jo'-ab (yo'-abh, "Yahweh is father"; Ioab):
(1) Son of Zeruiah, David's sister. He was "captain of the host" (compare 2 Sam 19:13) under David.
(a) Joab is first introduced in the narrative of the war with Abner, who supported the claims of Ishbosheth to the throne against those of David (2 Sam 2:8 through 3:1). The two armies met, and on Abner's suggestion a tournament took place between 12 men from each side; a general engagement follows, and in this Joab's army is victorious. Asahel, Joab's brother, is killed in his pursuit of Abner, but the latter's army is sorely pressed, and he appeals to Joab for a cessation of hostilities. Joab calls a halt, but declares that he would not cease had Abner not made his plea.
(b) 2 Sam 3:12-29. Abner visits David at Hebron, and makes an alliance with David. He then leaves the town, apparently under royal protection. Joab is absent at the time, but returns immediately after Abner's departure, and expostulates with David for not avenging Asahel's death, and at the same time attributes a bad motive to Abner's visit. He sends a message, no doubt in the form of a royal command, for Abner to return; the chief does so, is taken aside "into the midst of the gate" (or as Septuagint and commentators read, "into the side of the gate," 2 Sam 3:27), and slain there by Joab. David proclaims his own innocence in the matter, commands Joab as well as the people to mourn publicly for the dead hero (2 Sam 3:31), composes a lament for Abner, and pronounces a curse upon Joab and his descendants (2 Sam 3:30 is regarded as an editorial note, and commentators change 3:39).
2. The Ammonite War: Death of Uriah:
(a) 2 Sam 10:1-14; 1 Ch 19:1-15. David sends ambassadors with his good wishes to Hanun on his ascending the throne of the Ammonites; these are ill-treated, and war follows, David's troops being commanded by Joab. On finding himself placed between the Ammonites on the one hand, and their Syrian allies on the other, he divides his army, and himself leads one division against the Syrians, leaving Abishai, his brother, to fight the Ammonites; the defeat of the Syrians is followed by the rout of the ammonites.
(b) 2 Sam 10:15-19; 1 Ch 19:16-19 describes a second war between Hadarezer and David. Joab is not mentioned here.
(c) 2 Sam 11:1 narrates the resumption of the war against the Ammonites; Joab is in command, and the town of Rabbah is besieged. Here occurs the account of David's sin with Bathsheba, omitted by Chronicles. David gets Joab to send Uriah, her husband, to Jerusalem, and when he refuses to break the soldier's vow (11:6-13), Joab is used to procure Uriah's death in the siege, and the general then sends news of it to David (11:14-27). After capturing the `water-city' of Rabbah, Joab sends for David to complete the capture and lead the triumph himself (12:26-29).
(a) The next scene depicts Joab attempting and succeeding in his attempt to get Absalom restored to royal favor. He has noticed that "the king's heart is toward Absalom" (2 Sam 14:1), and so arranges for "a wise woman" of Tekoa to bring a supposed complaint of her own before the king, and then rebuke him for his treatment of Absalom. The plan succeeds. David sees Joab's hand in it, and gives him permission to bring Absalom to Jerusalem. But the rebel has to remain in his own house, and is not allowed to see his father (2 Sam 14:1-24).
(b) Absalom attempts to secure Joab's intercession for a complete restoration to his father's confidence. Joab turns a deaf ear to the request until his field is put on fire by Absalom's command. He then sees Absalom, and gets David to receive his prodigal son back into the royal home (2 Sam 14:28-33).
(c) Absalom revolts, and makes Amasa, another nephew of David, general instead of Joab (2 Sam 17:24 f). David flees to Mahanaim, followed by Absalom. Joab is given a third of the army, the other divisions being led by Abishai and Ittai. He is informed that Absalom has been caught in a tree (or thicket), and expostulates with the informer for not having killed him. Although he is reminded of David's tender plea that Absalom be kindly dealt with, he dispatches the rebel himself, and afterward calls for a general halt of the army. When David gives vent to his feelings of grief, he is sternly rebuked by Joab, and the rebuke has its effect (2 Sam 17 through 19:8a).
2 Sam 19:8b-15. On David's return to Jerusalem, Amasa is made "captain of the host" instead of Joab (19:13). Then Sheba revolts, Amasa loses time in making preparation for quelling it, and Abishai is bidden by David to take the field (20:6). The Syriac version reads "Joab" for "Abishai" in this verse, and some commentators follow it, but Septuagint supports Massoretic Text. Joab seems to have accompanied Abishai; and when Amasa meets them at Gibeon, Joab, on pretense of kissing his rival, kills him. He then assumes command, is followed by Amasa's men, and arranges with a woman of Abel beth-maacah to deliver to him Sheba's head. The revolt is then at an end.
Joab subsequently opposed David's suggestion of a census, but eventually carried it out (2 Sam 24:1-9; 1 Ch 21:1-6), yet 1 Ch 21:6 and 27:24 relate that he did not carry it out fully. He was one of Adonijah's supporters in his claim to the throne (1 Ki 1:7,19,41). For this he had to pay the penalty with his life, being slain at the altar in the "Tent of Yahweh" (1 Ki 2:28-34) by Benaiah, who acted upon Solomon's orders. His murderer became his successor as head of the army. 1 Ki 2:5 makes David advise Solomon not to forget that Joab slew Abner and Amasa, and 1 Ki 11:14-22 contains a reference to the dread of his name in Edom. 1 Ch 11:6 makes him win his spurs first at the capture of Jerusalem, but 2 Sam 2; 3 are previous in time to this event (compare 2 Sam 5:6-10), and 1 Ch 11:8 makes him repair the city, while 1 Ch 26:28 refers to a dedication of armor by him.
In summing up Joab's character, we must remember the stirring times in which he lived. That he was a most able general, there is no doubt. He was, however, very jealous of his position, and this accounts for Amasa's murder, if not partially for that of Abner too: if he was afraid that Abner would supplant him, that fear may be held to be justified, for Amasa, who had not been too loyal to David did take Joab's place for a time. But blood revenge for Asahel's death was perhaps the chief cause. Yet even when judged in the light of those rough times, and in the light of eastern life, the murder of Abner was a foul, treacherous deed (see Trumbull, Studies in Oriental Social Life, 129-31).
Joab opposed the census probably because it was an innovation. His rebuke of David's great grief over Absalom's death can only be characterized as just; he is the stern warrior who, after being once merciful and forgiving, will not again spare a deceitful rebel; and yet David shows how a father's conduct toward a prodigal, rebellious son is not regulated by stern justice. Joab's unswerving loyalty to David leads one to believe that no disloyalty was meant by his support of Adonijah, who was really the rightful heir to the throne. But their plans were defeated by those of the harem, and Joab had to pay the price with his life.
Taken as a whole, his life, as depicted in the very reliable narrative of 2 Sam and 1 Ki, may be said to be as characteristic of the times as that of David himself, with a truly Homeric ring about it. He was a great man, great in military prowess and also in personal revenge, in his loyalty to the king as well as in his stern rebuke of his royal master. He was the greatest of David's generals, and the latter's success and glory owed much to this noblest of that noble trio whom Zeruiah bore.
(2) A Judahite, father or founder of Ge-harashim (1 Ch 4:14, "valley of craftsmen" the Revised Version margin).
See GE-HARASHIM .
(3) A family of returned exiles (Ezr 2:6 parallel Neh 7:11; Ezr 8:9; 1 Esdras 8:35).
David Francis Roberts
jo'-a-kaz (Iochaz, Iechonias): Son of Josiah (1 Esdras 1:34). In Mt 1:11 "Jechoniah" is the reading.
jo'-a-sim.
See JOAKIM .
jo-a-da'-nus (Ioadanos: In 1 Esdras 9:19, apparently, through some corruption; the same as Gedaliah, a son of Jeshua, the son of Jozadak, in Ezr 10:18.
jo'-a (yo'ach, "Yahweh is brother"):
(1) Son of Asaph and recorder under King Hezekiah (2 Ki 18:18,26; Isa 36:3,11,22); he was one of the 3 officers sent by the king to speak to the Assyrian envoys at the siege of Jerusalem (circa 701 BC).
(2) In 1 Ch 6:21 (Hebrew 6); 2 Ch 29:12, a Levite (son of Zimmah) = "Ethan" of 1 Ch 6:42 (Hebrew 27).
(3) a son of Obed-edom (1 Ch 26:4).
(4) Son of Joahaz and recorder under King Josiah (2 Ch 34:8).
jo'-a-haz (yo'-achaz, "Yahweh has grasped" = "Jehoahaz"):
(1) Father of JOAH (4) (2 Ch 34:8).
(2) the Revised Version (British and American) and Hebrew in 2 Ki 14:1 for Jehoahaz, king of Israel.
See JEHOAHAZ .
(3) the Revised Version (British and American) and Hebrew in 2 Ch 36:2,4 for JEHOAHAZ, king of Judah (which see).
jo'-a-kim (Ioakeim; the King James Version Joacim):
(1) Jehoiakim, king of Judah and Jerusalem (1 Esdras 1:37-39; Baruch 1:3).
(2) Jehoiachin, son of (1) (1 Esdras 1:43).
(3) Son of Jeshua (1 Esdras 5:5), called by mistake son of Zerubbabel; in Neh 12:10,26 his name occurs as in 1 Esdras, among the priests and Levitea who returned to Jerusalem with Zerubbabel.
(4) High priest of Jerusalem in the time of Baruch (Baruch 1:7).
(5) High priest in Jerusalem in the days of Judith who, along with "the ancients of the children of Israel," welcomed the heroine back to the city after the death of Holofernes (Judith 4). He cannot be identified with any of the high priests in the lists given in 1 Chronicles or in Josephus, Ant, X, viii, 6. The word means "the Lord hath set up." It is probably symbolical, and tends with other names occurring in the narrative to establish the supposition that the book was a work of imagination composed to support the faith of the Jews in times of stress and difficulty.
(6) The husband of Susanna (Susanna verses 1 ff), perhaps here also a symbolical name.
J. Hutchison
jo-a'-nan (Westcott-Hort, Greek New Testament, Ioanan; Textus Receptus of the New Testament, Ioanna; the King James Version, Joanna):
(1) A grandson of Zerubbabel in the genealogy of Jesus according to Luke (3:27).
(2) The son of Eliasib (1 Esdras 9:1 the King James Version, the Revised Version (British and American) "Jonas").
jo-an'-a (Ioana, or Ioanna): The wife of Chuzas, Herod's steward. She was one of the "women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities" which "ministered unto him (King James Version, i.e. Jesus, or "them" the Revised Version (British and American), i.e. Jesus and His disciples) of their substance," on the occasion of Jesus' tour through Galilee (Lk 8:2,3). Along with other women she accompanied Jesus on His last journey from Galilee to Jerusalem, and was present when His body was laid in the sepulcher (Lk 23:55). She was thus among those who prepared spices and ointments, who found the grave empty, and who "told these things unto the apostles" (Lk 23:56 through 24:10).
C. M. Kerr
jo-an'-es, jo-an'-ez (Ioannes; the King James Version, Johannes):
(1) Son of Acatan (1 Esdras 8:38), called also "Johanan" in Ezr 8:12.
