Job 34

¹ Then Elihu answered and said: ² “Hear my words, you wise men, and give ear to me, you who know; ³ for the ear tests words as the palate tastes food. ⁴ Let us choose what is right; let us know among ourselves what is good. ⁵ For Job has said, ‘I am in the right, and God has taken away my right; ⁶ in spite of my right I am counted a liar; my wound is incurable, though I am without transgression.’ ⁷ What man is like Job, who drinks up scoffing like water, ⁸ who travels in company with evildoers and walks with wicked men? ⁹ For he has said, ‘It profits a man nothing that he should take delight in God.’ ¹⁰ “Therefore, hear me, you men of understanding: far be it from God that he should do wickedness, and from the Almighty that he should do wrong. ¹¹ For according to the work of a man he will repay him, and according to his ways he will make it befall him. ¹² Of a truth, God will not do wickedly, and the Almighty will not pervert justice. ¹³ Who gave him charge over the earth, and who laid on him the whole world? ¹⁴ If he should set his heart to it and gather to himself his spirit and his breath, ¹⁵ all flesh would perish together, and man would return to dust. ¹⁶ “If you have understanding, hear this; listen to what I say. ¹⁷ Shall one who hates justice govern? Will you condemn him who is righteous and mighty, ¹⁸ who says to a king, ‘Worthless one,’ and to nobles, ‘Wicked man,’ ¹⁹ who shows no partiality to princes, nor regards the rich more than the poor, for they are all the work of his hands? ²⁰ In a moment they die; at midnight the people are shaken and pass away, and the mighty are taken away by no human hand. ²¹ “For his eyes are on the ways of a man, and he sees all his steps. ²² There is no gloom or deep darkness where evildoers may hide themselves. ²³ For God has no need to consider a man further, that he should go before God in judgment. ²⁴ He shatters the mighty without investigation and sets others in their place. ²⁵ Thus, knowing their works, he overturns them in the night, and they are crushed. ²⁶ He strikes them for their wickedness in a place for all to see, ²⁷ because they turned aside from following him and had no regard for any of his ways, ²⁸ so that they caused the cry of the poor to come to him, and he heard the cry of the afflicted— ²⁹ When he is quiet, who can condemn? When he hides his face, who can behold him, whether it be a nation or a man?— ³⁰ that a godless man should not reign, that he should not ensnare the people. ³¹ “For has anyone said to God, ‘I have borne punishment; I will not offend any more; ³² teach me what I do not see; if I have done iniquity, I will do it no more’? ³³ Will he then make repayment to suit you, because you reject it? For you must choose, and not I; therefore declare what you know. ³⁴ Men of understanding will say to me, and the wise man who hears me will say: ³⁵ ‘Job speaks without knowledge; his words are without insight.’ ³⁶ Would that Job were tried to the end, because he answers like wicked men. ³⁷ For he adds rebellion to his sin; he claps his hands among us and multiplies his words against God.”

Job 35

¹ And Elihu answered and said: ² “Do you think this to be just? Do you say, ‘It is my right before God,’ ³ that you ask, ‘What advantage have I? How am I better off than if I had sinned?’ ⁴ I will answer you and your friends with you. ⁵ Look at the heavens, and see; and behold the clouds, which are higher than you. ⁶ If you have sinned, what do you accomplish against him? And if your transgressions are multiplied, what do you do to him? ⁷ If you are righteous, what do you give to him? Or what does he receive from your hand? ⁸ Your wickedness concerns a man like yourself, and your righteousness a son of man. ⁹ “Because of the multitude of oppressions people cry out; they call for help because of the arm of the mighty. ¹⁰ But none says, ‘Where is God my Maker, who gives songs in the night, ¹¹ who teaches us more than the beasts of the earth and makes us wiser than the birds of the heavens?’ ¹² There they cry out, but he does not answer, because of the pride of evil men. ¹³ Surely God does not hear an empty cry, nor does the Almighty regard it. ¹⁴ How much less when you say that you do not see him, that the case is before him, and you are waiting for him! ¹⁵ And now, because his anger does not punish, and he does not take much note of transgression, ¹⁶ Job opens his mouth in empty talk; he multiplies words without knowledge.”

