ing God's readiness to execute vengeance on the wicked, and to rescue the good from oppreffion, and about terpret ragang, Ifai. li. 13. Jerem. xxxi. 35. as they do the fame word Job, vii. 6. of the beating or throbbing of a bile; The latter clause again, of God's fmiting the proud, as the fame word rahhab is rendered Prov. xxviii. 2 5. Pf. ci. 5. Prov. xxi. 4. but is turned often elsewhere the large, the broad, they explain of God's fubduing the fwelling billows, or of his fubduing the fea-monsters formidable by bulk or fize: and as this glofs agrees to Pf. lxxxix. 10. so it is that of the 70. Exisпun te espwтØY то иnтos, and feems countenanced by Pf. lxxiv. 11. Ifai. xxvii. 1. Besides from the very tenor of the chapter, there seems to be only a recital of God's general operations in the course of his providence designed, and not the mention of any fingular interpofition.Again, it hath been faid, there is an allufion to the Jewish law by which idolatry was punished with death, Job, xxxi. 26, 28. but, though it should be admitted, that this paffage relates to the idolatrous worship of the fun and moon, as it is indeed the literal and obvious fenfe of the words, and not to the covetousness of gold and filver, or to the adulation of the great and powerful, one or other of which figurative explications the celebrated Schultens prefers, furely any worshipper of the true God, however unacquainted with any conftitution or system of laws which made idolatry punishable with death by the civil magiftrate, might be represented, without any trespass against the strict decorum of his age, to say that it was An iniquity of arbitrators or judges,' Compare Deuteron. xxxii. 31. an iniquity deserving punishment from them; and indeed it must have drawn some punishment after it in the families of Abraham and Jacob, and other pious perfons, unless we will fay they fuffered the breach of their own commands to keep the way of the Lord, and to put away ftrange gods, Gen. xviii. 19. xxxv. 2. to pass with impunity, instead of making the disobedient smart for it, for their own reformation, and the prevention of the crime in others. I forbear to mention that fome understand the word in the fingular number, and suppose the all-discerning judge in heaven to be here meant. -As to Job xxi. 19. again, where Job fayeth, ⚫layeth up his (the wicked man's,) iniquity for his children,' what is there here to oblige us to think, there is a respect to God's threatening by Mofes, that he would visit the iniquities of the fathers upon the chile

God

following difpenfations of providence towards the Ifraelites, whatever allusions may be to previous fcrip

dren, fince it hath been believed by the heathens from the most antient times, that it was not unusual for divine vengeance to pursue children for the crimes of their parents? See Plutarch De sera vindi&ta Numinis, and Aelian Var. Hiftor. 3. 43. as Cicero fays, it was also the method of human governments from the earlieft ages, to fubject children to evils for the faults of their parents, that parents, from that affection which made them unwilling they fhould fuffer, might be engaged to behave better; Cicer. Epist. liber fingul. ad Brutum epist. 11. and 15.-In like manner, it hath been thought, there was a clear allufion to the law of Mofes, when these faults are charged against Job, ' of ⚫ taking a pledge from his brother for nought, and stripping the naked of their cloathing,' as the greatest enormities, Job, xxii. 6. and xxiv. 7, 9, 10. But does not every one see with what propriety such account might be made of thefe crimes, where was no acquaintance with the prohibition, Deut. xxiv. 10-13? the more that this does not guard against taking the raiment of the poor as a pledge for the payment of a loan, but only against its detention over-night, which is not here distinctly mentioned.-Once more it hath been afferted, there is a most inconteftible allufion to God's fpecial providence over the land of Judea as his own land, in these words of Elihu, where speaking of the clouds of rain, our tranflation has it, (as the 70) He 'causeth it to come, whether for correction, or for his land, or for ' many,' xxxvii. 13. the meaning of which is explained to be,' He ⚫ bringeth it at fuch junctures, and in fuch excefs, as to cause dearth, ⚫ (for correction,) or fo timely and moderately as to cause plenty, (for

mercy,) or laftly fo tempered in a long continued course, as to pro⚫duce that fertility of foil, which was to make one of the blessings of ⚫ the promised land, (for his land,) a providence as distinct from the ❝ other two, of correction and mercy, as the genus is from the species." But though I acknowledge, that the land of Canaan might be ftiled God's land, by way of eminence, as it is Joel, ii. 18. Ezek. xxxvi. 20. Pf. x. 16. fince God himself called it, My land, Jerem. ii. 7. xvi. 18. Ezek. xxxvi. 5. xxxviii. 6. Joel, i. 6. it does not follow, that this was here intended. The word we turn land, tho' it fignify often a particular country, fignifies alfo the earth in general; and the earth

tural + facts, which might have been learned by tradition. Above all, they urge Job's great longevity or length of days; for he is faid to have lived 140 years, after recovering his profperous ftate with advantage, though he could not be less than fifty for

might very well be denominated his, as it is Prov. viii, 31. I was re'joicing,' fays Wisdom, in the habitable part of his (God's) earth,' with which compare Pf. xxiv, 1. Now, thus there will refult a very good fenfe, and a sense against which there will not lie the objection of fuppofing the greatest benefit or advantage placed in the middle; ⚫ He fends it either unfeasonably and immoderately, (for correction,) or for the neceffity of his earth, to fupply what the common course of nature requires, to produce the ordinary increafe for fuftenance of man and beast, (for his earth,) or for caufing extraordinary plenty ⚫ and abundance, (for mercy or liberality,)' as indeed the word 10 bhefed often denotes peculiar and unafual favour; but I muft defift. In other instances which are brought of fuch indecorums in Job and the other speakers, while they are admitted to have been prior to Mofes, a reader's own fagacity will fhew him that they do not carry con viction with them.

