e early editions are in many instances
wrongly divided, and assigned to the wrong persons. It might have
arisen from inadvertence; it might have arisen from the foolishness of
some Jewish transcriber, who resolved, at all costs, to drag the book
into harmony with Judaism, and make Job unsay his heresy. This view has
the merit of fully clearing up the obscurity. Another, however, has been
suggested by Eichorn, who originally followed Kennicott, but discovered,
as he supposed, a less violent hypothesis, which was equally
satisfactory. Eichorn imagines the verses to be a summary by Job of his
adversaries' opinions, as if he said--'Listen now; you know what the
facts are as well as I, and yet you maintain this;' and then passed on
with his indirect reply to it. It is possible that Eichorn may be
right--at any rate, either he is right, or else Dr. Kennicott is.
Certainly, Ewald is not. Taken as an account of Job's own conviction,
the passage contradicts the burden of the whole poem. Passing it by,
therefore, and going to what immediately follows, we arrive at what, in
a human sense, is the final climax--Job's victory and triumph. He had
appealed to God, and God had not appeared; he had doubted and fought
against his doubts, and at last had crushed them down. He, too, had been
taught to look for God in outward judgments; and when his own experience
had shown him his mistake, he knew not where to turn. He had been
leaning on a bruised reed, and it had run into his hand and pierced him.
But as soon as in the speeches of his friend he saw it all laid down in
its weakness and its false conclusions--when he saw the defenders of it
wandering further and further from what he knew to be true, growing
every moment, as if from a consciousness of the unsoundness of their
standing ground, more violent, obstinate, and unreasonable, the scales
fell more and more from his eyes--he had seen the fact that the wicked
might prosper, and in learning to depend upon his innocency he had felt
that the good man's support was there, if it was anywhere; and at last,
with all his heart, was reconciled to the truth. The mystery of the
outer world becomes deeper to him, but he does not any more try to
understand it. The wisdom which can compass that mystery, he knows, is
not in man, though man search for it deeper and harder than the miner
searches for the hidden treasures of the earth; the wisdom which alone
is attainable is resignation to God.

'Where,