They are ended: even though at this point (when the debate seems
to be closed) a young Aramaean Arab, Elihu, who has been
loitering around and listening to the controversy, bursts in and
delivers his young red-hot opinions. They are violent, and at the
same time quite raw and priggish. Job troubles not to answer: the
others keep a chilling silence. But while this young man rants,
pointing skyward now and again, we see, we feel--it is most
wonderfully conveyed--as clearly as if indicated by successive
stage-directions, a terrific thunder-storm gathering; a
thunder-storm with a whirlwind. It gathers; it is upon them; it
darkens them with dread until even the words of Elihu dry on his
lips:
If a man speak, surely he shall be swallowed up.
It breaks and blasts and confounds them; and out of it the Lord
speaks.
Now of that famous and marvellous speech, put by the poet into
the mouth of God, we may say what may be said of all speeches put
by man into the mouth of God. We may say, as of the speeches of
the Archangel in "Paradise Lost" that it is argument, and
argument, by its very nature, admits of being answered. But, if to
make God talk at all be anthropomorphism, here is anthropomorphism
at its very best in its effort to reach to God.
There is a hush. The storm clears away; and in this hush the
voice of the Narrator is heard again, pronouncing the Epilogue.
Job has looked in the face of God and reproached him as a friend
reproaches a friend. Therefore his captivity was turned, and his
wealth returned to him, and he begat sons and daughters, and saw
his sons' sons unto the fourth generation. So Job died, being old
and full of years.