What to Make of Elihu’s Counsel to Job
I’ve spent the past several months reading the Bible cover-to-cover seeking to discern the Bible’s teaching on traumatic-suffering and embodied-souls. So far I’ve studied Genesis 1 to Psalms 150. I have over 400 pages of single-spaced typed notes.
I have eighty-five pages of notes on the Book of Job alone. As part of my study of Job, I’ve collated over four dozen examples of poor counseling from Job’s miserable counselors. I hope to summarize that material into a couple of blog posts at some point in the future.
Like others, I’ve wondered where Elihu (Job 32-37) fits into the picture. Is he a worthy model of a wise counselor? Or, is he a prime example of how not to counsel? Or, perhaps he is a mixture of both good/wise and bad/foolish counsel?
In Eric Ortlund’s book on Job, Piercing Leviathan, He notes that some commentators have assessed Elihu positively, while others have evaluated Elihu’s counsel negatively. Ortlund then lists about a dozen reasons why he sees Elihu’s counsel as unwise and unhelpful.
Christopher Ash, in his book, Job: The Wisdom of the Cross, notes that “almost every commentary is skeptical about Elihu,
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