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Graviora. 573 to the records of such facts. The fourth friend, Elihu, though he reproves Job with faithful unexaggerating severity, for justifying himself rather than God, is not blamed with the other three in chap. xlii. 7. The reason of this is, I believe, to be gathered from internal evidence. It could not be said of Elihu, as he said of the three " miserable comforters," that he " had found no answer, and yet had condemned Job." The key to. that poor man's unmitigated misery, is to be found in the ninth chapter, verses 32-35 ; where we learn that, though he feared God and eschewed evil, though he knew that his Redeemer lived, and predicted his advent* to this world, and the resurrection of his own body, yet he did not know the Lord in the gracious and indispensable character of Mediator; and, in fact, in the 35 verse, expressly declares that there is no one to act that part. Elihu, in chap, xxxiii., 6, 7, announces himself as supplying Job's desideratum, in terms which seem to me, to render him pre-eminently a type of Messiah, the One Mediator ; who, being also made out of the clay, i.e., a man as Job was, according to his wish, could, by his divine nature, lay his hand on both, and thus act the part of " daysman " (arbiter or mediator) between him and the God whose awful holiness the temporarily convicted sinner, in that sorrowful ninth chapter, dreads as an insurmountable obstacle to his justification, notwithstanding his utmost efforts to purify and commend himself. At the close of the chapter, Elihu further sets forth the doctrine of a ran¬ som (or atonement, margin) so plainly (for these early times), that the " gospel according to Elihu," might be spoken of with quite as much propriety as Isaiah. To * " At the latter day " seems, compared with Zech. xiv. 41, to point to the second advent.