Elihu is still speaking. And by now, Job and his friends have probably stopped expecting much from any voice in the room. They have been at this for thirty-four chapters. Everyone has said their piece. Everyone has run dry. And here is this young man, still going.
Elihu is still speaking. And by now, Job and his friends have probably stopped expecting much from any voice in the room. They have been at this for thirty-four chapters. Everyone has said their piece. Everyone has run dry. And here is this young man, still going.
But something is changing in Elihu’s voice as he moves through chapters 35 to 37. He starts with argument, and he ends with awe. He begins by correcting and he finishes by gazing. It is as though, mid-speech, he looks up and forgets what he was saying because the sky is doing something extraordinary.
There are moments when the argument stops mattering because the presence of God becomes undeniable. Elihu is about to have one of those moments. And so are we.
Chapter 35 is Elihu still pressing his case against Job. His argument is sharp: if you sin, what does that take from God? If you are righteous, what does that give to Him? God is not diminished by your failures and not enlarged by your goodness. He is beyond the reach of either. And yet He hears and sometimes He is silent because the pride of the one crying out is getting in the way of the answer.
It is a hard word. And it may not be entirely aimed at Job. It may be aimed at you. Because sometimes we approach God in our suffering as though He owes us an explanation as though the fact that we have been faithful means He must account for Himself. Elihu is not saying God doesn’t hear. He is saying: check the posture you are bringing to the silence.
— God is not deaf. But He is not impressed by volume either. Sometimes the quieter the approach, the clearer the answer.
Chapter 36 is where something shifts. Elihu moves from rebuke to wonder. He speaks of God’s greatness — His power, His justice, His care for the afflicted. He says God opens their ears through suffering, commands them to repent of their iniquity, and if they obey, they spend their remaining years in prosperity and their years in pleasantness. There is a pathway through the pain. The suffering is not the destination.
“He is wooing you from the jaws of distress to a spacious place free from restriction,”
— Job 36:16
Raising altars of prayer, worship and the Word across the nations.
