Canter Bridge

For Elihu and his bombast, things are really very simple. Job is suffering. God brings suffering only upon those who deserve it. Therefore, Job must have sinned to deserve his wretched boils, his insufferable loss, his rude and public indignity.

When Elihu has freed himself of his alleged restraint, the words flow like a river in flood. A just God never had so enthusiastic an ally as this pubescent orator.

Job’s loud agony should cease, Elihu claims. He should simply shut up and swallow the bitter cup he has mixed for himself:

Would that Job were tried to the limit,
because his answers are those of the wicked.
For he adds rebellion to his sin;
he claps his hands among us,
and multiplies his words against God.

Ironically, those very multiplied words against God place the book’s suffering hero on a plane above the cheap, hyper-moral hysterics of Elihu and the three now-silent wordsmiths who preceded him. Job’s ‘multiplied words’ were directed against God. Elihu is quite right in this observation.

The others rattled on with ideological serenity about God and his placid governance of his world. The book has God little pleased about such monotone defense of his ways. Job’s textured groan, screams, and painful narrative win the heart of God in the end.

Here Elihu is quite wrong. This is not a time for Job to shut up and eat his peas. It is, rather, a time for the audible trauma of the ragged, shattered, oozing heart.

Elihu knows nothing of such untidy relationship, trapped as he is in the antiseptic urgency of appearing to be wise before his time.