to be admitted, that it rather cuts the knot than unties it.  Eliphaz and Bildad have each spoken a third time; the symmetry of the general form requires that now Zophar should speak; and the suggestion, we believe, was first made by Dr. Kennicott, that he did speak, and that the verses in question belong to him.  Any one who is accustomed to MSS. will understand easily how such a mistake,—­ if it be one,—­might have arisen.  Even in Shakespeare, the speeches in the early editions are, in many instances, wrongly divided, and assigned to the wrong persons.  It might have arisen from inadvertence; it might have arisen from the foolishness of some Jewish transcriber, who resolved, at all costs, to drag the book into harmony with Judaism, and make Job unsay his heresy.  This view has the merit of fully clearing up the obscurity; another, however, has been suggested by Eichorn, who originally followed Kennicott, but discovered, as he supposed, a less violent hypothesis, which was equally satisfactory.  He imagines the verses to be a summary by Job of his adversaries’ opinions, as if he said—­ “Listen now; you know what the facts are as well as I, and yet you maintain this;” and then passed on with his indirect reply to it.  It is possible that Eichorn may be right—­at any rate, either he is right, or else Dr. Kennicott is.  Certainly, Ewald is not.  Taken as an account of Job’s own conviction, the passage contradicts the burden of the whole poem.  Passing it by, therefore, and going to what immediately follows, we arrive at what, in a human sense, is the final climax—­ Job’s victory and triumph.  He had appealed to God, and God had not appeared; he had doubted and fought against his doubts, and, at last, had crushed them down.  He, too, had been taught to look for God in outward judgments; and when his own experience had shown him his mistake, he knew not where to turn.  He had been leaning on a braised reed, and it had run into his hand, and pierced him.  But as soon as in the speeches of his friends he saw it all laid down in its weakness and its false conclusions—­when he saw the defenders of it wandering further and further from what he knew to be true, growing every moment, as if from a consciousness of the unsoundness of their standing ground, more violent, obstinate, and unreasonable, the scales fell more and more from his eyes—­he had seen the fact that the wicked might prosper, and in learning to depend upon his innocency he had felt that the good man’s support was there, if it was anywhere; and at last, with all his heart, was reconciled to it.  The mystery of the outer world becomes deeper to him, but he does not any more try to understand it.  The wisdom which can compass that, he knows, is not in man; though man search for it deeper and harder than the miner searches for the hidden treasures of the earth; and the wisdom which alone is possible to him, is resignation to God.