beating heart”[1] of the whole. The aspect of the affliction as a chastisement so greatly preponderates, that the other, viz., as a trial or proving, is as it were swallowed up by it. One of the old writers[2] says, “Elihu proves that it can indeed be that a man may fear and honour God from the heart, and consequently be in favour with God, and still be heavily visited by God, either for a trial of faith, hope, and patience, or for the revelation and improvement of the sinful blemishes which now and then are also hidden from the pious.” According to this, both aspects are found united in Elihu's speeches; but in this first speech, at least, we cannot find it.
There is another poet, whose charisma does not come up to that of the older poet, who in this speech pursues the well-authorized purpose not only of moderating what is extreme in Job's speeches, but also of bringing out what is true in the speeches of the friends.[3]
While the book of Job, apart from these speeches, presents in the Old Testament way the great truth which Paul, Rom 8:1, expresses in the words, οὐδέν κατάκριμα τοῖς ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ, this other poet has given expression at the same time, in the connection of the drama, to the great truth, 1Co 11:32, κρινόμενοι ὑπὸ τοῦ δυρίου παιδευόμεθα, ἵνα μὴ σὺν τῷ κόσμῳ κατακριθῶμεν. That it is another poet, is already manifest from his inferior, or if it is preferred, different, poetic gift. True, A. B. Davidson has again recently asserted, that by supporting it by such observations, the critical question is made “a question of subjective taste.” But if these speeches and the other parts of the book are said to have been written by one poet, there is an end to all critical judgment in such questions generally. One cannot
- ↑ Vid., Hengstenberg, Lecture on the Book of Job.
- ↑ Jacob Hoffmann (of St. Gallen), Gedult Iobs, Basel, 1663 (a rare little book which I became acquainted with in the town library of St. Gallen).
- ↑ On this subject see my Art. Hiob in Herzog's Real-Encyklopädie, vi. 116-119, and comp. Kahnis, Dogmatik, i. 306-309, and my Für und wider Kahnis (1863), S. 19-21.
