mishap, and if that man have begotten a son, there is nothing in
his hand.
16_a_. But this likewise is a sore evil: exactly as he came, even so
shall he go; 15. naked, as he issued from his mother's womb, must he
depart again, nor for all his labour shall he carry away aught that might
go with him in his hand. 16_b_. What profit hath he then for having
toiled for the wind, 17. and likewise passed all his days in darkness,
mourning and much grief, suffering and wrath?
_(c) Because the Capacity for Pleasure is hedged round with
Conditions_
V. 18. Behold what I have found to be good and beautiful: that a man eat,
drink and make merry amid all his labour whereat he striveth under the
sun during the brief days of his life which God hath allotted to him; for
such is his portion. 19. But that God should enable every man on whom he
has bestowed riches and treasures, to enjoy these, and taking his share,
to have pleasure in his labour, this is itself a gift of God.[260] 20.
For then he shall not ponder overmuch on the days of his life, since God
approveth the joy of his heart.
VI. 1. But there is an evil which I have seen under the sun, and it
weighs heavy upon men: 2. that God bestows upon one riches, wealth and
honour, grudging him nought for which his soul yearns, yet permitteth him
not to taste thereof, but a stranger enjoyeth it. This is vanity and a
sore evil. 3. If such an one should beget even a hundred sons and live
many years, but his soul could not revel in bliss then I say, an untimely
birth is better off than he. 4. For it came into nothingness, and
departed in gloom and its name is shrouded in darkness; 3. not even a
sepulchre fell to its lot; 5. moreover, it had not gazed upon, nor known
the sun; this latter hath more rest than the former. 6. Yea, though one
lived a thousand years twice told, yet had not tasted happiness, must not
all wander into one place?[261]
7. All man's toil is for his mouth;
And yet the soul[262]
gets not its fill.
III. 9. What profit hath the toiler from that whereat he labours? 12. I
perceived that for him there is no good other than to eat, drink, and
make merry in his life; 13. but even this same that any one may eat,
drink, and enjoy himself during all his toil, is for him a gift of
God.[263]
PROOFS OF THE VANITY OF KNOWLEDGE
(a) _Because of its Limitation_
III. 10. I considered the working of the world which God gave unto man as
a subject of meditation. 11. Unto their perception he made over the
universe and likewise all eternity; yet so that they are unable to
discern the work that he worketh from the beginning unto the end.[264]
(6) _From its Depressing Effects as Applied to the Order of the
World_
III. 14. I discovered that whatever God doeth is for ever; nothing can be
superadded to it, neither can aught be taken away; and God hath so
contrived it that man must fear him.
15. What came into being had been already long before, and what will be
was long ago; and God quickeneth the past.
(c) _Because of its Depressing Effects as Applied to Human Life and
Conduct_
III. 16. Moreover, I saw, under the sun, in the place of equity iniquity,
and in lieu of justice crime. 18. I said in mine heart: It is for men's
sake that God should try them and show that they are beasts, they unto
themselves. 19. For men are an accident, and the beasts are an accident,
and the same accident befalleth them all: as these die even so die those,
and the selfsame breath have they all, nor is there any pre-eminence of
man above beast;[265] for all is nothingness. 20. All drift into one
place; all sprang from the dust, and all turn to dust again. 21. Who
knoweth whether the breath of man riseth upwards or whether the breath of
the beast sinketh downwards to the earth?
22. And I perceived that other good there is none, save only that man
should enjoy himself in his work; for that is his portion. For who can
show him what shall become of him after his death?
IV. I. And again I saw all the oppressive deeds that are wrought under
the sun; and behold the downtrodden weep, and none comforteth them; and
they endure violence from their tyrants, and none consoleth them. 2. Then
I appraised the dead who died long since, as happier than the quick who
are yet alive; 3. but luckier than both, him who is still unborn, who
hath not yet witnessed the evil doings under the sun.
4. And I saw that all striving and all painstaking in the working of men
is but the jealousy of one with another; this too is vanity and the
grasping of wind. 5. True,
The fool foldeth his hands,
And eateth up his own flesh.
6. And yet better is a handful of quietness than both fists filled with
drudgery and the grasping of wind.
7. And again I beheld a vain thing under the sun: 8. one who toileth
restlessly without enjoying his riches. For whom do I wear myself out and
bereave my soul of pleasure? This too is vanity and irksome drudgery.
II. 12. For what manner of man will he be who shall come after me? 18.
Then I loathed all my toil, wherewith I had wearied myself under the sun,
in order that I should leave it to one who shall come after me. 19. And
who knoweth whether he be a wise man or a fool? Yet shall he have sway
over all the fruits of my labour which I have gained by toil and wisdom
under the sun; this likewise is vanity. 20. And I turned away to let my
heart abandon itself to despair because of the pains wherewith I laboured
under the sun. 21. For here is a man who hath performed his work with
wisdom, knowledge and painstaking, and to one who hath not laboured
thereat he must leave it, as his portion. This also is vanity and a sore
evil.
22. For what hath man of all his striving and of the worry of his heart
wherewith he labours under the sun? 23. For all his days are sorrows and
his work grief; yea, even at night his heart taketh no rest; this too is
vanity.
