the serpent, though the serpent should bruise his heel or mortal part. What being was expected in consequence of such a promise, and what benefits were supposed to result from his manifestation, we have already seen very much at large'. From the remotest period it was believed, that Jehovah himself would become incarnate; and that, through a mysterious selfdevotement shadowed out by the rite of sacrifice, he would reconcile man to God, and thus open to him the prospect of a resurrection to eternal life.

Now, when the question is viewed under this aspect, we may naturally conclude, that Moses, while professedly writing a drama on the subject of man's justification before God, could not fail to introduce the doctrine of a future state and of a promised Redeemer. The poem, in fact, would be precisely as incomplete without it, as the defective reasonings of Job's three friends for it were of little use to convince mankind, that even their very best deeds could not justify them in the presence of their Creator, unless a more effectual mode of justification and reconciliation were at the same time declared. In the Pentateuch then, Moses records the prophecy respecting the Seed of the woman, and gives without any explanation the remarkable words of Eve on the birth of Cain. This he did

as an historian: but, since, at the period when the oracles of God were committed to writing, both the prophecy and the words of Eve might justly demand an inspired authoritative comment; such a comment was delivered a in the argumentative drama before us, and was aptly placed in the mouth of Job to teach the nascent Levitical Church what had previously been the uninterrupted doctrine of the ancient Patriarchal Church bas à Dc

What I suppose to be this inspired comment of Moses himself, upon the prophecy and the exclamation nakedly recorded in his history, is the famous passage relative to that living Saviour, whom Job is described as acknowledging with so much devout solemnity. In our common version however, as the English reader may perceive, by the numerous words, which are printed in Italics, and which are owned therefore not to exist in the original Hebrew: in our common version, the passage, though its general scope be accurately enough expressed, is rendered much more loosely than can well be tolerated. Such being the case, let us see, whether a translation more scrupulously literal and therefore not liable to the same objections, cannot be produced. Taking then for the basis of my own version that proposed by Parkhurst, I would render the entire passage in the following manner.

T

I KNOW, THAT MY REDEEMER IS THE LIVING ONE, AND THAT HEREAFTER HE SHALL RISE UP

OVER THE DUST. AND HEREAFTER MY SKIN SHALL ENCOMPASS THIS: AND FROM MY FLESH I SHALL SEE GOD. AND MY EYES SHALL BEHOLD HIM AND NOT A STRANGER: MY REINS ARE CONSUMED WITHIN ME.

As Eve, in her exclamation, I have gotten the man even Jehovah his very self, acknowledged her promised Seed to be no other than the Angel or Word of the Lord; so Moses here confirms her opinion of his nature, by declaring him to be very God: and, as Moses, confessing the Redeemer to be very God, consistently pronounces him to be the Living One or the essential fountain of vitality; so Christ, in the Apocalypse, similarly claims to be the Living One, and, in the Gospel, assumes to himself the high titles of the Resurrection and the Life'. The Redeemer (what additionally proves the book of Job to have been written by an Israelite subsequent to the promulgation of the Law from mount Sinai) is set forth in his quality of a Redeemer by a technical legal term, which involves the idea of a near kinsman: for to a near kinsman was committed under the Law the right of redemption. This statute typically shadowed out our near relationship to the promised Saviour: for, as our kinsman-redeemer, he took not on him the nature of angels, but he took on him the seed of Abraham; wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made

1 Rev. i. 18. Gr. & Zwv. John xi. 25. Gr. ǹ Swn.

2 See Levit. xxv. 24-34.

like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high-priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people'. The passage then in the poem relates, so far as its phraseology is concerned, to the statute in the Law: Job therefore professes his belief in one, who should be the living God, whom his eyes should hereafter behold in a visible form, and who as his near kinsman according to the flesh should legally act as his Redeemer. Hence, still with the same reference to the shadowy ceremonial Law, he declares, that, in beholding this kinsman-redeemer, he should not behold a stranger or foreigner; but that he should look upon one, who was bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh. In thus professing his belief, he is likewise, in apt allusion to the literal history, made to profess his full assurance, that, miserably lacerated as his body might now be, yet hereafter, pointing to his excoriated frame, the renovated cuticles of his skin should encompass this, and that from his own flesh he should see his incarnate God: that God whose advent was too hastily expected by Eve at the nativity of her first-born. His reins now indeed might be consumed within him: but this did not diminish his full confidence in the promise made to the

woman.

The doctrine of the resurrection of the body,

'Heb. ii. 16, 17.

thus taught by the great legislator of Israel, tallies with and explains his account of the translation of Enoch. If that patriarch were translated to heaven, both soul and body; it were reasonable to argue from such an event, not only a future state, but a resurrection of the corporeal frame itself. Here, accordingly, in its proper place, with whatever scantiness the doctrine might be taught in the Pentateuch, Moses says enough on the subject for the information and consolation of each more spiritual believer.

Perhaps it may be objected, that, according to the tenor of the argument as severally conducted by Job and his three friends, the confession of a Redeemer ought to have been put in their mouth rather than in his: because their reasoning directly tends to establish the necessity of a Redeemer, while his reasoning would go to prove that man requires not any extrinsic aid to justify him in the presence of God.

To this I reply, that however inconsistent it may be, nothing is more common than to unite a high notion of human merit with a full belief in a Redeemer: so common indeed is it, that such a paralogism constitutes the very basis of the entire Romish creed. We are to recollect, that the argument of the poem is the confutation and conviction of a self-righteous moralist, who is aptly personated by the strictly upright Job.. In the prosecution of this design, the hero is made to contest every inch of his ground. First,