as equally
satisfactory. He 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 braised reed, and it had run into his
hand, and pierced him. But as soon as in the speeches
of his friends 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 it. 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, 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; and the wisdom
which alone is possible to him, is resignation to
God.

"Where, he cries, shall wisdom be found, and where is
the place of understanding. Man knoweth not the price
thereof, neither is it found in the land of the living. The
depth said, it is not with me; and the sea said, it is not in
me. It is hid from the eyes of all living, and kept close from
the fowls of the air.* God understandeth the way thereof,
and He knoweth the place thereof [He, not man, understands
the mysteries of the world which He has made].
And unto man He said, Behold the fear of the Lord,
that i