24. There is no good for man, save that he should eat and drink and make
glad his soul in his labour. Yet I saw that even this lieth in the hand
of God.[266] 25. For who can eat and who can enjoy except through him?
26. For on the man who findeth favour in his sight he bestoweth wisdom,
knowledge, and joy; but to him who is not pleasing in his sight[267] he
giveth drudgery, to gather and to heap up in order to make it over to him
in whom he is well pleased. This also is vanity and a grasping of wind.
PROOFS OF THE VANITY OF WISDOM IN ITS RELIGIOUS AND MORAL ASPECTS[268]
_(a) Because in the Chances of Life and Death the Just are Nowise
Favoured_
II. 12_a_. Then I turned to behold wisdom, madness and folly, 13.
and I saw that wisdom excelleth folly as much as light surpasseth
darkness:
14. The wise man hath eyes in his head;
But the fool walketh in obscurity.
But I perceived that the same fate overtaketh them all. 15. Then I said
in mine heart: As it happeneth to the fool, so shall it happen also unto
me; and why then have I been so very wise? Whereupon I said in my heart
that this too is vanity. 16. For there is no more remembrance of the wise
man than of the fool for ever; because in the days to come all shall have
been long since forgotten, and how the wise man perisheth like the fool!
17. Then I loathed life; because the turmoil under the sun weighed upon
me as a calamity, for all is vanity and a grasping of wind. III. 1. To
everything there is a season and each thing under heaven hath its
hour.[269] 2. There is a time to be born and a time to die; a time to
plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted; 3. a time to kill and
a time to heal; a time to break down and a time to build up; 4. a time to
weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance; 5. a time
to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together; a time to
embrace and a time to refrain from embracing; 6. a time to seek and a
time to throw away; a time to keep and a time to destroy; 7. a time to
rend and a time to repair; a time to be silent and a time to speak; 8. a
time to love and a time to hate; a time of war and a time of peace. VIII.
6. For every thing hath its season and its destiny,[270] for the bane of
man presses heavily upon him. 7. Because he knoweth not what shall be;
for who can tell him how it will come to pass?
8. No man swayeth the storm-wind,
None controlleth the day of his death;
There is no discharge in war,
Nor can riches rescue their possessor.
_(b) Because the Just are very often Treated worse than the Wicked_
VIII. 9. All this have I seen, and I have applied my heart unto every
event that happens under the sun, at the time when one man ruleth over
another to his undoing. 10. And so I beheld the evil-doer honoured, even
in the holy place, while they who had done uprightly must go away and
were forgotten in the city. This also is vanity.
11. Because sentence against misdeeds is not executed forthwith,
therefore the heart of the sons of man is fully set to work evil. 12. For
I know that many a miscreant hath committed bad deeds for a protracted
time past, and yet lives long, 13. while the God-fearing prolongeth not
his shadow-like days.
14. There is a vanity which is done upon earth: to righteous men that
happeneth which should befall wrong-doers; and that betideth criminals
which should fall to the lot of the upright. I said: This too is vain.
16a. When I applied my heart to know wisdom and to consider the goings on
upon earth, 17a. then I perceived that no man can find out the whole work
of God that is carried on beneath the sun.[271] How much soever he may
labour in seeking, he will not discover it; 16_b_. even though by
day and by night he should keep his eyes from seeing sleep; 17_b_.
yea, though a wise man set himself to fathom it, yet shall he not find it
out.[272]
IX. 1. For all this I laid to heart, and my heart beheld it all; that the
righteous and the wise and their doings are in the hand of God; neither
love nor hatred doth a man know in advance;[273] everything lies before
him.
2. All things come alike to all indiscriminately;[274] the one fate
overtaketh the upright man and the miscreant, the clean and the unclean,
him who sacrifices and him who sacrifices not, the just and the sinner,
him who swears as him who dreads an oath. 3. This is an evil amongst all
things that are done under the sun, that one chance betideth all;
therefore the sons of men pluck up courage for evil, and madness abideth
in their heart.
VIII. 15. Then I commended mirth, because for man there is no good under
the sun save only to eat, drink, and make merry, and that abideth with
him in his toil during the days of his life which God hath given him
under the sun.
PROOFS OF THE VANITY OF WISDOM IN ITS ASPECT AS PRUDENCE AND PRACTICAL
APTITUDE
_(a) Because Success is Contingent upon Circumstances beyond the
Control of Man_
IX. 11. Again I saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift, nor
the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to men of
understanding, nor favour to men of skill; but time and chance overtake
them all. 12. For man knoweth not even his own time; like the fishes that
are taken in the evil net, and like the birds that are caught in the
snare, so are the sons of men entrapped in the season of misfortune, when
it breaks in upon them unawares.[275]
_(b) Because of the Difficulty of obtaining recognition for it, and of
the Ease with which it may be Thwarted by Folly_
IX. 13. This also have I seen under the sun, as wisdom, and it appeared
great unto me. 14. There was a little city and few soldiers therein, and
there came a mighty king against it, and besieged it, and built great
bulwarks against it. 15. Now he found in it a poor wise man who, by his
wisdom, delivered the city; but no one remembered this poor man
afterwards. 16. Thereupon I said:
Wisdom is better than strength;
Yet the poor man's wisdom is despised.
