THE SPEECHES OF ELIHU.
(CHAPS. XXXII.-XXXVII.)
At a (perhaps) considerably later period than the original work
(including chap. xxviii.)—symbolised by the youthfulness of Elihu as
compared with the four older friends—the problem of the sufferings of
the innocent still beset the minds of the wise men, the attempt of the
three friends to ‘justify the ways of God’ to the intellect having
proved, as the wise men thought, a too manifest failure (xxxii. 2, 3).
One of their number therefore invented a fourth friend, Elihu (or is
this the name of the author himself?[42]), who is described as having
been a listener during the preceding debates, and who reduces Job to
silence. It is noteworthy that the sudden introduction of Elihu required
the insertion of a fresh narrative passage (xxxii. 1-6) as a supplement
to the original prologue.
I assume, as the reader will observe, the one assured result of the
criticism of Job. To those who follow me in this, the speeches of Elihu
will, I think, gain greatly in interest. They mark out a time when,
partly through the teaching of history, partly through a deeper inward
experience, and partly through the reading of the poem of _Job_, the old
difficulties of faith were no longer so acutely felt. Two courses were
open to the Epigoni of that age—either to force Job to say what, as it
seemed, he ought to have said (this, however, was not so easy as in the
case of Ecclesiastes), or to insert fresh speeches in the style of the
original, separating the corn from the chaff in the pleadings of the
three friends, and adding whatever a more advanced religious thought
suggested to the writer. In forms of expression, however, it must be
admitted that Elihu does not shine. (True, he does not profess to
comfort Job.) For offensiveness the two following verses are not easily
matched:
Where is there a man like Job,
who drinks[43] scoffing like water? (xxxiv. 7.)
Would that Job might be tried to the uttermost
because of his answers in the manner of wicked men (xxxiv. 36).
A ‘vulgar braggart’ he may not be from an Oriental point of view, nor is
he ‘the prototype of the Bachelor in _Faust_;’ but that he is too
positive and dogmatic, and much overrates his own powers, is certain. He
represents the dogmatism of a purified orthodoxy, which thinks too much
of its minute advances (‘one perfect in knowledge is with thee,’ xxxvi.
4).
Elihu distributes his matter (of which he says that he is ‘full,’ xxxii.
18-20) over four speeches. His themes in the first three are: 1, the
ground and object of suffering (chaps. xxxii., xxxiii.); 2, the
righteousness of God (chap. xxxiv.); and 3, the use of religion (chap.
xxxv.), all of which are treated in relation to the questionable or
erroneous utterances of Job. Then, in his last and longest effort, Elihu
unrolls before Job a picture of the government of God, in its
beneficence and righteousness as well as its omnipotence, in the hope of
moving Job to self-humiliation (chaps. xxxvi., xxxvii.) Let us remember
again that Elihu represents the debates of the ‘wise men’ of the
post-regal period, who were conscious of being in some sense ‘inspired’
like their prophetic predecessors (xxxii. 8, xxxvi. 4; Ecclus. xxiv.
32-34, l. 28, 29), so that we cannot believe that the _bizarre_
impression made by Elihu on some Western critics was intended by the
original author. That his portrait suggests certain grave infirmities,
may be granted; but these are the failings of the circle to which the
author belongs: the self-commendation of Elihu in his exordium is hardly
excessive from an Oriental point of view, or would at any rate be
justifiable in a more original thinker. Indeed, he only commends himself
in order to excuse the unusual step of criticising the proceedings of
men so much older than himself. After what he thinks sufficient excuse
has been offered, Elihu takes up Job’s fundamental error,
self-righteousness, but prepares the way by examining Job’s assertion
(xix. 7, xxx. 20) that God took no heed of his complaints.
Wherefore hast thou contended with Him
because ‘He answers none of my words’?[44] (xxxiii. 13.)
To this Elihu replies that it is a man’s own fault if he cannot hear the
Divine voice. For God is constantly speaking to man, if man would only
regard it (‘revelation,’ then, is not confined to a class or a
succession). Two means of communication are specially mentioned—nightly
dreams and visions, and severe sickness. The object of both is to divert
men from courses of action which can only lead to destruction. At this
point a remarkable intimation is given. In order to produce conversion,
and so to ‘redeem a man from going down to the pit,’ a special angelic
agency is necessary—that of a ‘mediator’ or ‘interpreter’ (Targ.
