I’m a little confused about what God would think of Elihu. Even though he’s younger than Job’s three “friends”, he seems a little wiser and knows more about God. Yet he was arrogant, inconsistent, misrepresented Job’s words, called Job a fool, etc. Then at the end of Job, God scolded Job’s three friends but said nothing about Elihu. So I’m not sure what to think about him. I can’t find commentary on him. Does anyone have any thoughts or links to other resources?
Part of the reason I ask is because an author of a book I’m reviewing writes, “While the first three friends give bad advice, Elihu generally seems to be speaking for the Lord.” That kind of took me by surprise.
Try this location http://www.bookofjob.org in the section The Truth About God No One Wanted to Know.
Elihu is an intentionally false climax, tempting the reader to premature judgement that Job is wrong.
God will say Job is right in what he said about God (God caused his suffering, he deserves an explanation why). Elihu says Job is wrong in what he said about God. Therefore, Elihu is wrong, like Job’s friends. Why no specific condemnation? Elihu probably has fled the scene or is below the age of accountability.
That’s great Robert. Thanks.
Jeff
I have been searching EVERYWHERE on commentary on Elihu. There IS lots of commentary, but most say Elihu was right in condemning Job. Some are not sure. Your response lines up with my understanding of Job’s predicament. Here’s what stands out like a sore thumb to me. Job’s friends are actually “debating” with a sorely suffering, anguished Job. Pointing arrows at him and firing them. In addition, they were spouting off pious platitudes. This includes Elihu. I can’t imagine how much horror this added to Job’s suffering.
@robert sutherland
If Elihu was wrong, why didn’t Job defend himself? Nobody seems to ask this.
Job defended himself from the 3 friends accusation but not when Elihu started speaking. Elihu even challenge Job in Job 33:5 to take his stand if he can answer Elihu which Job didn’t.
God himself strengthen what Elihu told Job and God did not give an answer to Job for his suffering at all.
Furthermore you are just speculating then Elihu fled the scene or below the age of accountability. God is omnipotent, no one can hide from Him.
If Job was right in all his doing, why did God directed the question to Job not Elihu if in fact Elihu was wrong? (Job 38:1-3)
Again if Job was right why did he uttered this word in Job 42:3
Why did Job not respond to Elihu?
He didn’t have to. Job’s Oath of Innocence is a complete and final response to all challengers. It would have been accepted by all human courts as a definitive statement on the matter. That’s just the nature of the ancient Oath of Innocence lawsuit. For Elihu to question that Oath and say it is wrong is for Elihu to risk damnation.
Why did God direct his questions to Job rather than Elihu?
This requires an understanding of the Oath of Innocence. Through five key speeches, Job turns his cry for justice into a demand through an Oath of Innocence. This was a self-contained lawsuit involving a summary trial in absentia and two default judgments. No formal court was required since the oath made God himself the court. No summons was required since the oath dispensed with it. No witnesses were required since the testimony of the deponent was all that was needed.
(a) Job’s statement of claim is a simple one. God is the author of underserved evil in the world and must explain himself. He has deprived Job and humankind of the reason why. (Job 27:2)
(b) Job’s proof of his claim is a lengthy positive (Job 29:2-25) and negative confession (Job 31:1-40)
(c) Job’s enforcement of his claim is through a summary default mechanism. If God does not appear or appearing does not give a morally sufficient answer for evil in the world, then two judgments issue. The first is called “vindication”, a finding of causal responsibility that Job and humankind are not responsible for much of the evil that befalls them but God is. The second is called “condemnation”, a finding of moral blameworthiness attaches to that causal responsibility. The first is automatic; the second is something Job must pronounce by way of a curse. And God guaranteed he would execute that curse. (1 Kings 8:31-32; 2 Chronicles 6:22-23)
This is high drama: an appeal to God, through God and against God for crimes against humanity. Job has set in motion the legal machinery to condemn God if no sufficient answer is forthcoming.
To the astonishment of all God appears, but cannot give a reason for his actions based on the restrictions created in his trial with Satan. If he tells Job the reason for his suffering, then he defeats his own purpose in the creation of humankind: the creation of selfless love. He would be giving Job a reason to continue to love him. He has to be harsh. He enters into a strategy of indirection.
(a) In his first speech to Job, God suggests the existence of purpose and providence through the language of constancy and control. (Job 38:4-39:30)
(b) In his second speech to Job, God suggest the existence of purpose in evil through the image of Leviathan. Leviathan is Isaiah’s name for a cross-cultural symbol of the moral evil that strikes at the heart of creation. It is deeply poetic image with extensive ties to the Babylonian and Canaanite literatures that preceded it. God admits to creating that evil. (Job 40:15,19) But the image carries much more with it. Isaiah used Leviathan as a moral metaphor for an apocalyptic end of the world when God would destroy and explain all evil including Leviathan. (Isaiah 25:6-9; 27:1; 28:9-13; 29:18-21; 30:18-21) God wants Job to pick up on that hint and his description of Leviathan (Job 41:1-7) draws heavily on Isaiah’s messianic banquet when Leviathan is served as the main course.
