I gotta have my orange juice.

I proposed that Elihu is one of Job’s adversaries and speculated why God does not rebuke him in Job 42:

Elihu is perhaps spared the worse condemnation because he is a young man imitating Job’s older counselors, who have a greater responsibility; or else because he repented while their hearts remained hardened.

Continuing to consider Job as a type of Jesus, I think we can more fully explain this difference if we see Elihu as one of Jesus’s disciples: fleeing, denying him, hiding in an upper room. Ironically, this makes Elihu the one who is vainly vaunting his righteousness.

If Job’s three friends are friends in the technical sense—his closest advisors, pillars of his kingdom—then Elihu is a lesser official. Like Jesus’s disciples, he is cowed by the example of the wicked stewards-usurpers, and betrays his king. By the time God is finished speaking, Elihu must have repented and restored his allegiance to Job.