7. Signs from the Doctrinal Contents
That the book of Job belongs to this period and no other, is confirmed also by the relation of its doctrinal contents to the other canonical writings. If we compare the doctrine respecting Wisdom - her super-eminence, applicability to worldly matters, and co-operation in the creation of the world - in Prov 1-9, especially ch. 8, with Job 28, it is there manifestly more advanced, and further developed. If we compare the pointing to the judgment of God, Job 19:29, with the hint of a future general judgment, which shall decide and adjust all things, in Ecc 12:14, we see at once that what comes forward in the former passage only at first as an expression of personal belief, is in the latter already become a settled element of general religious consciousness.
And however we may interpret that brilliant passage of the book of Job, Job 19:25-27, - whether it be the beholding of God in the present bodily, future spiritual, or future glorified state, - it is by no means an echo of an already existing revelation of the resurrection of the dead, that acknowledgment of revelation which we see breaking forth and expanding throughout Isa 26:19, comp. Isa 25:8, and Ezek 37 comp. Hos 6:2, until Dan 12:2. The prevailing representations of the future in the book of Job are exactly the same as those in the Psalms of the time of David and Solomon, and in the Proverbs of Solomon. The writer speaks as one of the same age in which Heman sighed, Psa 88:11., “Wilt Thou show wonders to the dead? or shall the shades arise and praise Thee? Shall Thy loving-kindness be declared in the grave, Thy faithfulness in the abyss?” Besides, the greatest conceivable fulness of allusion to the book of Job, including Elihu's speeches, is found in Ps 88 and 89, whose authors, Heman and Ethan, the Ezrahites, are not the same as the
