342 SCRIPTURE NATURAL HISTORY. 



affect at all the metaphor of the seal that follows, and which it is* 

 ray purpose to explain. The day-spring to be understood in the 

 second interrogation, is poetically adverted to by St. Luke (ch. i. 

 rer. 7, 8), on the occasion of Zechariah's prophecy respecting the 

 appearance of St. John the Baptist, the aurora of the Sun of Right- 

 eousness ; where he says, The day-spring from on high hath vis- 

 ited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness.' In Job, howev- 

 er, the personified day-spring is made to take hold of the ends of 

 the earth, that the wicked might be shaken out of it;' that is to 

 say, their wickedness being brought to light, the punishment which 

 legal justice inflicts, shall follow the exposure. This meaning re- 

 sults even to the Bible readers of the present day ; but what more 

 terrible sentiment raust have been felt by those disputants who,, 

 throughout the poem, had been darkening eouusel by words with- 

 out knowledge, it might be thought foreign to our -antiquarian pur- 

 pose to attempt to explain. 



Th,e next verse proceeds, 4 It is turned as clay to the seal, and 

 they stand as a garment,' or, as tl>e latter member of the sentence 

 is rendered by Junius and Tremellius, ' they present themselves- 

 like her coverings.' 



It seems here proper to note, that, as the text implies the seal- 

 ing substance of the land of Uz, and probably that of the nation* 

 on the banks of the Euphrates, at this remote period was clay the 

 ooze of that river : the very same substance, levigated, perhaps, of 

 which the stamped Babylonian bricks are formed ; and the better 

 sort of that pottery whose fragments abundantly bestrew the sites 

 of Babylon and Susa, even at present the potter's clay of the an- 

 cient prophets, and what is still used for the purpose of sealing in 

 some parts of the East. It may also be worthy of remark, that of 

 the various substances (such as waxes, pastes, we.) on which I have 

 tried to. impress these aneient signets, I have found clay the fittest 

 for the purpose, both of receiving and retaining the impression ; and 1 

 though a Copernican objector might argue here, that it is not the 

 light of the morning which is turned, but the earth toward the 

 light, yet this would be casuistry : the poet who wrote this wonder- 

 ful book, probably believed otherwise ; or, if thi-? point he still re- 

 garded as of any importance, it may be answered, So does the sig- 

 net which is compared to the earth, in fact, turn (.on its axis, during 

 the operation of impressing it) toward the clay ; and if it be true, as 

 Volney has asserted, that some of tire oriental nations of antiquity 

 believed the earth to be of a cylindrical form, and have so represent- 

 ed it among their hieroglyphics, the metaphor would be still more 

 complete ; and the words contained in our English translation of 

 the preceding verse, 'that it might take hold of the ends of the 

 3arth,' be expressly correct, whether we regard the word it as refer- 

 ring to the light of morning, or as denoting that searching ray of 

 Providence which brings moral turpitude to view. The latter, 

 however, is the meaning to which the text before us has more es- 

 pecial reference. * It is turned as clay to the seal, and they stand or 



