The message of the prose story of Job, as it was sent out to the Jewish race, was that it was not always possible to understand the reason why the righteous were afflicted, but that if they faithfully met the test restoration to Jehovah's approval, with the honor and reputation that necessarily follow, were assured. To the nation such a message was not without its practical application and value, but it failed completely to meet the individual problems that became pathetically insistent during the middle of the fifth century B.C. IV. The Poem of Job. In the later poetic version of the story (which begins with the third chapter) Job himself is the embodiment of the problem of innocent suffering. His friends' suppositions and condemnations add still another burden to his weight of woe. More intolerable, however, than loss of possessions, health, and reputation is his sense of being forsaken and condemned by Jehovah. Job cannot shake himself entirely free from the belief, which had been inculcated in his mind from earliest infancy, that calamity was a sign of divine displeasure, and therefore of sin on the part of the victim. In the series of monologues and dialogues between Job and his friends he voices every phase of the great problem and makes it concrete and objective. With marvellous psychological truth and insight the author has presented the different phases of feeling through which an innocent sufferer in Job's position naturally passes. At times Job is intemperate in his speech and at other times he yields to despondency; again his faith overleaps all obstacles and he holds for the moment a clear belief in the ultimate vindication not only of himself but of Jehovah's justice. His friends, on the other hand, formulate at length the current Explanation of suffering. Job in his sharp retorts makes clear the Inapplicability of the arguments and the limitations of the dogmas which they constantly reassert. In the concluding speeches of Jehovah the author with masterly skill takes Job out of his little circle into the larger world of nature, and brings him face to face with the evidences of Jehovah's might, wisdom, and gracious rulership of the great universe and of the complex life of those who inhabit it. Above all, Job learns to know God, not through the testimony of others, but by direct personal experience, and this knowledge begets humility and trust.