PREFACE.

In some respects, the BOOK OF JOB is one of the most interesting portions of Scripture. It is the oldest poem in the world, and it is perhaps the oldest book in the Bible. It is farther remarkable, inasmuch as its hero (to use the language of literature) is not a Hebrew, and its locality is not the Holy Land. It carries us back to a state of things earlier than the Jewish economy, and it gives us a glimpse of that patriarchal piety which was preserved in the ark, and of which specimens lingered as late as the days of Melchizedek.

But it is not only on account of its antiquity, its antecedence to the Ceremonial Institute, and its patriarchal catholicity, that the Book of Job claims our special regard. It grapples with the gravest and most awful questions

which affect our mysterious humanity, and it exhibits many of the perfections of the Most High in a light which at once overwhelms the gainsayer and elevates the worshipper. Sin, Atonement, Acceptance with God, Suffering, Death, Satanic Agency, the Divine Benevolence, are all more or less illustrated in its comprehensive theology; and, whilst the elegiac strain by which it is pervaded must evermore give it a powerful hold on human sympathies in this world of sorrow, few books are better fitted to teach the reader humility, resignation, compassion, and trust in Providence.

At the same time it possesses an unusual amount of incidental attractions. It gives us a specimen of the way men thought and reasoned when the world was young and when lives were long. It throws not a little light on primitive manners; and, if it cannot be called a history of inventions, it shews us at least how very ancient are writing and book-making, music, the military art, mining and working in metals, the manufacture of wine, the naming of the stars. It sets before us pictures wonderfully vivid of the husbandman, the warrior, the traveller, the sportsman, the stately magnate, and the starving outcast of that departed

Job's own life could hardly be shorter than two centuries. See the close of the Book.

!

era.

And, not to mention that it contains some of the most magnificent descriptions of natural objects and phenomena to be found in any language, we must search its page in order to find the earliest forms of those sublime and beautiful images which delight us in the poets of our own day, and in which Job anticipated by many ages Homer, Pindar, and Sophocles.

We are not without the hope that some may be induced to read in the present edition this most ancient of poems, who have never yet given it what it so eminently demands, and will so richly repay-a continuous perusal. We have preferred retaining that time-hallowed translation, which is so endeared to the fifty millions of the English-speaking world; but where subsequent research has brought out any important error in that version, or any special force in the original, we have added it in the Notes at the end.

These Notes also contain occasional specimens of the renderings which have been attempted by the bards of our own and other lands, and a few of those poetical parallels, to which every reader of taste will be able to make numberless additions. To our younger readers, especially, we would recommend it as a pleasant and instructive exercise, in their excursions through the fields of modern poetry, whether British or Continental, to take with them

as a companion such a book as Job, Ecclesiastes, or the Psalms. They will detect many curious coincidences, and not a few unconscious plagiarisms; and, especially in that portion of the territory which borders most nearly on the Bible enclosure, our English and German, in other words, our Protestant poetry, they will be surprised to find how many of the fairest flowers are exotics which at some time or other have been transplanted from the Volume of Inspiration, but which have been so widely disseminated and so thoroughly acclimatized that they now pass for indigenous productions.

We once thought of adding a short dissertation on the Bibliography of Job; but the subject is too extensive. For many minds this portion of Sacred Writ has possessed a peculiar fascination, and long lives have been devoted to its study. The gigantic commentary on which Joseph Caryl expended upwards of twenty years is well known, and it has more intrinsic value than might be expected from its huge dimensions. But those who are really anxious to understand the book will find better help in authors more attainable; for instance, in Schultens, and Good, and Barnes. One of the most curious contributions to this department of literature was made by the father of John and Charles Wesley. When ready for the press, his