It is important that we think rightly about God. Wrong thoughts about God have dire consequences, yet the world is filled with wrong views about God. I think, for instance, of Joseph Heller’s description of Chaplain Tappman in Catch 22. Heller refers to “…the lifelong trust [the chaplain] had placed in the wisdom and justice of an immortal, omnipotent, omniscient, humane, universal, anthropomorphic, English-speaking, Anglo-Saxon, pro-American God…”[1] This is humorous, yet this is not humorous. Tappman’s view of God clearly reflected his own image. This is a dangerous, though common, theology!

Or consider the words of Angela Yarber. She is mentioned in Paul Dekar’s book Community of the Transfiguration.

Angela Yarber of Shell Ridge Community Church in Walnut Creek, California…[said] “Every person, no matter their age, sexual preference, gender, or nationality, has the right to have access to the divine, however they see the divinity made manifest.”[2]

What a strangely modern American thing to say? A “right to have access to the divine”? And where did she gather this idea? Christ has granted access to God, but a “right” to access “the divine” and to do so “however they see the divine made manifest”?! Oh my.

What of Shane Clairborne’s odd sentiment, when he refers to, “Jesus, the one I long to fall asleep cuddling with, run into the woods with, live and die with – my lover.”[3] One wonders what to say about such a description.

Or what of Roger Rosenblatt who wrote in a December 2001 Time magazine article entitled “God is Not On My Side. Or Yours,” “So indefinite is my idea of God that I do not even connect it to morality…”[4]

Or what of the “famous God-is-dead theologian” who was asked by a reporter, “What do you mean by God?” and who answered, “God? God, to me, is that little inner voice that always says, ‘That’s not quite good enough.’”[5]

Yes, thinking wrongly about God is a dangerous thing. In essence, this is Elihu’s allegation against Job: Job is not thinking rightly about God. As Elihu continues his speech, he makes a number of theological contentions that need to be seriously considered.

It does need to be said here that there are different ways of viewing Elihu’s speech. It should be remembered that God never condemns Elihu’s words like He condemns both Job’s and his friends’ words. That being said, it perhaps ought to be acknowledged that Elihu could be right on the main but wrong in some particulars. Let us remember that this is our basic approach to Job’s own words. He was right on the main but wrong in some particulars. Furthermore, while Elihu is correct to suggest that Job has lost sight of the glory and grandeur of God through his vociferous defense of his own innocence, this does not necessarily mean that Elihu was correct in all that he said about Job.

For instance, an early commentator like the sixth century Gregory the Great complained that Elihu put words in Job’s mouth that Job never uttered and that Elihu “invented” words “to find fault within another person.” He argued that Elihu was himself proud, that he kept talking and talking “in order that his loquacity may be continued without limit by beginnings being constantly joined,” and that he was uncharitable in the way he listened to Job, unjustly parsing Job’s words instead of hearing what Job was really trying to say.[6] On the other hand, a modern commentator like Tremper Longman argues that, “All in all, Elihu gives a fair assessment of Job’s viewpoint.”[7]

Are we allowed to say that Elihu might be in error? Of course. We have critiqued the theological assertions of Job and his friends throughout the course of this book. We should hear Elihu charitably, even if we sometimes sense that he has not always heard Job charitably. But Elihu is a human being, like Job and his friends, and while there are reasons, again, to think that Elihu, on the whole, is saying something very important, there are points where he too missteps.

Theological Contention #1: God is good, just, and impartial.

It must be admitted that the general thrust of Elihu’s argument was sound and much needed. It was, in a general sense, an effort to focus everybody’s eyes upwards to God. He was attempting to say that God and His glory had been unduly diminished throughout the unfolding dispute and this could only be done to the detriment of all. In the first fifteen verses of Job 34, Elihu addresses Job and his three friends.

¹ Then Elihu answered and said: ² “Hear my words, you wise men, and give ear to me, you who know; ³ for the ear tests words as the palate tastes food. ⁴ Let us choose what is right; let us know among ourselves what is good. ⁵ For Job has said, ‘I am in the right, and God has taken away my right; ⁶ in spite of my right I am counted a liar; my wound is incurable, though I am without transgression.’ ⁷ What man is like Job, who drinks up scoffing like water, ⁸ who travels in company with evildoers and walks with wicked men? ⁹ For he has said, ‘It profits a man nothing that he should take delight in God.’ ¹⁰ “Therefore, hear me, you men of understanding: far be it from God that he should do wickedness, and from the Almighty that he should do wrong. ¹¹ For according to the work of a man he will repay him, and according to his ways he will make it befall him. ¹² Of a truth, God will not do wickedly, and the Almighty will not pervert justice. ¹³ Who gave him charge over the earth, and who laid on him the whole world? ¹⁴ If he should set his heart to it and gather to himself his spirit and his breath, ¹⁵ all flesh would perish together, and man would return to dust.

