Elihu's Speeches in Job

   
"When the words of Job were ended and the three friends ceased to answer Job because he was righteous in his own eyes, Job was driven up the wall in defensiveness. Like a cat with its hair on end, he was in no way open to receive from God or man. The Elihu discourses are the transition from Job bristling with defiance to Job open to the revelation out of the whirlwind. While some textual critics believe the Elihu discourses to be an interpolation by a later author, from a pastoral theological viewpoint they are needed to account for the movement of the drama. The fact that there is no mention of Elihu in the epilogue is difficult to explain if there were a single author to the book. On the other hand, it is even more difficult from a pastoral point of view to account for the openness of Job to divine revelation without the transition of the Elihu speeches

William E. Hulme, Dialogue in Despair: Pastoral Commentary on the Book of Job (Nashville: Abingdon, 1968), 110.