The Date of the Book of Job
WE must first spend a few moments in considering the question: When did Job live? The Hebrew of the Book of Job is marked by word-forms more ancient than the Hebrew of Moses. Furthermore, while mention is made of the Flood (chap. 22:16), there is no reference to the miracles of the Exodus, whereas the arguments of the speakers would certainly have included mention of those miracles if they had already occurred. Still further, there is no reference to the destruction of Sodom and the neighboring cities, although Job and his friends lived near the River Jordan (chap. 40:23). It may therefore be safely inferred that Job lived before the overthrow of “the cities of the plain.” The length of his life indicates that he was a contemporary of Terah, the father of Abram; and this is borne out by the remark recorded in chapter 8:8, 9. We shall, then, be not far from the truth if we place the events of this Book at about B.C. 2150 or 2200: that is, shortly after the fall of the famous Third Dynasty of Ur founded by Ur-Nammu.
The Civilization of the Period
Recent research has thrown light upon a number of passages in the Book of Job. The more we learn of the culture of those times, the more accurately and beautifully is this Book seen to “dovetail” into that culture. This is the most severe and searching test that can be applied to any book; and this Book stands that test triumphantly.
Reference is made, in chapter 19:23, 24, to the practice of writing with a metal stylus on clay tablets, and also to the carving of inscriptions upon stone. It is interesting to notice that the use of iron for weapons and for tools was well-known in the land of Uz (see chap. 19:24; chap. 20:24; and chap. 28:2). Until recently this would have been set down by most archeologists as an error; but within the past few years discoveries have been made which prove that the use of iron was known in Mesopotamia hundreds of years before the time of Abram. What misled many investigators is the quickness with which tools and weapons of iron disappear by rusting away.
We notice also that in the time of Job the chief forms of idolatry, at least in that region, seem to have been sun-worship and moon-worship (see chap. 31:26, 27). Further, the graves of “the great” were distinguished by a mound (see chaps. 21:7, 28, 32) ( “and over the mound shall a watch be kept”). Further, harps were popular (see chap. 21:12); and one thinks of the magnificent stringed-instruments recovered from the “royal tombs” at Ur. Also, the existence of temple-prostitution is clearly implied in the Hebrew of chapter 36:14. By all who are familiar with modern archeological results it will be admitted that this Book has been remarkably confirmed.
A final remark on this subject may be added. In chapter 9:25 there is a reference to the existence of a widespread postal service. This gives us a wonderful glimpse into the very life of that period. Two or three hundred years before the time of Job, Sargon the Great built up a vast empire by great and rapid conquests. He was not only a mighty conqueror, but also a wonderful organizer. Throughout his wide domain he enforced one official language and one system of writing, and established a regular postal service from North-West India to the Levant.
Thus this ancient Book, in common with the other Scriptures, bestows upon its readers a privilege found in no other literature, namely, the privilege of observing and almost mingling with the men and women of long-past ages.
The Historic Reality of Abraham
By the nineteenth century critics of the Bible, the patriarch Abraham was treated as almost, or even quite, a myth. They were dogmatically certain that, if he ever lived, he could not have had the experience related in Genesis and referred to elsewhere in Scripture and vouched for by the Lord of Glory Himself again and again. Here also, however, twentieth century discoveries have been most unkind to the critical assertions and assumptions, and have furnished a host of confirmations to the truthfulness of this portion of the Biblical narrative.
The account in Genesis clearly implies that in ancient Ur of the Chaldees there was a Hebrew-speaking section of the population; and this has been amply confirmed by the “finds” of archaeologists there. The name “Abram” has been shown to have been a name then in use. An old poem found during the excavations of Ras Shamra is proved to have originated in South Palestine, and at about the time of Abraham. It contains the name “Terah,” showing that the name of Abraham’s father was also in use at that period. In the same poem, both “El” and “Jah” are used as Divine titles; and that one fact completely annihilates the critical theories.
The Bible also says that, as the result of the migration of Abram’s relatives from Ur of the Chaldees to Haran in Syria, a Hebrew community established itself at the latter city. Discovery has confirmed this also; there was, at the period indicated, an influential Hebrew community at Haran.
