safety, for the great tempest shall have passed for ever. We are told by the commentators that the words "about thee" are an interpolation. If this is not the interpretation, for what would Job dig about him? What relation can digging have with the disease which afflicted Job? But Job refuses to receive this consolation. He refuses to believe that the tower of Siloam fell only on the wickedest men in the city. He refers to his past experience of mankind. He thinks honest poverty is without honor at the hands of successful fraud. He says (chap. xii): "5. He that is ready to slip with his feet is as a lamp _despised in the thought of him that is at ease_." But-- "6. The tabernacles of robbers prosper, and they that provoke God are secure; into whose hand God bringeth abundantly." And he can not see how, if this calamity has come upon men for their sins, that the innocent birds and beasts, and even the fish in the heated and poisoned waters, are perishing: "7. But ask now the beasts," ("for verily," he has just said, "ye are the men, and wisdom will die with you,") "and _they_ shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and _they_ shall tell thee: "8. Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare it unto thee. "9. Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this?" Wrought what? Job's disease? No. Some great catastrophe to bird and beast and earth. You pretend, he says, in effect, ye wise men, that only the wicked have suffered; but it is not so, for aforetime I have seen the honest poor man despised and the villain {p. 295} prosperous. And if the sins of men have brought this catastrophe on the earth, go ask the beasts and the birds and the fish and the very face of the suffering earth, what they have done to provoke this wrath. No, it is the work of God, and of God alone, and he gives and will give no reason for it. "14. Behold, he breaketh down, and it cannot be built up again; _he shutteth up a man_, and there can be no opening. "15. Behold, _he withholdeth the waters, and they dry up:_ also, he sendeth them out, and _they overturn the earth_." That is to say, the heat of the fire from heaven sucks up the waters until rivers and lakes are dried up: Cacus steals the cows of Hercules; and then again they fall, deluging and overturning the earth, piling it into Mountains in one place, says the Tupi legend, and digging out valleys in another. And God buries men in the caves in which they sought shelter. "23. He increaseth the nations, _and destroyeth them:_ he enlargeth the nations, and straiteneth them again. "24. He taketh away the heart of the chief of the people of the earth, and causeth them to wander _in a wilderness where there is no way_. "25. _They grope in the dark without light, and he maketh them to stagger like a drunken man_." More darkness, more groping in the dark, more of that staggering like drunken men, described in the American legends: