Job 33:23–24

Job 33:15-22. He shows God using the plough — a dream, a striking providence, bodily pain or sickness — to break up such unploughed ground. And such is the work to this day. Job 33:23-24. The sower comes after the ploughman. The seed is the Gospel. God provides the ransom, and deliverance comes to the sinner.

The word for "messenger" is "angel," and this suggests a supernatural revealer of the mind of God. We find this often in the Old Testament, where the "angel" made known the will of God (see Judges 2:1; Judges 13:3). The "angel of Jehovah" is indeed His representative — so fully that Scripture calls Him Jehovah Himself ("The angel of His presence," Isaiah 63:9). Here we have a hint of the Mediator, and the next word makes it stronger: "an Interpreter," or "Mediator" (see Genesis 42:23; 2 Chronicles 32:21) — one whom God sends as an ambassador to make His mind known. An ordinary messenger will not do; it must be "one of a thousand."

Times of emergency are the opportunity for the one Elihu called a "messenger," an "interpreter." He can show what God has to say in these things. Such people are not common, as we know, but they are of great value, and Elihu called them "one among a thousand," which shows how rare they are. Many can pity the afflicted one, and sometimes condemn him, as Job's three friends did. To give the mind of God is another and a greater thing.

Yes, there is help, but only in God, who knows how to send a messenger at the right time, a messenger who is also a mediator, "one among a thousand" (v.23). Such an individual is typical of the Lord Jesus, the "one mediator between God and men" (1 Tim. 2:5).

He had asked for someone with feelings like his own, when he was crushed in spirit under the hand of God. He longed for a man who would step in between God and himself. And God now gives him what he wanted (not yet the man Christ Jesus), a man of God indeed, but with weaknesses like his own.

We fully grant that the Hebrew word can sometimes be translated "duty," but that hardly fits man's sinful state and condition before God. No doubt his state calls for self-judgment; but you could not press this on him as a duty... The sinner needs someone to show him what, for him, is uprightness: bowing before God, and owning his true state, holding nothing back and hiding nothing.

This interpreter is to show man his uprightness. But whose uprightness, or righteousness, does this mean?... Most commentators explain that the interpreter tells the sufferer how to do right before God, and critics even suggest changing the word "uprightness" to "fault." There is a deeper meaning here. The word "his" should carry a capital "H" — not man's righteousness, but God's.

The moment the conscience bows under the sin and confesses it, it comes into an upright position. Where evil has been, uprightness of soul shows itself in the awareness of that evil, and in the power to confess it... Get sin judged in the conscience, and then comes the revelation of the unfailing love of God to meet the need.

If a man is to profit from God's chastening, he must understand its purpose, and for that he needs someone who can explain it. The word for "messenger" is "angel," and this points to a heavenly messenger who reveals the mind of God. Often in the Old Testament the "angel" made known the will of God (see Judges 2:1; 13:3). The "angel of Jehovah" is His representative — so fully that Scripture calls Him Jehovah Himself ("The angel of His presence," Isa. 63:9). So here we have a hint of the Mediator, and the next word strengthens it: "an Interpreter," or "Mediator" (see Gen. 42:23; 2 Chron. 32:21) — one whom God sends as an ambassador to make His mind known. And an ordinary messenger will not do; it must be "one of a thousand."

The word translated "ransom" here means a "covering," close to the word translated "atonement" in the Old Testament. Before Christ came, God covered the sin of the repentant sinner from His own holy eye. He was waiting for the time when the sacrifice of Christ, enough for everything, would make full propitiation. So Romans speaks of God passing over "former sins" in "his divine forbearance" (Rom. 3:25). Those past sins were the sins of believers who lived before Christ — Job's among them.

The means of such grace is wonderful: "Deliver him from going down into the pit; I have found a ransom" (v.24). Elihu could not have understood the full weight of his own words. We know the ransom is the Lord Jesus Himself, in His perfect sacrifice for sinners at the cross. Job's friends could not think of suggesting a ransom for Job. But Elihu's heart overflowed with the conviction that there must be such a ransom, since he knew the character of His Creator. The Spirit of God put such words into his mouth. It was not any man who had found the ransom, but God.

Look at that drunkard! He is "going down into the pit." … Look at the man who only claims to believe — respectable and respected, honest and honourable, the most religious and most self-righteous church or chapel member, whether a robed priest or an ordinary member of the congregation! He too is "going down into the pit." The word of God says that everyone is travelling that road, whatever their outward, moral, or religious state, unless they have personally taken for themselves the ransom that God found and God gave.

"He is merciful to him, and says, 'Deliver him from going down into the pit; I have found a ransom'" — a strikingly vivid way of setting out what God was about to do in due time, and not merely a promise given here in picture form. The language here is plain enough. These are perhaps as clear as any words in the Old Testament, looking ahead to that infinite work which we now know was finished at the cross of Christ.

In Elihu's words we find a beautiful expression of the good news of God — "I have found a ransom"; or, in the language of the New Testament, "having obtained (Greek: found) eternal redemption" (Heb. 9:12).

Now we see the blessed results of this work of the Interpreter in the ransomed man. He can now pray with confidence and rejoice in God's favour, seeing His face with joy. He has found a righteousness — not of his own goodness but of Another — "the righteousness which is of God by faith."