(2) Son of Bebai (1 Esdras 9:29), called "Jehohanan" in Ezr 10:28.
jo'-a-rib (Ioarib; the King James Version Jarib): Ancestor of Mattathias (1 Macc 14:29), given as "Joarib" in the King James Version of 1 Macc 2:1; he was chief of the first of the 24 courses of priests in the reign of David. Varieties of the name are Jarib, Joarib, and Jehoiarib (1 Ch 24:7).
jo'-ash (yo'ash, "Yahweh is strong" or "Yahweh has bestowed"; Ioas):
(1) Father of Gideon, of the clan of Abiezer and the tribe Manasseh (Jdg 6:11,29,30,31; 7:14; 8:13,19,32). Gideon declares (Jdg 6:15) that the family is the poorest in Manasseh, words similar to those of Saul (1 Sam 9:21), and not to be taken too literally. Joash would be a man of standing and wealth, for Gideon was able to command 10 servants to destroy the altar and the Asherah (Jdg 6:27,34), and also to summon the whole clan to follow him. Further, the altar that Joash had was that used by the community (Jdg 6:28), so that he would be the priest, not only of his own family qua paterfamilias, but also of the community in virtue of his position as chief. When Gideon destroyed the altar and the Asherah or sacred pillar by it, Joash refused to deliver his son to death, declaring that Baal, if he was a god, should avenge himself (compare Elijah in 1 Ki 18).
(2) Called "the king's son" (1 Ki 22:26; 2 Ch 18:25; compare Jer 36:26; 38:6), or, less probably, "the son of Hammelech," the Revised Version margin; perhaps a son of Ahab. Micaiah the prophet was handed over to his custody and that of Amon by Ahab.
(3) A Judahite, descendant of Shelah (1 Ch 4:22).
(4) A Benjamite recruit of David at Ziklag. Commentators read here, "Joash the son of Shemaiah (or Jehoshamai), the Gibeathite" (1 Ch 12:3).
(5) In 2 Ki 11:2, etc. = Jehoash, king of Judah.
(6) In 2 Ki 13:9, etc. = Jehoash, king of Northern Israel.
David Francis Roberts
(yo`ash, "Yahweh has aided"):
(1) A Benjamite, or, more probably, a Zebulunite (1 Ch 7:8).
(2) One of David's officers; Joash was "over the cellars of oil" (1 Ch 27:28).
jo'-a-tham (Ioatham): the King James Version for the Revised Version (British and American) "Jotham" (Mt 1:9).
See JOTHAM (the king).
job ('iyobh, meaning of name doubtful; some conjecturing "object of enmity," others "he who turns," etc., to God; both uncertain guesses; Iob): The titular hero of the Book of Job, represented as a wealthy and pious land-holder who lived in patriarchal times, or at least conditions, in the land of Uz, on the borders of Idumea. Outside of the Book of Job he is mentioned by Ezekiel (Ezek 14:14,20) as one of 3 great personages whose representative righteousness would presumably avail, if that of any individuals could, to redeem the nation; the other two being Noah, an ancient patriarch, and Daniel, a contemporary of the prophet. It is difficult to determine whether Job was an actual personage or not. If known through legend, it must have been on account of some such experience as is narrated in the book, an experience unique enough to have become a potent household word; still, the power and influence of it is due to the masterly vigor and exposition of the story. It was the Job of literature, rather than the Job of legend, who lived in the hearts of men; a character so commanding that, albeit fictitious, it could be referred to as real, just as we refer to Hamlet or Othello. It is not the way of Hebrew writers, however, to evolve literary heroes from pure imagination; they crave an authentic basis of fact. It is probable that such a basis, in its essential outlines, existed under the story of Job. It is not necessary to suppose, however, that the legend or the name was known to Israel from ancient times. Job is introduced (Job 1:1) as if he had not been known before. The writer, who throughout the book shows a wide acquaintance with the world, doubtless found the legend somewhere, and drew its meanings together for an undying message to his and all times.
John Franklin Genung
1. Setting of Time, Place and Scene
A) To Job's Blessing and Curse
B) To Job's Ultimatum of Protest
2. Wisdom Insipid, Friends Doubtful
3. Crookedness of the Order of Things
C) To Job's Ultimatum of Faith
1. Detecting the Friends' False Note
2. Staking Everything on Integrity
D) To Job's Verdict on Things as They Are
1. Climax and Subsidence of the Friends' Charge
2. The Real Cause of Job's Dismay
E) The Denouement
1. The Self-constituted Interpreter
2. The Whirlwind and the Voice
IV. THE PROBLEM AND THE PURPOSE
2. What Comes of Limiting the Purpose
3. The Book's Own Import of Purpose
4. Problem of the Intrinsic Man
V. CONSIDERATIONS OF AGE AND SETTING
1. Shadowy Contacts with History
2. Place in Biblical Literature
LITERATURE
The greatest production of the Hebrew Wisdom literature, and one of the supreme literary creations of the world. Its place in the Hebrew Canon corresponds to the high estimation in which it was held; it stands in the 3rd section, the "writings" (kethubhim) or Hagiographa, next after the two great anthologies Psalms and Proverbs; apparently put thus near the head of the list for weighty reading and meditation. In the Greek Canon (which ours follows), it is put with the poetical books, standing at their head. It is one of 3 Scripture books, the others being Psalms and Proverbs, for which the later Hebrew scholars (the Massoretes) employed a special system of punctuation to mark its poetic character.
The Book of Job was not one of the books designated for public reading in the synagogues, as were the Pentateuch and the Prophets, or for occasional reading at feast seasons, as were the 5 megilloth or rolls. It was rather a book for private reading, and one whose subject-matter would appeal especially to the more cultivated and thoughtful classes. Doubtless it was all the more intimately valued for this detachment from sanctuary associations; it was, like Proverbs, a people's book; and especially among the cultivators of Wisdom it must have been from its first publication a cherished classic. At any rate, the patriarch Job (though whether from the legend or from the finished book is not clear; See JOB ) is mentioned as a well-known national type by Ezek 14:14,20; and James, writing to Jewish Christians (5:11), refers to the character of patriarch as familiar to his readers. It was as one of the great classic stories of their literature, rather than as embodying a ritual or prophetic standard, that it was so universally known and cherished.
In view of the numerous critical questions by which the interpretation of the book has been beclouded--questions of later alterations, additions, corruptions, dislocations--it may be well to say at the outset that what is here proposed is to consider the Book of Job as we have it before us today, in its latest and presumably definitive edition. It will be time enough to remove excrescences when a fair view of the book as it is, with its literary values and relations, makes us sure that there are such; see III , below. Meanwhile, as a book that has reached a stage so fixed and finished that at any rate modern tinkering cannot materially change it, we may consider what its literary framework does to justify itself. And first of all, we may note that preeminently among Scripture books it bears the matured literary stamp; both in style and structure it is a work, not only of spiritual edification, but of finished literary article This may best be realized, perhaps, by taking it, as from the beginning it purports to be, as a continuously maintained story, with the consistent elements of plot, character scheme, and narrative movement which we naturally associate with a work of the narrator's article
1. Setting of Time, Place and Scene:
The story of the Book of Job is laid in the far-off patriarchal age, such a time as we find elsewhere represented only in the Book of Genesis; a time long before the Israelite state, with its religious, social and political organization, existed. Its place is "the land of Uz," a little-known region Southeast of Palestine, on the borders of Edom; a place remote from the ways of thinking peculiar to Israelite lawgivers, priests and prophets. Its scene is in the free open country, among mountains, wadies, pasture-lands, and rural towns, where the relations of man and man are more elemental and primitive, and where the things of God are more intimately apprehended than in the complex affairs of city and state. It is easy to see what the writer gains by such a choice of setting. The patriarchal conditions, wherein the family is the social and communal unit, enable him to portray worship and conduct in their primal elements: religious rites of the simplest nature, with the family head the unchallenged priest and intercessor (compare Job 1:4,5; 42:8), and without the austere exactions of sanctuary or temple; to represent God, as in the old folk-stories, as communicating with men in audible voice and in tempest; and to give to the patriarch or sheikh a function of counsel and succor in the community analogous to that of the later wise man or sage (compare Job 29). The place outside the bounds of Palestine enables him to give an international or rather intercommunal tissue to his thought, as befits the character of the wisdom with which he is dealing, a strain of truth which Israel could and did share with neighbor nations. This is made further evident by the fact that in the discourses of the book, the designation of God is not Yahweh (with one exception, Job 12:9), but 'Elohim or 'Eloah or Shaddai, appellatives rather than names, common to the Semitic peoples. The whole archaic scene serves to detach the story from complex conditions of civilization, and enables the writer to deal with the inherent and intrinsic elements of manhood.
2. Characters and Personality:
All the characters of the story, Job included, are from non-Palestinian regions. The chief spokes-man of the friends, Eliphaz, who is from Teman, is perhaps intended to represent a type of the standard and orthodox wisdom of the day; Teman, and Edom in general being famed for wisdom (Jer 49:7; Obadiah 1:8,9). The characters of the friends, while representing in general a remarkable uniformity of tenet, are quite aptly individualized: Eliphaz as a venerable and devout sage who, with his eminent penetrativeness of insight, combines a yearning compassion; Bildad more as a scholar versed in the derived lore of tradition; and Zophar more impetuous and dogmatic, with the dogmatist's vein of intolerance. In Elihu, the young Aramean who speaks after the others, the writer seems endeavoring to portray a young man's positiveness and absoluteness of conviction, and with it a self-conceit that quite outruns his ability. The Satan of the Prologue, who makes the wager with Yahweh, is masterfully individualized, not as the malignant tempter and enemy of mankind, but as a spirit compact of impudent skepticism, who can appreciate no motive beyond self-advantage. Even the wife of Job, with her peremptory disposition to make his affliction a personal issue with God, is not without an authentic touch of the elemental feminine. But high above them all is the character of Job himself, which, with all its stormy alternations of mood, range of assertion and remonstrance and growth of new conviction, remains absolutely consistent with itself. Nor can we leave unmentioned what is perhaps the hardest achievement of all, the sublime venture of giving the very words of God, in such a way that He speaks no word out of character nor measures His thought according to the standards of men.
The Prologue, Job 1 and 2, a few verses at the beginning of chapter 32 (verses 1-6a), and the Epilogue (42:7-17) are written in narrative prose. The rest of the book (except the short sentences introducing the speakers) is in poetry; a poetic tissue conforming to the type of the later mashal (see underPROVERB ), which, in continuous series of couplets, is admirably adapted alike to imaginative sublimity and impassioned address. Beginning with Job's curse of his day (Job 3), Job and his three friends answer each other back and forth in three rounds of speeches, complete except that, for reasons which the subject makes apparent, Zophar, the third friend, fails to speak the third time. After the friends are thus put to silence, Job speaks three times in succession (Job 26 through 31), and then "the words of Job are ended." At this point (Job 32) a fourth speaker, Elihu, hitherto unmentioned, is introduced and speaks four times, when he abruptly ceases in terror at an approaching whirlwind (37:24). Yahweh speaks from the whirlwind, two speeches, each of which Job answers briefly (40:3-5; 42:1-6), or rather declines to answer. Such, which we may summarize in Prologue (Job 1;2), Body of Discussion (3 through 42:6), and Epilogue (42:7-17), is the literary framework of the book. The substance of the book is in a way dramatic; it cannot, however, be called so truly a drama as a kind of forum of debate; its movement is too rigid for dramatic action, and it lacks besides the give-and-take of dialogue. In a book of mine published some years ago I ventured to call it "the Epic of the Inner Life," epic not so much in the technical sense, as in recognition of an underlying epos which for fundamental significance may be compared to the story underlying the Prometheus Bound of Aeschylus. It will not do, however, to make too much of either of these forms as designating the Book of Job; either term has to be accommodated almost out of recognition, because the Hebrew literary forms were not conceived according to the Greek categories from which our terms "epic" and "dramatic" are derived. A greater limitation on our appreciation of its form, I think, is imposed by those who regard it as a mixture of forms. It is too generally divided between narrative and didactic debate. To the Hebrew mind it was all a continuous narrative, in which the poetic discussion, though overweighting the current of visualized action, had nevertheless the movement and value of real events. It is in this light, rather than in the didactic, that we may most profitably regard it.
