Elihu has been very diversely estimated. As Dr. Davidson says, “a great deal of bad language has been discharged at Elihu.” He has been called “a bombastic chattering trifler,” and “a conceited stripling.” Jerome says that he is afflicted with a shallow, scientific dilettantism and faith-opposing philosophy. Others maintain that he only throws new darkness over a subject which was beginning to clarify itself, and that, without an idea of his own, he begins to pillage speeches of all preceding speakers, in order to hide his own hollowness. The Jews identified him with Balaam; and the Testament of Job says that Elihu was imbued with the spirit of Satan. But in recent times a more favourable estimate has been formed of him; and it is now maintained that while the poetry of the Elihu speeches does not reach the same level as that of the Dialogue, yet his discourses certainly “contain no Satanic poison,” but rather the germ of ideas which form an essential part of Christian teaching.
Elihu agreed with the friends in connecting all human suffering with sin. He agreed with them further in connecting all suffering with personal sin in the sufferer. He disagreed with them in connecting suffering with the nature's deep sinfulness, not its mere sins. And thus, further, he disagreed with them in the view he took of the purpose of suffering; it was not penalty, but chastisement; not the weapon of God's anger, but the instrument for many purposes of His love. With Job he agreed in his estimate of the awful Omnipotence of God, and the ultimate inscrutability of His ways. But he disagreed with him by denying this inscrutability to be absolute; and by denying God to be mere power-He is power with goodness, God is mighty, but contemns not. Omnipotence and condescension appear in all His works. This on one side furnishes a clue to the meaning of affliction-it comes not in anger but in love. On the other side the clue is furnished by man's nature; affliction is for sin. There is enough in man's nature to deserve and account for all he suffers; there is enough visible of God in His general providence to demonstrate that suffering flows from His infinite goodness. To this Job has nothing to answer; his conscience proclaims its concurrence by his silence.
With regard to the final end of Job's sufferings, Elihu was right so far in giving them a reference immediately to the sin of Job's heart, for no doubt they had such a reference-Job was purified and elevated by them; but his view was defective when he saw only this relation. Neither he nor the friends ever rose to the conception of Providence as a great scheme, or of the Universe as a great unity. God's dealings, in their view, with an individual took rise and took end with the individual; far-reaching and subtle influences of one creature on multitudes of his fellow-creatures, of one order of creatures on the fate of another order, they dreamed not of. And thus Elihu does not solve the immediate problem of Job's sorrows; he knows their cause no better than the friends or Job himself. But yet he solves what is mainly the problem of sorrow, he contributes enough to satisfy all sufferers, to silence and compose all complaint under suffering.
As related to the subsequent theophany, the conception of Elihu's character is not without a certain grim humour, apparent especially in the sharply accentuated contrast between his extravagant pretensions at the beginning and his ludicrous abasement at the end.1 [Note: J. F. Genung, Job, 81.]
