Job 34
ButlerSuch, then, are the three modes in which the Spirit of God dealt of old with the spirits of men, and in which He still deals with them. The first may be called rare, the second common, the third most common. J. Stalker.
1. MOREOVER Elihu answered and said,
2. Hear my words, ye wise men; And give ear unto me, ye that have knowledge.
3. For the ear trieth words, As the palate tasteth meat.
4. Let us choose for us that which is right: Let us know among ourselves what is good.
5. For Job hath said, I am righteous, And God hath taken away my right:
6. Notwithstanding my right I am accounted a liar; My wound is incurable, though I am without transgression.
7. What man is like Job, Who drinketh up scorning like water?
8. Which goeth in company with the workers of iniquity, And walketh with wicked men.
9. For he hath said, It profiteth a man nothing That he should delight himself with God.
10. Therefore hearken unto me, ye men of understanding:
Far be it from God, that he should do wickedness;
And from the Almighty, that he should commit iniquity.
11. For the work of a man shall he render unto him,
And cause every man to find according to his way,
12. Yea, of a surety, God will not do wickedly, Neither will the Almighty pervert judgment.
13. Who gave him a charge over the earth? Or who hath disposed the whole world?
14. If he set his heart upon man, If he gather unto himself his spirit and his breath;
15. All flesh shall perish together, And man shall turn again unto dust.
16. If now thou hast understanding, hear this: Hearken to the voice of my words.
17. Shall even one that hateth right govern? And wilt thou condemn him that is just and mighty?
18. Is it fit to say to a king, Thou art vile? Or to nobles, Ye are wicked?
19. How much less to him that respecteth not the persons of princes, Nor regardeth the rich more than the poor? For they all are the work of his hands.
20. In a moment they die, even at midnight; The people are shaken and pass away, And the mighty are taken away without hand.
21. For his eyes are upon the ways of a man, And he seeth all his goings.
22. There is no darkness, nor shadow of death, Where the workers of iniquity may hide themselves.
23. For he needeth not further to consider a man,
That he should go before God in judgment.
24. He breaketh in pieces mighty men in ways past finding out,
And setteth others in their stead.
25. Therefore he taketh knowledge of their works;
And he overturneth them in the night, so that they are destroyed.
26. He striketh them as wicked men
In the open sight of others;
27. Because they turned aside from following him,
And would not have regard to any of his ways:
28. So that they caused the cry of the poor to come unto him,
And he heard the cry of the afflicted.
29. When he giveth quietness, who then can condemn?
And when he hideth his face, who then can behold him?
Chap. 34. Having in chap. 33 replied to Job’s charge that God’s afflictions were examples of an arbitrary hostility to men, Elihu in this chapter replies to another charge, that God was unjust in the afflictions which He laid on him. His answer is, That a motive for injustice in Him who is Creator of all cannot be found; and, That injustice in the Ruler of all is inconceivable—shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? The line of thought in the chapter is something as follows: First (vs. 1-4), in a brief introduction Elihu invites his intelligent hearers to listen further to him, and to unite with him in seeking to discover what was the right, the just state of the case, in Job’s cause with God and his charges against Him. Second (vs. 5-9), these charges he recites: Job had said that God perverted his right, and that he was incurably afflicted though he had done no wrong (vs. 5, 6). Elihu cannot mention such charges without expressing his detestation of them: Job has not his parallel for impiety (vs. 7, 8). He has even gone the length of saying that it was no advantage to a man to be religious (v. 9). This last sentiment Elihu does not deal with in the present chapter, its discussion follows in chap. 35. Third (vs. 10-20), coming to his argument Elihu, first expresses his reprobation of such sentiments as those of Job, they are contrary to right thoughts of God; such ways of acting are not to be thought of in connection with the Almighty (vs. 10-12). Second, this reproof of Job’s charges from God’s nature in general Elihu then particularizes into two
Alike whether it be done unto a nation, or unto a man:
30. That the godless man reign not, That there be none to ensnare the people.
31. For hath any said unto God, I have borne chastisement, I will not offend any more:
32. That which I see not teach thou me: If I have done iniquity, I will do it no more?
33. Shall his recompence be as thou wilt, that thou refusest it?
For thou must choose, and not I: Therefore speak what thou knowest.