To divide the story of Job into 42 parts, according to the 42 numbered chapters, is in the last degree arbitrary. Nothing comes of it except convenience in reading for those who wish to take their Job in little detached bits. The chapter division was no part of the original, and a very insignificant step in the later apprehension of the original. To divide according to the speeches of the interlocutors is better; it helps us realize how the conflict of views brought the various phases of the thought to expression; but this too, with its tempting, three-times-three, turns out to be merely a framework; it corresponds only imperfectly with the true inwardness of the story's movement; it is rather a scheme than a continuity. We are to bear in mind that this Book of Job is fundamentally the inner experience of one man, as he rises from the depths of spiritual gloom and doubt to a majestic table-land of new insight and faith; the other characters are but ancillary, helps and foils, whose function is subordinate and relative. Hence, mindful of this inwardness of Job's experience, I have ventured to trace the story in 5 main stages, naming them according to the landing-stage attained in each.
A) To Job's Blessing and Curse:
The story begins (Job 1:1-5) with a brief description of Job as he was before his trial began; the elements of his life, outer and inner, on which is to be raised the question of motive. A prosperous landholder of the land of Uz, distinguished far and wide as the greatest (i.e. richest) of the sons of the East, his inner character corresponds: to all appearance nothing lacking, a man "perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and turned away from evil." The typical Hebrew blessings of life were his to the full: wealth, honor, health, family. He is evidently set before us as the perfect example of the validity of the established Wisdom-tenet, that righteousness and Wisdom are identical (see underPROVERBS ,THE BOOK OF ), and that this is manifest in its visible rewards. This period of his life Job describes afterward by retrospect as his "autumn days," when the friendship or intimacy (coah) of God was over his tent (See 29:4, and the whole chapter). Nor are we left without a glimpse into his heart: his constant attitude of worship, and his tender solicitude lest, in their enjoyment of the pleasures of life, his sons may have been disloyal to God (Job 1:4,5). It is easy to see that not Job alone, but Wisdom as embodied in Job, is postulated here for its supreme test.
Nor is the test delayed, or its ground ambiguous when it comes. Satan proposes it. Two scenes are given (Job 1:6-12; 2:1-6) from the court of God, wherever that is; for they are overheard by the reader, not seen, and of course neither Job nor any inhabitant of earth is aware of them. In these scenes the sons of God, the spirits who rejoiced over creation (38:7), are come together to render report, and Satan, uninvited, enters among them. He is a wandering spirit, unanchored to any allegiance, who roams through the earth, prying and criticizing. There is nothing, it would seem, in which he cannot find some flaw or discount. To Yahweh's question if he has considered Job, the man perfect and upright, he makes no denial of the fact, but raises the issue of motive: "Doth Job fear God for nought?" and urges that Job's integrity is after all only a transparent bargain, a paying investment with only reward in view. It is virtually an arraignment both of God's order and of the essential human character: of God's order in connecting righteousness so intimately with gain; and of the essential human character, virtually denying that there is such a thing as disinterested, intrinsic human virtue. The sneer strikes deep, and Job, the perfect embodiment of human virtue, is its designated victim. Satan proposes a wager, to the issue of which Yahweh commits Himself. The trial of Job is carried out in two stages: first against his property and family, with the stipulation that it is not to touch him; and then, this failing to detach him from his allegiance, against his person in sore disease, with the stipulation that his life is to be spared. Yahweh acknowledges that for once He is consenting to an injustice (2:3), and Satan, liar that he is, uses instrumentalities that men have ascribed to God alone: the first time, tempest and lightning (as well as murderous foray), the second time, the black leprosy, a fell disease, loathsome and deadly, which, in men's minds meant the immediate punitive stroke of God. The evil is as absolute as was the reward; a complete reversal of the order in which men's wisdom had come to trust. But in the immediate result, Yahweh's faith in His noblest creature is vindicated. Urged by his wife in his extremity to "curse God and die," Job remains true to his allegiance; and in his staunch utterance, "Yahweh gave, and Yahweh hath taken away; blessed be the name of Yahweh," Job, as the writer puts it, `sinned not, nor attributed aught unbeseeming (tiphalah, literally, "tasteless") to God.' Such is the first onset of Job's affliction and its result. It remains to be seen what the long issue, days and months of wretchedness, will bring forth.
We are now to imagine the lapse of some time, perhaps several months (compare Job 7:3), during which Job suffers alone, an outcast from house and society, on a leper's ash-heap. Meanwhile three friends of his who have heard of his affliction make an appointment together and come from distant regions to give him sympathy and comfort (2:11-13). On arriving, however, they find things different from what they had expected; perhaps the ominous nature of his disease has developed since they started. What they find is a man wretched and outcast, with a disease (elephantiasis) which to them can mean nothing but the immediate vengeance of God. The awful sight gives them pause. Instead of condoling with him, they sit silent and dismayed, and for seven days and nights no word is spoken (compare Isa 53:3). What they were debating with themselves during that time is betrayed by the after-course of the story. How can they bless one whom God has stamped with His curse? To do so would be taking sides with the wicked. Is it not rather their duty to side with God, and be safe, and let sympathy go? By this introduction of the friends and their averted attitude, the writer with consummate skill brings a new element into the story, the element of the Wisdom-philosophy; and time will show whether as a theoretical thing, cold and intellectual, it will retain or repress the natural outwelling of human friendship. And this silence is ominous.
The man who, in the first onset of trial, blessed Yahweh and set himself to bear in silence now opens his mouth to curse. His curse is directed, not against Yahweh nor against the order of things, but against the day of his birth. It is a day that has ceased to have meaning or worth for him. The day stands for life, for his individual life, a life that in the order of things should carry out the personal promise and fruitage for which it had been bestowed. And his quarrel with it is that he has lost its clue. Satan unknown to him has sneered because Yahweh had hedged him round with protection and favor (Job 1:10); but his complaint is that all this is removed without cause, and God has hedged him round with darkness. His way is hid (Job 3:23). Why then was life given at all? In all this, it will be noted, he raises no train of introspection to account for his condition; he assumes no sinfulness, nor even natural human depravity; the opposite rather, for a baffling element of his case is his shrinking sensitiveness against evil and disloyalty (compare Job 3:25,26, in which the tenses should be past, with 1:5; see also 6:30; 16:17). His plight has become sharply, poignantly objective; his inner self has no part in it. Thus in this opening speech he strikes the keynote of the real, against which the friends' theories rage and in the end wreck themselves.
B) To Job's Ultimatum of Protest:
With all the gentle regret of having to urge a disagreeable truth the friends, beginning with Eliphaz the wisest and most venerable, enter upon their theory of the case. Eliphaz covers virtually the whole ground; the others come in mainly to echo or emphasize. He veils his reproof in general and implicatory terms, the seasoned terms of wisdom in which Job himself is expert (4:3-5); reminds him that no righteous man perishes, but that men reap what they sow (4:7,8); adduces a vision that he had had which revealed to him that man, by the very fact of being mortal, is impure and iniquitous (4:17-19); implies that Job's turbulence of mind precludes him from similar revelations, and jeopardizes his soul (5:1,2); advises him to commit his case to God, with the implication, however, that it is a case needing correction rather than justification, and that the result in view is restored comfort and prosperity. As Job answers with a more passionate and detailed portrayal of his wrong, Bildad, following, abandons the indirect impeachment and attributes the children's death to their sin (8:4), saying also that if Job were pure and upright he might supplicate and regain God's favor (8:5,6). He then goes on to draw a lesson from the traditional Wisdom lore, to the effect that sure destruction awaits the wicked and sure felicity the righteous (Job 8:11-22). On Job's following this with his most positive arraignment of God's order and claim for light, Zophar replies with impetuous heat, averring that Job's punishment is less than he deserves (Job 11:6), and reproving him for his presumption in trying to find the secret of God (Job 11:7-12). All three of the friends, with increasing emphasis, end their admonitions in much the same way; promising Job reinstatement in God's favor, but always with the veiled implication that he must own to iniquity and entreat as a sinner.
2. Wisdom Insipid, Friends Doubtful:
To the general maxims of Wisdom urged against him, with which he is already familiar (compare Job 13:2), Job's objection is not that they are untrue, but that they are insipid (Job 6:6,7); they have lost their application to the case. Yet it is pain to him to think that the words of the Holy One should fail; he longs to die rather than deny them (Job 6:9,10). One poignant element of his sorrow is that the intuitive sense (tushiyah; see underPROVERBS ,THE BOOK OF ) is driven away from him; See Job 6:13. He is irritated by the insinuating way in which the friends beg the question of his guilt; longs for forthright and sincere words (6:25). It is this quality of their speech, in fact, which adds the bitterest drop to his cup; his friends, on whom he had counted for support, are deceitful like a dried-up brook (6:15-20); he feels, in his sick sensitiveness, that they are not sympathizing with him but using him for their cold, calculating purposes (6:27). Thus is introduced one of the most potent motives of the story, the motive of friendship; much will come of it when from the fallible friendships of earth he conquers his way by faith to a friendship in the unseen (compare 16:19; 19:27).
3. Crookedness of the Order of things:
With the sense that the old theories have become stale and pointless, though his discernment of the evil of things is undulled by sin (Job 6:30), Job arrives at an extremely poignant realization of the hardness and crookedness of the world-order, the result both of what the friends are saying and of what he has always held in common with them. It is the view that is forced upon him by the sense that he is unjustly dealt with by a God who renders no reasons, who on the score of justice vouchsafes to man neither insight nor recourse, and whose severity is out of all proportion to man's sense of worth (7:17) or right (9:17) or claim as a creature of His hand (10:8-14). Job 9, which contains Job's direct address to this arbitrary Being, is one of the most tremendous, not to say audacious conceptions in literature; in which a mortal on the threshold of death takes upon himself to read God a lesson in godlikeness. In this part of the story Job reaches his ultimatum of protest; a protest amazingly sincere, but not blasphemous when we realize that it is made in the interest of the Godlike.
The great lack which Job feels in his arraignment of God is the lack of mediation between Creator and creature, the Oppressor and His victim. There is no umpire between them, who might lay his hand upon both, so that the wronged one might have voice in the matter (9:32-35). The two things that an umpire might do: to remove God's afflicting hand, and to prevent God's terror from unmanning His victim (see 13:20-22, as compared with the passage just cited), are the great need to restore normal and reciprocal relations with Him whose demand of righteousness is so inexorable. This umpire or advocate idea, thus propounded negatively, will grow to a sublime positive conviction in the next stage of Job's spiritual progress (16:19; 19:25-27).)
