Job 33:24

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."