Armenia in comments -- Book: Job (tJob) Յոբ
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tJob 33:1 Wherefore, Job, I pray thee - In the next chapter he addresses the three friends of Job. This is addressed particularly to him.
My speeches - Hebrew, "my words" - מלה millâh. This is the usual word in the Aramaen languages to express a saying or discourse, though in Hebrew it is only a poetic form. The meaning is, not that he would address separate speeches, or distinct discourses, to Job, but that he called on him to attend to what he had to say. Job 33:2
tJob 33:4 4 The Spirit of God hath made me,
And the breath of the Almighty hath given me life.
5 If thou canst, answer me,
Prepare in my presence, take thy stand!
6 Behold, I am like thyself, of God,
Formed out of clay am I also.
7 Behold, my terror shall not affright thee,
And my pressure shall not be heavy upon thee.
He has both in common with Job: the spirituality as well as the earthliness of man's nature; but by virtue of the former he does not, indeed, feel himself exalted above Job's person, but above the present standpoint taken up by Job; and in consideration of this, Job need not fear any unequal contest, nor as before God, Job 9:34; Job 13:21, in order that he may be able to defend himself against Him, make it a stipulation that His majesty may not terrify him. It is man's twofold origin which Elihu, Job 33:4, Job 33:6, gives utterance to in harmony with Gen 2:7 : the mode of man's origin, which is exalted above that of all other earthly beings that have life; for the life of the animal is only the individualizing of the breath of the Divine Spirit already existing in matter. The spirit of man, on the contrary (for which the language has reserved the name נשׁמה), is an inspiration directly coming forth from God the personal being, transferred into the bodily frame, and therefore forming a person.
(Note: God took a small piece of His own life - says the tradition among the Karens, a scattered tribe of Eastern India - blew into the nostrils of His son and daughter, and they became living beings, and were really human.)
In the exalted consciousness of having been originated by the Spirit of God, and being endowed with life from the inbreathed breath of the Almighty, Elihu stands invincible before Job: if thou canst, refute me (השׁיב with acc. of the person, as Job 33:32); array thyself (ערכה for ערכה, according to Ges. 63, rem. 1) before me (here with the additional thought of מלחמה, as Job 23:4, in a forensic sense with משׁפּט), place thyself in position, or take thy post (imper. Hithpa. with the ah less frequent by longer forms, Ew. 228, a).
On the other side, he also, like Job, belongs to God, i.e., is dependent and conditioned. הן־אני is to be written with Segol (not Ssere); לאל is intended like לו, Job 12:16; and כּפיך signifies properly, according to thine utterance, i.e., standard, in accordance with, i.e., like thee, and is used even in the Pentateuch (e.g., Exo 16:21) in this sense pro ratione; כפי, Job 30:18, we took differently. He, Elihu, is also nipped from the clay, i.e., taken from the earth, as when the potter nips off a piece of his clay (comp. Aram. קרץ, a piece, Arab. qurs, a bread-cake, or a dung-cake, vid., supra, p. 449, from qarasa, to pinch off, take off, cogn. qarada, to gnaw off, cut off, p. 512). Thus, therefore, no terribleness in his appearing will disconcert Job, and his pressure will not be a burden upon him. By a comparison of Job 13:21, it might seem that אכפּי is equivalent to כּפּי (lxx ἡ χείρ μου), but כּבד is everywhere connected only with יד, never with כּף; and the ἁπ. γεγρ. is explained according to Pro 16:26, where אכף signifies to oppress, drive (Jer. compulit), and from the dialects differently, for in Syr. ecaf signifies to be anxious about anything (ecaf li, it causes me anxiety, curae mihi est), and in Arab. accafa, to saddle, ucâf, Talmud. אוּכּף, a saddle, so that consequently the Targ. translation of אכפּי by טוּני, my burden, and the Syr. by אוכפני, my pressing forward (Arabic version iqbâli, my touch), are supported, since אכף signifies pressure, heavy weight, load, and burden; according to which it is also translated by Saad. (my constraint), Gecat. (my might). It is therefore not an opponent who is not on an equality with him by nature, with whom Job has to do. If he is not able to answer him, he will have to be considered as beaten. Job 33:8 tJob 33:19 19 He is chastened also with pain upon his bed,
And with the unceasing conflict of his limbs;
20 And his life causeth him to loathe bread,
And his soul dainty meat.
21 His flesh consumeth away to uncomeliness,
And his deranged limbs are scarcely to be seen.
