description of a thunderstorm with which the final oration concludes (Chaps. xxxvi. 26-xxxvii. 24) most fitly and nobly introduces the Theophany which closes the Book, depicting the "tempest" out of which Jehovah speaks. But, as Professor Davidson has pointed out, the contention of Elihu meets, and refutes, the main positions taken up by Job. To the very end (Chap. xxxi. 35-37) Job had demanded audience of God, implying or affirming that he cried out for Him in vain (Chap. xxx. 20-24). Throughout his argument, and still to the very end, he had impugned the justice of God and of his rule over men. And even in his Soliloquy he had asserted the mystery of Providence, and the impossibility of apprehending or vindicating it (Chap. xxviii.). These, indeed, are his main positions; and Elihu assails, and carries, them all. To his contention that God would not speak to men, Elihu replies that God does speak to men in many ways. -instructing them by dreams, reproving and correcting them by the natural and inevitable results of their own actions, in order that by both these-by experience and by quickened and suggestive ideals-He may redeem their souls and bring them back to the light of life (Chap. xxxiii. 14-30). To his contention that God was unjust, since the righteous man was none the better for his righteousness, Elihu replies that the very creation and continuance of the world prove God to be good; that He who has the whole universe in charge cannot be inequitable (Chap. xxxiv. 10-15); that the Ruler of the world must be just, since injustice means anarchy, and anarchy dissolution (Chap. xxxiv. 16-30); that, so far from men gaining nothing by their righteousness, their courses of action, whether good or evil, must tell upon their own character and conditions, since they cannot affect Him who sits above the clouds (Chap. xxxv. 2-8); and that, when they cry out in vain under their calamities and oppressions, it is because they cry amiss-from mere fear and pain, not from love of righteousness and trust in God their Maker (Chap. xxxv. 9–16). To his contention that the Divine Providence is an inscrutable mystery, Elihu, without for a moment assuming to solve the whole mystery of Providence, replies that the very sufferings of which Job complains open the eyes and hearts of men to

a perception of the meaning and design of Providence sufficient for all practical, i.e., all moral, purposes, teaching them their sinfulness and God's goodness, and that the whole course of his Providential rule takes its colour from the strife between these two (Chaps. xxxvi. and xxxvii.). “And while he is descanting on the greatness of God, which is but the other side of his goodness, displayed in the storm-cloud that he sees rising, suddenly he is interrupted, and God Himself speaks out of the storm."

or

Let these considerations be but fairly weighed, and the candid student will at least hesitate before he consents to cut out Elihu's part from this noble drama, at the bidding of critics who seem transported beyond all bounds of reason and patience by the mere mention of his name. Whatever else he may be, Elihu is no "bombastic braggart," or "chattering trifler," or "conceited coxcomb," who darkens counsel with words devoid of wisdom. To any one who has honestly and carefully studied his argument, it can hardly fail to appear that the critics who denounce him in such terms as these misconceive him as completely and sinistrously as Job himself was misconceived by the Friends; and it would be no great marvel should some of their ugly epithets come home to roost.

Among the objections which an adverse and too peremptory criticism has accumulated against this section of the Poem, one of the slenderest and weakest-though much stress has been laid upon it is that Elihu does not appear either in the Prologue or in the Epilogue; that he is not so much as introduced to us until the Poem is drawing to a close. But unless we are to evolve the scheme of an antique Oriental poem out of our own consciousness, or demand that it should conform to our own arbitrary canons of art, instead of carefully studying the Poem to ascertain on what scheme it was actually modelled, such an objection proves nothing but a determination to make the faults it cannot find. It is a sufficient reply to the objection, that Elihu is introduced to us, and even formally and elaborately introduced, as soon as he comes forward, as soon, i.e., as we need to know him. The Friends were not introduced to us till they were wanted, till the action of the Drama compelled the

Poet to make them known to us; and even then they were not introduced so formally as Elihu, nor at such length. Elihu is not in the Prologue because he is not to take part in the argument of the Poem till toward its close; and he is not in the Epilogue because the anger of the Lord was not kindled against him as it was against the Friends, because, so far as he went, he had spoken of God aright, while they had not.

CHAPTER XXXII. VERSES 1-6.