34. Men of understanding will say unto me, Yea, every wise man that heareth me:
35. Job speaketh without knowledge, And his words are without wisdom.
36. Would that Job were tried unto the end, Because of his answering like wicked men.
37. For he addeth rebellion unto his sin, He clappeth his hands among us, And multiplieth his words against God.
distinct thoughts: 1. No motive for injustice in Him who is the Creator of all can be discovered; on the contrary, His calling all things into being and upholding them by sending forth His Spirit is evidence of unselfish goodness, for were He to set His mind on Himself and withdraw His Spirit all flesh would perish (vs. 13-15). 2. The foundation of government is justice, without which rule would come to an end. Injustice in the highest Ruler is inconceivable. And in truth His rule approves itself by its impartiality to be just (vs. 16-20). Fourth (vs. 21-28), this justice is secured by God’s omniscient insight into men, and by His goodness which is the spring and motive of His rule of mankind. Fifth (vs. 29-33), shall any one then murmur at this absolute disposing of all things by the hand of God? To murmur is to usurp the rule of God, and to claim to dictate how He should dispense His recompenses. Finally (vs. 34-37), Elihu, having shown what is involved in Job’s charges of injustice against God, draws the conclusion, in which he is confident all reflecting minds who listen to him will concur with him, that Job speaks without wisdom; to the sin of his life he has added a defiant and mocking impiety, which one must wish to see purified out of him in the furnace of severer afflictions. A. B. D.
7. A strong assertion that Job had given way to his feelings without restraint, that instead of shrinking from the temptation, he had greedily absorbed the bitter draught of scorn. Elihu goes now, for the first time, far beyond the truth. There was bitterness, even fierceness in Job’s remonstrances, but the words were wrung from him by agony and by the taunts of his unfriendly counsellors; his scorn was altogether directed against them, not, as Elihu seems to assume, against God.
9. See 9:22; 21:7; 24:1, and other passages, stating or implying the same thing. Elihu, however, does scanty justice to Job, who repeatedly asserts that such facts are matters of perplexity, not that they really represent the principles of the Divine government. Cook.
10-12. In direct and broad contradiction of what Job had said, Elihu now proceeds to deny each and all of the charges of wrongdoing alleged against God, and to declare that He deals righteously with men, and recompenses to every man according to his ways—his conduct and character. He asserts God’s infinite righteousness as proof that whatever He may do must be right, though His reasons may not appear even to the wisest of men. Curry.
10. There are and will be difficulties in the administration of providence; but these difficulties can never make reasonable and considerate persons, men of attention and understanding, to doubt concerning the righteousness of the Divine government. A righteous and just man may be depended upon that he will not do an unjust thing; much more, therefore, “far be it from the Almighty, far be it from the Supreme Lord and Governor of all things, that He should commit iniquity.” Many things mysterious, many things incomprehensible, there needs must be in the nature of the Supreme Being; but injustice or iniquity, hard or unrighteous dealing with any of His creatures—this, above all things, far ought we to keep it from all our notions and conceptions of Him. Objections will be started and difficulties arise, but whether we can answer them or no, we are sure they must be false; because no evidence in proof of any particular doctrine inconsistent with this notion can be so strong as are the arguments which prove in general the truth of the Divine justice. S. Clarke.
If at any time we have any unbecoming thoughts of the justice of God, either that He afflicts the good without reason or prospers the wicked against it, all this ariseth from our ignorance or the shortness of our sight. We have not a full or perfect prospect of things; we see but a little way backward; we are not wise to compare what is past with what is present, nor can we at all infallibly foresee anything future or discern what shall be. Whereas God at once hath all things before Him; He seeth what is past as well as what is present, and what shall be hereafter as well as what hath been; and so the completeness and indefectibility of His own justice in all. And when we in the great day shall see all the works of God in the world brought and presented together as in one view, we shall then say, from the evidence of sight as now we ought from the evidence of faith, that the Almighty hath not in any one thing perverted judgment. And therefore the apostle doth most appositely call that day “The day of the revelation of the righteous judgment of God.” Caryl.