22 Then his soul draweth near to the grave,
And his life to the destroyers.
Another and severer lesson which God teaches man is by painful sickness: he is chastened with pain (בּ of the means) on his bed, he and the vigorous number of his limbs, i.e., he with this hitherto vigorous (Raschi), or: while the multitude of his limbs is still vigorous (Ew). Thus is the Keri ורב to be understood, for the interpretation: and the multitude of his limbs with unceasing pain (Arnh. after Aben-Ezra), is unnatural. But the Chethib is far more commendable: and with a constant tumult of his limbs (Hirz. and others). Job 33:19 might also be taken as a substantival clause: and the tumult of his limbs is unceasing (Umbr., Welte); but that taking over of בּ from במכאוב is simpler and more pleasing. ריב (opposite of שׁלום, e.g., Psa 38:4) is an excellent description of disease which consists in a disturbance of the equilibrium of the powers, in the dissolution of their harmony, in the excitement of one against another (Psychol. S. 287). אתן for איתן belongs to the many defective forms of writing of this section. In Job 33:20 we again meet a Hebraeo-Arabic hapaxlegomenon. זהם from זהם. In Arab. zahuma signifies to stink, like the Aram. זהם (whence זוּהם, dirt and stench), zahama to thrust back, restrain, after which Abu Suleiman Dad Alfsi, in his Arabic Lexicon of the Hebrew, interprets: "his soul thrusts back (תזהם נפסה) food and every means of life,"
(Note: Vid., Pinsker's Likkute Kadmoniot, p. קמג.)
beside which the suff. of וזהמתּוּ is taken as an anticipation of the following object (vid., on Job 29:3): his life feels disgust at it, at bread, and his soul at dainty meat. The Piel has then only the intensive signification of Kal (synon. תּעב, Psa 107:18), according to which it is translated by Hahn with many before him. But if the poet had wished to be so understood, he would have made use of a less ambiguous arrangement of the words, וזהמתו לחם חיתו. We take זהם with Ew. 122, b, as causative of Kal, in which signification the Piel, it is true, occurs but rarely, yet it does sometimes, instead of Hiph.; but without translating, with Hirz., חיה by hunger and נפשׁ by appetite, which gives a confused thought. Schlottm. appropriately remarks: "It is very clearly expressed, as the proper vital power, the proper ψυχή, when it is inwardly consumed by disease, gives one a loathing for that which it otherwise likes as being a necessary condition of its own existence." Thus it is: health produces an appetite, sickness causes nausea; the soul that is in an uninjured normal state longs for food, that which is severely weakened by sickness turns the desire for dainties into loathing and aversion.
Job 33:21
The contracted future form יכל, again, like ישׂם, Job 33:11, is poetic instead of the full form: his flesh vanishes מראי, from sight, i.s. so that it is seen no longer; or from comeliness, i.e., so that it becomes unsightly; the latter (comp. Sa1 16:12 with Isa 53:2, ולא־מראה) might be preferred. In Job 33:21 the Keri corrects the text to ושׁפּוּ, et contrita sunt, whereas the Chethib is to be read וּשׁפי, et contritio. The verb שׁפה, which has been explained by Saadia from the Talmudic,
(Note: He refers to b. Aboda zara 42a: If a heathen have broken an idol to pieces (שׁפּה) to derive advantage from the pieces, both the (shattered) idol and the fragments (שׁפּוּיין) are permitted (since both are deprived of their heathenish character).)
signifies conterere, comminuere; Abulwald (in Ges. Thes.) interprets it here by suhifet wa-baradet, they are consumed and wasted away, and explains it by כּתּתוּ. The radical notion is that of scraping, scratching, rubbing away (not to be interchanged with Arab. sf', ספה, which, starting from the radical notion of sweeping away, vanishing, comes to have that of wasting away; cognate, however, with the above Arab. sḥf, whence suhâf, consumption, prop. a rasure of the plumpness of the body). According to the Keri, Job 33:21 runs: and his bones (limbs) are shattered (fallen away), they are not seen, i.e., in their wasting away and shrivelling up they have lost their former pleasing form. Others, taking the bones in their strict sense, and שׁפה in the signification to scrape away = lay bare, take לא ראו as a relative clause, as Jer. has done: ossa quae tecta fuerant nudabuntur (rather nudata sunt), but this ought with a change of mood to be לא ראו...וישׁפּוּ. To the former interpretation corresponds the unexceptionable Chethib: and the falling away of his limbs are not seen, i.e., (per attractionem) his wasting limbs are diminished until they are become invisible. ראוּ is one of the four Old Testament words (Gen 43:26; Ezr 8:18; Lev 23:17) which have a Dagesh in the Aleph; in all four the Aleph stands between two vowels, and the dageshing (probably the remains of a custom in the system of pointing which has become the prevailing one, which, with these few exceptions, has been suffered to fall away) is intended to indicate that the Aleph is here to be carefully pronounced as a guttural (to use an Arabic expression, as Hamza), therefore in this passage ru-'û.
