Job, we read, was a man of great substance as well as great integrity, living in a very early time in the land of Uz. Moreover, besides his great possessions, we are told that he had seven sons and three daughters. And we find that his sons were used, “to feast in their houses, every one his day;” and that on these occasions it was their custom to “send and call for their three sisters to eat and to drink with them;” a token, (as a well-known commentator has fairly enough conjectured,) both of their harmonious family affection and of the good order and conduct which prevailed in their feastings, or so holy a man as Job would not have permitted his daughters to join in their festivity. But, nevertheless, we read that Job in his anxious care was mindful to intercede for them, even in case they might have erred or sinned in the fulness of their rejoicing, or in the exuberance of their mirth. “And it was so, when the days of their feasting were gone about, that Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the morning, and offered burnt-offerings according to the number of them all: for Job said, It may be that my sons have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts. Thus did Job continually.” {24} Here, then, we have no doubtful witness, not merely to the usage of sacrifice, but to its acceptableness also in the sight of God, as a part of worship and intercession. And this is all the more, not merely curious, but important, when we reflect upon the very early date almost universally assigned to the events related in the Book of Job. Whether the record itself may have been composed at a somewhat later period, as some have thought, yet all authorities are, I believe, agreed that the time of Job’s life was contemporaneous with even the earliest part of the life of Moses, and, therefore, that he did not derive his knowledge of God from the institutions of the Jews, or live under the Mosaic dispensation. The consenting witness, both of the Jews themselves and of the early Christian writers accepting their testimony, is that Job is the same as Jobab, mentioned in the first book of Chronicles, who is there named as the third in descent from Esau; so that he, as well as Moses, was the fifth in descent from Abraham,—the one in the line of Esau, and the other in the line of Jacob. Moreover, it would appear that this Job or Jobab was, if not absolutely what may be termed a king, yet a ruler and a prince in the land called Uz, or Ausitis, a country on the confines, probably, of Idumæa and Arabia. If this be so, he would seem, from the summary given in the first book of Chronicles, to have succeeded Balaam in the sovereignty or chiefdom of that country. “For,” (says that narrative,) “these are the kings that reigned in the land of Edom, before any king reigned over the children of Israel; Bela the son of Beor,” (undoubtedly the same as Balaam); “and the name of his city was Dinhabah.