We’re coming to the dramatic close of Job. Last week we watched Job’s last, powerful speech: `Let the Almighty answer me!` – and to his amazement God does! Yet first, for 6 whole chapters the book is taken over by a new character, the young, passionate, articulate, hot-headed Elihu. Young, passionate for God, articulate, though not totally sensitive nor totally balanced – have you got friends like that?
Elihu gets more continuous space than any of Job’s three `friends` – more indeed than any but a handful of old testament people outside the prophetic books. Why does God the Spirit do this? Simply because this is what happened? Or what?
When Elihu gets started on God it can be great, like this:
“Listen to this, Job;
stop and consider God’s wonders.
Do you know how God controls the clouds
and makes His lightning flash?
Do you know how the clouds hang poised,
those wonders of Him who has perfect knowledge?
You who swelter in your clothes
when the land lies hushed under the south wind,
can you join Him in spreading out the skies?` (ch37, NIV)
But commentators can’t agree about him. Mackintosh sees him as a Christ-figure, inspired by God’s Spirit (as indeed he claims, 32:8 cf 33:4), and rightly frustrated that Job seeks to justify himself rather glorify God (32:2); someone who, rather than appealing to tradition and human wisdom like the three friends, `brings in God`. In contrast Atkinson says that he `blusters on to the stage as an angry young man, full of his own importance, offering to clarify the situation`; and Forster groups him with the false comforters.
There’s a lot about Elihu that’s attractive. What drives him is a deep passion for God’s honour and glory (32:2, 34:12,17, 36:3,22ff). Noticeably, he is not one of the three judged negatively by God in 42:7. There’s a humility in his words in 34:33 (`You must decide, not I`), and an attractiveness about how he relates to Job in 33:32 (`If you have anything to say, answer me; speak up, for I want you to be cleared`). He makes a point vital to the whole book in 33:13-30 about Job’s complaint regarding God’s silence, that God is not responsible to answer to us humans for His actions, and yet that He does speak – not when we demand (cf 30:20), but still in many subtle ways, for the different purpose of `turning back a man’s soul from the pit`. It’s a profound passage on one of the possible meanings of suffering, which after all is the book’s theme. And it’s as Elihu speaks of this that we find another of these astonishing prehistoric gospel passages, telling how someone is `redeemed` because there is a `mediator`, and not by our deserving but because a `ransom` has been found (33:23-30 – marvellous passage!) Again, his assessment of Job in 32:2 sounds like what the Lord says later in 40:8; still more his wonderful hymn of worship in 36:22 through 37:18 is of a piece with what God says about Himself in the next four chapters. (34:10-30 is striking too.)
But then there’s another side. Parts of ch36 do indeed sound like the judgmental theology (suffering is the direct result of your sin) that we’ve heard from Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar. And when he turns on Job in 34:7,36-37, 35:16 and 36:17 he is as wrong and as harsh as the three friends. Why? Because he’s young (32:6) and inexperienced? The young can be harsh – perhaps particularly when they are passionate for the glory of God! Is he being unfair to Job in 33:8-11, 34:5,9, and 35:2-3? Perhaps not; probably his words can be supported from what Job has said earlier. But whereas we’ve noted his humility in 34:33, in 36:4 we sense he has a problem with pride himself; something else we may have sensed in friends who are equally passionate (or in ourselves!)…
Let’s then map out these chapters that God the Spirit gives him. For at least the first three he seems more consistent in flow than anything we’ve seen hitherto. In ch32 he explains why he’s speaking; in ch33 he sets out a memorable picture of how God can use discipline to bring people to salvation. (Ash notes that Elihu presents God working personally – and lovingly – to rescue people, rather than seeing suffering as an impersonal system of rewards and punishments like the three friends have.) Then in ch34 Elihu responds to Job’s accusation of God – speaking too harshly to Job, yet powerfully in much of what he himself says about God, and noting very relevantly that God sometimes has His own good reasons to remain hidden (v29), even while He quietly oversees the fates of nations (v30).