C) To Job's Ultimatum of Faith:
1. Detecting the Friends' False Note:
As the friends finish their first round of speeches, in which a remote and arbitrary God is urged upon him as everything, and man so corrupt and blind that he cannot but be a worm and culprit (compare Job 25:4-6), Job's eyes, which hitherto have seen with theirs, are suddenly opened. His first complaint of their professed friendship was that it was fallible; instead of sticking to him when he needed them most (Job 6:14), and in spite of his bewilderment (Job 6:26), they were making it virtually an article of traffic (Job 6:27), as if it were a thing for their gain. It was not sincere, not intrinsic to their nature, but an expedient. And now all at once he penetrates to its motive. They are deserting him in order to curry favor with God. That motive has prevented them from seeing true; they see only their theoretical God, and are respecting His person instead of responding to the inner dictate of truth and integrity. To his honest heart this is monstrous; they ought to be afraid of taking falseness for God (JOb 13:3-12). Nor does his inference stop with thus detecting their false note. If they are "forgers of lies" in this respect, what of all their words of wisdom? they have been giving him "proverbs of ashes" (Job 13:12); the note of false implication is in them all. From this point therefore he pays little attention to what they say; lets them go on to grossly exaggerated statement of their tenet, while he opens a new way of faith for himself, developing the germs of insight that have come to him.
Having cut loose from all countenancing of the friends' self-interested motives, Job now, with the desperate sense of taking his life in his hand and abandoning hope, resolves that come what will he will maintain his ways to God's face. This, as he believes, is not only the one course for his integrity, but his one plea of salvation, for no false one shall appear before him. How tremendous the meaning of this resolve, we can think when we reflect how he has just taken God in hand to amend His supposed iniquitous order of things; and that he is now, without mediator, pleading the privilege that a mediator would secure (13:20,21; see 8, above) and urging a hearing on his own charges. The whole reach of his sublime faith is involved in this.
In two directions his faith is reaching out; in both negatively at first. One, the belief in an Advocate, has already been broached, and is germinating from negative to positive. The other, the question of life after death, rises here in the same tentative way: using first the analogy of the tree which sprouts again after it is cut down (Job 14:7-9), and from it inquiring, `If a man die--might he live again?' and dwelling in fervid imagination on the ideal solution which a survival of death would bring (Job 14:13-17), but returning to his reluctant negative, from the analogy of drying waters (Job 14:11) and the slow wearing down of mountains (Job 14:18,19). As yet he can treat the idea only as a fancy; not yet a hope or a grounded conviction.
The conviction comes by a nobler way than fancy, by the way of his personal sense of the just and God-like order. The friends in their second round of speeches have begun their lurid portrayals of the wicked man's awful fate; but until all have spoken again he is concerned with a far more momentous matter. Dismissing these for the present as an academic exercise composed in cold blood (Job 16:4,5), and evincing a heart hid from understanding (Job 17:4), Job goes on to recount in the most bitter terms he has yet used the flagrancy of his wrong as something that calls out for expiation like the blood of Cain (16:18), and breaks out with the conviction that his witness and voucher who will hear his prayer for mediation is on high (16:19-21). Then after Bildad in a spiteful retort has matched his complaint with a description of the calamities of the wicked (an augmented echo of Eliphaz), and he has pathetically bewailed the treachery of earthly friends (19:13,14,21,22), he mounts, as it were, at a bound to the sublime ultimatum of his faith in an utterance which he would fain see engraved on the rock forever (19:23-29). "I know that my Redeemer liveth," he exclaims; literally, my Go'el (go'ali), or next of kin, the person whose business in the old Hebrew idea was to maintain the rights of an innocent wronged one and avenge his blood. He does not recede from the idea that his wrong is from God (compare 19:6,21); but over his dust stands his next of kin, and as the result of this one's intercession Job, in his own integral person, shall see God no more a stranger. So confident is he that he solemnly warns the friends who have falsely impeached him that it is they, not he, who are in peril (19:28,29; compare 13:10,11).
D) To Job's Verdict on Things as They Are:
1. Climax and Subsidence of the Friends' Charge:
That in this conviction of a living Redeemer Job's faith has reached firm and final ground is evident from the fact that he does not recur to his old doubts at all. They are settled, and settled right. But now, leaving them, he can attend to what the friends have been saying. Zophar, the third speaker, following, presses to vehement, extreme their iterated portrayal of the wicked man's terrific woes; it seems the design of the writer to make them outdo themselves in frantic overstatement of their thesis. As Zophar ceases, and Job has thus, as it were, drawn all their fire, Job refutes them squarely, as we shall presently see. Meanwhile, in the course of his extended refutation, the friends begin a third round of speeches. Eliphaz, who has already taken alarm at the tendency of Job's words, as those of a depraved skeptic and ruinous to devotion (15:4-6), now in the interests of his orthodoxy brings in his bill of particulars. It is the kind of theoretical cant that has had large prevalence in dogmatic religion, but in Job's case atrociously false. He accuses Job of the most heartless cruelties and frauds (22:5-11), and of taking occasion to indulge in secret wickedness when God was not looking (22:12-14); to this it is that he attributes the spiritual darkness with which Job is encompassed. Then in a beautiful exhortation--beautiful when we forget its unreal condition (22:23)--he ends by holding open to Job The way of reinstatement and peace. This is the last word of the friends that has any weight. Bildad follows Job's next speech indeed very briefly (Job 25), giving a last feeble echo of their doctrine of total depravity; a reply which Job ridicules and carries on in a kind of parody (Job 26). Zophar does not speak a third time at all. He has nothing to say. And this silence of his is the writer's way of making the friends' theory subside ingloriously.
2. The Real Cause of Job's Dismay:
The idea that Job has a defensible cause or sees farther than they is wholly lost on the friends; to them he is simply a wicked man tormented by the consciousness of guilt, and they attribute the tumult of his thoughts to a wrath, or vexation, which blinds and imperils his soul (compare 5:2; 18:4). That is not the cause of his dismay at all, nor is it merely that his personal fate is inscrutable (compare 23:17 margin). He is confounded rather, even to horror, because the probable facts of the world-order prove the utter falsity of all that they allege. Leaving his case, the righteous man's, out of the account, he sees the wicked just as prosperous, just as secure, just as honored in life and death, as the righteous (21:5-15,29-33). The friends ought to see so plain a fact as well as he (21:29). To all outward appearance there is absolutely no diversity of fate between righteous and wicked (21:23-26). The friends' cut-and-dried Wisdom-doctrine and their thrifty haste to justify God (compare 13:7,8) have landed them in a lie; the truth is that God has left His times mysterious to men (24:1). They may as well own to the full the baffling fact of the impunity of wickedness; the whole of Job 24 is taken up with details of it. Wisdom, with its rigid law of reward and punishment, has failed to penetrate the secret. A hard regime of justice, work and wage, conduct and desert, does not sound the deep truth of God's dealings, either with righteous or wicked. What then? Shall Wisdom go, or shall it rise to a higher level of outlook and insight?
In some such dim inquiry as this, it would seem, Job goes on from where his friends sit silenced to figure some positive solution of things as they are. He begins with himself and his steadfastly held integrity, sealing his utterance by the solemn Hebrew oath (27:2-6), and as solemnly disavowing all part or sympathy with the wicked (27:7; compare 21:16). He has already found a meaning in his own searching experience; he is being tried for a sublime assay, in which all that is permanent and precious in him shall come out as gold (23:10). But this thought of manhood in the ore is no monopoly of his; it may hold for all. What then of the wicked? In a passage which some have deemed the lost third speech of Zophar (27:8-23), and which, indeed, recounts what all the friends have seen (27:12), he sets forth the case of the wicked in its true light. The gist of it is that the wicked have not the joy of God (27:10), or the peace of a permanent hope. It is in much the same tone as the friends' diatribes, but with a distinct advance from outward disaster toward tendency and futility. The ore is not being purged for a noble assay; and this will work their woe. Then finally, in the celebrated Job 28, comes up the summary of wisdom itself. That remains, after all this testing of motive, a thing intact and elemental; and man's part in it is just what Job's life has been, to fear God and shun evil (28:28).
As the crowning pronouncement on things as they are, Job in his final and longest speech, describes in a beautiful retrospect his past life, from his "autumn days" when the friendship of God was over his tent and he was a counselor and benefactor among men (Job 29), through this contrasted time of his wretchedness and curse-betraying disease, when the most degraded despise him (Job 30), until now as he draws consciously near the grave, he recounts in solemn review the principles and virtues that have guided his conduct--a noble summary of the highest Hebrew ideals of character (Job 31). This he calls, in sublime irony, the indictment which his Adversary has written; and like a prince, bearing it upon his shoulder and binding it to him like a crown, he is ready to take it with him beyond the bourn to the presence of his Judge. With this tremendous proposal, sanctioned Hebrew-fashion by a final curse if it prove false, the words of Job are ended.
E) The Denoucement:
The friends are silenced, not enlightened. They have clung to their hard thesis to the stubborn end; postulating enough overt crime on Job's part to kill him (Job 22:5-9), and clinching their hypothesis with their theory of innate depravity (Job 4:18,19; 15:14,15; 25:4-6) and spiritual hebetude (Job 5:2; 15:26,27; 22:10,11); but toward Job's higher level of honest integrity and exploring faith they have not advanced one inch; and here they lie, fossilized dogmatists, fixed and inveterate in their odium theologicum--a far cry from the friendship that came from afar to condole and console. Job, on the other hand, staking all on the issue of his integrity, has held on his way in sturdy consistency (compare 17:9), and stood his ground before the enigma of things as they are. Both parties have said their say; the story is evidently ready for its denouement. Job, too, is ready for the determining word, though it would seem he expects it to be spoken only in some unseen tribunal; the friends rather savagely wish that God would speak and reprove Job for his presumption (compare 11:5,11). But how shall the solution be brought about in this land of Uz where all may see? And above all, how shall it affect the parties concerned? A skillfully told story should not leave this out.
1. The Self-constituted Interpreter:
For this determining pronouncement the writer has chosen to have both parties definitely represented, apparently at their best. So, instead of proceeding at once to the summons from the whirlwind, he introduces here a new character, Elihu, a young man, who has listened with growing impatience to the fruitless discussion, and now must set both parties right or burst (Job 32:19). It is like the infusion of young blood into a theodicy too arrogant in its antiquity (compare Job 8:8-10; 15:10,18; 12:12 margin, or better as question). This character of Elihu is conceived in a spirit of satire, not without a dash of grim humor. His self-confidence, not to say conceit, is strongly accentuated (Job 32:11-22); he assumes the umpire function for which Job has pleaded (33:6,7; compare 9:33-35; 13:20-22); and is sure he represents the perfect in knowledge (36:2-4; 37:16). He speaks four times, addressing himself alternately to Job and the friends. His words, though designedly diffuse, are not without wisdom and beauty; he makes less of Job's deep-seated iniquity than do the friends, but blames him for speaking in the wicked man's idiom (34:7-9,36,37), and warns him against inclining more to iniquity than submission (36:21); but his positive contribution to the discussion is the view he holds of the chastening influence of dreams and visions (33:14-18; compare 7:13-15), and of the pains of disease (33:19-28), especially if the sufferer has an "angel (messenger) interpreter" to reveal its meaning, such a one perhaps as Elihu feels himself to be. As he proceeds in his speech, his words indicate that a storm is rising; and so long as it is distant he employs it to descant on the wonders of God in Nature, wonders which to him mean little more than arbitrary marvels of power; but as it approaches nearer and shows exceptional phenomena as of a theophany, his words become incoherent, and he breaks off with an abject attempt to disclaim his pretensions. Such is the effect, with him, of the near presence of God. It overwhelms, paralyzes, stops the presumptuous currents of life.