17. The words of the wise are gently uttered;
But the clamour of fools is deafening.[276]
18. Wisdom is better than war weapons;
Yet a single oversight bringeth ruin.
X. 1. A dead fly causes balsam to putrefy;
So a little folly destroys much happiness.
VI. 8. For what hath the wise more than the fool? What, the poor who
knoweth how to walk before the living? 10. That which is happening was
long ago named, and it is known beforehand what a man shall be; neither
can he join issue with him who is mightier than he. 11. For there is much
prattle that only augmenteth vanity. Of what avail is it to man? 12. For
who knoweth what is helpful to man in life during the brief vain days of
his existence which he spendeth as a shadow? For who can tell a man what
shall come to pass after him under the sun?
PART II
RECOMMENDATION OF THE RELATIVE GOOD; AND IN THE FIRST PLACE OF WISDOM, AS
RENUNCIATION
_(a) Of Claims to Happiness_
VII.1_a_. Better is a good name than choice unguents,
X.1. But better wisdom than glory;
[Better not being than existence,][277]
VII.1_b_. And the death-day than the birthday.
2. Better to enter the house of mourning
Than to go into the tavern;
Because there is the end of every man,
And he who survives will lay it to heart.
3. Better is sorrow than laughter;
For a cheerless face makes a blithesome heart.
4. The heart of the wise is in the mourning-house;
The heart of fools in the house of mirth.
5. Better to hearken to the rebuke of the wise,
Than to listen to the song of the foolish.
6. As the crackling of thorns under a pot,[278]
Is the inane laughter of the fool.
VI.9. Better look with the eyes than wander with desire;
This too is vanity and a grasping of wind.
VII.7. For extortion maketh the wise man foolish,
And bribery robs understanding.
8. Better the end of a thing than the beginning thereof;
Better is patience than haughtiness.
9. Let not thy spirit be hurried into anger,
For anger lurketh in the bosom of fools.
10. Say not: Why were old times better than these? For it is not from
wisdom that thou askest thus.
13. Contemplate the work of God! Who can straighten what he hath made
crooked? 14. In the day of prosperity be of good cheer, and in the evil
day bethink thee: the latter God hath made even as the former, to the end
that man at his death shall have left nothing unaccomplished.
_(b) As Renunciation of Reputation for Perfect Justice and Wisdom_
VII. 15. All things have I witnessed in my vain days; there are just men
who perish through their righteousness, and there are wicked men who
prolong their lives by means of their iniquity.[279] 16. Be not righteous
overmuch, neither make thyself overwise; why wouldst thou ruin thyself?
17. Do not allow thyself too much liberty, and be not a fool: why wouldst
thou die before thy time? 18. It is well that thou shouldst hold fast to
the one and also not withdraw thy hand from the other, for he who feareth
God compasseth all this.
19. Wisdom is a stronger guard for the wise man than ten mighty men who
are in the city.
11. Wisdom is good with an inheritance,
Yea, better yet, to them that see the sun;[280]
12. For wisdom and wealth afford shade,
And wisdom, besides, keeps its possessors alive.
_(c) As Renunciation of One's Claims to the Respect and Consideration
of Others_
VII. 21. Likewise, take not all the gossip of people to heart, lest thou
hear that thy friend hath reviled thee! 22. For thy heart is conscious
that thou thyself hast often-times made little of others. 20. For:
There is no just man upon the earth
Who worketh good and never faileth.
_(d) Of One's Claims to Act Independently of their Counsel and Aid_
IV. 9. Two are better off than one; 10. for should one of them fall, the
other lifts him up again. Woe to him that is alone, if he fall, and there
be not another to raise him up. 11. Likewise, if two lie down together,
they become warm; but how can one grow warm alone? 12. Moreover, if a man
would overpower the single one, two can keep him at bay, and a threefold
cord will not easily give way.
13. Better is the youth, needy and wise, than the king old and foolish,
who can no longer take a warning to heart. 14. For the former went forth
from prison to govern, though born poor in the realm of the king. 15. I
saw all the living who walk under the sun, in attendance on the youth who
was to take his place. 16. There was no end to the multitude....[281] who
were before them; nor did those who lived afterwards glory in him. For
this likewise is vanity and a grasping of wind.
RECOMMENDATION OF WISDOM AS RATIONAL PIETY[282]
_A Warning: (a) Against Outward and Sacrificial Worship_
V. 1. Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God! And to draw near
him, in order to obey, is better than the offering of sacrifices by
fools: for they know not....[283] to work evil.
_(b) Against Mechanical Prayer_
V. 2. Be not rash with thy mouth, nor let thy heart be hasty to utter
words before God! For God is in heaven, and thou art upon earth;
therefore let thy words be few! 3. For
Dreams proceed from much brooding,
And the prattle of fools from a multitude of words.
_(c) Against Rash Vows_
V. 4. If thou makest a vow unto God, fail not to fulfil it, for fools are
displeasing. Carry out that which thou hast promised. 5. It is better
thou shouldst not vow at all than vow and not perform. 6. Suffer not thy
mouth to render thy body punishable, neither utter thou the plea before
the messenger:[284] "it was rashness." Why cause God to be wroth at thy
voice and destroy the work of thy hands?
