tury B.C.

IV. The Poem of Job. In the later poetic version of the story (which
begins with the third chapter) Job himself is the embodiment of the
problem of innocent suffering. His friends' suppositions and condemnations
add still another burden to his weight of woe. More intolerable, however,
than loss of possessions, health, and reputation is his sense of being
forsaken and condemned by Jehovah. Job cannot shake himself entirely free
from the belief, which had been inculcated in his mind from earliest
infancy, that calamity was a sign of divine displeasure, and therefore of
sin on the part of the victim. In the series of monologues and dialogues
between Job and his friends he voices every phase of the great problem and
makes it concrete and objective. With marvellous psychological truth and
insight the author has presented the different phases of feeling through
which an innocent sufferer in Job's position naturally passes. At times
Job is intemperate in his speech and at other times he yields to
despondency; again his faith overleaps all obstacles and he holds for the
moment a clear belief in the ultimate vindication not only of himself but
of Jehovah's justice.

His friends, on the other hand, formulate at length the current
Explanation of suffering. Job in his sharp retorts makes clear the
Inapplicability of the arguments and the limitations of the dogmas which
they constantly reassert. In the concluding speeches of Jehovah the author
with masterly skill takes Job out of his little circle into the larger
world of nature, and brings him face to face with the evidences of
Jehovah's might, wisdom, and gracious rulership of the great universe and
of the complex life of those who inhabit it. Above all, Job learns to know
God, not through the testimony of others, but by direct personal
experience, and this knowledge begets humility and trust.

V. Progress in Job's Thought. The thought of the book of Job is
characteristically Oriental. Instead of moving straight on from premises
to conclusion it constantly reverts to the same themes yet advances
along independent, parallel lines. Its progress is not objective, as is
usually the case in a drama, but almost entirely subjective. These
parallel lines of progress are: (1) the conviction gradually crystallizing
into certainty that the current explanations of suffering are in certain
cases inadequate and false. While viewed from one point of view this
conclusion is merely ne