Page "Book of Job" Paragraph 47

The status of Elihu's interrupting didactic sermon is brought further into question by his extremely sudden appearance and disappearance from the text.

He is not mentioned in Job 2: 11, in which Job's friends are introduced, nor is he mentioned at all in the epilogue, 42: 7-10, in which God expresses anger at Job's friends.

It is suggested that had Elihu appeared in the original source, his spirited and virtuous defence of the divine right to punish would have been rewarded by God in the conclusion, or at the very least mentioned.

Additionally, Elihu's first spoken words are a confession of his youthful status, being much younger than the three canonical friends, including a claim to be speaking because he cannot bear to remain silent ; it has been suggested that this interesting statement may have been symbolic of a " younger " ( that is to say, later and interpolating ) writer, who has written Elihu's sermon to respond to what he views as morally and theologically scandalous statements being made within the book of Job, and creating the literary device of Elihu to provide what seemed to be a faith-based response to further refute heresy and provide a counter-argument, a need partially provided by God's ambiguous and unspecific response to Job at the end of the book.