_(d) Against Arbitrary Religious Speculations_
V. 7....[285] For in the multitude of fancies and prattle there likewise
lurketh much vanity. Rather fear thou God!
RECOMMENDATION OF WISDOM AS ACTIVITY
_(a) In Public Life_
V. 8. When thou witnessest oppression of the poor and the swerving from
right and equity in the land, marvel not thereat. For a higher one
watcheth over the high, and still higher ones over both.[286] 9. But a
gain to the country is only a king--for tilled land.
X.16. Wo, land, to thee whose king is a child,
And whose princes feast in the early morning!
17. Hail to thee, land, whose king is noble,
And whose princes eat in due season!
18. Through sloth the rafters give way;
Through idleness the roof lets in the rain.
19. They misuse food and drink for feasting:
And gold putteth all things in their grasp.
20. Even in thy privacy curse not the king,
Nor in thy bed-chamber the wealthy;
The birds of heaven might divulge it,
And the feathered ones might report the word.
_(b) In Private Life_
XI. 1. Send forth thy bread over the surface of the waters, for after
many days thou shall find it again. 2. Divide thy possessions into seven,
yea, into eight portions! For thou knowest not what evil may befall the
land. 3. If the clouds fill themselves with rain, they discharge it upon
the earth; and whether the tree falleth towards the south or towards the
north, in the place where it falleth, there shall it abide.
6. In the morning sow thy seed,
And until evening let not thy hand repose.[287]
For thou knowest not which one shall thrive, this or that, or whether
they shall both prosper alike.
4. He that observeth the wind shall not sow;
He that watcheth the clouds shall not reap.
5. As thou knowest not the way of the wind, nor the growth of the bones
in the womb of the mother, even so, thou canst not fathom the work of God
who compasseth everything.
RECOMMENDATION OF WISDOM AS CIRCUMSPECTION
_(a) In our Dealings with Women_
VII. 23. All this have I tried with understanding; I was minded to
acquire wisdom, but it remained far from me. 24. Far off is that which
is,[288] and deep, deep; who can fathom it?
25. I turned away, and my heart was bent upon understanding, sifting, and
seeking the outgrowth of wisdom and knowledge, madness, and folly. 26.
Whereupon I found that more bitter than death is woman--that snare whose
heart is a net, whose arms are fetters: the God-favoured shall escape
her, but the sinner shall be entangled by her.
27. Lo, this have I found, saith the Speaker, piecing one thing with
another in order to discover a result: 28. What my soul hath ever sought
for, yet never fallen upon, is this: I have discovered one man, among
thousands; and of all these there was not one single woman. 29. Behold,
this only have I found: that God made men upright, but they go in search
of many wiles.
_(b) In our Relations to the Monarch_
VIII.1. A man's wisdom brightens up his countenance.
And transforms the coarse rancour of his face.
2. The wise man hearkens to the king's command,
By reason of the oath to God.
3. Steer clear of evil causes![289]
For he[290] doeth even what he listeth.
4. Mighty is the word of the monarch;
Who dares ask him: "What dost thou?"[291]
X.2. The wise man's heart straineth to the right,
The heart of the fool to the left.
3. Even out of doors he lacketh sense,
Saying unto every one: "I am a fool."[292]
4. Though the wrath of the ruler should swell against thee, yet forsake
not thy post. For composure avoids grave mistakes.
5. There is an evil which I beheld under the sun, like unto a blunder,
proceeding from the ruler!
6. Folly is set in high places,
The great ones must sit low down;
7. Slaves have I beheld on horseback,
And princes trudging on foot.
_(c) In the Conditions of Everyday Life_
X. 8. He that diggeth a pit may fall into it; him who breaketh down walls
a serpent may sting. 9. Whoso removeth stones may be hurt therewith; he
who cleaveth wood may be endangered thereby.
10. If the axe be blunt it demands more strength:[293]
Only through intelligence doth exertion avail.
11. If the serpent bites before the spell,
Then bootless is the charmer's art.
12. Speech from the wise man's mouth is grace,
The lips of a fool swallow him up;
13. The first words of his mouth are folly.
And the end of his talk rank madness.
II.15. For in self-conceit babbles the fool,[294]
X.14_a_. The silly man multiplieth his words;
15. The fussiness of the fool jadeth him.
Who knows not yet the way citywards.[295]
_Exhortation to enjoy Life_
X. 14_b_. Man knoweth not what shall come to pass, and who can tell
him IX. 3. during his life, what shall befall after his death? Afterwards
they go down to the[296] [dead, and there none can tell him aught nor can
he apprehend anything. Even could he take it in, it would avail him
nothing, for in _Sheol_ there is no participation in life]. 4. For
whosoever may enrol himself in the company of all the living, can rest
content, seeing that a living dog is better than a dead lion. 5. For the
living know at least that they shall die, whereas the dead know not
anything at all, neither have they any more a reward, for the memory of
them is forgotten. 6. As well their love as their hatred and jealousy has
long since passed away, neither have they any more a portion for ever in
anything that is done under the sun.
7. Go, eat thy bread with joy,
And quaff thy wine with merry heart.