2. The Whirlwind and the Voice:
The writer of the book has not committed the literary fatuity of describing the whirlwind, except as Elihu has seen its oncoming, first with conceit of knowledge, then with wild access of terror--a description in which his essentially vapid personality is reflected. For the readers the significance of the whirlwind is in the Voice it encloses, the thing it says. And here the writer has undertaken the most tremendous task ever attempted by the human imagination: to make the Almighty speak, and speak in character. And one fatuity at least he has escaped; he has not made God bandy arguments with men, or piece together the shifting premises of logic. The whole of the two discourses from the whirlwind is descriptive; a recounting of observable phenomena of created nature, from the great elemental things, earth and sea and light and star and storm, to the varied wonders of animal nature--all things in which the questing mind of man may share, laying hold in his degree on its meaning or mystery. Thus, as a sheer literary personation, it fails at no point of the Godlike. It begins with a peremptory dismissal of Elihu: "Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?" (Job 38:2). Then Job is bidden gird up his loins like a strong man, and listen and answer. The fact that Job alone, of all the company, can stand, as it were, on common terms with God is premonitory of the outcome. Of the two Divine discourses, the first (Job 38; 39) emphasizes more especially the unsearchable wisdom of creation; and the lesson it brings home to Job is that a being who is great enough--or presumptuous enough--to criticize and censure is great enough to resolve his own criticism (40:2). To this, of course, Job has no answer; he has presented his plea, which he neither adds to nor takes back (40:3-5). Resuming, then, the Voice in the second discourse (40:6 through 41:34) goes on to describe two great beasts, as it were, elemental monsters of Nature: Behemoth--probably the hippopotamus--vast in resisting and overcoming power, yet unaware of it, and easily subduable by man; and Leviathan--probably the crocodile--a wonder of beautiful adaptedness to its function in Nature, yet utterly malignant, unsubduable, untamable. And the lesson brought home to Job by this strange distribution of creative power is that he, who has called in question God's right to work as He does, had better undertake to lower human pride and "tread down the wicked where they stand" (40:12), thus demonstrating his ability to save himself and manage mankind (40:14). By this illuminating thought Job's trenchancy of demand is utterly melted away into contrition and penitence (42:1-6); but one inspiring effect is his, the thing indeed which he has persistently sought (compare 23:3): God is no more a hearsay, such as the friends have defended and his Wisdom has speculated about; his eye sees Him here on earth, and in his still unremoved affliction, no stranger, but a wise and communable Friend, just as his confident faith had pictured he would, in some embodied sphere beyond suffering (19:27).
Two of the parties in the story have met the august theophany, and it has wrought its effect on them according to the spirit of the man. The self-constituted interpreter, Elihu, has collapsed as suddenly as he swelled up and exhibited himself. The man of integrity, Job, has reached the beatific goal of his quest. What now of the friends who came from far to confirm their Wisdom, and who were so sure they were defending the mind of God? they are not left without a sufficing word, addressed straight to their spokesman Eliphaz (Job 42:7); but their way to light is through the man whose honesty they outraged. Eliphaz' closing words had promised mediatorial power to Job if he would return from iniquity and acquaint himself with God (22:30); Job is now the mediator, though he has held consistently to the terms they reprobated. And the Divine verdict on them is: "Ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath" (42:7). These are the words of the Being who acknowledged that in permitting this whole trial He was `swallowing Job up causelessly' (2:3). Job's honest and immensely revelatory words, anger, remonstrance, bold arraignment of God's way and all, were "the thing that is right." There is no more tremendous Divine pronouncement in all Scripture than this.
Here certain myopic students of the Book of Job think the story should end. It offends them, apparently, to see Satan's work undone; if they had had the making of the story they would have left Job still suffering, as if disinterested virtue could not be its own reward without it. The author, at least the final author, evidently did not think so; in the ideals and sanctions that prevailed in his age he knew better what he was about. It is not my business to cut the book to modern pattern, but to note what is there. Job is restored to health, to double his former wealth, to family and honor and a ripe old age. These were what the friends predicted for him on condition of his owning to guilt and calling injustice desert; but in no word of his has he intimated that worldly reinstatement was his wish or his object, the contrary rather. And what he sought he obtained, in richer measure than he sought; obtained it still in suffering, and on earth, "in the place where may see" (compare 34:26 margin). It is no discount to the value of this, nor on the other hand is it an essential addition, to express it not only in spiritual terms, but in terms current among men. And one fundamental thing this restored situation shows, or at least takes for granted, namely, that the quarrel has not been with Wisdom itself, its essence or its sanctions, but only with its encroaching false motive. Deepened, not invaded, its Newtonian law that it is well with the righteous, ill with the wicked, remains intact, an external sanction to live by, in spite of temporal exceptions. A spiritual principle of great significance, too, seems to be indicated, as it were, furtively, in the words, "And Yahweh turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends." He had stood on his integrity demanding his right, and became a self-loathing penitent; out of dust and ashes he prayed for his friends, and became again such a power in health and wealth as he had been in his "autumn days."
IV. The Problem and the Purpose.
1. Beyond the Didactic Tether:
If the foregoing section has rightly shown that the main thrust and interest of the Book of Job lies not in its debate but in its narrative, we have therein the best clue to its problem and its purpose. The sublime self-portrayal of a man who held fast his integrity against God and man and death and darkness tells its own story and teaches its own lesson, beyond the power of didactic propositions or deductions to compass. The book is not a sermon but a vital, throbbing uprising of the human spirit. It is warm with the life of sound manhood; the inner life with its hopes, its doubts, its convictions, its supreme affiance; to impose on this any tether of didacticism is to chili its spirit and make it dogmatic and academic. The reading of its problem which mainly holds the field today is expressed in the question, "Why does God afflict the righteous?" and so the book is resolved into a theodicy, a justification of God's ways with man. Well the friends of Job do their best to make their interpretation a theodicy, even outraging palpable fact to do it; they monopolize the didactic element of the poem; but their chief contention is that God does not afflict the righteous but the wicked, and that Job is a flagrant case in point who adds rebellion to his sin (compare 34:37). Job does not know why God afflicts the righteous; he only knows that it is a grievous fact, which to him seems utterly un-Godlike. God knows, undoubtedly, but He does not tell. Yet all the while an answer to the question is shaping itself in personality, in intrinsic manhood, in the sturdy truth and loyalty of Job's spirit. So, going beyond the didactic tether, we may say that in a deeper sense God is justified after all; if such a result of desperate trial is possible in man, it is worth all the rigor of the experiment. But it is as truly an anthropodicy (excuse the word!) as a theodicy; it puts the essential man on a plane above all that Satan can prove by his lying sneers of self-interest, or the friends' poisoning of the wells by their theory of natural depravity. It comes back after all to the story of Job; he lives the answer to the problem, his personality is the teaching.
2. What Comes of Limiting the Purpose:
It is from this point of view that we can best judge of the critical attacks that have been made on the structure and coherence of the Book of Job. The book has suffered its full share of negative disintegration at the hands of the critics; mostly subjective it seems to me, coming from a too restricted view of its problem and purpose, or from lack of that long patient induction which will not be content until it sees all the elements of its creative idea in fitting order and proportion. To limit the purpose to the issue of a debated theodicy, is to put some parts in precarious tenure; accordingly, there are those to whom the Epilogue seems a superfluity, the Prologue an afterthought, Job 28 a fugitive poem put in to fill up--not to go on to still more radical excisions. On the score of regularity of structure, too, this limitation of design has had equally grave results. Elihu has perhaps fared the worst. He must go, the critics almost universally say, because forsooth he was not formally introduced in the Prologue; and naturally enough, as soon as he has received notice to quit, the language which in one view fits him so dramatically to his part begins to bristle with Aramaisms (`of the kindred of Ram,' 32:2) and strange locutions, the alleged marks of a later bungling hand. Then, further, Zophar must needs round out the mechanical three-times-three of structure by coming up the third time; accordingly, Job is levied upon to contribute some of his words (27:13-23) to help him out. I need not go into further detail. The foregoing section has done something, I hope, to justify my conviction that the book has a homogeneous design and structure just as it is. Whatever its vicissitudes since the first draft was made, it may turn out after all that the last edition is the best.
3. The Book's Own Import of Purpose:
We are not left in the dark as to the large purpose of the Book of Job, if we will follow its own indications consistently. Satan's question at the beginning, "Doth Job fear God for nought?" sets us on the track of it. To give that question a Godlike and not a Satanic answer, to prove in the person of Job That man has it in him to make his life an unbought loyalty to the Divine, is a purpose large enough to include many subsidiary purposes. But behind this appears, on the part of the author, a purpose which relates his story intimately to the intellectual tendencies of his day. The book embodies, especially in theories of the friends, a searching epitome of the status to which the wisdom philosophy of his time had arrived. That philosophy was a nobly founded theory of life; Job himself had been and continued (compare 28:28) thoroughly at one with it. Soundly identified with righteousness and piety, Wisdom had in religious idiom defined the elements of right and wrong living, and had in no uncertain terms fixed its sanctions of reward and penalty. But from a warm, pulsating life it had become an orthodoxy. Its rigid world had room for only two classes of men: the righteous, bound for the sure rewards of life; the wicked, bound for sure failure and destruction. It brooked no real exception to this austere law of being. But two grave evils were invading its system. One was its hard blindness to facts, or, what is as bad, its determination at all hazards to explain them away. From the psalms of the period (compare e.g. Psalms 37; 49; 73) we can see how the evident happiness and prosperity of the wicked was troubling devout minds. The other was that under this prevailing philosophy life was becoming too cold-blooded and calculable a thing, a virtual feeder of self-interest. The doubt lay very near whether conduct so sanctioned was a thing intrinsic and sincere or a thing bought and sold. This equivocal state of things could not long endure. Sooner or later Satan's question of motive must stab it to the heart; and we may be sure that to the author of the book the impulse to ask the question was not all Satanic. The interests of true wisdom, no less than of skepticism, demanded that the question of inner motive be raised and solved. Nay, Yahweh Himself, whom Satan mocked as abettor of the situation, was on trial. Have we not material here, then, for a sublime purpose, a mighty epic of test and trial and victory? Out of it, not Job alone, but Wisdom must emerge purified, enlightened, spiritualized.
4. Problem of the Intrinsic Man:
So much for the purpose of the book. The problem corresponds to it. If we take it as the baffling problem of suffering, or more specifically why God afflicts the righteous, the sufficing answer is, Job is why. To give such essential integrity as his its ultimate proof and occasion is worth the injustice and the unmerited pain. In other words, the problem is more deeply concerned with man's intrinsic nature than with God's mysterious dealings. When God created man in His own image, did He endow him most fundamentally with the spirit of commercialism, or with the spirit of unbought loyalty to the Godlike? And when created man was made fallible and mortal, did that mean an inescapable inherent depravity, or was the potency of noblest manhood still left at the center of his being? Here again Job is the embodied answer. The friends, veritable Calvinists before Calvin, urge depravity; they would exalt God by making man His utter contrast. But Job's stedfast integrity proves that man, one man at least, is at heart sound and true. And if one man, then the potency of soundness exists in manhood. The book is indeed a theodicy; but still more truly it is a boldly maintained anthropodicy, a vindication of the intrinsic worth of man.
