Job 34
Elihu continues:
Hear my words, you wise men,
Job 34:2-4
and give ear to me, you who know;
for the ear tests words
as the palate tastes food.
Let us choose what is right;
let us know among ourselves what is good.
Some may consider Elihu to be somewhat arrogant in his assessment of his own wisdom, but as Dizzy Dean once said, “It ain’t bragging if you can back it up.” He speaks sincerely and he is well motivated, seeking what is true and right and good. He wants his audience to pay attention, confident that when they hear what is right, they will recognize it as such.
He goes on to again summarize Job’s position:
For Job has said, “I am in the right,
Job 34:5-6
and God has taken away my right;
in spite of my right I am counted a liar;
my wound is incurable, though I am without transgression.”
Job has set himself as being in the right and that therefore God must be wrong and unjust. So Elihu then gets right to the heart of the matter:
Therefore, hear me, you men of understanding:
Job 34:10-12
far be it from God that He should do wickedness,
and from the Almighty that He should do wrong.
For according to the work of a man He will repay him,
and according to his ways He will make it befall him.
Of a truth, God will not do wickedly,
and the Almighty will not pervert justice.
Elihu declares that God will not do wickedly and will not pervert justice, so God cannot be in the wrong — Job is. The rest of the chapter drives this point home. God is the Creator. (vv. 13-15) God is the One Who is righteous and mighty. (v. 17) God is the One Who shows no partiality to princes, nor regards the rich more than the poor. (v. 19) God is the One Who sees everything and needs no investigation to pronounce judgment. (Job 34:21-26) Who, then, has a right to condemn God?
Men of understanding will say to me,
Job 34:34-37
and the wise man who hears me will say:
“Job speaks without knowledge;
his words are without insight.”
Would that Job were tried to the end,
because he answers like wicked men.
For he adds rebellion to his sin;
he claps his hands among us
and multiplies his words against God.
And in this Elihu hits the nail on the head. He sees that, in contrast to Job’s initial response in Job 2:10, where Job did not sin with his lips, Job subsequently turned his words against God in his own self-justification.
So, again, what about us? How might we be like Job? How might we feel ill-used by God? How might we set ourselves up as judges of God? (Hint: If you think you do not do this, and especially if you think you’ve never done this, you are probably mistaken and you should probably take a deeper look…) How might we need to listen more closely to Elihu?
If some of you are like me, you want to (try to) understand the essence of every verse, both in and of itself and in the context of the neighboring verses. Today’s verse 29a had me confused. It is in bold below, set in between verses 28 and 30: They caused the cry of the poor to come before Him, and He heard the outcry of the afflicted. But when He remains silent, who can condemn Him? When He hides His face, who can see Him? Yet He watches over both man and nation, that godless men should not rule or lay snares for the people. These three verses continue the thread of the previous verses in speaking about the wicked, that the wicked “force” the Lord to act. Two of the Bibles that I read had these three verses simply written together, but one of my Bibles had one dash after verse 29 and I realized that it was properly an offset – it did not belong to the context of the other two verses. Remove the bold words above and verses 28 and 30, together with 29b make perfect sense. In addition to Job saying that the wicked “force” God to act, that middle verse says that God will speak when He wants and it is not our part to understand Him. But it is misplaced when it is set between verses 28 and 30.
The words now made sense, but I found myself newly troubled: “…godless men should not rule…”. I immediately thought of Russia invading Ukraine and the seemingly godless Putin leading the charge. God does let it happen and godless men do rule. How can this be?? How can God let Putin do all this? Maybe it’s all about a much bigger picture. What Putin has done has brought the nations of the world together in a way that they have not been united for a long, long time! We don’t know Putin’s next move or the final outcome of this invasion, but we do know that God knows. And somehow, that’s comforting.