ust
rest. The language is no guide, for although unquestionably
of Hebrew origin, it bears no analogy to any of the
other books in the Bible; while, of its external history,
nothing is known at all, except that it was received into
the Canon at the time of the great synagogue. Ewald
decides, with some confidence, that it belongs to the
great prophetic period, and that the writer was a
contemporary of Jeremiah. Ewald is a high authority
in these matters, and this opinion is the one which
we believe is now commonly received among biblical
scholars. In the absence of proof, however, (and the
reasons which he brings forward are really no more than
conjectures) these opposite considerations may be of
moment. It is only natural that at first thought we
should ascribe the grandest poem in a literature to the
time at which the poetry of the nation to which it
belongs was generally at its best: but, on reflection,
the time when the poetry of prophecy is the richest, is
not likely to be favourable to compositions of another
kind. The prophets wrote in an era of decrepitude,
dissolution, sin, and shame, when the glory of Israel
was filling round them into ruin, and their mission,
glowing as they were with the ancient spirit, was to
rebuke, to warn, to threaten, and to promise. Finding
themselves too late to save, and only, like Cassandra,
despised and disregarded, their voices rise up singing
the swan song of a dying people, now falling away in
the wild wailing of despondency over the shameful and
desperate present, now swelling in triumphant hope
that God will not leave them forever, and in his own
time will take his chosen to himself again. But such a
period is an ill-occasion for searching into the broad
problems of human destiny; the present is all-important
and all-absorbing; and such a book as that of Job
could have arisen only out of an isolation of mind, and
life, and interest, which we cannot conceive of as
possible.

The more it is studied, the more the conclusion
forces itself upon us that, let the writer have lived when
he would, in his struggle with the central falsehood of
his own people's creed, he must have divorced himself
from them outwardly as well as inwardly; that he
travelled away into the world, and lived long, perhaps
all his matured life, in exile. Everything about the
book speaks of a person who had broken free from
the narrow littleness of "the peculiar people." The
language, as we said, is fu