and higher prosperity.  To show the unreasonableness of charging upon God injustice, he dwells at length upon his infinite majesty and greatness.  The special ground of Job’s trial, as given in the first two chapters, Elihu could not of course understand.  But his general position in regard to human afflictions is right; and it should be carefully noticed that their issue as described by him in the case of a good man—­an imperfectly good man under a system of grace—­is precisely what happens to Job when he humbles himself before his Maker.

As Elihu’s discourse was drawing towards a close, the signs of God’s approach had already began to manifest themselves (chap. 37).  Now he addresses Job out of the whirlwind, rebuking him for his presumptuous language, and setting before him His infinite perfections, manifested in the creation and government of the world, as a sufficient proof that to arraign His justice at the bar of human reason is folly and presumption.  Job now humbles himself unconditionally before his Maker.  Upon this God publicly justifies him to his three friends, while He condemns them, declaring that he has spoken of Him the thing which is right (42:8).  This is to be understood as referring not to the spirit manifested by Job, which God had sharply rebuked, but rather to the ground taken by him in respect to God’s dealings with men.  By God’s direction the three friends now offer sacrifices for their folly, which are accepted in answer to Job’s prayer in their behalf, and his former prosperity is restored to him in double measure.

6.  From the above sketch of the plan of the book its design is manifest.  It unfolds the nature of God’s providential government over men.  It is not simply retributive, as the three friends had maintained, so that the measure of a man’s outward sufferings is the measure of his sins; nor is it simply incomprehensible, so that there can be no reasoning about it; but it is disciplinary, in such a way that sorrow, though always the fruit of sin, comes upon good men as well as upon the wicked, being a fatherly chastisement intended for their benefit, and which, if properly improved, will in the end conduct them to a higher degree of holiness, and therefore of true prosperity and happiness.  The three friends were right in maintaining God’s justice; but with respect to the manner of its manifestation their error was fundamental.  Job’s view was right, but inadequate.  A disciplinary government, administered over a world in which the wicked and the imperfectly good live together, must be incomprehensible as it respects the particular distribution of good and evil.  Elihu was right in the main position, but he wanted authority.  The question was settled by God’s interposition not before the human discussion, nor without it, but after it; an interposition in which the three friends were condemned, Job approved, and the argument of Elihu left in its full force.