Reading: Job 35-37, Psalm 144

Let’s do a book of Job recap. The story opens by introducing Job as a man who was rich, powerful, respected, and righteous. He is everything a person was supposed to be in that day and time. Then we are given a scene that no one in the story itself ever knows about. In some kind of divine council, the Accuser, Satan, appears before God, and God brags about Job. Satan suggests Job will not be all that if he didn’t have all his stuff. So God allows Satan to take away all Job’s stuff. Job mourns his loss, but allows that God knows what he is doing, and remains righteous. Satan again comes before God and God is still bragging on Job. Satan says sure, it’s not like he was suffering physical harm, so he’s staying the course. So God says okay, do your worst as long as you do not kill him. Job gets sick and ravaged by disease, which is where our dialogues start. The reason I am pointing out this story again here is because it tells us the answer to the great question that Job and his friends all have been attempting to answer. It tells us why Job suffered. It was because he was righteous and God was so proud of him he couldn’t help bragging.

Today we wrap up Elihu’s speech, which are the last human words before God’s direct involvement in the dialogues. There is not really anything new here, as we saw yesterday. Elihu gets angry at Job and his friends for not finding the “right” answer to Job’s suffering, but then spends a bunch of time rehashing what they already said. He accuses Job of terrible sin, just as Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar eventually did. He strongly argues that God brings suffering on the wicked and blessing on the righteous. He declares that God is beyond the challenge of human justice, which Job said way back in chapter 9. While Elihu makes a big deal of being offended for God, he does nothing terribly positive for the conversation.

That being said, Elihu does make a couple of distinct statements that are worth pointing out. The first one, in chapter 35, is that God is beyond Job’s reach. He is responding to Job’s question as to the value of a virtuous life, How am I better off than if I had sinned? Elihu’s answer is that God is not harmed or helped by either sin or righteousness, but they have a great impact on the person doing them. This is an ethical philosophy that has a great deal of currency in the world today. Elihu believes that righteous and wicked actions are what they are because of their effects on the person doing them, and apparently not because of an objective standard of right and wrong. While he does not take this as far as today’s relativist morality, it is interesting to see that it is certainly not a new idea. Elihu’s other big point, in chapter 36, is that suffering is more discipline than punishment. He sees the suffering inflicted upon a wicked person as a lesson, not a penalty. While this certainly part of suffering in the story, it is not the whole story, and we know that in the case of Job it is neither.

Some interpreters have looked at the dialogues in Job as a courtroom scene. It bears resemblance to other ancient writing in that vein. If that is correct, Elihu has put himself forth as the adjudicator of justice in the scene. He assumes that God will not appear and pass judgment, so he steps up and does it himself. It is a gutsy move which does not go perfectly for him, as God does in fact show up. But the author of Job put Elihu where he did for a reason. While he speaks as a judge to both Job and his three friends, it is ultimately human wisdom he represents. His accusations are exactly what one would expect: the wicked are punished and the righteous blessed. The problem, if we have been paying attention, is that this is not in fact the case when it comes to Job and his suffering.

The tail end of Elihu’s speech in chapter 37 is a declaration that God will not answer anyone like Job and his friends, who are wise in their own conceit. He confidently asserts that the Almighty- we cannot find him! Elihu’s conclusions is drawn from his philosophy about good and evil being primarily about the person. God will not respond to Job because Job’s suffering is already God’s response to Job. Elihu is left looking rather foolish, as the next chapter opens with the appearance of God and his speech to Job.