THE ARGUMENT
HOly Job, otherwise called Jobab (Gen. 36.) as S. Augustin, S. Chrisostom, S. Ambrose, S. Gregory, and other fathers teach, the son of Zara, the son of Rahuel, the son of Esau, was King (or absolute Prince) of the land of Hus. [Lib. 18. c. 47. civit. conc. 2. de Laza. Rom. 9. Praefat. in Job.] Who being perfect in religion, sincere in life, rich in wealth, and blessed with children, for an admirable example of patience, and to show that a mortal man through God’s grace, may resist all the devil’s tentations, by God’s permission, suddenly lost all his goods and children, was stricken with horrible sores in all his body, reviled by his wife, and in stead of comfort which his special friends pretented towards him, was injuriously charged by them, with impatience, arrogancy, blasphemy, and other crimes, for which they falsely supposed he was so afflicted, affirming, and by divers sophistical arguments, grounded as they pretended upon God’s justice, wisdom, power, mercy, and goodness, would prove that God suffereth none but wicked men to be so afflicted. But Job constantly defendeth his own just innocency, and that worldly calamities and prosperity happen indifferently to good and bad in this life, and that the true reward of the just, and punishment of the wicked, is to be expected in the other world. At last God, with due reprehension of Job for some imperfections, sharply rebuketh the errors and insolency of his adverse friends, giveth sentence on Job’s side, pardoneth them at his intercession, and restoreth all things to him double to that he had before.
Besides the literal sense, Job in all his actions, sufferings, and whole life, was a special figure of Christ, showing (sayth S. Gregory [Praefat.]) by those things which he did and sustained, what our Redeemer should do and suffer: yea more particularly than most part of the Patriarchs, which S. Jerome (epist. ad Paulin.) also admireth, and testifieth, saying: what mysteries of Christ doth not this book comprehend? Every word is full of sense. Moreover this history is replenished with moral documents, how to embrace virtue, and eschew vice: proposing the life of a right godly man, neither insolent in prosperity, nor despairing in adversity, always resolute in God’s service, as well in his prosperous Kingdom as in the miserable dunghill. Here also we have the true manner of arguing, according to the rules of Logic, with detection of sophistry, Job proving and disproving assertions by proposition, assumption, and conclusion, as S. Jerom observeth, with profound knowledge of natural things and causes, as appeareth in very many places. All which variety and abundance of matter, comprised in small room, make many things hard and obscure, yet are the same so tempered with other things plain and easy, that here is verified S. Augustin’s observation (li. 2. c. 6. doct. Christ.) certain places of holy Scriptures serve as delectable meat to them that hunger and thirst divine knowledge, and the obscure take away tediousness from them, that loathe usual plain doctrine.
It is most probable that Job himself, inspired by the Holy Ghost, by whose grace he excelled all in right simplicity (c. 1.) writ his own history, the most part in verse, only the two first chapters and the last in prose, in the Arabian tongue, which Moyses translated into Hebrew, for the consolation of the Israelites afflicted in Aegypt.
And it may be divided into three general parts. First, the change of Job’s state from prosperity into affliction, with his lamentation for the same, are recorded in the three first chapters. In four and thirty chapters following are sundry disputations, conflicts, and discourses between him and his friends, touching the cause of his so vehement affliction. In the five last chapters God discusseth the quarrel, giveth sentence for Job against his adversaries, pardoneth them, and rewardeth him.