being all told in round numbers, and all exactly doubled in the years of his prosperity; it is obvious to remark, that it would ill suit the fulness and elegance of poetic* narration to descend to the minutiae of exact numeration; and that, as to the precise duplication, it is but a periphrasis growing out of the former enumeration, intended merely to express, that the Lord gave to Job. twice as much as he had before.

The two remaining objections require more particular consideration. And first, as to the incredibility of the conversation, which is related to have taken place between the Almighty and Satan, it may be observed, that this, and the assemblage of the celestial intelligences before the throne of God, should be considered as poetic, or, as Peters with more propriety expresses it, prophetical personifications, in accommodation to our limited faculties, which are abundantly authorized by God himself in holy Scripture, and are perfectly agreeable to the style, wherein his prophets have been frequently commanded to deliver the most solemn and important truths. Thus the prophetic visions of Isaiah, (ch. vi.) of Ezech. (ch. i.) of St. Paul, (2 Cor. xii. 2. 4.) and of St. John, (Rev. iv. 1, 2.) represent the proceedings of

The poem, perhaps, strictly speaking, may be said not to begin until the third chapter; that which precedes being narration. But the narration, agreeably to the lofty style of the East, is itself of poetical elevation.

Providence, in like reference to our powers and modes of conception: and the vision of Micaiah, (1 Kings xxii. 19—23.) and that of Zechariah, (ii. 13. iii. 1.) supply cases precisely parallel in every respect. Farmer justly remarks on this subject, that such "visions or parabolical representations, convey instruction as truly and properly, as if they were exact copies of outward objects."* And indeed, if the introduction of Satan be admitted as an argument against the truth of the history, it should lead us equally to reject the narrative of our Lord's temptation, as an unfounded fiction. If, however, the opinion of Dathe (which has also the support of Herder, Eichhorn, and Doederlein,) be well founded, all difficulty arising even from this circumstance is removed; inasmuch as THE EVIL SPIRIT is not, according to his interpretation, intended; but one of the angelic ministers, whose peculiar office it was to explore and try the real characters of men, and to distinguish the hypocrite from the sincerely pious.

The objection, derived from the internal inconsistencies and contradictions of the work, is thus stated by Michaelis. Job, who could not have been advanced in years himself, upbraids his

* Enquiry into the Temptation, p. 164-attend to this writer's observations,-also to Chappel. Comment. præf. p. xiv. and particularly to Peters's Crit. Diss. p. 113-122. and Taylor's Scheme of Scr. Div. ch. xxi.

friends with their youth (xxx. 1.): yet these very men exact reverence from Job as their junior, speaking of themselves as aged men, much older than his father, (xv. 10.) and are expressly described by Elihu, (xxxii. 6, 7.) as men to be respected for their hoary age. (Note et Epimetra. pp. 178, 179.) This argument Michaelis admits to be the grand strength of his cause, and to this Dr. Gregory's reply is satisfactory, so far as the meaning of the passage, xxx. 1. is concerned; in which there certainly appears no relation to the friends of Job, but merely a general complaint, bewailing the degraded state to which himself had fallen; and contrasting with that high respect which he had in former days experienced, -when even the AGED arose and stood up, when princes refrained talking, and the nobles held their peace,--his present abject condition, when even those that were YOUNGER than him, and who were of such mean descent, that he would have disdained to have set their fathers with the dogs of his flock, (by which he could not possibly have intended his three friends,) now held him in derision. But, I apprehend, Dr. Gregory's criticism on ch. xv. 10.—namely, that by the words, with us (1), is meant, with us in opinion-is not at all supported by the genius of the Hebrew, nor by parallel usage. I think it is evident both from this and the passage, xxxii. 6, 7. that the friends of Job, or some of them, were aged. But in the

true meaning of the word ww, which seems to have been hit off by Chappelow alone of all the commentators, we shall find a complete solution of the difficulty. This word, as Chappelow remarks, on Job xii. 12. and xxxii. 6. does not merely imply age, but the wisdom which should accompany age. It may perhaps not improperly be expressed in our language, by the single term sage. Taking the word in this sense, no inconsistency whatever appears: for then the thing denied by Job to his friends, in xii. 12. claimed by themselves in xv. 10. and ascribed to them by Elihu, in xxxii. 6, 7. will be, not length of years, but those fruits of wisdom, which years should have produced. It should also be noted that in xv. 10. the words are in the singular number; so that, in strictness, no more than one amongst them is here spoken of, as advanced in age beyond the years of Job. Indeed an inconsistency so gross and obvious, as this which is charged against the book of Job by the German Professor, cannot be other than seeming, and founded in some misapprehension of the meaning of the original. Admitting even the poem to be fabulous, he must have been a clumsy contriver, who could in one place describe his characters as young, and in another as extremely aged, when urged to it by no necessity whatever, and at full liberty to frame his narrative as he pleased. And this want of comprehension should least of all have been

objected by those critics, who, in supposing the work to have been composed in an age and country different from those whose manners it professes to describe, are compelled, upon their own hypothesis, to ascribe to the writer, an uncommon portion of address and refinement.

He

But supposing the narrative to have a foundation in truth, the third hypothesis, which represents this as wrought up into an allegorical drama, remains to be considered. This strange conceit was the invention of Warburton. considers Job, his wife, and his three friends, as designed to personate, the Jewish people on their return from the captivity, their idolatrous wives, and the three great enemies of the Jews at that period, Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem. This allegorical scheme has been followed by Garnet, with some variations, whereby the history of Job is ingeniously strained to a description of the Jewish sufferings, during the captivity. The whole of Warburton's system," the improbabili ties of which," as Peters observes, are by no means glossed over by the elaborate reasoning and extravagant assertions of the learned writer," is fully examined and refuted by that ingenious author, in the first eight sections of his Critical Dissertation.

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The arguments, by which this extraordinary hypothesis has been supported, are drawn from the highly poetic and figurative style of the work.