V. Considerations of Age and Setting.
1. Shadowy Contacts with History:
The questions who was the personal author of the Book of Job, and what was its age, are at best only a matter of conjecture; and my revised conjecture, arrived at since I wrote my Epic of the Inner Life, must go for what it is worth. It seems to me much better to regard a story so homogeneous and interrelated as in the main the composition of one mind than to distribute it, as some critics do, among various authors, supplementers, and editors. As to its age, there is so little identifiable contact with political or ecclesiastical history that its composition has been ascribed to many periods, from the time of Abraham to late in post-exilic times. The fact that its scene is laid in the patriarchal past and in a land outside of Palestine indicates the author's design to dissociate it from contemporary events and conditions; such contact with these as exist, therefore, must be read between the lines. The book does not hold with full consistency to patriarchal conditions. Job's friends appeal with the complacency of wisdom-prospered men to the ancient tenure of the land (15:19); and yet, as Job complains, the heartless greed of the landholding class in removing landmarks and oppressing the poor (24:2-12) connotes the prevalence of such outrages as were denounced by Isaiah and Micah before the Assyrian crisis. Such evils would not decrease under Manasseh and Jehoiakim, and might well be portrayed in reminiscence by an exilic writer. On the top of this consideration may be cited the most definite reference to a historical event that the book contains: the passage Job 12:17-25, which vividly describes, by an eyewitness ("Lo, mine eye hath seen all this," 13:1), a wholesale deportation and humiliation of eminent persons, just like that told of Jehoiachin and his court in 2 Ki 24:13-15. To my mind this is illuminative for the age of the book. It seems to have been written by one who saw the Chaldean deportation of 587 BC. May I be suffered to carry the suggestion a step farther? It will be remembered that the chief personage of that deportation was for 37 years a state prisoner in Babylon, at the end of which time he was "taken from durance and judgment" (compare Isa 53:8 the King James Version) and lived thenceforth honored with kings (2 Ki 25:27-30 = Jer 52:31-34). I take him to have been the original of the individualized Servant of Yahweh described and describing himself in Second Isa. In one of his self-descriptions he says that Yahweh has given him "the tongue of them that are taught" (Isa 50:4); in another that Yahweh has made his "mouth like a sharp sword" and himself "a polished shaft" (Isa 49:2). What he said or wrote is of course unidentifiable; but it is certain that in some cultural way he was a hidden power for good to his people. What if this Book of Job were a prison-made book, like Pilgrim's Progress and Don Quixote, but as much greater as the experience that underlay it was more momentous? I do not see but this suggestion is as probable as any that have been made; and some expressions of the book become thereby very striking, as for instance, the reference to prisoners (3:18,19), to the servant longing for release (7:2), the general sense of being despised, the several references to Job as "my servant Job" (1:8; 2:3; 42:7,8), the description of his restoration as a turned captivity, and his successful intercession for the friends (42:10; compare Isa 53:12). I would merely suggest the idea, however, not press it.
2. Place in Biblical Literature:
If the Book of Job is a product of the time of Jehoiachin's imprisonment, it is in worthy and congenial literary company. Isaiah, fostering the faith of a new-born spiritual "remnant," had gathered the elements of that sublime vision (Isa 1:1) of Israel's mission among the nations which a later hand was even now, four generations after, working to supplement and finish, in a prophecy (Isa 40 through 66) which, as all recognize, constitutes the closest parallel in spirited idea to our book. Seers, priests and singers had long busied themselves with the literary treasures of the past; drawing out of dusty archives and putting into popular idiom the ancient laws and counsels of Moses (Deuteronomy; see underJOSIAH ); Collecting and adapting the old Davidic psalms and composing new ones, as Hezekiah's reorganization of the worship required. Ezekiel was at Tel Abib planning for the reconstruction of the temple, and perhaps by his use of the name "Job" veiling a cryptic reference (Ezek 14:14,20). The affiliations of the Book of Job, however, were more specifically, with the wisdom literature; and long before this the "men of Hezekiah" (Prov 25:1) had gathered their aftermath of the Solomonic proverbs, to supplement the maxims which had been the educative pabulum of the people (see underPROVERBS ,THE BOOK OF ). It was with the care and principle of this diffused instruction, now the most popular vein of literature, that the Book of Job concerned itself. That had become apparent as soon as the maxims were coordinated in an anthology, and an introduction to the collection had been composed, extolling Wisdom as the guide and savior of life. To a spiritually-minded thinker with the Hebrew genius for religion the motivation of Wisdom must sooner or later come. With its values should be apprehended also its unguarded points and tendencies. It was exposed to the one-sided drift of all popular things. In an age when revision and deeper insight were the literary order of the day, Wisdom would come in with the other strains of literature for purification and maturing; and there was not wanting an experience, the basis of an almost unbelievable report (compare Isa 53:1) to give depth and poignancy to Job's personal story of suffering and integrity.
In the amazing sureness and vigor. of its message the Book of Job stands out unique and alone; but it is by no means without its lesser parallels in faith and doubt, above which it rises like a mountain above its retinue of foothills. Mention has been made above of a number of Psalms (e.g. 37; 49; 73) which with different degrees of assurance witness to the struggle of faith with the problem of the rampant and successful wicked. Ps 49, one of the psalms of the sons of Korah, is especially noteworthy, because it expressly employs the popular mashal, that is, the Wisdom vehicle, to convey a corrective lesson about unblest riches, drawing a conclusion not unlike that of Job 27:8-23, though in milder tone. Not less noteworthy also is the note of suffering and its mysteriousness which pervades many of the psalms, especially of Asaph and Heman; Psalms 88 and 102 might both have been composed with special reference to Hezekiah's sickness and set beside his psalm in Isa 38, but also they are so fully in the tone of Job's complaint, especially Ps 88, that Professor Godet, not unplausibly, conjectures that the Book of Job was written by its author Heman. Hezekiah's deadly sickness itself (Isa 38), which was of a leprous nature, banishing him from the house of God, and which was miraculously healed--an experience regarding which Hezekiah's own writing (Isa 38:10-20) is strikingly in the key of Job's complaint--furnishes the nearest parallel to, or adumbration of, Job's affliction; but also in the accounts of the Servant of Yahweh there are hints of a similar stroke of God's judgment (compare Isa 52:14; 53:3). The passage Job 7:17,18 has been called "a bitter parody" of Ps 8:4; it may be so, but the conditions are in utter contrast, and nothing can be concluded as to which is original and which echo. As to expression, the most remarkable parallel to Job, perhaps, is the passage Jer 20:14-18, in which, like Job, the prophet Jeremiah curses the day of his birth. This curse in Job would naturally be remembered by all readers as one of the most characteristic features of the book; and in like manner the curse in Jer may have stood out in the memory of his disciples, of whom the writer of Job may have been one, and figure in a similar literary situation. Ezekiel's naming of Job along with Noah and Daniel (Ezek 14:14,20), as a type of atoning righteousness, is doubly remarkable if the writer of Job was a contemporary; he may have taken the name from a well-known legend, and there may have underlain it a double meaning, known to an inner circle, referring cryptically to one whose real name it might be impolitic to pronounce. Whenever written, the outline and meaning of Job's momentous experience must have won speedily to a permanent place in the universal Hebrew memory; so that centuries afterward James could write to the twelve tribes scattered abroad (5:11), "Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord."
LITERATURE.
A.B. Davidson, "The Book or Job" (Cambridge Bible for Schools), 1884; A.S. Peake, "Job" (New Century Bible), 1905; S.R. Driver, The Book of Job in the Revised Version, 1906; J. T. Marshall, The Book of Job, 1904; J.F. Genung,. Epic of the Inner Life, 1891; G.G. Bradley, Lectures on Job in Westminster Abbey, 1887; F.C. Cook in The Speaker's Commentary, 1882. Among German writers, A. Dillmann, Hiob erklart, 1891; K. Budde, Das Buch Hiob ubersetzt und erklart, 1896 (see The Expositor T,VIII , iii); B. Duhm, Das Buch Hiob erklart, 1897; G. Beer, Der text des Buches Hiob untersucht, 1897; Gibson, "The Book of Job" (Oxford Commentaries), 1899.
John Franklin Genung
See APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE .
jo'-bab (yobhabh, perhaps "howling"; Iobab):
(1) "Son" of Joktan (Gen 10:29; 1 Ch 1:23).
See TABLE OF NATIONS .
(2) An Edomite king (Gen 36:33,14; 1 Ch 1:44,45).
(3) King of Madon (Josh 11:1).
(4) 1 Ch 8:9; and (5) 1 Ch 8:18, Benjamites.
The name is confused with that of Job in Septuagint of Job 42:17.
jok'-e-bed (yokhebhedh, "Yahweh is glory"): Daughter of Levi, wife of Amram and mother of Moses (Ex 6:20; Nu 26:59). According to Ex 6:20, she was a sister of Kohath, Amram's father.
jod "y": Yodh, the tenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet.
jo'-da (Westcott-Hort, Greek New Testament, Ioda; Textus Receptus of the New Testament, Iouda):
(1) A Levite, whose sons were "over the works of the Lord," corresponding to Sudias (1 Esdras 5:26), Hodaviah (Ezr 2:40), Judah (Ezr 3:9), Hodevah (Neh 7:43).
(2) An ancestor of Jesus in Luke's genealogy (Lk 3:26, the King James Version "Juda").
jo'-ed (yo`edh, "Yahweh is witness"): A "son" of Benjamin (Neh 11:7), wanting in 1 Ch 9:7.
jo'-el (yo'el, popularly interpreted as "Yahweh is God"; but See HPN , 153;BDB , 222a):
(1) The firstborn of Samuel (1 Sam 8:2; 1 Ch 6:33 (Hebrew 18), and supplied in the Revised Version (British and American) of 1 Ch 6:28, correctly).
(2) A Simeonite prince (1 Ch 4:35). (3) A Reubenite chief (1 Ch 5:4,8).
(4) A Gadite chief, perhaps the same as (3) (1 Ch 5:12). He might be the chief of "a family or clan whose members might be reckoned as belonging to either or both of the tribes" (Curtis, Chronicles, 122).
(5) A Levite ancestor of Samuel (1 Ch 6:36 (Hebrew 21), called "Shaul" in 6:24 (Hebrew 9)).
(6) A chief of Issachar (1 Ch 7:3).
(7) One of David's mighty men (1 Ch 11:38), brother of Nathan. 2 Sam 23:36 has "Igal son of Nathan," and the Septuagint's Codex Vaticanus has "son" in 1 Chronicles, a reading which Curtis adopts.
See IGAL .
(8) A Levite (1 Ch 15:7,11,17), probably the Joel of 1 Ch 23:8 and 26:22.
(9) David's tribal chief over half of Manasseh (1 Ch 27:20).
(10) A Levite of Hezekiah's time (2 Ch 29:12).
(11) One of those who had married foreign wives (Ezr 10:43) = "Juel" of 1 Esdras 9:35.
(12) A Benjamite "overseer" in Jerusalem (Neh 11:9).
(13) Ioel, the prophet (Joel 1:1; Acts 2:16). See following article.
David Francis Roberts
(yo'el; Ioel):
(5) Foreign Nations Mentioned or Omitted
6. Connections with the New Testament
LITERATURE
The Book of Joel stands second in the collection of the twelve Prophets in the Hebrew Canon. The name (yo'el), meaning "Yahweh is God," seems to have been common, as we find a dozen other persons bearing it at various periods of the Biblical history. Beyond the fact that he was the son of Pethuel, there is no intimation in the book as to his native place, date, or personal history; nor is he mentioned in any other part of the Old Testament; so that any information on these points must be matter of inference, and the consideration of them must follow some examination of the book itself.