For God hath countenanced beforehand this thy doing. 8. Let thy garments
be always white and let thy head lack not ointment. 9. See life with a
woman whom thou lovest throughout all the days of thy empty existence
which he hath given thee under the sun, during all thy vain days! For
that is thy portion in life[297] and in thy labour which thou takest
under the sun. 10. Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do that with thy
might. For there is no work, nor cogitation, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in
the _Sheol_[298] whither thou goest. XI. 7. But sweet is the light
and pleasant it is for the eyes to gaze upon the sun. 8. For how many
years soever a man may live, he should enjoy himself during them all, and
bear in mind the days of darkness that they shall be many. Everything
that is to come, is vain.
9. Rejoice, young man, in thy youth![299]
And let thy heart make thee glad!
And walk in the ways of thine heart,
And according to the seeing of thine eyes!
_10a._ Drive sorrow from thy heart;
And put away care from thy flesh!
XII._1a._ And bethink thee of thy fountain,[300]
In the days of thy youth!
XI. _10b._ For youth and dawn are fleeting.
XII._1b._ Dreary days are drawing near,
And years approach devoid of joy.
2. Then darkened shall be sun and moon,
And clouds come after rain alway.
3. The keepers of the house[301] shall quake,
The sturdy ones[302] shall bend themselves;
Darksome shall the windows[303] be,
4. And closed shall be the portals.[304]
The roar of the mill[305] shall be as the sparrows twitter,
The daughters of song[306] shall bow low;
5. Likewise of heights shall they be afraid,
For dread shall lie in wait.
3. The grinding maids[307] shall leave off work,
5. The almond-tree[308] shall shed its blooms;
The grasshopper[309] shall be burdened,
And the caperberry[310] unavailing.
For man goeth to his everlasting home and the mourners are in readiness
in the street.
6. Asunder snaps the silver chain;
Shivered is the golden lamp;
The pitcher shattered at the brook;
The scoopwheel falls into the well.
8. O Vanity of Vanities, saith the Speaker; all is vanity![311]
Footnotes:
[254] For the convenience of the reader I give the chapters and verses as
they are in the ordinary Hebrew Bible, so that they can be found
at once in the Authorised Version. The letter _a_ after the
verse number indicates the first half of that verse, the letter
_b_ the second half.
[255] The meaning is almost the opposite of that of the Authorised
Version. Eye and ear are wearied and bewildered by the incessant
whirl of the vast machinery of the universe. _Cf._
Schopenhauer, ed. Grisebach, vol. v. p. 295, § 144. The metre of
the strophe is identical with that of the "Poem of Job."
[256] It is interesting and instructive to compare this with the
identical doctrine of Buddha, as set forth in the canonical book,
"Samyuttaka-Nikayo," vol. i. vii., 2 P, 2 Suttam. It is
accessible to most readers in the admirable German translation of
Dr. K. E. Neumann, Leiden, 1892. Pp. 156, 157.
[257] The Authorised Version has "shall not be satisfied with silver."
The meaning is that he who loves silver shall not enjoy the good
things it can purchase.
[258] _I.e_., The care and anxiety which accompany the possession of
wealth. The Authorised Version has: "The sleep of a labouring man
is sweet, whether he eat little or much: but the abundance of the
rich will not suffer him to sleep." The Hebrew word _saba'_
can signify both wealth and repletion. Here it manifestly means
the former; but some well-intentioned person whose ideas of
physiology were defective, having taken it to mean repletion,
confirmed his view by interpolating the words: "whether he eat
little or much."
[259] Here a portion of the original text has been lost, as is evident
from the passage beginning "What profit," two sentences lower
down, which sums up the troubles of the rich man and makes them
consist not merely in the loss of what he actually possessed, but
likewise in the hardships and privations which he endured in
order to produce his wealth. I give in brackets the words which
Professor Bickell conjecturally supplies in lieu of the lost
passage.
[260] And therefore extremely doubtful. When Koheleth wishes to express
the idea of inexorable law, or Fate, he has recourse to the
notion of God.
[261] It is only on earth that one can hope for some approximation to
happiness. If we fail to obtain it here--and the odds are very
much against us--there is no hereafter to look forward to; for we
_all_--the miserable as well as the fortunate--are drifting
steadily into one place--the dreary _Sheol_, where there is
no pleasure, no striving, no life.
[262] _I.e._, not merely, as commentators generally suppose, that
desire is not satiated; but that the enjoyment for the sake of
which alone we desire life, and toil to sustain it, is never
attained. The aim of labour is enjoyment, without which existence
is a burden; but the real result of it all is the mere support of
life without its redeeming pleasures. _Cf._ Schopenhauer,
vol. v. pp. 300, 301.
[263] That is to say, is a very uncertain outlook.
[264] This is a remarkable sentence, which, if it could be supposed to be
the fruit of the writer's own speculations, would entitle him to
a high place in the Pantheon of speculative philosophers. This
proposition, which underlies all Buddhistic doctrines, would be
formulated by Kant or Schopenhauer somewhat as follows: Time,
space, and causality are given to man as the _a priori_
conditions of all thought; they are the stuff his mind is made
of. As they are likewise the three ingredients of which the
universe is composed, it follows that the world is the web of his
own intellect, and, in so far as it is knowable, exists for the
intellect alone. That which underlies all the shadows of
existence, the one eternal force or will, he never beholds.
