freedom from tradition, were fitted to look into the very heart of the hook of Job ; and they also possessed sufficient acquaintance with the Hebrew to get an inkling of the carry-ing out of its chief idea, but no more than an inkling of it. " The book of Job," says Luther in his preface, "treats of the question whether misfortune from God befalls even the godly. Here Job is firm, and maintains that God afflicts even the godly without cause, for His praise alone, as Christ (John ix.) also shows from the man who was born blind." In these words the idea of the book is correctly indicated. But that he had only an approximate conception of the sepa-rate parts, he openly confesses. By the help of Melancthon and the Hebraist Aurogallus, he translated the book of Job, and says in his epistle on the translation, that they could sometimes scarcely finish three lines in four days. And while engaged upon the translation, he wrote to Spalatin, in his naive strong way, that Job seemed to bear his translation less patiently than the consolation of his friends, and would rather remain seated on his dunghill. Jerome Weller, a man who, from inward experience similar to that described in this book, was qualified above many to be its expositor, felt the same unsatisfactoriness. An expositor of Job, says he, must have lain on the same bed of sickness as Job, and have tasted in some measure the bitter experience of Job. Such an expositor was Weller, sorely tried in the school of affliction. But his exposition does not extend beyond the twelfth chapter ; and he is glad when at last, by God's grace, he has got through the twelve chapters, as through firm and hard rock; the remaining chapters he commends to another. The most comprehensive work of the formation period on the book of Job, is the Sermons (condones) of Calvin. The exegesis of the pre-rationalistic period advanced beyond these performances of the reformers only in proportion as philological learning extended, particularly Mercier and Cocceius in the
