Job 10:22

22. Darkness itself Ophel. Darkness particularly thick. (Furst.) The spectacle that the interior of the dark and gloomy sepulchre presented, evidently tinged Job’s views of the state of the dead. The vivid imagination of the Arab, notwithstanding the teaching of the Koran, still sees in the tomb the real, conscious home of the dead. “I have read some poems of the Arabians in which they are represented as visiting the graves of their friends like dwelling places, conversing with them, and watching the dust of their dwellings.… The dead were held so dear that one could not, must not, think of them as dead, even in the grave, and thus they were represented there as still having an animate, though shadowy, existence.” Herder. (See further, Hebrew Poetry, 1:173.)

Without any order “Where all is confused, like unto a chaos.” GESENIUS, Thesaurus. The light is as darkness It shines as thick darkness. Such darkness reigns there that their broad daylight is as dark as midnight on earth. (Hirtzel.) Thus Milton:

Yet from those flames

No light, but rather darkness visible.

Dr. Clarke cites Sophocles: “Thou, darkness, be my light.” This “bold and tremendous” description of the underworld of the dead is not surpassed in any language, and forcibly recalls the conclusion to a similar, but vastly inferior, one by Seneca:

Ipsaque morte pejor est mortis locus, etc.,

And death’s abode is worse than death itself.

Hercules Furens.

The description Job gives of the underworld bears some points of resemblance to that recovered from the Assyrian tablets, supposed to have been made at least twenty centuries before Christ. It appears in the account of the descent of the goddess Ishtar to the infernal regions. To “the house of the departed, the seat of the god Iskalla; to the house from within which there is no exit; to the road the course of which never returns; to the place within which they long for light; the place where dust is their nourishment, and their food mud; light is never seen, in the darkness they dwell; its chiefs, also, like birds, are clothed with wings; over the door and its bolts is scattered dust.” GEORGE SMITH, Assyrian Discov., p. 220.

EXCURSUS IV

THE DAYSMAN.

In the judicial language of the Middle Ages, the word day was specially applied to the day appointed for hearing a cause. (Wedgwood.) Hence our English word daysman denoted the judge who presided at the day fixed, for he was the man of the day. No better word could have been selected to express the faith of our translators, that this daysman is Christ, who will judge the world on the day which God hath appointed. Acts 17:31.

The word מוכיח , mokiahh, daysman, which Furst renders “mediator,” “umpire,” is used in the Hiphil form with the idea of judging or deciding between two parties. The Septuagint version gives as the equivalent of mokiahh, μεσιτης ημων , the same term ( mesites) that is employed by the apostle (Galatians 3:19-20; 1 Timothy 2:5, and Hebrews 8:6) for Mediator. The Septuagint also adds, “and a reprover, and one who should hear (through) in the midst of both,” διακουων αναμεσον , etc. Many manuscripts, (Dr. Clarke speaks of fifteen,) and the ancient versions, the Septuagint, Arabic, and Syriac,. read לו , lou, “would that,” in place of לא , lo, “not;” thus, “Would that there were a days-man,” etc. This passage has given rise to extreme views. On the one side is that of the Fathers: thus St. Gregory “The holy patriarch Job, contemplating the sins of man and the wrath of God against sin, prays for a mediator who is both God and man. He beholds him from afar, and longs for a redeemer who may lay his hands on both.” St. Augustine (Psalm ciii) also writes: “Job desired to see Christ; he desired a mediator. What is a mediator? One who stands in the midst in order to adjust a cause. Were we not the enemies of God, and had we not a bad cause toward God? Who could put an end to that bad cause but He ( medius arbiter) concerning whom the apostle says,” etc., 1 Timothy 2:5. At the other extreme is the view of the Rationalists, thus expressed by Dr. Noyes: “An arbiter who may have authority to control either of us who shall exceed the limits of propriety in the controversy, and also oblige us to stand to his decision.” Job had been but just before (Job 10:31) treating of moral defilement that had stained the soul beyond all human power of removal. Such was this defilement that even after man’s utmost cleansing of himself, his own unclean garments would abhor contact with so filthy a being. Though there be the intervention of a verse, (32,) yet such a degrading transition as would be implied in the rationalistic interpretation of this verse is unworthy of Job. It means a descent from the profoundest and most momentous question that can conceivably engage the mind of man, to the platitude of a super-divine umpire, (pedagogue,) whose duty it should be to hold in restraint two quarrelsome disputants, God and man. Its absurdity is stamped upon its face.