God rests his case, having hinted at the existence of a defense but having never presented it. In doing so, God opens himself to the condemnation that is the second part of the enforcement mechanism of Job’s Oath of Innocence. But God also puts Job and us to the ultimate test: will we condemn God (a finding of moral blameworthiness) so that we ourselves might be justified (a finding of causal non-responsibility)? (Job 40:8)
Job elects not to condemn God but to continue to worship him.
(a) He intuits the existence of a hidden purpose in evil based on God’s presentation of the image of Leviathan. (Job 42:2)
(b) He despises the premature judgment of condemning God before God has had a chance to present his case more fully. He melts to his knees in worship. (Job 42:6a) The Hebrew here “em’as” means both “despise” and “melt”.
(c) He changes course. He chooses not to condemn God. He is comforted in his own vindication and delays any condemnation of God. (Job 42:6b) The Hebrew here “naham” does not mean confession of sin, but rather “change in action” and “comfort”.
(d) He adjourns the matter to the Day of the Final Judgment to hear from his Redeemer a third time. (Job 42:6b) This was the original trial date set for an answer. (Job 19:25-29) And Job is content to postpone any consideration of a final condemnation of God to that date. He continues the lawsuit. The image of “dust and ashes” builds on Abraham’s ongoing challenge with God. (Genesis 18:20-23) Job will neither prematurely condemn God nor acquit God. Job will neither deny his moral need to know nor his legal right to know. He grants God an adjournment of his defense. He will not “condemn” God prematurely, so that he himself might be “justified” or “vindicated”. (Job 40:8) In the meantime, he will continue to selflessly love, trusting that answers will be forthcoming. This is the moral integrity and selfless love for which the world was created.
Through the Oath of Innocence and Job’s nuanced submission, the author is making a profound point in his theodicy.
(a) God has a duty to give the answer. That duty is rooted in the goodness of God. God has created human beings with certain natural needs, including the need for truth. God has to provide a reasonable possibility that those needs can be fulfilled for it is self-evidently true that “ought implies can”. Otherwise, God is contradicting himself. God does not have any obligations to human beings prior to their creation. But once God creates humankind with certain needs, God acquires certain duties of care. They are duties he owes to himself and to men and women.
(b) But God does not have the duty to give the answer right now. That is because the right to know is not an inalienable and indefeasible right. A right is inalienable or indefeasible if it cannot be “given up”, “taken away”, “deferred” or “overridden”, without a moral wrong being committed. Very few rights are inalienable and indefeasible in that sense. There are perhaps only three such rights: the rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Those three rights can never be given up, taken away, deferred or overridden, without human nature itself being destroyed. The right to know the truth can be overridden or deferred in certain circumstances. Such circumstances exist where the disclosure of the truth would interfere with the pursuit or possession of a more important good. Selfless love is posited as such a real good. Time is required for the development of that good. Any premature disclosure of that truth is overridden by that higher good. The ultimate disclosure of that truth is deferred to the time at which that good is complete. Truth is never denied as being a real good. If truth were not regarded as a good, then that denial would constitute a moral wrong. It is just that the timing of the disclosure of the truth has some flexibility to it. Since selfless love is posited as a real good justifying the deferral of the truth behind evil in the world for an entire human life, the appropriate time for that disclosure is the moment of death, or a short time thereafter in a resurrection and a Final Judgment on the life one has lived.
This understanding of the nature of the right to know the truth is what underlies God’s failure to answer Job’s complaint and what underlies Job’s adjournment of the lawsuit. It is what allows both God and Job to be right.
Job is declared by God to be the only one who has spoken “rightly” about God. (Job 42:7-8) The Hebrew here “kuwn” means “to establish as right or true”. “The root meaning is to bring something into being with the consequence that its existence is a certainty.” It does not carry with it any nuance of “sincerity” such that God might be understood to be excusing Job for speaking “sincerely”, but “incorrectly”. God is saying Job spoke “correctly”. Through his Oath of Innocence, Job has established with certainty two points.
(a) First, God is the author of evil in the world and that evil is undeserved.
(b) Second, human beings have a right and need to know what why God has sent evil into the world.
That is the judgment of God. It is a stumbling block for many a reader.
I enjoyed reading these comments. I don’t think that God was offended by Job’s complaints. Here is another take why God scolded Job:
http://godscharacter.com/article.php/20120206164916990
“…we needn’t be too afraid of questionings and expostulations:it was the impatience of Job not the theodicies of Elihu that were pleasing to God. Does He like us to ‘stand up to Him’ a bit?” CS Lewis