(Note: Vid., Luzzatto's Grammatica della Lingua Ebraica (1853), 54. Ewald's (21) view, that in these instances the pointed Aleph is to be read as j (therefore ruju), is unfounded; moreover, the point over the Aleph is certainly only improperly called Dagesh, it might at least just as suitably be called Mappik.)
Thus, then, the soul (the bearer of the life of the body) of the sick man, at last succumbing to this process of decay, comes near to the pit, and his life to the ממתים, destroying angels (comp. Psa 78:49; Sa2 24:16), i.e., the angels who are commissioned by God to slay the man, if he does not anticipate the decree of death by penitence. To understand the powers of death in general, with Rosenm., or the pains of death, with Schlottm. and others, does not commend itself, because the Elihu section has a strong angelological colouring in common with the book of Job. The following strophe, indeed, in contrast to the ממיתים, speaks of an angel that effects deliverance from death. Job 33:23 tJob 33:29 29 Behold, God doeth all
Twice, thrice with man,
30 To bring back his soul from the pit,
That it may become light in the light of life.
31 Listen, O Job, hearken to me;
Be silent and let me speak on.
32 Yet if thou hast words, answer me;
Speak, for I desire thy justification.
33 If not, hearken thou to me;
Be silent and I will teach thee wisdom.
After having described two prominent modes of divine interposition for the moral restoration and welfare of man, he adds, Job 33:29, that God undertakes (observe the want of parallelism in the distich, Job 33:29) everything with a man twice or thrice (asyndeton, as e.g., Isa 17:6, in the sense of bis terve) in order to bring back his soul from the pit (שׁחת, here for the fifth time in this speech, without being anywhere interchanged with שׁאול or another synonym, which is remarkable), that it, having hitherto been encompassed by the darkness of death, may be, or become, light (לאור, inf. Niph., syncopated from להאור, Ew. 244, b) in the light of life (as it were bask in the new and restored light of life) - it does not always happen, for these are experiences of no ordinary kind, which interrupt the daily course of life; and it is not even repeated again and again constantly, for if it is without effect the first time, it is repeated a second or third time, but it has an end if the man trifles constantly with the disciplinary work of grace which designs his good. Finally, Elihu calls upon Job quietly to ponder this, that he may proceed; nevertheless, if he has words, i.e., if he thinks he is able to advance any appropriate objections, he is continually to answer him (השׁיב with acc. of the person, as Job 33:5), for he (Elihu) would willingly justify him, i.e., he would gladly be in the position to be able to acknowledge Job to be right, and to have the accusation dispensed with. Hirz. and others render falsely: I wish thy justification, i.e., thou shouldst justify thyself; in this case נפשׁך ought to be supplied, which is unnecessary: חפץ, without a change of subject, has the inf. constr. here without ל, as it has the inf. absol. in Job 13:3, and צדּק signifies to vindicate (as Job 32:2), or acknowledge to be in the right (as the Piel of צדק, Job 33:12), both of which are blended here. The lxx, which translates θέλω γὰρ δικαιωθῆναί σε, has probably read צדקך (Psa 35:27). If it is not so (אם־אין as Gen 30:1), viz., that he does not intend to defend himself with reference to his expostulation with God on account of the affliction decreed for him, he shall on his part (אתּה) listen, shall be silent and be further taught wisdom.
Quasi hac ratione Heliu sanctum Iob convicerit! exclaims Beda, after a complete exposition of this speech. He regards Elihu as the type of the false wisdom of the heathen, which fails to recognise and persecutes the servant of God: Sunt alii extra ecclesiam, qui Christo ejusque ecclesiae similiter adversantur, quorum imaginem praetulit Balaam ille ariolus, qui et Elieu sicut patrum traditio habet (Balaam and Elihu, one person - a worthless conceit repeated in the Talmud and Midrash), qui contra ipsum sanctum Iob multa improbe et injuriose locutus est, in tantum ut etiam displiceret in una ejus et indisciplinata loquacitas.
