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When Elihu finally finished clearing his throat and turned to Job's concerns beginning in 33:8, his major point was that God was trying to say something to Job through his terrible distress but that Job had been unable, as of yet, to hear what God was saying. God spoke possibly through dreams and visions (33:15-18) or bodily pain (33:19-22). More striking, however, was Elihu's reference to "an angel, a mediator, one of a thousand (v.23)" as the means by which God spoke. By invoking such a figure, Elihu not only affirmed Job's fondest hope (19:23-27), but subtly redefined the nature and role of the expected mediator.

Declaring a Person Upright

In chapter 19, Job calls the mediator "My Redeemer" ('goel'). The 'goel' in the Hebrew tradition was a vindicator of a family's right when it had been evicted unjustly from land, when a childless woman relative needed an heir, or even when someone's death needed avenging. The vindicator was a fearful figure, utterly committed to the welfare of the kinsman. For Elihu the mediator plays a "softer" role. To be sure, the mediator "declares a person upright (33:23)," thus affirming a continuity with Job's hope, and "is gracious to that person" urging God to "deliver him from going down into the Pit," because the mediator has found a "ransom" to help his client (33:24-25).

In addition, the mediator will enable "his flesh to become fresh with youth (33:26)." He prays to God, "let him return to the days of his youthful vigor (33:26)." Not only can one hear the indistinct echoes of Job's hope in 19:26, where "after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God," but Elihu has construed Job's words in a more favorable way that even Job did. No bodily destruction is here envisioned. In fact, Elihu's words sound strikingly like those most hopeful words of that most hopeful prophet, the so-called Deutero-Isaiah, who was writing at that time, when he says with unmatched eloquence, "Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up wiht wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint (Is. 40:31)."

One Difference

There is one significant way, however, where Elihu not only gently nudges Job to a fuller understanding of the mediator but also lays on Job a responsibility that is currently beyond Job's capacity: to ask for forgiveness. Elihu says, "You will pray to him, and he will hear you, and you will pay your vows (33:27)." What Elihu means by this is indicated in the next few verses, where the one restored not only prays to God and is accepted but also sings to others and confesses his perversion of the right (33:26-27). The restored person is the grateful person (33:28), who was redeemed from going down to the Pit and whose life "shall see the light (33:28)."

The role of the mediator for Elihu, therefore, is not simply to be a vindicator and possibly wreak havoc on the enemies of Job but to exhort Job to pray and perform sacrifice. As a sign that Elihu has rightly read the divine mind, when Job actually is restored in chapter 42, he is commanded by God to offer up prayers for the friends as they offer sacrifices to God (42:8-9).

Elihu has done something far more sophisticated than Job's three friends. Not only has he genuinely heard Job, as indicated by the accurate quotation of Job's actual words, but he channels Job's hope in a direction that both utiliizes Job's image and refines it in a theologically sophisticated manner. Elihu's subsequent critical words of Job to the friends and to Job himself are to be understood in the context of Elihu's hope for Job: a hope that outstrips the dyspeptic and unrealistic expressions of hope of the three friends.