pleasing picture of family concord in the commencement of the history; at the same time it implies that Job will not have been wanting in son-in-law for his fair, richly-dowried daughters, - a fact which Job 42:16 establishes:
Verse 16
Job 42:16 16 And Job lived after this a hundred and forty years, and saw his children and his children's children to four generations.
In place of ויּרא, the Keri gives the unusual Aorist form ויּראה, which, however, does also occur elsewhere (e.g., 1Sa 17:42). The style of the primeval histories, which we here everywhere recognise, Gen 50:23 (comp. Isa 53:10), is retained to the last words.
Verse 17
Job 42:17 17 And Job died, old, and weary of life.
In the very same manner Genesis, Gen 25:8, Gen 35:29, records the end of the patriarchs. They died satiated of life; for long life is a gift of God, but neither His greatest nor His final gift.
A New Testament poet would have closed the book of Job differently. He would have shown us how, becoming free from his inward conflict of temptation, and being divinely comforted, Job succumbs to his disease, but waves his palm of victory before the throne of God among the innumerable hosts of those who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. The Old Testament poet, however, could begin his book with a celestial scene, but not end it with the same. True, in some passages, which are like New Testament luminous points in the Old Testament poem, Job dares to believe and to hope that God will indeed acknowledge him after death. But this is a purely individual aspiration of faith - the extreme of hope, which comes forth against the extreme of fear. The unravelment does not correspond to this aspiration. The view of heaven
