Addressing Job, Elihu composes a hymn to the greatness and wisdom of God...
Addressing Job, Elihu composes a hymn to the greatness and wisdom of God (vv. 22-33). Without doubt, Job himself and his friends would have agreed with such words. But Elihu does not limit himself to praising the wisdom of the Creator as it is manifested in creation. He says directly that the purpose of his speech is what modern theologians call theodicy, the justification of God (vv. 2-4). The main task of such a justification was to explain where evil in the world comes from and why it so often happens that those who are ready to follow God's will live worse in this world than those who do not take God into account at all. Elihu's theory is simple: God always supports the righteous person, and if misfortune nevertheless happens to the righteous, it is nothing other than God's attempt to correct him when, for some reason, the righteous person suddenly falls into sin (vv. 5-12).
For Elihu, as we can see, this explanation is the only possible one, which is no surprise: only such a position excludes any protest from the start, while not requiring of a person merely formal obedience or acceptance of the rule of a dull force indifferent to human beings. If a person rejects God's correction, then in Elihu's eyes he becomes a hypocrite, almost worse than an open evildoer (vv. 13-15). Therefore Elihu calls Job not to take the position of a hypocrite, not to prefer wickedness to suffering (vv. 16-21). In putting forward these arguments, Elihu is, in a certain sense, inconsistent: if God has no concern for a person's righteousness or sinfulness, as Elihu himself recently claimed, why would He instruct or correct anyone? But Elihu's heart was apparently wiser than his reason. He understood that a God who creates something senseless and inhuman is not God but a monster, and his heart, it seems, rebelled against such a God no less than the heart of Job, whom Elihu wanted to convince of God's rightness. And so Elihu tries to find meaning in God's actions, although everything he had previously said about God gave no hope of this.
For Elihu, humility, as he understood it, was the key to the search for meaning. It is no accident that in his speech Elihu calls the righteous person "poor" (v. 15): already in pre-exilic hymnography, reflected in the Book of Psalms, the poor of the Lord had become a living example of humility. But that was true humility, a complete entrusting of oneself to the will of God, without which a normal and full spiritual life is impossible. Elihu, without noticing it, substituted false humility for true humility. He is not speaking of humility before God, who leads a person after Himself and opens the path of righteousness to him, but of a God who has no concern at all for an individual person, for whom all people look the same, so that both their righteousness and their sins are indifferent to Him. In that case, to humble oneself no longer meant entrusting oneself to the will of God, but bowing before a crude force utterly indifferent to human beings, behind which God is hidden as behind a veil. Such a position is, of course, very far from true humility. But it allowed Elihu to make at least some sense of what seemed to him to be God's providence. And this understanding of his, as we can see, he offers to Job on God's behalf in answer to the questions Job has been asking God.
36 Elihu desires a farther hearing, Giobbe 36:1-4.
Describes the methods of providence, Giobbe 36:5-15.
Warns and counsels Job, Giobbe 36:16-21.
Shews God's sovereignty and omnipotence, Giobbe 36:22-33.
36:3 Afar - From remote times, and places, and things. I will not confine my discourse to thy particular case, but wilt justify God by declaring his great and glorious works of creation and providence both in the heaven and in the earth, and the manner of his dealing with men in other parts and ages of the world. Ascribe - I will clear and maintain this truth, that God is righteous in all his ways.
36:4 He, etc - Thou hast to do with a God of perfect knowledge, by whom all thy words and actions are weighed.
36:5 Despiseth - His greatness doth not make him (as it doth men) despise, or oppress the meanest. Wisdom - His strength is guided by wisdom, and therefore cannot do any thing unbecoming God, or unjust to his creatures.
36:6 But - He will certainly in his time deliver his oppressed ones.
36:7 He - Never ceases to care for and watch over them.Exalted - They continue to be exalted; they are not cast down from their dignity, as the wicked commonly are.
36:8 If - Through the vicissitude of worldly affairs, they are brought from their throne into a prison, as sometimes hath been done.
36:9 Work - Their evil works, by these afflictions he brings them to a sight of their sins. Exceeded - That they have greatly sinned by abusing their power and prosperity; which even good men are too prone to do.
