upon subjective considerations. Two classes of the.se may be mentioned. (1) What measure of difficulty in a passage warrants conjectural emenda- tion, and how far is a 19th cent, critic competent to reconstruct an ancient poem, without being guilty of the vice of trj'ing it by his own preconceived ideas and standards ? (2) \Vh;it is the view to be taken of the scope and design of the book ? Can it be viewed as a fairly harmonious whole in its pre- sent state, and what amount of apparent incon- sistency warrants interference with the text as it stands? These are questions which are certain to receive dill'erent answers from dillerent types of mind. The only satisfactory line of argument in a conservative direction lies in a justification of the book as it stands, and its success must depend upon power to show that the book can be better understood as we have it, with certain compara- tively slight omissions and modifications, than in the forms proposed by more destructive and re- volutionary theories.
The section most open to objection is that containing the speeches of Elihu. The chief arguments against its having formed a part of the original book are the following, [a) Elihu is not mentioned cither in the proloffue or the epi- logue. In the latter, especially, it would seem unnatural that Jehovah, when referring to the speeches of the three friends and Job, should pass Elihu by in silence, (i) Chs. 32-37 are awkwardly placed between Job's monologue and the divine answer out of the whirlwind. The intervention of the Almighty, and the words with which He addresses Job, are much better understood if ch. 38 follows immediately upon ch. 31. The ease and advantage with whicn this section could be de- tached from the rest of the poem seems to point to a line of juncture here, (c) Elihu's arguments appear to consist partly of a repetition of those of the three friends, partly an anticipation of the address of Jehovah. So far as Elihu does furnish an original contribution to the discussion in the emphasis which he lays upon the j)urifying in- fluence of suffering viewed as chastisement, it is not in harmony with the general teaching of the book, (d) The style is prolLx, and, in the opinion of most, distinctly inferior to the rest of the liook ; though Kuenen (tor example) has pronounced that style alone would In this case be insulficieut to prove a later origin, (e) Certain peculiarities of language are discernible, a much stronger and more decided Aramaic colourim; being discernible in this section. Canon V. C. Cook {Spea/ccr's Com. ) argues, after Sehlottmann, that this is the poet's way of indicating Elihu's AramaMin origin. The subject is investigated at length in Stickel'i Da.i Buck Hiob (1842), Budde's Bcitra^e zur Kritik des B. H. (1876), and in an e.s.say of Ivleinert {Stud. u. Krit. 1886) ; and the bearings of these are investigated by Cheyne (Job and Solomon, Appendix, etc. 291-293), who sums up in the words, ' P^videntlv the speeches of Elihu are later compositions.' (liudde is the most distinguished of the defenders of the genuineness of the speeches).
The force of these arguments really lies in their conjunction. It will be observ'ed that they are of dillerent kinds, and their cumulative force is therefore all the greater. Standing alone, each one would not lie fatal. Cook, for example, jininta out that no person is named in the book till he begins to take part in the action, and he attaches considerable weight to the argument-s adduced by Elihu. Bradley, however, in his thoughtful lectures on the liook of .lob (1887), takes a dill'er- ent view. The concurrence of argniMcnts drawn from dill'orcnt (|uarter8 appears to the present writer convincing, and perhaps the strongest evidence of all is drawn trom the view taken ol
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JOB, BOOK OF
the book as a wliole, the plan and outline of which the oi)iso<ie of Elihu mara, or positively disliguros.
The siiiiie must, on the whole, be said of cli. S?'"'-" and ch. 28. The fonuer jjassage contains nn elaliorate account of the alUictious which overtake the wicked, apparently quite out of place on the lips of Job, and containing precisely sueli arj^uinents as had previously been urged bj" his friends. Compare, e.g., the speech of Zopliar in ch. 20, and observe that 27" is almost identical in expression with 20-''. There is no real connexion between the lirst si.\ verses of ch. 27, in which Job a-sserts his own innocence, and the strain of the verses that follow, which are quite inconsistent with Job's previous contentions. The only two modes of reconciliation possible are these. (1) Job wishes to show that he does not alto"ether denj- the fact that the wicked are punished, and is anxious to sever himself from their perilous and friendless condition. He shrinks from the very thought of being as the wicked are. He wishes to ' avoid everything that can appear ambiguous, and to take a position ujjon a much higher elevation ' (Ewald). Even, however, if this train of thought were appropriate in Job's mouth, it cannot be said that it fits in at all suitably with 27'"' which precedes, or ch. 28 which follows. Or (2) it may be urged (again with Ewald) that Job has by this time conquered his doubts as to the divine moral government, that the.se ' have worked their own cure,' and that he anticipates already some such issue as is described in the epilogue. But it retjuires only a moment's consideration to see that this disturbs the whole order of the composition, that it is quite inconsistent with the language of Job's soliloquy, especially ch. 30, and it does not harmonize with the address of the Almighty to Job, which follows.