"... each of these interesting features in Elihu’s speech has its downside: even though Elihu distinguishes among sufferers between the basically good and the basically wicked, he still operates within the traditional framework of suffering as punishment. Innocent or inexplicable suffering is outside his whole range of experience. And on the second point, while it may be uplifting to consider the universe as testimony to the wonder of the deity, it could be a retrograde step to imagine that the weather is an instrument of divine self-revelation. It will not do much harm to hear in the thunder the sound of the divine wrath (36:33), or find in enforced idleness during winter storms a heaven-sent opportunity to contemplate the divine activity (37:7), but if for a moment Elihu thinks that a lightning strike is a mark of divine judgment, or that the coming or the withholding of rain signifies the pleasure or displeasure of the deity, he is a poorer theologian than he seems. Another Hebrew sage knew that God sends rain on the just and unjust alike (Matthew 5:45), still recognizing a religious significance in rain, but not a discriminatory one. Elihu, to be fair, does not ever say explicitly that the natural phenomena separate out the righteous from the wicked, though 37:13 might at first suggest this ..."