This takes largely the form of addresses, the occasion and scope of which have to be gathered from the contents. There is no narrative, properly so called, except at one place (Joel 2:18), "Then was Yahweh jealous for his land," etc., and even there the narrative form is not continued. Yet, though the earlier portions at least may be the transcript of actual addresses in which the speaker had his audience before him, this would not apply to the later portions, in which also the direct address is still maintained (e.g. Joel 3:11, "Haste ye, and come, all ye nations round about"). This form of direct address is, indeed, characteristic of the style throughout (e.g. Joel 2:21; 3:4,9,13). There is this also to be said of its literary character, that "the style of Joel is bright and flowing," his "imagery and language are fine" (Driver, LOT); "his book is a description, clear, well arranged, and carried out with taste and vivacity, of the present distress and of the ideal future. Joel may be reckoned among the classics of Hebrew literature. The need of a commentary for details, as is the case with Amos and Hosea, is here hardly felt" (Reuss, Das Altes Testament).
The book in the original consists of 4 chapters, which, however, are in our version reduced to 3, by making the portion which constitutes chapter 3 in the Hebrew the concluding portion (3:28-32) of chapter 2. The book begins in gloom, and its close is bright. Up to Joel 2:18 there is some great trouble or a succession of troubles culminating at 2:28-32 (Joel 3 in Hebrew). And the concluding portion, Joel 3 (Joel 4 in Hebrew), in which the prophet projects his view into futurity, begins with judgment but ends with final blessedness. There is a progression in the thought, rising from the solid, sorely smitten earth to a region ethereal, and the stages of advance are marked by sudden, sharp calls (1:2,14; 3:9), or by the blasts of the trumpet which prelude the shifting scenes (2:1,15).
Joel 1 begins with an address, sharp and peremptory, in which the oldest inhabitant is appealed to whether such a calamity as the present has ever been experienced, and all are called to take note so that the record of it may be handed down to remotest posterity. The land has suffered from a succession of disasters, the greatest that could befall an agricultural country, drought and locusts. The two are in fact inextricably connected, and the features of both are mixed up in the description of their effects. The extent of the disaster is vividly depicted by the singling out of the classes on whom the calamity has fallen, the drinkers of wine, the priests,
the vine-dressers, the husbandmen; and, toward the close of the chapter, the lower animals are pathetically introduced as making their mute appeal to heaven for succor (1:18-20). Specially to be noted is the manner in which the priests are introduced (1:9), and how with them is associated the climax of the affliction. The prophet had just said "my land" (1:6), "my vine" and "my fig-tree" (1:7); and, though many modern expositors take the pronoun as referring to the nation or people, it would appear more appropriate, since the people is objectively addressed, to regard the prophet as identifying himself with the God in whose name he is speaking. And then the transition to Joel 1:8 becomes intelligible, in which certainly the land is personified as a female: "Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth." The underlying idea seems to be the conception of the land as Yahweh's and of Yahweh as the ba`al "lord," or husband of people and land. This is the idea so much in evidence in the Book of Hosea, and so much perverted by the people whom he addressed, who ascribed their corn (grain) and wine and oil to the Canaanite Baals. The idea in its purer form is found in the "land Beulah," "married land" (Isa 62:4,5). If it was this that was in Joel's mind, the mention of the priests comes naturally. The products of the land were Yahweh's gifts, and the acknowledgment of His lordship was made by offerings of the produce laid on His altar. But if nothing was given, nothing could be offered; the "cutting off" of the meal and drink offerings was the mark of the widowhood and destitution of the land. Hence, the pathetic longing (Joel 2:14) that at least so much may be left as to assure the famished land that the supreme calamity, the loss of God, has not fallen. Thus the visitation is set in a religious light: the graphic description is more than a poetic picture. It is the Lord's land that is wasted; hence, the summons (Joel 1:14) to "cry unto Yahweh," and in the verses that follow the supplication by man and beast for deliverance.
Joel 2 up to verse 17 seems to go over the same ground as Joel 1, and it has also two parts parallel respectively to two parts of that chapter: 2:1-11 is parallel to 1:2-12, and 2:12-17 to 1:13-20. The former part in both cases is chiefly descriptive of the calamity, while the latter part is more hortatory. Yet there is an advance; for, whereas in 1:2-12 the attention is fixed on the devastation, in 2:1-11 it is the devastator, the locust, that is particularly described; also, in 2:12-17 the tone is more intensely religious: "Rend your heart, and not your garments" (2:13). Finally it is to be noted that it is at the close of this portion that we get the first reference to external nations: "Give not thy heritage to reproach, that the nations should use a byword against them: wherefore should they say among the peoples, Where is their God?" (2:17 margin). If the view given above of 1:6-8 be correct, this is merely an expansion of the germinal idea there involved. And so it becomes a pivot on which the succeeding portion turns: "Then was Yahweh jealous for his land, and had pity on his people" (2:18).
There is a sharp turn at Joel 2:18, marked by the sudden variation of the verbal forms. Just as in Am 7:10, in the midst of the prophet's discourse, we come upon the narration, "Then Amaziah the priest of Beth-el sent to Jeroboam," etc., so here we have obviously to take the narrative to be the sequence of the foregoing address, or, more properly speaking, we have to infer that what Joel had counseled had been done. The fast had been sanctified, the solemn assembly had been called, all classes or their representatives had been gathered to the house of the Lord, the supplication had been made, and "then was Yahweh jealous for his land, and had pity on his people." In point of fact, as the Hebrew student will perceive, all the verbs from 2:15 may be read, with a change of the points, as simple perfects, with the exception of the verbs for "weep" and "say" in 2:17, which might be descriptive imperfects. But no doubt the imperative forms are to be read, expressing as they do more graphically the doing of the thing prescribed. And, this sharp turn having been made, it will be noticed how the discourse proceeds on a higher gradient, forming a counterpart to the preceding context. Step by step, in inverse order, we pass the former points, beginning opposite what was last the "reproach among the nations" (2:19; compare 2:7), passing the destruction of the great army (2:20; compare 2:1-11), then touching upon the various kinds of vegetation affected (2:21-24; compare 1:12,10, etc.), and ending with the reversal of the fourfold devastation with which the prophet began (2:25; compare 1:4). So that what at the outset was announced as a calamity unprecedented and unparalleled, now becomes a deliverance as enduring as God's presence with His people is forever assured.
Up to this point there has been an observable sequence and connection, so that, while the prophet has steadily progressed upward, we can look down from the point reached and see the whole course that has been traversed. But now in Joel 2:28-32 (Joel 3 in Hebrews) he passes abruptly to what "shall come to pass afterward." And yet no doubt there was a connection of thought in his mind, of which we obtain suggestions in the new features of the description. There is "the sound of abundance of rain" (1 Ki 18:41) in this pouring out of the Spirit upon all flesh; in the sons and daughters, old men and young, servants and handmaidens, we seem to recognize the representative gathering of Joel 2:15 f, those engaged in the priestly function of, supplication here endued with prophetic gifts, "a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation" (Ex 19:6), all the Lord's people become prophets (Nu 11:29). Again we see the sky overcast and sun and moon darkened before the great and terrible day of the Lord, as if the prophet had said: There shall be greater things than these; a new era is coming in which God's hand will be laid more heavily upon the world, and His people will be quickened to a clearer vision of His working. The "day of Yahweh" has yet to come in a fuller sense than the locust plague suggested, and there will be a more effective deliverance than from drought and dearth; but then as now there will be found safety in Mt. Zion and Jerusalem. This, however, implies some danger with which Jerusalem has been threatened; a "remnant," an "escaped" portion involves a disaster or crisis out of which new life comes. And so the prophet goes on in Joel 3 (Joel 4 in Hebrews), still speaking of "those days" and "that time," to tell us of the greater deliverance from the greater trouble to which he has been alluding. There is nothing in the antecedent chapters to indicate what "that time" and "those days" are, or what the prophet means by bringing again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem. These are questions of interpretation. In the meantime, we may note the general features of the scene now set before us. A great assize is to be held in the valley of Jehoshaphat, in which "all nations" there assembled by Divine summons will be judged for offenses against God's people and heritage (3:1-8). And again, just as in Joel 1; 2 the prophet exhibited the plague of locusts in two pictures, so here in 3:9-21 the picture of the great assize is transformed into a bloody picture in the same valley, not so much of battle as of slaughter, a treading of the wine-press. There is a confused multitude in "the valley of decision"; sun and moon are darkened, and the stars withdraw their shining; the "day of Yahweh" has finally come; and, when the din is silenced and clear light again falls upon the scene, all is peace and prosperity, the last of the enemies destroyed, and the Lord dwelleth in Zion.
Thus the book forms a fairly intelligible and connected whole when we read in the literal sense of the language. That is to say: a time of continued drought combined with an unprecedented visitation of locusts gives occasion to the prophet to call his people to the recognition of the Divine hand and to earnest supplication that the threatened ruin of people and land may be averted. The removal of the calamity is interpreted as a mark of restored Divine favor and an assurance of prosperity based on God's unchangeable purpose of good to His people. But these great doings of Nature's God suggest yet greater deeds of Israel's God of a more spiritual kind, the outpouring, like copious showers, of Divine blessing, so that the whole community would be set on a higher level of spiritual apprehension. And thus the prophet is led on to speak of the "last things." Judah and Jerusalem, highly distinguished and signally protected, are bound up with a world-wide purpose; Israel, in a word, cannot be conceived apart from non-Israel. And as non-Israel had in the past been an opposing power, in the great "day of Yahweh," wrong should be at last righted, the nations judged, and Israel and Israel's God be glorified. No doubt the interpretation is not without difficulties. We may not be able to detect the motives of the sudden transitions, or to say how much of the purport of the latter part was in the prophet's mind when he was engaged on the former part. And the description of the locust is so highly poetical that there is a temptation to see in it a reference to a great invading army.
These considerations, combined with the undoubted eschatological strain of the closing part of the book, led early commentators (and they have had followers in modern times) to an allegorical interpretation of the locust, and to regard the whole book as pointing forward to future history. Thus, in Jerome's time, the 4 names of the locust in 1:4 were supposed to designate (1) the Assyrians and Babylonians, (2) the Medes and Persians, (3) the Macedonians and Antiochus Epiphanes, and (4) the Romans. But, apart from the consideration that the analogy of prophecy would lead us to look for some actual situation or occurrence of his time as the starting-point of Joel's discourse, a close observation and acquaintance with the habits of the locust confirm the prophet's description, albeit highly figurative and poetical, as minutely accurate in all its details. It is to be observed that, though spoken of as an army (and at the present day the Oriental calls the locust the "army of God"), there is no mention of bloodshed. The designation "the northern one," which has been considered inappropriate because the locust comes from the parched plain of the eastern interior, need not cause perplexity; for the Hebrew, while it has names for the 4 cardinal points of the compass, has none for the intermediate points: Judea might be visited by locusts coming from the Northeast, or, coming from the East, they might strike the country at a point to the North of Palestine and travel southward. So the wind which destroys the locust (Joel 2:20) would be a northwesterly wind, driving the forepart into the Dead Sea and the hinder part into the Mediterranean.
The Book of Joel has been assigned by different authorities to very various dates, ranging over 4 or 5 centuries; but, as will appear in the sequel, it comes to be a question whether the book is very early or very late, in fact, whether Joel is perhaps the very earliest or the very last or among the last of the writing prophets. This diversity of opinion is due to the fact that there are no direct indications of date in the book itself, and that such indirect indications as it affords are held to be capable of explanation on the one view or the other. It will be noticed also that, to add to the uncertainty, many of the arguments adduced are of a negative kind, i.e. consideration of what the prophet does not mention or refer to, and the argument from silence is notoriously precarious. It will, therefore, be convenient to specify the indications available, and to note the arguments drawn from them in support of the respective dates.
An argument for a very early date is based upon the place of the book in the, collection of the "twelve" minor prophets.
