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`woman', it is stating a universal truth, a truth which must be acknowledged even though the mother that bore him
be most beloved. Job goes back not only to Adam and his transgression; not only to the guilty covering of the fallen
pair with leaves; not only to the curse that produced thorns and thistles; but to the consequences of the fall as
pertaining to Eve particularly: `I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring
forth children' (Gen. 3:16). These subjects of revelation found in Genesis 3, together with the enmity of the Serpent
and his seed, underlie most of the trouble and sore distress that runs through the book of Job. Moses came from a
land where the dead were mummified in the belief that the soul of the departed revisited the body at times, and
where the Pert em hru (the book of the dead) was common property. When he read the book of Job he would not
find a single word to justify belief in the natural immortality of the soul, or that a man once dead, would ever revisit
the scenes of his earthly life; he would find exactly opposite doctrines; he would realize very vividly the mortality of
man and the absolute necessity for resurrection if ever man was to `live again'.
`Now shall I sleep in the dust; and Thou shalt seek me in the morning, but I shall not be' (Job 7:21).
`Remember, I beseech Thee, that Thou hast made me as the clay; and wilt Thou bring me into dust again?' (Job
10:9).
Here, in the second part of this last verse, is language identical with Genesis 3:19.
`They shall go down to the bars of the pit, when our rest together is in the dust' (Job 17:16).
`His bones are full of the sin of his youth, which shall lie down with him in the dust' (Job 20:11).
That there was a store of teaching available to the enquirer, the language of Bildad the Shuhite makes plain:
`Enquire, I pray thee, of the former age, and prepare thyself to the search of their fathers' (Job 8:8).
If Job could `enquire' of this former generation, and `search' the wisdom of the fathers, it must have existed in
some accessible form. Granted that such wisdom of ancient days was accessible, it will not appear strange to read
words which seem an echo of the Deluge, `All flesh shall perish together' (Job 34:15). Dr. Samuel Lee says of this
passage `the very words used of the historian of that event. See Genesis 6:17; 7:21'. Job also speaks of those
angelic beings `the sons of God' (38:7) as does the writer of the prose introduction (Job 1:6; 2:1). Nowhere in the
whole of the Old Testament is there a purer monotheism than that found in the earliest of all its books. Nowhere is
creation more emphatically predicated, or the mortality of man endorsed. The record of Adam, of the Serpent, of the
coming in of sin and death, as more fully revealed in Genesis 1 to 3 is anticipated in the book of Job, and it is
impossible to overestimate its value to Moses in those formative years in the house of Jethro in Midian.
The wisdom of a former age
We have seen how closely the records of Genesis and Job agree on the subjects dealt with in Genesis 1 to 6, and
have tried to indicate the place that the book of Job must have occupied in the education and equipping of Moses for
his great work. There are one or two further aspects that demand attention, and we shall now devote our attention to
the references to the `former age' and to the `fathers' in Job 8 which were touched upon at the close of the previous
article.
`For inquire, I pray thee, of the former age, and prepare thyself to the search of their fathers' (Job 8:8).
The R.V. reads here `and apply thyself to that which their fathers have searched out'. These are the words which
Bildad the Shuhite used in his endeavour to probe the secret of Job's trouble. Job also uses the same word `inquire'
when replying to the words of Zophar the Naamathite, but instead of referring back to past history, he refers to the
animal creation around him (Job 12:7,8). Bildad advises Job to inquire `of the former age'. The Massorah notes
that the spelling of the word translated `former' differs from the ordinary. This is one of the evidences of the
antiquity of the book of Job. The word age is the Hebrew dor and is usually translated `generation' as `four
generations' (Job 42:16). Moses echoes the thought here, when he says: