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as a mouldering corpse, should he not by his eyes, which shall behold Eloah, mean those which have been dimmed in death, and are now again become capable of seeing? While, if we wish to expound grammatical-historically, not practically, not homiletically, we also dare not introduce the definiteness of the later dogma into the affirmation of Job. It is related to eschatology as the protevangelium is to soteriology; it presents only the first lines of the picture, which is worked up in detail later on, but also an outline, sketched in such a way that every later perception may be added to it. Hence Schlottmann is perfectly correct when he considers that it is justifiable to understand these grand and powerful words, in hymns, and compositions, and liturgies, and monumental inscriptions, of the God-man, and to use them in the sense which “the more richly developed conception of the last things might so easily put upon them.” It must not surprise us that this sublime hope is not again expressed further on. On the one hand, what Sanctius remarks is not untrue: ab hoc loco ad finem usque libri aliter se habet Iobus quam prius; on the other hand, Job here, indeed in the middle of the book, soars triumphantly over his opponents to the height of a believing consciousness of victory, but as yet he is not in that state of mind in which he can attain to the beholding of God on his behalf, be it in this world or in the world to come. He has still further to learn submission in relation to God, gentleness in relation to the friends. Hence, inexhaustibly rich in thought and variations of thought, the poet allows the controversy to become more and more involved, and the fire in which Job is to be proved, but also purified, to burn still longer.
Ἐπ ̓ αὐτῶν τῶν λέξεων [τοῦ βιβλίου] γενόμενοι σαφηνίσωμεν τὴν ἔννοιαν,
αὐτοῦ ποδηγούντος ἡμᾶς πρὸς τὴν ἑρμηνείαν, τοῦ καὶ τὸν ἅγιον
Ἰὼβ πρὸς τοὺς ἀγῶνας ἐνισχύσαντος. - Olympiodoros.