SECTION VII.

THE INTERVENTION OF ELIHU.

CHAPTERS XXXII.-XXXVII.

WE are arrested on the very threshold of this section of the Book. Before we can enter upon it we must, for no choice is allowed us, raise and determine the question: Is the intervention of Elihu an integral part of the original Poem, or is it only a late, spurious, and worthless addition to it by some unknown hand? From the very first, Commentators have been very hard on Elihu. Ancient Jewish rabbis pronounced him "Balaam in disguise." Many fathers, both of the Eastern and of the Western Churches, held him up to scorn as a type of the false wisdom, the broken and misleading lights, of heathen philosophy. By modern Commentators he has been stigmatized as "a pert braggart boy" of "weak rambling speech," "a mere shadow" (Herder), "a babbler" (Umbreit), "a most conceited and arrogant young man (Hahn): Merx, indeed, carries his contempt for Elihu so far as altogether to ignore, if not to annihilate, him, by leaving his orations wholly untouched, although they are to be found in every MS. of Job which we possess.

On the other hand, one of the most recent translators of the Book (Coleman, 1869), on the express ground that Elihu's language would be unbecoming in a mere mortal, that it is too wise and too authoritative for merely human lips, actually affirms him to be no less than "the Second Person of the Sacred Trinity," and with a sublime audacity translates the Hebrew for "Elihu, the son of Barachel the Buzite, of the tribe of Ram," by, " Elihu, the blessed Son of God, the Despised One, of the lineage of the Most High”!

More sober judges than these have their doubts of Elihu;

they question whether the speeches attributed to him can fairly be regarded as part of the original Poem, and lean to the conclusion that they were inserted either by the Poet himself at some subsequent revision of his work, or by some later and inferior hand.

These doubts, like the adverse conclusions of the "higher criticism," are based on the following considerations. (1) That Aramaic forms of speech abound in this section of the Poem to a very unusual degree. (2) That at least the boastful exordium (Chaps. xxxii. 6-xxxiii. 7) to Elihu's "discourse" is wholly out of keeping with the Poet's manner and style. (3) That the part played by Elihu is not essential to the drama; that even when he breaks into his "discourse" he contributes nothing of any value to the argument of the Poem: so that both the man himself and his orations might be detached from it without any sensible loss, or even with obvious and positive gain.

Now, I am not of those who "deny the value of criticism and refuse to accept the evidence of partial compilation and redaction patent in the Biblical texts;" but surely the evidence should be both "patent" and conclusive before we are summoned to yield to it. And I submit that the presumption is in favour of the text as settled by a careful collation of the MSS., and even in favour of the traditional interpretation of the text. Before we advocate any change on the sole evidence of internal criticism or evidence, it would only be fair to study the passage in question with a view to ascertain whether, as it stands, it does not fall in, if not with our modern canons of art, yet with the design and the art canons of the Oriental poet or prophet to whom, on sufficient diplomatic evidence, it has been attributed from the earliest recoverable date. And if this course had been taken, if these Chapters had been approached with a prejudice in favour of the original text as established by external evidence, instead of a prejudice in favour of change; if, in short, the destructive critics had not shewn "that irritable kind of intellect," common to their school," which sets an undue value on novel theories and novel interpretations,” it may be doubted whether they would have found much weight

in the arguments that have led them to ascribe the intervention of Elihu to a later hand, or to denounce it as a fraudulent and irrelevant interpolation. For myself, I confess that, as I approached this section of the Poem, I quite expected, so high and numerous are the authorities who have impugned it, to be convinced that it was at least a later addition to it, inserted either by the original author himself, or by some other poet who was moved by one and the selfsame Spirit ; and it is with no small surprise that I have been led by a patient study of it, and after careful consideration of the objections alleged against it, to conclude that these objections carry very little weight, and that the discourses of Elihu form an integral part of the original work. To be quite frank, it is with a certain regret, as well as surprise, that I have reached this conclusion; for it imposes on me the difficult and unwelcome task of vindicating it: and I cannot but be conscious that I lay myself open to the charge of arrogance and presumption in contesting the verdict of critics many of whom are so much more able and learned than myself. Every man, however, like each of the Evangelists, is bound to speak the truth "according to" him: and therefore I submit for consideration the following answers to the objections most commonly alleged against Elihu, and the part he plays, and the words he speaks.

