the point of view from which they can be understood. Kleinert
supplies this omission. The body of the poem, he remarks, is juristic
in spirit; the speeches of Elihu ethical and hortatory. This brings
with it a different mode of regarding the problem of Job's sufferings.
'Die Reden Elihu's haben zu dem gerichtlichen Aufriss der Buchanlage
nur das alleräusserlichste Verhältniss. Sie verlassen die scharfgezogenen
Grundlinien der rechtlichen Auseinandersetzung, um in
eine ethisch-paränetische, rein chokmatisch-didaktische Erörterung
der Frage überzulenken.' Kleinert also notes one peculiar word of
Elihu's which I have not met with in Budde, but which, from Kleinert's
point of view, is important—(
Hebrew characters), 'a ransom' (xxxiii. 24, xxxvi.
18). Why did not the juristic theologians of the Colloquies use it?
Evidently the speeches of Elihu are later compositions.
The Aramaisms and Arabisms of Job (excepting the Elihu portion).
10. Page 99.—The critic, no less than the prophet, is still with too many a favourite subject of ironical remark; 'they say of him, Doth he not speak in riddles'?[1] The origin of Job, upon the linguistic as well as the theological side, may be a riddle, but the interest of the book is such that we cannot give up the riddle. We may not all agree upon the solution; the riddle may be one that admits of different answers. All that this proves is the injudiciousness of dogmatism, which specially needs emphasising with respect to the bearings of the linguistic data. To say, with Nöldeke,[2] 'We have no ground for regarding the language of Job as anything but a very pure Hebrew' seems to me as extreme as to assert with G. H. Bernstein (the well-known Syriac scholar) that the amount of Aramaic colouring would of itself bring the book into the post-Exile period. Bernstein carried to a dangerous extreme a tendency already combated by Michaelis and Eichhorn;[3] but his research is thorough-*going and systematic. Those who, like the present writer, have no access to it, may be referred to L. Bertholdt's Historisch-kritische Einleitung[4] (Erlangen, 1812-1819), where it is carefully examined, and its arguments, as it would seem, reduced to something like their just proportions. Bertholdt does not scruple to admit that distinctively Aramaising constructions are wanting in Job, and that words
- ↑ Ezek. xx. 49.
- ↑ Die alttestamentliche Literatur, p. 192.
- ↑ See Eichhorn's notice of Michaelis in vol. i. of his Allgemeine Bibliothek der biblischen Literatur.
- ↑ Pp. 2076, 2077. Bernstein's title is, Ueber das Alter, den Inhalt, den Zweck und die gegenwärtige Gestalt des Buches Hiob (in Keil and Tzschirner's Analekten, 1813, pp. 1-137).
