The name Elihu refers to three persons
mentioned in several books of the Bible (for example, 1 Samuel 1:1and 1 Chronicles
12:20). The most well-known of these is Elihu “the son of Barachel the Buzite of
the family of Ram,” from the Bible book of Job (32:2). It is ironically the
case, however, since from the story of Elihu in the book of Job it does not appear to
have ever been Elihu’s intention to become a figure of such renown. As we will see,
he is compelled into his role for a very important reason.
Before giving attention to the actions
of Elihu and thereby becoming better acquainted with him I will provide some of
the story’s context so we can better understand Elihu and the things he says. As
the characters to this story are introduced it should become immediately apparent
just how serious a context it was in which Elihu was forced to act.
The Book of Job, the date and authorship
of which is uncertain, tells the history of a man named Job from the “land of Uz”
(1:1). The exact location of Uz is unknown, though the Watchtower Society’s Bible
encyclopedia Insight on the Scriptures, volume 2,
page 1145, under “Uz,”
gives a reasonable explanation for thinking that Uz was “E[ast] of the Promised
Land and near Edom, somewhere in N[orth] Arabia.”
Job was a man whom Satan (a being
who appeared before God together with God’s “sons” [1:6]) ‘set his heart upon’ because
Job was “blameless and upright,
fearing God and turning aside from bad” (Job 1:7, 8). It appears from the story
that Job’s righteous character presented Satan with an opportunity to challenge
the basis for Job’s integrity and loyalty to God. Indeed, after God referred to
the good character of Job, Satan spoke to Jehovah and said, “For a change, thrust
out your hand, please, and touch everything he has [and see] whether he will not
curse you to your very face.”
It appears, then, that Satan saw in
the person of Job a chance to make a point that ultimately must have had something
to do with Satan’s view of man and those who serve God. Jehovah must have seen something
in Satan’s challenge that was important enough in the greater scheme of things at
that time to let the proposed test take place. But Jehovah himself refused to be
the one responsible for such wicked treatment of his servant. Yet, because of the
heavenly order put in place by Jehovah and perhaps also because of man’s ability
since Adam’s and Eve’s sins to know good from bad (Genesis 3:22) this level of testing
was permitted before God and before his “sons.”
After receiving authority from Jehovah
to test Job against everything but “him himself,” Satan proceeds to “touch everything”
Job had, from the lives of his attendants (1:15, 16, 17), to his cattle, she-asses,
sheep, and camels (1:13-17), even to the lives of his sons and his daughters (1:18).
Satan took all of them away and then waited to see what Job would think of Jehovah
as a result of what Satan had actually done.
When these losses were not enough
to cause Job to ‘curse God to his very face,’ Satan extended the challenge further
to that which Jehovah had previously denied him, that is, against the person of
Job himself. Satan contended that Job’s love for his own life would cause him to
curse Jehovah. Though Jehovah again refused to let Satan put Job’s life in danger,
he did allow Satan to touch Job as far as his “bone and his flesh” (2:5-6). Satan
then “struck Job with a malignant boil from the sole of his foot to the crown of
his head” (Job 2:7).
After all his losses, and now after
having been struck himself, Job proceeded to take a “fragment of earthenware with
which to scrape himself” and he sat “among the ashes” (2:8). But Job refused to
“curse God and die,” as even his own wife admonished him to do (2:9-10). Job would
not go that far, though he could not rightly understand what was happening to him
and he mistakenly believed that Jehovah was the cause of all his sufferings (16:11).
Eventually others heard of what had
befallen Job, and three of his “friends” (Hebrew: rea‘) came to visit him
(2:11). Eliphaz the Temanite, and Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite
came to ‘sympathize and comfort’ Job. But ‘they did not recognize him’ because of
what Satan had done (2:11-12). Nevertheless, like good friends “they kept sitting
with [Job] on
the earth seven days and seven nights, and there was no one speaking
a word to him, for they saw that the pain was very great” (2:13).
But unlike true friends their initial
sympathy and comfort could not endure Job’s attempts to explain his great losses
and affliction. Instead of turning aside only from Job’s self-righteousness (32:1)
Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar ‘did not speak what was truthful concerning Jehovah’
(42:7-8). It is in this context where Job struggles with his great affliction and
self-righteousness and where his three friends speak what is not truthful about
Jehovah in responding to Job, that Elihu speaks out.
