It has been the fashion with a certain class of critics to disparage Elihu as a self-conceited young man, and to deny the authenticity of his discourses.  But thus the plan of the book is fatally broken, as must be evident from the account given of it above.  It was not necessary that Elihu should be named in the prologue.  It is enough that he is described when he takes a part in the argument.  Why he is not named in the closing chapter has been already indicated.  There was nothing in his argument to be censured.  As to the attacks made on other parts of the book as not authentic, for example, what is said of Behemoth and Leviathan, they rest on no valid foundation.  They are only judgments of modern critics as to how and what the author of the book before us ought to have written.  The attempt to resolve into disconnected parts a book so perfect in its plan, and which has come down to us by the unanimous testimony of antiquity in its present form, is a most uncritical procedure.

7.  Job plainly belonged to the patriarchal period.  This appears from his longevity.  He lived after his trial a hundred and forty years (42:16), and must have been then considerably advanced in life.  This points to a period as early as that of Abraham.  To the same conclusion we are brought by the fact that no form of idolatry is mentioned in the book, but only the worship of the heavenly bodies.  The simplicity of the patriarchal age appears, moreover, in all its descriptions.  But we need not from this infer that the book was written in the patriarchal age, for the author may have received from the past the facts which he records.  The book is written in pure Hebrew, with all the freedom of an original work, and by one intimately acquainted with both Arabic and Egyptian scenery.  Some have supposed Moses to be the author, but this is very uncertain.  The prevailing opinion of the present day is that it was written not far from the age of Solomon.

8.  There is no ground for denying that the book of Job has a foundation of true history.  He is mentioned by Ezekiel with Noah and Daniel as a real person.  Ezek. 14:14, 20.  The apostle James also refers to the happy issue of his trials as a historic event calculated to encourage God’s suffering children.  Jas. 5:11.  But we need not suppose that all the details of the book are historic.  The inspired poet takes up the great facts of Job’s history and the great arguments connected with them, and gives them in his own language; probably also, to a certain extent, according to his own arrangement.  The scene of the first two chapters is laid in heaven.  Undoubtedly they record a real transaction; but it may be a transaction revealed to the author in an allegorical form, like Micaiah’s vision (1 Kings 22:19-22), that it might be thus made level to human apprehension.

II.  THE PSALMS.