[265] Schopenhauer would express it thus: Our sources of knowledge--inner
and outer observation--are identical with those of animals, the
difference consisting in that faculty of imparting to our
intuitions the form of abstract ideas.
[266] That is to say, is highly uncertain; for, as we learn in the
following lines, happiness and misery depend upon chance or luck.
God gives his favourites an agreeable life, leaving the drudgery
to all the rest. And his choice is not determined by any ethical
acts of man.
[267] "Sinner" is not the correct translation of the Hebrew word
_khôte_ here; otherwise the author could not say that this
too (_i.e._, the punishment of the sinner) is vanity.
[268] The Jews frequently give to piety and morality the name of wisdom.
[269] The sense of this passage, which has become proverbial, is
generally misunderstood. What it means is that man's work, be he
never so skilful, be it never so easy, is absolutely dependent
for success upon conditions which are wholly beyond his control,
and that undertaken under any other conditions is inevitably
doomed to failure.
[270] Here Professor Bickell supplies the words: "Against this no man can
strive."
[271] The utmost that physical science can teach us is the where, the
when and the why of the appearance of the forces of nature. The
_what_ remains for ever a mystery.
[272] Wisdom here is taken to mean the one eternal reality which
underlies the shadowy appearances that we see and know. The same
use of the word and exactly the same thesis occur in Job.
(_Cf_. A.V. Job xxviii. 21, 22.)
[273] He cannot answer even for his own sentiments, completely though
they may seem to be under his sway.
[274] _I.e._, without ethical distinctions between the good and the
bad.
[275] It is curious to note that a comparison strikingly similar to this
occurs in the ancient Indian collection of fables entitled
"Pantschatantra." (Ed. Kosegarten, p. 105.)
[276] Literally: tyrannical.
[277] This line is no longer found in the Hebrew or Greek texts. It is
required, however, by the sense and metre, and is inserted by
Professor Bickell.
[278] Here the Hebrew text contains a play of words which cannot be
reproduced in English.
[279] "Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall." ("Measure for
Measure.")
[280] _I.e._, for mankind.
[281] Here a portion of the text is evidently lost. Professor Bickell
suggests that it ran somewhat as follows: "Who received him with
applause and reviled the old king. For inasmuch as he had spurned
the counsel of the wise, in order to misgovern and grind down the
people, therefore they hated him as those had hated him" who were
before them.
[282] As an antidote to the so-called "piety" founded upon the scrupulous
observance of the law, which had become a very Upas tree of
self-complacency. Mankind is already encompassed by so many and
such terrible evils, that it would be sheer madness to turn
religion into a means of multiplying them.
[283] Another passage is wanting here, which most probably was to the
effect that they know not that God asks no sacrifices at their
hands but only works of justice; and that therefore they take
courage "to work evil."
[284] Various commentators have offered various explanations of this
obscure passage. As none of them is convincing, I prefer to leave
them unnoticed. It is not impossible that it may contain an
allusion to some popular tale or fable, analogous to that of the
man who called upon death in his despair, and when the grim
visitor made his appearance, asked him merely to help him to
carry his burden.
[285] Professor Bickell supposes that here some words have fallen out,
such as: "Brood not over that which is too marvellous and too
lofty for thee, neither say of the dreams of thy heart and the
babbling of thy lips, 'I have found the knowledge of the Holy
One.'"
[286] This passage is a bitterly ironical onslaught on bureaucracy.
[287] This distich is rhymed in Hebrew.
[288] What Kant would call _das Ding an sich_. Everything we see and
know is but appearance. The underlying substance, "that which
is," is unknowable.
[289] Political plots.
[290] _I.e._, the king.
[291] Ironical.
[292] By his unconsidered acts.
[293] Literally, "it must be the more lustily wielded."
[294] This line is found only in the Septuagint.
[295] Probably a proverbial way of saying that a man knows nothing.
[296] The words in brackets are supplied conjecturally by Professor
Bickell.
[297] The Authorised Version has "in this life." But it deviates from the
Hebrew original.
[298] The nether world where the dead are but shadows.
[299] This and the following quatrain are rhymed in the original; as is
also the preceding distich.
[300] Thy wife.
[301] The arms.
[302] The legs.
[303] The eyes.
[304] The ears.
[305] The voice.
[306] The tones.
[307] The teeth.
[308] The white hair.
[309] Fascinum.
[310] [Greek: Kreis].
[311] The epilogue forms no part of the original text.
* * * * *
THE SAYINGS OF AGUR
TRANSLATION OF THE RESTORED TEXT
* * * * *
THE SAYINGS OF AGUR
FIRST SAYING
_On God_
I
Sentence of the man who has worried himself about God:
I have worried myself about God and succeeded not;
For I am more stupid than other men,
And in me there is no human understanding.
Neither have I learned wisdom,
So that I might comprehend the science of sacred things.
II
Who has ascended into heaven and come down again?
Who can gather the wind in his fists?
Who can bind the waters in a garment?
Who can grasp all the ends of the earth?
Such an one would I question about God: What is his name?