11. The work of a man shall be render unto Him. Good works shall be rewarded, and evil works either punished or satisfied for; so that sooner or later in this world or in that to come He will cause every man to find according to his ways. This is the standing rule of distributive justice, to give to every man according to his works. Say to the righteous, it shall be well with them; woe to the wicked, it shall be ill with him. If services persevered in now go unrewarded and sins persisted in now go unpunished, yet there is a day coming when God will fully render to every man according to his works, with interest for the delay. H.—Let us, then, cultivate the sense of stewardship. It is a very hard thing for us to keep fresh the feeling that all which we are and have is given to us, and that not for ourselves, but for God. The beginning of evil is the weakening of that sense of responsibility, and the dawning of the dream that we are our own. The prodigal son’s downfall began with saying, “Give me the portion of goods that falleth to me.” And the next step came naturally after that: “He gathered all together and went away into a far country.” And the next step came just as naturally after that: “He wasted his substance in riotous living.” If sense of stewardship and responsibility is weakened within us, the mainspring of all good is weakened within us, and we shall become self-willed, self-indulgent, self-asserting, God-forgetting. If we think that the talent or the pound is ours, we shall spend it for our own purposes, and that is “waste.” And is it not a sad commentary on the tendency of human nature to forget stewardship, and to lose the impression of responsibility, that that very word “talents,” which is borrowed from Christ’s parable, is used in common speech without the slightest sense that it suggests anything about stewardship, faithfulness, or reckoning? Let us, then, take care to cultivate the sense of responsibility. A. M.
13-15. Elihu first lays down the simple proposition that the Almighty is just in all His dealings. He then proceeds to prove it. The first proof is the absoluteness of God’s government. “Who hath given him a charge?” The inference to be drawn is that God administers the government out of His own free will; He is not, like the subordinate duties of the heathen, merely in possession of a delegated authority; He has none to consult; when we reach Him we reach the last, highest, absolute source of all justice. Cook.
Elihu says this to assert God’s sovereignty, and the bearing of this on the main argument is, if God be sovereign and amenable to no superior, then He can have no motive for doing what is otherwise than right. Carey.—If the Lord be supreme, then let us set Him up as supreme in all things. Let His ends be above our ends. Let us design God in all we do. He who is over all ought to be honored by all. All our actions, as so many lines, ought to centre in His honor who is the centre of power. Caryl.
13-15. The first thought of Elihu is that the earth, the world, is not intrusted to God by another; He Himself arranged it all as it is; there is therefore no motive to injustice. This is one side of His ideas; the other (v. 14) is that the fact of the creation and sustaining of all things and creatures by God is proof of unselfish benevolence, for if God thought of Himself, and ceased to send forth His Spirit, all flesh would perish. A. B. D.
16-30. The second proof that God deals justly is, that as a matter of fact He deals with all men impartially; princes and people, rich and poor, are alike in His sight; none of their works escape Him; He overthrows the powerful oppressor, hears the cry of the afflicted, and overthrows the hypocrite. Elihu’s argument here is not new; it has been partly anticipated by Job’s friends, and far more broadly and strongly stated by Job himself; at the same time there is so much reverence, so deep a conviction that God’s almightiness and omniscience are essentially one with righteousness, that the address is calculated to prepare Job for the final manifestation of God Himself. Cook.
16-19. The thought is, without justice rule is impossible; and therefore injustice in the Supreme Ruler is inconceivable. The thought is one that finds repeated expression in Scripture, as in the words of Abraham, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” and in those of Paul, “Is God unrighteous? God forbid; for then how shall God judge the world?” A. B. D.—Nowhere in the book, except in the address of the Almighty, are there to be found grander ethical and theological ideas; God cannot do wrong; He cannot be a despiser of right who binds the world in harmony; His very continuance of man and the world shows this; oh, that Job’s sufferings would allow him to see it! Nothing in the speeches of Eliphaz and Zophar comes up to this. T. Lewis.
