NOTES for Job 33:1-33

What, then, did Job hear from Elihu that was new? Essentially, nothing. Elihu repeats vividly and figuratively what Job has already heard from his friends. Yet, judging by the tone of his speech, Elihu himself seems to think he is opening Job's eyes to something he had not known before. Moreover, Elihu quite boldly puts himself in God's place, saying that Job can speak freely with him, Elihu.

He is a human being like Job, but one through whom God speaks, so that Job will hear from him the same thing he would hear from God. Such boldness may seem somewhat strange in a religious person, but we must not forget that Elihu is a charismatic. He really does perceive certain rather commonplace truths as something new and astonishing. This is a characteristic phenomenon of charismatic movements: charismatics often seem to discover particular religious truths anew for themselves, convinced that their discovery will be new to others as well. In reality, of course, they usually tell the world nothing altogether new. The truths they discover are new only to themselves.

Even this relative novelty often has less to do with the content of what charismatics discover than with their experience of the reality of God's breath, so well known to the biblical prophets. In the case of charismatics, however, this breath is usually not associated with actual revelation. Its presence merely refreshes their perception spiritually. Then familiar realities seem new, newly discovered, just as rain-washed leaves on trees sometimes look as though they have only just unfurled, even in the middle of summer. So Elihu too thinks he is revealing something new to Job.

But surely his words about illness as God's reminder of sins a person has committed cannot be considered new. This is a commonplace of every religious tradition, and Job's friends have already told him something similar many times. Perhaps the idea that God repeats His warnings two or three times, but even here there is nothing fundamentally new: the friends too told Job that he still had a chance at a new life, provided that he truly repented of some secret sins which he absolutely must remember and bring to light. Such a speech could hardly help Job: it contained nothing fundamentally new for him.

With youthful spontaneity, Elihu plunges into the dispute with Job; he grounds his right to speak in the fact that he too was created by God and that the Spirit of God breathed life into him. Just as readily, he offers to answer Job in God's place. Elihu qualifies this by saying that he himself was made from dust, like Job, and in this is no different from him. Most translations, from the Septuagint and the Vulgate to modern versions, phrase verse 6 in much the same way: ‘Before God I am just like you, also moulded from clay.’ The Russian Synodal translation and the King James Bible put it differently: ‘I will answer you in God's place, as you wished, for I too am made of clay.’ In essence, these translations bring into verse 6 a meaning distributed across the preceding and following verses, expressing it with the utmost clarity. Incidentally, let us notice the mention of clay: perhaps we owe this interpretation of Genesis's words about humanity's creation from the dust of the earth to the theology of the late Old Testament period.

So God remains silent in response to Job's appeals—and Elihu cannot bear this silence. Unlike Job's elderly and wise friends, he cannot respect God's silence as they do. He cannot wait alongside Job for the Almighty's answer. And so he utters this outrageous absurdity, offering his own thoughts in place of the Creator's word. Of course, Elihu does not claim divinity—that would be wholly impossible within the biblical spiritual tradition. He carefully qualifies his words by saying that he is only dust into which God has breathed life. What drives his thinking and his words is not a claim to divinity but a claim to understand the truth, to comprehend the Lord's mysteries fully. Elihu tries to say what, in his opinion, God prefers to leave unsaid. In doing so, he clearly fails to respect God as a person or to honour his freedom.

What great revelation, then, does Elihu offer? Nothing new: the same old theory that righteousness arises through punishment, like... a conditioned reflex in monkeys. Behind Elihu's words one almost sees God as a little old man with a grey beard, resembling I. P. Pavlov in a ninth-grade biology textbook. In essence, an entirely Darwinian approach. Stepping away from the biblical text once more, let us note that Darwin undoubtedly knew the Bible. Could it have been the words of Elihu and Job's friends that guided his thinking?

Essentially, the theory Elihu proposes rests on human observations of nature. Experience in teaching children and in selectively breeding livestock, along with observations of competition among animals, gives rise to such thoughts. This is a peculiar kind of anthropomorphism—or perhaps ‘naturomorphism’—that finds a form of expression within monotheism.

Once, twice, and several times more, God brings a person to understanding through words and calamities, to turn that person's soul away from the pit and illumine it with the light of life. Despite its Darwinian character, Elihu's thought is quite profound. He knows that people do not listen to God's quiet voice and often cannot be brought to understanding and saved except through temporary suffering that prevents eternal destruction. God's correction is indeed often extremely painful for a person. Perhaps this is the main thought Elihu is trying so clumsily to convey to Job and to the reader. Yes, he says, God punishes people—and there is always something for which we deserve punishment. But he does so not for the sake of their suffering, but for their salvation.

Let us note that Job himself does not reject this view. Yet, while accepting it, he wants to know precisely what the Almighty intends to correct in him.

To some extent, Elihu may be right. Where he is wrong is not in how he explains the phenomenon of human suffering, but in how he sees God. For Elihu, God stands apart from human life, far from the human heart. In Elihu's view, human joy and sorrow, bliss and anguish, are foreign to God. Elihu considers God merciful—simply put, good—and desirous of humanity's salvation, but very distant. Elihu maintains that God acts rightly and that it is better for us that God should punish us than forget us. Elihu thinks Job should humbly accept what is happening. Job began his speeches in just this way, but, as we have seen more than once in the preceding chapters, he cannot live with this distance of God.

Addressing Job, Elihu wants to defend God. His words contain much that is true and reasonable, against which one does not wish to object. He too seems to accuse Job, yet the words spoken almost in passing, I desire to justify you, distinguish him substantially from the previous speakers. Elihu certainly accuses, but accusation is neither a passion nor an end in itself for him.

But is Elihu free from self-exaltation, and does he have the right to speak on God’s behalf? Doing so is tantamount to putting oneself in His place. Yet can a human being say anything on behalf of Him whose ways and thoughts are not ours? And even with the greatest zeal, can one suppose that sincerity of conviction is by itself equivalent to truth?

Elihu’s words and thoughts are another step toward the truth, but they are not yet the truth itself. Attempts to speak on God’s behalf are too risky and may lead one away from Him.