Introduction to Job

The Pencill of the Holy Ghost hath laboured more in describing the Afflictions of Job than the Felicities of Solomon.

—Bacon.

I call that one of the grandest things ever written with pen. One feels indeed as if it were not Hebrew; such a noble universality, different from noble patriotism or sectarianism, reigns in it. A noble Book; all men's Book! It is our first, oldest statement of the never-ending problem—man's destiny and God's ways with him here in this earth. And all in such free flowing outlines; grand in its sincerity, in its simplicity; in its epic melody, and repose of reconcilement.... Sublime sorrow, sublime reconciliation; oldest choral melody as of the heart of mankind;—so soft and great; as the summer midnight, as the world with its seas and stars! There is nothing written, I think, in the Bible or out of it, of equal literary merit.

—Carlyle, Heroes and Hero-worship.

In discernment of the real breadth and depth of social duty, nothing has gone beyond the book of Job. Much of it ought to be engraved upon brass and set upon pillars throughout the land, as a perpetual reminder of the truth as between man and man.

—W. Hale White in The Deliverance.