Realizing that Job had “declared his
own soul righteous rather than God” (32:2) and that his three friends “had not found
an answer but [instead] proceeded to pronounce God wicked” (32:3), Elihu begins:
*** NWT Job 32:6-10 ***
While it is understandable that we
look to those accomplished in a particular field of study for insight on a matter,
to rely entirely on “scholars” or to show partiality to men or women just because
of their “title” is a mistake.
In considering Elihu’s role in this
story I personally would say it is also a mistake to let those who have received
or ‘bestowed upon themselves a title’ in a religious sense, such as “Dr.,” “Pastor,”
or anything but “brother” (Matthew 23:8), be exalted above anyone else. It is also
not appropriate to
call yourself “faithful and discreet” because it is a
cause for self-righteousness and a block to those seeking to be impartial.
Specific to Jehovah’s Witnesses, to
whom many IN MEDIO articles and Elihu Books’ publications refer, it is best to let
the judgment of who is a “faithful slave” and who is an “evil slave” remain with
the one qualified to make it, Jesus Christ. The Bible says clearly that Christ will
indeed make this judgment “when he comes” (Matthew 24:46; Greek: elthon).
It would be wrong for anyone to make that judgment for him and it would be self-righteous
for anyone to consider themselves “faithful and discreet” in any permanent way,
similar to the self-righteousness of Job.
This is the very trap Elihu sought
to avoid by choosing to defend Job only where he was in fact right before God and
by not allowing Job’s self-righteousness to take away from Jehovah’s greatness,
at all.
What matters most is not our “title”
or position relative to others or how we think of our selves. Instead we should
all the time speak to others in the light of what can reasonably be shown to be
true based on the best type and quality of reasons available. This is essentially
what Paul had in mind, I think, when he wrote: “For if anyone thinks he is something
when he is nothing, he is deceiving his own mind. But let each one prove what his
own work is” (Galatians 6:3, 4).
Elihu had a similar disposition. Thus,
he invited a response to his words knowing that he was no better than those to whom
he was about to speak:
*** NWT Job 33:5-7 ***
If you are able, make reply to me,
array [words] before me; do take your station. Look! I am to the [true] God just
what you are; from the clay I was shaped, I too. Look!
No frightfulness in me will
terrify you, and no pressure by me will be heavy upon you.
In speaking this way Elihu was able
to take the attention away from himself so that whatever he said only served to
highlight the righteousness and justice of Jehovah.
Like Elihu, then, those who
know and love Jehovah should not put “pressure” or a heavy burden on the shoulders
of anyone looking for answers. We are all “from the clay.”
But Job’s three friends only added
to Job’s burden by further arguing that God was the cause, even rightly so, for
the evils that had befallen Job. So also today many people in positions of responsibility
have created burdens and put “pressure” on others, refusing to have open discussion
like Elihu about questions of genuine concern. This has in many instances led some
to ‘set aside the commandment of God in order to retain their tradition’ (Mark 7:9).
Often those who act this way do so
because they perceive that they have a privileged position before God, appointed by him as his special messengers or representatives. Elihu knew that God has his
messengers. And he knew that those truly speaking for Jehovah would do so knowing
that God had rescued them “from going down into the pit” (Job 33:24). Elihu knew
what the attitude of any such messenger should be:
*** NWT Job 33:23-24, 27-28 ***
If there exists for him a messenger,
a spokesman, one out of a thousand, to tell to man his uprightness, then he favors
him and says, ‘Let him off from going down into the pit! I have found a ransom!
. . . He will sing to men and say, ‘I have sinned; and what is upright I have perverted,
and it certainly was not the proper thing for me. He has redeemed my soul from passing
into the pit, and my life itself will see the light.’
Keeping that perspective will prevent
anyone from thinking more of him- or herself than they ever should, especially if
such thoughts occur to anyone during their service to God. For the turning back
of man or woman from their sins and any enlightenment they receive thereafter is
by God alone, not of ourselves, as Elihu told Job:
*** NWT Job 33:29-30 ***
Look! All these things God performs,
two times, three times, in the case of an able-bodied man, to turn his soul back
from the pit, that he may be enlightened with the light of those living.
The resulting enlightenment should
never cause such persons to forget how close they came to “the pit,” and it should
moderate a person’s view of him- or herself in order to keep them from becoming
self-righteous.
Elihu knew that no matter how righteous
Job was before Satan’s tests that Job was indeed now headed toward “the pit,” because
he was “certainly on his way to companionship with practicers of what is hurtful”
(34:8). As a result of his condition Job had come to believe that it was ‘not profitable
to take pleasure in God’ (34:9). Elihu corrected him and rejected any suggestion
that Jehovah would “act wickedly” or “unjustly” (34:10).
