view of Job's afflictions taken in the Prologue, and, on the other, has much in common with the rest of the book in orthographic, grammatical, and lexical respects. The idea that God permits affliction simply to try the disinterestedness of a good man, is one which might easily shock the feelings of one only too conscious that he was not good; and the linguistic points which 'Elihu' and the rest of the book have in common are such as we should expect to find in works proceeding from the same class of writers. If Jeremiah wrote all the pieces which contain Jeremian phraseology, or Isaiah all the prophecies which remind one at all of the great prophet, or the same 'wise man' wrote Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, then we may perhaps believe that the author of Job also wrote the speeches of Elihu and perhaps one or two of the didactic psalms.
Professor Briggs, the author of that excellent work Biblical Study, takes up a different position, which, though not new, acquires some authority from his respected name. He does not see any literary or theological merit in Elihu's speeches, and yet regards them as 'an important part of the original work.' The author designed to pourtray Elihu as a young and inexperienced man, and uses these ambitious failures 'as a literary foil . . . to prepare the way for the divine interposition, to quiet and soothe by their tediousness the agitated spirits of Job and his friends.'[1] To me, this view of the intention of the speeches lowers the character of the original writer. So reverent and devout a speaker as Elihu is ill rewarded by being treated as a literary and theological foil. Artistically, the value of this part may be comparatively slight, but theologically it enriches the Old Testament with a monument of a truly Christian consciousness of sin. Had the original writer equalled him in this, we should perhaps have missed a splendid anticipation of the life of Christ, who 'did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth.' But the Elihu-section expresses in Old Testament language the great truth announced by St. Paul in 1 Cor. xi. 32.[2]