(Note: Bedae Opp. ed. Basil. iii. col. 602f. 786. The commentary also bears the false name of Jerome Hieronymus, and as a writing attributed to him is contained in tom. v. Opp. ed. Vallarsi.)
Gregory the Great, in his Moralia, expresses himself no less unfavourably at the conclusion of this speech:
(Note: Opp. ed. Prais, i. col. 777.)
Magna Eliu ac valde fortia protulit, sed hoc unusquisque arrogans habere proprium solet, quod dum vera ac mystica loquitur subito per tumorem cordis quaedam inania et superba permiscet. He also regards Elihu as an emblem of confident arrogance, yet not as a type of a heathen philosopher, but of a believing yet vain and arrogant teacher. This tone in judging of Elihu, first started by Jerome, has spread somewhat extensively in the Western Church. In the age of the Reformation, e.g., Victorin Strigel takes this side: Elihu is regarded by him as exemplum ambitiosi oratoris qui plenus sit ostentatione et audacia inusitate sine mente. Also in the Greek Eastern Church such views are not wanting. Elihu says much that is good, and excels the friends in this, that he does not condemn Job; Olympiodorus adds, πλὴν οὐκ ἐνόησε τοῦ δικαίου τῆν διάνοιαν, but he has not understood the true idea of the servant of God!
(Note: Catena in Job. Londin. p. 484, where it is further said, Ὅθεν λογιζόμεθα καὶ τόν θεὸν μήτε ἐπαινέσαι τὸν Ελιοὺς, ἐπειδὴ μὴ νενόηκε τοῦ Ἰὼβ τοὺς λόγους, μήτε μὴν καταδικάσαι, ἐπειδὴ μὴ ἀσεβείας αὐτὸν κατέκρινε.)
In modern times, Herder entertains the same judgment. Elihu's speech, in comparison with the short, majestic, solemn language of the Creator, he calls "the weak rambling speech of a boy." "Elihu, a young prophet" - he says further on his Geist der Ebr. Poesie, where he expounds the book of Job as a composition - "arrogant, bold, alone wise, draws fine pictures without end or aim; hence no one answers him, and he stands there merely as a shadow."
(Note: Edition 1805, S. 101, 142.)
Among the latest expositors, Umbreit (Edition 2, 1832) consider's Elihu's appearance as "an uncalled-for stumbling in of a conceited young philosopher into the conflict that is already properly ended; the silent contempt with which one allows him to speak is the merited reward of a babbler." In later years Umbreit gave up this depreciation of Elihu.
(Note: Vid., Riehm, Bltter der Erinnerung an F. W. C. Umbreit (1862), S. 58.)
Nevertheless Hahn, in his Comm. zu Iob (1850), has sought anew to prove that Elihu's speeches are meant indeed to furnish a solution, but do not really do so: on the contrary, the poet intentionally represents the character of Elihu as that "of a most conceited and arrogant young man, boastful and officious in his undeniable knowingness." The unfavourable judgments have been carried still further, inasmuch as an attempt has even been made to regard Elihu as a disguise for Satan in the organism of the drama;
(Note: Thus the writer of a treatise in the 3rd vol. of Bernstein's Analekten, entitled: Der Satan als Irrgeist und Engel des Lichts.)
but it may be more suitable to break off this unpleasant subject than to continue it.
In fact this dogmatic criticism of Elihu's character and speeches produces a painful impression. For, granted that it might be otherwise, and the poet really had designed to bring forward in these speeches of Elihu respecting God's own appearing an incontrovertible apology for His holy love, as a love which is at work even in such dispensations of affliction as that of Job: what offence against the deep earnestness of this portion of Holy Scripture would there be in this degradation of Elihu to an absurd character, in that depreciation of him to a babbler promising much and performing little! But that the poet is really in earnest in everything he puts into Elihu's mouth, is at once shown by the description, Job 33:13-30, which forms the kernel of the contents of the first speech. This description of the manifold ways of the divine communication to man, upon a contrite attention to which his rescue from destruction depends, belongs to the most comprehensive passages of the Old Testament; and I know instances of the powerful effect which it can produce in arousing from the sleep of security and awakening penitence. If one, further, casts a glance at the historical introduction of Elihu, Job 32:1-5, the poet there gives no indication that he intends in Elihu to bring the odd character of a young poltroon before us. The motive and aim of his coming forward, as they are there given, are fully authorized. If one considers, further, that the poet makes Job keep silence at the speeches of Elihu, it may also be inferred therefrom that he believes he has put answers into Elihu's mouth by which he must feel himself most deeply smitten; such truths as Job 32:13-22, drawn from the depths of moral experience, could not have been put forth if Job's silence were intended to be the punishment of contempt.
