Path: christian Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian From: Subject: Purpose of Elihu in JOB? Organization: Penn State University Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu I have been study the story of Job and have come upon some serious questions - if anyone can answer these, I would be grateful.... What is the purpose of Elihu in Job? Does Job really question the authority of God, or do you feel he merely asks what he did wrong? The book of Job must be a patchwork of many texts - Elihu's passage must be one. Does anyone k now about the significance of this historical "patchworking?" Thanks - you can email me at blb122@psuvm.psu.edu [Like most questions of composite authorship, this claim is controversial. The scholars I've read don't say it's a "patchwork". That implies to me many different pieces. However some do believe Elihu's speeches were added later, by someone who didn't exactly share the perspective of the original author. I can see why some think it's not entirely consistent, but I find it more useful to take the book as a whole. In past discussions here, we've seen several attitudes towards Job. My personal opinion is that the book takes a basically positive attitude towards Job's questions. After all, in the prose section at the end, it is Job that is justified, in contrast to his friends. But why? Does this mean that the author is endorsing doubt and challenging God? I suspect so, in some limited way. At the very least, it seems to endorse being honest about your doubts, rather than accepting trite answers. But it seems to me that in some sense it's about what kind of understanding we can come to of God. On the surface it really does look like Job is doing the two things you mention: questioning God's authority, and asking (really, demanding) to know what he did wrong. But I think what he's really after -- though perhaps he himself doesn't even know quite what it is -- is deeper than that. After all, his friends to try provide what he asked for. They try to answer questions about God's authority, and they try to find something he did wrong. But that's not what he really wants. What he wants is an understanding of God at a personal and emotional level, of a kind that will allow him to come to trust God. And I think that's what the final confrontation with God does. As an intellectual answer, the final chapters don't say a lot. At a superficial level, God simply says "look how powerful I am -- you can't question me" and Job gives up. But the underlying emotional tone, and the impliciations in the epilog, don't seem to be consistent with that sort of brush-off. I think what Job is given is a vision of God's nature and purposes. And that changes everything for him. He repents. But I don't think that means he regrets his challenge and just gives up. Rather, I think it means that he finally understands God well enough to understand that he had been asking the wrong questions. But I don't see that as a complete condemnation of his previous questioning. Yes, he had been asking the questions that were in some ways wrong. But in the ways that mattered, he had been right -- certainly more right than his friends. He had been right not to give up trying to make sense out of what God was doing, but to insist on confronting him. To me, Job is an encouragement of honesty in our relationships with God. In an ultimate sense, doubt and anger at God are inappropriate responses to him. But there are times when these things are almost inevitable. What Job says to me is that in circumstances like that, it's better to shout at God than to accept the easy answers that so many people offer. God can deal with our anger, and help us come to a better understanding. It's much harder for him to deal with someone who pretends that nothing is wrong. Now actually, I think some of Elihu's points about the role of suffering are good ones. Clearly Job's friends have taken a far too simple view of reward an punishment, and Elihu's view is more sophisticated. If what you want are answers to the problem of suffering, I think Elihu's speeches are worth looking at. But they don't answer Job, because in the final analysis Job isn't after a philosophical answer to the problem of suffering -- he's after a personal grasp of God, not philosophy. This is why I always have an ambiguous reaction to Elihu -- he often seems right, but irrelevant to Job's problems. One can of course write it off as a later insertion. But I think it actually does make a certain dramatic sense. During the first part of the book, the author is clearly rejecting oversimplified answers to evil. In Elihu's speeches, I think we no longer have something that's oversimplified. Indeed I think the author probably agrees with much of it. The fact that they don't settle things for Job, and he still goes on to confront God is not necessarily a condemnation of the answers. Rather it may be an indication that even a more sophisticated set of answers doesn't necessarily help people. In some situations it's not intellectual answers that people need. But I have to say that Job is a book that defies neat analysis. --clh]