Nor are we inclined with the Fathers to attribute to Job too great a knowledge of divine truth. His moral needs unquestionably led him to think of and desire superhuman help the intervention of some being who should assist in the adjudication of the cause at issue between man and God. He sighed for some one to stand between, and not as the Rationalists say, above, both. With Job the real knowledge of a mediator was more of the heart than of the head more a feeling than a mental conception. The heart’s wants belong to the race, and to every age; clear perception of truth to but few. In the fulness of time, meridian knowledge of a mediator should come with the mediator himself. “Job, out of his religious entanglement, proclaimed the necessity of a mediator to humanize God two thousand years before he came.” Davidson. An exceedingly ancient custom of the Arabs certainly favours the evangelical view. “The Arabs,” says Herodotus, (iii, 8,) “plight faith with the forms following. When two men would swear a friendship, they stand on each side of a third; he, with a sharp stone, makes a cut on the inside of the hand of each, near the middle finger, and taking a piece from their dress, dips it in the blood of each, and moistens therewith seven stones lying in the midst, calling the while on Bacchus and Urania. After this the man who makes the pledge commends the stranger (or the citizen, if citizen he be) to all his friends, and they deem themselves bound to stand to the engagement.” A like custom is perpetuated to the present day among the Arabs. “When any one commits an offence against another individual,” says Sir J.G. Wilkinson, ( ibid.,) “he endeavors to find a mediator to intercede in his behalf, and the tent of that person becomes an asylum (like the refuge city of the Jews, Numbers 35:11) until the compact has been settled.” Some such Semitic custom of mediation Job probably had in mind. The old Accadian faith, as we now learn from Assyrian tablets, embraced an idea of divine mediation for the benefit of men. The primitive Accad (see note on Job 1:17) worshipped a God, (Silik-moulou khi,) “him who orders what is good for man,” the eldest son of Hea, through whom the will of his father, Hea, was communicated to men; “him, the command of whose mouth is propitious, the sublime judge of heaven.” The early Accadian hymns recognise the great power he had with his father, Hea, in averting evils from men. LENORMANT, la Magie, 346, 7. See further, Speaker’s Com., vol. vi, p. 266, Excursus on Chaldee Magic.

In the presence of such light from the not far distant land of Chaldea, into contact with which our history brings us closely, (Job 1:17,) we are not to suppose an inadvertent use of words on the part of Job when he speaks of “a daysman;” but rather, that he may have possessed at least as enlightened views as those of the Chaldeans, from whose land it will be remembered Abraham had early migrated. But of Abraham, Christ says he “rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad.” John 8:56. This anticipatory knowledge of Christ may have been vouchsafed to him before he left Ur of the Chaldees, (Genesis 11:31,) and have been communicated by him to his Chaldaean countrymen, and preserved in tradition, which, after the lapse of so many centuries, has been marvellously brought to light. The most ancient false religions were burdened with the momentous problem of Job How shall the evil of sin be compounded, and man made pure? On a point of so much interest we adduce a few illustrations: “What shall I do,” cried Zoroaster, “O Ormazd, steeped in brightness, in order to battle with Daroodj-Ahriman, father of the evil law, how shall I make men pure and holy?” Ormazd answered and said, “Invoke, O Zoroaster, the pure law of the servants of Ormazd;… invoke my spirit, me, who am Ahura-Mazda, the purest, strongest, wisest, best of beings; me, who have the most majestic body; who, through purity, am supreme, whose soul is the excellent word, and ye, all people, invoke me as I have commanded Zoroaster.” KLEUKER’S Avesta Vendidad Farg., 19 . See HARDWICK, ibid., ii, pp. 392-395.

The later literature of the Brahman frequently intimates that deliverance is secured by a son. Of such a one the Rig Veda, (vii, 56, 24,) translated by Max Muller, early speaks: “O, Maruts, may there be to us a strong son, who is a living ruler of men, through whom we may cross the waters on our way to the happy abode; then may we come to your own house.” Buddha himself confessed his own age to be irremediably corrupt, and prophesied of a Buddha to be called Mait-reya, the loving, the merciful, who will cause justice to reign over the earth. See further, on Buddha, BUNSEN, God in History, 1:371. “For we ought,” says Plato, describing the last scenes in the life of Socrates, “with respect to these things, either to learn from others how they stand, or to discover them for one’s self; or, if both these are impossible, then, taking the best of human reasonings, and that which is most difficult to be refitted, and embarking on this as one who risks himself on a raft, so to sail through life, UNLESS one could be carried more safely, and with less risk, on a surer conveyance, or SOME DIVINE REASON ( λογου θειου τινος ). Phaedo, section 78. See also Socrates, in Plato, Second Alcibiades, section 23.