These counter-considerations also really affect another possible and milder apprehension of the young speaker, inasmuch as, with von Hofmann, the gravitating point of the book of Job is transferred to the fact of the Theophany as the only satisfactory practical solution of the mystery of affliction: it is solved by God Himself coming down and acknowledging Job as His servant. Elihu - thus one can say from this point of view - is not one of Job's friends, whose duty it was to comfort him; but the moral judgment of man's perception of God is made known by this teacher, but without any other effect than that Job is silent. There is one duty towards Job which he has not violated, for he has not to fulfil the duty of friendship: The only art of correct theorizing is to put an opponent to silence, and to have spoken to the wind is the one punishment appropriate to it. This milder rendering also does not satisfy; for, in the idea of the poet, Elihu's speeches are not only a thus negative, but the positive preparation for Jehovah's appearing. In the idea of the poet, Job is silent because he does not know how to answer Elihu, and therefore feels himself overcome.
(Note: The preparation is negative only so far as Elihu causes Job to be silent and to cease to murmur; but Jehovah drawn from him a confession of penitence on account of his murmuring. This positive relation of the appearing of Jehovah to that for which Elihu negatively prepares the way, is rightly emphasized by Schlottm., Rbiger (De l. Iobi sententia primaria, 1860, 4), and others, as favourable to the authenticity.)
And, in fact, what answer should he give to this first speech? Elihu wishes to dispute Job's self-justification, which places God's justice in the shade, but not indeed in the friends' judging, condemnatory manner: he wishes to dispute Job's notion that his affliction proceeds from a hostile purpose on the part of God, and sets himself here, as there, a perfectly correct task, which he seeks to accomplish by directing Job to regard his affliction, not indeed as a punishment from the angry God, but as a chastisement of the God who desires his highest good, as disciplinary affliction which is intended to secure him against hurtful temptation to sin, especially to pride, by salutary humiliation, and will have a glorious issue, as soon as it has in itself accomplished that at which it aims.
It is true one must listen very closely to discover the difference between the tone which Elihu takes and the tone in which Eliphaz began his first speech. But there is a difference notwithstanding: both designate Job's affliction as a chastisement (מוסר), which will end gloriously, if he receives it without murmuring; but Eliphaz at once demands of him humiliation under the mighty hand of God; Elihu, on the contrary, makes this humiliation lighter to him, by setting over against his longing for God to answer him, the pleasing teaching that his affliction in itself is already the speech of God to him, - a speech designed to educate him, and to bring about his spiritual well-being. What objection could Job, who has hitherto maintained his own righteousness in opposition to affliction as a hostile decree, now raise, when it is represented to him as a wholesome medicine reached forth to him by the holy God of love? What objection could Job now raise, without, in common, offensive self-righteousness, falling into contradiction with his own confession that he is a sinful man, Job 14:4, comp. Job 13:26? Therefore Elihu has not spoken to the wind, and it cannot have been the design of the poet to represent the feebleness of theory and rhetoric in contrast with the convincing power which there is in the fact of Jehovah's appearing.
But would it be possible, that from the earliest times one could form such a condemnatory, depreciating judgment concerning Elihu's speeches, if it had not been a matter of certainty with them? If of two such enlightened men as Augustine and Jerome, the former can say of Elihu: ut primas partes modestiae habuit, ita et sapientiae, while the latter, and after his example Bede, can consider him as a type of a heathen philosophy hostile to the faith, or of a selfishly perverted spirit of prophecy: they must surely have two sides which make it possible to form directly opposite opinions concerning them. Thus is it also in reality. On the one side, they express great, earnest, humiliating truths, which even the holiest man in his affliction must suffer himself to be told, especially if he has fallen into such vainglorying and such murmuring against God as Job did; on the other side, they do not give such sharply-defined expression to that which is intended characteristically to distinguish them from the speeches of the friends, viz., that they regard Job not as רשׁע, and his affliction not as just retribution, but as a wholesome means of discipline, that all misunderstanding would be excluded, as all the expositors who acknowledge themselves unable to perceive an essential difference between Elihu's standpoint and the original standpoint of the friends, show. But the most surprising thing is, that the peculiar, true aim of Job's affliction, viz., his being proved as God's servant, is by no means thoroughly clear in them. From the prologue we know that Job's affliction is designed to show that there is a piety which also retains its hold on God amid the loss of all earthly goods, and even in the face of death in the midst of the darkest night of affliction; that it is designed to justify God's choice before Satan, and bring the latter to ruin; that it is a part of the conflict with the serpent, whose head cannot be crushed without its sting being felt in the heel of the conqueror; in fine, expressed in New Testament language, that it falls under the point of view of the cross (σταυρός), which has its ground not so much in the sinfulness of the sufferer, as in the share which is assigned to him in the conflict of good with evil that exists in the world. It cannot be supposed that the poet would, in the speeches of Elihu, set another design in opposition to the design of Job's affliction expressed in the prologue; on the contrary, he started from the assumption that the one design does not exclude the other, and in connection with the imperfectness of the righteousness even of the holiest man, the one is easily added to the other; but it was not in his power to give expression to both grounds of explanation of Job's affliction side by side, and thus to make this intermediate section "the beating heart"
(Note: Vid., Hengstenberg, Lecture on the Book of Job.)