Elihu argued that Job had erred in suggesting that God was dealing with him unjustly. It is a sure thing that Job’s suffering cannot and should not be attributed to any secret sin. Even so, Job had spoken wrongly about God at certain points. Again, Job was essentially correct in his refutation of his friends’ theory of retributive justice. He was also correct to say that he was not being punished for secret sin. Nonetheless, Job had crossed the line at certain points in suggesting that God was dealing unjustly with him.

Elihu himself seems to be advancing something of a theory of retributive justice in verse 11 (“For according to the work of a man he will repay him”). Insofar as Elihu was applying that to the original reason for Job’s dilemma, he was mistaken. Yet he seems at least in part to be applying that idea to Job’s current distortions of the character of God in his claims of personal innocence and divine injustice and not to the original cause of Job’s dilemma. Regardless, the primary argument that Elihu was making

¹⁰ “Therefore, hear me, you men of understanding: far be it from God that he should do wickedness, and from the Almighty that he should do wrong.

¹² Of a truth, God will not do wickedly, and the Almighty will not pervert justice.

In this, Elihu was profoundly correct and this rebuke was by any reckoning sorely needed. However innocent and righteous Job was, was it not the case that Job had come very close to attributing evil and cruelty to God? Whatever grasp Elihu did or did not have of Job’s predicament, he was certainly correct to say this: God is good and God does no evil.

One is encouraged to hear a popular modern praise song like Chris Tomlin’s “Good Good Father” gain traction among Evangelicals today. The beginning of that song is noteworthy.

Oh, I’ve heard a thousand stories of what they think you’re like

But I’ve heard the tender whispers of love in the dead of night

And you tell me that you’re pleased

And that I’m never alone

You’re a Good, Good Father

It’s who you are, it’s who you are, it’s who you are

And I’m loved by you

It’s who I am, it’s who I am, it’s who I am[8]

This is simply a restatement of one of the first prayers we teach our children: “God is great, God is good…”

Does a blank assertion of the goodness of God answer our questions, especially regarding suffering? No. But the goodness of God is one of the primary attributes of God and it is attested to from Genesis to Revelation in the strongest possible terms. In Genesis, for instance, the word “God” and the word “good” or consistently joined together.

And God saw that the light was good. (Genesis 1:4)

And God saw that it was good. (Genesis 1:10)

And God saw that it was good. (Genesis 1:12)

And God saw that it was good. (Genesis 1:18)

And God saw that it was good. (Genesis 1:21)

And God saw that it was good. (Genesis 1:25)

And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. (Genesis 1:31)

It is so often repeated in the first book of Genesis because it is a theological tenet that is foundational to the rest of the Bible. It is crucial to grasp this: God loves goodness because God is Himself good.

However Job and his friends might try to understand Job’s suffering, Elihu boldly and rightly proclaims that the goodness of God cannot be abandoned.

Theological Contention #2: God punishes wickedness.

What is more, Elihu asserts that God does and God will punish evil.

Steven Lawson notes that in verse 16 of Job 34 “Elihu shifted his address from the three friends and Job to Job himself. This is indicated by the fact that the Hebrew verbs are now in the singular, not in the plural as was used previously.”[9] This is significant because in these verses Elihu strongly suggests that Job has sinned.

¹⁶ “If you have understanding, hear this; listen to what I say. ¹⁷ Shall one who hates justice govern? Will you condemn him who is righteous and mighty, ¹⁸ who says to a king, ‘Worthless one,’ and to nobles, ‘Wicked man,’ ¹⁹ who shows no partiality to princes, nor regards the rich more than the poor, for they are all the work of his hands? ²⁰ In a moment they die; at midnight the people are shaken and pass away, and the mighty are taken away by no human hand. ²¹ “For his eyes are on the ways of a man, and he sees all his steps. ²² There is no gloom or deep darkness where evildoers may hide themselves. ²³ For God has no need to consider a man further, that he should go before God in judgment. ²⁴ He shatters the mighty without investigation and sets others in their place. ²⁵ Thus, knowing their works, he overturns them in the night, and they are crushed. ²⁶ He strikes them for their wickedness in a place for all to see, ²⁷ because they turned aside from following him and had no regard for any of his ways, ²⁸ so that they caused the cry of the poor to come to him, and he heard the cry of the afflicted—

To this point, Elihu has made a simple and true statement: the wicked will be punished. We would like to add, “either in this life or the next,” but the point remains. Job himself has earlier argued the same. The wicked are indeed punished. In verses 29-37, however, Elihu turns his attack on Job.

