The Song of Solomon : and the Lamentations of Jeremiah

THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH
apparently it passed into current language, and so was
adopted by St. John in the Apocalypse.^ At first Satan
is the adversary and accuser of man, as in Job - and
Zechariah;^ then he is recognised as the tempter, in
Chronicles, for example.* But in no case is he said
to be the primary cause of evil. No plummet can
sound the depths of that dark pit in which lurks the
source of sin.
Meanwhile a very different problem, the problem of
suffering, is answered by attributing this form of evil
quite unreservedly and even emphatically to God. It is
to be remembered that our Lord, accepting the language
of His contemporaries, ascribes this to Satan, speaking
of the woman afflicted with a spirit of infirmity as one
whom Satan had bound ; ^ and that similarly St. Paul
writes of his thorn in the tlesh as a messenger of
Satan," to whom he also assigns the hindrance of a
projected journey.'' But in these cases it is not in the
least degree suggested that the evil spirit is an irre-
sistible and irresponsible being. The language only
points to his immediate agency. The absolute supremacy
of God is never called in question. There is no real
concession to Persian dualism anywhere in the Bible.
In difficult cases the sacred writers seem more anxious
to uphold the authority of God than to justify His
actions. They are perfectly convinced that those actions
are all just and right, and not to be called in question,
and so they are quite fearless in attributing to His
direct commands occurrences that we should perhaps
think more satisfactorily accounted for in some other
' Rev. xii. 9.