As is illustrated by the third chapter, Job in common with his race still shared the belief that for the ordinary individual life beyond the grave was a shadowy existence, far removed from Jehovah’s presence.  This conception of the life after death was inherited by the Israelites from their Semitic ancestors, and was held in common by most ancient peoples, both of the East and of the West.  The Babylonians believed, however, that certain favored mortals, as, for example, the hero of the flood, were transported to the abode of the gods, there to enjoy blessed individual immortality.  The same belief is the foundation of the Hebrew stories regarding Enoch and Elijah.  This belief was apparently the germ which in time developed, as in the twelfth chapter of Daniel, into the widespread conviction that the grave would not hold those who had been loyal to Jehovah, but that he would surely raise them again to a glorious life.  In the book of Job it is possible to trace the birth-pangs of this broader hope.  Conscious of his innocence and confronted by the grave, Job repeatedly voices the deep conviction that God, because he is just, will raise his afflicted servant from the grave and accord to him that justice which seems excluded from his present life.  This solution of the problem of innocent suffering is not given the central place by the author of the book of Job.  It is safe, however, to conjecture that if the appearance of Jehovah had not furnished to the author’s mind a more satisfactory conclusion, the vindication after death would have been the solution offered.  At several points Job approaches very close to the belief in individual immortality which became a commonly accepted tenet in the trying days of the Maccabean struggle.

The fourth line of progress is that Jehovah, after all, must be just and that he will right the seeming wrongs of life.  In his opening speeches Job gives free vent to the anguish and impatience that fills his tortured mind.  With a boldness strangely foreign to Hebrew thought, he charges Jehovah with injustice and speaks of him as a cruel monster that watches man, his helpless prey, and takes cruel pleasure in the pain which he inflicts.  As the discussion progresses Job’s mind becomes calmer, and the conviction that God, after all, is just comes more clearly to expression.  His strong utterances gradually yield to this quieter mood.  Even before he hears the voice of Jehovah, Job has attained an attitude of trust, though he is still groping in darkness.  Thus with marvelous fidelity to human nature and experience the author of the book of Job would have made a great contribution to the problem with which he was dealing even had he not added the concluding speeches of Jehovah.