Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1914 Excerpt: ...and a spirit and temper different from those of the other interested books. All the Old Testament writings, it is true, reveal intense sympathy with the poor and the unfortunate. But the Psalms above all give a moral quality to their condition. They are here made a special community or class, enjoying not merely the protection of Jehovah, for that was the distinctive doctrine of the Hebrew legislation ( 576, 582 f.), but his peculiar favour as well. If, on the other hand, we desire a minute description of the lot of the poor, we must turn to the book of Job. No catalogue of social wrongs can be more graphic or more touching than that furnished in Job xxii. 5 ff., xxiv. 2 ff. It is there contended just as earnestly as in the Prophets that their sufferings are due in large measure to the map Ch. VI, 601 JOB, PROVERBS, PROPHETS, PSALMS 217 nates who oppress and rob the helpless, and defy God himself in the confidence born of prosperity.1 This is the most piteous cry that is heard in all ancient literature over the unrelieved sufferings of the poor and their unavenged wrongs. 600. Naturally, however, it is rather a judicial tone that is adopted in the book of Job, the vindication of whose hero demands that he should impartially look from all sides upon the problems of life. In Chapter xxxi. Job not merely offers a minute justification of his own career, but at the same time registers the temptations to which an elder and judge is subject. He even goes so far as to say that while the wickedness of the world is due to evil judges, their partiality is tolerated by God's providence (ix. 24). The book of Proverbs, also, on the whole, views the matter from the outside, an attitude that befits the philosophy of life in general. The Prophets, who ar...