To my mind, however, it’s after this that he goes well adrift, becoming, as Atkinson says, thoughtless and heartless towards Job, and also muddled in his own passionate thoughts. His grasp of God’s transcendent greatness leads him (as it does some theologians) to an extreme place: `If you sin, how does that affect Him? If your sins are many, what does that do to Him? If you are righteous, what do you give to Him?… He does not answer when people cry out because of the arrogance of the wicked` (35:6-7, 12). But there’s confusion here – does he sense it? – because almost immediately he rebukes Job for saying that God `does not take the least notice of wickedness`, adding, `God… does not despise men… He does not keep the wicked alive, but gives the afflicted their rights. He does not take his eyes off the righteous; He enthrones them with kings and exalts them forever.` God does care, he says in ch 36 (`I will ascribe justice to my Maker`, v3); God does judge, indeed He works through suffering (`If men are bound in chains, He tells them what they have done… He speaks to them in their affliction`, v15). But then again this passionate man goes a wrong step further (falling briefly into the same error as the three friends, v11): his affirmation of how God heals through suffering leads him from telling Job `He is wooing you from the jaws of distress` into denouncing him presumptuously as `laden with the judgment due to the wicked`…
But then comes yet a further shift: Elihu’s restless mind returns to extolling the greatness of God, and that’s a much safer theme (as it is for us!) than trying to define what God is doing in the present situation. `Remember to extol His work, which men have praised in song… How great is God – beyond our understanding!` As we’ve said, 36:22 through to 37:18 are a wonderfully readable hymn of worship; and here also he speaks for the first time of God’s love (37:13). But what are we to make of the conclusion he draws from God’s greatness? `Tell us what we should say to Him; we cannot draw up our case because of our darkness. Should He be told that I want to speak? Would anyone ask to be swallowed up?` (37:19-23). We’re back with the `fear [awe] of the Lord`, which is good (see ESV of v24) – but Elihu is drawing the wrong conclusion: and when (right now!) God comes in His enormous majesty, Job will in fact be answered, `wooed from the jaws of distress` indeed, but (hallelujah!) not `swallowed up` at all…
Well. Job is a drama, not a sermon series, and if we don’t want a drama where the characters speak a complex mixture of truth and muddle, Job isn’t the book for us! Atkinson suggests – and these two things can be very practical for us – that Elihu’s contribution leads us, and Job, `from argument and despair to God himself` (even if not totally rightly perceived by Elihu); just as now it must be in Christ crucified, not abstract ideas, that we seek the `wisdom of God` (1 Cor 1:24); and secondly, that what matters (like in John 9:1-4) isn’t solving the tough questions about the past, but locking in worshipfully to what God is doing now and in the future. But can we also see Elihu – realistically – as the sort of person who thinks out complicated matters by verbalizing them in all their contradictions, and helps us by doing so? Perhaps we see God using Elihu to help Job think, to prepare Job for what God Himself will say? And can He use these chapters to prepare us also, as we are caught up into the action and carried along in the journey of understanding…?
But Elihu’s speech ends spectacularly with the coming of a huge thunderstorm:
`His thunder announces the coming storm;
even the cattle make known its approach.
At this my heart pounds,
and leaps from its place.
Listen! Listen to the roar of His voice,
to the rumbling that comes from His mouth.
He unleashes his lightning beneath the whole heaven
and sends it to the ends of the earth…`
We can imagine young Elihu shouting passionately about the greatness of God even as the thunder rolls, the lightning bursts flash and the clouds burst open…
`He thunders with his majestic voice.
When His voice resounds,
He holds nothing back.
God’s voice thunders in marvellous ways;
He does great things beyond our understanding!
He says to the snow, “Fall on the earth,”
and to the rain shower, “Be a mighty downpour”!
So that all men He has made may know His work,
He stops every man from his labour,
the animals take cover;
they remain in their dens….
He loads the clouds with moisture;
He scatters His lightning through them.
At His direction they swirl around
over the face of the whole earth
to do whatever He commands them.
He brings the clouds to punish people,
or to water his earth and show his love.
Listen to this, Job!
Stop and consider God’s wonders!
Do you know how God controls the clouds
and makes His lightning flash?`
And then – just as the skies start to clear and the sun reappears (v21) – the Lord Himself speaks at last, `out of the storm` (38:1); and so the book comes to its revelatory climax… Next week…