It has further been revealed that the moon-god was a special object of worship both at Ur and at Haran; so that Abram’s idolatrous relatives found themselves in congenial surroundings at their new home.
That old Ras Shamra poem has thrown light upon another matter in the history of Abraham. It contains the statement, “Shalem received sovereignty over the Arabs from (the god) El.” This strongly suggests that the city of Shalem (or “Salem”) was named after that ancient king or sub-deity.
The Chronological Setting
It will be helpful to have before us the following outstanding dates:
B.C.
2232. The Third Ur Dynasty was ended by Elamite conquerors, who made Isin the capital of their Mesopotamian dominions.
2105. The First Babylonian Dynasty was founded, under the Elamite overlordship.
2086. The birth of Abram.
2016. Abram left Ur and came to Haran.
2011. Abram left Haran for Canaan.
2007. The Elamite domination was ended by Khamu—
Rabi’s father.
Presently we shall point out the wonderful confirmation of Scripture contained in the last of the above dates. When Abram left Haran, the Eleventh Dynasty of Egyptian kings was coming to an end.
The Conditions in Canaan
As has already been remarked, we now know that over all those lands Sargon the Great had, some 400 years before Abram’s time, spread a uniform civilization. This fact of a “world-empire” at so early a period has been one of the great surprises of archaeology. But it is a fact that is reflected in many places in the story of Abram. He was one of the most widely traveled men of his time; yet he found no language problem during his extensive journeyings. Again, it is very clearly implied that the land of Canaan was at that period quite open to foreigners. Proofs of the accuracy of this representation have recently been accumulating. The right of common pasturage for herds and flocks was recognized throughout that land. Furthermore, in Melchizedek we have set before us a Priest-King; and recent Mesopotamian discoveries have demonstrated that this office of priest-kingship was a real though not a common institution of those times.
Abram’s Visit to Egypt
The critics of the Bible ascribed the composition of these narratives to a period many centuries later than the time of Moses; but even Moses never knew the Egypt of Abram’s visit; for more than four hundred years divided him from it, and during those eventful centuries great changes had occurred. Yet in this brief account we are given, as is proved by ancient Egyptian monuments and documents now discovered and read, an exactly correct picture of the Egypt of the closing years of the Eleventh Dynasty just when Abram visited that country, about B.C. 2009. WEIGALL, in his “History of the Pharaohs,” shows that at that very time the Egyptian royal policy was to welcome Semitic visitors, but that immediately afterward the founder of the Twelfth Dynasty adopted the policy of rigidly excluding them. The same writer further remarks upon the accuracy of the list of animals given to Abram by the Pharaoh. He points out that the omission of any reference to horses is true to history, because horses were introduced into Egypt at a later date, by the Hyksos conquerors (who were the masters of Egypt in the time of Joseph). Pious fabricators of history living in a much later age, such as were imagined by the critics of last century, would inevitably have fallen into anachronisms and other mistakes; but the alleged “mistakes of Moses” have turned out to be the mistakes of his critics.
The Battle of the Kings
If our readers will refer to a previous paragraph on “The Chronological Setting,” and study the history given in chapters 12 to 14 of Genesis, they will see that B. C. 2008 or 2007 was the date of the capture of Lot by the invading armies of the Elamite king “and the kings that were with him,” and of their overwhelming defeat at the hands of Abram and his allies.
Now the nineteenth century critics were emphatic in their denials of the truthfulness of Gen. 14. They denied any supremacy of Elam over Babylon at that period; they said that the names given to the invading kings were inventions of a much later age; they asserted that such an invasion at such a remote epoch was “simply impossible.”
But unsubstantial theories must give way to solid facts. We now know that when Abram entered Canaan, the whole of Lower Mesopotamia had been ruled by Elam for more than two hundred years; that every one of the kings named was contemporary with Abram; and that Mesopotamian monarchs invaded Canaan even 450 years before this occasion. Until recently, “Tidal king of nations” remained unidentified; but light has come on that matter also. It is now well-known that the Hittites were not one people, but were a number of associated peoples. The question at once arises: Was “Tidal king of nations” the contemporary Hittite emperor? The Hebrew spelling is “T-d-gh-1.” Professor SAYCE, in his 1925 volume on “The Hittites,” gives “Dudkhaliyas I” as the Hittite monarch who was reigning over those associated peoples about that very time.
