Author of the Book of Job

The considerations stated yesterday will naturally

lead the reader to ask: “Who, then, wrote the book of
Job?” This is a question much more easily asked
than answered, as may be conjectured from the fact,
that the range of conjectures on the subject runs over
more than a thousand years—some ascribing the
authorship of the book to one of the parties
concerned in the discussion—Job himself, or
perhaps Elihu—while others, as we have already
hinted, suppose that it was written during or after
the Babylonish captivity.
It will be seen that the question as to the time of Job
himself, is very different from that of the time of the
author of the book which bears his name. Yet if the
book be, as we have urged, historically true, and not
parabolic, we should naturally, from the nature of
the book, expect the author to have either been one
of the parties engaged in the discussion, or to have
lived in or not considerably later than the time of the
event; but, if it be a parabolic composition, this point
is no longer of the same consequence, for the
circumstances not being essentially true, it matters
little whether it were written one year or one
thousand years after the times they purport to
represent. We say “purport to represent,” because it
is now agreed very generally, even by those who
believe the work to be a kind of poetical romance,
that the author, in whatever age he lived, intended to
represent the customs and ideas of the patriarchal
age.
It is on this view that those who urge the historical
truth of the Book of Job are also the advocates of its
early authorship, while those who regard it as a
parabolic, or place it as only “founded on facts,” like
the historical plays of Shakespeare, or the historical
romances of Scott, generally seek for the author in a
late age, and on their view of the case, are quite at
liberty to do so.
That the author lived in or about the time of the
Babylonish captivity, is a notion which has found no
recent advocates in this country, but has the support
of many high authorities abroad. We have already
alluded to it as founded chiefly on the erroneous
opinion, that the idea of Satan which the book
presents had no anterior existence. It is also urged
that it was likewise in this time of trouble, during the
Babylonish exile, that first originated the
disheartening view of human life, and that then the
great problem, to the solution of which the book is
devoted, first engrossed the public mind. “But the
sense of misery, and of the nothingness of human
life, is found among all nations, cultivated and
uncultivated. Noah, Jacob, Moses, complain; and as
old as suffering must be the question of the seeming
disparity in the distribution of good and evil, and
how this disparity can be reconciled with God’s
justice. It is frequently under consideration in the
Psalms.” Note: Hengstenberg in art. Job:
Cyclopaedia of Biblical Literature.
Farther, this late authorship of the book is disproved
by the evidences of its anterior existence which have
been found in other books of Scripture. Ezekiel’s
reference to “Noah, Daniel, and Job,” was given
before the destruction of Jerusalem by
Nebuchadnezzar, and notwithstanding the attempts
which have been made to lessen its weight, remains
conclusive against this view, especially with the
support it derives from other testimony. Thus, Job’s
cursing the day of his birth, in the third chapter, is
manifestly imitated by Jeremiah, Note: Jer_20:14
who uses not only the same sentiments, but the same
words. Ay, but what is to prevent us from supposing
that Job copied Jeremiah, instead of that Jeremiah
copied Job? Simply this, that the mind of Jeremiah
being filled with the Scriptures already in existence,
he does habitually—as religious writers would now—
repeat Scriptural thoughts and forms of expression,
whereas the Book of Job is in this respect quite
original and independent of other books of
Scripture; and this alone supplies a strong argument
for the remote antiquity of the book—going far to
prove that no other books of Scripture, except
perhaps Genesis, existed when it was written. The
conclusion that Jeremiah was acquainted with the
Book of Job, will probably be held to receive some
corroboration from a comparison of Lam_2:16, with
Job_16:9-10; and Lam_3:7-9, with Job_19:8.
Still earlier, references to the Book of Job may be
found even in Isaiah. Thus, there is a Hebrew word
tzaba, which usually means “warfare;” but in the
Book of Job this word occurs repeatedly in the sense
of a period of hard service, of calamity, or of
affliction. In this very peculiar sense Note: Job_7:1;
Job_10:17; Job_14:14. it also occurs in Isa_40:2;
and that this is not a casual coincidence, but has a
designed reference to the Book of Job, is clear from
the fact that the very same verse of Isaiah closes
with, “for she hath received of the Lord’s hand
double for all her sins,” which is a manifest allusion
to the double which Job is described as having
received at the end of his history. The value of this
piece of evidence is very considerable, and will be
appreciated by supposing the case that Spenser has a
peculiar word, or uses a word in a sense peculiar to
himself—both of which are cases of frequent
occurrence with him. Suppose also that in a poet of
our own day—say Wordsworth—we not only find this
word, which has not in the same sense been
intermediately used by any author, but such an
allusion in the context as brings to mind a prominent
circumstance in the very book in which the word
thus occurs, we shall make no question that
Wordsworth not only had Spenser in view, but that
he intended to indicate the fact.
Some who are themselves averse to giving so late a
date to the book, and have ably contended against it,
are yet unwilling to acknowledge that it has claims to
that degree of antiquity which we have assigned to it.
