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not, he artfully contrasts it with the spurious wisdom of the ancient pagan Mysteries. These celebrated rites, so well known to the Egyptian priesthood that some have even ascribed to t their origination, treated of mundane destructions and reproductions, conducted the aspirants to the very realms of Death or Hades, and professed to illuminate the initiated with all wisdom, which, at the same time, was studiously kept hidden from the profane'. Hence, in allusion to this systematic concealment, the author asks: Whence then cometh WISDOM, and where is the place of UNDERSTANDING? 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. Such an allusion nobly conducts him to the final result of his whole argument. 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 2.

2

'See my Origin of Pagan Idol. book v. chap. 6.

Bishop Warburton makes a very just and a very acute remark on the general texture of the book of Job; which, though adduced in favour of his own hypothesis that Ezra was the author of it, tends with equal if not with superior force to establish my own full conviction that the poem ought to be ascribed to Moses.

A third circumstance, says his lordship, is the author's being drawn, by the vigour of his imagination, from the seat of action and from the manners of the scene, to one very different;

What I have now adduced are allusions, which Moses would naturally make, if he were the

especially if it be one of great fame and celebrity. So here, though the scene be the deserts of Arabia, among family-heads of independent tribes and in the simplicity of primitive manners; yet we are carried, by a poetic fancy, into the midst of EGYPT, the best policied and the most magnificent empire then existing in the world. Why died I not from the womb, says the chief speaker; for now I should have lien still and been quiet, I should have slept: then had I been at rest, with KINGS and COUNSELLORS of the earth, which build desolate places for themselves; that is, magnificent buildings in desolate places, meaning plainly the pyramids raised in the midst of barren sands for the burying places of the Kings of Egypt. Kings and counsellors of the earth was, by way of eminence, the designation of the Egyptian governors. But it may be observed in general that, although the scene confined the author to scattered tribes in the midst of deserts, yet his images and his ideas are, by an insensible allure, taken throughout from crowded cities and a civil policied people. Thus he speaks of the children of the wicked being crushed in the gate; alluding to a city taken by storm, and to the destruction of the flying inhabitants pressing one another to death in the narrow passage of the city-gates. Again, of the good man it is said, that he shall be hid from the scourge of tongues; that pestilent mischief, which rages chiefly in rich and licentious communities. But there would be no end of giving instances of this kind, where they are so numerous. Div. Leg. book vi. sect. 2. p. 311, 312.

Though it may be doubted whether the pyramids be alluded to by the expression of desolate places; because the pyramids, like the tower of Babel and the pagodas of Hindostan, seem rather to have been temples to the chief sepulchral hero-god than literal sepulchres of men: yet I agree with the bishop, that by kings and counsellors we are eminently to understand

author of the book of Job: as such therefore they may be fairly brought forward as confirming and harmonizing with such an hypothesis, though I am very far from wishing to rest the proof of it upon them. The vivid descriptions indeed of the hippopotamus and the crocodile seem plainly to indicate a person, who was familiar with the natural history of Egypt; a circumstance, which at once excludes the Arabian emir Job and immediately directs our attention to the well educated lawgiver of the Hebrews: but still what alone I deem the proof would have been equally the proof, if not one supposed allusion had been produced. The book must have been written AFTER the delivery of the Law from mount Sinai; because it contains an express reference to the punishment of idolatry by the civil magistrate: and it must have been written BEFORE the death of Moses; because, unlike the more recent sacred books, it hints not even in the slightest

the Egyptian kings and counsellors. See Isaiah xix. 11. But what will follow from this allusion to Egypt? Clearly the much higher probability, that Moses, who was familiar with Egypt, should have been the author; than Ezra, who had been a cap. tive at Babylon. At all events, the frequent allusions to a well policied state, which will forcibly remind the classical reader of the general tone of the Eneid, sufficiently shew, that neither Job nor any other Arabian chieftain could have written the poem. It certainly must be ascribed to some one, who had been familiarly accustomed to a regular and powerful and well-ordered monarchy.

Hence we

degree at any subsequent occurrence. are brought to the conclusion, that the time of its composition is limited to the forty years which elapsed between the delivery of the Law and the death of Moses. But no person occurs within that period save Moses himself, to whom, with even a moderate degree of probability, the poem can be ascribed. Therefore I conclude Moses to have been its author. As for the allusions, the reader may admit or reject them according to his humour.

SECTION III.

Respecting the object of the book of Job.

AN important question yet remains to be discussed: I mean the object with which the book of Job may be thought to have been composed.

I. On this point, the various opinions, which have been advanced, seem to me very far from being satisfactory.

1. It is easy to say with Grey, that the poem is a perpetual document of humility and patience to all good men in affliction. This may be cheaply asserted: but, if we study the train of reasoning which pervades the work, we shall find it very difficult to reconcile such an assertion with such a mode of argument.

Job is indeed a sufferer, and he finally enjoys great prosperity; two circumstances, which constitute the naked literal history of that good man: but, when we turn from the bare narrative to the drama itself, we find the speakers, for whatever reason; setting forth any thing rather than what Grey supposes to be the argument of the poem. He would have been right, if nothing more had come down to us than the two first chapters and the eight concluding verses of the last chapter, which comprehend the whole of what is properly the history: but, since the entire drama runs upon a totally different subject, nothing can be more contradictory and inconsistent than to imagine, that it was simply written as a perpetual document of humility and patience to all good men in affliction.

2. Nor is the opinion of Houbigant much more satisfactory, though founded upon, what the theory of Grey cannot claim to be, an attentive perusal of the drama itself.

This writer imagines, that it was composed for the purpose of shewing how a good man might be afflicted in this world without any imputation upon the divine justice, though in the early ages notoriously wicked men were struck by the hand of heaven beyond the ordinary course of nature.

But, if we turn to the drama, we find Job actually censured for so stiffly maintaining himself to be a good man; and that too, not only by his three unkind friends, but also by the irre

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