“460. HEAPS—JOB 15-21”

Heaps—Job 15-21

All the three friends have now spoken, and Job has replied to them all in turn. The first series of the discussion may, therefore, be considered to have closed with the last chapter, and the second to commence with the one before us. In this the friends have but little to say, and add scarcely anything to what they had already urged, betraying manifest signs of exhaustion. The speeches are of equal number as before, but so much shorter, that this section of the debate, extending through seven chapters (Job 15-21), occupies much less space than the former, which required eleven chapters (Job 4-14).

It has now become the turn of Eliphaz, who opened the former debate, to speak again. His speech is well suited to carry on the design of the poem, by irritating the passions of Job, and inflaming his discontent at the ways of Providence. His tone is less mild and polite than in his former speech; for he begins with bitter sarcasms and reproaches, and strongly censures Job’s doctrine of the indiscriminate distribution of happiness and misery, as tending to undermine religion, and to discourage prayer. He materially exaggerates and misunderstands Job’s positions; but the difficulty he sees is scarcely answerable, if we have regard only to this present life. In that case, unless God evinced in his government of this world, that he loved righteousness and hated iniquity, the wicked would have little to fear, and the righteous less to hope; and all prayer to a being so regardless of his votaries would be neglected. There is, in fact, no possibility of clearly understanding this discussion without bearing distinctly in mind this fact, that neither Job nor his friends had any such knowledge of a future state of rewards and punishments as could avail for the purposes of this debate. That they believed dimly in a future existence, and in the immortality of the soul, we make no question; but that they had any distinct ideas of that future existence as one of retribution, there is no evidence to show. Indeed it is clear that they had not; for this would at once remove all the difficulties with which they labor, and cut away the ground of the whole controversy. It has often occurred to us, that this book, with its exhibition of the contracted views of the Divine plans which even good men held, and the difficulties under which they labored before our Lord brought in a “better hope,” may have been preserved to us, for the very purpose of teaching us duly to appreciate the fuller and clearer view of the spiritual kingdom, which the gospel has enabled us to realize.

Eliphaz, considering the assertion of such heretical opinions as Job advanced, a sufficient evidence of his guilt, lashes him severely for the contempt with which he had received the exhortation of those who were his elders, as well as for his passionate complaints respecting God’s dealings with him. He asserts, as he had already done, that, notwithstanding the ungodly may seem for a time prosperous and successful, yet even their prosperity is troubled, and their successes marred, by the stings of an evil conscience, which haunts them like an apparition wherever they go, and is alone sufficient for their punishment. He closes with a highly-wrought description, which seems to be quoted from an ancient poem, of the miseries which pursue the wicked man. The drift of the whole speech is to vindicate Providence, to condemn Job as a manifest object of the Divine wrath on account of his wickedness, and to terrify him, if possible, into a confession of his guilt.

In the description quoted from the old poem, respecting the ultimate lot of bad men and tyrannical oppressors, they are described as driven forth from among men, and compelled to dwell “in desolate cities, and in homes which no man inhabiteth, which are ready to become heaps.” Such forsaken old towns, like Palmyra, Petra, and many in Syria and Asia Minor at this day, become the retreats of outcasts and robbers, and the temporary resort of caravans and travellers—who, however, approach them with much caution, and under strong consciousness of danger.

But the phrase to which our special attention is drawn, is that in which these old and abandoned sites are described as “ready to become heaps.” This is an emphatic description of the condition of many sites of ancient renown which we have examined in the East, and which are literally heaps—nothing but heaps—covered with soil, and appearing like natural hillocks, but which are known to cover blocks of ancient building. The houses mentioned in the Book of Job are “houses of clay,” or of sun-dried brick, and such are the houses which are especially liable to become heaps. The recent descriptions of such mounds or heaps at Nineveh, by Layard and others, and the discoveries which their exploration has afforded, have rendered this condition of ancient cities—so different from that of stony ruins in various lands—familiar to the minds of our readers. Yet it may require explanation, in the proportion in which it excites our wonder, that piles of originally rectangular buildings, sometimes of great extent and imposing structure, should ever be molded into such shapely rounded hills. This is mainly owing to the nature of the materials employed. The sun-dried bricks, which are quite adequate for the construction of large buildings in a dry climate, will not stand much moisture. An inundation, therefore, commits great havoc; and such is likely to occur when a town or building near a river has been once forsaken, and when there are, consequently, no people to maintain the safeguard against its encroachments. But even without this, a forsaken building quickly becomes unroofed, and the walls being thus exposed to the heavy periodical rains, soon crumble down, and the building speedily loses all traces of its original shape and destination. It is not only a fallen, but a dissolved ruin. The moldered walls having become a heap of clay, successive rains soon deprive it of ail regularity of shape; and when, in addition to this, it is borne in mind that, during the hot winds of summer, the air is filled with clouds of the finest dust, which is arrested by and deposited on any prominent mass, and consolidated by subsequent rains, it is easily understood that an abandoned mansion will ere long be covered with a layer of soil, and the plow may eventually trace its furrows over the banqueting halls of mighty kings.

It is to such kind of “heaps,” and not to such as are caused by the confusedly accumulated ruins of stone buildings, that we apprehend Eliphaz to refer to as the ultimate condition of “desolate cities.” We shall not readily forget the surprise, nearly akin to disappointment, with which we regarded the first ancient site of this sort that came under our personal notice—when, instead of broken walls, and towers, and columns of stone, nothing appeared but a confused wilderness of rounded “heaps,”—a sea of solid billows. Note: This happened to be Seleucia on the Tigris, sometimes called Babylon.

Autor: JOHN KITTO