Job 31:6

6. Let me be weighed, etc. Literally, let him weigh me in a balance of righteousness, and God shall know mine integrity.

Balance See note, Job 6:2. According to the Egyptian mythology, when the soul appears before Osiris it is weighed in a balance. A series of questions (amounting to as many as forty-two) are proposed, of the most severe and searching character, which “illustrate the nature of that secret and self-judging law which everywhere, in spite of intellectual aberrations, is still active in the cause of truth and righteousness, among the inmost fibres of the human heart.” HARDWICK. (See his work, “Christ,” etc., 2:301-303; also Bib. Sac., 25:97-103.)

In this picture, taken from Champollion, the good deeds of an entire life, supposed to have been deposited in a vase, are being weighed in the one scale; while an ostrich feather, the emblem of truth or justice, serves as a weight in the other. A report of the issue is in process of reading to Osiris, before whom sits the dog Cerberus, the keeper of the gates of the invisible world. The trial has evidently gone against the dead man, who is being ferried back to earth in the form of a hog under the guidance of a monkey.