_p’raqlītā_; comp. παράκλητος, John xiv. 16, 26), whose office it is to
‘show unto man his rightness’ (i.e. how to conform his life to the right
standard, xxxiii. 23).
We must pause here, however, to consider the bearings of this. It seems
to show us, first, that inspired minds (see above) were already
beginning to refine and elevate the popular notions of the spiritual
world. That there were two classes of spirits, the one favourable, the
other adverse to man, had long been the belief of the Israelites and
their neighbours.[45] The author of the speeches of Elihu now introduces
one of them among the symbols of a higher stage of religion. In
antithesis to the ‘destroyers’[46] (ver. 22) he implies that God has
thousands of angels (the ‘mediator’ is ‘one among a thousand’), whose
business it is to save sinners from destruction by leading them to
repentance. Such is the φιλανθρωπία, the friendliness to man, of the
angelic world, without which indeed, according to Elihu, the purpose of
sickness would be unobserved and a fatal issue inevitable. To students
of Christianity, however, it has a deeper interest, if the concluding
words, ‘I have found a ransom,’ be a part of the Old Testament
foundation of the doctrine of redemption through Christ. This, however,
is questionable, and even its possibility is not recognised by the
latest orthodox commentator.[47] In his second speech Elihu returns to
the main question of Job’s attitude towards God. He begins by imputing
to Job language which he had never used, and which from its extreme
irreverence Job would certainly have disowned (xxxiv. 5, 9), and
maintains that God never acts unjustly, but rewards every man according
to his deeds. There is nothing in his treatment of this theme which
requires comment except its vagueness and generality, to which, were the
speech an integral part of the poem, Job would certainly have taken
exception.
The subject of the third speech is handled with more originality. Job
had really complained that afflicted persons such as himself appealed to
God in vain (xxiv. 12, xxx. 20). Elihu 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.’[48] 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.’[49] 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 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.[50]
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.’[51] 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[52] 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.
Footnote 42:
So M. Derenbourg, who points out that none of the other speakers have
a genealogy, and identifies Buz with Boaz, and Ram with an ancestor of
David (Ruth iv. 19). The author of chaps. xxxii.-xxxvii. might thus be
a descendant of Elihu the brother of David (1 Chr. xxvii. 18).
Footnote 43:
On ‘drinks’ see Thomson, _The Land and the Book_, p. 319.
Footnote 44:
The _text_ (which has ‘_His_ words’) is generally rendered ‘because He
gives not account of any of His matters,’ i.e. of the details of His
government. This is very strained; the Sept. has ‘my words,’ the
Vulgate ‘thy words,’ either of which readings gives a natural sense.
Footnote 45:
See 2 Sam. xxiv. 16, and comp. 1 Chr. xxi. 15, Ps. xxviii. 49, Prov.
xvi. 14, Ezek. ix. 1, x. 7; also Jost, _Gesch. des Judenthums_, i.
304. For Assyria see _Records of the Past_, i. 131-5: iv. 53-60 (the
sinner was thought to be given up in displeasure by his God into the
hands of the evil spirits). For Arabia see Korán, lxxix. 1, 2—
‘By those (angels) who tear out (souls) with violence,
And by those who joyously release them:’
for the early Christian, Justin M. _Dial. e. Tryph._ 105, τὰ αὐτὰ
αἰτῶμεν τὸν θεὸν, τὸν δυνάμενον ἀποστρέψαι πάντα ἀναιδῆ πονηρὸν
ἄγγελον μὴ λαβέσθαι ἡμῶν τῆς ψυχῆς: and for the medieval, Dante,
_Inferno_, xxvii. 112-123: _Purgatorio_, v. 103-108. Comp. below,
Chap. X.
Footnote 46:
Blake seems to have felt Elihu’s strong faith in the angels. The
border of his 12th illustration is filled with a stream of delicate
angel forms.
Footnote 47:
Davidson. Ewald explains the ‘ransom’ partly of the intercession of
the angel, partly of the prayer of repentance.
Footnote 48:
Turner, _Studies Biblical and Oriental_, p. 146.
Footnote 49:
Cox, _Commentary on the Book of Job_, p. 489.
Footnote 50:
So Lightfoot (see Lowth, _Prælect._ xxxii.).
Footnote 51:
_Le livre de Job_, p. liv.
Footnote 52:
Davidson, _The Book of Job_, p. xlv.