Job 34:7

As already noticed, Elihu deals fairly with Job's statements. He either quotes his words, or gives their substance, or draws obvious conclusions from them. Job had time and again declared he was righteous, or guiltless (so Job 10:7). This is the whole burden of his complaint against God. He had declared that God had taken away his right (Job 27:2), and that, being innocent, he would be a liar if he confessed sin.

He does not say "iniquity," as Eliphaz did; but he does charge Job with drinking up scorning like water. His words were unbecoming and irreverent. He did not attribute some secret crime to him which God must avenge without mercy. But Job, sure of his integrity, was leaning too much on what grace had made him for God — something he should have counted as nothing in his own eyes.

Eliphaz continues, "…how much less man, who is abominable and filthy, who drinks iniquity like water!" From God's viewpoint this too is true. But would Eliphaz have appreciated it if Job called him "abominable and filthy?" So Eliphaz was trying to use a general truth to convict Job of worse guilt than was actually true of Job.

His wound did indeed seem incurable, but he insisted that no transgression of his had caused it. Verses 5 and 6 sum up Job's position, as Elihu saw it. He had not claimed to be sinless. But he did claim that he was guilty of no transgression that justified God in inflicting such suffering on him. In effect it came to this, that he was right, and God was wrong.

Elihu does not mean Job's practice, but his words; for Job had ventured to speak too carelessly, provoked by Eliphaz and the others… Job gave the impression not only that he was just, but that God set it aside unjustly, and that there was no need whatever for his trial — language perfectly suited to encourage evil-doers.

Elihu likens such statements to the conduct of the wicked. By his assertions, Job was putting himself in their company. For surely if we lose faith in God's righteousness, what is left? This is walking "in the counsel of the wicked," far more dangerous than outward forms of evil. The effect of such teaching is that there is no profit in seeking to please God, or in having fellowship with Him. What a monstrous charge to fall from the lips of one who was a child of God! We can be thankful that Job's faith did not fail in spite of this cloud of unbelief. But Elihu in faithfulness must put the point of the knife on the festering sore, more serious than his bodily ailments.

Elihu now shows that in all this Job had allied himself with the wicked. The scorning of men he might drink up like water, but he could not so treat the judgment of God. Elihu asserts the absolute perfection and rightness of all God's ways. This matters greatly, since He is supreme in all the earth.

How differently our blessed Lord spoke in His path of loneliness: "The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places" (Psalm 16:6). In His darkest hour He justifies God's ways, saying, "Yet You are holy" (Psalm 22:3).