And what is the name of his sons, if thou knowest it?[312]
SECOND SAYING
_On Four Insatiable Things_
There be three things which are never satisfied,
Yea, four exclaim: "It is not enough!"
The Ghoul hath two daughters:
"Give, give!"--the grave and the womb.[313]
The earth is not filled with water,
And the fire sayeth not, "It is enough!"
THIRD SAYING OF AGUR
_On Four Inscrutable Things_
There be three things too wonderful for me,
Yea, four which I fathom not:
The way of the eagle in the air,
The way of the serpent upon a rock,
The way of a ship amidst the ocean,
And the way of a man with a maid.[314]
FOURTH SAYING
_Four Insupportable Things_
Under three things the earth quakes,
And under four it cannot stand.
Under a slave when he seeks to reign,
And under a fool when he is filled with meat;
Under an odious woman when she gets a husband,
And under a handmaid who is heir to her mistress.[315]
FIFTH SAYING
_Four who stride majestically_
There be three things which go well,
Yea, four are comely in going:
A lion--the hero among beasts,
Who turneth not aside for any one;
A greyhound and a bell-goat,
And a king who riseth up for his people's sake.
SIXTH SENTENCE
_Exhortation to denounce ambition_
Whether thou hast acted foolishly in exalting thyself,
Or whether thou hast done wisely, lay thy hand upon thy lips![316]
For pressure of milk produces butter,
And pressure of vanity produces anger;
Pressure of the nose[317] produces blood,
And pressure of wrath produces strife.
Footnotes:
[312] To this and the following Sayings, Agur's orthodox opponent replies
thus:
Every word of God is purified:
He is a shield to them that put their trust in him.
Add thou not unto his words,
Lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar.
Two things have I demanded of thee, O Jahveh,
Deny me them not before I die:
Frivolity and blasphemous words
And negation remove far from me.
Give me neither poverty nor riches;
Feed me with food suitable for me.
Lest I be sated and deny thee,
And say, Who is the Lord?
Or lest I be poor and yield to seduction
And offend against the name of my God.
Accuse not a servant to his master,[312a]
Lest he curse thee and thou be found guilty.
There is a bad generation that curses its father
And doth not bless its mother,[312b]
A bad generation which is pure in its own eyes,
And yet is not washed from its filthiness.
A bad generation, how lofty are its eyes!
And how uplifted its eyelids!
A bad generation whose teeth are as swords,
And whose jaw-teeth are as knives
To devour the poor from off the earth,
And the needy from among men.[312c]
[312a] As if Agur were an aristocrat from blind unreasoning sympathy for
the heathen aristocracy. Allusion to Agur's 4th Saying.
[312b] Against Agur's 2nd and 3rd Sayings.
[312c] Against Agur's 4th Saying.
[313] _I.e_., birth and death. (_Cf. Agur, the Agnostic_, pp.
139, 140.) The champion of orthodoxy evidently took the passage
literally and consequently condemned Agur as guilty of a lack of
filial respect for his mother, venting his feelings in the
following lines:
"The eye that scoffeth at the grey hair of the father
And that despiseth the old age of the mother,
The ravens of the valley shall pick it out
And the young eagles shall devour it."
[314] Verse 20 A.V. is an addition inserted by a later writer who having
misunderstood the last line of the fourth sentence, deemed it his
duty to give it a moral turn.
[315] The Sentence following (vv. 24-24 A.V.) dealing with Four Cunning
Ones is probably not from Agur's pen; for not only has it five
distichs, but it lacks the point which characterises his Sayings,
besides which it does not begin, as his "numerical" Sentences do,
with _three_ before proceeding to _four_.
[316] Keep silence.
[317] In Hebrew the same word signifies "nose" and "strife."
* * * * *
INDEX
* * * * *
INDEX
Adversary, the, "a son of God"
Agur, the Sayings of--
their literary place
character of
their position in Proverbs
their present form
Agur and his orthodox opponent
blunders of the latter
Oriental influence traceable in the Sayings
the mystery of generation
date of composition
Agur shows no respect for the doctrine of retribution, for
Messianism, revelation, &c.; no belief in a personal God
his antagonism to Jewish theologians
his views of right conduct
Angels
Animals, the tenderness of Buddhism towards
Aryans and Semites, contrast of mental characteristics
Asterisks, Origen's, in the Hexapla
Authorship of Job
Bickell, Professor, and the laws of Hebrew metre
discovery of the Saidic version of Job
on the theophany in Job
theory as to the chaotic state of Koheleth
and the "Praise of Wisdom"
textual conjectures
"Book, That mine adversary had written a"
Book of Job (see Job)
Buddhism and the theology of Job
and Job's moral system
influence of, on Koheleth
Buddhism, spread of, into Syria, Egypt, &c.
influence of, on Agur
and the doctrine of Renunciation
its tenderness towards animals and plants
Byron's "Cain" and Job
"Cain" (Byron's) and Job
"Canticles of Scepticism," Heine's description of Koheleth
Cheyne, Prof., and the date of Job
and the laws of Hebrew metre
and Prof. Bickell's theory of the plan of Koheleth
on the "theism" of Koheleth
Job, strophe liii. and Ps. viii. 5 compared.
