Sirach with a true instinct detected an affinity between his own ideas and Job xxviii. (comp. this chapter with Ecclus. i. 3, 5, &c.), though he neglects the rest, and does not include our poet among the 'famous men' and the 'fathers that begot us.' Passing upwards, we shall, if historical criticism be our guide, make our first pause at the undeniably later psalms and at the later portions of Isaiah. In the former compare (as specimens).
Ps. ciii. 16 with Job vii. 12
— cvii. 40 — — xii. 21, 24
— — 41 — — xxi. 11
— — 42 — — xxii. 19, v. 16
— cxix. 28 — — xvi. 20
— — 50 — — vi. 10
— — 69 — — xiii. 4
— — 103 — — vi. 25.
There is, I think, no question that these psalm-passages were inspired by the parallels in Job. In Isa. xl.-lxvi. there are, as I have pointed out (Isaiah, ed. 3, ii. 250), at least twenty-one parallels to passages in our poem. I do not, however, think that we can venture to describe either set of passages en bloc as imitations. But there are at least two clear cases of imitation, and here the original is not the prophet but the poet (comp. Isa. li. 9b, 10a, with Job xxvi. 12, 13, and Isa. liii. 9 with Job xvi. 17). With regard to the book (II. Isaiah) as a whole, or at least the greater part of it, we may say that there is a parallelism of idea running through it and the Book of job, which may to a large extent account for parallelisms of expression. This does not, however, apply everywhere, least of all to the great prophetic dirge on the 'despised and rejected' one, which presents stylistic phenomena so unlike that of its context that we seem bound to assign the substratum of Isa. lii. 13-liii. to a time of persecution previous to the Exile.[1] How the poet of Job became acquainted with this striking passage, we know not. Did it form part of some prophetic anthology similar to the poetic
- ↑ See Cheyne, The Prophecies of Isaiah, ed. 3, ii. 30; art. 'Isaiah,' Encyclopædia Britannica, xi. 380.
