Job 33:17

In this chapter Elihu shows Job one common way God deals with people, though God does not always work this way. He is not limited in how He reaches men, and can act on the soul in many ways. Elihu rightly begins at the beginning, with the first work of God in the man who does not know Him. It is grace working to awaken a soul that does not know God… This is just what marks out divine mercy when it appeals to such a man. His own will carries him away. But God knows how to bend or break it.

We all forget too easily the weighty fact that "God tries the righteous." "He does not withdraw His eyes from them." We are in His hands and always under His eye. We are the objects of His deep, tender, unchanging love; but we are also the subjects of His wise moral government. His dealings with us are varied. They are sometimes preventive, sometimes corrective, always instructive. We may be bent on some course of our own, the end of which would be moral ruin. He steps in and withdraws us from our purpose. He dashes our castles in the air to pieces. He scatters our golden dreams. He breaks in on many a favourite plan our hearts clung to — a plan that would have ended in certain destruction.

His object is to correct wrong thoughts and actions. He withdraws man from "mischief," or his purpose, and hides pride from man (geber, the hero or mighty man). This goes deeper than action, for pride lurks in the heart, and God would hide it from man — hinder its control over him. "Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins" (Ps. 19:13). So man is kept back from destruction. He bows to the correction of God's truth, and so is spared the smiting of the rod, or of the sword.

Chastenings are not always for actual faults. Job 33:18-19 says, "he keeps back his soul from the pit, his life from perishing by the sword. Man is also rebuked with pain on his bed and with continual strife in his bones." Verse 17 tells us the purpose: to hide pride from man. Then in chapter 36 the chastening is for positive faults (v. 9).

When there was no Bible, the revelation of God, God spoke to man individually by dreams and visions. He does not do so any longer, for we have His completed Word in which His will is made known to us.

When God sends dreams to people, He "opens the ears of men, and seals their instruction" (v.16). This is not to flatter man's pride. It does the very opposite: it is "to turn man from his deed, and conceal pride from man" (v.17). In other words, if a dream is a warning against what I may be inclined to do, or if it humbles me, then I should take it to heart.

Every effort to justify myself before God is striving against God… God "opens the ears of men, that He may withdraw man from his purpose, and hide pride from man." Then the man must pass through this sore pain and affliction. It may be through some fall that all self-trust is blighted.