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

The Chaldeans made three bands,

and fell upon the camels,

and have taken them away,

yea, and slain the servants with the edge of the sword;
and I only am escaped alone to tell thee!

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

Thy sons and thy daughters

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

there came a great 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!

Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped; and he said:

Naked came I out of my mother's womb,

And naked shall I return thither!

The LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away:
Blessed be the Name of the LORD!

In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God with foolishness.

Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and the Adversary came also among them to present himself before the LORD.

And the LORD said unto the Adversary, "From whence comest thou?"

And the Adversary answered the LORD, and said, "From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it. And the LORD said unto the Adversary, "Hast thou considered

my servant Job? for there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil: and he still holdeth fast his integrity, although thou movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause."

And the Adversary answered the LORD, and said, "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."

So the Adversary went forth from the presence of the LORD, and smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown. And he took him a potsherd to scrape himself withal; and he sat among the ashes.

Then said his wife unto him, "Dost thou still hold fast thine integrity? renounce God, and die.”

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.

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: and they made an appointment together to come to bemoan him and to comfort him. 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.

We pass from narrated story to lyric drama, for the mysterious situation stands fully revealed. Job, deemed the most perfect servant of God on earth, has been suddenly visited with an overwhelming combination of every kind of calamity. What can be the moral significance of all this? The personages of the drama are assembled. Job, victim of a loathsome disease, is sitting in the place of outcasts on the ashes mound which is outside any oriental

village. This ashes mound is the stage. Round this stage have gathered spectators to learn wisdom from the strange sight; this is like a Greek Chorus. It is at first a silent chorus; but later on one of its members will ascend the ash mound and enter into the debate. For scene of this drama we have the open air scenery of the Land of Uz; and this is an important consideration, for in the end a change in this open air scene will bring the drama to its dénouement. The three Friends of Job-aged chieftains like himself-sit in grief before him; they wait, with the lofty courtesy of the east, for the chief sufferer to speak the first word. At last Job breaks the oppressive silence, and "curses the day of his birth." But what is called a "curse" is only an elegy on a ruined life: from abject misery Job's thoughts turn to the dignity and silence of the grave.

For now should I have lien down and been quiet;
I should have slept; then had I been at rest,
With kings and counsellors of the earth,
Which built solitary piles for themselves;
Or with princes that had gold,

Who filled their houses with silver;

Or as an hidden untimely birth I had not been;
As infants which never saw light.

There the wicked cease from troubling;
And there the weary be at rest.

There the prisoners are at ease together;
They hear not the voice of the taskmaster.
The small and great are there;

And the servant is free from his master.

This lament of Job starts the movement of the drama. The three Friends are shocked: not by what Job has said, but by what he has failed to say. All this talk about suffering, and not a word about sin! For the point of departure in the philosophic debate is the current orthodoxy, which invariably sees in human suffering a judgment upon sin.

What follows is an elaborate Debate: round after round of speeches expressed in language of lofty rhetoric. The debate is also, by quick turns and fluctuations of passion, a powerful dramatic movement. The three Friends of Job constitute one party to

this debate. When the book is read in full detail we are tempted to discriminate the separate personalities of the three Friends, but so far as their position in the discussion is concerned they are a unit. Without swerving for a moment they insist upon their thesis that all suffering without exception is judgment upon sin; Job must be a sinner, simply because God's providence has sent suffering upon him. They exhibit the usual persistency of men defending a traditional view: they pour out profusely facts of life illustrating their contention; they ignore altogether the equally profuse instances in which their view is contradicted; and they more than hint that any variation from their view must be due to moral obliquity. The case of the Friends is at last brought to a climax in a much quoted passage, which here follows. Read by itself it is a beautiful poem, picturing how there are mines out of which men dig gold and silver, but out of no mine has man ever dug wisdom. It makes a peroration to the case of the Friends, because it brings out how their priniciple of the invariable connection of suffering with sin is not advanced because it meets the facts of life, but because such a view is 'wisdom' is part of the fundamental structure of the universe.

Sonnet (of the Friends) on Wisdom

Surely there is a mine for silver,

And a place for gold which they refine.

Iron is taken out of the earth,

And brass is molten out of the stone.

Man setteth an end to darkness,

And searcheth out to the furthest bound

The stones of thick darkness and of the shadow of death. He breaketh open a shaft away from where men sojourn; They are forgotten of the foot that passeth by;

They hang afar from men, they swing to and fro.

As for the earth, out of it cometh bread;

And underneath it is turned up as it were by fire.
The stones thereof are the place of sapphires,
And it hath dust of gold.

That path no bird of prey knoweth,

Neither hath the falcon's eye seen it:

The proud beasts have not trodden it,
Nor hath the fierce lion passed thereby.

He putteth forth his hand upon the flinty rock;
He overturneth the mountains by the roots.
He cutteth out passages among the rocks;
And his eye seeth every precious thing.
He bindeth the streams that they trickle not;
And the thing that is hid bringeth he forth to light.

But where shall wisdom be found?

And where is the place of understanding?

Man knoweth not the price thereof;

Neither is it found in the land of the living.

The deep saith, It is not in me:

And the sea saith, It is not with me.

It cannot be gotten for gold,

Neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof.

It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir,

With the precious onyx, or the sapphire.

Gold and glass cannot equal it,

Neither shall the exchange thereof be jewels of fine gold;

No mention shall be made of coral or of crystal:

Yea, the price of wisdom is above rubies;

The topaz of Ethiopia shall not equal it,

Neither shall it be valued with pure gold.

Whence then cometh wisdom?

And where is the place of understanding?
Seeing it is hid from the eyes of all living,
And kept close from the fowls of the air.

Destruction and Death say,

We have heard a rumour thereof with our ears.

God understandeth the way thereof,

And he knoweth the place thereof.

For he looketh to the ends of the earth,
And seeth under the whole heaven;

To make a weight for the wind;

Yea, he meteth out the waters by measure.