Question: In the story of Job, who was Elihu, and why did he go un-reprimanded?
Wikipedia: Elihu (Hebrew: אֱלִיהוּא ’Elihu) is a critic of Job and his three friends in the Hebrew Bible's Book of Job. He is said to have been the son of Barachel and a descendant of Buz, who may have been from the line of Abraham (Genesis 22:20–21 mentions Buz as a nephew of Abraham).
Google; What was Job's complaint to God?
Job complains that God has no good reason for permitting the evil that befalls him. He believes that God doesn't have a good reason because he, Job, can't imagine what that reason might be.
What is the purpose of Elihu in Job?
Rather than stressing the idea that suffering is a punishment for sinful actions, Elihu concentrates on Job's sinful reaction to his undeserved suffering. Job, he says, reacts by questioning the justice of God's ways and, indeed, takes a perverse pride in so doing.
Let the day perish in which I was born... [Job 3: 3a]1 ...he crushes me with a tempest, and multiplies my wounds without cause; he will not let me get my breath, but fills me with bitterness ... though I am blameless, he would prove me perverse. [9: 17-18,2ob] ... therefore I say, he destroys both the blameless and the wicked. When disaster brings sudden death, he mocks at the calamity of the innocent. [g: 22] I call aloud, but there is no justice. [19: 7 b]
Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind. Who is this that darkens counsel without knowledge?... Where were you when I laid the foundations of the Earth? ... when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy? [38: 1-2, 4a, 7]
Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook, or press down its tongue with a cord? Can you put a rope in its nose, or pierce its jaw with a hook?
How does Elihu Characterize job's problem? Elihu claims that job is misunderstanding God.
He teaches that God is supreme, and that one must acknowledge and submit to that supremacy because of God's wisdom. He draws instances of benignity from, for example, the constant wonders of creation and of the seasons. Elihu's speeches finish abruptly, and he disappears "without a trace", at the end of Chapter 37.
The reason that God did not rebuke Elihu is because he spoke the truth about Job's condition, unlike Job's three friends.
In Chapter 42 Job repents for his attitude, and lack of faith and understanding. The Chapter concludes (vs. 12–17) with the Lord blessing the latter days of Job more than the beginning!
Job 32:9 in Other Translations
Sometimes the aged do not understand justice. The experts have no corner on wisdom; getting old doesn't guarantee good sense. It is not [only] the old who are wise or the elderly who understand how to judge.
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