DURATlOiN OF THE SOOX. 



m 



tfhosts exhibiting, as I have already observed, a form larger than life, 

 or, as Juvenal has admirably expressed it upon a similar occasion, xiii, 221, 



Major iinago 



Humana. 



A more than mortal make : 



whence the term Rephaim is rendered in the Septuagint, rT^ymi?, and by 

 Theodotion, T/yavrfs. ; 



To the same effect, Ezekiel, about a century afterwards, m his sublime 

 prophecy of the destruction of Egypt, a piece of poetry that has never been 

 surpassed in any age or country, chap, xxxii. 19 — 26. 1 can only quote a 

 few verses, and 1 do it to prove that the tradition common to other nations, 

 that the ghosts of heroes were surrounded in hades, or the invisible world, 

 with a shadowy semblance of their former dress and instruments of war,- 

 was equally common to Judea. 



V. 2. Wail ! Son of Man, for multitudiflous Egypt, 

 Yea, down let her be cast, 

 Like the daughters of the renowned nlEitions, 

 Into the nether parts of the earth, 

 Among those that have descended into the pit. 

 Thou ! that surpassest in beauty ! 

 Get thee down.— 

 ^ To the sword is she surrendered : 



Draw him forth, and ait his forces. 

 The chieftains of the mighty dead (Q'^XS'^) 

 Call to him and his auxiliaries 

 From the lowest depths of hell, — 

 V. 27. To the grave who have descended 

 With their instruments of war ; 

 With their swords placed under their heads. 



From what quarter this popular and almost universal tradition was de- 

 rived, or in what age it originated, we know not. I have said that it 

 appears to bo more ancient than any of the traditions of the philosophers <; 

 and in support of this opinion I chiefly allude to one or two hints at it that 

 are scattered throughout the book of Job, which I must again take leave 

 to regard as the oldest composition that has descended to us. I do not refer 

 to the fearful and unrivalled description of the spectre that appeared to 

 Eliphaz, because the narrator himself does not seem to have regarded 

 this as a human image, but, among other passages,* to the following part 

 of the afflicted patriarch's severe invective against his friend Bildad : 



Yea the mighty dead are laid open from below, 



The floods and their inhabitants. 



Hell is naked before him ; 



And Destruction hath no covering. 



Bildad had been taunting Job with ready-made and proverbial speeches ; 

 and there can be no doubt that this of Job's, in reply, is of the same sort ; 

 imbued with popular tradition, but a tradition not entering into the philo- 

 sophical creed either of himself or of any of his friends ; for throughout 

 the whole scope of the argument upon the important question of a future 

 being, the immortality and separate existence of the soul is never once 

 brought forward ; every ray of hope being, as I have already observed- 

 derived from the doctrine of the future resurrection of the body. 



In many parts of the world, though not in all, this common tradition of 

 ^ the people was carried much farther, and, under different modifications? 



*Chap.3fx. II 



in 