1. That Aramaisms should abound in his "discourse," so far from being an argument against its genuineness and authenticity, becomes an argument in its favour the moment we observe that Elihu is introduced to us as an Aramaan Arab for who should use Aramæan words and idioms if not the one speaker in the Poem who is of Aramæan blood? That the style of this Section differs largely from that of other sections of the Poem, and is in some ways inferior to it, is, or may be, conceded: but how long has it been an offence against dramatic art that the diction of an actor and speaker should correspond to his age, and position, and race? Good critics, such as Ewald, Schlottmann, and Davidson, find fine distinctions of idiom and style, a characteristic tone, in the speeches of each of the three Friends-all old or elderly men, and all more or less closely akin. Might we not fairly expect

then, to find on the lips of a young man, and a young man of different type and blood, a still larger and more characteristic deviation from the common standard of language and manner? Are we to admire the Author for the delicate discrimination which leads him to put characteristic language into the lips of the Friends, and to blame him, or even to deny his hand, when he puts language equally characteristic and appropriate into the mouth of Elihu? Whatever “the higher criticism" has attempted, or may attempt, on Henry V., it would be hard to persuade Englishmen that Fluellen was not created by the same capacious mind which gave birth to the King himself and his statesmen and captains, albeit "the care and valour of this Welshman were a little out of the fashion' of the time, and Shakespeare endeavours-not with complete success, be it said with reverence—to give him the mental and verbal idioms, and even the very pronunciation, peculiar to the English-speaking Welsh.1

2. So, too, with the boastful exordium to Elihu's discourse, which seems most of all to have stirred the bile of the critics, which has led them to stigmatize him as a "braggart boy," and to doom him to something very like capital punishment, it may be well to ask, before we consent to that doom, whether in his conditions such an exordium might not be natural and consistent. Far too much stress has been laid on this point. Elihu is not guilty, as I hope to shew in detail when we study his orations verse by verse, of a tithe of the conceit and self-commendation which has been attributed to him. He is far indeed from being the vulgar and fluent braggart" he has been painted. But, granting to the full all that has been alleged against him, I would still submit that he does but carry himself in a manner characteristic of his race. If travellers are to be believed, the boastful and long

1 Even Prince Hal himself speaks a very different language, and takes a very different tone, when rioting with his boon companions to that which he employs when, having "turned away his former self," he resumes his majesty and "shews his sail of greatness" as he discusses affairs of state with his nobles and prelates. And I do not yet despair of seeing some grave German critic of the "higher" school contrasting the style and idioms of the two so-different series of scenes, and authoritatively assigning the Falstaff scenes to the third or fourth redacteur of the Plays.

winded accost so repulsive to the English mind is common to many Oriental races, and may be heard to this day when Arab meets Arab in the Desert. So, also, I have somewhere read, though I cannot now recover the reference, that in their modern dramas and rhapsodies characters continually introduce themselves to the audience with a boastful recital of their claims to attention similar to the opening sentences of Elihu's discourse. Nor is this custom confined to the illiterate-to the wandering and fighting clans and to the rhapsodists who amuse their leisure.—Boasts far more turgid than those attributed to Elihu may be encountered in the writings of grave Arabian historians and poets. We have a capital illustration of this singular habit in the celebrated Arab historian of the seventeenth century, Al-Makkari-or, to give him his full style, Ahmed Ibn-Mohammed Al-Makkari Attelemsari—known in the East as "the Western Traditionist and Bright Star of Religion." In the preface to his curious and erudite "History of the Mohammedan Dynasties of Spain," he thus describes his labours in behalf of a grateful and admiring posterity: "We had, while residing in the West

laboured hard on the history of Andalus; we had collected for the description of that country and its inhabitants the most interesting and valuable documents, and the most complete written as well as oral information. We had described minutely the aptitude and superiority of the Andalusians in the sciences, their forwardness and courage in attacking the cruel enemy of God; the enchanting beauty of the spots they formerly inhabited, the sites of their contests and battles; of all which we had amassed treasures enough to satisfy the wishes and ambition of the most excellent historian, and collected a sufficient number of unique pearls to bewitch the mind of the reader, and gathered in the delightful paths of their literature flowers enough to gratify the senses of the studious, and strung together many useful and hitherto unknown things in a manner to make the eyes of the learned and ingenious start out of their orbits with pleasure and astonishment. All this, moreover, was written in such an elevated and flowing style that, had it been delivered by the common crier, it would have made even the stones deaf." If