²⁹ When he is quiet, who can condemn? When he hides his face, who can behold him, whether it be a nation or a man?— ³⁰ that a godless man should not reign, that he should not ensnare the people. ³¹ “For has anyone said to God, ‘I have borne punishment; I will not offend any more; ³² teach me what I do not see; if I have done iniquity, I will do it no more’? ³³ Will he then make repayment to suit you, because you reject it? For you must choose, and not I; therefore declare what you know. ³⁴ Men of understanding will say to me, and the wise man who hears me will say: ³⁵ ‘Job speaks without knowledge; his words are without insight.’ ³⁶ Would that Job were tried to the end, because he answers like wicked men. ³⁷ For he adds rebellion to his sin; he claps his hands among us and multiplies his words against God.”

Verse 31-32 are fascinating because in them Elihu rhetorically asks whether or not anybody ever really repents. That is question that could be asked today as well. There is something within fallen man that does not want to admit wrongdoing and does not want to accept the discipline of God. Is Elihu suggesting that Job refuses to repent? It would seem that he is. What is more, Elihu reminds Job that God need not respond to man’s fickle reactions to His chastening. Man does not get to make the rules and God does not have to dance to the tune that fallen man plays.

Elihu next says that any wise man hearing his words would have to conclude that Job has sinned. More than that, says Elihu, Job “adds rebellion to his sin.” Is Elihu still quoting these elusive “wise men” at this point? Are the words at the end of Job 34 his or theirs? Is Elihu trying to make the point that Job is a rebellious sinner without owning them himself? It truly does not much matter, for the gist of his words are clear: Job has sinned. This is clearly Elihu’s own conviction.

As we have seen, we cannot ascribe sin to Job as the cause of his suffering without doing damage to the beginning of the book in which his innocence is established. Nonetheless, Job did overstep at key points in his protestations and he did sin in his reaction at certain points (though not, we hasten to add, at all points). Tremper Longman offers a nice summary that I think is spot on.

            Indeed, in an important sense, Job is right to claim that he is “right/innocent.” That is, he is not guilty of any wrongdoing that would lead to his present suffering. The reader knows this from the prologue to the story in chaps. 1 and 2. However, Elihu is also correct in saying that Job thinks not only that he is “right” but also that God is wrong. After all, Job wants to pursue God in order to set him straight. Job himself operates with a strict idea of retribution theology. He believes that his suffering is unjust because he does not deserve it, and such a belief depends on the supposition that suffering results only from one’s own sin.[10]

Elihu’s point stands: God punishes the wicked. How Elihu sees that point applying to Job specific case, however, is worthy of careful consideration and critique.

Theological Contention #3: God is transcendent and above the minds of men.

Elihu makes a third contention and, in my estimation, it is a troubling one.

¹ And Elihu answered and said: ² “Do you think this to be just? Do you say, ‘It is my right before God,’ ³ that you ask, ‘What advantage have I? How am I better off than if I had sinned?’ ⁴ I will answer you and your friends with you. ⁵ Look at the heavens, and see; and behold the clouds, which are higher than you. ⁶ If you have sinned, what do you accomplish against him? And if your transgressions are multiplied, what do you do to him? ⁷ If you are righteous, what do you give to him? Or what does he receive from your hand? ⁸ Your wickedness concerns a man like yourself, and your righteousness a son of man. ⁹ “Because of the multitude of oppressions people cry out; they call for help because of the arm of the mighty. ¹⁰ But none says, ‘Where is God my Maker, who gives songs in the night, ¹¹ who teaches us more than the beasts of the earth and makes us wiser than the birds of the heavens?’ ¹² There they cry out, but he does not answer, because of the pride of evil men. ¹³ Surely God does not hear an empty cry, nor does the Almighty regard it. ¹⁴ How much less when you say that you do not see him, that the case is before him, and you are waiting for him! ¹⁵ And now, because his anger does not punish, and he does not take much note of transgression, ¹⁶ Job opens his mouth in empty talk; he multiplies words without knowledge.”