Elihu lets the reasons for Job’s sufferings
remain entirely with the higher ways of God, without giving any direct cause. Elihu
knew that Job’s new perspective resulting from his great sufferings, one where he
now asked, “What benefit do I have more than by my sinning?” (35:3) was wrong no
matter how bad things had gotten:
*** NWT Job 35:5-7 ***
Look up to heaven and see, and behold
the clouds, [that] they are indeed higher than you. If you actually sin, what do
you accomplish against him? And [if] your revolts actually increase, what do you
do to him? If you are really in the right, what do you give him, or what does he
receive from your own hand?
If we choose to sin then the
results of it come back upon us. If we do righteousness then it, too, returns to
us. To think of either act as affecting God in any enduring way is foolish. He loves
us, but his love and his ways are higher than ours.
On the
other hand, Job’s and our responses
to Satan’s challenges apparently have a significant impact on his credibility and
either blunt or further his intentions in some respect realized in a greater sense
in the “realms above” (John 8:23). There is no doubt more going on than any of us
realize.
Again, the account of Job shows us
in part that it is Satan who challenges the basis for serving God perhaps to justify,
ultimately, his own desire not to do so. The account of Job further shows that there
is a tendency on the part of man to blame God for what we do not understand. But
in allowing Satan to bring
forth wickedness Jehovah provides an opportunity for
each of us to show who we truly are, even imperfectly, in a legal case before God
involving our
faith in the ‘ransom God has found’ for us in Jesus Christ (Job 33:24;
Acts 10:43). Every such trial from Job, to Christ Jesus, to you and me, and to any
“legal case with his people” (Micah 6:2) takes place before Jehovah:
*** NWT Job 35:14-15 ***
The legal case is before him, and
so you should wait anxiously for him. And now because his anger has not called for
an accounting, he has also not taken note of the extreme rashness.
There is always time to turn back
from our wickedness. There is always an opportunity to give up committing wrongs
in Jehovah’s name. Those who cannot allow for a change of heart will themselves
not be allowed one (Matthew 7:1-2). For those bearing Jehovah’s name it is imperative
that we seek him alone, not our own wisdom and righteousness. Job sought his own
righteousness, but he was also a prized servant of God. He simply lost sight of
what matters most: Jehovah.
Elihu never lost sight of this. He
was outraged at Job’s conduct and at the words of Job’s “friends.” All of them were
either too caught up in their own self-righteousness (Job) or they were unable to
speak truthfully about God (Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar).
Given their ‘wisdom in years’ these
four should have been the ones who spoke rightly about Jehovah. Instead it fell
to the younger Elihu to speak truthfully about God and convince Job in particular
that it was not God who “takes [us] for an enemy of his” (33:10); it is not Jehovah
who “puts [our] feet in the stocks” (33:11). But God does ‘let the testing go to
the limit’ (34:36), apparently so the judgment cannot be questioned.
Elihu finished his words to Job by
speaking about Jehovah’s “justice and abundance of righteousness” (37:23) and about
the fact that he “does not regard any who are wise in [their own] heart” (37:24).
After this, Elihu is not mentioned again and for good reason. After he finishes
Jehovah himself speaks to Job.
Though Job had been faithful to Jehovah
in an extraordinary way before his testing revealed his limitations, after his “own
eye” saw Jehovah in the windstorm Job ‘made a retraction’ and he ‘repented in dust
and ashes” (42:6). Job then prayed on behalf of his friends who spoke falsely about
Jehovah, and as a result Jehovah blessed Job and did not punish Eliphaz, Bildad,
or Zophar:
*** NWT Job 42:10 ***
And Jehovah himself turned back the
captive condition of Job when he prayed in behalf of his companions, and Jehovah
began to give in addition all that had been Job’s, in double amount.
Elihu Books was founded in part on
the spirit of Elihu. It was founded on the principle that Jehovah should be defended above all else: above ourselves, above those with titles, and even above Jehovah’s
own people. For who are they, without Jehovah? Who was Job, without Jehovah?
If Jehovah is spoken of falsely because
of any of God’s servants should they themselves not be spoken of truthfully so that
others do not behold their condition and say, ‘We have found wisdom and it is God
that drives [them] away, not a man?’ (32:13).
Defending Jehovah above all else as
Elihu did will keep us from thinking more of ourselves than we should. Defending
his people ‘in whose righteousness we take delight’ (Job 33:32) should only be done
if it does not ‘declare their or our own soul righteous rather than God.’—Job 32:2.