CHAP. XXXII.-So these three men ceased to answer Job, because he was righteous in his own eyes. (2) Then was kindled the anger of Elihu, the son of Barachel the Buzite, of the tribe of Ram; against Job was his anger kindled, because he justified himself rather than God. (3) Also against his three friends was his anger kindled, because they could find no answer to Job and yet condemned him. (4) For Elihu had delayed to answer Job because they were older than he; (5) but when Elihu saw that there was no answer in the mouth of these three men, his anger was kindled. (6) And Elihu, the son of Barachel the Buzite, answered and said:

From Chapter xxxii., Verse 1, we learn, as we learn more fully from Verses 15 and 16, that the Friends had ceased to argue with Job, not because he had convinced them-for, to them, he was still only "righteous in his own eyes”—but simply because they could not move him from his position; because, though their arguments had broken down, they had "no more," or no more cogent, arguments to allege. Our inference from their silence is thus confirmed and established.

Verse 2.-The word Elihu means, "My God is He;" the word Barachel, "May God bless." As proper names they imply that Elihu belonged to a family in which the great primitive tradition of one God and Lord over all was retained and accepted. The added tribal name-Buzite-indicates that Elihu was an Aramaan, since it marks descent from Nahor, Abram's brother, through Buz his son; and yet an Aramæan Arab, since Jeremiah (Chap. xxv. 23) reckons the Buzites. among the Arabs proper, who were distinguished by their "shaven cheeks" or temples, i.e., who cut their hair short all round because they held, with St. Paul, that "if a man have

long hair it is a shame to him."1 Within the Buzite clan Elihu sprang from the family of Ram; but of this family nothing is now known, though no doubt it once helped the readers of "Job" to identify him.

Elihu, then, is somewhat more fully and precisely introduced to us than any other of the interlocutors of the Poem save Job himself; and his Aramæan descent goes far to explain the Aramaic flavour of his "discourse."

In Verses 2 and 3 we are told what it was that induced and constrained him to thrust himself into the discussion. He had observed with indignation (1) that Job had justified himself at the expense of God; and (2) that the Friends had condemned Job although they could not refute him. It was not the mere fact that Job had held fast his integrity, that he had vindicated himself against the aspersions of the Friends, which had moved Elihu to anger; but that, in order to vindicate himself and refute them, he had charged God with injustice. Nor was his anger kindled against the Friends simply because they had condemned Job; but because they had condemned him for sins of which they had no shadow of proof, and without really clearing the character of the God for whom they assumed to speak. So far, therefore, Elihu is at one with Jehovah Himself; for He too rebukes Job for so asserting his own righteousness as to condemn Him (Chap. xl. 8), and his anger is kindled against the Friends for aspersing Job to vindicate Him (Chap. xlii. 7, 8).

Full of words and arguments which he felt to be far more cogent than any they had adduced, waxing wellnigh desperate at seeing so momentous a theme so grossly mishandled, he had yet restrained himself out of deference to the age of the Friends; but now, when they have manifestly failed to solve the problem submitted to them, and even Job has nothing further to allege in his own defence, he feels that he may give vent to his repressed indignation without any lack of modesty or courtesy, and state as best he can the thoughts which have

1 Heredotus (iii. 8) describes the Arabs as cutting their hair á la Bacchus, and explains, "Now their practice is to cut it in a ring, away from the temples." Comp. Jer. ix. 26; xlix. 32 (in the Original).

risen up within him as he has listened to their long and indecisive debate (Verses 5, 6). Accordingly, he proceeds in four separate discourses, which yet are one discourse, to meet the arguments of Job in what he holds to be a wiser and more convincing method than that of the old men who, as all admit, had met them neither wisely nor fairly; and to prove (a) that God does speak to men in many ways, though Job had complained that He would not and did not speak (Chaps. xxxii. 6 -xxxiii. 33); (3) that God is just, though Job had charged Him with injustice (Chap. xxxiv.); (7) that the righteous man is the better for his righteousness, though Job had argued that he was not (Chap. xxxv.); and (6) that the mystery of Providence, though it must ever remain a mystery, is not so utterly inscrutable as Job had alleged (Chaps. xxxvi., xxxvii.).

FIRST DISCOURSE.

CHAPTERS XXXII. 6-XXXIII. 33.

In his opening discourse Elihu undertakes to prove both that God does speak to men at sundry times, and in divers manners, and that He chastens men in love rather than in anger,-the proof being that the Divine chastening is corrective and medicinal:

'tis a physic

That's bitter to sweet end.

This double thesis is woven into one with singular skill, and yet in the simplest and most natural way. His first thesis, that God speaks to men, Elihu proves (1) by generalizing the experience of Eliphaz (Comp. Chap. xxxiii. 15-18 with Chap. iv. 12-21, and especially Chap. xxxiii. 15 with Chap. iv. 13), and shewing that as God spoke to him in dream and vision, so also He speaks to all men; (2) by generalizing the experience of Job, and shewing that all men are taught, as he was taught, by pain, by the discipline of sorrow and experience; and (3) by generalizing (as I suspect) his own experience, and shewing