- volent. Let Job regard his present affliction as a chastening
and he may look forward to even more abundant blessings than he has yet enjoyed.
In these concluding verses Eliphaz certainly does his best to be sympathetic, but the result shows how utterly he has failed. He has neither convinced Job's reason nor calmed the violence of his emotion. It is now Job's turn to reply. He is not, indeed, in a mood to answer Eliphaz point by point. Passing over the ungenerous reference to the fate of the rebellious, which he can hardly believe to be seriously meant, Job first of all justifies the despair which has so astonished Eliphaz.[1] Since the latter is so cool and so critical, let him weigh Job's calamity as well as his words, and see if the extravagance of the latter is not excusable. Are these arrow wounds the fruit of chastisement? Does the Divine love disguise itself as terror? The good man is never allowed to perish, you say; but how much longer can a body of flesh hold out? Why should I not even desire death? God may be my enemy, but I have given Him no cause. And now, if He would be my friend, the only favour I crave is that He would shorten my agony.
Then should (this) still be my comfort
(I would leap amidst unsparing pain),
that I have not denied the words of the Holy One (vi. 10).
Job's demeanour is thus fully accounted for; it is that of his friends which is unnatural and disappointing.
My brethren have been treacherous as a winter stream,
as the bed of winter streams which pass away:
(once) they were turbid with ice,
and the snow, as it fell, hid itself in them;
but now that they feel the glow they vanish,
when it is hot they disappear from their place.
Caravans bend their course;
they go up into the desert and perish.
The caravans of Tema looked;
- ↑ The following lines develope what Job may be supposed to have had in his mind.