20-28. God’s strict justice may be seen in His government of the peoples and their princes alike. His justice is unerring, for it is guided by omniscient insight. Punishing oppression, it avenges the cause of the poor and afflicted. A. B. D.
20. They die. What cannot He do that has all the powers of death at His command? Observe the suddenness of this destruction. In a moment they die. It is not a work of time with God.
21,22. God is omniscient, and can discover that which is most secret. As the strongest cannot oppose His arm, so the most subtle cannot escape His eye; and therefore, if some are punished either more or less than we think they should be, instead of quarrelling with God, it becomes us to ascribe it to some secret cause known to God only. For everything is open before Him. His eyes are upon the ways of man; not only they are within reach of His eye, so that He can see them, but His eye is upon them, so that He actually observes and inspects them; He sees us all and sees all our goings; go whither we will we are under His eye; all our actions, good and evil, are regarded and recorded and reserved to be brought into judgment when the books shall be opened. Nothing is or can be concealed from Him. There is no darkness nor shadow of death so close, so thick, so solitary, so remote from light or sight, as that in it the workers of iniquity may hide themselves from the discovering eye and avenging hand of the righteous God. H.
25-30. This continues the thought that dominates what has gone before—that is, that because of God’s omniscience He knows every man’s actions, and that His omnipotence is actively engaged in works of retributive judgment, overthrowing the wicked in their evil designs, avenging the cause of the poor, and by His authority establishing peace, so that the godless may not reign—that crime and violence shall not prosper. Curry.
29. The frowns of all the world cannot trouble those whom God quiets with His smiles. If God give outward peace to a nation, He can secure what He gives, and disable the enemies of it to give it any disturbance. If God give inward peace to a man only, the quietness and everlasting assurance which are the effect of righteousness, neither the accusations of Satan nor the afflictions of this present time, no, nor the arrests of death itself can give trouble. The smiles of all the world cannot quiet those whom God troubles with His frowns; for if He in displeasure hide His face, and withhold the comfort of His favor, who then can behold Him?—that is, who can behold a displeased God so as to bear up under His wrath or turn it away. H.
29,30. So completely is man dependent upon God, for good or ill, that the word of peace from God is above all creature power to bring condemnation, while only the hiding His face, which none can hinder, is death. So God deals with men and nations, and because He is righteous the godless shall not triumph, nor the people always suffer. Curry.
31-33. Elihu gradually approaches the conduct of Job. He supposes the case of one animadverting on the Divine procedure and complaining of unjust affliction. This is presumption, and implies that one usurps the government of the Most High. A supposition is put: Has any one said unto God? where God is emphatic, the emphasis implying the unseemliness and presumption of the act. The case is put generally, but the case is that of Job, as v. 33 reveals. The meaning of the passage is that the complainer under affliction protests his innocence (v. 31); disclaims knowledge of any offence; desires, as Job frequently expressed his desire, to know what his sin was; and professes his readiness to desist from it, when it is made clear to him (v. 32). Elihu’s answer to this complaint (v. 33) is that it is a claim to regulate the government of God, to give laws to Him how He shall act, and to decide how He shall recompense. Such a position the complainer takes—but for himself Elihu repudiates it: Thou must choose, not I. In the concluding words, speak that which thou knowest, Elihu invites Job to state that method of “recompense” which shall be “according to his mind” and better than that observed in God’s rule of the world. A. B. D.
32. That which I see not teach Thou me. What we all want is direct teaching—the teaching of Almighty God. God has many lesson-books out of which He teaches. But the Teacher Himself is always apart from and above the lesson-book. The power is all in His secret agency. That instructs; that elevates. It is a real, personal God, using all, pervading all, impressing all, a spirit working with the spirit of a man. There is only one way to secure God’s own teaching. You must go into that school with clean hands and a pure heart. Over the portal of the palace of truth is the inscription—as strict in its stipulation as it is large in its undertaking—“If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine.” J. V.
