chief singers of David and of the same name, but the contemporaries of Solomon mentioned in 1Ki 5:11. These two psalms coincide with the book of Job, both in expressions with which remarkable representations are united, as קרושׁים of the celestial spirits, רפאים of the shades in Hades, אבדון of Hades itself, and also in expressions which do not occur elsewhere in the Old Testament, as אמים and בּעתים; and the agreement is manifest, moreover, in the agreement of whole verses either in thought or in expression: comp. Psa 89:38 with Job 16:19; Psa 89:48 with Job 7:7; Psa 89:49 with Job 14:14; Psa 88:5 with Job 14:10; Psa 88:9 with Job 30:10; Psa 89:8 with Job 31:34. In all these passages, however, there is no such similarity as suggests a borrowing, but an agreement which, since it cannot possibly be accidental, may be most easily explained by supposing that the book of Job proceeds from just the same Chokma-fellowship to which, according to 1Ki 5:11, the two Ezrahites, the writers of Ps 88 and 89, belong.
One might go further, and conjecture that the same Heman who composed Ps 88, the gloomiest of all the Psalms, and written under circumstances of suffering similar to Job's, may be the author of the book of Job - for which many probable reasons might be advanced; by which also what G. Baur rightly assumes would be confirmed, that the writer of the book of Job has himself passed through the inward spiritual conflict which he describes, and accordingly gives a page from his own religious history. But we are satisfied with the admission, that the book of Job is the work of one of the wise men whose rendezvous was the court of Solomon. Gregory of Nazianzen and Luther have already admitted the origin of the book in Solomon's time; and among later critics, Rosenmüller, Hävernick, Vaihinger, Hahn, Schlottmann, Keil, and Hofmann (though in
