“24.  The earth is given into the hands of the wicked: he covereth the faces of the judges thereof; if it be not him, who is it then?” (Douay ver.)

That is to say, God has given up the earth to the power of Satan (as appears by chapter i); good and bad perish together; and the evil one laughs as the scourge (the comet) slays suddenly the innocent ones; the very judges who should have enforced justice are dead, and

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their faces covered with dust and ashes.  And if God has not done this terrible deed, who has done it?

And Job rebels against such a state of things

“34.  Let him take his rod away from me, and let not his fear terrify me.

“35.  Then I would speak to him and not fear him but it is not so with me.”

What rod—­what fear?  Surely not the mere physical affliction which is popularly supposed to have constituted Job’s chief grievance.  Is the “rod” that terrifies Job so that he fears to speak, that great object which cleft the heavens; that curved wolf-jaw of the Goths, one end of which rested on the earth while the other touched the sun?  Is it the great sword of Surt?

And here we have another (chap. x) allusion to the “darkness,” although in our version it is applied to death: 

“21.  Before I go whence I shall not return, even to the land of darkness and the shadow of death.

“22.  A land of darkness as darkness itself, and of the shadow of death, without any order, and where the light is as darkness.”

Or, as the Douay version has it: 

“21.  Before I go, and return no more, to a land that is dark and covered with the mist of death.

“22.  A land of misery and darkness, where the shadow of death, and no order but everlasting horror dwelleth.”

This is not death; death is a place of peace, “where the wicked ceased from troubling “; this is a description of the chaotic condition of things on the earth outside the cave, “without any order,” and where even the feeble light of day is little better than total darkness.  Job thinks he might just as well go out into this dreadful world and end it all.

Zophar argues (chap. xi) that all these things have

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come because of the wickedness of the people, and that it is all right: 

“10.  If he cut off and shut up and gather together, who can hinder him?

“11.  For he knoweth vain men:  he seeth wickedness also; will he not then consider it?

“If he cut off,” the commentators say, means literally, “If he pass by as a storm.”

That is to say, if he cuts off the people, (kills them by the million,) and shuts up a few in caves, as Job was shut up in prison, gathered together from the storm, how are you going to help it?  Hath he not seen the vanity and wickedness of man?