The history of Queen Esther is of the time of the captivity; and therefore the writer must have been of the same time, or after it.

The book of Job hath no mark in it of the time wherein it was written; and though it appear sufficiently (Ezekiel 14:14, and James 5:11) that he was no feigned person; yet the book itself seemeth not to be a history, but a treatise concerning a question in ancient time much disputed, “why wicked men have often prospered in this world, and good men have been afflicted”; and this is the more probable, because from the beginning to the third verse of the third chapter, where the complaint of Job beginneth, the Hebrew is, as St. Jerome testifies, in prose; and from thence to the sixth verse of the last chapter, in hexameter verses; and the rest of that chapter again in prose. So that the dispute is all in verse; and the prose is added but as a preface in the beginning, and an epilogue in the end. But verse is no usual style of such, as either are themselves in great pain, as Job; or of such as come to comfort them, as his friends; but in philosophy, especially moral philosophy, in ancient time frequent.