NOTES for Job 35:1-16

Continuing his speech, Elihu asserts God's absolute and unquestionable sovereignty over everything concerning His creation, including humanity. Yet in Elihu's speech, a human being differs little from any other creature. Like Eliphaz a little earlier, Elihu maintains that God has no concern for human righteousness. He knows what each person is worth without even looking at their deeds.

Elihu seems not to notice that in saying this he strips all value not only from every path of righteousness, but even from religiosity itself: ultimately, that too rests on the idea of prescribed behaviour, with recompense both for following it and for departing from it. Here, however, Elihu's own experience as a charismatic seems to be playing a cruel trick on him. Indeed, such experience is by no means always an experience of direct, personal communion with God. It is no accident that charismatics of every time and nation so often describe their experiences in terms that are, if not explicitly pantheistic, then close to pantheism, preferring to speak not of God Himself, but of His power and His breath.

And often, on closer examination, this power and breath turn out to be something that envelops a person, drawing him into an ecstasy, sometimes a rather violent one, behind which it can be quite difficult to sense any will at all. Such a charismatic does not so much meet or commune with God as surrender himself to an elemental force, even if it is not a physical one. It is hardly surprising that in this case he feels completely dependent on the power to which he surrenders himself. And then, indeed, nothing depends on the person any longer. You may be anyone and any kind of person: during the ecstasy, this is completely irrelevant.

Something happens to a person over which he has no power and which he cannot control; he cannot even imagine demanding anything of the current in which he finds himself. Add to this the fact that the ecstasy itself sometimes begins quite unexpectedly, and it follows that a person really can neither demand any kind of trial nor expect a face-to-face meeting. God is power, He is the breath that envelops a person, while the person is merely the object of His action, not an active participant in any relationship with Him, still less a relationship between equals. If this is a person's experience, he will indeed find it hard to understand Job, who wants to speak with God as one person speaks with another.

In his speech Elihu again and again, perhaps without noticing it himself, repeats arguments already presented to Job by his friends. He says to Job: what concern is your righteousness to God? Both righteousness and sinfulness are human matters; they concern people themselves, but not God at all (vv. 2-8). In this case, however, Elihu is more consistent than Job's friends, since from the beginning he bears witness to Job about a God who has no concern for so small a thing as an individual person and his life. In his own way, though, Elihu still allows for God's providence in human affairs, even if this brings no relief to a concrete person with his problems. Elihu says to Job: look how many people in the world suffer from injustice, yet none of them accuses God of their misfortunes (vv. 9-11). They wait patiently for judgment; you should endure too, Elihu tells Job (vv. 13-14).

Here Elihu remains entirely consistent: his God is the Creator and Lord of the universe, not the God of a particular, concrete person, and He acts on the scale of the universe as well. Someday, perhaps, He will get around to the individual person, including Job, but this will happen, so to speak, according to schedule. Elihu's God will certainly not change His plans for the sake of one individual person; He has other tasks, far larger in scale. For now Job had better keep silent and not irritate God with bold speeches, so as not to deserve an even harsher punishment from Him (vv. 15-16). Of course, Elihu does not deny the fact that life on earth could be different if not for "the wickedness of evil people," because of which God does not answer those who complain about oppressors (v. 12). More than that, Elihu is sure that everything will come out well in the end, that the day of judgment will arrive (v. 13). Everything simply takes time, and God is not yet free for such small matters.

As Elihu continues his testimony, he remains true to himself. His God is not only the Lord of the universe; He is also the lord of all people, but precisely of all, not of each one individually. God's power will show itself in relation to each person, but in its own time, which must be awaited. Elihu's God resembles an earthly king whom it is not easy to reach: there is a state machine, there is an established order for resolving matters, and it is impossible to obtain anything from the king outside that established order. An attempt to appeal directly to the king will provoke nothing from him but anger. Such an image of God once again confirmed that Elihu's God has no concern for an individual person with his problems and misfortunes, his righteousness and sinfulness.

Elihu attributes to Job the words “I am more righteous than God,” which he never uttered. In fact, Job spoke about his own righteousness, but can this serve as grounds for accusing him of denying the Creator's righteousness? Elihu twists his words, and not by accident. In our own day, many people take someone's assertion of his own dignity as an encroachment on another's dignity, most often their own. Elihu, as we remember, is trying to take God's place; but if that is so, is it really God whom he is defending? What if Elihu in fact perceives Job's speeches as an attack upon himself, upon his own comfortable and familiar picture of the world?..

Yet it is impossible to object to Elihu when he upholds the greatness of the Creator, whom none of the people opposing Him is even capable of causing real harm. But we might supplement Elihu's words by observing that the human person is the summit of creation, and therefore an attack upon any person is equivalent to an attack upon the Creator's design.

Alas, the calamities that have befallen Job are not enough for Elihu; he believes that Job's words are caused by the lightness of his punishment, not by unbearable suffering. Unfortunately, in Elihu's mind, as in the minds of Job's other accusers, truth and justice are separated from mercy.