e
known in the fewest possible words. The history of
Job was probably a tradition in the east; his name, like
that of Priam in Greece, the symbol of fallen greatness,
and his misfortunes the problem of philosophers. In
keeping with the current belief, he is described as a
model of excellence, the most perfect and upright man
upon the earth, "and the same was the greatest man in
all the east." So far, greatness and goodness had gone
hand in hand together, as the popular theory required.
The details of his character are brought out in the
progress of the poem. He was "the father of the
oppressed, and of those who had none to help them."
When he sat as a judge in the market-places,
"righteousness clothed him" there, and "his justice was
a robe and a diadem." He "broke the jaws of the
wicked and plucked the spoil out of his teeth;" and,
humble in the midst of his power, he "did not despise
the cause of his manservant, or his maidservant, when
they contended with him," knowing (and amidst those
old people where the multitude of mankind were
regarded as the born slaves of the powerful, to be carved
into eunuchs or polluted into concubines at their
master's pleasure, it was no easy matter to know it)
knowing "that He who had made him had made
them," and one "had fashioned them both in the
womb." Above all, he was the friend of the poor,
"the blessing of him that was ready to perish came
upon him," and he "made the widow's heart to sing
for joy."

Setting these characteristics of his daily life by the
side of his unaffected piety, as it is described in the first
chapter, we have a picture of the best man who could
then be conceived; not a hard ascetic, living in haughty
or cowardly isolation, but a warm figure of flesh and
blood, a man full of all human loveliness, and to whom,
that no room might be left for any possible Calvinistic
falsehood, God himself bears the emphatic testimony,
"that there was none like him upon the earth, a perfect
and upright man, who feared God and eschewed evil."
If such a person as this, therefore, could be made
miserable, necessarily the current belief of the Jews
was false to the root; and tradition furnished the fact
that he had been visited by every worst calamity.
How was it then to be accounted for? Out of a thousand
possible explanations, the poet introduces a single
one. He admits us behind the veil which covers the
ways of Providence, and we hear the accusing angel
charging Job