It stands, in the Hebrew Bible, between Hosea and Amos, who are usually spoken of as the earliest "writing prophets." It is true that, in the Septuagint collection, the order is different, namely, Hosea, Amos, Micah, Joel, Obadiah, Jonah; which may indicate that as early as the time of the formation of the Canon of the Prophets there was uncertainty as to the place of Joel, Obadiah, and Jon, which contain no direct indication of their dates. But, seeing that there has evidently been a regard to some chronological order, the books being arranged according to the Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian periods, it cannot be without significance that Joel has found a place so high up in the collection. The three indisputably post-exilian books stand together at the end. If Joel is late, it must be as late as the latest of these, possibly a great deal later. But if that is so, there was the greater likelihood of its date being known to the collectors. It would be a very hazardous assumption that prophetical books were not read or copied from the time of their first composition till the time they were gathered into a Canon. And, if they were so read and copied, surely the people who handled them took some interest in preserving the knowledge of their origin and authorship.
In this connection, attention is directed to the resemblances to the Book of Am before which Joel stands. These are regarded by Reuss as favoring the early date. That large and beautiful passage with which the Book of Amos opens dwells upon the thought that the threatenings, which had formerly been uttered against the nations, are about to receive their fulfillment, and that Yahweh could not take back His word. Now it is just such a threatening that fills the last part of the Book of Joel. Indeed Amos begins his book with the very phrase in which Joel opens his closing address, "Yahweh will roar from Zion, and utter his voice from Jerus" (Am 1:2; Joel 4:16). At the end of Am also the happy fertility of Canaan is described in similar terms to those in Joel (Am 9:13; Joel 3:18). Reuss, moreover, draws attention to the remarkable expression found in Joel, and also, though in modified terms, in two Prophets of the Assyrian period: "Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning-hooks into spears," says Joel (3:10), whereas we have the oracle in Isa 2:4 and Mic 4:3, "They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks"; and it is suggested that, if these were current phrases, they were more likely to have been coined in the form employed by Joel in earlier and less settled times, when sudden alarms of war called the peaceful husbandman to the defense of his fields and flocks. Further, it is pointed out that Amos reproaches the people of his day for impenitence, although Yahweh had given them "cleanness of teeth" and "want of bread" and had "withholden the rain .... when there were yet three months to the harvest," and smitten them with blasting and mildew and the palmer worm (Am 4:6-9); and all this is the more striking because Joel represents the distress of his day as unprecedented in magnitude.
To all this, advocates of the late date reply that we cannot determine the date of a book by its place in the Canon; for that the collectors were guided by other considerations. As to the resemblances to Amos, it may have been on the strength of these very resemblances that the Book of Joel, bearing no date in itself, was placed beside that of Amos. Moreover, it is maintained, as we shall see presently, that Joel has resemblances to other prophets, some of them confessedly of late date, proving that he was acquainted with writings of a very late time.
Another argument for an early date is based upon the purity of the language and character of the style. The book is written in what may be described as classical Hebrew, and shows no trace of decadence of language. It is no doubt true that "the style is the man," as is strikingly illustrated in the very different styles of Amos and Hosea, who were practically contemporaneous; so that arguments of this kind are precarious. Still, it is to be noted, that though there is nothing archaic in the style of Joel, neither is there anything archaic in the style of Amos, who would, by the exclusion of Joel, be our earliest example of written prophecy.
The advocates of the very late date reply that the style of Joel is too good to be archaic; and that his admittedly classic style is to be explained by the supposition that, living at a late time, he was a diligent student of earlier prophetic literature, and molded his style upon the classical.
Here, therefore, must be mentioned an argument much relied on by the advocates of a very late date. It is said that there are so many resemblances in thought and expression to other Old Testament books that it is incredible that so many writers posterior to the early date claimed for Joel should have quoted from this little book or expanded thoughts contained in it. A very elaborate comparison of Joel with late writers has been made by Holzinger in ZATW, 1889, 89-131; his line of argument being that, while resemblances to undoubtedly early writers may be explained as the work of a writer in the Renaissance imitating older models, the resemblances to others known to be late, such as Jeremiah, Ezekiel, II Isaiah, Psalms, Nehemiah, Chronicles, etc., cannot be so explained if Joel is taken to be early. The principal passages in question are given in the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, "Book of Joel," by Professor Driver, who also takes the view that Joel is late.
The list is not, perhaps, so formidable as its length would imply. Both writers confess that from several of the passages no conclusion of any value can be drawn, and that there is always a difficulty in determining priority when similarities in diction are found. Many of the expressions quoted look as if they might have been commonplaces of the prophetical literature; and, if it was possible for a very late writer to quote from so many antecedent writings, it was as possible and much easier for a number of late writers to go back to the very earliest prophets, especially if their words were memorable and germinal. We have heard of the man who objected to Shakespeare because he was full of quotations; and there is perhaps not a line of Gray's "Elegy" that has not been quoted somewhere, while some of his lines have become household words. But the strongest objection to this argument is this: if Joel had the minute acquaintance with antecedent writers and followed them so closely as is implied, he not only varies from them in essential particulars, but falls below them, as we shall see, in his anticipations of the future.
We have now to look at features of a more concrete and tangible character, which promise to give more positive results. It is maintained by the advocates of the late date that the situation and immediate outlook of the prophet are not only consistent with the late date but preclude any preexilian date altogether. The elements of the situation are these: Whereas all the prophets before the downfall of Samaria (722 BC), and even Jeremiah and Ezekiel, mention the Northern Kingdom, it is not once named or referred to in Joel; for the occurrence of the name "Israel" in 2:27; 3:2,16 cannot support this sense. Judah and Jerusalem fill our prophet's actual horizon (2:1,32; 3:6,16 f.20); no king is mentioned or implied, but the elders with the priests seem to be the prominent and ruling class. Further, the temple and its worship are central (1:14; 2:15 f) and so important that the cutting off of the meal offering and drink offering is tantamount to national ruin (1:9,13,16; 2:14). Again, there is no mention of the prevailing sins of preexilian times, the high places with their corrupt worship, or indeed of any specific sin for which the people were to humble themselves, while fasting and putting on sackcloth seem to have a special virtue. All the circumstances, it is held, conform exactly to the time of the post-exilian temple and to no other time. The Northern Kingdom was no more, there was no king in Jerusalem, the temple was the center and rallying-point of national life, its ritual the pledge and guarantee of God's presence and favor; the period of legalism had set in. It is confidently averred that at no period prior to the regime inaugurated by Ezra and Nehemiah was there such a conjunction of circumstances.
In reply, it is urged in favor of the early date that there was a period in preexilian time when such a situation existed, namely, the early years of the reign of Joash, when that prince was still an infant; for Jehoiada the priest acted practically as regent after the death of Athaliah, 836 BC (2 Ki 11:1-17). This would sufficiently account for the absence of mention of a king in the book. At such a time the priesthood must have held a prominent position, and the temple would overshadow the palace in importance. The omission of the Northern Kingdom may be accounted for by the fact that at that time the two kingdoms were on friendly terms; for the two royal houses were connected by marriage, and the kingdoms were in alliance (2 Ki 3:6 ff; 8:28 ff). Or the omission may have no more significance than the fact that Joel was concerned with an immediate and near present distress and had no occasion to mention the Northern Kingdom. To show how unsafe it is to draw conclusions from such silence, it may be observed that throughout the first 5 chapters of Isa, larger in bulk than the whole Book of Joel, only Judah and Jerusalem are mentioned; and, even if it should be maintained that a part or the whole of these chapters dates from after the deportation of the ten tribes, still it is noteworthy that, when the prophet could have made as good use of a reference to the event as Jeremiah and Ezekiel, he does not do so.
The fact that there is no mention of specific national sins, and particularly of the worship of the high places, of which preexilian prophets have so much to say, is made much of by advocates of the late date, Dr. A.B. Davidson, e.g., declaring it to be "doubtful whether such a state of things existed at any time prior to the restoration from exile" (Expos, March, 1888); but perhaps this argument proves too much. If we are to deduce the state of religion in Joel's day from, what he does not say on the subject, it may be doubted whether at any time, either before or after the exile, such a condition prevailed. The post-exilian prophets certainly knew of sins in their time, sins, too, which restrained the rain and blasted the wine and oil and corn (Hag 1:11). For all that Joel says on the subject, the condition of things implied is as consistent with the time of Jehoiada as with that of Nehemiah. And what shall we say of Isaiah's positive description of the condition of Jerusalem before his time: "the faithful city .... she that was full of justice! righteousness lodged in her" (Isa 1:21)? When was that? So also his promise: "I will restore thy judges as at the first, and thy counselors as at the beginning: afterward thou shalt be called The city of righteousness, a faithful town" (Isa 1:26). Higher praise could scarcely be bestowed, and there is nothing in the Book of Joel to imply that he assumed so much.
Too much has been made of the references to ritual, as if they necessarily implied a post-exilian date. It is not legitimate here to assume that the idea of centralization of worship originated in Josiah's days, and that the priestly legislation is post-exilic. The mention of "old men" or "elders" is no such indication. Wellhausen himself maintains that the expression everywhere in Joel means nothing more than "old men"; and, even if it had an official connotation, the official elders are an old tribal institution in Israel. It may be noted here again that in the first 5 chapters of Isa elders also are mentioned, and more indubitably in an official sense, although the time was that of the monarchy (Isa 3:2,14). And as to the sanctity of the temple, it will hardly be denied that in the time of Jehoiada the Jerusalem temple was a place of far more importance than any supposed local shrine, and especially when there was a call to a united national supplication (See 2 Ki 11). In point of fact the alleged references to ritual are very few and in most general terms. The "fast" is not denoted by the phrases in the legal codes, and was evidently on the footing of such observances as are common and instinctive at all times and among all persons (Jdg 20:26; 1 Sam 7:6; 2 Sam 1:12; Jon 3:5 ff). And where in any law-code are priests enjoined to lie all night in sackcloth (Joel 1:13)? Or what prescription in any code requires young and old, bridegroom and bride, to press together into the temple (Joel 2:16)? And why should not any or all of these things have been done in face of a sudden emergency threatening the ruin of an agricultural people? Moreover, Joel, so far from ascribing virtue to these outward marks of humiliation in a legalistic spirit, immediately after mentioning them says: "Rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto Yahweh your God" (Joel 2:13).
The only ritual references are to the meal offering and the drink offering (Joel 1:9,13; 2:14), and these were not characteristically post-exilian. Indeed, they may be regarded as primitive forms of offering, the produce of the ground without which, among an agricultural people, we can hardly imagine a system of offerings to exist. They are both ancient. Amos regards the meal offering as well known (Joel 5:22,25), and Isaiah uses the word "vain oblations" in speaking of its abuse (Isa 1:13). And though the noun for drink offering is not mentioned in the older prophets, Hosea knows the related verb and the act of pouring out wine to the Lord (Hos 9:4), and it may be asked whether it is likely that the people performed the act and had no name for the offering itself. Moreover, in an undisputed passage (2 Ki 16:13,15), both offerings are mentioned in the time of Ahaz. As for the contention that our prophet regards these offerings of so much importance that the cessation of them would be fatal, if our interpretation of Joel 1:8 f above be correct, the earlier date would be much more appropriate. It was not because the offering threatened to cease, but because the thing offered threatened to be cut off, that Joel was so perturbed. The popular view as to the relation of Yahweh to His land was ancient, and had a foundation of truth; and in fact Hosea's teaching would fitly follow and complete that of Joel. Finally it is to b