progress is that Jehovah, after all, must be just and
that he will right the seeming wrongs of life. In his opening speeches Job
gives free vent to the anguish and impatience that fills his tortured
mind. With a boldness strangely foreign to Hebrew thought, he charges
Jehovah with injustice and speaks of him as a cruel monster that watches
man, his helpless prey, and takes cruel pleasure in the pain which he
inflicts. As the discussion progresses Job's mind becomes calmer, and
the conviction that God, after all, is just comes more clearly to
expression. His strong utterances gradually yield to this quieter mood.
Even before he hears the voice of Jehovah, Job has attained an attitude of
trust, though he is still groping in darkness. Thus with marvelous
fidelity to human nature and experience the author of the book of Job
would have made a great contribution to the problem with which he was
dealing even had he not added the concluding speeches of Jehovah.

VI. Significance of the Speeches of Jehovah. To many Western readers the
concluding speeches of Jehovah are unsatisfying. They lack the emphasis on
Jehovah's love and that divine tenderness in addressing the heroic
sufferer which to us would seem to have been a satisfactory conclusion to
the great drama. This element is furnished in characteristically concrete
form by the epilogue of the book, in which Job's prosperity is restored in
double measure and he is personally assured of Jehovah's favor. The severe
and realistic author of the great poem, however, knew that in ordinary
life such solutions are rare. In the speeches of Jehovah he does not
introduce an altogether new element, but emphasizes motifs already
developed in the earlier dialogues. The effect of these speeches upon Job
are threefold: (1) They rebuke his over-accentuated individualism.
(2) They reveal the fundamental contrast between the infinite God and
finite man. In the light of this revelation Job plainly recognizes his
presumption and folly in attempting, with his limited outlook, to
comprehend, much less to criticise, the mighty ruler of all the universe.
(3) After Job had thus been led out of himself into personal companionship
with God he was content to trust his all-wise guide, even though he
recognized his own inability to fathom the mysteries of the universe or to
solve the problem of innocent suffering. Thus the great contributions of
the book of Job to the problem of suffering are: (1) A clear an