Job 31

Job’s Monologue, (continued.)

THIRD PART, chap. 31.

In “this masterly piece of moral painting” we have a most pleasing view of a gentle and amiable spirit ennobled by the one common love of God and man. At the first sight, this review of Job’s life seems a pharisaical display of virtue, a quasi invoice of righteousness; but it is to be remembered that Job has been forced to a defence under circumstances which Sir Richard Steele states “may justify a man in saying not only as much as will refute his adversaries, but if he can, he may assert things of himself praiseworthy, which ought not to be called vanity in him, but simply justice as against his opponents.”

We have, moreover, an insight into the patriarchal religion, the most ancient religion of our race. The religion of Job was not of Israel, nor from Moses, but Abrahamic, the din Ibrahim, (religion of Abraham,) as the Arab calls it even to the present day. There is a striking resemblance between this exhibit of moral duty and the ten commandments of piety peculiar to the din Ibrahim. (See Delitzsch, 2:173.) There is displayed a most remarkable insight into the motives and springs of moral action, the rudiments of good and evil. The heart he regards as the fount of moral action the field from which man may look the saint but be the devil.

Job anticipates, to a wonderful degree, various elements of “the sermon on the mount,” more especially the responsibility connected with the subtle beginnings of action, the unseen primordia of the outward deed. And yet it is worthy of special consideration that “a conscience so wonderfully delicate and enlightened as that which Job had disclosed in these his closing discourses, appears as in need of repentance, and unable to secure from God a verdict of unconditional justification.” Zockler.