replies to this (xxxv. 9-13) that such persons merely cried from physical pain, and did not really pray. The fourth and last speech, in which he dismisses controversy and expresses his own sublime ideas of the Creator, has the most poetical interest. At the very outset the solemnity of his language prepares the reader to expect something great, and the expectation is not altogether disappointed. 'God,' he says, 'is mighty, but despiseth not any' (xxxvi. 5); He has given proof of this by the trials with which He visits His servants when they have fallen into sin. Might and mercy are the principal attributes of God. The verses in which Elihu applies this doctrine to Job's case are ambiguous and perhaps corrupt, but it appears as if Elihu regarded Job as in danger of missing the disciplinary object of his sufferings. It is in the second part of his speech (xxxvi. 26-xxxvii. 24) that Elihu displays his greatest rhetorical power, and though by no means equal to the speeches of Jehovah, which it appears to imitate, the vividness of its descriptions has obtained the admiration of no less competent a judge than Alexander von Humboldt. The moral is intended to be that, instead of criticising God, Job should humble himself in devout awe at the combined splendour and mystery of the creation.
It is tempting to regard the sketch of the storm in xxxvi. 29-xxxvii. 5 and the appeals which Elihu makes to Job as preparatory to the appearance of Jehovah in xxxviii. 1. 'While Elihu is speaking,' says Mr. Turner, 'the clouds gather, a storm darkens the heavens and sweeps across the landscape, and the thunder utters its voice . . . out of the whirlwind that passes by Jehovah speaks.'[1] So too Dr. Cox thinks that Job's invisible Opponent 'opens His mouth and answers him out of the tempest which Elihu has so graphically described.'[2] In fact in xxxviii. 1 we may equally well render 'the tempest' (i.e. that lately mentioned) and 'a tempest.' The objection is (1) that the storm does not come into the close of Elihu's speech, as it ought to do, and (2) that in His very first words Jehovah distinctly implies that
