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The Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary by Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich
29.1 THE SPRING AT MATAREA - DISCOVERED BY JOB.
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The spring which appeared at Matarea in answer to the Blessed Virgin's
prayers was not a new one, but an old one which gushed forth afresh. It
had been choked but was still lined with masonry. I saw that Job had
been in Egypt long before Abraham and had dwelt on this spot in this
place. [172] It was he who found the spring, and he made sacrifices on
the great stone lying here. Job was the youngest of thirteen brothers.
His father was a great chieftain at the time of the building of the
Tower of Babel. His father had one brother who was Abraham's ancestor.
The tribes of these two brothers generally intermarried. Job's first
wife was of the tribe of Peleg: after many adventures, when he was
living in his third home, he married three more wives of the same
tribe. One of them bore him a son whose daughter married into the tribe
of Peleg and gave birth to Abraham's mother. Job was thus the
great-grandfather of Abraham's mother. Job's father was called Joktan,
a son of Eber. He lived to the north of the Caspian Sea, near a
mountain range one side of which is quite warm, while the other is cold
and ice-covered. There were elephants in that country. I do not think
elephants could have gone to the place where Job first went to set up
his own tribe, for it was very swampy there. That place was to the
north of a mountain range lying between two seas, the westernmost of
which was before the Flood a high mountain inhabited by evil angels by
whom men were possessed. [173] The country there was poor and marshy; I
think it is now inhabited by a race with small eyes, flat noses, and
high cheek-bones. It was here that Job's first misfortune befell him,
and he then moved southwards to the Caucasus and began his life again.
From here he made a great expedition to Egypt, a land which at that
time was ruled by foreign kings belonging to a shepherd people from
Job's fatherland. One of these came from Job's own country; another
came from the farthest country of the three holy kings. They ruled over
only a part of Egypt, and were later driven out by an Egyptian king.
[174] At one time there was a great number of these shepherd people all
collected together in one city; they had migrated to Egypt from their
own country.
The king of these shepherds from Job's country desired a wife for his
son from his family's tribe in the Caucasus, and Job brought this royal
bride (who was related to him) to Egypt with a great following. He had
thirty camels with him, and many menservants and rich presents. He was
still young--a tall man of a pleasing yellow-brown color, with reddish
hair. The people in Egypt were dirty brown in color. At that time Egypt
was not thickly populated; only here and there were large masses of
people. There were no great buildings either; these did not appear
until the time of the children of Israel.
The king showed Job great honor, and was unwilling to let him go away
again. He was very anxious for him to emigrate to Egypt with his whole
tribe, and appointed as his dwelling-place the city where afterwards
the Holy Family lived, which was then quite different. Job remained
five years in Egypt, and I saw that he lived in the same place where
the Holy Family lived, and that God showed him that spring. When
performing his religious ceremonies, he made sacrifice on the great
stone.
Job was to be sure a heathen, but he was an upright man who
acknowledged the true God and worshipped Him as the Creator of all that
he saw in nature, the stars, and the ever-changing light. He was never
tired of speaking with God of His wonderful creations. He worshipped
none of the horrible figures of beasts adored by the other races of
mankind in his time, but had thought out for himself a representation
of the true God. This was a small figure of a man with rays round its
head, and I think it had wings. Its hands were clasped under its
breast, and bore a globe on which was a ship on waves. Perhaps it was
meant to represent the Flood. When performing his religious ceremonies
he burnt grains before this little figure. Figures of this kind were
afterwards introduced into Egypt, sitting in a kind of pulpit with a
canopy above.
Job found a terrible form of idolatry here in this city, descending
from the heathen magical rites practiced at the building of the Tower
of Babel. They had an idol with a broad ox's head, rising to a point at
the top. Its mouth was open, and behind its head were twisted horns.
Its body was hollow, fire was made in it, and live children were thrust
into its glowing arms. I saw something being taken out of holes in its
body. The people here were horrible, and the land was full of dreadful
beasts. Great black creatures with fiery manes flew about in swarms,
scattering what seemed like fire as they flew. They poisoned everything
in their path, and the trees withered away under them. I saw other
animals with long hind-legs and short fore-legs, like moles; they could
leap from roof to roof. Then there were frightful creatures lurking in
hollows and between stones, which wound themselves round men and
strangled them. In the Nile I saw a heavy, awkward beast with hideous
teeth and thick black feet. It was the size of a horse and had
something pig-like about it. Besides these I saw many other ugly
creatures; but the people here were much more horrible than any of
them. Job, whom I saw clearing the evil beasts from around his dwelling
by his prayers, had such a horror of these godless folk that he often
broke out in loud reproaches of them, saying that he would rather live
with all these dreadful beasts than with the infamous inhabitants of
this land. I often saw him at sunrise gazing longingly towards his own
country, which hay a little to the south of the farthest country of the
three holy kings. Job saw prophetic pictures foreshadowing the arrival
in Egypt of the children of Israel; he also had visions of the
salvation of mankind and of the trials that awaited himself. He would
not be persuaded to stay in Egypt, and at the end of five years he and
his companions left the country.
There were intervals of calm between the great misfortunes that befell
Job: the first interval lasted nine years, the second seven, and the
third twelve. The words in the Book of Job: "And while he (the
messenger of evil) was yet speaking" mean "This misfortune of his was
still the talk of the people when the following befell him." [175] His
misfortunes came upon him in three different places. The last
calamity--and also the restoration of all his prosperity--happened when
he was hiving in a flat country directly to the east of Jericho.
Incense and myrrh were found here, and there was also a gold-mine with
smithies. At another time I saw much more about Job, which I will tell
later. For the present I will only say that Job's story of himself and
of his talking with God were written down at his dictation by two
trusty servants of his, like treasurers. Their names were Hai and Uis
or Ois. [176] This story was preserved by his descendants as a sacred
treasure, and was handed down from generation to generation until it
reached Abraham and his sons. It was used for purposes of instruction,
and came into Egypt with the children of Israel. Moses used it to
comfort and console the Israelites during the Egyptian oppression and
their journey through the desert, but in a summarized version, for it
was originally of much greater length, and a great deal of it would
have been incomprehensible to them. Solomon again remodeled it, so that
it is a religious work full of the wisdom of Job, Moses, and Solomon.
It was difficult to recognize the true history of Job from it, for the
names of persons and places had been changed to ones nearer Canaan, and
it was thought that Job was an Edomite because the last place where he
lived was inhabited long after his death by Edomites, the descendants
of Esau. Job might still have been alive when Abraham was born.
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