[1.  Smith’s “Sacred Annals,” p. 364.

2.  Magee “On the Atonement,” vol. ii, p. 84.]

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The literary excellence of the work is of the highest order.  Lowth says: 

“The antiquary, or the critic, who has been at the pains to trace the history of the Grecian drama from its first weak and imperfect efforts, and has carefully observed its tardy progress to perfection, will scarcely, I think, without astonishment, contemplate a poem produced so many ages before, so elegant in its design, so regular in its structure, so animated, so affecting, so near to the true dramatic model; while, on the contrary, the united wisdom of Greece, after ages of study, was not able to produce anything approaching to perfection in this walk of poetry before the time of Æschylus."[1]

Smith says: 

“The debate rises high above earthly things; the way and will and providential dealings of God are investigated.  All this is done with the greatest propriety, with the most consummate skill; and, notwithstanding the expression of some erroneous opinions, all is under the influence of a devout and sanctified temper of mind."[2]

Has this most ancient, wonderful, and lofty work, breathing the spirit of primeval times, its origin lost in the night of ages, testifying to a high civilization and a higher moral development, has it anything to do with that event which lay far beyond the Flood?

If it is a drama of Atlantean times, it must have passed through many hands, through many ages, through many tongues, before it reached the Israelites.  We may expect its original meaning, therefore, to appear through it only like the light through clouds; we may expect that later generations would modify it with local names and allusions; we may expect that they would even strike out parts whose meaning they failed to understand, and

[1.  “Hebrew Poetry,” lecture xxxiii.

2.  “Sacred Annals,” vol. i, p. 365.]

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interpolate others.  It is believed that the opening and closing parts are additions made in a subsequent age.  If they could not comprehend how the fire from heaven and the whirlwind could have so utterly destroyed Job’s sheep, servants, property, and family, they would bring in those desert accessories, Sabæan and Chaldean robbers, to carry away the camels and the oxen.

What is the meaning of the whole poem?

God gives over the government of the world for a time to Satan, to work his devilish will upon Job.  Did not God do this very thing when he permitted the comet to strike the earth?  Satan in Arabic means a serpent.  “Going to and fro” means in the Arabic in “the heat of haste “; Umbreit translates it, “from a flight over the earth.”

Job may mean a man, a tribe, or a whole nation.

From a condition of great prosperity Job is stricken down, in an instant, to the utmost depths of poverty and distress; and the chief agency is “fire from heaven” and great wind-storms.