No reader can have failed to have been struck with the simplicity of the opening. Still, calm, and most majestic, it tells us everything which is necessary to be known in the fewest possible words. The history of Job was probably a tradition in the East; his name, like that of Priam in Greece, the symbol of fallen greatness, and his misfortunes the problem of philosophers. In keeping with the current belief, he is described as a model of excellence, the most perfect and upright man upon the earth, 'and the same was the greatest man in all the east.' So far, greatness and goodness had gone hand in hand together, as the popular theory required. The details of his character are brought out in the progress of the poem. He was 'the father of the oppressed, and of those who had none to help them.' When he sat as a judge in the market-places, 'righteousness clothed him' there, and 'his justice was a robe and a diadem.' He 'broke the jaws of the wicked, and plucked the spoil out of his teeth;' and, humble in the midst of his power, he 'did not despise the cause of his manservant, or his maidservant, when they contended with him,' knowing (and amidst those old people where the multitude of mankind were regarded as the born slaves of the powerful, to be carved into eunuchs or polluted into concubines at their master's pleasure, it was no easy matter to know it)--knowing that 'He who had made him had made them,' and _one_ 'had fashioned them both in the womb.' Above all, he was the friend of the poor; 'the blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon him,' and he 'made the widow's heart to sing for joy.'