Who was Elihu?

If you read my previous post on literary shaping in the Bible, you know that some books of the Bible show evidence of having a purposeful literary shaping. Or at least, you know that I think that.

The book of Job moves along with Job’s complaint, a friend’s response. Lather, rinse, repeat. That’s a particular literary formality. Job makes a final complaint. And then …

And then we get to the monologue of Elihu.

Elihu wasn’t one of Job’s “original” friends. By that, I mean that he was not one of the three who came to comfort him at the end of chapter 2. Those 3 were specifically rebuked by God in chapter 42. But not Elihu. Why?

My opinion is this: Elihu represents the way Job thought as a young man, full of grand ideas about God, many of which were true. If I am right, then through Elihu’s mouth, we learn that Job thought that God would reward his obedience with prosperity, or at least by preventing destitution. Before the hammer fell on him, Job thought that his prosperity was the only sign of God’s favor. But Job was subjected to soul-crushing hardship.

So Elihu wasn’t rebuked directly by God because Job’s condition was Elihu’s rebuke.

But like the Psalmist in Psalm 119:67 — perhaps even giving the idea to the psalmist who fleshed it out under the guidance of the Holy Spirit — Job finds meaning in God’s rebuke, even after his world crashes in on him.

One other observation: Like Jesus, Job learned obedience in what he suffered (Hebrews 5:8). In this way, Job forecasts our savior. And as Jesus told us in Matthew 5, even being scorned and persecuted by others can be a sign of God’s favor.

What do you think?

The shape of some books of the Bible

A handful of books in the Bible show some evidence of literary shaping. Please understand: I absolutely do not mean that they are in any way other than the inspired Word of God. At the same time, because of how inspiration works, even the literary shaping of the parts of the Bible that show this evidence is done by inspiration.
Which books show this shaping? I submit that at least the books of Ruth, Esther, Job, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs (a/k/a Song of Solomon), and Jonah.
Other books, the letters of the New Testament, the historical books of the Old Testament, the prophets, show other signs of shaping, but here I am thinking about the shaping of the books as literature, not, for instance, by subject grouping (as in, e.g., Isaiah). The Psalms are a special case, as are (probably) the Proverbs. There we have a kind of internal logic that doesn’t amount to literary shaping in the same way.
What about the Gospels? Each was written with a distinct first-century audience in mind, but they flow more like histories than like something you would study in a literature class.
What do you think?

The Best Of Times

Just listened to the Dream Theater album called Black Clouds and Silver Linings. Had to cry after the song “The Best Of Times.” The writer, Mike Portnoy, wrote it about his father, how they had a close relationship, and about getting the call that his father had been diagnosed with cancer.

I didn't have the closeness with my father that he described, but I remember when the call came …