Job's Three Friends
His friends maintained the contrary. They said that afflictions were punishments for sins and were always in exact proportion to the nature of the sins. By this argument it was made plain that Job, being the most afflicted of all men must be the most wicked of all men. The great discussion came to an end without any of the four men indicating that he had the faintest idea of the purpose of God, in spite of the many excellent things they said about God.
God's purpose in permitting afflictions is to bring the afflicted one into blessing through self-judgment, confession, and correcting of their ways. None of them had the faintest thought of the "end of the Lord" or that "the Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy." In all that those four men said about God, the words, love, mercy, kindness, goodness, compassion, pity and the like, did not once occur. Notwithstanding all their great thoughts about God, they did not know Him well. "Thus saith the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches: but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth Me, that I am the Lord which exercise loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the Lord." Jer. 9:23, 24.
Elihu sums up Job's contention in chapter 33:9-11: "I am clean without transgression, I am innocent; neither is there iniquity in me. Behold, He findeth occasions against me, He counteth me for His enemy; He putteth my feet in the stocks, He marketh all my paths." That is, God did all these things arbitrarily, though Job was in his own eyes clean without transgression and innocent.
Elihu dismisses that view of the matter by saying briefly, "Behold, in this thou art not just: I will answer thee, that God is greater than man." Then he proceeds to show that in all God's dealings with men, His purpose is to save them from going down to the pit, and to bring them into the light of the living. He showed that God first speaks to men once and twice, in a vision (there was no written Word then) and if that fails, He chastens him with pain upon his bed, perhaps with sickness that brings him "near unto the grave.”