of the whole. The aspect of the affliction as a chastisement so greatly preponderates, that the other, viz., as a trial or proving, is as it were swallowed up by it. One of the old writers
(Note: Jacob Hoffmann (of St. Gallen), Gedult Iobs, Basel, 1663 (a rare little book which I became acquainted with in the town library of St. Gallen).)
says, "Elihu proves that it can indeed be that a man may fear and honour God from the heart, and consequently be in favour with God, and still be heavily visited by God, either for a trial of faith, hope, and patience, or for the revelation and improvement of the sinful blemishes which now and then are also hidden from the pious." According to this, both aspects are found united in Elihu's speeches; but in this first speech, at least, we cannot find it.
There is another poet, whose charisma does not come up to that of the older poet, who in this speech pursues the well-authorized purpose not only of moderating what is extreme in Job's speeches, but also of bringing out what is true in the speeches of the friends.
(Note: On this subject see my Art. Hiob in Herzog's Real-Encyklopdie, vi. 116-119, and comp. Kahnis, Dogmatik, i. 306-309, and my Fr und wider Kahnis (1863), S. 19-21.)
While the book of Job, apart from these speeches, presents in the Old Testament way the great truth which Paul, Rom 8:1, expresses in the words, οὐδέν κατάκριμα τοῖς ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ, this other poet has given expression at the same time, in the connection of the drama, to the great truth, Co1 11:32, κρινόμενοι ὑπὸ τοῦ δυρίου παιδευόμεθα, ἵνα μὴ σὺν τῷ κόσμῳ κατακριθῶμεν. That it is another poet, is already manifest from his inferior, or if it is preferred, different, poetic gift. True, A. B. Davidson has again recently asserted, that by supporting it by such observations, the critical question is made "a question of subjective taste." But if these speeches and the other parts of the book are said to have been written by one poet, there is an end to all critical judgment in such questions generally. One cannot avoid the impression of the distance between them; and if it be suppressed for a time, it will nevertheless make itself constantly felt. But do the prophecies of Malachi stand lower in the scale of the historical development of revelation, because the Salomonic glory of prophetic speech which we admire in Isaiah is wanting in them? Just as little do we depreciate the spiritual glory of these speeches, when we find the outward glory of the rest of the book wanting in them. They occupy a position of the highest worth in the historical development of revelation and redemption. They are a perfecting part of the canonical Scriptures. In their origin, also, they are not much later;
(Note: Seinecke (Der Grundgedanke des B. Hiob, 1863) places it, with Ewald, 100-200 years later; and, moreover, asserts that the book of Job has no foundation whatever in oral tradition - Job is the Israel of the exile, Uz is Judaea, etc.)
indeed, I venture to assert that they are by a contemporary member even of the Chokma-fellowship from which the book of Job has its rise. For they stand in like intimate relation with the rest of the book to the two Ezrahite Psalms, 88, 89; they have, as to their doctrinal contents, the fundamental features of the Israelitish Chokma in common; they speak another and still similar Aramaizing and Arabizing language (hebraicum arabicumque sermonem et interdum syrum, as Jerome expresses it in his Praef. in l. Iobi); in fact, we shall further on meet with linguistic signs that the poet who wrote this addition has lived together with the poet of the book of Job in one spot beyond the Holy Land, and speaks a Hebrew bearing traces of a like dialectic influence. Next: Job Chapter 34