Elihu appears to be pushing the transcendence of God to the point of saying that, in a sense, God is indifferent to Job and to all of mankind. Perhaps Elihu has gotten off track in his otherwise admirable goal of stressing the glory of God. God is above man. His ways are not our ways (Isaiah 55:8-9). This must not be forgotten. But there is a great distance between rightly stressing the transcendent otherness of God and alleging that God is so other that He is indifferent. The crux of Elihu’s error appears in verses 6-8.

⁶ If you have sinned, what do you accomplish against him? And if your transgressions are multiplied, what do you do to him? ⁷ If you are righteous, what do you give to him? Or what does he receive from your hand? ⁸ Your wickedness concerns a man like yourself, and your righteousness a son of man.

Thus, according to Elihu, your righteousness adds nothing to God and your wickedness takes nothing from Him. He is up there and you are down here and all of these matters really have more to do with other human beings than God.

If this is indeed what Elihu is arguing (and it appears that it is), it is a grievous error. Job 1 shatters such a notion. God is fully aware of Job’s righteousness and God’s “wager” (for lack of a better word) with Satan concerns Job not abandoning his righteousness for wickedness. One might could argue that one of the major points of the entire book of Job is that God knows and cares deeply whether or not His people are righteous or wicked.

It is oftentimes the case that preachers keep preaching long after they should have stopped. Ask any layperson and he or she will tell you it is so! So it was with Elihu. J. Gerald Janzen’s rebuke of Elihu’s words in Job 35 are helpful.

            In 35:1-8 Elihu repeats Eliphaz’s denial (22:2-4) that Job’s righteousness could make any difference to God. The prologue (which shares with the reader a perspective hidden from Elihu as well as from the friends and Job) has already shown us that God has a huge stake in Job’s righteousness. Elihu’s argument in these verses rests on conventional assumptions about God that persist to the present day, both as general religious convictions and as formal theological propositions. According to these assumptions, God is all-sufficient in such a way that nothing any mere mortal might do can make any difference to the divine life or the divine knowledge. That such a view is placed on the lips of Eliphaz and Elihu is not the best advertisement for its soundness! Moreover, in the light of the prologue we may be permitted to assert that it is simply wrong, at least from the point of view of the Book of Job.[11]

It must be noted as well that Christians should find Elihu’s argument on this point especially dangerous. Has God not entered human history in Christ in order to save us from our sins? Does He not bathe us in the righteousness of the Son when we come to Christ in repentance and faith? Does the reality of Jesus Christ not push against any attempt to push God’s transcendence into the realm of divine indifference? Does Jesus not reveal that God cares?

What Job was missing was a theology of the cross of Christ. The same could be said of Elihu. But we now know the truth of the cross and the empty tomb. For this reason, we dare not make the mistake of Job when he felt that God was cruel or unjust in His treatment of him. Nor should we make the mistake of Elihu when he argued that God was so beyond Job’s concerns as to be indifferent.

Even so, we should hold to Elihu’s central argument: to make more of man that we should is to make less of God than we should. God is good. God is just. God is sovereign.

As Christians we would add only, “Yes, and His goodness, justice, and sovereignty is demonstrated definitively in the life, death, resurrection, and promised return of Jesus Christ, to Whom belongs glory and dominion and power forever and ever.”

 

[1] Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (New York, NY: Everyman’s Library, 1995), p.354.

[2] Paul R. Dekar, Community of the Transfiguration (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2008, p.128.

[3] Shane Clairborne, The Irresistible Revolution (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006), p.229.

[4] National Liberty Journal, February 2002, p.23

[5] Seamands, David A. (2010-11-01). Healing for Damaged Emotions (Kindle Locations 218-221). David C Cook. Kindle Edition.

[6] Manlio Simonetti and Marco Conti, eds., Job. Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. Gen. Ed., Thomas C. Oden. Old Testament, Vol. VI (Downes Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), p.174,179.

[7] Tremper Longman III, Job. Baker Commentary on the Old Testament. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2012), p.392.

[8] https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/christomlin/goodgoodfather.html

[9] Steven J. Lawson, Job. Holman Old Testament Commentary. Vo.10 (Nashville, TN: Holman Reference, 2004), p.292.

[10] Tremper Longman III, Job. Baker Commentary on the Old Testament. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2012), p.398.

[11] J. Gerald Janzen, Job. Interpretation. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1985), p.220.