Merv,
I hope you haven’t lost sleep waiting for this. I’m not sure I’ve even addressed what you intended in my notes below. Feel free to ask further.
A couple of prefatory things:
I spent time over the last few days looking over Job 32-38, then I looked back over Job’s parts in the previous chapters and God’s reply at the end. I never located what I thought sounded like the relevant discussion in the Forum, so I decided not to spend more time looking, and just get reading and take some notes. It was good to dig into the book. I don’t remember the last time I’ve heard sermons on the book, and I don’t remember doing anything much more with it than just reading it through, when I read through the OT. So, thanks for asking about it. That may have been the most fruitful part of this exchange.
I read Job as a theological work, not as a biographical piece. Perhaps there was an actual person, on whose experiences this book is based, but I think it’s irrelevant to the purpose of the book. The book showscases an ideal man in a worst-case-scenerio of suffering, and provides for our analysis the responses of Job, 4 “Concerned Individuals” and God himself, assuming that the writer has leave to write for God.
I didn’t do any background study on this. I just dove right in to the text.
Here are some things I noticed:
Unlike the other three friends, Elihu rebukes Job for repeated sin, that Job actually commits with his words throughout his discourse. The other friends conclude that Job must have sinned, because he was suffering. Elihu doesn’t so much seek to explain a cause and effect relationship, and therefore way of escape from the suffering, but rather that Job’s response to it is the problem.
I don’t have any strong feeling about whether Elihu was intended to be rebuked or not, but I think his points are different from Jobs other friends. If I had to choose, I’d say he probably wasn’t required to come back and repent. But I probably would never have noticed that detail anyway. However, reading it now, he almost appears like the warm up band for God himself.
More detailed but pared down notes from Elihu’s section of Job:
Chapter 33
Elihu frames Job’s complaint in a nutshell: “I am righteous, yet God counts me as an enemy and will not answer me.”
Then he describes two ways that God does speak to men (not just Job) and for a purpose, although they don’t percieve it:
- (33:15-18) Through terrifying visions at night, which are intended to cause a man to change his deeds and conceal his pride, and in doing so protect his life.
- (33:19-28) Through intense physical suffering, which is intended “to declare to man what is right for him” and ultimately lead the man to repentance AND redemption/restoration.
I don’t think the other friends talked about a relationship between repentance, redemption and restoration in this way. They were focused on getting health and wealth back.
Chapter 34
Elihu addresses Job’s claim that it profits a man nothing that he should take delight in God, saying that Job is accusing God of wickedness and the perversion of justice, and claiming that God is unfit to rule his own world.
Elihu then applies this argument regarding men in general to Job in 31-33:
"For has anyone said to God, ‘I have borne punishment; I will not offend any more; teach me what I do not see; if I have done iniquity, I will do it no more’?
Will he then make repayment to suit you, because you reject it?
In Chapter 35, Elihu expands on Job’s question: How am I better off than if I had sinned? In vs 6 and 7 Elihu points out that man’s righteousness and sinfulness make no real difference to God, as God has no needs. However in vs 9 - Elihu shows that human wickedness leads to oppression of other people, but even in that suffering, “There they cry out, but he does not answer, because of the pride of evil men” (v. 12).
In Chapter 36, Elihu contrasts the way of the righteous and the wicked. God does NOT take his eyes form the righteous as Job repeatedly accuses. He uses suffering to open their ears to instruction, and restore them if they listen, or let them perish by the sword if they don’t, they suffer.
Elihu also gives Job some very stern warnings. “Beware lest wrath entice you into scoffing, and let not the greatness of the ransom turn you aside.” And “Take care; do not turn to iniquity, for this you have chosen rather than affliction.”
Throughout the section, Elihu talks about specific sins general to man, but also applies them to Job. So, I think the reading you mentioned earlier would make sense, at least the way I’m reading the text.
PS: [I’d like to think more about how the methods of thinking differ between Elihu and Job’s other three friends, but that is for another time, I think. But here I’ll note that all three seem to attempt to work from observations. But the way they develop/establish the patterns from observations, on which they base their conclusions, seems to be different.]
PPS: [I’d like to look more at “the mediator” that Job mentions. It’s common to a lot of Protestants to focus heavily on this mediator in Job.]
PPPS: [I recognize that Horton comes from a tradition that deliberately seeks to see Christ and the Gospel in every book of the Bible. While I like the idea, I’m not convinced that it always works. It’s something else I will be engaging with more directly in a PCA church. So there will be time to learn more about it and draw more informed conclusions.]
and I didn’t know for sure it would come with a side of humor. 