Christ and the doctrine of Renunciation
Christianity not incompatible with Koheleth's scepticism
Clement of Alexandria and a lost version of Job
Cornill, Dr., and the date of Job
Council of Constantinople and the historical truth of Job
Critical apparatus applied to text of Job
Date of Job
of earliest extant MS. of Job
of Koheleth
of the Sayings of Agur
Ecclesiastes (_see_ Koheleth)
Ecclesiasticus, dropped leaves causing transposition of chapters in
Elephantiasis
Eternal justice, Job's belief in
Koheleth's belief in
Evil (_see_ Good and Evil)
Ewald and the laws of Hebrew metre
Firmament, the
Free-will and the origin of evil
Future life, Job knows nothing of
Koheleth knows nothing of
Ghoul, the (_Tanha_)
Good and Evil, problem of
free-will and the origin of evil
the Oriental theory of
Gregory the Great and the Book of Job
Hebrew metre, Prof. Bickell and the laws of
Heine and the "Canticles of Scepticism"
Hitopadeça, the, and the Sayings of Agur
Inspiration of Job not affected by reconstructive changes
Interpolations in Job, examples of
Isaac of Antioch, transpositions in poems caused by dropped leaves
Jesus Sirach and the Book of Proverbs
Job, the Poem of--
compared with Lucretius, _De Nat. Rerum_
its inclusion in the Canon
its appeal to all ages
opinion of Gregory the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Tennyson,
Luther
its place in literature
the problem of
traditional theology
the mystery of good and evil
no conception of a future life
nor of the Resurrection or Atonement
the poet's view of the problem
free-will and the origin of evil
the Oriental theory of these
Brahmanism and Buddhism
Job's illumination the same as Buddha's
authorship of
date of
the question of historicity
date of earliest extant MS. of
a lost version of
various causes for changes in text
the chief cause, a horror of blasphemy
apparatus for detecting these changes
laws of Hebrew metre
parallelism
evidence of the Septuagint
Theodotion's version of the Old Testament
the Hexapla
the Saidic or Thebaic version of Job
examples of interpolations
reconstructive changes do not affect inspiration
Job's natural philosophy
his dynamic theory of the Universe
his monotheism not Jewish
his moral system, based on pity, found in Buddhism, and here
first preached in the Old Testament
belief in eternal justice
the secret of Job's resignation
the ancient legend of Job, use of it by the poet
analysis of the Poem
the appearance of Jehovah not literal
but symbolical of Job's illumination
Judaism, the influence of Buddhism on
Kant and Koheleth
Koheleth--
its inclusion in the Canon
the literary problem of
its metaphysical basis the same as that of the philosophy of
Buddha, Kant, and Schopenhauer
chaotic and conflicting character of text
Prof. Bickell's theory as to the confusion of the book
instances of similar confusion in other works
the proposed re-arrangement
illustrations in support of Prof. Bickell's theory
Koheleth's theory of life
source of happiness not wealth
nor wisdom
nor virtue
Koheleth's system
relation of God to man
the practical moral
the view of "moral order"
the world all Maya, illusion
Koheleth's theory not inconsistent with Christianity
the reach of our knowledge; happiness the only true good
Koheleth knows nothing of future life or of divine promises or
revelations
his belief in eternal justice
renunciation, the great doctrine
wisdom the great boon
content and moderation the golden rule
the sources of his philosophy
opposition of Jewish orthodoxy to the book
admission of the book to the Canon
its incompatibility with Messianic hopes of Israel
disbelief in a personal God
in retribution and immortality
Greek influences questioned; probable influence of Buddhism
date and locality of Koheleth
Life to come (_see_ Future Life)
Lucretius compared with Job
Luther and the Book of Job
Magicians mentioned in Job
Maya, illusion, the teaching of Koheleth
Metre in Hebrew, laws of
Nirvana, Koheleth's only real good
view of
Old Testament, untrustworthiness of historical books
Origen and the Hexapla
Parallelism in Hebrew poetry
Paul, St., and a lost version of Job
"Praise of Wisdom," its place in "Proverbs," Prof. Bickell's discovery
Priests' Code, the
"Proverbs," analysis of
not written by Solomon
their history
date of
Plants, tenderness of Buddhism towards
Renunciation, the teaching of Koheleth, Buddha, Christ, etc.
Resurrection, the (in Job)
"Redeemer liveth, I know that my"
Saidic or Thebaic version of Job
Sariputto, and the desire for life (_tanha_)
Satan, "a son of God"
Scotus Erigena and free-will
Schopenhauer and Koheleth
and Renunciation
and the four things insatiable
Semites, remains of ancient speculation among
and Aryans, contrast of mental characteristics
Septuagint, the value of, in regard to text of Job
Tanha, the terrible Ghoul
Tennyson's opinion of Job
Thebaic or Saidic version of Job
Theodore of Mopsuestia condemned for declaring Job to be fiction
Theodotion's version of the Old Testament
Thomas Aquinas on Job
Transmigration of souls
Veda, the
Vedanta, the
Vowel points in Hebrew
"Wisdom, Praise of," its place in "Proverbs," Prof. Bickell's discovery
* * * * *
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Job - Koheleth - Agur, by Emile Joseph Dillon
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