I will do iniquity no more. A gracious heart is willing to know and see the worst of himself. He would have God teach him what iniquity he hath done. A godly man never thinks he seeth his sin enough. How little soever he sins, he thinks he sins too much, and how much soever he sees his sin, he thinks he sees it too little. Caryl.—Lavish and liberal as the Gospel is of its forgiveness for the past, it has no toleration either for the purposes or for the practices of sin for the future. The same Gospel which sheds an oblivion over the sinfulness of the past enters upon a war of extermination against all future sinfulness. It cannot be said of us that grace has abounded unto the forgiveness of our sins, unless there be seen in us an honest and determined habit of exertion against the continuance of sin. T. C.
33. As Thou wilt? God will take His own way, fulfil His own counsel, and recompense according to the sentence of His own justice, whether thou art pleased or displeased; He will neither ask thy leave nor thy advice, but what He pleases that will He do; it is therefore thy wisdom to make the best of that which is, because it is out of thy power to make it otherwise. If thou pretend to choose and refuse—that is, to prescribe to God, and except against what He does, so will not I, I will acquiesce in all He does. H.
No one has all he wishes or exactly what he wishes. Many have a great deal in the life-lot which they deprecate, object to, resent, and strive against with all their might, albeit in vain. If the will is strong and the view of life and duty defined and decisive, then between the soul and events there will be continual collision. There will be toiling and fretting; the building up again of things which have been cast down, a looking about for things that are wanting, vain regrets for what is lost, and a constant wonder, animated almost by a sense of injury, that things will not take their right shape—all this will be, unless there shall come in, happily, the explanation and corrective of a trustful faith, of true religion—unless the baffled one shall take time and thought, and quietly put to himself the question, “But should it be according to my will?” If things were “according to our will,” all the rain and all the darkness would be at once swept away, and the realms of pure enjoyment opened, and the sun of the eternal summer set high in the heavens, never to be obscured again. Not so does God arrange the seasons and times of our growing. Not such is His preparation of His children for the good things He has prepared for them. The thorn, the wilderness, the cross—hunger, and cold, and thirst, and weariness—such things as these, mingled no doubt with their opposites, are like the signs and fingerposts of the old consecrated way. A short new way into the land of promise, green and flowery, by the banks of murmuring streams, and under the shadow of the woods, has never been discovered. It is still the old way, across the sands, among the rocks, hither and thither, as the cloud may move. Of course we form our opinion of things as they happen, and take our measures for safe journeying day by day, according to the wisdom we have. But the supreme wisdom is always this—that we shall have our eye upon the cloud, and hold ourselves ready for movement along the line where the shadow of it passes; or where its fire burns. “Thy will” is, not to move; but you must—for see! the cloud is moving. “Thy will” is, to stay no longer here. ‘Tis high time you were up and away. Nay, not so fast; for see! there is no movement from on high. All is yet quiet and still. And should it be, then, according to thy will? Raleigh.
How it would smooth the troubled sea if we would yield ourselves to be borne peacefully on its waves, instead of entering into contest with its surges! It is our self-will, our controversy with events, or rather with God, that is the grand source of our unhappiness under the trials that befall us. Oh, could we set God always before us; could we live surrounded by the visible forms of His perfections and make our will one with His, how it would soothe and cheer this weary pilgrimage on earth! In the darkest hour and amid all the terrors and dismay of the heaviest tempest, light would beam upon us from the eternal throne; and that voice be heard: “It is I, be not afraid!” Trusting in God, I can stand on a falling universe and triumph there. N. W. Taylor.
36,37. Elihu’s judgment of Job extends far beyond the mere bearing of the latter under his afflictions; it embraces Job’s former life. And the language exceeds in harshness almost anything that the three friends had said. A. B. D.—Harsh as the words are, they are not without some justification. Elihu, of course, could not see into Job’s heart, and his offence at the tone of Job’s expostulations was natural. His own conviction that all chastisements proceed from love necessarily involved the condemnation of one who could see in them nothing but indications of enmity. Cook.