some have styled the Law of nature; but it was a Law received immediately from the mouth of Jehovah, to which description no law, save that delivered from the top of mount Sinai, will be found to answer. The Rabbins accordingly, as Bishop Warburton appositely remarks, were so sensible of the expressive peculiarity of this phrase, that, imagining Job himself to have been the author of the poem, they say THE LAW OF MOSES is here spoken of by a kind of prophetic anticipation'.

(4.) As God delivered the Law from mount Sinai; so he was visibly, though mysteriously, present with the tabernacle in a pillar of fire and smoke. To this extraordinary manifestation, which daily presented itself to the eyes of Moses, we may well suppose that he would almost inevitably allude, if he were the author of the book of Job. Hence, agreeably to such an opinion, it is not unreasonable to believe, that that apparition was present to his mind, when he put the following passage into the mouth of his hero.

Oh, that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me; when his fiery lamp shined upon my head, and when by his light I walked through darkness: as I was in the days of my youth, when the secret of God was upon my taber

nacle 2.

(5.) In addition to these peculiarities we may

1 Div. Leg. book vi. sect. 2. § II. 1. p. 311.

2 Job xxix. 2-4.

obviously remark, that, whenever the subject of an author does not necessarily prevent him, he will be apt to allude to those particular studies, in which he delights and in which he has been early engaged.

Now we are told, that Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians': and, in what a considerable part at least of that wisdom consisted, we may gather not equivocally from the account which is given of the attainments of Solomon. We read, that Solomon's wisdom, like the wisdom of Moses, excelled the wisdom of all the children of the east country and all the wisdom of Egypt2: and the nature of this wisdom is immediately afterward set forth to us, as being partly of a moral and partly of a physical description. Solomon, we find, was the author both of many grave and important ethical sentences and likewise of a copious treatise on natural philosophy. spake three thousand proverbs: and his songs were a thousand and five. And he spake of trees, from the cedar-tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes. Such being the case, as the wisdom of Moses and the wisdom of Solomon are described in the very same terms, since each is celebrated for his surpassing acquaintance with the wisdom of Egypt: we may reasonably conclude, that 2 1 Kings iv. 30.

1 Acts vii. 22.

He

the wisdom of Moses resembled in its nature the wisdom of Solomon; in other words, that it was a wisdom partly physical and partly ethical.

But the author of the book of Job must plainly have been a man very largely endowed with, and very greatly delighting in, this identical sort of wisdom or philosophy. No where, save in the Proverbs of Solomon, do we find such a store of sententious moral theology and no where in the whole volume of Scripture, since the physical treatise of Solomon has perished, do we find such ample and studious excursions into the field of natural history. While the author provides us with numerous pithy apophthegms for the due regulation of our conduct; he copiously reads us lectures upon the creation, upon the physical economy of the world, upon the numerous productions of the earth, upon the influences of the constellations, upon birds and upon beasts, upon fishes and upon river-monsters. But this is precisely what we might expect from the learned adoptive son of Pharaoh's daughter, when his secular wisdom was corrected and sanctified by divine inspiration and, even to omit all other points, the highly-wrought descriptions of Behemoth and Leviathan evince an author, who had long dwelt in Egypt, and to whom the peculiarities of its natural history were quite familiar. The amphibious Behemoth is palpably, I think, the hippopotamus of upper Egypt and Ethiopia:

while the monster Leviathan, whose skin bids defiance to the fish-spears, whose teeth are terrible round about the doors of his face, whose scales closely joined together so that they cannot be sundered are his pride, who esteemeth iron as straw and brass as rotten wood, who mocks alike at the sword and the spear and the dart and the habergeon, and who maketh the Oceanes or Nileotic sea of Egypt to boil like a pot, can only be the matchless crocodile, that king over all the children of pride'.

(6.) From an inspired author, thus instituted in all the science of the pagan world, that beautiful eulogy on real wisdom comes with a singular grace and propriety.

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 depth saith, It is not in me: and the sea saith, It is not in 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. The gold and the crystal cannot equal it: and the exchange of it shall not be for jewels of fine gold. No mention shall be made of coral or of pearls: for the

1

Job xl. 15-24. xli. Diod. Bibl. lib. i. p. 12, 17. I am aware, that the Behemoth is mentioned as frequenting Jordan : but this does not invalidate the argument from the nationality of the Leviathan or crocodile.

price of wisdom is above rubies'. The topaz of Cush 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 the fame thereof with our ears. God understandeth the way thereof; and he knoweth the place thereof. Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding*.

The writer's favourite study of natural philosophy is here employed to illustrate the infinite importance of that divine philosophy, which surpasses all price and, as he winds up the matter by setting forth the Supreme Divinity as being at once its source and its object; so, if I mistake

1

Or, as some would ingeniously render the passage, Wisdom draws more forcibly than loadstones; an allusion to maguetic influence strictly agreeable to the character of a profound natural philosopher. The word, which our translators have rendered rubies, denotes, according to its radical etymology, turning stones or stones which possess the property of communicating motion to another body. Though the Egyptians might be ignorant of the polarity of the magnetic needle, there is no reason why we should deem them ignorant of the attractive faculty of the magnet. I may observe, that the Hiphilized form of the word insinuates, not self-motion which might imply a knowledge of the magnetic needle's polarity, but communication of motion which implies only a knowledge of the magnet's attractiveness. See Parkhurst's Heb. Lex.

.x $ .פנה vox

2 Job xxviii. 12--23, 28.