The Return of the Accuser as God’s Defender: A Diabolical Reception of Elihu in Elie Wiesel’s The Trial of God

Abstract

Abstract While a wealth of recent scholarship and popular reception has suggested the Elihu speeches in Job 32–37 are redundant and perhaps do not belong, still others maintain the character’s status as revelatory and divinely-inspired within the narrative. This article highlights Elie Wiesel’s little-noticed contribution to the discourse on Elihu through a reading of Wiesel’s play, The Trial of God . The play expands on an interpretation of Elihu first found in the pseudepigraphal Testament of Job and suggests that Elihu is a truly diabolical character who threatens the faithfulness of the righteous sufferer. This article begins with a brief survey of recent scholarly reception of Elihu, then offers a close reading of Wiesel’s analogue to Elihu in his play. The article concludes with a discussion of the ways Wiesel’s reception of Elihu can aid biblical scholars and theologians in their work on the Book of Job.