Some ascribe it to the age of Samuel, David, or
Solomon, but on grounds which are either
inconclusive or capable of being disproved. Thus
there is an arbitrary assumption, proved by modern
researches to be erroneous, that the art of writing
was not known before the age of Moses. It is urged
that there are marks of civilization and refinement—
of knowledge in science and art—which were true
only in this later age; but this is disproved by our
improved acquaintance with the state of civilization
and of the arts in ancient Egypt and Assyria. The
further allegation, that the refined poetical art, the
regularity and the system that pervades the book,
could not have existed in an earlier and ruder age, is
purely gratuitous, and not in unison with our
experience. The master-pieces of poetry, and
especially of eastern poetry, have been composed in
ages and under conditions of life not less rude than,
nor materially different from, those which prevailed
in and before the age of the Exodus; and it is now
capable of proof that in those remote ages more real
refinement existed than has generally been
supposed. In fact, every argument which attempts to
give a later date to the book than the Exodus, breaks
down in some point or other, and only those which
give to it an ante-Mosaic origin are throughout
consistent. One great writer, Note: Hengstenberg.
who ably argues against the latest date, yet stumbles
in the attempt to prove that the book could not have
been written before the age of Samuel and David. Of
course, this or any other position which gives to the
book a later date than that of the Exodus of the
Israelites, assumes that the book is not a real history,
seeing that its circumstances are laid in the
patriarchal age. It farther assumes that the author,
living under a different dispensation, and in a
different system of ideas and usages, was enabled so
thoroughly to throw himself back into a distant age
and foreign land, as completely to disguise his own
very peculiar country and time, and to represent
characters as living and acting in the supposed
country and time, without, by the slightest allusion,
betraying his own. The intrinsic difficulty of this is
immense, and the object would scarcely be deemed
worthy the aid of Divine inspiration for its
accomplishment. “It requires,” as Barnes remarks,
“rare genius for an author so to throw himself into
past ages as to leave nothing that shall betray his age
and country. We are never so betrayed as to imagine
that Shakespeare lived in the time of Coriolanus or
of Caesar; that Johnson lived in the tune and country
of Rasselas; or that Scott lived in the time of the
Crusaders. Instances have been found, it is admitted,
where the concealment has been effectual; but they
have been exceedingly rare. Another objection to this
view is, that such a work would have been
particularly impracticable for a Hebrew, who, of all
men, would have been most liable to betray his time
and country. The cast of the poem is highly
philosophical. The argument is in many places
exceedingly abstruse. The appeal is to close and long
observation; to the recorded experience of their
ancestors; to the observed effects of the Divine
judgment, in the world. A Hebrew in such
circumstances would have appealed to the authority
of God; he would have referred to the terrible
sanctions of the law, rather than to cold and abstract
reasoning; and he would hardly have refrained from
some allusion to events in his own history that bore
so remarkably on the case. It may be doubted
whether any Hebrew ever had such versatility of
genius and character as to divest himself wholly of
the proper costume of his country, so as never, in a
long argument, to express anything but such as
became the assumed character of a foreigner.”
Then the peculiarly archaic character of the language
of the book deserves a passing notice, though we
cannot here enter into the consideration of it. It is
materially different from that of the later period, and
includes words and forms of speech which
afterwards become obsolete. To write in this antique
style, to suppress so much that was known to the
Hebrews after the law was given, and to enter so
completely into the habits and ideas of an ancient
time and foreign country, constitute a species of
impersonation altogether alien to the genius and
temper, not only of the Hebrews, but generally of the
Orientals. There is nothing of the kind to be found
even in the parables of Scripture, nor yet in any
author of tales among the Arabs, Persians, Syrians,
Samaritans, Chaldeans, Ethiopians, or Jews. The
more thoroughly any one has studied this matter in
all its bearings, the more completely will he perceive
that this is a supposition which cannot be
entertained.
If we believe in the reality of the various speeches
contained in the Book of Job, it becomes difficult to
suppose other than that the book was written by one
of the persons engaged in the discussion; and as Job
and Elihu appear to most advantage in it, they would
seem to have been the most likely persons to
perform this. But it is then difficult to say when or
wherefore a book relating wholly to the affairs of a
stranger, and having no connection with the
concerns of the Hebrews, was received by them into
the number of their sacred books. It must have come
to them on high authority. This gives great weight to
the general opinion which assigns the authorship of
the book to Moses. If Job or any of his friends lived
so late as to have seen and conversed with Moses, or
if the book be a fictitious composition, there would
be little difficulty in this conclusion; but if otherwise,
it seems to us adequately to account both for the
tradition which makes Moses the author of the book,
as well as for its introduction into the sacred canon,
to suppose that during his long sojourn in Midian,
Moses became acquainted with the report of this
high controversy as transmitted from Job or his
friends, either by writing or oral tradition; and,
conceiving it to be well suited to justify the ways of
God to man, and to comfort his afflicted brethren in
Egypt, wrote it out in its present form, and
communicated it to them on his return to Egypt, or
during the sojourn in the wilderness. Whether
written before the time of Moses, or by him, with or
without previously existing documents, during his
stay in Midian, it will necessarily follow that the
Book of Job is the oldest in the Bible (perhaps
excepting Genesis), and therefore the oldest in the
world.
Having reached this result, it is time for us to look
into the book itself.