A Startling Coincidence
Let us now draw attention to a remarkable instance of historical harmony. According to the Biblical History, it was in B.C. 2008 or 2007 that Abram inflicted a disastrous and humiliating defeat upon the armies of the Elamite emperor. According to the Babylonian records, it was in B.C. 2007 that Lower Mesopotamia successfully revolted and threw off the Elamite yoke. The one event explains the other. In this fact we have a really startling testimony to the veracity of the Genesis narrative.
Hagar and Ishmael
Abram’s acquiescence in his wife’s proposal that he should marry her slave-girl Hagar, and his strong disinclination to agree to her later request that Hagar and her son should be cast out, were both in entire harmony with the laws and customs of those times and lands—the laws and customs under which Abram and Sarah had spent their whole lives. This we know from the famous Law-Code of Khamu-Rabi (or Amurab-el, the Amraphel of Gen. 14). A copy of this code was discovered in Persia at the beginning of the twentieth century. It is true that Amraphel’s Code was published in Abram’s lifetime; but further discoveries have revealed that this code was a revision of a law-code published 500 years earlier by Urukagina, king of Lagash, and made by Sargon the Great the standard code throughout his dominions, which included Egypt, the native land of Hagar. The sending away of Hagar and Ishmael, after Abram had acknowledged the latter as his son, was contrary to that code; and it required a special command and assurance from God before Abram would consent to Sarah’s request.
A very different code of laws was in force at the period when the critics of the Bible imagined these narratives to have been composed; and it would have been utterly impossible for any writer then to avoid blunder upon blunder in trying to describe life in the then ancient time of Abram. On the other hand, as the modern discoveries give us an increasingly full picture of that remote age, we perceive how perfectly the Bible narratives fit into that picture. It is not strange, therefore, that modern investigators who formerly accepted the postulates of the “Higher Criticism” are now among the defenders of the truthfulness of the Scripture records.
The Destruction of Sodom
The Scriptural account of the overthrow of the “cities of the plain” has from ancient times been held up to ridicule; and of course the critics of last century, with their strong bias against anything miraculous, joined in the chorus of scorn. Until recent years the very completeness of the catastrophe which overwhelmed those cities of sin, made it more difficult to meet the attack upon this part of God’s Word. Various attempts were made to locate the ruins of that old civilization; some investigators identifying them with ruins on the northwest shores of the Dead Sea, others to the north of it, while still others believed them to lie beneath the shallow waters at the south end. The main objection to the last-mentioned location was the statement made by several travelers that it would have been impossible for Abram, from the hilltop near Hebron, to have, in any real sense of the phrase, “looked toward Sodom” (Gen. 19:2828And he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, and, lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace. (Genesis 19:28)). However, more accurate observations made since have shown that this objection does not hold.
Professor M. G. KYLE and his fellow archaeologists and investigators, in their recent and very thorough explorations in that region, have conclusively confirmed the Biblical narrative. They have proved (1) that the civilization of that region perished utterly in the Abrahamic period; (2) that the region itself is a burned-out region of oil and asphalt; (3) that there is “along the lower part of this Plain a great stratum of rock salt,” showing itself prominently in Jebel Usdum (“The Mount of Sodom”), where a stratum of salt one hundred and fifty feet thick has in it and about it a marl containing much free sulfur; (4) that lumps of sulfur are still to be “found scattered along the shore of the sea even on the east side”— Jebel Usdum being on the southwest coast. Professor KYLE adds (5) that the nearby mountain-peaks are encrusted with salt. We are thus helped to envisage the terrible deluge of burning brimstone mingled with salt that blotted out human and animal and vegetable life in and around those cities, whose cry of wickedness and violence had come before the Judge of all the earth. It is not often that blatant unbelief in the Bible has suffered such a decisive rebuke as has resulted from these twentieth century “Explorations at the Site of Sodom.”