Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel

WE are told in the Bible (Job, i, 16) --

"While he (Job) was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The fire of God is fallen from heaven and hath burned up the sheep, and the servants, and consumed them, and I only am escaped alone to tell thee."

And in verse 18 we are told --

"While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, Thy sons and thy daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother's house:

"19. And behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, and they are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee."

We have here the record of a great convulsion. Fire fell from heaven; the fire of God. It was not lightning, for it killed the seven thousand sheep, (see chap. i, 3,) belonging to Job, and all his shepherds; and not only killed but consumed them -- burned them up. A fire falling from heaven great enough to kill seven thousand sheep must have been an extensive conflagration, extending over a large area of country. And it seems to have been accompanied by a great wind -- a cyclone -- which killed all Job's sons and daughters.

Has the book of Job anything to do with that great event which we have been discussing? Did it originate out of it? Let us see.

In the first place it is, I believe, conceded by the foremost scholars that the book of Job is not a Hebrew work; it was not written by Moses; it far antedates even the time of Abraham.

That very high orthodox authority, George Smith, F. S. A., in his work shows that --

"Everything relating to this patriarch has been violently controverted. His country; the age in which he lived; the author of the book that bears his name; have all been fruitful themes of discord, and, as if to confound confusion, these disputants are interrupted by others, who would maintain that no such person ever existed; that the whole tale is a poetic fiction, an allegory!"[1]

Job lived to be two hundred years old, or, according to the Septuagint, four hundred. This great age relegates him to the era of the antediluvians, or their immediate descendants, among whom such extreme ages were said to have been common.