36:10 Openeth - He inclines them to hearken to what God speaks by the rod.
36:13 Cry not - Unto God for help. Bindeth - With the cords of affliction.
36:14 Die - They provoke God to cut them off before their time.Unclean - Or, Sodomites; to whose destruction, he may allude. They shall die by some exemplary stroke of Divine vengeance. Yea, and after death, their life is among the unclean, the unclean spirits, the devil and his angels, for ever excluded from the new Jerusalem, into which no unclean thing shall enter.
36:15 Openeth - Causeth them to hear, and understand, and do, the will of God.
36:16 He would - If thou hadst opened thine ear to God's counsels.Into - A state of ease and freedom.
36:17 The judgment - Or, the sentence, thou hast justified the hard speeches which wicked men utter against God. Therefore - Therefore the just judgment of God takes hold on thee. Thou hast maintained their cause against God, and God passes against thee the sentence of condemnation due to wicked men.
36:18 Wrath - Conceived by God against thee. Then - If once God's wrath take hold of thee, no ransom will be accepted for thee.
36:19 Thy riches - If thou hadst as much of them as ever.Forces - The strongest forces.
36:20 The night - The night of death, which Job had often desired, for then, thou art irrecoverably gone: take heed of thy foolish and often repeated desire of death, lest God inflict it upon thee in anger.
36:21 Chosen - Thou hast chosen rather to quarrel with God, and censure his judgments, than quietly to submit to them.
36:22 Behold - God is omnipotent; and therefore can, either punish thee far worse, or deliver thee, if thou dost repent. He is also infinitely wise; and as none can work like him, so none can teach like him.Therefore do not presume to teach him how to govern the world.None teacheth with such authority and convincing evidence, with such condescension and compassion, with such power and efficacy as God doth, he teaches by the bible, and that is the best book; by his son, and he is the best master.
36:24 Remember - Call to mind this thy duty. Magnify - Every work which he doth; do not condemn any of his providential works, but adore them as done with admirable wisdom, and justice. Behold - With admiration and astonishment.
36:25 It - The power, and wisdom, and greatness of God are so manifest in all his works, that all who are not stupid, must see and acknowledge it.Afar off - The works of God are so great and conspicuous, that they may be seen at a great distance. Hence Elihu proceeds to give some instances, in the works of nature and common providence. His general aim is to shew,
36:26 Neither - He is eternal, as in his being, so in all his counsels; which therefore must be infinitely above the comprehension of short - lived men.
36:27 For - Having affirmed that God's works are incomprehensibly great and glorious, he now proves it from the most common works of nature and providence. And hence he leaves it to Job to consider how much more deep and inconceivable the secret counsels of God must be. Water - He orders matters so wisely, that the waters which are in the clouds, do not fall down at once in spouts, which would be pernicious to the earth and to mankind; but by degrees, and in drops. According - According to the proportion of vapours which the heat of the sun hath drawn up by the earth or sea. So it notes that great work of God by which the rain is first made of vapours, and afterwards resolved into vapours, or into the matter of succeeding vapours, by a constant rotation.
36:29 Understand - Whence it comes to pass, that a small cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, suddenly spreads over the whole heavens: how the clouds come to be suddenly gathered, and so condensed as to bring forth thunder and lightning. Noise - The thunder produced in the clouds, which are often called God's tent or tabernacle.
36:30 Light - The lightning; fitly God's light, because God only can light it. It - Upon the cloud, which is in a manner the candlestick in which God sets up this light. The sea - The lightning spreads far and wide over all the parts of the sea, and pierceth deep, reaching even to the bottom of it.
36:31 Judgeth - By thunder and lightning, and rain from the clouds, he executes his judgments against ungodly people. Meat - Giveth meat.By the same clouds, he provides plentiful showers dropping fatness on the earth.
36:32 Clouds - With thick and black clouds spread over the whole heavens. Light - The sun. The cloud - Which God interposes as a veil between the sun and earth.
36:33 The noise - The thunder gives notice of the approaching rain.Also - And as the thunder, so also the cattle sheweth, concerning the vapour, concerning the coming of the rain, by a strange instinct, seeking for shelter, when a change of weather is near.