Job and His Times, or a Picture of the Patriarchal Age During the Period Between Noah and Abraham, and a New Version of That Poem, Accompanied with Notes and Dissertations (Paperback)

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. 1839. Excerpt: ... necessarily lead to false and inconclusive reasoning; and had Job's friends been acquainted with the records of the earliest ages, the instances there given would have been sufficient to make them demur, in applying those maxims in the sweeping manner they do. Abel was a righteous man, yet his life was shortened by the hand of Cain. Cain was a murderer, and yet was suffered to live. Abraham was dear to God, and yet was obliged to leave his native country, and to become a wanderer in a foreign land. Jacob was persecuted by his brother Esau. And other unrecorded instances had no doubt occurred. Their perfect silence as to these events, and the fallacy of their reasonings, are a strong presumption that they were wholly unacquainted with them. Whether this unacquaintance arose from their position in the land of Idumea, or from the Mosaic accounts not having been yet committed to writing, or from any other cause, of course we can do nothing but conjecture. It is enough, that there is an absence of all allusion to such histories; and this circumstance may assist in determining the date of the book, as in all probability composed at a period of the most remote antiquity. There are even now almost daily proofs that the Divine favour or displeasure towards men is not to be estimated by their external condition. NOTICES OF JOB IN THE KORAN. Job, or Aiub, is reported by some of the Arabian historians to have been descended from Ishmael: by others, his descent is traced from Isaac, through Esau, from whom he was the third, or at most the fourth, in succession. And in the history given by Khendemir, who distinguishes him by the title of The Patient, it is stated that by his mother's side he was descended from Lot; that he had been commissioned by God to preach the fai...