the last speaker was one who 'darkened counsel by words without knowledge' (xxxviii. 3).
Such are the contributions of Elihu, which gain considerably when considered as a little treatise in themselves. It is, indeed, a strange freak of fancy to regard Elihu as representing the poet himself.[1] Neither æsthetically nor theologically do they reach the same high mark as the remainder of the book. 'The style of Elihu,' as M. Renan remarks, 'is cold, heavy, pretentious. The author loses himself in long descriptions without vivacity. . . . His language is obscure and presents peculiar difficulties. In the other parts of the poem the obscurity comes from our ignorance and our scanty means of comprehending these ancient documents; here the obscurity comes from the style itself, from its bizarrerie and affectation.'[2] Theologically it is difficult to discover any important point (but see Chap. XII., below, on Elihu) in which, in spite of his sharp censure of the friends, he distinctly passes beyond them. His arguments have been so largely anticipated by the three friends that, on the whole, we may perhaps best regard chaps. xxxii.-xxxix. as a first theological criticism on the contents of the original work. From this point of view it is interesting that the idea of affliction as correction, which had already occurred to Eliphaz, acquired in the course of years a much deeper hold on thinking minds (see xxxiii. 19-30, xxxvi. 8-10). There is one feature of the earlier speeches which is not imitated by Elihu, and that is the long and terrifying descriptions in each of the three original colloquies of the fate of the impious man, and one of the most considerate of Elihu's Western critics[3] thinks it possible that Elihu, who says in one place—
And the impious in heart cherish wrath,
and supplicate not when he hath bound them (xxxvi. 13)—
considered no calamity whatever as penal in the first instance.
