have given way before a more sound conception of the dramatic unity of the entire poem; and the volumes before us contain merely an inquiry into its meaning, bringing, at the same time, all the resources of modern scholarship and historical and mythological research to bear upon the obscurity of separate passages.  It is the most difficult of all the Hebrew compositions—­many words occurring in it, and many thoughts, not to be found elsewhere in the Bible.  How difficult our translators found it may be seen by the number of words which they were obliged to insert in italics, and the doubtful renderings which they have suggested in the margin.  One instance of this, in passing, we will notice in this place—­it will be familiar to everyone as the passage quoted at the opening of the English burial service, and adduced as one of the doctrinal proofs of the resurrection of the body:  “I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though, after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh I shall see God.”  So this passage stands in the ordinary version.  But the words in italics have nothing answering to them in the original—­they were all added by the translators to fill out their interpretation; and for in my flesh, they tell us themselves in the margin that we may read (and, in fact, we ought to read, and must read) “out of,” or “without” my flesh.  It is but to write out the verses omitting the conjectural additions, and making that one small, but vital correction, to see how frail a support is there for so large a conclusion; “I know that my Redeemer liveth, and shall stand at the latter... upon the earth; and after my skin... destroy this...; yet without my flesh I shall see God.”  If there is any doctrine of a resurrection here, it is a resurrection precisely not of the body, but of the spirit.  And now let us only add that the word translated Redeemer is the technical expression for the “avenger of blood”; and that the second paragraph ought to be rendered—­“and one to come after me (my next of kin, to whom the avenging my injuries belongs) shall stand upon my dust,” and we shall see how much was to be done towards the mere exegesis of the text.  This is an extreme instance, and no one will question the general beauty and majesty of our translation; but there are many mythical and physical allusions scattered over the poem, which, in the sixteenth century, there were positively no means of understanding; and perhaps, too, there were mental tendencies in the translators themselves which prevented them from adequately apprehending even the drift and spirit of it.  The form of the story was too stringent to allow such tendencies any latitude; but they appear, from time to time, sufficiently to produce serious confusion.  With these recent assistances, therefore, we propose to say something of the nature of this extraordinary book—­a book of which it is to say little to call it unequalled of its kind, and which will,