Job 33:22

If they do not listen to His word, He may send them His rod. As he expands on this, Elihu is in effect describing the case of Job. Painful chastening comes upon him, and his bones seem to wither in deadly struggle. "The night racks my bones, and the pain that gnaws me takes no rest" (Job 30:17). He is brought so low that he loathes even the food that would keep him alive... His flesh is wasted away, and his bones look and stare at him. "My bones stick to my skin and to my flesh" (Job 19:20). He is at the last of life, drawing near to the grave, or the more dreadful "pit of destruction." "I know that You will bring me to death, and to the house appointed for all living" (Job 30:23).

Elihu does not say in so many words that Job has refused to listen to God's warnings, nor does he say he is describing his case exactly. He speaks of God's method of dealing with men. Has it no voice for Job? Can he not at least see that God is speaking in the affliction, and that He has something to say?

And again, God may speak through pain and sickness. Verses 19-22 describe it vividly. God speaks until the sufferer comes face to face with death itself. How often has a careless sinner, when struck down like this, been led to turn to God and awakened for his eternal salvation. How often too has a believer had to look back to a time of severe sickness as an occasion of much spiritual blessing.

The man is carried away by his own will. But God knows how to bend or break it. "He keeps back his soul from the pit" — this is the merciful purpose of God's intervention — "and his life from perishing by the sword." Here is more than a dream of the night or a passing vision. Here are corrective ways, as well as glimpses of God's light, or of His judgment, which the man was despising.

One finds himself unable even to eat (v.20). Then he loses weight and becomes little more than "skin and bones," with an early death staring him in the face (vv.21-22). "His soul draws near the pit." Is there any help?

The word for "messenger" is "angel," and this suggests a supernatural revealer of the mind of God... Here we have a suggestion of the Mediator. The next word makes this stronger: "an Interpreter," or "Mediator" — one sent as an ambassador to make known the mind of God. No ordinary messenger will do; it must be "one of a thousand."

There may be many who can sympathise and sometimes condemn the afflicted one, as Job's three friends did. To give the mind of God is another and a greater thing.

"Then He is gracious to him, and says, Deliver him from going down into the pit; I have found a ransom." This is a vivid way of presenting what God was about to do in due time... Here we have plain enough language — perhaps as clear as any words in the Old Testament, anticipating that infinite work which we now know to be finished in the cross of Christ.

What the sinner needs to be shown is what uprightness means for him: bowing before God, and owning his true state without holding back or hiding anything. This would be genuine uprightness, and it would at once draw out the response from the heart of God.