Part 29 (2/2)

[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._, G.o.d.

[238] Ironical.

[239] If there be a G.o.d 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 ma.n.u.scripts 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 G.o.d, 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 Ma.s.soretic text has the strophes which occur in the Authorised Version (x.x.xi. 1-4), and which would seem to have been subst.i.tuted for the original verses. The present Hebrew text is useless here. If the four Ma.s.soretic 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 pa.s.sages 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 G.o.ds.

[250] Of the n.o.bles.

[251] This is the pa.s.sage become famous in the imaginary form: ”That mine adversary had written a book!” (x.x.xi. 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

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