+ Such are reckoned to be to the history of the fall, Job, xii. 16. xxvi. 13. to the deftruction of Sodom, Job, xx. 23, 26. xxxi. 33. See of others Dr. Sherlock's fecond Differtation after his book on prophecy.

A learned perfon hath reprefented Job to reproach his threefriends as younger than himself, and hath obferved, as their being fo young is contrary to Elihu's account that they had gray hairs which awed him long to keep respectful filence, xxxii. 6, 7, 9. and to Eliphaz's affertion, xv. 10. there cannot be any truth in the hiftory, but all must be a fiction. Vid. Joan. David Michaelis Not. ad Lowth Praelect. 32. p. 179. But for this there is no foundation, though indeed many have fuppofed Job's words, xxx. 1. to have been levelled against them as well as he. It is unreasonable so to interpret his words, when he is fuppofed not to be more advanced than in the text; he must mean, persons younger than himself among the lowest of the people derided him; for he adds. their fathers did not appear to him

fixty years old at the arrival of his calamities. By confequence, he must have lived two hundred years or thereabouts, which is a measure of life more agreeable to the times of the poftdiluvian patriarchs, than to those which fucceeded; and indeed, even in the age of the later patriarchs after the flood, needed a peculiar bleffing of heaven to fecure it: for Abraham only lived 175 years, Jacob only 147, Jofeph only 110, Levi only 137, and Mofes only 120. So far back have most removed Job's age, event of them who look upon the book which takes its denomination from him, as a far later production. Nor have fome others among them, who have not raised him

worthy to be joined to his fhepherd dogs; and indeed it is incredible that a rich and illustrious perfon as Job was, would have chosen men of so low and mean extraction to be his friends.

+ Thus Spanheim, who, after Jerome and Bochart, supposes Job a defcendent from Nahor, Abraham's brother, in the country of Aufitis, makes the history of Job to have happened before the Ifraelites left Egypt, though he thinks the book was written by a Jewish prophet about the times of David or Solomon. So does Carpzovius, Introduct. ad libros V. I. poeticos, though he fancies the prophet Samuel was the person who prefixed to the book of Job the two firft chapters, and also added the last, at least part of it. Mr. Heath, after Bp. Usher, places Job's exit fourteen years before the Ifraelites left Egypt, though he thinks the book was written during or after the captivity. The learned Dr Warburton proceeds upon the fuppofition, that Job was more antient than the Mofaic oeconomy and difpenfation, though, rejecting their opinions who date the book either a little before, or during the continuance of this distress, he reckons it was written by Ezra himself, sometime between the return of the Jews from Babylon, and their thorough fettlement in their own country. Finally, Mr. Costard, of Wadham college, while he imagines the book as recent a work as the age of the captivity, makes Job contemporary in the race of Nahor even with Ifaac,

to fo high antiquity, brought him down much lower: after which I need scarce obferve, that §they have

Thus Grotius, who regards the book of Job as written for the confolation of Efau's defcendents, when they were carried captive by the Babylonians, and who urges in behalf of this date, that many expreffions are borrowed from the book of Pfalms, as Job, xxi. 21, 24. from Pf. cvii. 40. Job, v. 16. and xxii. 19. from Pf. cvii. 42. Job, v. 18. from Pf. cxlvii. 3. (as if it could not be answered, that David rather borrowed from Job's book, fuppofing fuch a coincidence of thought and phrase between two facred writers, could not happen without borrowing on either fide.) makes the events related in the book to have happened while the Ifraelites fojourned in the defert.

§ Nevertheless I fhall mention fome of them, that it may appear what a concurrence there is about the great antiquity of Job himself. The famous Albert Schultens, who makes him a defcendent of Abraham by Keturah, whose fons and grandfons for the greater part fixed their feats in Arabia Deferta, fuppofes Abraham was his grandfather, or great-grandfather, as may be found by his preface to his Comment. on the book of Job. So too Carpzovius, who makes the rest of the book a work of Mofes's age. So alfo Huetius, Jo. Hen. Michaelis, and, to name no more foreigners, the author of the Obfervationes Mifcellaneae, published at Amsterdam 1756, place Job before Moses. In the fame manner among ourselves, Bishops Patrick, Sherlock, and Lowth, Dr. Taylor, Dr. Kennicot, who, if I mistake not, makes him a fon of Efau, and the writers of the Antient Univ. History, who, although they make him a more remote descendent of Efau, still suppose him to have seen an end of all his fufferings before Mofes left the land of Midian, the four generations on Efau's fide having been shorter than thofe on Jacob's. In giving this high antiquity to Job, the Christian fathers had led the way, for Origen exprefsly calls him more antient than Mofes, adverf. Celf. lib. 6. p. 305. Eufebius pronounces, Dem. Evan. lib. 1. cap. 6. p. 14. that he was two complete ages before Mofes, being the fifth from Abraham, whereas Mofes was the feventh; yea, be introduces him in his catalogue of God's favourites before Jofeph, while at the fame time he denies him to be of Jewish race, Praep. Ev. lib. 7. c. 8. p. 300. as indeed Leontius, a writer about the year 600, tells us fome fuppofed Jofeph the author of the book of job,