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.]
{p. 281}
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, Sab?an 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_.
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